Guilded.gg is a good alternative to Discord. To be clear, I've never had a Discord account but practically everyone else on the Guilded servers I'm on has, and while it's certainly not perfect, it works really well like 90% of the time. Everything is free and you can have as many emotes as you want, there are lots of options for different types of channels (forums, calendars, video and audio streaming, galleries, and of course basic chat channels), including one specifically designed for people to list availability for stuff (which automatically updates to everyone's local time zone). There's a bot that pluralities can use to create webhook handles (it doesn't work in every channel type but I hear they're working on it). You start out by getting your own server but you don't have to do anything in it if you don't want to (full disclosure I do have one that I actually use, so). It has browser, desktop, and mobile app.
Don't join if you don't want to (can't blame you, there are So Many Things) but I don't often see lists of Discord alternatives the same way I do other stuff so if you feel like you're stuck, there's at least one thing you can use. A larger (in my terms) community that I am part of on Twitch transferred their whole Discord to Guilded so it can be done!