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Discord vs Skype: What are the differences?

Introduction

In today's digital world, communication platforms have become a crucial part of our lives. Two popular communication platforms are Discord and Skype. Although both serve the purpose of connecting people, there are key differences between the two. Here are six specific differences that set Discord and Skype apart.

  1. Target Audience and Purpose: Discord primarily caters to the gaming community, providing seamless voice chat and text communication features. On the other hand, Skype is more versatile, targeting a wider range of users including individuals, businesses, and organizations for both personal and professional communication purposes.

  2. Server Structure: Discord follows a server-based model, where users can create or join servers with specific interests or communities. This structure allows for easy organization and management, giving users more control over their conversations. Skype, however, is centered around contact lists and individual contacts, making it more suitable for one-on-one or small group conversations.

  3. Voice Quality and Features: Discord is well-known for its superior voice quality even in crowded servers, making it ideal for gamers and those who prioritize clear communication. It offers advanced features like noise suppression and echo cancellation. On the other hand, while Skype provides reliable voice quality, it may not offer the same level of clarity and additional features as Discord.

  4. Text Chat Features: Discord focuses on providing a more robust text chat experience. It supports channels for different topics within a server, allowing users to engage in organized conversations. It also supports markdown formatting, code blocks, and a wide range of emojis. In comparison, Skype offers a simpler chat interface with the ability to send files, images, and emojis, but lacks the organizational features of channels.

  5. Third-Party Integrations: Discord has an extensive range of third-party integrations, allowing users to connect Discord with other platforms, such as Twitch, Spotify, and YouTube, enhancing their overall experience. On the other hand, Skype has limited third-party integrations, primarily focusing on features offered by Microsoft, its parent company, such as Office 365 and Outlook.

  6. Pricing: Discord is free to use, offering its core features at no cost. It also provides a premium subscription called Discord Nitro, which offers additional benefits like higher quality screen sharing and animated emotes. Skype, on the other hand, offers a freemium model, with basic features available for free, but charging for premium features such as calling landlines or mobile numbers.

In summary, Discord is primarily geared towards the gaming community with a server-based structure, superior voice quality, and advanced text chat features, while Skype targets a wide range of users with its versatile contact-based model, reliable voice quality, and a simpler chat interface. Discord also offers more extensive third-party integrations and has a different pricing structure compared to Skype.

Advice on Discord and Skype
Needs advice
on
DiscordDiscord
and
ZoomZoom

I want to host an online Jeopardy game with less than 30 participants. During each round of the game, I'll stream some videos. The point is to gather friends together to play the Jeopardy game and watch random stuff. Please let me know if there's a more suitable platform other than Discord and Zoom. Thanks, everyone!

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Replies (1)
RuralAnemone
Head Devoloper/coder at Super Smash Eternal · | 2 upvotes · 189K views

Personally, I think that Discord works much better than anything else, even if you don't have Nitro (which is what they call their premium plan). You could seriously do this Jeopardy thing with just Discord (and maybe a bot to make it easier)

Zoom would only let you have a crappy meeting that hackers could easily join. Discord actually has DDoS protection, Zoom just has things that can easily be bypassed.

And if you do want Nitro, it's only $9/mo or $99/yr

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Lisa Myers
Needs advice
on
SkypeSkypeWebexWebex
and
ZoomZoom

Hi, I am helping teachers in my kid's schools to set up distance learning and wanted to see what is better between Webex, Zoom, and Skype (although only putting this one in as most parents probably have it). The children are 8-9, so they won't be using it on their own and the parents have no experience using Webex or Zoom.

The main use will be for the teacher to explain what they will be covering in the week and enable some social interaction between the kids.

I need to be easy to use for about 20-25 people.

Thanks for your advice, Lisa

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Replies (4)
Yoram Kornatzky
Independent Information Technology and Services Professional at DR. YORAM KORNATZKY LTD · | 4 upvotes · 31.8K views
Recommends
on
ZoomZoom

I consider Skype dead. Even Microsoft strongly neglected it. Webex is more corporate-oriented. So for your use case, I recommend Zoom. It is easy to set up, and the quality is very good. Zoom became such a household name that the average person heard about it. Moreover, any person probably has friends who may have used it. So it will be easier for people to get some community help.

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Fábio Henrique Oliveira
Recommends
on
WebexWebex

Hi, Lisa,

I haven't used Skype in a long time. I have I lot of experience with Zoom and Webex. Both for me are very good tools, especially if you have money to pay for (to unlock more features, like more people in a video conference - Zoom).

Nowadays, I've used more Webex with my undergraduate students, I'm using the free account. Cloud recording is a features very useful, especially while using the free account (thanks Cisco!). Webex has control features very useful (e.g., mute, raise hand etc).

Kind regards,

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Attila Fulop
Recommends
on
ZoomZoom

We've been using Zoom for about a half a year and it's stability is unbeatable. We have all-hands on Fridays with 100+ participants. The free tier can easily handle the requirements, the only limitation is that max meeting length is 40 minutes. After that you can immediately restart the meeting, but the pro option is also very affordable. It also features screen sharing and whiteboard sharing out of the box. I also appreciate that it's not mandatory to register an account to attend a meeting.

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John Perry
Account Executive at Towerstream · | 3 upvotes · 108K views
Recommends
on
Microsoft TeamsMicrosoft Teams

From my experiences I feel like Zoom is a pretty intuitive program to teach kids, however Skype might be more common amongst them already.

I am a big fan of Microsoft Teams.

They all do the same pretty much but Teams I find the bells and whistles are easier to find, like custom backgrounds... creating groups for topic discussions that remain there until you want to change/edit or delete. Easy to share files.

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Decisions about Discord and Skype
Chose
DiscordDiscord
over
ZoomZoom

as many people say that you can only hold 30 to 10 people in one discord call if you were to make a server and add a chat or a VC you can hold up to 99 which is more than zoom and you can also use the text chat, general chat or anything else that you add and the best part you can hold pretty much infinite people I have personally seen servers with up to 100k people in it. One of the better parts is that you don't necessarily have to download it you can search it up on google and make an account it's as easy as that. Another thing is due to the original purpose of the website/app is that it's very customizable meaning that your students can customize heir profile pictures and names, but not to worry in a discord server you can have it where only you can change their nicknames so let's say things get too confusing or you want to be able to see who they really are you can just change it to their name. One last thing I will say is that you can have customizable ranks and so on so if you desire to split people into teams you can do so and with that, you can customize what they can do like give people ranks or de-rank them. Like I mentioned earlier about VC's you can also screen share and do videos so you can see their screen or their face.

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Pros of Discord
Pros of Skype
  • 64
    Unlimited Users
  • 58
    Unlimited Channels
  • 54
    Easy to use
  • 50
    Voice Chat
  • 48
    Fast and easy set-ups and connections
  • 45
    Clean UI
  • 42
    Free
  • 42
    Mobile Friendly
  • 32
    Android App
  • 28
    Mention system
  • 26
    Customizable notifications on per channel basis
  • 25
    Customizable ranks/permissions
  • 21
    IOS app
  • 20
    Good code embedding
  • 18
    Vast Webhook Support
  • 15
    Dark mode
  • 13
    Roles
  • 13
    Easy context switching between work and home
  • 12
    Bot control
  • 12
    Great Communities
  • 11
    Very Resource Friendly
  • 11
    Robust
  • 11
    Easy to develop for
  • 11
    Great Customer Support
  • 11
    Video Call Conference
  • 11
    Video call meeting
  • 10
    Sharing screen layer
  • 10
    Able to hold 99 people in one call
  • 9
    Easy Server Setup and joining system
  • 9
    Shares screen with other member
  • 9
    Easy
  • 8
    Great browser experience
  • 7
    Easy to code bots for
  • 7
    Lower bandwidth requirements than competitors
  • 6
    Noice
  • 3
    Easily set up custom emoji
  • 258
    Free, widespread
  • 147
    Desktop and mobile apps
  • 110
    Because i have to :(
  • 57
    Low cost international calling
  • 56
    Good for international calls
  • 10
    Best call quality anywhere, generally
  • 5
    Beautiful emojis
  • 4
    Chat bots
  • 2
    Translator
  • 2
    Skype for business integration with Outlook
  • 1
    United kingdom
  • 1
    Not the Best, but get the job done

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Cons of Discord
Cons of Skype
  • 10
    Not as many integrations as Slack
  • 9
    For gamers
  • 5
    Limited file size
  • 4
    Sends data to US Gov
  • 4
    For everyone
  • 2
    Undescriptive in global ban reasons
  • 2
    Suspected Pedophiles in few servers
  • 1
    Unsupportive Support
  • 1
    High memory and CPU footprint
  • 5
    Really high CPU utilization during video/screenshare
  • 3
    Not always reliable
  • 3
    Outdated UI
  • 3
    Birthday notifications are annoying
  • 3
    The worst indicator noises of any app ever
  • 2
    Finding/adding people isn't easy

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What is Discord?

Discord is a modern free voice & text chat app for groups of gamers. Our resilient Erlang backend running on the cloud has built in DDoS protection with automatic server failover.

What is Skype?

Skype’s text, voice and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are.

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What companies use Discord?
What companies use Skype?
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What tools integrate with Discord?
What tools integrate with Skype?

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What are some alternatives to Discord and Skype?
Slack
Imagine all your team communication in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. That’s Slack. All your messages. All your files. And everything from Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Asana, Trello, GitHub and dozens of other services. All together.
Zoom
Zoom unifies cloud video conferencing, simple online meetings, and cross platform group chat into one easy-to-use platform. Our solution offers the best video, audio, and screen-sharing experience across Zoom Rooms, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and H.323/SIP room systems.
Gitter
Free chat rooms for your public repositories. A bit like IRC only smarter. Chats for private repositories as well as organisations.
Google Hangouts
Message contacts, start free video or voice calls, and hop on a conversation with one person or a group.
WhatsApp
It is a cross-platform mobile messaging app for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia. It allows users to send text messages and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other media.
See all alternatives