Whole site is full of LLM-isms (em-dashes, stilted 'X. Y. Z. <Summary>.' constructions).
It's so boring. It says "We put one prompt worth of effort into our landing page". Just like all the others.
"No ads · No tracking · No ID verification · Free forever" - why would anyone believe this for a closed source application that, presumably, you want to monetize? Servers and developers aren't free, unless it's open source and/or self hosted.
While it's great to have alternatives, I suspect a lot us are really only interested in forkable open alternatives (like Matrix / Element), as most concerns about Discord are tied with it being a private company.
As far as I can tell, Echoed is also closed the same way Discord is?
Damn this is gorgeous. That said, how can one try something if no one is there? I can sway my team to move it, but not my audience. Discord still owns the market as a medium to reach an audience.
I'm always surprised to hear people hate Discord's UI. I think it's fine.
The only thing I was probably change is adding the ability to bookmark specific channels so I can switch to them in a single click no matter what channel I'm currently looking at.
It's fine as a kind of replacement for forums, but I don't like it at all for chat and community. I find Discord admins always tend to create 5 trillion channels which each get about one message per week. And then whine when you haven't sorted your messages in to the most relevant channels.
The vast majority of chats would be be better off in a standard group chat UI with no channels.
Yeah; I get the impression that people saying this really mean "I hate the stupid upsells." Which is fine, I do too. But I guess on HN there's more clout to claiming it's the UI that's the problem?
Because it reduces the switching cost because users don't have to learn a new interface. Discord has shown that its UI is at least capable of being used by hundreds of millions of users so it is not a bad starting point.
That's exactly it. A lot of users are likely emotionally attached and trapped to their Nitro garbage and feel like they "invested" far into the cult by now. Giving them a way out is important if you want to acquire that market.
I have a lot of chatting applications that all demonstrated that to me. The most common way was having another party indicate the app as a communication option
Please please please someone take over discord and their use base. Their nitro and ads is the most toxic nonsense stuff I have ever had the displeasure to work with.
I am in a niche market with both new gen workers and customers and discord is a really important medium to engage and connect with them. My soul dies every time I am there dealing with all sorts of psychological traps and baits to more spending coupled with the incessant advertising.
I don't even care anymore who wins that market, just get me out of it.
There is so little advertising on discord that I find it hilarious you are so upset about a few notifications here and there about nitro and other aesthetic perks which are basically entirely optional
There are 3rd party ads in Discord now, and they are probably going to expand as an ad platform. I think this is what the parent comment was upset about.
A few notifications here and there? I'm not sure I can agree with you. It's a daily persistent thing that there is no way to disable and the constant dark patterns.
I believe I am not alone with things like https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
> Please please please someone take over discord and their use base
This is one area where I can not muster the optimism to think that would improve the situation. You need someone else to somehow unseat them somehow.. they’re entrenched in this space so deeply though.
Is this P2P, or hosted on proprietary servers? How is it funded? I don't like ads and I like free things, but "no ads, free forever" doesn't make me confident in its long term stability.
We have been online for more than 1.5 years. Back when we started, we didn't see Discord alternatives popping up left and right, so we created our own. Nowadays, there are like 10 of them popping up every single day, most of those are below par and completely usable. If you like to try out a new one you can give us a try no stress haha bye
Cool. I would like to try it, but it will probably take a considerable amount of time to convince my circle of friends to migrate to this platform en masse.
Is there a catalog of public, Echoed-based groups / communities that anyone can freely join? I'd like to explore the platform's full range of features before trying to persuade others to make the switch.
Why do companies like this continue to promise "No Ads Ever"? How do they plan enough money to support their service? Video sharing is incredibly expensive, even Discord is unlikely profitable between their advertising campaigns and server boosting revenue.
It's not self-hosted, they are going to have to make money at some point to support the effort.
If it’s not open source and self-hostable, it’s a non-starter. Not switching to another closed platform just for it to die. I’m tired of switching. Whatever I switch to next must be able to last the rest of my life expectancy.
I'm just ready for something new, personally. I don't really like Discord's vibe of paying for avatar skins? Gross. And paying for custom emojis? Super gross. Yuck.
Front page says 150MB RAM, About page says 90MB.
Whole site is full of LLM-isms (em-dashes, stilted 'X. Y. Z. <Summary>.' constructions).
It's so boring. It says "We put one prompt worth of effort into our landing page". Just like all the others.
"No ads · No tracking · No ID verification · Free forever" - why would anyone believe this for a closed source application that, presumably, you want to monetize? Servers and developers aren't free, unless it's open source and/or self hosted.
While it's great to have alternatives, I suspect a lot us are really only interested in forkable open alternatives (like Matrix / Element), as most concerns about Discord are tied with it being a private company.
As far as I can tell, Echoed is also closed the same way Discord is?
Why do all the Discord alternative apps try to 1:1 clone Discord's UI? Half of my dislike of Discord stems from its UI.
Have you tried Chatto[0]? Seems to be an open-source Slack and Discord alternative with a nice UI.
0. https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto
Damn this is gorgeous. That said, how can one try something if no one is there? I can sway my team to move it, but not my audience. Discord still owns the market as a medium to reach an audience.
The screenshot looks identical to Discord?
Looks like a cool project, thanks for the reference. Have been relying on Dorion up to this point.
So much this. Discord UI was for simple voice and text chat. Over time it's had so many other things shoe horned in its now a royal kludge.
I guess because there's people like me that like the UI (aside from all the Nitro bloat at least)
I'm always surprised to hear people hate Discord's UI. I think it's fine.
The only thing I was probably change is adding the ability to bookmark specific channels so I can switch to them in a single click no matter what channel I'm currently looking at.
It's fine as a kind of replacement for forums, but I don't like it at all for chat and community. I find Discord admins always tend to create 5 trillion channels which each get about one message per week. And then whine when you haven't sorted your messages in to the most relevant channels.
The vast majority of chats would be be better off in a standard group chat UI with no channels.
Yeah; I get the impression that people saying this really mean "I hate the stupid upsells." Which is fine, I do too. But I guess on HN there's more clout to claiming it's the UI that's the problem?
3 replies →
Because it reduces the switching cost because users don't have to learn a new interface. Discord has shown that its UI is at least capable of being used by hundreds of millions of users so it is not a bad starting point.
That's exactly it. A lot of users are likely emotionally attached and trapped to their Nitro garbage and feel like they "invested" far into the cult by now. Giving them a way out is important if you want to acquire that market.
2 replies →
Is there anyone there I want to talk to? You need to demonstrate that before I create a login, otherwise there is too much friction for me.
The iOS storefront is also far behind your website in quality and attention to detail.
Edit: please accept this in the spirit of some quick feedback from one maker to another
How on earth do you expect them to show you whether there's anyone there you want to talk to?
I have a lot of chatting applications that all demonstrated that to me. The most common way was having another party indicate the app as a communication option
Please please please someone take over discord and their use base. Their nitro and ads is the most toxic nonsense stuff I have ever had the displeasure to work with.
I am in a niche market with both new gen workers and customers and discord is a really important medium to engage and connect with them. My soul dies every time I am there dealing with all sorts of psychological traps and baits to more spending coupled with the incessant advertising.
I don't even care anymore who wins that market, just get me out of it.
There is so little advertising on discord that I find it hilarious you are so upset about a few notifications here and there about nitro and other aesthetic perks which are basically entirely optional
There are 3rd party ads in Discord now, and they are probably going to expand as an ad platform. I think this is what the parent comment was upset about.
edit: grammar
1 reply →
A few notifications here and there? I'm not sure I can agree with you. It's a daily persistent thing that there is no way to disable and the constant dark patterns.
I believe I am not alone with things like https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
Charging for perks and user self-expression seems a lot healthier than what we see in app stores and websites.
This is all pre-IPO, it's sure to get worse; hopefully one of the Discord alternatives will have caught on by then.
The big line they've crossed is collecting identification; much thanks to HN for linking to the bypass that worked for a day.
I have never seen true need to get Nitro. Missing on some things but if someone wants to pay for it let them.
Big question is how else would they make money? Monetise hosting "servers" directly? Would they have even gotten community if they did that?
Do you have or use Discord for work? E.g. streaming, many calls, etc. Only nitro lets you do those.
2 replies →
> Please please please someone take over discord and their use base
This is one area where I can not muster the optimism to think that would improve the situation. You need someone else to somehow unseat them somehow.. they’re entrenched in this space so deeply though.
Is this P2P, or hosted on proprietary servers? How is it funded? I don't like ads and I like free things, but "no ads, free forever" doesn't make me confident in its long term stability.
https://fluxer.app seems to be the best alternative so far, by a mile. Gained a bunch of users during some controversy too.
We have been online for more than 1.5 years. Back when we started, we didn't see Discord alternatives popping up left and right, so we created our own. Nowadays, there are like 10 of them popping up every single day, most of those are below par and completely usable. If you like to try out a new one you can give us a try no stress haha bye
Cool. I would like to try it, but it will probably take a considerable amount of time to convince my circle of friends to migrate to this platform en masse.
Is there a catalog of public, Echoed-based groups / communities that anyone can freely join? I'd like to explore the platform's full range of features before trying to persuade others to make the switch.
Sorry, where is the source code? For any trust to be built OS should be a prime feature at this point in the game.
Why do companies like this continue to promise "No Ads Ever"? How do they plan enough money to support their service? Video sharing is incredibly expensive, even Discord is unlikely profitable between their advertising campaigns and server boosting revenue.
It's not self-hosted, they are going to have to make money at some point to support the effort.
Are clients and server FOSS? If so, advertise that. Personally, I’m not interested in another platform that isn’t.
Not open source
Not interested
I see no point in switching from one closed-source platform to another closed-source platform.
If it’s not open source and self-hostable, it’s a non-starter. Not switching to another closed platform just for it to die. I’m tired of switching. Whatever I switch to next must be able to last the rest of my life expectancy.
I'm just ready for something new, personally. I don't really like Discord's vibe of paying for avatar skins? Gross. And paying for custom emojis? Super gross. Yuck.
Congratulations, I'm sure it was a monumental effort to build this. Good luck with marketing and all that.
xkcd 927 but instead of another standard, another vibe-coded discord clone.
I say this as someone building a discord clone (https://flotilla.social)
Yeah ok.
2025 to 2026 full of slop signals, LLC reg number from April 2026 to the same address in multiple reports as ultra scammy:
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/30-n-gould-st-sheridan-wy-scam...
https://www.thesheridanpress.com/news/local/another-scam-rec...
https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/scammers-use-reg...
Lot of other red flags for me but those are even more vibe-based than everything about this.
Yet another Discord alternative whose effort could've been put into an XMPP client.