this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Yeah honestly. Running the teamspeak server executable is hardly selfhosting, and they're just another closed source proprietary service. Cool they're still around after all these years I guess but they shouldn't even be considered as a migration option.
Stoat and Fluxer are both open source, very straightforward and familiar, and I believe self-hostable. Much easier for casual users than Matrix too.
Yeah honestly. Like I work in IT, have my own home server, run linux on everything, etc etc etc, but even I found Matrix to be a convoluted mess, and most clients have their own issues. I can't imagine trying to get someone who's not tech-savvy to try it out.
I set up Matrix accounts for my parents this weekend and was completely horrified at how inconvenient the experience is for normies.
I tried to get friends into Matrix before and they were confused by it. So can confirm it's not that simple for everyone.
Though to be fair, one of them wasn't able to post without including an emoji in their message, that shit confused me too.
I'm unsure what is difficult about Matrix.
I've had several "casual" friends register and join my space on their own.
Things have been getting better fast for matrix, but its just not ready for the masses IMO. I still suggest it when I can when the use case makes sense.
Using Stoat's main server raises a privacy concern because it’s UK-based and AFAIK lacks E2EE—UK authorities could seize server data without our knowledge. That effectively means private use requires self-hosting.
Issue with self-hosting Stoat is, it's currently more complicated than Matrix. This user created a detailed GitHub guide that documents their research and pitfalls for getting Stoat working with voice/video: https://github.com/javif89/stoat-selfhost
The official self-hosted guide (https://github.com/stoatchat/self-hosted) looks simple at first, but if you look at the compose file, it requires FOURTEEN containers to run and doesn’t yet include voice/video support which will increase complexity.
By contrast, TeamSpeak’s self-hosting appeal is its simplicity: only two services (or one with SQLite) and it works out of the box today.
But I agree — moving from one closed-source silo to another isn’t ideal. I just wish Stoat were easier to run behind the scenes.
For me, a combination of matrix for text chat and mumble for voice is the simplest and most privacy respecting way to self-host a discord alternative.
There's also Movim, which doesn't even require an email, you can join instantly with just a username and password.
The official self-hosted guide is actually quite simple and straightforward. I had it set up and going in a half hour or so, and that's even with removing Caddy and using my existing nginx reverse proxy. It's intimidating at first-glance, yeah.
That being said, the official self-host guide is also 5 months out of date. The alternative you linked requires jumping through a bunch of hoops because it's just a small community of enthusiasts hacking together the current version of Stoat for self-hosting.
So I acknowledge that self-hosting current version of Stoat with voice is rather complicated and frustrating right now, but hopefully it becomes as simple as the official self-hosting guide eventually.
It’s all about friction. As long as the user has to pick an instance they will always hesitate to pick any federated service. The average user will always choose the path of least resistance.
Proprietary services spend a lot of time trying to reduce friction, and it works.
The only solution I can think of would be a three part one:
This would of course require some federated account login system. Hard but not impossible. It could be some sort of Casandra style ring based account service where nodes are part of the ring.
This eliminates the new user friction.
It works anywhere any time with corpo style low friction. You don’t need to think about instances at all till you are ready to.
I'm not sure which horse to bet on Stoat or fluxer.app.
One thing that worries me a little about fluxer is this:
They have a CLA on contributions. So while today Fluxer is licensed as AGPLv3, tomorrow they can pull the rug and change the license, just like everyone else has been doing.
EDIT: The Fluxer dev agreed to remove the CLA!
Woah, didn't know about that, thanks for the heads up. That's definitely dampening my goodwill toward it.
As an alternative, I'd suggest Movim, which has no CLA, and is already federated.
Hey, just wanted to give you an update that the Fluxer dev actually agreed to remove the CLA!
Holy fuck! Noice!!!!
XMPP!
Stoat is dead in the water due to dependency on the UK and not an easy solution to deploy yet.
Fluxer is dead in the water due to license.
I don't get why so many people are saying this. Afaik, it doesn't have channels within servers like Discord and Slack, which I feel is a defining feature in the text chat part of the apps.
Oh that is like the second most common thing on XMPP! It's rooms/chats/conversations on servers/conferences/salons, etc. Like, come on, even IRC has that and that was made before I was born.
The one thing that's complex, or at least bad in the UI I've seen for most XMPP clients, is that searchability of rooms is not very good. Like, discoverability is, but to my knowledge there's no way to actually filter for rooms based on a keyword, you either get the whole roomlist for a server or nothing.
Fluxer feels more full-featured to me
Stoat has no voice chat and streaming.
Movim does, and it's federated and offers encryption! :D
Stoat, both its app and website refuse to open on my mobile data. I doubt it's only happening to me. Teamspeak at least lets people host and have control of their own servers.
You can self host stoat.
The fact you can’t use the desktop client with a self hosted server and that there is no public iOS app right now are dealbreakers for me
Yeah, I get "address not found" regardless of browser. I'll probably be keeping a closer eye on fluxer.
I had problems logging in the other day, which I assume was the server getting hammered.
That's a separate issue from what I'm having. It only doesn't work on my verizon cell service. Unfortunately it makes stoat not an option for me.
Yeah... I hate watching people make the same mistake over and over. I guess we just have to take the lead and build the communities that we need over on Stoat and Matrix.
Nice, what's the link?
It looks like its not working for me.
Im seeing a huge increase in people using stoat. And its been fun.
If anyone is interested in Retro Games: https://stt.gg/GJh5JHy2
coo see you there!
I just spent a week trying to set up my own server and good lord it was such a battle I gave up. Matrix? Up in like half an hour. Shame because my friends are so much more interested in Revolt lmao. Just gonna give them some time to sort out their business before trying again.
Just use fluxer...