5 ms·

A Discord Alternative – Echoed

42 points by acley 2mo ago

acley 2mo ago
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
- Varelion 2mo ago
  Sorry, where is the source code? For any trust to be built OS should be a prime feature at this point in the game.
- altilunium 2mo ago
  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.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
bitmasher9 2mo ago
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
- apetresc 2mo ago
  How on earth do you expect them to show you whether there's anyone there you want to talk to?
  - bitmasher9 2mo ago
    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
- kennywinker 2mo ago
  What a weird and entitled position. This is a product for people who create or manage communities, not people who demand to be shown there is already a community there
LorenDB 2mo ago
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.
- charcircuit 2mo ago
  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.
  - hmokiguess 2mo ago
    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.
    - virgil_disgr4ce 2mo ago
      Man, the Nitro stuff is garbage, but it's bizarre that you're equating the ENTIRE UI to that. It's really not that obtrusive. I don't like it either but it's like 0.5% of the UI
      - hmokiguess 2mo ago
        Fair point, opinions are not truth. That said there are lots of mods out there for it with substantial (many millions) of users where their entire reason for existing is taking control of the UI. What happens to building protocols? I am totally against being a slave to PaaS.
- tekchip 2mo ago
  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.
- Sohcahtoa82 2mo ago
soundworlds 2mo ago
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?
hmokiguess 2mo ago
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.
- adzm 2mo ago
  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
  - hmokiguess 2mo ago
    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/ https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
    - xboxnolifes 2mo ago
      I'm actually confused about what you mean with "daily persistent thing". I see a discord popup on start about a new feature or ad for some collaboration maybe once a month. Most days it just starts and brings me to the last server I was in.
      - hmokiguess 2mo ago
        Three things I can't remove from the UI that often have intrusive popups at random placed directly under "Friends": 1. Nitro Home 2. Shop 3. Quests And hovering on users often brings up upsell.
fishgoesblub 2mo ago
Yet another Discord alternative whose effort could've been put into an XMPP client.
- pavo-etc 2mo ago
  I've been dealing with this exact problem this week. For being such an established protocol with such strong servers, the open source clients available are shockingly undercooked. I've been playing around with using XMPP as the communication layer for some agents, but the popular client apps (converse.js on web, conversations.im on android) have such little polish. I've had to fork them to make them pleasant to use at all, this feels like it should be a solved problem.
hatthew 2mo ago
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.
s0ss 2mo ago
Are clients and server FOSS? If so, advertise that. Personally, I’m not interested in another platform that isn’t.
bellowsgulch 2mo ago
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.
kennywinker 2mo ago
I see no point in switching from one closed-source platform to another closed-source platform.
dymk 2mo ago
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.
- Varelion 2mo ago
  Exactly. I am simply done using any service whose source code I cannot audit myself.
- acley 2mo ago
  Yeah, the RAM numbers are off, those are from different builds, and we never synced them. my bad, fixing today. And it's two of us and the landing page got like a day of attention because everything else felt more urgent. not really a defense, just what happened. Same reason it's nowhere near as rich as Discord's site. "free forever" — it's already been free 1.5 years, we were Zorium before the rebrand. If we do add a paid plan later the stuff that's free now stays free, new stuff gets charged for. we also build business software, so we've got spare server capacity, runs fine on it. Thanks for the feedback tho :)
- lenkite 2mo ago
  All the people saying AI makes less mistakes than humans are just completely wrong. That has NOT been my experience in the last year and half after reviewing ~100 AI-assisted PRs. Humans made LESS mistakes when they took direct responsibility. (Some developers don't make any mistakes) Also, humans don't generally tend to repeat the same mistakes again and again. General code quality has gone to shit and problems are discovered far too late.
ludston 2mo ago
Congratulations, I'm sure it was a monumental effort to build this. Good luck with marketing and all that.
Madmallard 2mo ago
Not open source Not interested
jonstaab 2mo ago
xkcd 927 but instead of another standard, another vibe-coded discord clone. I say this as someone building a discord clone (https://flotilla.social https://flotilla.social)
jimmygrapes 2mo ago
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-scams-exposed/ https://malwaretips.com/blogs/30-n-gould-st-sheridan-wy-scam... https://www.thesheridanpress.com/news/local/another-scam-recorded-from-business-related-to-30-n-gould-st-registered-agent/article_52b040ca-f622-11eb-a595-e7f2de685e62.html https://www.thesheridanpress.com/news/local/another-scam-rec... https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/scammers-use-registered-agent-site-because-of-tax-benefits-legislative-loopholes/article_42f5fb0c-2f3a-4248-ba1a-74473548ab0d.html 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.
- acley 2mo ago
  yeah 30 N Gould is a registered agent. We registered a US entity mainly for stripe + dmca since users upload stuff which content tons of restriced contents. it was the cheapest way to do it without a US office.
muwtyhg 2mo ago
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.
Apreche 2mo ago
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.
Cider9986 2mo ago
https://fluxer.app https://fluxer.app seems to be the best alternative so far, by a mile. Gained a bunch of users during some controversy too.
- blooalien 2mo ago
  Someone else here also mentioned Chatto [0] which seems far easier to self-host than Fluxer, though both appear to be quite similar to Discord in overall functionality. I've played with Chatto a bit and it seems surprisingly solid overall thus far. [0]: https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto
- riddley 2mo ago
  Haven is pretty rad. https://github.com/ancsemi/Haven https://github.com/ancsemi/Haven
anon7000 2mo ago
No one’s squads give 2 shits what language their app is written in. The LLMisms are so annoying to read and tell me nothing genuine about what it’d be like to use it.

42 points by acley 2mo ago

acley 2mo ago

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

Varelion 2mo ago
Sorry, where is the source code? For any trust to be built OS should be a prime feature at this point in the game.
altilunium 2mo ago
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.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

bitmasher9 2mo ago

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

apetresc 2mo ago
How on earth do you expect them to show you whether there's anyone there you want to talk to?
- bitmasher9 2mo ago
  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
kennywinker 2mo ago
What a weird and entitled position. This is a product for people who create or manage communities, not people who demand to be shown there is already a community there

LorenDB 2mo ago

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.

charcircuit 2mo ago
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.
- hmokiguess 2mo ago
  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.
  - virgil_disgr4ce 2mo ago
    Man, the Nitro stuff is garbage, but it's bizarre that you're equating the ENTIRE UI to that. It's really not that obtrusive. I don't like it either but it's like 0.5% of the UI
    - hmokiguess 2mo ago
      Fair point, opinions are not truth. That said there are lots of mods out there for it with substantial (many millions) of users where their entire reason for existing is taking control of the UI. What happens to building protocols? I am totally against being a slave to PaaS.
tekchip 2mo ago
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.
Sohcahtoa82 2mo ago

soundworlds 2mo ago

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?

hmokiguess 2mo ago

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.

adzm 2mo ago
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
- hmokiguess 2mo ago
  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/ https://betterdiscord.app/ having more than 56M downloads (and that being just one of the custom mods)
  - xboxnolifes 2mo ago
    I'm actually confused about what you mean with "daily persistent thing". I see a discord popup on start about a new feature or ad for some collaboration maybe once a month. Most days it just starts and brings me to the last server I was in.
    - hmokiguess 2mo ago
      Three things I can't remove from the UI that often have intrusive popups at random placed directly under "Friends": 1. Nitro Home 2. Shop 3. Quests And hovering on users often brings up upsell.

fishgoesblub 2mo ago

Yet another Discord alternative whose effort could've been put into an XMPP client.

pavo-etc 2mo ago
I've been dealing with this exact problem this week. For being such an established protocol with such strong servers, the open source clients available are shockingly undercooked. I've been playing around with using XMPP as the communication layer for some agents, but the popular client apps (converse.js on web, conversations.im on android) have such little polish. I've had to fork them to make them pleasant to use at all, this feels like it should be a solved problem.

hatthew 2mo ago

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.

s0ss 2mo ago

Are clients and server FOSS? If so, advertise that. Personally, I’m not interested in another platform that isn’t.

bellowsgulch 2mo ago

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.

kennywinker 2mo ago

I see no point in switching from one closed-source platform to another closed-source platform.

dymk 2mo ago

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.

Varelion 2mo ago
Exactly. I am simply done using any service whose source code I cannot audit myself.
acley 2mo ago
Yeah, the RAM numbers are off, those are from different builds, and we never synced them. my bad, fixing today. And it's two of us and the landing page got like a day of attention because everything else felt more urgent. not really a defense, just what happened. Same reason it's nowhere near as rich as Discord's site. "free forever" — it's already been free 1.5 years, we were Zorium before the rebrand. If we do add a paid plan later the stuff that's free now stays free, new stuff gets charged for. we also build business software, so we've got spare server capacity, runs fine on it. Thanks for the feedback tho :)
lenkite 2mo ago
All the people saying AI makes less mistakes than humans are just completely wrong. That has NOT been my experience in the last year and half after reviewing ~100 AI-assisted PRs. Humans made LESS mistakes when they took direct responsibility. (Some developers don't make any mistakes) Also, humans don't generally tend to repeat the same mistakes again and again. General code quality has gone to shit and problems are discovered far too late.

ludston 2mo ago

Congratulations, I'm sure it was a monumental effort to build this. Good luck with marketing and all that.

Madmallard 2mo ago

Not open source Not interested

jonstaab 2mo ago

xkcd 927 but instead of another standard, another vibe-coded discord clone. I say this as someone building a discord clone (https://flotilla.social https://flotilla.social)

jimmygrapes 2mo ago

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-scams-exposed/ https://malwaretips.com/blogs/30-n-gould-st-sheridan-wy-scam... https://www.thesheridanpress.com/news/local/another-scam-recorded-from-business-related-to-30-n-gould-st-registered-agent/article_52b040ca-f622-11eb-a595-e7f2de685e62.html https://www.thesheridanpress.com/news/local/another-scam-rec... https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/scammers-use-registered-agent-site-because-of-tax-benefits-legislative-loopholes/article_42f5fb0c-2f3a-4248-ba1a-74473548ab0d.html 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.

acley 2mo ago
yeah 30 N Gould is a registered agent. We registered a US entity mainly for stripe + dmca since users upload stuff which content tons of restriced contents. it was the cheapest way to do it without a US office.

muwtyhg 2mo ago

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.

Apreche 2mo ago

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.

Cider9986 2mo ago

https://fluxer.app https://fluxer.app seems to be the best alternative so far, by a mile. Gained a bunch of users during some controversy too.

blooalien 2mo ago
Someone else here also mentioned Chatto [0] which seems far easier to self-host than Fluxer, though both appear to be quite similar to Discord in overall functionality. I've played with Chatto a bit and it seems surprisingly solid overall thus far. [0]: https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto https://github.com/chattocorp/chatto
riddley 2mo ago
Haven is pretty rad. https://github.com/ancsemi/Haven https://github.com/ancsemi/Haven

anon7000 2mo ago

No one’s squads give 2 shits what language their app is written in. The LLMisms are so annoying to read and tell me nothing genuine about what it’d be like to use it.