When comparing WhatsApp vs Missive, the Slant community recommends WhatsApp for most people. In the question“What is the best team chat software?” WhatsApp is ranked 54th while Missive is ranked 63rd. The most important reason people chose WhatsApp is:
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.
Specs
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Pros
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.
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.
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.
Pro Message mirroring on web app
WhatsApp can be used from the desktop via Chrome, Firefox and Opera browsers. Accessing it requires using the Android app to scan the QR code that's presented on web.whatsapp.com.
Pro Signal protocol
Whatsapp uses the state-of-the-art Signal protocol that ensure strong end-to-end encryption.
Pro One-on-one texts can be encrypted
WhatsApp has implemented end to end encryption for messages sent on it's service. Even WhatsApp has no way to read a users messages.
Pro Live collaborative draft editor
In Missive you can live edit an email draft with your teammates, the draft composer acts exactly like a Google doc. Each team member has a different color cursor.
Pro Is a fully functional email client
The email section allows for consuming all of your email accounts in it, utilizing shared addresses (help@acme.com), personal work inbox (philippe@acme.com) and personal inbox (phil@gmail.com).
It’s important because the collaborative part of Missive becomes useful when users consume all of their emails within the app. You not only want to collaborate around emails sent to your company help@address, but also around the really important emails you most likely receive at your personal company address, like that really important email you received from a potential high profile partner.
Pro Team chat
Missive is also a team chat app. When using Missive you can ditch your email client, chat app and help desk.
Pro Unified inbox
Merge all email accounts in one unified inbox.
Pro Tasks
You can create multiple tasks per conversation all assignable to a single or a group of persons.
Pro It works
Nicely written software. Always works as you'd expect, beautifully designed, a classy piece of software.
Pro Multi-organizations
Supports multiple organizations with one user login.
Pro Offers read receipt
Know exactly if and when the recipients read your important email.
Pro Has emojis
Pro Gmail shortcuts
Supports Gmail shortcuts.
Cons
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
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.
Con Proprietary
Not open source.
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.
Con Web interface uses message mirroring
To use your computer to send messages your phone must be on with a consistent data connection.
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.
Con No cloud sync
Messages are not stored on WhatsApp server for privacy and security reasons.
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.
Con No option to add words to spellcheck dictionary on Windows
Incredibly frustrating to see the name of your company constantly underlined in red, with no way to fix it.