20 best alternatives to Flock as of 2018 - Slant

Contus Fly

Top Pro

Scalability

Contus Fly has quick scalability applications from few users to lakhs of users. It performs simultaneously to communicate with the user with online presence. See More

Top Con

Group video conferencing

Communicating with a group using video calls on the chat app is an extra feature. You need an upgrade in group video conferencing. See More

Top Pro

On Cloud

Host data on a cloud server or on your own premises servers to scale up your instant messaging mobile app's accessibility and scalability. See More

Top Pro

High Profile Technology Stack

Build your chat app with solution powered by Ejabbered, Erlang, Amazon Web Services, MySQL, and much more under the hood. See More

Top Pro

Customization

Hyper-accommodative for quick customizations, scalability, technology updates and integrations. See More

8 0

Zulip

Top Pro

Helps keep track of different conversations

Instead of rooms or channels Zulip is built around topics. This allows you to have multiple conversations at the same time without conversations interfering with each another. It also allows you to reference conversations without clutter. See More

Top Con

Takes some getting used to

As most chat software uses the concept of channels or rooms, getting in the habit of splitting each topic off in a separate category can require some getting used to and discipline. See More

Top Pro

Easy asynchronous conversations

Its threaded model helps people working in different timezone's communicate effectively. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux, terminal

License:Apache 2

Hosting options:Hosted and Self-hosted

Service integrations:Yes

26 2

Rocket.Chat

Top Pro

Free and open source

Rocket.Chat is available for free. It's licensed under the MIT license with source code available on GitHub. See More

Top Con

No way to block new registrations

Without the ability to disable registrations, there's no way to control access to the chat. See More

Top Pro

Supports a wide variety of authentication methods

In addition to the usual email / username + password combination, Rocket.Chat supports authenticating via Facebook, Github, Gitlab, Google, Linkedin, Meteor and Twitter accounts. See More

Top Pro

Understands markdown better than Slack does.

Links work properly, for instance, with square brackets followed by parentheses. See More

Top Pro

Native apps for all major desktop and mobile platforms

Rocket.Chat has native apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. See More

Top Pro

Very active and helpful community

Top Pro

Video conferencing support

Rocket.Chat supports video calls. See More

Top Pro

Will allow for anonymous use

Specs

Platforms:Web iOS Android OSX Windows Linux

Hosting options:Hosted & self-hosted

Videoconferencing:Yes

See All Experiences

83 13

Mattermost

Top Pro

Can be self-hosted

You don't need to rely on someone else's servers, you can host Mattermost on your own server. See More

Top Con

Self-Hosted

This doesn't work for every type of company. Mainly great for those concerned with privacy, security, compliance and control of your data/information. See More

Top Pro

One-line Docker install

With Docker set up, you can install Mattermost with the following command: docker run --name mattermost-dev -d --publish 8065:80 mattermost/platform For other cases, installation instructions can be found here. See More

Top Pro

Similar to Slack

Almost all features of Slack are available in Mattermost. See More

Top Pro

Free - OpenSource

You can download and use it as free for self-hosted server. See More

Top Pro

Mark-Down support

Yes, it supports markdown. See More

Top Pro

Browser notifications

Top Pro

Desktop app for MacOS, Linux and Windows

Top Pro

Mobile apps for android and iOS

Top Pro

You can change theme

Specs

Platforms:Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, Linux (beta)

Hosting options:Self-hosted

Service integrations:No

See All Experiences

63 13

Slack

Top Pro

Robust integration with a huge number of tools

Slack integrates with tools like Trello, GitHub, Dropbox, Mailchimp, and dozens of others, so you can have a centralized event feed of your project right alongside your chat. This is tremendously useful for keeping context with your discussions. See More

Top Con

Expensive when you need to upgrade

At $6.67 per user / month (or $8 if billed monthly) , Slack is significantly more expensive than the competition if you need features such as unlimited integrations (more than 10) or unlimited message storage (more than 10,000). However, the free version of Slack includes unlimited users. However if you need only unlimited messages you can use storage services like https://slarck.com to upload then browse and search your entire message history, while staying in Slack's free plan. So with a combo of Slack+Slarck this con is not that major. See More

Top Pro

Drag & drop files in channels

You can upload a file to any channel over HTTPS simply by dragging and dropping. See More

Top Con

No self-hosting available

If you are worried about third-parties getting access to your data you should consider self-hosting. With self-hosting you are in control over where your data is stored, who has access to it. You will also not be vulnerable to exploits of a third-party provider. See More

Top Pro

@mentions

You can ping people to get their attention even if they are not online by @mentioning them. Slack supports desktop notifications. See More

Top Con

Hidden max limit of free users per channel

Slack says that their free accounts support an unlimited number of users, which is true. However they don't mention that there is an undisclosed maximum number of users per channel (8462). For a large open source community, this is something to keep in mind. See More

Top Pro

Fantastic search functionality

You can deep search messages, files and snippets. Given Slacks integration into many external services, Slack is good enough to act as the central search interface for your entire team. See More

Top Con

Proprietary (non-free/libre)

Top Pro

Very polished user experience

The entire Slack interface is polished and intuitive to use. There are very few bugs or inconsistencies in the UI and it's very fast to use. There is nothing in particular that is new with Slacks implementation of team chat, but the execution of the groups (called channels), search, external service integration and notifications is close to perfect. See More

Top Con

Linux client is very RAM intensive

Top Pro

Syntax coloring

Pasted code can be colored based on syntax. See More

Top Con

"Native" desktop apps are web apps

While it's great that Slack provides installable apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux, they're just the Slack web app wrapped in Electron shell. This means they don't offer the same level of native UX that a truly native toolkit app would. See More

Top Pro

Apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Mac OS, Linux, and Windows

Slack has apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Mac OS, Linux, and Windows to give you the full functionality of Slack with some extra features not found on the website on most major platforms. See More

Top Con

Slow and lags sometimes

Top Pro

Supports multiple teams

You can be signed into multiple teams simultaneously and quickly switch between them. See More

Top Con

API doesn't allow custom widgets in chat

Top Pro

Flexible, granular notification settings

Notifications are handled separately for mobile and the web app. You can receive notifications for all messages, just direct messages, or based on filters, and you can have different settings for different channels: you don't have to get notified every time someone pushed to GitHub or every time someone posts to off-topic chat, unless you want to. See More

Top Con

Awful performance and constant glitches, since it is Chromium-based

You will experience a lot of hangs and glitches and it eats immense (for as basic as UI is) amount of RAM. See More

Top Pro

Freemium plan

Free forever, only restriction on searchable message archives, up to 10k of your team’s most recent messages and 10 apps or service integration. Great for trying out first. See More

Top Con

No E2E encryption

Data is sent of SSL only, not E2E encrypted. See More

Top Pro

Slackbot extensible chat robot

The "Slackbot" can is an extensible robot that can be set you remind you about tasks, auto respond to certain phrases and a variety of other functionality. See More

Top Con

API is overall very poor

Can't do much with integrations. See More

Top Pro

Inline link previews (photos, mockups, etc.)

When a link is added, some content in the link is shown such as image - like how Facebook does it when you share a link. See More

Top Con

Replies are the worst feature implementation of all time

Top Pro

Edit messages easily

It allows you to change what you sent by hovering to the message and selecting "Edit message" under the ellipsis (...). See More

Top Pro

Emoji reactions to limit excessive posts and notifications

Top Pro

Shows local time of each participant

You can click on the profile of a user to see their local time. An especially useful feature when members of your team are working in different timezones. See More

Top Pro

Dev team is invested, responsive, and friendly

Having submitted both feedback and support requests for bot development, I can personally attest that the team takes feedback seriously, and responds quickly to communication. This is vital for any closed-source or hosted project. See More

Top Pro

IRC connectivity over SSL

Top Pro

Self chatting

Creative implementation which is very good for personal journaling or drafting/collecting ideas. Previously, to do this, users needed to create a private channel with themselves. Note that some other team-chat apps may disallow creating group/channel with no 2nd person(s). See More

Top Pro

It can surprise you

There's a checkbox in preferences under advanced options that may surprise you. See More

Top Pro

Multiple channels for different groups

Specs

Platforms:Chrome, iOS, Android, Mac OS, Windows

Service integrations:Yes

Screensharing:Yes

See All Experiences

427 79

Stride (previously HipChat)

Top Pro

Available on Web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android

You can access HipChat from pretty much every common platform. HipChat even allows chatting via SMS. See More

Top Con

Will be discontinued Feb 2019

Slack acquired Stride / Hip Chat. Both Stride and Hip Chat will cease to exist. Sad since they were quite usable. See More

Top Pro

Powerful @mentions

You can ping people to get their attention even if they are not online by @mentioning them. Depending on how the person has set their account up it can be by notifications via in-app sounds, visual alerts, and even email, SMS, or mobile app push notifications. See More

Top Con

Reliability of service has been weak

The reliability of the hosted HipChat service, particularly in the early days of version 4.x, has not been a strong suit. See More

Top Pro

Huge list of integrations

Including Asana, Github, Zendesk, WordPress, MongoDB, TeamCity, JIRA, Confluence, PowerShell and more that 40 others. See More

Top Con

Free plan has limited storage

Free plan comes with 5GB of storage, where as paid plan has "Unlimited". See More

Top Pro

Cheap

Free with unlimited users, $2/user/month for voice + video calls, screencasts, full history retention and management. (Even enterprise feature like SAML) See More

Top Con

Prioprietary (non-free/libre)

Top Pro

Simple, easy to use

An intuitive, easy to overview interface listing both online and offline users. See More

Top Con

Only one-on-one video calls in free version

There is no option for multi-user conference calls. See More

Top Pro

Embeds files

Things like photos get automatically embedded in the chat thread once you upload them. See More

Top Con

No emoji

There's no emoji support. Instead there are some strange custom emoticons which only make sense for people steeped in internet subculture and never get updated. See More

Top Pro

Guest access

You can invite people to join conversations even if they don't have a HipChat account. HipChat will generate a link to share and the guest will only need to enter their name to join the conversation. See More

Top Con

API calls are limited even on paid plan to 500 calls in 5min by default

This will force you to contact them when you need more calls. See More

Top Pro

Desktop client

HipChat has an optional desktop client powered by Adobe AIR. See More

Top Con

Non-synced notifications

Messages read on one client don't sync their status to another client. See More

Top Pro

Good audio and video support

HipChat audio and video works on mobile platforms and web browsers. See More

Top Pro

"Rooms" for persistent group chat

Participate and keep tabs on ongoing discussions on particular topics or amongst certain groups of people. See More

Top Pro

Self-Hosting available

If you are worried about third-parties getting access to your data you should consider self-hosting. With self-hosting you are in control over where your data is stored, who has access to it. You will also not be vulnerable to exploits of a third-party provider. See More

Top Pro

Plentiful GIFs and custom Emoticons

Top Pro

Syntax coloring

Pasted code can be colored based on syntax. See More

Top Pro

Will be updated to have more functions in the future

A big company with experience will bring in more options like Google Apps One Time Login. See More

Top Pro

Reliability has been great

Top Pro

Powerful command system

E.g. part, away, all, here etc. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web iOS Android OSX Windows Linux

Hosting options:Hosted & self-hosted

Service integrations:Yes

Screensharing:Yes

See All Experiences

92 31

AstraChat

Top Pro

Direct connect

Top Con

No OTR service

Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) is a cryptographic protocol that provides encryption for instant messaging conversations. Astrachat doesn't include this protocol, that it is often included in other XMPP services. See More

Top Pro

Secure

Messages are received from clients using secured (TLS or SSL) XMPP (jabber) protocol. See More

Top Pro

Network efficient

AstraChat is tuned to make very efficient use of the network connection and processor so you can be confident that it will use very little of your battery or data allowance. See More

Top Pro

Supports a lot of protocol

RFC-3920:Core RFC-3921:Instant Messaging and Presence XEP-0012 Last Activity XEP-0016 Privact lists XEP-0054 VCARD-temp XEP-0085 Chat State Notifications XEP-0153 vCard-Based Avatars XEP-0172 User Nickname XEP-0184 Message delivery receipts XEP-0191 Blocking commands XEP-0198 Stream Management XEP-0199 XMPP Ping XEP-0176: Jingle ICE-UDP XEP-0136: Message Archiving XEP-0045: Multi-User Chat See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows , Linux , Mac , Android , iOS

Hosting options:Hosted & self-hosted

Service integrations:Windows , Linux , Mac , Android , iOS

9 4

Echofin

Top Pro

Powerful financial widgets

In-app widgets, such as an economic event calendar and news feed, are available. See More

Top Con

Cannot customize UI (i.e colors)

Top Pro

Beautiful UI

Top Con

Relatively new

Top Pro

Talking twitter widget

Top Con

Currently only available in English

Top Pro

Chat software specifically for trading teams

Top Pro

Integrated billing solution

Top Pro

Screen sharing

Top Pro

Ability to add pay-to-access content

You can host pay-to-access webinars. See More

Top Pro

Third-party integrations

For example, you can integrate the app with your MT4 web client. See More

Top Pro

HD video streaming

Top Pro

Mobile, web and desktop apps

Top Pro

Admins have full moderation and user control

Specs

Platforms:Web, iOS, Android, Windows

Service integrations:Yes

Screensharing:Yes (Full HD)

Mobile Apps:iOS, Android

See All Experiences

9 0

Samepage

Top Pro

Group video-call quality is amazing

It works perfectly with 15+ people. Web conferencing quality is incredible, which is extremely useful when you're participating in a call while viewing a browser tab holding all of the project content you're talking about. See More

Top Con

Not for teams looking for rigid project management structure

Samepage is designed to be flexible, so it misses some of the more rigid structures of other project management tools. See More

Top Pro

Easy to work with internal & external members

Secure sharing makes it easy to work with your internal team but also with clients, vendors, partners, contractors, and other external members. See More

Top Pro

Very polished user experience

App is very easy to use on desktop and mobile devices. Notifications ensure that you respond quickly and stay up to date on team progress. See More

Top Pro

Lots of great integrations

Native integrations with all major file sharing platforms, YouTube, Vimeo, Google Maps and more. Also integrates with Zapier to connect with hundreds of other apps so they can automatically create tasks, pages, and comments in Samepage. See More

Top Pro

Easy real-time collaboration on diagrams

6 0

Twist

Top Pro

Focused collaboration

Channels are neatly divided into topic threads, focusing the discussions. See More

Top Con

Only 1 month of search for free

The free tier only searches the last 1 month. See More

Top Pro

Guest roles

Guest members can be added that have access to specific channels; ideal for individuals outside the team. See More

5 0

Chatwee

Top Pro

Has a free-forever option

A bit less options available but works nonetheless. See More

Top Pro

Real-time media and file sharing

Including YouTube videos and pictures preview in the chat window. See More

Top Pro

Plenty of customization options

Chat size, color, fonts, language, log in methods, notifications, emojis, privacy, powerful moderation and many more. See More

Top Pro

Single Sign-on

Users, who log in to the site, are automatically logged in to the chat. See More

Top Pro

Integrated with 25+ most popular CMS

Developers provide easy to follow, clear plugin installation instructions. See More

Top Pro

Clean design

Chatwee has a clean and easy to use UI. On the left there's a clean and defined user list, each name has a flag next to it. It's also very easy to move from one side of the screen to the other. There's only the most useful information on the screen at any time and the design never feel overwhelming or cluttered. See More

4 0

Ryver

Top Pro

Threaded conversations

Ryver has Facebook like "Posts" that allow for threaded conversations to occur among teams. See More

Top Con

Having Chat and Posts for Teams is confusing to some users

It takes some time to get accustomed to all the features of the program, like a separate chat and a feed for team posts. See More

Top Pro

Free

Top Con

Don't have "emoji reaction to message" feature

Top Pro

Unlimited users

There is no limit to the amount of users you can invite to join your instance/account of Ryver. See More

Top Pro

Upvote and Downvote

"Do you like this?" questions can easily be answered with up or down votes. See More

Top Pro

Drag and drop file sharing

Start a new post, drag your file (photo, doc, pdf, etc. 100MB limit), and starting discussing. See More

Top Pro

Fast

The app loads fast on start-up. Any new chats, comments, and posts show up instantly. Overall, the app just feels rather speedy. See More

Top Pro

@mentions for users and teams

Get someone's attention with @mentions. See More

Top Pro

Desktop and mobile apps

Apps work great on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. See More

Top Pro

I like this

Top Pro

Free conference calling

Top Pro

Can hide topics until new comment is received

You can remove a topic from your nav bar and have it reappear when new messages are sent in that topic. See More

Top Pro

Hosted on Amazon

Hosted on Amazon cloud. Service has been very reliable. Ryver has been unavailable maybe once or twice in the last 6 months. (We used to use HipChat and in early 2016, HipChat was crashing once or twice a week for a month or so.) See More

Top Pro

You can edit a chat message

Ever make a mistake in a conversation? Of course! With Ryver, you can edit chats that you've sent. (Wish iOS Messages would do this some day!) See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, Mobile, OSX, Win, Linux

Storage:Unlimited

Hosting options:Hosted

Videoconferencing:YES

See All Experiences

14 1

IMO

Top Con

No support for third-party instant messaging networks

On March 3, 2014, IMO will start discontinuing support for all third-party instant messaging networks. See More

Top Pro

Beautiful User Interface

Although IMO has a comparable, and in some cases superior, feature set when compared to the competition its key selling point is its interface. From LifeHacker when it won "Best IM Client": Signing on, navigating chats by tapping the tabs at the bottom, searching for buddies, and virtually any other operation is easy to find and use. The app, itself, is very quick. Even sending a voice IM, if you don't feel like typing, is responsive and sends quickly. Everything imo does it does well, but it's excellent navigation really makes it top notch. IMO also has a fully functional website that you can use for chat while on your desktop or laptop. This really puts IMO ahead of the competition as you can use the same system on all your devices so you don't have to deal with overlapping notifications etc. (Note: IM+ also has this feature) It should also be noted that it has the highest rating in the App Store due to both the UI and its stability. See More

Top Pro

Easy to switch between conversations with tabs

Tabbed chats make it easy to switch between conversations See More

Top Pro

Lists and chat histories are searchable

Both your buddy lists and chat histories are searchable. See More

Top Pro

Accounts can be linked so you don't have to sign in to several accounts

Top Pro

Push notifications

Top Pro

Video call support

Top Pro

Concurrent sessions

Concurrent sessions allow you to be logged in on your desktop while also being logged in on your phone. See More

Top Pro

Chat groups

See All Experiences

27 3

Keybase

Top Pro

E2E encrypted

Completely end-to-end encrypted. See More

Top Pro

250GB of free team file storage

250GB of free storage for encrypted files in a team. See More

Top Pro

250GB of free private file storage

250GB of free storage for privately-encrypted files. See More

Top Pro

Shared private encrypted filesystem

Share files securely and privately with other users, a group of users, or a team. See More

Top Pro

Public encrypted filesystem

For sharing files publicly. See More

Top Pro

Encrypted Git

Encrypted private or team Git repositories with automatic commit signatures. See More

Top Pro

Encrypted file sharing

Securely share files. See More

Top Pro

Private encrypted filesystem

Securely store personal files that only you can access. See More

Top Pro

FOSS

Free (as in beer) and Open Source Software. See More

Top Pro

Public teams

Teams can be public with open access or admin-approved access. Opt-in to list public teams. See More

Top Pro

Private teams

Teams can be completely private (access granted via admin-approval only, not publicly listed). See More

Top Pro

E2E encrypted team chat

Teams are E2E encrypted, unlike Slack and other services. See More

Top Pro

Identity verification

Users can publish proofs of identity (PGP public key, Twitter, Facebook, etc). See More

Top Pro

Public key encryption

Supports public key encryption. See More

Top Pro

PGP/GPG support

Encrypt/decrypt any PGP message or file with minimal effort. See More

Top Pro

Sigchain verification

View/verify the cryptographic signature history of any user. See More

Top Pro

Blockchain technology

Based on blockchain technology. See More

Top Pro

Free static site hosting

Host a public static website for free. Sites are automatically viewable via keybase.pub if an index.html or index.md exist in your public files. See More

See All Experiences

2 0

Trillian for Business

Top Pro

Comprehensive security and privacy policy

Trillian seems serious about security and privacy, and is ready to explain in detail how they architect their service to achieve these goals. See More

Top Pro

Self-Hosting available

If you are worried about third-parties getting access to your data you should consider self-hosting. With self-hosting you are in control over where your data is stored, who has access to it. You will also not be vulnerable to exploits of a third-party provider. Trillian supports both cloud hosting and a self-hosted Trillian Server. See More

Top Pro

Native clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Web.

Trillian has fully native apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Web. See More

Top Pro

Multi-protocol support

Chat with other Trillian users or those on Facebook, Google, AIM, ICQ, XMPP, Yahoo!, Twitter, and more. See More

2 0

Riot

Top Pro

Web and mobile (iOS, Android) versions available

Top Con

Still in active yet early development

There is clearly a User Experience issue esp. in web version which the developers are aware of and are working hard to improve. They've got the concept concrete, so UX won't be an issue in no time. Most often used parts are functional, but some are yet not. The success of riot depends on how fast the development is, or it'll get outdated too quickly as developers of Signal and Telegram have predicted. See More

Top Pro

Supports text, voice, video

Integrates with Jitsi for multi-party video chats See More

Top Pro

Uses Matrix, the open communications protocol

Top Pro

Very good and simple interface

Riot has a very simple interface, adding the ability for more unexperienced PC-Users to use it. See More

Top Pro

Widgets support

Want to watch that flick at YouTube and discuss it at the same time? Have Grafana graphs stacked above your DevOps team chat? Collaboratively edit Google Docs and chat over without switching applications? This is possible with Riot. See More

Top Pro

Bridges to other networks

You're not confined within Riot's or even Matrix garden, and you don't have to make users of other networks switch to Matrix. See More

Specs

Platforms:mac/windows/linux/android

End-to-end encryption:Yes

Videoconferencing:Yes

See All Experiences

75 8

Flowdock

Top Pro

Threaded discussions

An easy & simple interface to filter chat discussion into separate threads. See More

Top Con

Proprietary (non-free/libre)

Top Pro

Drag and drop file sharing

Files can be dragged and dropped in to the flow dock screen for upload. See More

Top Con

No self-hosting available

If you are worried about third-parties getting access to your data you should consider self-hosting. With self-hosting you are in control over where your data is stored, who has access to it. You will also not be vulnerable to exploits of a third-party provider. See More

Top Pro

Multi-platform

Browser Based, as well as: iPhone and iPad App Android App Mac OS X App See More

Top Con

Free only for small teams, non-profits or students

Unless it's used by a team of less than five people, a non-profit or students, Flowdock will cost $3/mo per person. See More

Top Pro

Stored chat history

Content and discussions are stored forever. See More

Top Con

Buggy android app

Google sign up didn't work, then after going to the website to do the sign up, the invite team members screen was broken. See More

Top Pro

Smart pastes & code syntax highlighting

Top Pro

Private chat option

Able to speak privately/talk head-to-head. See More

Top Pro

Notification system

A specific user or everyone in the channel can be notified via @user or @everyone respectively. See More

Top Pro

A full developer API

Flowdock API allows developers the freedom to create custom integrations. See More

Top Pro

Create and assign PRs from Flowdock

You can interact with Github directly from Flowdock to create PRs. See More

Top Pro

Free for teams of five, non-profits and students

Top Pro

Data exports

Back up conversations and files fully at any time. See More

Top Pro

Add Tools

On top of our 50+ custom integrations, easily integrate any tool that sends emails or generates RSS feeds, as well as having the option to build a custom integration with Flowdock's API See More

Top Pro

Status updating

Allows co-workers to know what you’re up to "/status I'm busy today!" See More

Top Pro

Google Apps Integration

Google Apps get a Flowdock link to the Apps tool-bar and won't have to separately manage users See More

Top Pro

Typo Fix-ups

Top Pro

Able to host users external to your team

When working with stakeholders (clients or partners) you can add organizations to manage internal privacy See More

Specs

Platforms:Web iOS Android OSX Windows

Hosting options:Hosted

Service integrations:Yes

Screensharing:No

See All Experiences

76 15

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