What is WhatsApp and what are its top alternatives?
Top Alternatives to WhatsApp
- Telegram
Users can send messages and exchange photos, videos, stickers, audio and files of any type. It provides instant messaging, simple, fast, secure and synced across all your devices. ...
- Skype
Skype’s text, voice and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are. ...
- Hangouts
It is a communication platform which includes messaging, video chat, and VOIP features. ...
- Slack
Imagine all your team communication in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. That’s Slack. All your messages. All your files. And everything from Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Asana, Trello, GitHub and dozens of other services. All together. ...
- HipChat
HipChat is a hosted private chat service for your company or team. Invite colleagues to share ideas and files in persistent group chat rooms. Get your team off AIM, Google Talk, and Skype — HipChat was built for business. ...
- Viber
It is a cross-platform instant messaging and voice over IP application provided as freeware for the Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS platforms. ...
- Zoom
Zoom unifies cloud video conferencing, simple online meetings, and cross platform group chat into one easy-to-use platform. Our solution offers the best video, audio, and screen-sharing experience across Zoom Rooms, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and H.323/SIP room systems. ...
- Twilio
Twilio offers developers a powerful API for phone services to make and receive phone calls, and send and receive text messages. Their product allows programmers to more easily integrate various communication methods into their software and programs. ...
WhatsApp alternatives & related posts
- Lightweight16
- Free8
- Unlimited history8
- Great bot API8
- Can hide phone number4
- Media editor3
- Delete without a trace2
- Great bot2
- Requires phone number3
- Notification customisation is limited3
- No video call2
related Telegram posts
- Free, widespread258
- Desktop and mobile apps147
- Because i have to :(110
- Low cost international calling57
- Good for international calls56
- Best call quality anywhere, generally10
- Beautiful emojis5
- Chat bots4
- Translator2
- Skype for business integration with Outlook2
- United kingdom1
- Not the Best, but get the job done1
- Really high CPU utilization during video/screenshare5
- Not always reliable3
- Outdated UI3
- Birthday notifications are annoying3
- The worst indicator noises of any app ever3
- Finding/adding people isn't easy2
related Skype posts
Uploadcare is mostly remote team and we're using video conferencing all the time both for internal team meetings and for external sales, support, interview, etc. calls. I think we've tried every solution there is on the market before we've decided to stop with Zoom.
Tools just plainly don't work (Skype), are painful to install for external participants (Webex and other "enterprise" solutions) can't properly handle 10+ participants calls (Google Hangouts Chat).
Zoom just works. It has all required features and even handles bad connections very graciously. One of the best tool decisions we've ever made :)
I use Slack because it offers the best experience, even on the free tier (which we're still using). As a comparison, I have had in depth experience with HipChat, Stride, Skype, Google Chat (the new service), Google Hangouts (the old service). For self hosted, Mattermost is open source and claims to support most Slack integrations, but I have not extensively investigated this claim.
- Free4
related Hangouts posts
- Easy to integrate with1.2K
- Excellent interface on multiple platforms876
- Free849
- Mobile friendly694
- People really enjoy using it690
- Great integrations331
- Flexible notification preferences315
- Unlimited users198
- Strong search and data archiving184
- Multi domain switching support155
- Easy to use82
- Beautiful40
- Hubot support27
- Unread/read control22
- Slackbot21
- Permalink for each messages19
- Text snippet with highlighting17
- Quote message easily15
- Per-room notification14
- Awesome integration support13
- Star for each message / attached files12
- IRC gateway12
- Good communication within a team11
- Dropbox Integration11
- Slick, search is great10
- Jira Integration10
- New Relic Integration9
- Great communication tool8
- Combine All Services Quickly8
- Asana Integration8
- This tool understands developers7
- XMPP gateway7
- Google Drive Integration7
- Awesomeness7
- Replaces email6
- Twitter Integration6
- Google Docs Integration6
- BitBucket integration6
- Jenkins Integration5
- GREAT Customer Support / Quick Response to Feedback5
- Guest and Restricted user control5
- Clean UI4
- Excellent multi platform internal communication tool4
- GitHub integration4
- Mention list view4
- Gathers all my communications in one place4
- Perfect implementation of chat + integrations3
- Easy3
- Easy to add a reaction3
- Timely while non intrusive3
- Great on-boarding3
- Threaded chat3
- Visual Studio Integration3
- Easy to start working with3
- Android app3
- Simplicity2
- Message Actions2
- It's basically an improved (although closed) IRC2
- So much better than email2
- Eases collaboration for geographically dispersed teams2
- Great interface2
- Great Channel Customization2
- Markdown2
- Intuitive, easy to use, great integrations2
- Great Support Team1
- Watch1
- Multi work-space support1
- Flexible and Accessible1
- Better User Experience1
- Archive Importing1
- Travis CI integration1
- It's the coolest IM ever1
- Community1
- Great API1
- Easy remote communication1
- Get less busy1
- API1
- Zapier integration1
- Targetprocess integration1
- Finally with terrible "threading"—I miss Flowdock1
- Complete with plenty of Electron BLOAT1
- I was 666 star :D1
- Dev communication Made Easy1
- Integrates with just about everything1
- Very customizable1
- Platforms0
- Easy to useL0
- Can be distracting depending on how you use it13
- Requires some management for large teams6
- Limit messages history6
- Too expensive5
- You don't really own your messages5
- Too many notifications by default4
related Slack posts
Sentry has been essential to our development approach. Nobody likes errors or apps that crash. We use Sentry heavily during Node.js and React development. Our developers are able to see error reports, crashes, user's browsers, and more, all in one place. Sentry also seamlessly integrates with Asana, Slack, and GitHub.
Last time we shared there information about our decision about using YouTrack over Jira actually we found much better solution that our team have loved. Linear is a minimalistic issue tracker that integrates well with Sentry, GitHub, Slack and Figma which are our basic tools. I would like to recommend checking out Linear as a potential alternative to "heavy" issue trackers, maybe at enterprises that may not work but when we're a startup that works awesome!
- Integrates well with a lot of developer tools144
- Developer-friendly96
- Clients for every major platform85
- Free unlimited users70
- Mobile-friendly70
- Extremely easy to use for non-tech guys40
- Good api integration39
- Irc-like38
- Reliable28
- Feature rich26
- Affordable at $2/user13
- Email notifications6
- Text Messages6
- More developer-friendly than Skype4
- Full text search3
- JIRA integration3
- Integrates with Atlassian products3
- Team Chat Rooms2
- Intergration with all the things1
- gitlab1
- tagia1
- 256-bit SSL encryption to transmit your data1
- Fast1
- On-Premise deployment1
- Trello integration1
- salt1
- Purchased by and merged with Slack1
- Discontinued with the Atlassian Stack1
related HipChat posts
I use Slack because it offers the best experience, even on the free tier (which we're still using). As a comparison, I have had in depth experience with HipChat, Stride, Skype, Google Chat (the new service), Google Hangouts (the old service). For self hosted, Mattermost is open source and claims to support most Slack integrations, but I have not extensively investigated this claim.
We use Microsoft Teams as our primary workplace collaboration tool. It enables our team to work remotely and still collaborate on projects - with integration to JIRA and Confluence, the tool enables us to create War Rooms when problems occur and also provides information-sharing capabilities. Replaced HipChat.
- Free5
- Easy to use2
- Free calls and chats1
- Lack of interaction with new people1
- No servers, only group chats1
- Ad supported1
related Viber posts
- Web conferencing made easy25
- Remote control option16
- Draw on screen13
- Very reliable12
- In-meeting chat is pretty good11
- Free9
- Pair programming sessions with shared controls9
- Easy to share meeting links/invites8
- Good Sound Quality7
- Cloud recordings for meetings6
- Great mobile app5
- Virtual backgrounds4
- Recording Feature4
- Other people use it4
- User Friendly actions4
- Reactions (emoticons)2
- Auto reconnecting2
- Chrome extension is great to easily create meetings2
- While sharing screen, you can still see your video2
- Mute all participants at once2
- When ending the videocall, everybody gets kicked2
- Different options for blocking chat2
- Easily share video with audio1
- /zoom on Slack1
- Registration form1
- Meant for business and education1
- Zoom0
- Limited time if you are a basic member20
- Limited Storage14
- Hate how sharing your screen defaults to Full Screen11
- Quality isn't great (Free)10
- No cursor highlight on screenshare.9
- Potential security flaws8
- Onboarding process for new users is not intuitive7
- Virtual background quality isn't good5
- Security5
- Editing can be improved4
- Doesn't handle switching audio sources well4
- The native calendar is buggy4
- Dashboard can be improved4
- Pornographic material displayed3
- Any body can get in it3
- Not many emojis3
- Past chat history is not saved3
- Recording Feature3
- En In reality,the chat in the meet not is excelent,noo3
- Zoom lags a lot3
related Zoom posts
Using Screenhero via Slack was getting to be pretty horrible. Video and sound quality was often times pretty bad and worst of all the service just wasn't reliable. We all had high hopes when the acquisition went through but ultimately, the product just didn't live up to expectations. We ended up trying Zoom after I had heard about it from some friends at other companies. We noticed the video/sound quality was better, and more importantly it was super reliable. The Slack integration was awesome (just type /zoom and it starts a call)
You can schedule recurring calls which is helpful. There's a G Suite (Google Calendar) integration which lets you add a Zoom call (w/dial in info + link to web/mobile) with the click of a button.
Meeting recordings (video and audio) are really nice, you get recordings stored in the cloud on the higher tier plans. One of our engineers, Jerome, actually built a cool little Slack integration using the Slack API and Zoom API so that every time a recording is processed, a link gets posted to the "event-recordings" channel. The iOS app is great too!
#WebAndVideoConferencing #videochat
Server side
We decided to use Python for our backend because it is one of the industry standard languages for data analysis and machine learning. It also has a lot of support due to its large user base.
Web Server: We chose Flask because we want to keep our machine learning / data analysis and the web server in the same language. Flask is easy to use and we all have experience with it. Postman will be used for creating and testing APIs due to its convenience.
Machine Learning: We decided to go with PyTorch for machine learning since it is one of the most popular libraries. It is also known to have an easier learning curve than other popular libraries such as Tensorflow. This is important because our team lacks ML experience and learning the tool as fast as possible would increase productivity.
Data Analysis: Some common Python libraries will be used to analyze our data. These include NumPy, Pandas , and matplotlib. These tools combined will help us learn the properties and characteristics of our data. Jupyter notebook will be used to help organize the data analysis process, and improve the code readability.
Client side
UI: We decided to use React for the UI because it helps organize the data and variables of the application into components, making it very convenient to maintain our dashboard. Since React is one of the most popular front end frameworks right now, there will be a lot of support for it as well as a lot of potential new hires that are familiar with the framework. CSS 3 and HTML5 will be used for the basic styling and structure of the web app, as they are the most widely used front end languages.
State Management: We decided to use Redux to manage the state of the application since it works naturally to React. Our team also already has experience working with Redux which gave it a slight edge over the other state management libraries.
Data Visualization: We decided to use the React-based library Victory to visualize the data. They have very user friendly documentation on their official website which we find easy to learn from.
Cache
- Caching: We decided between Redis and memcached because they are two of the most popular open-source cache engines. We ultimately decided to use Redis to improve our web app performance mainly due to the extra functionalities it provides such as fine-tuning cache contents and durability.
Database
- Database: We decided to use a NoSQL database over a relational database because of its flexibility from not having a predefined schema. The user behavior analytics has to be flexible since the data we plan to store may change frequently. We decided on MongoDB because it is lightweight and we can easily host the database with MongoDB Atlas . Everyone on our team also has experience working with MongoDB.
Infrastructure
- Deployment: We decided to use Heroku over AWS, Azure, Google Cloud because it is free. Although there are advantages to the other cloud services, Heroku makes the most sense to our team because our primary goal is to build an MVP.
Other Tools
Communication Slack will be used as the primary source of communication. It provides all the features needed for basic discussions. In terms of more interactive meetings, Zoom will be used for its video calls and screen sharing capabilities.
Source Control The project will be stored on GitHub and all code changes will be done though pull requests. This will help us keep the codebase clean and make it easy to revert changes when we need to.
- Powerful, simple, and well documented api148
- RESTful API88
- Clear pricing66
- Great sms services61
- Low cost of entry58
- Global SMS Gateway29
- Good value14
- Cloud IVR12
- Simple11
- Extremely simple to integrate with rails11
- Great for startups6
- SMS5
- Great developer program3
- Hassle free3
- Text me the app pages2
- New Features constantly rolling out1
- Many deployment options, from build from scratch to buy1
- Easy integration1
- Two factor authentication1
- Predictable pricing4
- Expensive2
related Twilio posts
Hi, We are looking to implement 2FA - so that users would be sent a Verification code over their Email and SMS to their phone.
We faced some limitations with Amazon SNS where we could either send the verification code to email OR to the phone number, while we want to send it to both.
We also are looking to make the 2FA more flexible by adding any other options later on.
What are the best alternatives to SNS for this use case and purpose? Looked at Twilio but want to explore other options before making a decision.
Would be great to know what the experience with Twilio has been, especially the limitations/issues with Twilio...
Appreciate any input from users of Twilio and others who have had similar use cases.
Searching for options for SMS that integrates with SiteLink and will allow personalization of text and tracking of both incoming/outgoing messages with reporting (Time, date, call#, etc) Have been looking at Twilio, and seems most leaning toward this. Are there any other options known that integrate into SiteLink? Also looked at Clickatell.