Post
My #Discord community might be looking to migrate to a different service, and preferably I would like to steer them towards something #SelfHosted, possibly #Matrix ?
So, any #SelfHosting fans out there - how difficult is it to host&manage a Matrix-server? What kind of hardware would be necessary for 50 - 100 users? What features would we be missing compared to Discord?
@bloodaxe if you want a discord alternative, just use stoat chat, there is a selfhost repo, quite easy to deploy.
You can try matrix 'flavor' tuwunel, written is rust.
I have good experience so far with both, but as a Discord alternative, stoat chat is just perfect.
@bloodaxe You can look at https://joinmatrix.org/guide/matrix-vs-discord/ for a list of feature comparisons. I'd say maybe try out public homeservers before selfhosting? You can then get started with https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy once you've committed. Depending on your users' usage pattern, storage could be an issue though as Matrix is full mesh federation, so maybe ask in support rooms of various homeserver implementations.
@bloodaxe I'm not self hosting this but the .org page lists a bunch of server options. The thing most seem to struggle with is setting up video/webrtc.
I hear some are indeed running their single/ tiny user instances on a Raspberry so it's probably possible.
Anyway kudos for trying. From my little corner only the inner circle of maybe 4 people decided to give this a chance and joined me on Matrix as well.
@bloodaxe As a user, I've bounced off every Matrix community I've tried to participate in. Having decryption randomly fail for messages makes it hard to have a conversation.
@RadDevon Yeah I'm super unsure about migrating my community over to something Matrix-based. Not because I dislike Matrix as a concept, but I'm just not sure if it's a right fit uknow? It's so much more than "just" a chat+voice platform. Maybe Fluxer is more of what we need? 🤔
@bloodaxe I'm watching that one, but it feels like it's not quite ready. I noticed just today they had a link from their GitHub to self-hosting docs, but that link 404ed. I found a self-hosting section in their docs, but almost every page just has some placeholder text.
@bloodaxe I would start by making sure you understand exactly what your community was using Discord for, before jumping to any particular self-hosted service. There is no one-to-one replacement for Discord, so different communities will resolve to different replacements, depending on what they need.
@soatok has this post on twelve different use-cases of Discord, and that might help guide your assessment: https://soatok.blog/2026/02/11/on-discord-alternatives/
@bloodaxe I found a good middle ground for my community. I am self hosting a Matrix server but I am the only user on the server. Everyone else in my community is federated from whichever server they prefer.
@darth Tha does sound like a smart solution in many ways, but I think I would like to allow my members to register on our server 😃 Mainly because then they do not have to hunt down other servers they want to register to xD
@bloodaxe if they register that's not a problem on its own. The problem starts when they join many federated rooms with photos and videos. Your server storage requirements go up
@bloodaxe self-hosting matrix is a huge resource hog. That alone would rule it out for me.
@collectifission I'm still trying to map what features my community wants from an alternative, but what other options are out there? I just read a blogpost about XMPP, and severs are good but clients are lagging behind.
Matrix is also seeing adoption from EU countries, and there are different server solutions out there as well. Can't certain resource-hog-processes be disabled somehow?
@bloodaxe as someone looking for an alternative myself, I haven’t yet settled on one. I’m leaning towards open source Discord clones like Stoat and @fluxer.app
