Replacing Discord with Matrix: self-hosting Synapse and Element

On 8 October 2026 Hackaday published a field report from an author who moved his group from Discord to a Matrix server he runs himself. The trigger was the age verification that Discord wanted to force this spring and then postponed. The report is a single case, but an honest one: it shows what a text chat replacement costs once it has to handle voice and video too.

The setup comes from the Hackaday post of 8 October 2026, the license details from Synapse's GitHub project page. We did not build an installation of our own for this post. (Quelle: Simple Icons, file matrix.svg (CC0))

A protocol, not a platform

Matrix is an open standard rather than a single service. The author compares it to email: different servers and clients speak the same protocol. The most common server is Synapse and the most common clients are Element variants. Synapse is developed by Element, released under the AGPL and also available under a commercial license. According to the project page, support comes only with an Element Server Suite subscription. Element offers three editions: ESS Community for small to mid-scale non-commercial use, ESS Pro, and a variant for the TI-Messenger setting in German healthcare.

Matrix also works without your own server, for example through matrix.org. If you run one, you can connect it to other servers or leave it isolated. The author chose isolation: the active users are family members who want no contact with the open network, and his experience on matrix.org was marred by crypto scams and empty rooms. For bridges to IRC, Discord and other services there is a bridging network, which lets a group move over step by step.

Where the effort sits

Text chat is quick to set up. The author starts Synapse in an LXC container on his Proxmox server and first exposes it through a Cloudflare tunnel. With the Element clients of his family and friends it runs end-to-end encrypted, and the messages sit on a machine he controls. Voice and video are more work.

When he set things up, he says, there were two call modes side by side: the legacy one with a TURN server, and Element's newer one with a LiveKit server. Since then the architecture has become simpler and TURN matters less.

Then there is the provider's NAT. The free Cloudflare tunnel forwards only HTTP and WebSockets and takes no UDP for media streams. So he rents a small VPS with a public IP. TURN runs on it directly. LiveKit needs more resources than he wants to pay for on a VPS, so it stays in a container on his own Proxmox server, reached over WireGuard. Behind the router sits a DMZ on its own VLAN where an nginx manages the public services.

Simplified from the Hackaday report. In the same setup, text chat goes through a Cloudflare tunnel. (Quelle: Hackaday, 8 October 2026)

The result in the author's words: six virtual machines, Cloudflare as an intermediate stop, and one additional inexpensive paid service. According to the report, the host and other VMs also run services that monitor web traffic and secure the network. The author does not say whether they are part of the six VMs.

What still snags

The author lists openly what does not run smoothly. Users of the Element X client on iPhone are occasionally unable to send pictures, and he does not know why. Now and then a service on one of the VMs fails and needs maintenance, in his experience mostly when he is away from his laptop. He has not set up federation.

Commenters under the post raise the usual objection: a group of non-technical people is hard to move as long as usability trails Discord. That is the opinion of individual readers, not a measurement.

Our Matrix setup

We run our own Matrix server with Element at chat.senn-gruppe.com. Customer chat goes straight there with no relay in between. A WhatsApp bridge feeds it, and every customer gets a room of their own in a space. Our use is a different one from the Hackaday report: a customer chat instead of a circle of friends. How much effort a call setup with LiveKit would mean for us, we have not looked into.

For clubs and small teams a practical staging follows. Anyone who needs only text chat gets by with one server. Once voice and video come in, the number of components grows: TURN or LiveKit, UDP reachability, a host with a public IP. Before that point it is worth asking whether a hosted Matrix provider is enough.