this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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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.
When the alternative is Discord that's no different. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
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That being said, the official self-host guide is also 5 months out of date.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.
The paid tiers are only to support the development and the official server costs. If you self-host you can do whatever you want. And federation is on the roadmap of the project.
There's also Movim, which doesn't even require an email, you can join instantly with just a username and password.
Those are extremely negative things for a community platform. Like absurdly negative.
That just means it's going to be attacked by endless bots, impersonation, and general user confusion.
I legitimately can not think of a single stupider thing for a community platform for normal users.
It's no different from how lemmy/piefed function. Some instances require email, others don't. My instance, as an example, doesn't require an email to sign up, but it does require you to write a short message as to why you're interested in joining the server, and what communities are appealing to you. This weeds out 99% of bots or spammy users, and the handful that get through that are quickly banned.
Movim currently has so few users that the main server is trying to put as few barriers as possible to adoption, other servers can and do enable the Email requirement.
If it becomes more popular and bots or spam accounts become an issue, they could easily activate the email requirement, or even implement a system similar to what I described above. Instances that don't take appropriate measures to those threats as they become a problem can just be defederated as they are here. It's worked out pretty well so far.