Building an online community takes more than tools. But the right tool can make all the difference.
  • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
    29·
    2 months ago

    What I really need is realtime multi-party voice chat

    Do any of these support that?

    I mostly use discord for light coordination and online voice chat during games or activities.

    • jagermo@feddit.org
      23·
      2 months ago

      Teamspeak, ventrilo, mumble - but discord replaced them all with being easy to use.

      Sadly, there is no real alternative with all the discord features. I mean, you could create chats in Zoom and use their voice/video feature, but at least one person would need pro.

    • CMDR_Horn@lemmy.world
      8·
      2 months ago

      Steam’s built in voice chat replaced discord for my group of friends years ago. It was rough at first, but it has improved a lot and now we dont have issues anymore.

      • xploit@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 months ago

        Except when steam itself craps out for a while and you can’t even tell unless you keep the group chat/voice window open on 2nd screen.
        Still better than discord tho

    • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      Technically, Signal, Rocket Chat, and Matrix all have multi-party voice chat built in. You probably won’t have a great time with it, and if you want video or screen sharing, you’ll have an even worse time.

      • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
        2·
        2 months ago

        Honestly just voice chat is all, I used to play SC2 with some sketchy apps that could do it… but 2026 feels like easy stuff got much harder.

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
    10·
    2 months ago

    I’ve seen this article and I find it unhelpful.

    Why it’s signal on this list? Signal is a sms replacement, not a discord replacement.

    My research has found… Root - rootapp.com Stoat - stoat.chat Matrix - matrix.org

    Root and Stoat appear to be the closest to Discord.

      • onlinepersona@programming.dev
        1·
        2 months ago

        I’ve seen this mentioned multiple times even for Matrix (which does have Matrix Call). What do you mean with “screen sharing”? Just sharing your screen during a call?

          • onlinepersona@programming.dev
            1·
            2 months ago

            I dunno. It seems like others have another interpretation of it. Like how people have started saying “side loading” instead of installing. As if “installing” means something different.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    10·
    2 months ago

    One of the biggest reasons Discord took off for my group over mumble was the ease in inviting strangers on an MMO and they didn’t even need the app. Getting strangers into voice comms is kind of non-negotiable for difficult raiding when you need a sub.

    That said, my group is used to streaming for each other and quite a few have nitro for sound board, profile stuff, etc, so it’d be a hard sell unless a more feature rich option comes along. I have the power to persuade them to join me on another platform, but only once and I’m not about to waste that chance until I know their needs are met. Steam got close, but it failed us when we used it for the brief days that Discord was down.

    I’ll just be a teen account until there’s a suitable alternative, or do the stupid fake image of a guy trick the Brits taught me, lol.

  • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
    2·
    2 months ago

    I would like to throw Kiwi IRC into the mix, perhaps it would suffice for some people.

    Alternatively, IRCCloud.