Cancelled my Nitro and looking to jump ship, what's the next Discord?
As pointed out earlier, there's Matrix, and also more niche protocols like XMPP. Both offer encryption with no backdoors I'm aware of, which is a whole lot better than most alternatives.
Signal isn't really comparable, I don't use it due to sketchy origins and requiring a phone (not just a number, but a client that is installed on/acts as if it was on a phone), but if people at large started using it, I'd consider again.
As for registering on Matrix, you can find servers
here and
here.
Do not register on Matrix
.org, it defeats the decentralised nature of the protocol.
The reference desktop client is
Element and has all the features, but it uses Chromium (like Discord), so expect high memory usage. The client I recommend is
Nheko; it's not the shiniest client out there, but it doesn't chew resources and has most Matrix features you would expect.
FluffyChat is a well-known Android/iOS client. As I don't use Android or iOS nowadays, I can't say much about it, but it should be okay.
As for registering on XMPP, you can find servers
here and
here (Movim is an extension of XMPP, but essentially is the same thing). There are fewer XMPP users compared to Matrix users, so you may have a harder time finding rooms/contacts, but it doesn't hurt to use both XMPP
and Matrix.
The desktop client most people use is
Gajim, it is quite usable and feature-packed, but doesn't receive major new features. There's also
Dino if you use Linux, and want things like modern VoIP that works with Cheogram/Conversations while sacrificing a lot of niche features Gajim has.
Cheogram is a feature-packed client for Android which is most recommended over the project it's based on, Conversations. There's also
Monal for iOS, but I can't say anything about it.
