this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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How hard is this type of service, as a self hosted docker app, to develop?
Wouldn’t most of the underlying codec and streaming technologies be more or less extendable into a platform?
https://stoat.chat/
These guys have been at it for several years now. Check out their GitHub, look at the components.
I'm trying to modify their dockerfile a bit so it runs in my container manager and uses my reverse proxy, instead of the one they included, and it creates more containers for this one application than I have for all my other projects combined.
All of which is to say: "pretty hard" is the answer. It is pretty damn hard to build this stuff.
I got the self hosted version up and it looks like it's a much older version than their current iteration which was a kick in the teeth. Nothing discouraging quite like "Well you can self host if you don't mind a worse version of the product". Like my dudes I'm trying to take some pressure off of your server...
Stoat doesn't have screen sharing. Teamspeak 6 does though
Teamspeak isn't open source... Use Mumble, MediaMTX or Matrix instead.
How hard is it to create discord?
A lot of the technical difficulty in that type of app usually centers around scale. If you only ever have 10 users in a channel it's not so hard. When you have 10,000 or 50,000 things start to get more tricky.
Still as per usually for small scale (and slightly larger too) there have been options for a long time. The main difficulty is in getting other people to use your proposed option.
Stoat is an open source Discord alternative. You should check it out.
There's also https://spacebar.chat/, which I've been hearing some buzz about, but not really here; not sure if that's because there are known problems with it or what.
Edit: it looks like voice and video are just experimental right now, so might not be a good replacement for many: https://docs.spacebar.chat/faq/
Don’t think much needs to be developed.
Matrix has been out for a while… but admittedly i have not checked it out myself yet.
I've been trying it out with a group of people. (On Linux and Android)
It's pretty bad still. The concept is solid but each client and server has their own way to go about things. Most are missing desired features like calling and screen sharing. Some even lack group chat...
Reactions and custom emojis are sent through an unencrypted side channel. Rich formatting such as code blocks are inconsistent across clients.
You're pretty much stuck using the mainline client element to get the best discord lite experience. But it's still pretty junk at hq screen sharing and group calls. It's missing audio capture and a decent audio filter essentially.