How would you rate mattermost and zulip compared to slack and discord? I've only used slack, mattermost and skype. Of those I prefer mattermost by a fair margin, but I'm still not sure I like it. It seems like the ui could be better. Something about the way both it and slack handle channels or groups feels clunky.

I might get backlash for this, but IRC (what all these platforms are emulating) handled channels pretty terribly also.

it's an old car that gets you places without breaking down

Zulip is very “channels first” and once you get used to it it works pretty well. I constantly run into issues uploading files > 10Mb to Zulip though, it just sits there “Waiting” forever. I have to put things like screencasts somewhere else. Otherwise it’s pretty good though

Guilded over discord in my opinion. More features like forums in a channel. Long term, I only see discord and their company culture turning it into twitch or other zealot infested dumps.

Discord has forum channels already: https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6208479917079-...

(they’re technically in beta but a bunch of popular discords use them)