Discord was originally developed to meet the needs of the gaming community. This should be pretty obvious when it comes to most of their features. Having come a long way since its public release in May 2015, Discord has taken the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) scene by storm and is not going to stop anytime soon.
That being said, Discord isn’t the only VoIP app in the city that has a lot to offer. Before Discord, there were several VoIP services to choose from, and even more Discord alternatives are coming out today.
Not everyone is happy with the services Discord provides. There were concerns about privacy, hacking vulnerabilities, and rumors that Discord was a breeding ground for questionable communities in the past. For some users, these complications have proven to be too disturbing and make them want to use Discord alternatives.
Top Discord Alternatives
There are many alternatives to Discord, depending on what you need the VoIP service for. Not all options are dedicated to games as their primary focus, as Discord does. Below you can find the best Discord alternatives for VoIP in our opinion.
TOX
For those who are primarily concerned with safety, Tox provides this to the fullest. Built-in military grade encryption provides superior protection for Tox users.
This makes things perfect for anyone who needs a VoIP application to talk about topics other than video games. The interface may seem a little dated, but if you look at it, you will find that Tox has many great features.
Tox supports text, voice and video chat, not to mention a handy screen sharing feature. File sharing is also available on the platform, making Tox an excellent VoIP service for professional and business organizations.
What really sets Tox apart from the others on this list is that it doesn’t have central servers. Rather than relying on a server to experience complications such as interruptions and outages, the entire Tox network is made up of users.
You can find the Tox app on mobile, macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Riot.im
Another service that kills Discord in an online privacy game should be Riot.im This VoIP Discord alternative service offers end-to-end encryption for all text and voice chat messages. The service is primarily designed for team collaboration and validates this claim with a set of tools that help streamline team workflow.
The entire service is built on the open Matrix communication protocol, which means that Riot.im will let you communicate with anyone in the Matrix.org ecosystem.
Riot.im allows users to exchange messages, images, videos, and files and can be downloaded on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
Slack
Following the trend of team collaboration, we shouldn’t forget about Slack If we talk about the user interface, then first of all these are professionals, since this is practically a Discord without a gamer feel. Instead of a haven for games, Slack offers many productivity features to improve your workflow.
The app provides integration with over 800 third-party business software and supports downloads up to 1 GB. Compared to 8MB on Discord, Slack is a business. Of course, you can only get these amazing features in the paid version of the app, as the free version offers very limited functionality.
However, professional settings and lag-free voice are more than enough to meet the needs of business-minded teams in the market for a Discord alternative.
Skip
If you still want something that has a Discord look and feel but isn’t actually Discord, then Overtone might be your preferred VoIP service choice. Like Discord, Overtone is designed for gamers.
Overtone is completely free and is based on Vivox’s integrated chat services, which are widely used by League of Legends, Fortnite and PUBG players. It also supports voice and group chats, direct messaging, and community building.
Ventrilo
Ventrilo is an old but good alternative, lightweight Discord alternative featuring low voice call latency and lightweight design. This means you don’t have to worry about VoIP service draining your computer’s resources. All Ventrilo messages are encrypted, so privacy shouldn’t be an issue.
Ventrilo’s user interface will take some getting used to if you’re already used to what you find on Discord. This may seem very difficult to some if they don’t come from a similar VoIP service like Teamspeak3. The features are relatively minimal apart from the positional audio adjustment, but with what it offers it works well and is not satisfactory.
TeamSpeak3
As mentioned, we could highlight this. TeamSpeak3 is one of the oldest chat apps for game communication. Many players are used to relying on TeamSpeak to communicate in the game.
To ensure low latency communications, TeamSpeak uses the opus codec, which is an encoding format that has been designed to efficiently encode speech and general audio into a single format, making it unmatched for interactive voice and music transmission over the Internet. Teamspeak3 also provides users with the ability to create their own dedicated server.
To ensure low latency communications, TeamSpeak uses the opus codec, which is an encoding format that has been designed to efficiently encode speech and general audio into a single format, making it unmatched for interactive voice and music transmission over the Internet. Teamspeak3 also provides users with the ability to create their own dedicated server.
TeamSpeak3 provides security in the form of AES encryption to ensure all conversations are protected from malicious objects. However, unlike others on this list, TeamSpeak3 does not offer browser support, so you will need to download and install the app to use it.
If you plan on using it on iOS or Android, there is a price tag as well, but it’s available for free on macOS, Linux, and Windows.
Skype
If all you desire is a service that offers free team communication and basic functionality, Skype is always there. It’s a familiar service that is still quite popular and offers features like screen share, video chat, and file-share.
Not much benefit to gamers but in a professional setting, Skype has the tools to come in handy. The only real annoyance is the potential to weigh heavy on your computer’s resources creating irritating lag problems while attempting other things.
The basic service is completely free. The only cost comes when using Skype as an international phone service. The app is available on all major platforms, some of which may be integrated.
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