What is Stoat?
Stoat (formerly Revolt) is an open-source community chat platform that offers servers, channels, roles, DMs, and bots, similar to Discord but built on open-source principles with a focus on privacy and user control.
Why it matters
Stoat represents a growing movement of communities choosing open-source, privacy-respecting platforms over proprietary alternatives. As Discord's monetization of its own platform increases (ads, Nitro pushes, data collection), more communities are looking for alternatives that respect both the server owner's and members' autonomy.
For community builders, Stoat offers the same core functionality as Discord (text and voice channels, role-based permissions, bot integrations, and DMs) without vendor lock-in. The platform is self-hostable, meaning communities can run their own Stoat instances with full control over data and moderation policies.
The challenge for Stoat communities has been the lack of ecosystem tools. Discord has hundreds of bots and integrations. Stoat's ecosystem is younger and smaller. For paid communities, evaluate both billing support and how an integration handles member access when payments change.
How Arcalotl handles this
Arcalotl is live on the official hosted Stoat service. Its bot supports typed commands, role management, private messages, and embeds. Members start with !subscribe and pay through a private browser checkout link.
Plans can grant paid roles through entitlements. Arcalotl also supports one-time purchases, donations, payment recovery, cancellation saves, and annual billing offers. Owners configure these in the dashboard.
One Arcalotl community can connect Discord, Fluxer, Telegram, and Stoat. Members link their identities so their existing entitlements can grant the configured benefits across platforms. Hosted Arcalotl does not offer arbitrary self-hosted Stoat connections.