this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
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Fluxer continues rapid development and is now self-hostable.
The current stand alone client doesn’t allow you to specify a self hosted server though I’m limited to the web interface until there’s a fix, hopefully soon.
Really like fluxer though! Highly recommend it was very easy to set up and looks exactly like Discord.
Genuinely the one issue I have with it at the moment. Had been using Matrix since early this year. Got Fluxer up recently when they got the beta apps. Shut my matrix server down about a week later. It's just nicer. Missing some things like E2E (for now) but my friends hated the additional step of having to put in that decrypt phrase anyway. Fluxer is easy and incredibly familiar out the box. Gonna keep my eye on Matrix clients though, but neither Element, Cinny, nor FluffyChat impressed.
Can't you specify instance when logging into a canary client?
Not on Linux and the forums said it’s an oversight or bug and would be fixed but not when. Frustrating I am trying to migrate friends but they whine about the web interface.
It’s also a slop project. Matrix exists: join it and enjoy the federated future.
Matrix has its benefits, but it is not a 1:1 replacement for discord, for one thing they still haven't figured out audio screen sharing. If privacy is your thing, it is also a mixed bag since jitsi is not e2ee while the fluxer video calls are. For my use case fluxer is preferable for less tech savvy people or people who want e2ee video calls, & matrix is good for e2ee chat messages, both have their place, & I use both where their strengths shine
Element call exists and both audio over screen share and encrypted video calls are a thing since couple years now. It’s not a 1:1 discord and it’s good because of that.
I've never gotten the screen share audio to work and based on the issue tracker I'm not the only one.
It's not. Matrix is awful.
Ok go ahead, and please explain why matrix is awful. Please only speak from recent experience.
Slow loading, constant encryption errors, difficult to use, and way too many people on the flagship instance.
I’ve been on matrix for over about two years now. There is no noticeable slowness on the client, on any that I tried (and I’ve tried a lot of them), and the chats for our groups open immediately.
There have been 0 encryption errors so far. We use encryption only in private chats and chats where we exchange important data. I have only been on large encrypted rooms (100+) once, and I did have an initial loading phase which took a couple of seconds. One should be able to live with that.
I have brought 12 people including my mother on element. Three of those people are what I consider “techy”, and the rest managed to join and use it by themselves with zero teaching from me (other than giving them the home server URL).
Hating matrix because lots of people are on the flagship server is like hating email because most people use Gmail. It’s not relevant for you. They can use whatever and you can use whatever.
I have a feeling that I have this talk once a month because there are misconceptions and misinformation on matrix. Matrix does have some issues, but these are not it.
I don't know what to tell you, that has been my experience, and the experience of many others I have discussed it with.
Well for one, yes, I absolutely do hate that most people use Gmail. This i s simply not the case with many competing protocols. For another, no, it's not the same, because Gmail makes no illusions of being private.
What client are you using?
Matrix is cool but the lackluster custom emote support on mobile clients is kind of a deal breaker for me
https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/2545 Exists since 2020. But are custom emotes really the reason that you don’t use matrix?
Sure Matrix supports custom emotes, but clients' support for them is still spotty. Element X didn't even show them at all when I tried, and fluffy chat would let you see them but had no emote picker. you just had to type the name into chat between colons
I don't know what you're trying to imply, but yes custom emote support is that important for me and my friends
Actually there are plenty of mobile clients with that feature lol.
I do use Extera Next and it does have them.
this does seem like a pretty nice mobile client. thanks for sharing!
though unfortunately there's no iOS version, so my partner can't use it
extera is a fluffychat fork, which does have an iOS client fwiw
yes but as I said elsewhere in the comments here, last I tried it the emoji picker didn't show custom emotes. To use them you had to specifically type out the emote name in colons 😔
Yeah.
Also Fluxer is closed-source AFAIK.
And they say they will open it, but that just feels like empty words, and even if they did, I know they will use a shitty license as the FSL.
It's open source under AGPL 3.0.
However they have worked on stuff privately before pushing it. That is apparently stopping now though, with contributions open again.
Oh well, I take back what I said, sorry for the misinformation. At least last time I checked there was no source code.
And about what I said about the FSL license, I'm really traumatized by projects that supposedly open source their code, but with that license.
I've been trying Fluxer recently and it's been really great. though not as nice as Stoat with emotes, they still give 500 emote slots and 500 sticker slots for servers on the main instance. The mobile app that recently came out are a bit rough around the edges, but works well enough to replace discord for me (if only I could get all my friends on it...)
Does it have audio notifications yet? That was my deal-breaker when I tried it 6 months ago.
It had audio notifications 6 months ago.
Yeah, my bad, I was thinking of Stoat.
yep! you can even turn on a notification sound for messages in the current channel while the window is focused
I wish they'd do a cheap "Nitro Classic" style tier, rather than just having only "Nitro Premium".
If they had a super cheap $1 tier just for being able to use custom emotes anywhere, I'd honestly love that. Though I feel like the $5/month for Plutonium is a lot better than $10/month that discord nitro goes for
yea, that's exactly why they don't do that. They know the only main feature that they offer that people who subscribe actually want is the emotes everywhere, they won't offer a super cheap tier offering only that as the jump would be people on the 1$ tier and then people on the 10$ tier. Nobody would do nitro basic.
They don't have either.
It's called Plutonium or something. They do have the equivalent of Nitro.
Yes but unlike Discord you can just ignore it.
Actually not. They do impose really stupid upload limits.
Storage costs build up fast, the real solution is just handling peer to peer file sharing.
Yeah, and that's the cool part on Matrix. It's not really P2P yet, but it's federated (including the storage), and they have a project looking to make it P2P.
Matrix is cool, it's just not a Discord replacement.
It can be, actually.
The protocol itself obviously no, but you have clients really similar to Discord, such as Cinny, Fluffy Chat, Extera, Extera Next, Nheko, Commet, Tacit, Sable, etc.
In my experience it has been a 1:1 discord replacement. It has channels, all kinds of emojis, video/voice calls, and multiple clients that give a very similar appearance to discord.
How has it not been the same for you?
It's a power user platform, it doesnt have simple onboarding in the way something like Fluxer/Stoat have. A Discord replacement has to have easy of use and familiarity, Matrix doesnt. You said it yourself with "multiple clients".
As for ease of use and familiarity, it seems to have reached par as far as a couple of my less technical friends go (see screenshot below for similarity to discord - its practically identical to our old setup).
As for on boarding, use cinny.in as your client (and don't tell your users that other clients exist) and you are off to the races!
Not stupid at all when you're the one paying for storage.