One messaging app to rule them all?

Hi all

I am looking for a desktop messaging app that can handle Whatsapp (which I am shortly moving away from), Signal, Telegram and preferably (but I don’t know if it’s possible) SMS from my phone. I would like to completely replace Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp and Skype and use one app to handle all my messaging. I’m trying to switch my friends to Signal or Telegram but have little traction at the moment as most of them use Whatsapp.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

The best solution for that is to filter out your real friends. Here is what I did: I changed to Threema and told everyone that if they want to talk to me, I will only be available there from now on. My real friends switched over and 1 or 2 people did not. Nobody would refuse to install 1 additional app on their phone rather than staying friends with you, if they are really your friends and understand that the decision you make is important to you.

Note on the app’s price:

  1. It’s 420% worth it, I am serious.
  2. On Google Play there is a thing called “Family Library”, so if 1 of your friends buys the app and invites 4 more friends, then the price can be split among your friends, which means 2.99 / 5 ≈ 0.60 . I think friends will survive this amount of money without having to skip food and water for a month, especially considering the huge advantages this app has over WhatsApp.

Since I already started stating my opinion, I might as well go on:

Telegram

  1. You are forced to provide your phone number, which is unnecessary.
  2. Secure conversations are optional and a hassle if you want to casually start talking or respond to someone who started talking to you in “normal” mode.
  3. It’s not secure.

Signal

  1. It’s not secure.
  2. Didn’t use it, because of Point 1.

Threema

  1. It is actually secure.
  2. Fully end-to-end encrypted. But 4 real, not like the others.
  3. If you are used to WhatsApp’s UI, then you will get used to this app within 3 minutes or less.
  4. All the features that WhatsApp has, but also more than that.
  5. OPTIONALLY provide your phone number.
  6. OPTIONALLY provide your e-mail address.
  7. OPTIONALLY save your account on the official server (fully encrypted of course) or on your own server. :slight_smile:
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There are two such apps I know:

and

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Best Messaging Apps Available For Linux

By some guy … Abhishek Prakash … so should be correct !

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Hi all, I used to use Franz and then Rambox but I believe they are both paid services now. Is that not the case?

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Nope. Here’s Franz:

Franz 5 is open-source licensed under the Apache-2.0 License.

Rambox has open source community edition.

Both have free and paid subscription model.