When comparing Pidgin vs Element (formerly Riot), the Slant community recommends Element (formerly Riot) for most people. In the question“What are the best messaging apps for desktop?” Element (formerly Riot) is ranked 1st while Pidgin is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Element (formerly Riot) is:
You're not confined within Element's or even Matrix garden, and you don't have to make users of other networks switch to Matrix.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Bridges to other networks
You're not confined within Element's or even Matrix garden, and you don't have to make users of other networks switch to Matrix.
Pro Markdown support
Code snippets in chats can be highlighted with Markdown.
Pro Simple interface
Element has a very simple interface, adding the ability for more inexperienced users to use it.
Pro VOIP and Videoconferencing
Pro Supports encryption
Element allows for fully encrypted text, voice, and video chatting.
Pro Widgets support
Want to watch that flick at YouTube and discuss it at the same time? Have Grafana graphs stacked above your DevOps team chat? Collaboratively edit Google Docs and chat over without switching applications? This is possible with Element.
Pro Decentralized
An open network for secure, decentralized communication.
Pro Self-hosting and federated network
Pro Libre/open source
Pro Search
Search messages in your current room, or all the rooms you're in. Not subject to a message history limit like Slack.
Pro Cross platform
Web browser
Linux
OS X
Windows
Android
iOS
Pro Large existing community
With public rooms for many people, and you can create your own and let people from the community join.
Pro Etherpad real-time document collaboration
An easy to activate integration that allows multiple authors to edit a document simultaneously.
Pro File Sharing
Pro Supports text, voice, video
Cons
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.
