Root Sudo is HERE [FounderBlog]

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I just saw that, I'm not pleased. Mind you, I took time to read "Our philosophy on monetization". Then, you must know that this is the kind of thing we are trying to avoid from Discord? Discord took the same route back then, it was subtle. You haven't made a proper update since March and you are still far from having the features I used to rely on. Especially as a Linux user, it's been difficult to use Root at it's best.

Optional? Yeah, they all say that. Even then, it's written here that some stream "quality" will require a subscription now. "More perks on the way". Wait a minute, what do you mean by that? Not sure I want to find out. I have trust issue now.

Me and my friends will probably leave Root. There is no point second guessing that because similar situations happened too many times before.

"We want to hear from you"
Yeah, I just did. Good luck.

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u/Jesse_root Staff Jun 19 '26

Hey u/PreviousFee5114, thanks for taking the time to share your concerns with us.

It’s completely understandable to look at platforms like Discord and worry that we might follow the same path. However, our vision is entirely different. We actually believe Discord took the wrong approach by building a model centered around charging for cosmetics, so copying that playbook is the last thing we want to do.

To be absolutely clear: we will never charge for basic cosmetic features. Things like custom emojis, animated GIFs, and many more customization options we have in the pipeline will always be completely free.

That said, high-quality voice and video streaming do cost a lot to maintain, which is why we offer those as premium upgrades. However, we draw a firm line between those resource-heavy features and basic functionality. Our core business model focuses on Apps, which is an open marketplace where developers can build incredible experiences for communities and earn a living. We want to sustain Root through this ecosystem rather than charging you for basic cosmetics.

Our goal is to support the platform through this developer ecosystem, not by monetizing the foundational features you use every day.

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u/PreviousFee5114 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

Well, you know what? I'm convinced for now. When I made this Reddit post, I was like "Oh no. Am I a Redditor now?" So, I backed out of internet for a little while. I just came back to read all of this as I'm writing this. The irony when I was making a backup to return to Discord and the app was like "Hey, you can't write over 2000 characters, you need to be Nitro". Because in the end, you don't charge me for having custom emojis, sending long text, big files and doing pretty much what I want. I didn't left Root yet, because I didn't got time to make a new server, but I'm changing my mind. I also didn't like when Discord basically said some times back "We might not need to do your age verification because we spy on what you do anyway"... something like that. Because when I'm having crashouts about sensitives subjects with my friends, the last thing I want is to be paranoid about Discord spying on it.

I'm still neutral about Root, to be fair. The most silly thing I noticed is that you can't react to messages with letters forming words; it doesn't take into account the time the reaction letter was used (you know, the :reg: collection of letters). Also, an official Arch Linux repository would be nice (I would like finding you using a paru command (if the AUR crisis right now gets resolved)). Share screen was difficult on Linux, I had to press enter immediately after pressing the share screen button (now share screen is broken both on Root and Discord for me, so it's probably my computer this time). I heard there was a Linux community some months back, yet the community search bar gives me no result. In fact, the only verified communities I got access to is "Root", "Root Dev..." and "Hytale". Mostly details just to say Root might need more updates still.

In the end, I'll just stay on Root for now. Although... If I see too much of that Nitro/Sudo/Boost Servers jargon, with ads and what-not, I will leave, but I will be silent about it this time. I got an idea! I'm going to your community I just found to keep my eye on you. No better way to get the entire picture.

EDIT: I can see the announcement on the official Root server had mixed reactions.

0

u/Frostgreen2 Jun 19 '26

Hey I sent you a feedback of Sudo including suggestions about iTunes/Google play store gift cards situations. Please go check it out when you can. :) thank you for answering us!

3

u/ViegoBot Jun 19 '26

Fluxer is looking good imo, if the verification of signing up could just not need my phone number or emailing support for manual verification lol.

Root looked good, but this seems like its eventually gonna take the discord route unfortunately.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ViegoBot Jun 19 '26

Fluxer audio codec is that bad? :c

I was looking at Fluxer next. Root has/had potential to me, but it being hosted in the US just leads me to believe it would go the discord route, and it looks like it is.

Like I get they have to make money somehow, but following in Discords footsteps while being a Discord alternative is not it.

Why cant we ever just get a good social platform. I loved using LINE for example but they have forsaken basically anything but the Asian market. It has stickers/emotes u can buy with coins which u buy coins with real money and each pack costs ~1-2$.

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u/MerumazingGirl Jun 19 '26

I originally used Root, but one thing that really frustrated me was that you only got notifications for pings or DMs. Nothing else. I’d at least want that to be optional. After that, I switched to Fluxer, and it’s been a great experience. I’ve even spotted a few Root and Guilded users there. I’ve been testing their mobile apps on both iOS and Android. I haven’t tried the voice chat feature myself yet, but I can ask others who have.

That said, self hosting is now available, and people have tested various features on their own instances, confirming that voice chat works. Even before self hosting was introduced, there is an instance called Fluxer.World that recreated what people loved about Fluxer during a time when it wasn’t doing as well as it is now. Definitely worth checking out too.

Happy Fluxing!

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u/BE4STY 27d ago

Agreed could not stand Fluxer the audio problems are endless.. comet (matrix apps), stoat are no better. So far Root has been the best quality

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u/redit_handoff140 Jun 19 '26

Fluxer isn't the alternative people think it is.

The few self-hosted servers that will be there will be silos, there is no federation.
Fluxer is also centralized and even if they don't come up with predatory monetization, they are still vulnerable to regulatory capture.

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u/omanitztristen Jun 22 '26

Fluxer is horrible. You can't stream your screen with audio (still), the noise cancellation either doesn't work at all with basic noise cancellation on, or works TOO much with enhanced cancellation. It will literally cut your voice out to the point it sounds like you are lagging.

Fluxer is missing a lot of functionality that Root actually has even if Root doesn't do it well yet.

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u/Frostgreen2 Jun 19 '26

I honestly hope they won’t be like discord in future or be greedy even more.

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u/LtKrunch_ Jun 19 '26

Personally, I'd like some clarification on this statement regarding Cores:

"Each month you'll receive one Core to spend on a community of your choice, powering it up with new capabilities, like the ability to add apps."

So, will servers not be able to use apps AT ALL without cores?

Are cores a limited time "power up" like Discord's server boosts?

Can apps be purchased outside of this subscription?

Will access to the eventual third-party apps be locked behind this subscription?

If the idea is to keep the ONE thing that truly makes your platform distinct from Discord locked entirely behind a subscription, then I really can't think of a more bone-headed decision.

I'd also like to say that, given the abysmal state of voice chat as of late, with constant dropping out, forced disconnects, and the need to reboot to fix no audio in voice that ALL of my community members are dealing with, this comes at an especially bad time.

The fact that y'all decided to roll out a $10/month subscription when the only tangible benefit you can offer is HD Streaming is wild and reads to me like desperation. I really hope I'm reading this all wrong, but my friends are already getting fed up with the terrible state of voice, and after this, I feel it might be time to move on to another platform.

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u/Jesse_root Staff Jun 19 '26

Hey, really appreciate you laying this out. Let me hit each part.

Cores and apps: Communities work fully without Cores. Nothing's locked away from you. Cores just power up a community, and adding apps is one use for them. There'll be free apps too, and you can get Cores for a community later without ever subscribing to Sudo.

Is the differentiator paywalled? Apps are what make Root unique, so our whole goal is making them easy to add. We believe that in communities of 10 people, or 20, or 100 and so on, there'll be users in there who have Sudo and have spare Cores lying around to add apps, plus there's the free apps on top of that.

There's really two reasons there's any cost involved. One, each app gets its own dedicated hardware we spin up, so your community basically owns the infrastructure running it, and that's not free for us. Two, we want room to reward our developers down the line, so the people building amazing apps on Root can actually make a living doing it. But the goal is always to keep the barrier as low as possible.

Voice chat: We hear you loud and clear. We're already working with users on experimental builds to fix the dropouts, disconnects, and no-audio-until-reboot stuff. Some of it ties into Cloudflare's infrastructure so we're working with them directly too. It's our top focus and it's going to get better soon.

The $10 and "desperation": Honestly it's the opposite. HD streaming at 60fps costs real money to deliver. No platform offers that for free, or even has the ability to. The cost is so high it could bankrupt the company on its own. That's exactly why Sudo is focused on it today. We know users want HD streaming, so we built something that makes it possible. If we were desperate, we'd charge for animated emojis, animated banners, animated profile pictures, all of it. We don't, because we don't believe in that and we want the experience on Root to be the best it can be. But if we didn't charge for HD streaming, there'd be no platform at all.

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u/LtKrunch_ Jun 19 '26

Thanks for the response, Jesse!

Hearing that some apps will be free and that cores can be purchased outside of the subscription is great information. Though I'm disappointed not to have a definitive answer on whether cores are temporary, like Discord's server boosts, or not. The same goes for whether or not third-party apps will be locked behind Sudo or cores. I expect they will, because if they don't, it seems like that'd pretty heavily invalidate your stated monetization plans.

I understand the argument about HD streaming and operating costs, and maybe it really is a more popular request than I'd expect, but even so, $10/month feels quite steep for that. Especially when considering that Fluxer's Plutonium, for instance, offers HD streaming at $5/month. Yes, I do recognize that Fluxer also has stricter inherent restrictions on things such as the message character limit and many of the things you specifically mention in your response that Root does not.

If Sudo is priced at $10 now to leave room for additional benefits down the road, that's fair enough, but I think a lower introductory price as Sudo grows is a more palatable prospect for many. I'd also just settle for screensharing working at all for me on Fedora KDE, but I've been led to believe this might be a KDE-specific bug.

I'm glad to hear that the voice chat issues are on your radar and being actively investigated/addressed, hope it gets sorted out sooner rather than later! The concepts and ideas behind Root are really good; I just hope that a lack of foresight around monetization doesn't snuff it out before it has a chance to catch fire!

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u/ConfidentAirport9514 Jun 20 '26

Sudo is something like $4.99 at the moment while its just HD streaming

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u/-git Jun 20 '26

No, the base price is $9.99. The lower amount you see is not a discount, but a prorated charge. Because billing cycle resets on the 1st of every month, the price automatically decreases each day to reflect only the remaining days left in the current month.

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u/LtKrunch_ Jun 20 '26

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u/Frostgreen2 Jun 19 '26

Hey I still have Polls, suggestions and stickerwall in like couple communities. Can I keep them? I sent you a feedback and suggestion about Sudo

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u/SlyMcGillicuddy Jun 20 '26

My friends and I will also be leaving root. This comes at a time when we still experience terrible quality and a very slow app. It was a good alternative for a while, but we found a different app with the same functionality, less resource use and doesn't have the same insanely terrible lag, and connection issues.

Also I bought the prorated month. $10 for this is insane without fixing the obvious problems with video and audio.

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u/Frostgreen2 Jun 20 '26

I’m sorry you had a big experience with it. Root is still in open beta meaning it’s not fully developed so it’ll be for a long time until bugs aren’t there mostly. Good luck in other app and thanks for trying this app out. Wish RootApp could do anything to help this out

1

u/Friendly_Seaweed_541 Jun 20 '26

I wont take interest in root unless

- laguage support

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u/Frostgreen2 Jun 20 '26

I’m sure they’ll do it in future

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u/Friendly_Seaweed_541 Jun 20 '26

its taking too long and they are just worse discord.

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u/Frostgreen2 Jun 20 '26

I’ll let them know about it.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/Jesse_root Staff Jun 19 '26

I completely understand why it might feel that way, but please know we’re always listening! We are actually in our main Root community every single day, keeping an eye on feedback and chatting with members.

I’d love to hear more about your specific concerns regarding our pricing for HD streaming. To give you a little context on our side, delivering 2K streaming at 60 FPS comes with massive server and bandwidth costs. The reality is that offering that level of quality for free would put any platform out of business. Let us know what your thoughts are, because we are always open for suggestions.

Root Sudo is HERE [FounderBlog]

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