Rocket.Chat vs Shout
When comparing Rocket.Chat vs Shout, the Slant community recommends Rocket.Chat for most people. In the question“What are the best open source alternatives to Slack?” Rocket.Chat is ranked 2nd while Shout is ranked 5th. The most important reason people chose Rocket.Chat is:
Rocket.Chat is available for free. It's licensed under the MIT license with source code available on [GitHub](https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat).
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and open source
Rocket.Chat is available for free. It's licensed under the MIT license with source code available on GitHub.
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.
Pro Understands markdown better than Slack does.
Links work properly, for instance, with square brackets followed by parentheses.
Pro Native apps for all major desktop and mobile platforms
Rocket.Chat has native apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android.
Pro Very active and helpful community
Pro Video conferencing support
Rocket.Chat supports video calls.
Pro Always connected
Unlike most other web IRC clients, Shout will stay connected even when you close the browser. It will allow you to see conversations that happened while you were away.
Cons
Con No theme customization
Con No chat audit for enterprise
Con Poor security implementations / protocols
Con No web browser support
Con Centralized
Con Email required for registration
Con iOS app is poorly made
The iOS application is not native, being just a browser container. This means that the UX is quite poor, slow, buttons unresponsive. At this moment they do not provide a decent experience.
Con Android app is poorly made
The Android application is just a badly wrapped web-view which does not perform well and has no form of offline caching whatsoever.
Con Privacy settings are absent
Privacy settings for the server are absent, for instance, you don't have the ability to disable registrations, there's no way to control access to the chat.
Con Features not available out of the box
Con No way to block new registrations
Without the ability to disable registrations, there's no way to control access to the chat.
Con No native apps
It's only available as a webapp.
Con Can't send files
You can only share links to files, no way to share files directly between users.
Con Lacks searchable history
Con Doesn't manage presence
Users have to manually set away messages or away nicks to notify other users that they are not currently available.