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What is best texting app for use while travelling in Europe using wifi (no GSM card in phone, no cell service)?

8

Options
Considered

78

User
Recs.

May 4, 2023

Last
Updated

7 Options Considered

What is best texting app for use while travelling in Europe using wifi (no GSM card in phone, no cell service)	Price	Platforms	Publisher
-- Signal	Free	Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X	Open Whisper Systems
-- Wire	-	Web iOS Android OSX Windows Linux	Wire Swiss GmbH
-- Threema	$1.99	Android / iOS / WP	Threema GmbH
-- Element (formerly Riot)	Free	MacOS, Windows, Linux, Android, Browser, iOS	New Vector Ltd
-- Telegram	-	Web, Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, macOS, BSD, Windows phone, UWP	Various companies affiliated with Telegram

Signal

Top Pro

Provides security and privacy

Signal uses an advanced end to end encryption protocol that provides privacy for every message every time. See More

Top Con

Servers hosted in the US

A security risk due to National Security letters, which require giving up data to the US state, and making it illegal to disclose that. See More

Yanis's Experience

Simple, easy and crypted. See More

Specs

Platforms:Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X

Publisher:Open Whisper Systems

End-to-end encryption:Yes

Media:images / audio / video / files / contacts / GIFs / location

Top Pro

Free and open source

Signal is free and open source software, enabling anyone to verify its security by auditing the code. It's the only private messenger that uses open source, peer-reviewed cryptographic protocols to keep your messages safe. See More

Top Con

Single device

Signal can only be registered to one mobile device at a time. But you can link Signal to Signal Desktop. See More

Top Pro

Supports encrypted group chats

Top Con

Needs access to your phone number and contacts to work

Top Pro

Note to Self feature

Allows you to "send" messages to yourself and sync to desktop so you can use Signal as a kind of encrypted Pushbullet alternative. See More

Top Pro

SMS/MMS support

Signal can be your default SMS/MMS text messenger. Encryption is not possible when sending SMS to your contacts, however. See More

Top Pro

You can easily view all media exchanged

You can easily view all media shared in the chat without scrolling back to when it was shared. See More

Wire

Top Pro

End-to-end encryption

Top Con

Centralized

Specs

Platforms:Web iOS Android OSX Windows Linux

Publisher:Wire Swiss GmbH

End-to-end encryption:Yes

Media:images / video / audio / GIFs

Top Pro

Libre/open source

Top Pro

Swiss legislation

Registered in Switzerland. See More

Top Pro

No phone needed

Only e-mail is required to use Wire. See More

Top Pro

Intuitive user interface

Wire's user interface is quite intuitive to use, still it has everything required for a complete experience. Settings are very clean and allows you to turn on/off some features which might be disturbing for some, like link previews and emoji conversion. See More

Top Pro

Privacy-respecting

Threema

Top Pro

Encrypted communication

Provides complete end-to-end encryption. See More

Top Con

Not free

Unlike many other options Threema is not free as it costs $1.99 for the app. See More

Specs

Platforms:Android / iOS / WP

Publisher:Threema GmbH

End-to-end encryption:Yes

Media:images / video / audio

Top Pro

Supports encrypted group chats

Top Pro

They charge for the service, that's good, privacy is not free

Top Pro

Ability to send pics and videos

Threema supports sending media messages such as video, pics and even voice messages. See More

Top Pro

Company behind Threema is based in Switzerland

Top Pro

Servers in Switzerland

Privacy laws protect the data Threema has. See More

Top Pro

Registration without phone number

Registration is handled by random generated IDs. No phone number needed. See More

Telegram

Top Pro

Free of cost

The application is available free of cost. See More

Top Con

Not fully open source

Telegram has an open API and protocol free for everyone, but the backend software is not open source. Therefore 100% privacy can not be evaluated. See More

ThriftyAmaArhus's Experience

3 year See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, macOS, BSD, Windows phone, UWP

Publisher:Various companies affiliated with Telegram

End-to-end encryption:Secret chats

Media:images / video / audio / GIFs / stickers / PiP Video / Videomessages

Top Pro

Privacy focused

In addition to the end-to-end encryption that provides privacy to communications, the app also includes self destructing timers for chats, and the ability to permanently delete messages, yours and theirs, from your device. See More

Top Con

Most security features are disabled

Most security features are disabled by default. See More

Top Pro

Channels for one way broadcasting

Broadcasting channels suitable for announcing things. See More

Top Con

Only "Secret Chat" messages are encrypted end to end

The only way to get end-to-end encryption (client-client) using Telegram is to use the Secret Chat function, anything through the service is server-client encrypted. Also secret chat is only implemented in the mobile apps, meaning there is no way to encrypt messages end-to-end when using the desktop client or the web browser client. See More

Top Pro

Supergroups of up to 200,000 people

In Supergroups, anyone along with admins can delete their messages from all sides. A message can be pinned to the top. All of the user's messages can be deleted by an administrator, and they can be banned and reported as well. Supergroups can have a public link (outside of Asia, due to high spam volumes), which is also a username. See More

Top Con

Can only be used with a phone number

It is not possible to activate and use Telegram by mail etc. You need a phone number. See More

Top Pro

High quality calls

Uses the latest GPL audio codecs, such as Opus, an adaptative high-quality codec that supersedes AAC at any bitrate. See More

Top Pro

Free and convenient large file sharing

Copy/paste videos, gifs, images, geolocation, documents, and even executable files. Drag over files for practically any time up to 1.5GB in size. Images can be compressed, too. See More

Top Pro

Media messaging

Videos, gifs, images, geolocation, and documents. See More

Top Pro

Beautiful UI

Very customizable with a lot of clean looking options. See More

Top Pro

Possible to send photos and videos without compression

Top Pro

Secure

Telegram uses an open source MTProto encryption protocol that provides complete end-to-end encryption for secret chats. To show off their confidence in the protocol the company behind Telegram has organized $200,000 and $300,000 challenges to break the encryption. So far there have been no winners. See More

Top Pro

Save time with inline bots and link previews

Unfortunately, on the desktop videos don't play, but images are viewable without visiting popular websites like imgur and Instagram. You can play YouTube videos and others within the app, so you don't need to embed code or anything. With inline bots, such as @gif, @pic/bing, @vid/YouTube, etc, you can look things up without leaving the client or chat that you're in. Simply type the name and some keywords and wait for the results to load. See More

Top Pro

Two-step verification

You can set up an additional password to your account, which can be reset by your email. You don't have to use an email if you do not want to. If you lose access to your email or forget your password, you will be able to reset it via text message if your account is over seven days old and will receive it within a week (in case you recover anything before then). See More

Viber

Top Pro

Desktop apps allow texting, calling and enables transferring calls between devices

Viber has native apps for both Windows and Mac that allow you to send and receive messages from your desktop. You can also use the desktop to make and receive calls. Synchronizes between all devices you are using Viber on. Allows transferring calls between devices. See More

Top Con

Constantly on

Need apps like Greenify to stop it from being constantly on and active, even if you don't use it. See More

Specs

Platforms:Android / iOS / WP / BB / Symbian / Windows / OSX / Linux

Publisher:Viber Media S.a r.l.

End-to-end encryption:Yes

Media:images / video / audio / emoji / stickers

Top Pro

Same protocol as used in Signal

Viber's protocol uses the same concepts of the "double ratchet" protocol used in Open Whisper Systems Signal application. See More

Top Con

Constant reminders of messages

If you don't check your messages (say your in a group chat and simply don't check all of them), it will flood your notifications. See More

Top Pro

Keys only on device

Starting with Viber 6.0 the encryption keys are stored only on the clients themselves, not even Viber itself has access to them. See More

Top Con

The company evades U. S. tax

The company uses the common practice of tax haven addresses in order to avoid paying US taxes despite being registered in Delaware. See More

Top Pro

Completely free and ad-less

Viber uses data connection and the app is free. There are also no advertisements. See More

Top Pro

Supports voice calls

Viber has really well implemented voice tech. It has comparable quality to Skype and you can even transfer calls from your phone to your desktop seamlessly. See More

Top Pro

Combines cellular and data messaging

This has an advantage in that if you text someone who uses Viber it will be free, if not it will just revert to SMS. This means you can replace your standard messaging app with Viber as well. See More

Top Pro

Clean interface

The interface is simple, functional and intuitive. See More

WhatsApp

Top Con

Owned by Facebook

Top Pro

Widely used

WhatsApp reported 1.5 billion users in 2018. Your friends are most likely already using WhatsApp, so it's easy to get setup. See More

Specs

Platforms:Android, iOS, Web, Mac, Windows, Windows Phone

Publisher:WhatsApp Inc.

End-to-end encryption:Yes

Media:images, video, audio, documents

Top Con

Proprietary

Not open source. See More

Top Pro

Straightforward interface

The interface is very simple, fast and easy to use. You can start using it as soon as the app has been downloaded - it does not require setting anything up or registering. You can communicate with anyone in your contacts list that also uses WhatsApp. Includes useful features like seeing when a contact is currently available or typing. See More

Top Con

Shares meta data with Facebook

WhatsApp shares your messaging meta data with Facebook if you do not opt-out in the settings. If you use the same phone number for WhatsApp and Facebook, the profiles can easily be linked. See https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/general/26000016 See More

Top Pro

Uses a small amount of data when sending messages

A 120 MB data plan could let you send a lot of messages. See More

Top Con

No cloud sync

Messages are not stored on WhatsApp server for privacy and security reasons. See More

Top Pro

Effortlessly builds your contacts by using your phone number as identification

WhatsApp will automatically find all of your contacts currently using Whatsapp and add them to your contacts. This makes it really easy to setup and given that it's the most popular messaging app it's likely that a lot of your contacts are already using it. See More

Top Con

Limitation on shareable file sizes

WhatsApp now allows users to share files of any type, but there is still a 16 MB size limit. See More

Top Pro

Secure communication

Whatsapp is making sure that the only people reading your messages are you and the person you are communicating with by having end-to-end encryption into their latest versions. See More

Top Con

Hard to migrate history cross platform

Migrating your chat history from Android to iOS or the other way around is not so simple. In some cases it requires a 3rd party app and in some the only way is to migrate specific chats one by one. See More

Top Con

Single device

You cannot use the same WhatsApp account on multiple devices (e.g. a tablet, a PC and a cellphone). The account is tied to the device with the specific cellphone number. Chat history is deleted when you sign in to a new account, unless you have created a backup. See More

Top Con

Web interface uses message mirroring

To use your computer to send messages your phone must be on with a consistent data connection. See More

Top Con

Tied to carrier phone number

WhatsApp cannot be used by people without a smart phone with an active cell plan. If your phone is lost or damaged, or if your phone number changes, you cannot get messages sent by friends without them updating your phone number. You cannot send message to them until you are able to get SMS messages at your phone number. See More

Jami (formerly GNU Ring, SFLphone)

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