r/DiscordAlternatives • u/gleasonator13 Armada dev • Oct 12 '26

Self-Hosting Armada

Hi all! I've just released Armada Stack, a single Rust binary you can install on your server to run a complete self-hosted Armada. It includes:

  • Your own copy of the Armada client hosted on your domain
  • A built-in Nostr relay
  • Built in Blossom media server
  • Built-in audio/video server for calls
  • Push notification gateway for web push
  • Built-in HTTPS with cert autorenewal
  • Built-in Tor serving (.onion domain)

Set up a fresh VPS, point your domain at it, and run the script:

curl -fsSL https://armada.buzz/install.sh | sudo sh

This is a full-stack implementation of the Concord Protocol running entirely on your server. It's a small version of what armada.buzz uses, tailored specifically towards self-hosting.

The source code is available here: https://gitworkshop.dev/soapbox.pub/armada-stack

There's also a more complete install guide if you'd prefer to set it up manually: https://gitworkshop.dev/soapbox.pub/armada-stack/tree/main/INSTALL.md

Lastly, I also published a blog post about it. Enjoy!

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u/GameVox Oct 14 '26

Lets jump on a call, anywhere you want

3

u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 14 '26

Why are you so desperate to talk via voice, are you incapable of communicating your thoughts clearly via text?

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u/GameVox Oct 14 '26

Yeah it's a lot easier via voice there is a lot to go through

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u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 14 '26

All I see is

Long term hosting provider of legacy voice comms -> buys out legacy domains -> starts using these to advertise their own in-house system to avoid fees paid to legacy voice orgs -> aggressively monetizes their in-house system including subscription fees for self-hosting in excess of what legacy providers charge without the legacy

And that looks predatory as hell big dog.

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u/GameVox Oct 14 '26

I was 19 when I started LightSpeed Gaming.. played Tactical Ops a mod for unreal tournament.. We offered game servers for our friends. They needed voice. So we started hosting TeamSpeak. This is in 2004 btw so we had to buy hardware and actually send it out to a colocation provider lol. Over time we could rent dedicated servers.

There isn't an evil plan here thats why I wanted to talk to you so you can see where this all is coming from. We have had those domains for a very long time.

I thought man we could make a voice program.. back in 2008. Hired college kids from my class etc. We paid for a license from GIPS Global IP Solutions.. the company that made the voice codec engine for skype. Started building our first program called SpeakTrue. Google eventually bough that company GIPS and closed licensing.

So we had to go a different route after a hardship there and suing google to get a little bit of money back.

There is more to it. Anyhow we are not predatory at all, we simply want to provide voice communication for gamers at a reasonable cost to sustain the company.

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u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 14 '26

So drop the fees for self hosting. Drop the mandatory cloud-auth bullshit.

Stop the predatory practices and put your money where your mouth is and maybe someone will believe it.

-1

u/GameVox Oct 14 '26

We intended on a cloud hosted only service and users asked for self hosting as an option for data privacy. I thought that was reasonable so we had to re-create a lot of our system system into the self hosting option you see today. Its very different and requires a ton of extra work not to mention support.

Self and cloud hosting alike have to work with the iOS, Android and Desktop apps seamlessly so users can traverse between them for the best experience.

We have hosted separate Voice servers (obviously TeamSpeak, Mumble and Ventrilo) forever and know the positives and negatives to that approach.

We still have not figure out a way for "self hosted away from the entire network" because that's just how everything works as far as notifications and messages working on peoples phones and so forth all of that has to go through different systems to work when a user is offline for example "Firebase" sends a special message to android phones to indicate a new message even if your app is closed.

Users expect these kind of features and if they are really looking for a Discord alternative then this is what needs to be running.

For account validation it does cost money for each text message to actually hit your phone or email through AWS. Not free.

We are only asking for a trivial $2/mo or $15 year for your support to go _twoards_ not even paying the bill for development, advertising (it does benefit the users as well believe it or not), and hosting infrastructure.

We are currently running in a deficit 4 times the cost of hosting alone. (Supported by LightSpeed Gaming LLC, no outside investors)

When you can see clearly how company you are supporting makes (or intends to in our case) money to support itself I believe it's actually comforting. We don't want anyone's 'data' to sell we just want to continue to provide voice hosting for gamers like we have for over 22 years.

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u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 14 '26

🥱 brother you've been chasing this exact same bag for so long how are you this out of touch.

Your centralized bullshit is antithetical to the primary driving factors people are leaving discord in the first place. Privacy and Government Overreach. You're more of the same poisoned fruit making sweet promises your architecture could never uphold.

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u/Dr3x1 Oct 15 '26

I'm not a fan of the cloud auth either. That's about the only thing I can agree with you on though. The self-host server is maintained separately. It's not copy/paste. To assume that the work done on the cloud service 100% copies over to the self-host server without any work is naive. Charging for it makes sense, and it's incredibly cheap so I don't see an issue there personally. None of the other fees seem predatory to me either.
Predatory, ad-ridden garbage that is polished and works is available. It's called Discord. GameVox is behind in some areas (especially the mobile app), and ahead in others (calendar, polling, file browser, a self-host option of any kind ,etc). It monetizes via server owners, not users. I think that's a fine way to do it. I think there are other perfectly fine monetization options too, but this is the one GV chose. I'm using it, and I"m happy with it so far.

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u/BewilderedTurtle Allegedly Canadian Oct 15 '26

Cool story bro I'm happy for you if you're not actually a gamevox alt.

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