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Discord or AirSend? Which platform do you choose to make or join the ideal community? We are here to tell you. In this blog post, we are gonna give you a break down of what we think communities need, and which platform is best suited for these needs. Our breakdown method is going to cover five essentials that make a community great.

  1. Connectivity
  2. Community Size
  3. UI Design
  4. UX
  5. Capabilities/Features

Before we dive in, we do want to say, we love Discord. Aside from it being free, Discord offers quite a bit for team chats and community building. We also believe AirSend has the potential to one day reach the repertoire of Discord. To see how Discord fares as a team chat, click here. With all that being said, both platforms are going to be judged and analyzed solely on these five essentials and nothing more. Without further ado, let’s dive into the community battlefield: Discord vs. AirSend. 

Deep Connection

The attribute of a strong community is to have deeper connections among conversations. When it comes to Discord and AirSend, one needs to ask which platform would be best for building connections with members? Which platform can you gain and receive the most connections with? 

Discord is known for its already preexisting groups. Due to the high amount of existing groups on Discord, some users may not find the platform a viable choice for creating communities. Especially, if there is already a community out there. Most of Discord’s communities also have well over 500 members. Due to the high volume of members, some who are looking to connect with others may find Discord a bit difficult to use.

Alternatively, AirSend’s latest feature of public channels allows for deep connections to be made. Discord is a great product for joining communities. However, by choosing Discord, you may also have to sacrifice some attributes, such as building genuine connections with others.

Finally, in terms of deep connections, we feel that we must also mention invite links. The question is, which platform is easiest to invite members?? The answer is both! Both Discord and AirSend communities have instant invite links. Next on our agenda is community size.

Community

As previously mentioned, Discord is known for having large communities. Part of the reason Discord has large communities is because the platform is originally marketed towards gamers. There are a ton of gamers out there, so it would make sense that Discord’s communities are naturally large. We will mention later why building small communities with Discord is a bit hard. For now, let’s continue talking about community size.

AirSend is a great platform for small and medium-sized communities. However, whenever it comes to community size, you have to ask yourself how genuine do you want your connections to be? Both platforms offer the ideal connection and community size. But remember, the larger the community, the harder it will be to maintain a real connection. This is often because of the signal-to-noise ratio which decreases as the community size increases. What this means is that users will often feel like they are being spammed with messages.

UI Design

Ask yourself this question, what platform do you envision your fellow members using the most? Which platform will be the most aesthetically pleasing? The comparison is simple. With Discord, you have a similar design to Slack. The view looks busy with a bunch of colors, messages, channels, gifs, memes; Basically, everything you could imagine in a text chat, all visually appear on the screen at the same time.

AirSend At Home Cooking Channel
AirSend’s UI

Lastly, the way Discord is laid out, each room requires a channel made. For instance, you make a server, and in that server is a channel for announcements, a channel for rules, a channel for what the community interest is, a channel for sources, etc. This is nice if you really like well-organized channels, but this also takes time away connecting with others because you will be continuously switching from channel-to-channel.

Discord Warframe
Discord’s UI

Alternatively, AirSend has a clean UI design which makes the usability extremely easy to use. Both platforms are visually appealing in their own way. It is all a matter of choosing which design suits your community more.

UX- Usability

Now, even though both platforms have their respective aesthetic look, when it comes to choosing the right tool to host your community, usability needs to be accounted for. Discord is one of those platforms where if you aren’t tech-savvy, you won’t be using the platform to its maximum potential.

Further, Discord is one of those tools that require time spent to learn the product, such as integrating bots, using mark-up and markdown language, HTML, permissions for members and moderators, and many more. There is an overwhelming amount of features to Discord that can appear intimidating. Especially if users aren’t tech-savvy.

AirSend’s usability is much easier in comparison. Though we do not currently have all the customization that Discord has, we do like to think we have easier usability. With clear instructions to guide you in making your private and/or public channel, you do not have to spend time researching and learning how to use the product.

Further, unlike discord, we offer built-in file storage, task management, and a built-in “about-section” all in one area. This eliminates the use of extra channels and makes communication flow easier. With task-management you and your members can remind each other of meetings, assign tasks to complete (like finishing a book for a book club), and best of all, with our task management, everyone stays in the loop. 

Capabilities/Features

We have finally reached the end of our blog post. So far, we have covered the four essentials of running a community. Those are, 

  1. Connectivity
  2. Community
  3. UI Design
  4. UX

Our last topic of discussion is the capabilities and features of the tools. Boiled down each tool offers extensive features and capabilities. Arguably, Discord may have more to offer in terms of features, such as integrations, bots, custom emojis, moderators, and many more.

However, with AirSend, we believe that while having a lot of features is great for a community, connecting should be the priority. With the poor signal-to-noise ratio happening in Discord, users will have a hard time building discussion, relationships, and interests.

Last but not least, when it really comes down to choosing the platform for your community, make sure it is a platform you and your members enjoy using and can build memories upon.  

AirSend is a versatile digital workspace that helps communities to share files, send messages, and complete tasks. See how AirSend can help you.