Unifier vs. Conventional

Something I asked myself when making Unifier was, "why do I need to make a whole new bot when I can just get something off the shelf to do it?"

And the answer was simple. Our goal was to unite many communities, not just few. And with conventional bots, we could not do that. So like how I did with Nevira and how Ente did with Ente Photos, I thought I'd just build my own bot that ticks the boxes I needed.

This comparison is not meant to criticize conventional bridge bots in any way, I only made this to show why I made Unifier instead of using an existing bot.

Feature	Unifier	Conventional
Discord-to-Discord bridging	✅	✅
Multi-server	✅	❌ Most are not multi-server, only server-to-server
Discord-to-External bridging	✅	Certain bots do this
Support for other platforms	✅ Native Revolt and Guilded support + support for other platforms via external bridge support	⚠️ Many bots may natively support platforms we don't, but they often support limited platforms per bot
Native layout	✅	Varies
Cross-server emojis	✅	Nitro is generally required to use an emoji from another server in a different server
Custom avatars	✅	❌
Nicknames	✅	❌
User/server blocking	✅	❌
Bridge medium	Webhooks	Bot messages/webhooks, it varies

Although conventional bridge bots are simple, out-of-the-box solutions to bridge Discord servers or even other platforms, it wasn't what we really wanted. We wanted to build a community by uniting smaller communities that had similar interests as us, which wasn't something those bots could really do.

Additionally, we wanted servers to have more control over what makes it into their servers via Unifier, but this wasn't really that good in conventional bots. You could ask the server moderators from the other side of the bridge to mute a troublemaker, but if they aren't cooperative then you would only have the choice to unlink the server or let it slide. We didn't want just these as moderation, so we added server-side blocking to Unifier so recipients are the ones deciding what makes the final cut, not the sender.

We also added some goodies such as cross-server emojis and custom avatars, so you can use paywalled features you couldn't use before without paying. For example, if you're in server A but not in server B where all the juicy emojis belong, you can't use the emojis you wanted. And even if you had access to server B, you couldn't use them in server A without paying. So instead, we added global emojis so you can just use them in whatever server you fancy.

And with these features, I think we've ticked almost all of the boxes we wanted to tick. There's definitely more boxes we want to tick, but the best thing is we, as the developers, have control over what we do indeed tick. So expect more from Unifier in the near future!