Top 10 best Discord alternatives for online communities

Discord was built as a social platform for gamers all around the world. It’s a place for them to chat before, during, and after playing video games, whether it’s via text, audio, video, or screen share. 

Today, Discord isn’t only for gamers—it’s become a community-building platform for a wide range of topics including art, music, tech, and education. And as a result, has amassed over 200 million active users worldwide. 

While Discord is popular, it might be the wrong fit for building your specific online community (we’ll get into why in the next section). 

We’ve researched and compiled the top 10 Discord alternatives that have worked best for different users. By the end of this article, you’ll have a clearer idea of which option is best for you.

Jump ahead to the list

Why Consider Alternatives to Discord?

Many users love that Discord is free and offers advanced permission settings, and appreciate that it has bots for automating tasks like welcoming new members and sending event reminders.

However, there are some downsides to Discord that people don’t often mention, and these could be deal-breakers for your community. Here are a few reasons that you may want to look outside of Discord:

1. It can be a steep learning curve 

Setting up roles, permissions, and bots in Discord is complex and time-consuming. If you aren’t tech-savvy, you’ll need to hire a Discord expert to ensure everything works well. 

2. May be complex for casual users

Most users (except for gamers and tech geeks) find Discord’s interface and extensive features to be intimidating at first glance. This could discourage them from checking the platform, and as a result, lower engagement levels in your community. 

3. There is a file upload limit

Discord lets you upload most file types, but the file size is limited to 8 MB. You have to purchase Nitro Basic ($2.99/month) or Nitro ($9.99/month) to increase this limit to 50 MB or 500 MB, which is still not much if you’re looking to share bigger files with your community.

4. Discord has only a few native integrations 

Discord has 22 native integrations, with most of them being gaming and social media related. If you need to connect with cloud storage, project management, and other business apps, this Discord limitation would heavily limit real-time updates and collaboration.  

5. Concern over privacy issues

Discord takes standard security measures and is generally safe to use. However, privacy-conscious users may not be comfortable with Discord’s data collection practices and lack of end-to-end encryption.

6. There is no built-in monetization tool

If you plan to offer an exclusive paid community (and other paid resources) in the future, you can’t implement this in Discord. You’d need to find some workarounds, which can be complicated and might lead to a negative user experience.

Discord Alternatives at a Glance

If you just want a TL;DR version of the best Discord alternatives, have a look at this table. To get much deeper insights about each tool, read on after this.

Our 10 Best Discord Alternatives

Now let’s take a closer look at how each of these alternatives compare to Discord, including their pros, cons, and pricing.

1. Whop: Chat, Forums, Digital Products

Whop is an all-in-one platform for building and monetizing your community. And the best part is that you can host your community internally or externally. 

For example, if you’re looking for a simple community-building platform, you can set one up with Whop’s chat and forum apps in less than 10 minutes. Then when you want to grow, you have extra features to keep your community active and engaged like hosting live events, running giveaways, and collecting user feedback.

On the other hand, if you're happy with Discord for everything but it's monetization features, then Whop lets you monetize a community on external platforms like Discord and Telegram. While your community is under development, use Whop to launch a waitlist, building hype around it and gauging interest. And when your community is ready, grant access by charging a one-time or subscription fee.

To expand your income streams, Whop also lets you sell digital products (like ebooks, courses, live events, and software) as standalone products or bundle them along with community access for a premium price.  

Pros

• Build a custom landing page for your products
• Set up an affiliate program to promote your products
• Add free trials and promo codes to products for higher conversions 
• Set up extensive payment options including credit/debit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and cryptocurrency

Cons

• Doesn’t have bots to automate tasks inside of a whop (yet!)  

Pricing

Whop is completely free to use. You only pay a 3% fee on each transaction. 

2. Slack: Best for building a tight-knit community of professionals

Slack and Discord have similar interfaces and features. Both let you create unlimited topic channels in your community, access those channels in the left navigation panel, and set up bots to carry out tasks. 

However, Slack has unique features that make it better for collaborating with your work team and other professionals. For instance, while Discord users maintain anonymity with cartoon avatars and nicknames, Slack keeps it professional with real names and profile photos. 

Slack also does a better job of organizing threads within channels, making it easier to follow conversations. And if you need to integrate with business apps, Slack makes it a breeze. 

Pros

• Share 1 GB files 
• User-friendly interface
• Host huddles (aka live video calls)
• Over 2,600 third-party integrations

Cons

• Heavily limited free plan
• Gets expensive for large communities 

Pricing

Slack has a free plan for unlimited channels and community members. However, you can only see messages sent in the last 90 days, host one-on-one huddles only, and connect with 10 business apps from the app directory.

To remove these limitations, you’ll need to get the Pro or Business+ plan, which costs $8.75/person/month and $15/person/month respectively. Then there’s the Enterprise Grid plan with custom pricing.

3. Telegram: Best for sending broadcasts to a large community

While Discord started as a community-building platform, Telegram—like WhatsApp and Signal—started as an instant messaging (IM) app. Like most IM apps, it’s free, lightweight, and simple to use for both techie and non-techie users.

Besides chatting with family and friends, Telegram lets you build Channels (with unlimited members) and Communities (with 200K members). In Channels, only admins can send messages, making it perfect for broadcasting business news and updates. On the other hand, Communities allow admins and community members to send messages under different sub-topics.  

Pros

• Set up bots
• Share 2 GB files
• Create polls for your community
• Host live streams with the option to share screen

Cons

• Lacks advanced permissions
• Can’t create communities with more than 200K members

Pricing

Telegram is free to use for admins and community members. However, community members can get Telegram Premium, which costs $3.99/month. Similar to Discord, it unlocks extra perks like a 4 GB file upload limit, premium emojis and stickers, and animated profile pictures.

4. Facebook Groups: Best for growing a large community that already hangs out on Facebook

Facebook Groups lets you build a community of like-minded people by tapping into Facebook’s vast directory of over three billion users.

Unlike Discord, Facebook Groups isn’t centered around chat channels. Instead, all community members post to a running feed with text, photo or video, GIF, file, or poll. But you can still create a community chat for topic-based discussions. 

Facebook Groups has the basic tools you need to build a community, and if your target audience is already on Facebook, it’s worth considering.

Pros

• Schedule new posts
• Unlimited community members
• Host live streams via desktop or mobile
• Pin relevant posts to the Featured section at the top

Cons

• Can’t exceed 100 community chats
• The multiple ads and notifications make it a distracting platform to grow your community

Pricing

Facebook’s Groups feature is free.

5. Reddit: Best for maximizing your community’s discoverability in search engines

Reddit communities (aka subreddits) take a forum-based approach to organizing text communication. Your subreddit members publish posts to the forum and others contribute in the comments. Reddit’s upvote-downvote system pushes the most relevant posts and comments to the top, making it easier for the rest of the community to quickly find helpful content.

One of Reddit’s biggest advantages over Discord is its search engine visibility. If your subreddit addresses questions about your business, non-members with similar queries can easily find your subreddit and the answers through a Google or Bing search. This way, you avoid answering the same questions multiple times and your community grows organically.

Pros

• Admins can pin comments to the top
• Set up bots to help with moderation 
• Add links to posts and comments

Cons

• Has in-app ads
• Can’t upload files directly to the platform

Pricing

Creating a subreddit is free.

6. Signal: Best for privacy-conscious users looking to build a small community of family and friends 

Signal launched in 2013 but took off in 2021 when WhatsApp’s updated policy raised concerns about data privacy. Unlike Discord, Signal focuses on strong encryption and doesn’t collect user data.

It has a group feature for connecting with your friends and family over shared interests like music, art, and hiking. Group members can share text messages and files, host voice and video calls, and even share their screens during calls. 

However, Signal limits file sizes to between 8 MB and 100 MB, depending on the file type...it isn’t much but it’s better than Discord.

Pros

• Works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS
• Allows admin to approve new members
• Screen share feature on desktop apps

Cons

• Groups are capped at 1,000 members
• Voice and video calls are limited to 16 participants
• No option to create sub-groups within a Signal group

Pricing

Signal is free to use.

7. TeamSpeak: Best for pro gamers who need a reliable and secure voice communication platform

TeamSpeak and Discord were built to connect gamers across the globe. However, they have different feature sets. 

While Discord is a more versatile platform offering text, voice, video chats, and screen sharing, TeamSpeak is purposely built for lag-free, high-quality voice communication between gamers on a chat channel during gameplay. 

Another key difference is that while Discord is cloud-hosted, TeamSpeak requires a Windows, MacOS, or Linux server to run. This can be a hassle to set up, but it’s worth it for users who prioritize secure and clear voice communication.

Pros

• Share files with no size limit
• Access thousands of public TeamSpeak servers 
• Create unlimited temporary, semi-temporary, and permanent channels in your server 

Cons

• Outdated and clunky interface
• No cloud-hosted solution
• Chat feature is very basic

Pricing

With TeamSpeak’s Free Server License, you can host one server with 32 active users at a time. The Gamer License offers two servers and up to 1,024 active users, but you’ll need to contact TeamSpeak for pricing. Then there’s the Commercial License for businesses that need an internal voice communication platform.

• TeamSpeak vs Discord: Which is Best for Your Gaming Community?

8. Swarm: Best for video-based team and client interactions

Swarm communities (aka Swarm Spaces) let you set up channels like Discord, but it has a more minimalist and professional interface, similar to Slack. 

What sets Swarm apart is its focus on video. Unlike Discord and Slack, Swarm encourages sharing short video clips in channels and DMs. Besides video, you can also share text, GIFs, and audio clips and keep track of these conversations inside threads. 

This makes Swarm perfect for maintaining personal, face-to-face interactions with your team or coaching clients, without the need for constant live calls.

Pros

• Host live streams and share recordings
• Get auto-generated captions for video clips
• Use the recap tool for video transcription summaries

Cons

• Limited native integrations
• To have over 150 Space members or host 1hr+ live streams, you’ll need the Elite plan

Pricing

Swarm doesn’t have a free plan, only a free 14-day trial. All paid plans have 0% transaction fees. The Novice plan costs $49/month for hosting 1 Space and 25 total members. The Pro plan costs $99/month for 5 Spaces, 50 members per Space, and 45-minute live streams. 

The Expert plan, which is $199/month, unlocks unlimited Spaces, 150 members per Space, 1-hour live streams, and Zapier and API access. Then there’s the Elite plan that unlocks unlimited spaces and members, priority support, and SSO for $399/month.

9. WhatsApp: Best for growing a small community that already uses WhatsApp

Initially, WhatsApp only offered group chats for connecting with friends and family, similar to Signal. Now, WhatsApp has also implemented the Channels and Communities features.

Channels are solely for broadcasting announcements, while Communities bring multiple groups together in one space. WhatsApp Communities have a default announcements group where admins can share updates, but the other groups are open for members to share text, images, audio, and videos. 

However, you’re limited to 50 groups and 5,000 members per Community. This should be enough if you’re only building a small community and your target audience is already active on WhatsApp.

Pros

• Upload files up to 2 GB
• Share polls and live locations
• Schedule live events and track attendance

Cons

• Limited permission settings
• Calls are capped at 32 members

Pricing

WhatsApp Communities is free to use.

10. Mighty Networks: Best for coaches looking to leverage community insights for growth

Mighty Networks is another Slack-like platform for building communities. But instead of having channels (or “Spaces” as they’re called in Mighty Networks) for just chat, you can also use them for sharing courses, upcoming live events, and resources. 

A standout Mighty Networks feature is its robust analytics (aka Mighty Insights). This gives you key metrics like total members, active members, and total contributions, plus a visual overview of how these metrics change over a certain time. 

You can also track active members by hour and top community spaces. These are super helpful for making informed decisions like optimizing post times to boost engagement and replicating what has worked for top spaces in underperforming ones.

Pros

• Organize Spaces into collections 
• Connect your account to a custom domain
• Charge a one-time or recurring fee for community access

Cons

• The starter plan doesn’t have Mighty Insights
• Supports only Stripe for monetization
• Limited native integrations

Pricing

There’s no free plan but you get a free 14-day trial. They have a 5-tier pricing plan and all plans unlock unlimited Spaces and members. 

The Community Plan costs $49/month (plus 3% transaction fees) and has basic features like 5 streaming hours and 50 viewers, zoom integration, and polls. 

The Courses Plan costs $119/month (plus 2% transaction fees) and comes with 20 streaming hours and 200 viewers, courses and resource libraries, quizzes, and member badges.

The Business Plan and Path-to-Pro Plan cost $219/month (plus 2% transaction fees) and $360/month (plus 1% transaction fees) and unlock more streaming hours and viewers, higher storage, and SSO. Then there’s the Mighty Pro Plan (custom pricing) that unlocks enterprise features.

What is the Best Discord Alternative?

As we’ve seen, each of these Discord alternatives has its unique strengths. So choosing the best one largely depends on your target audience and your community’s needs and goals. If you’re unsure of what these are, take a moment to answer the following questions:

• What am I looking to achieve with my community?
• What features must my chosen Discord alternative have?
• Do I want to monetize my community now or in the future?
• Do I want to bundle my community with other digital offerings?

Your answers should give you better clarity on which tool is the best fit for you. 

Whichever platform you choose, you can get Whop to monetize community access and offer additional products like courses, digital downloads, and software.

Whop: The Best Platform for Your Online Community

Discord is a feature-rich platform for running an online community. However, the community management features might feel overwhelming to certain user demographics. 

If you’re a creator, small business owner, or digital entreprenrus who needs a streamlined, all-in-one platform for building and monetizing your online community, then Whop is a much better fit for you. 

You can get started for free. Whop makes no money until you do…even better, you get to keep 97% of your earnings.