Software to use

Obviously, selfhosting would be ideal. But what software could hold Valhalla? Here’s some candidates

Matrix

The default assumption. Matrix is an open standard communication platform, with several implementations. The fandoms chat experiment was done with Matrix Synapse, the mainline Matrix reference server. There are other implementations.

Pros

• Very open, very FOSS, seems somewhat established with governments and things using it. Unlikely to go anywhere. Privacy first

Cons

Not very user friendly. Synapse is a heavy application, and feature parity with Discord is not quite there. Matrix VOIP implementtion is pormising, but still not as slick as Discord. Tuwunel is awesome to run, but still needs some time in the oven on moderation and management.

Links

• Synapse - Mainline reference implementation
• Tuwunel - Lightweight Rust implementation

Spacebar

A Discord re-implementation and clone, with supposed backward compatability with the main Discord clients

Pros

Supposed to be basically Discord, but FOSS and self-hostable.

Cons

Unsure how finished or active this project will be long-term. Seems not very active at the moment

Links

• Spacebar Server

TeamSpeak

The venerable self-hostable gamer chat and voice chatting platform.

Pros

• Has been around for the while, features seem to be pretty close to Discord
• Lighter-weight than Synapse and others
• Has some staying power because it isn’t free

Cons

• Not free or open source
• TS6, the closest to Discord in terms of feature parity, is still in beta.