When comparing Pidgin vs Disa, the Slant community recommends Pidgin for most people. In the question“What are the best unified messenger apps?” Pidgin is ranked 2nd while Disa is ranked 11th. 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
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 Does what it's supposed to do, without bloatware
Pro Open source plugin API
Everyone can develop their own plug-ins.
Pro Easy to use
Disa is very easy to use and has an open source API, so many new services will be added soon.
Pro Customizable notifications
Ability to set different notification sound/vibration/led based on the plugin.
Pro Unified conversations
Ability to merge conversations from the same contact on different services.
Pro Friendly developers and generally good G+ community
Fast, decent replies to questions, even if they've been asked before.
Pro Many requested features
The developer team does actually listen to the community and adds requested features.
Pro Pushbullet support
Disa works great with Pushbullet, allowing you to answer from your PC.
Pro Many languages
Help and support in many languages.
Pro Disa takes privacy much more serious
Currently, the Disa team knows less about you than the website you're currently visiting.
Pro Great material design
With color-changing design with custom colors for each service.
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.
Con Doesn't support most messaging apps
Con Disa doesn't follow the Google Design Guidelines
Hamburger Menu/Navigation Drawer (Side Menu):
https://www.google.com/design/spec/patterns/navigation-drawer.html#navigation-drawer-contentNo Animations:
Empty Pages/States:
Maybe a Launch screen?:
Con Does not support Google SMS
Con Closed source
Disa is closed source, so the development speed is capped of their team, no external developer can help or add features that are not on the route of the team.
Con Doesn't support WhatsApp at the moment
Con Attaching pictures suddenly failed; no working solution.
Con Smaller development team leading somewhat slow implementation of requested features
Though the main development (framework, etc) is moving along fine, things like quick reply and sending multiple images at once should've been in quicker.