The biggest problem was me not wanting to be a sysadmin in my free time. There were some other compatibility issues, and not a good mobile solution for us.

Is this still the case, with the actual matrix specification?

I'm currently hosting a matrix instance but haven't been able to get my friends to migrate over from Discord yet. The spec isn't the problem for us, it's the apps really. We have a seemingly basic discord server (channels for various hobbies/games we want to talk about + a general channel, a voice chat, and some custom meme emotes we made). In theory these should all be supported on the spec level.

Element has a ton of basic features locked behind a hidden developer menu (separate from the non-hidden developer menu) which is locked behind a / command. By default the app keeps defaulting to the old Jitsi meetings for voice calls even though I have the RTC matrix calling setup. It's also just finicky to get working. I'm the only one in the group willing to debug technical issues in their free time so this is actually an issue.

Cinny is better but the desktop app only supports voice chat on Windows (it's because of an upstream tauri issue but still stops several people in the group from being able to use it)

Nheko also seemed like a good option but it hasn't had a release in over a year which seems like a problem with how many improvements to matrix I've seen everywhere else.

FluffyChat is good and is what I use on my phone but it isn't well suited for discord-style organization with Spaces. There isn't a way to distinguish between standalone rooms and rooms withthin spaces. My understanding was that this is a spec issue and the way other apps handle it is hacky, but still worth mentioning.

I should look into matrix. I have a small group of nerds in my group. need video, voice, text, and image sharing. A dice bot is nice, too.