When comparing Signal vs Rocket.Chat, the Slant community recommends Signal for most people. In the question“What is the best team chat software?” Signal is ranked 2nd while Rocket.Chat is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Signal is:
Signal uses an advanced end to end encryption protocol that provides privacy for every message every time.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Provides security and privacy
Signal uses an advanced end to end encryption protocol that provides privacy for every message every time.
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.
Pro Supports encrypted group chats
Pro Has a desktop app
Signal Desktop can be used on multiple devices and has most features of the Android version, although it still requires you to register with your phone.
Pro Supports sharing of various different media types
Signal supports: emoji, pictures, videos, audio, contacts, any location and GIF.
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
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.
Pro Annonymous Sender (Encrypted)
The sender credentials can be encrypted with the rest of the message, leaving only the recipient address readable by the Signal server. Even if Signal wanted they couldn't see who is talking with who by this mean.
Pro Works everywhere in every country
Unlike most messenger apps, Signal works reliably in all countries by securely circumventing internet censorship.
Pro Recommended by Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden uses this messenger and recommends it to everyone who is concerned about his privacy.
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 Native apps for all major desktop and mobile platforms
Rocket.Chat has native apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android.
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 Very active and helpful community
Pro Video conferencing support
Rocket.Chat supports video calls.
Cons
Con Needs access to your phone number and contacts to work
Con Single device
Signal can only be registered to one mobile device at a time. But you can link Signal to Signal Desktop.
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.
Con Unreliable notifications
Sometimes messages won't be received if the Signal app has been closed for a long time or hasn't been opened after booting the device.
Con Developer support is non-existent
Can't even create a clean Ubuntu VM with a working developer install. Unresolved dependencies; fails to build. Docs are terrible; actual devs don't respond to questions; error messages are near-opaque. DO NOT RECOMMEND.
Con Web client loses images
In chat rooms with images, before very long, images start to become empty boxes. Useless to pass around visual information
Con No theme customization
Con No chat audit for enterprise
Con Poor security implementations / protocols
Con Centralized
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 web browser support
Con Email required for registration
Con No way to block new registrations
Without the ability to disable registrations, there's no way to control access to the chat.