r/DiscordAlternatives

So let me start off by saying I'm pretty non-versed in the technical side of stuff. I know enough to watch my footing but I don't know how to disarm the mines, if that makes sense. I recently found Armada and Hollow to be potential apps my group will move to, but I'm unfamiliar with how relay connections work.

I'm not looking for a by-the-book technical breakdown, more I want to ensure a few things, so I have some questions.

First: How do relays process the connecting users' data? Does it store user IP addresses and is there any way short of a data breach that bad actors can access it? I come from Skype where I was once ddosed because it was very easy to get a user's IP, and I don't want to connect to a service with leaky IPs that can get people targeted and doxxed.

Second: Is any data actually stored in a way where such a leak could happen? This is mostly targeted towards the devs for those two apps but if anyone familiar with the technology has an answer I'd love to know.

I just want to make sure this connection protocol can't be used as a weapon in the wrong hands. I noticed that Armada in particular seems to have many relays which bounce user data around- I'd love if someone from them could weigh in on who actually has access to those and that data.

Stiq is an open source, white-label, nostr over Tor social media platform for communities. We built it for activists and community organizations that actually care about their members.

People need to organize, but individuals should not give up control.

https://stiqtech.vercel.app

We’re a small community from Iraq (of all places…) funding and building a non profit app for non-profits.

We need your help publishing Stiq app (for those of you with Apple/Google dev account), and we need you to use it! You can run a community on an old machine, or with a cloud provider for as little as $5 per month.

You can find all the details you need in the website and public github repo.

Reach out and help us make the future of safe organizing for the world!

Disclaimer of conflict of interest: I am the owner of a direct competitor (Echo), and the only reviewer.

Hey guys, I am back with another review this time of the big boss Fluxer which will likely be used as the main point of comparison to other platforms as it will likely be one of the highest scoring which it did fairly so today but imperfectly.

Note: This review is based on the stable public release of Fluxer as of 2026/8/11, the canary is known to have higher feature parity and receive changes earlier, so take the review more holistically as the specific details are subject to change.

Trust Score 5/9:

Fluxer scored pretty big on some categories, and lost some points on others. I expect this to go up on the annual re-review.

On License Fluxer scored 3/3 as it is fully open source (Minus some operational cook book which is okay in my desecration)

On centralisation Fluxer scored a 0/3, Fluxer as of today remains fully centralised and while there are plans to become federated in the future, promises will not give you points here.

Though this is something to consider if you want to use Fluxer as a promise is better than nothing.

Note: Fluxer still get the 3 points for being FOSS, and you can get the source and run it on your own device with your own instance, and Fluxer's devs have put in effort to making sure it runs smoother on your device. However the centralisation metric has to do with the actual operating platform and how decentralised it is, not whether or not you can run an instance of it.

On other trust factors Fluxer scored a 2/3, it has an exceptionally user friendly T.O.S, has been in development for a number of years and has been out for longer than many alternatives, mostly clean reputation though with some major hickups such as the image scanning incident. I also expect this score to go up by the next time we review, unless any other major incidents happen.

Experience Score 6/9:

Fluxer is very useable and for the most part people won't complain, it is still growing and not quite at discord level polish and it lacks its own identity, but in terms of the core stuff and the basics, Fluxer as a technical product is mostly ready, just lacking in discord level polish.

On UI Fluxer scored a 2/3, in most areas Fluxer's UI will not leave you complaining, if functionality and familiarity is what you are looking for.

However if you care about a unique visual identity, Fluxer is a shameless discord clone.

If you care about attention to detail, you will be frequently disappointed by many small things that compound, so the major judgement is that Fluxer's UI is very functional though not unique and imperfectly polished.

Examples include but are not limited to: double background darkening, no inline composer preview of markdown or even emojis, no email design, awkwardness around light mode such in voice chat shadowing, imperfect skeleton shapes, lots of dead space that doesn't dynamically adjust and more.

On UX Fluxer scored a 2/3, once again good but imperfect. Fluxer is largely functional, though the user experience in some areas lacks polish and some of the stuff you would expect.

And Fluxer is not as generous as other alternatives in many aspects and even worse than even discord in some, such as deleting media, though if there was a sustainability score Fluxer would win points there.

Examples include: Preview widget only in edge corners, slow initial emoji load (though this is a technical tradeoff), jerky scroll corrections, views in modals (RBAC View for example) and more.

On Feature Parity and Completeness Fluxer scored a 2/3, if you are looking for the basics and core stuff, Fluxer has you covered, you will not be left asking for anything you need to move over from Discord.

However Fluxer has yet to achieve full feature parity, and considering that some alternative have reached beyond feature parity with discord, it would not be fair to give Fluxer a perfect score yet.

Where others have gone and implemented true full markdown support and even katex, or voice chat activities, fluxer still lacks behind in having no composer preview, no voice chat side chat and other things of that nature.

Readiness Score 5/9:

Fluxer while likely the most ready true discord alternative on the market, it is far from being fully ready to replace discord, and the Fluxer founders would likely agree too, if you asked me for a recommendation I would not feel bad recommending Fluxer at all, however if you asked me for a solid prediction I would not be as certain.

Popularity 2/3:

The thing that puts Fluxer in the big leagues is the fact that it boasts numbers of above 100k Users and has been one of the fastest growing alternatives, which makes it a much more viable replacement now for Discord. However this is still no where near discord which itself has those numbers many more times just in some of its biggest servers (which themselves are user limited otherwise they would likely be bigger)

So definitely one of the bigger and more viable alternatives, but no where near discord level, which itself is two issues, on one side you might not find enough people, especially the more specific you want to be, but also on a technical side, Fluxer has not proven itself to handle discord level scale, because it never had discord level scale, which will be an important issue in the future.

Platform Parity 2/3:

Fluxer is available to both PC and Mobile users, as a web and real downloadable client. It is not available on Console yet, which Discord is.

Other Readiness Factors 1/3:

The various Fluxer releases, especially on mobile, are far from mature, they are largely in beta still, so by Fluxer's own admission, this is far from its final form yet and so I can't give it any higher score than 1.

A while back I posted Howl here and said I would get technical if people asked. I got a few messages and asks so I figured to make a post about it.

What is encrypted end to end

Your DMs, group DMs, file attachments, DM voice and video calls, voice channels, stages, and screen shares. For all of these, our server stores and relays data it cannot read. There is no toggle and no secure mode to remember. It is on for every DM, every time.

What is not encrypted:

Server text channels. Moderators cannot moderate what they cannot read, so community channels work the way they do everywhere else.

How it works:

DMs use MLS (RFC 9420), the IETF's open standard for encrypted group messaging. Discord uses MLS too, but only for voice calls. Their messages sit on their servers as plain text. We use it for the messages.

Who holds the keys

You do, by default. Your key vault is sealed with your password plus a recovery key we show you once. We keep nothing that can open it. Lose both the password and the recovery key and your history is gone. The app tells you so at setup.

If that scares you, you can opt into server recovery instead. Then we keep a copy of your keys and can rescue a forgotten password. The cost is that, that key for decryption is on our servers. The setting also mentions this directly so theres nothing misunderstood.

I have seen “fail closed” thrown around on this sub from AI and the normal person probably has no clue what that actually means, a quick run down is basically, if something fails to perform its function (in our case encryption) then the action fails rather than working in a way that the person is unaware of.

If encryption is not ready, the app blocks the send. It never falls back to plain text. A hacked server cannot downgrade an encrypted DM to a plain one, because the client refuses to go backward.

Reporting: if you report a DM, your own client decrypts that one message and sends it to our moderators. Reporting is something you trigger, not something we do.

Check my work

Again Howl is open source so all code is public, so you do not have to take my word for any sentence above.

Repo: https://github.com/Howl-LLC/Howl

Happy to answer technical questions in the comments, same as last time.

Hi! I'm working on a personal project: Stoat Enhanced, a modified client for Stoat inspired by what Vencord does for Discord.

Full transparency: I'm not a coder. The entire codebase was written by Claude (Anthropic's AI), based on my ideas and direction. I'm driving the project — deciding what to build, testing everything on my end, debugging with Claude when things break — but the actual code is AI-written, not mine.

Project goal: Stoat is a great open source alternative to Discord, but it's still missing a number of features that are currently only available on Discord (rich presence, custom themes, and more to come). Rather than waiting for Stoat to build these natively or forking the entire client, this project adds a plugin injection system that enhances the official client without altering it directly — similar to what Vencord or BetterDiscord do for Discord.

Already working:

• Integrated CSS theme editor — built directly into Stoat's Settings panel, with theme importing, live editing, and the ability to revert a modified theme back to its original version
• Custom Rich Presence — a "playing..." / "listening to..." status, a feature Stoat doesn't have natively, with identity verification to prevent impersonation

In progress / planned next:

• Automatic display of other users' status (visual badges in the member list)
• More "Nitro-like" features, but free for everyone
• A community theme-sharing system, so people can create and download themes easily

Early alpha, not stable for daily use yet — this is a project I want to grow over time, not something ready for everyone right now.

Current version: v0.1.0-alpha
Repo: https://github.com/djell1l/stoat-enhanced

Open to feedback, feature ideas, or contributors if anyone's interested.

Checkout my new project I've been working on.

https://github.com/calebast/FreeCord

This is a project aimed at bringing you all the features of gaming voice chats without giving away all your information and freedom! Current build is functional with quality voice chat, persistent text chat with end to end encryption, screen sharing, file system, in chat video player, roles, invite only and more! Deployment is a bit messy right now but im working to cut that down! Let me know what you think or have any suggestions for my github to edit as this is my first project