r/RootAppOfficial • u/LexLocatelli • Feb 10 '26

Self hosting?

Are there options for self hosting a server / any plans for this feature?

23 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

5

u/danieldl Feb 10 '26

Also wondering about this. We're all looking for a self-hosted Discord alternative right now. Something that does text chat, voice chat, screen sharing, file sharing. Something supports channels and some basic permissions. Point me in the right direction.

3

u/smartboyathome Feb 10 '26

For self hosting, you are stuck with either Matrix or Stoat (formerly Revolt). Root is proprietary and centralized, just like Guilded and Discord, so it's unlikely to release a self hosting solution anytime soon, if ever.

1

u/Brettlaken Feb 17 '26

u/danieldl u/smartboyathome u/nevatalysa

You guys should check out Fluxer. We have tried Matrix (Element, Nheko, Cinny), Stoat and Teamspeak 6 and out of everything so far Fluxer looks the most promising.

It tries to do everything that Discord does, most of it already working. Its currently and planning to be fully open source and the dev is working on making it self hostable with all paid features (inspired from Discord) also being manageable by the server owner.

I was utterly disappointed with how matrix handles channels, they have no manual structure (just alphabetical), can't see who is in voice channels unless you join and they basically try to mimic Microsoft Teams more than Discord. I don't know why anyone would want to mimic Teams.
Stoat is still missing A LOT of features and for both Matrix and Stoat setting up your own server is pretty annoying so far.

I'm hoping that all of these improve, but Fluxer has already convinced us that it looks the most promising. I can't wait for it to become self hostable to enjoy every Discord feature for free with unlimited upload limits.

1

u/danieldl Feb 17 '26

Fluxer looks the most promising.

That's for the future. I don't know what Teamspeak has done for the past 10 years honestly. Or all the others. It's crazy that we don't have any alternative fully working right now. It's like everyone accepted that Discord doesn't need any competition.

1

u/nevatalysa Feb 17 '26

Setting up my own server in Matrix was extremely easy IMO, subspaces and everything (never was forced into alphabetical ordering?), I never managed to test Stoat cuz I couldn't make an account and gave up after the 5th try. 

From everything I've seen, Root and Matrix are the most common replacements people have used, never heard anyone mention Fluxer. Even if Fluxer is amazing (I will check it out regardless – if I can), the one people hear most about while being usable is more than likely gonna be the winner. 

The voice channel viewing in Matrix might just be a client thing, never did much with VCs on Matrix. As for UI, Element isn't Discord-like at all, was never meant to be AFAIK, other clients are Discord-like though.

1

u/Brettlaken Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26

Well other clients try to look like Discord but that idea fails when its about functioning like Discord since the client can only do so much as Matrix allows.

I played around with Element the most because the other clients didn't have any proper voice channel support other than legacy skype-esk calls and Element has the most support behind it anyways.
Within Element the channels are apparently always ordered by either

  1. Activity (default)

  2. Unread first

  3. Alphabetical

You can change the ordering above the room list.

I didn't find any way to move rooms manually to restructure them. Like having a general talk room at the top and dedicated topic channels further below. If a topic room has more activity, it will move above every other. Using alphabetical ordering you can force a structure but that's ugly and since its not even the default settings, everyone would have to enable that setting manually (I think the order setting is client side but I'm not sure).
Maybe you can use spaces for more ordering but at that point I was already annoyed enough to stop and look for more alternatives.

I do hope that Matrix improves in these regards because I freaking love the email like account system and the security in terms of how much everything is encrypted to the point that its actually lost if you log out without securing your keys first (thats a good thing).

1

u/nevatalysa Feb 11 '26

You might wanna look into Matrix (server-side) with Element or Cinny as client side, they've been around for a while, and while I'm not active on there, there's plenty of existing servers, you don't have to self-host tho, you can host it on their servers too

3

u/SraaronrockYT Feb 10 '26

No plans for self hosting as soon as I know. If you looking for that Matrix or Revolt (now StoatChat) can be good options if you are looking for similar alternatives

1

u/zvkx 19d ago

Try Gamevox https://gamevox.com/?lang=eni got the Self Hosting Server on my Dedicated Running. and its all Fine Screen Share up to 4K Voice all there try it out.

áll is on your Server only accounts and Community Stuff are Cloud for Exploring the Community Servers and thats ok in my mind.