The problem with revolt is that they didn't do federation, so every server is going to be limited to people who want accounts on that one, and discord has shown us that people want one interface to see all of their servers. So I'm not surprised. I like their UI, but they need to federate with other servers.

As for hosting I understand what you're saying. There's a few options to host your own with a couple of clicks online, but paid of course. To test it out I'd say set up on a smaller instance and see how you like it. It's rougher than discord for sure, but I've tried all of the others and it's where I'm landing.

If I'm not mistaken, that might be a server or app level item. You're using the element app with matrix org. Try something like the fluffychat app, or maybe another server if you prefer. If you go to matrix.org you can see all of the servers

Oh true. I think it would be difficult for a chat platform like Revolt to federate correctly with other existing services though. Channel permissions, role permissions, bot functionality - I think it would be difficult to honor this stuff with federation. For example, Matrix and Revolt don't have the same system of role permissions.