Are you a content creator looking for a new way to connect and interact with your audience? Maybe it’s time to look into Discord. There are discord servers available for any and every interest. Thousands of people use the app every day to chat with friends, engage with their favorite creators, and even play games together. It’s the perfect app for interacting with people and building real relationships. Unfortunately, with so many servers available, it can be hard to cut through the mess and find the best ones for your needs.
Read on to find the best discord servers for your needs, and learn how to create your own!
But first, here’s a quick overview of one of the best chat app for meeting new people and making new friends.
Table of Contents
What is Discord?
Discord is an application that allows you to chat with a specific group of people with shared interests. At its core, it’s a messaging app that allows you the option to voice chat, video chat, and text chat. It also allows you to screen share and stream directly to the app.
Discord is also a hangout place. Most of the chat rooms are for group chats, though you can direct message your friends on the platform or set up a private room with just two people.
Although it’s primarily seen as an app for gamers, Discord is extremely versatile. There are plenty of Discord communities that aren’t related to gaming at all. Creators have used them in a variety of ways. You can find discord servers specific to fans of a certain influencer, support discords, specialty topic discords (like anime discords, among us discords, and even affiliate marketing discords). Even if you aren’t a gamer, there are several good reasons to use Discord.
How Do I Use Discord?
Discord is very similar to Slack in function and layout. The left-hand side of a server will have the channels available, the center will be the community hub for chatting, and the right will show the users in each channel.
When you first sign up for discord, you will create a username and password and link your email to your account. The cool thing about this service is that you can remain anonymous. Your username doesn’t have to be related to your real name, and you can even have a different name in each server. Your overall username for discord will remain the same, and it will be associated with a small string of numbers. This is the name folks will use to send you private messages.
Once you find some discord servers to join, using them is fairly straightforward. Each server has its own set of rules, so be sure to read them and to speak with the moderators or server admins if you have any questions about what is and isn’t allowed in the specific server. Some have specific rules against self-promotion, whereas others are a free-for-all. Some ban any explicit content, whereas that’s the entire point of others. The moderators set the rules and ensure that all server members follow them.
When you join a discord server, you usually have to read and agree to the discord’s specific rules before being granted access to the entire server. Once you agree, you will be able to get your chat on! The general channel on most servers is a giant group chat where people can engage with one another, have discussions, and generally just get to know each other. Most discord servers then have other channels set up for specific discussions. For example, the general chat is for everyday conversations in my server. We have a specific chat for things like finding gaming partners, getting help with your stream, self-promotions, and various other topics.
What are Discord Servers?
Discord is the app as a whole, and Discord servers are the app’s specific rooms where the action happens. After you sign up for Discord, you will have to do some research to find out which servers you want to join.
Unlike social media, everyone can’t see everything on Discord. You have to join a specific server to start engaging with and interacting with the community. Some servers are open to the public, so you can just click and join, while others are private, and you can join by invitation only.
Discord servers are great places to meet new people and make new friends. It’s an easy way to find people with similar interests, whether specific music, a game, or a specific type of content. They are also great places to network and collaborate with content creators in your niche. The possibilities with discord servers are endless.
What Are the Best Discord Servers?
If you are a small streamer looking to become a Twitch affiliate, the Partners in Fire Discord Server is the best one for you. I’m not just tooting my own horn here! Partners in Fire is a support discord for streamers at any level of the affiliation process. We have new streamers just starting and established streamers on the road to partner.
Like anything, you get out of it what you put into it. Those active in the discord and support others are more likely to get the support back and tend to grow their communities the fastest.
However, Discord is for far more than gamers. It’s hard to answer the question “what are the best discord servers” without knowing what you are looking for in a Discord server. Are you looking to support your favorite gamer or creator? Their fan server is probably the best for that. If you love a certain game, joining that game’s official server might be best for you.
There are discord servers dedicated to all your favorite games, like Destiny, Among us, or Rainbow Six, and discord servers dedicated to a certain video game genre, like Esports or MMOs. There are thousands of smaller servers dedicated to different topics. You can find discord servers dedicated to subjects like investing, financial independence, crypto, NFTs, art, game development, programming, music, and nearly anything else you are interested in.
The best discord is a very subjective question, and the answer greatly depends on what you want to get out of it. However, some Discord servers might be the best to join because they are the most active.
What Are the Biggest Discord Servers?
There are huge Discord servers on a variety of different topics. Here’s a small list of popular Discord Servers across various niches.
- Genshin Impact Official – 800K Members (Gaming)
- Valorant – 800K Members (Gaming)
- Minecraft – 800K Members (Gaming)
- Official Fortnite – 760K members (Gaming)
- LoFi Girl – 640K Members (Music)
- Anime Soul – 606K Members (Entertainment – Anime)
- Memeology – 487K Members (Entertainment – memes)
- English – 374K Members (Educational – learn English)
- Sound’s World – 372K Members (Youtuber’s branded Discord)
- Python – 298K Members (Technology)
As you can see, gaming servers are still the most popular. Games such as Roblox, League of Legends, Apex Legends, Rocket League, and more also have servers with over 500K members. Still, it’s also important to recognize that non-gaming servers are also popular. All of the servers on this list are public and can be accessed on Discord’s Discover page.
How Do I Find Discord Servers to Join?
Finding the right discord server can be difficult, especially since many are private. However, you can start by searching for public discord servers right on the site! The icon circled in red in the below photo is the “discover” button. It will be at the top if you aren’t in any servers, but you can find it at the bottom of your server list when you have joined a few.
When you click that, you will come to the Discover menu, shown in the photo. Here you can browse by topic or use the search menu to find a server based on a specific topic.
Lists of Discord Servers
Many websites list thousands of Discord servers for you to join. One of the best known is top.gg. This website lists a ton of specific servers that are looking for new members. It’s harder to find good servers to join here, as the search function isn’t the greatest, and the only servers that are listed are ones where the owner has specifically uploaded it. Still, it’s worth checking out, especially if you are interested in a specific topic.
Quite a few websites offer giant lists of Discord servers to join. Please make sure the server is what you want before you join. Many are full of NSFW content, and unfortunately, pornography runs rampant in Discord communities, which is why it’s generally best to start with the communities supported by Discord itself.
Check out this short video to learn how to find discord servers to join on Discord itself and on top.gg:
Finding Small Discord Servers to Join
The best way to find Discord servers to join is to network with content creators. Many folks advertise their discords on Twitter and Instagram, so if you enjoy a certain content creator, ask them if they have a server. Most gamers also have their own server, and you can generally get an invite to those through their Twitch channel. Joining these servers is a great way to support your favorite creator and become a full member of their community.
Many will also know of other small, interesting servers that you can join. These word-of-mouth servers are not always on the mega-lists and are harder to find, but they offer a better sense of community and are great places to build relationships.
It’s hard to find servers at first, but as you network and build your community, you will soon find yourself in many different servers.
How Do I Make My Own Discord Server?
A great thing about discord is that you can make your own server at no cost. It’s straightforward, and because it’s yours, you can basically do whatever you want with it.
To create your own discord server, scroll down the left-hand list of servers you are in and click the “plus button” icon. When your mouse is hovering over it, it will say, “add a server.” When you click on it, a pop-up will appear. The top option is “create my own.” Discord gives you a variety of templates that you can choose from, or you can start from scratch and make it entirely your own.
Although creating a discord server is fairly straightforward, moderating it and making it do all the fancy things that it is capable of is a lot more difficult. You don’t need to do anything fancy to have a server. All you have to do is create one and make a few channels.
However, if you want to make it look nice and have more functionality, you will want to explore discord bots.
What are Discord Bots?
Discord bots are scripts that you can add to your discord server to make cool things happen or to help you with moderation. There’s a bot that prevents people from spamming emotes or capitalizations, another bot that lets you play music in your voice channels, and another that tracks recruitment. There’s basically a bot for everything, and you can even build your own if you can’t find one that does exactly what you want.
The most popular discord bot is MEE6. This bot can help you moderate your channel, keep track of user statistics, and create simple commands. The vast functionality is why most people add this bot to their server first.
What are Discord Emotes?
One of everyone’s favorite things about discord is the emoticons. You can react to someone’s text with various discord emotes, including the normal ones you probably have on your cell phone. You can also upload your own emojis to your discord server, so everyone in your server can use your unique emotes.
If you pay for Discord nitro, you can use the emojis from any discord server that you are in wherever you want. If you don’t want to pay for that service, you can only use an emoji in the server that it has been uploaded to.
What are the Problems with Discord?
Nothing is perfect, and Discord is not without its problems. The biggest issue with Discord is that it can be misused. It might be easy for children to find things they shouldn’t find. There are many NSFW discord servers. Since the platform is anonymous, it might be difficult for server owners to realize that a certain user is a child.
Another potential issue is that Discord server owners can do whatever they want with their servers. This means a specific server could potentially turn into a breeding ground for extremism. However, most apps have struggled with this. It’s not just a Discord problem. When you give customers a platform to privately express their views to a group, some of them will use it for nefarious purposes. If you aren’t specifically looking for that sort of thing, though, you probably won’t just stumble across it on Discord.
Discord Versus Social Media: Which Should I Use?
Although Discord is often lumped in with social media platforms, it’s slightly different. It’s more comparable to Skype because it’s a messaging app that allows you to host video calls, both one-on-one and group calls, and is overall a chat app.
Because it’s so different from other social media platforms, most people don’t choose one or the other; rather, they use both for specific purposes. Discord is better for community building and privacy, while social media is better for building a brand and engagement.
Check out the infographic for a full comparison of Discord versus traditional social media.
Is Discord Shutting Down?
Rumors were swirling around in 2020 that Discord was shutting down. As far as I can tell, these rumors are false. Discord has no plans to go away, and in fact, it just made a deal with Sony to expand Discord onto the Playstation system. That doesn’t sound like something a company on the verge of shutting down would do, does it?
You never know what will happen in the future, but as of now, there are no plans for it to go away.
Are You Ready to Get Started with Discord?
Now that you know everything you ever wanted to know about discord servers (and more!), what are you waiting for? Head to Discord to create your free account, and start collaborating with like-minded folks today!
I feel any content creator should be on Discord. Whether you are a gamer or not every content creator can benefit being on Discord. Especially bloggers.
Totally agree. I think people are just now starting to realize how powerful of a platform it can be.