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Add to SafariWhen comparing Kiwi IRC vs Pidgin, the Slant community recommends Pidgin for most people. In the question“What are the best IRC clients for Windows?” Pidgin is ranked 4th while Kiwi IRC is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose Pidgin is:
Pidgin not only supports IRC, it also supports plenty of other services such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, ICQ and plenty of others. This way, you can have all of your conversations in the same app and won't have to deal with multiple chat windows being open.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Beautiful interface
Kiwi's default interface is aesthetically modern, while keeping a classic two-column layout with chat window on the left and nicklist on the right. Unlike many other interfaces, a considerable amount of effort has been spent on making it easy on the eyes.
The interface offers common customization options including time format changes, choice of system messages and choice of laying out channels in a tabbed or list manner.
Pro Free and open source
Kiwi IRC web client is available for free licensed under GPL with source available on GitHub.
Pro Embeddable
Code can be generated that allows embedding the IRC client within a website.
Pro Available in multiple languages
Kiwi's front-end is available in more than 20 languages including Polish, Romanian and Russian.
Pro Support for a wide range of additional chat services
Pidgin not only supports IRC, it also supports plenty of other services such as AIM, Google Talk, MSN, ICQ and plenty of others. This way, you can have all of your conversations in the same app and won't have to deal with multiple chat windows being open.
Pro Free and open source
Pidgin and its code is completely free and open source. Pidgin has no ads and no features behind a paywall.
Pro Cross platform
The Pidgin instant messaging client is cross platform, working on Linux, Windows and OSX.
Pro Convenient notification features
Like other quality IRC clients, Pidgin features notifications that the user can set in order to have a variety of things happen when the users is mentioned, such as an audio cue or changing the system tray icon.
Pro Highly customisable with plugins
Pidgin not only has a large plugin library built-in, but also an array of third party plugins for a variety of functions.
Cons
Con Notifications don't time out
Notifications pop-ups have to be closed manually each time, they don't disappear on their own after a set amount of time.
Con Requires additional install, i.e. 'must have this' to run
Con Miserable IRC font controls (as of 2.13.0.17)
Does its best to avoid putting sensible default font controls in any place where you can get to it. And when it does grudgingly change it, based on system preferences (not local preferences), it does so in an inconsistent and unpredictable fashion.
Con No native VoIP support
While there are plugins there is no built in support for VoIP in Pidgin which is time consuming to implement instead of being baked in from the jump.
