When comparing Campfire vs Ryver, the Slant community recommends Ryver for most people. In the question“What is the best team chat software?” Ryver is ranked 20th while Campfire is ranked 30th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Supports optional 128-bit SSL encryption
Pro Guest access
You can invite people to join conversations even if they don't have a Campfire account. Campfire will generate a link to share and the guest will only need to enter their name to join the conversation.
Pro Easy conferencing
When you need to make a conference call, all you need to click is "Start A New Call" and Campfire instantly embeds a phone number and password code in the message thread.
Pro Mobile apps
Campfire supports only iOS, but third party apps can be used for Android. There are also other third party apps that build upon Campfire and extend its functionality.
Pro Embeds images
Images that are uploaded in the GIF, PNG, or JPEG formats are represented as thumbnails in the chat room.
Pro Free
Pro Threaded conversations
Ryver has Facebook like "Posts" that allow for threaded conversations to occur among teams.
Pro Unlimited users
There is no limit to the amount of users you can invite to join your instance/account of Ryver.
Pro Upvote and Downvote
"Do you like this?" questions can easily be answered with up or down votes.
Pro Drag and drop file sharing
Start a new post, drag your file (photo, doc, pdf, etc. 100MB limit), and starting discussing.
Pro Fast
The app loads fast on start-up. Any new chats, comments, and posts show up instantly. Overall, the app just feels rather speedy.
Pro @mentions for users and teams
Get someone's attention with @mentions.
Pro Desktop and mobile apps
Apps work great on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android.
Pro Free conference calling
Pro Can hide topics until new comment is received
You can remove a topic from your nav bar and have it reappear when new messages are sent in that topic.
Pro Hosted on Amazon
Hosted on Amazon cloud. Service is very reliable. Ryver has been unavailable maybe once or twice in the 6 month period.
Pro You can edit a chat message
With Ryver, you can edit chats that you've sent.
Cons
Con Future of Campfire is uncertain
37signals have "changed direction" away from Campfire, focusing on Basecamp. They've ruled out shutting it down, but at this stage it's uncertain whether it'll be spun off as a separate company, sold off, or run in maintenance mode without any new features.
Con No private one-on-one conversation possibility
Con Does not show who's online
Con Having Chat and Posts for Teams is confusing to some users
It takes some time to get accustomed to all the features of the program, like a separate chat and a feed for team posts.