While people are moving towards text and instant messaging via Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, or telegram, people are also exploring the option of open-source chat. This trend continues to grow in popularity and diversity. Social Media Chats are one of the most used messaging platforms worldwide, but it is considered and looked at like a relatively informal source of communication.
When communicating within the business environment, it is necessary to maintain a sense of formality in the sense of decorum while communicating.; Business teams keep looking for a relevant, excellent and reliable source of online communication that fits right to the needs of the business.
Thus the need for open-source communication channels has risen in the past decade.
Slack is probably one of the market's most common open-source chat services, but various other open tools have emerged and have been roving a solid competition to Slack. The right online open-source chatbots and messaging channels can make all the difference while communicating with the other business teams. These open-source chat services make communication within and outside the groups relatively easy. With so many people working remotely in the past two years, a reliable source of online communication is required.
With so many options available in the market, let us look at the Top 3 channels and top 3 competitors to Slack.
1. Sendbird
A leading API interaction platform, Sendbord is a trusted modern digital app like Reddit, Delivery Hero, and Hinge that can be embedded into real-time chat, voice, and video into various apps. The platform makes the real-time interactions available through an easy-to-access API on top of a fully managed platform.
A Messaging SDK and Chat API for various mobile apps and websites, Sendbird provides various chat services to replace slack. It allows user-to-user, user-to-business, and business-to-business communications inside any mobile and web service. With an ability to be customized fully, Sendbird is already serving more than makes of customers worldwide on different use cases, including on-demand, eCommerce, gaming, dating, and much more.
This platform offers access to a stable server with broad features that allow fast and effective real-time chatting on any scale. It also helps implement live chat features within any mobile application, game, or website. The platform is also used to engage and retain a user through real-time communications.
Features of Sendbird
- API
- Access Controls/Permissions
- Chat/Messaging
- Collaboration Tool
- Customizable Branding
- Data Modelling
- Live Chat
- Integrated Dveloepmetn Enviornement
- Offline Access
- Realtime chat
- Client-Side SDKs
- AI Image Moderation
- Screen Sharing and much more
Benefits of using Sendbird
Send bird is one of the top market leaders that help business owners in replacing Slack and creating their customized chatting system. There are various benefits of using SendBird.
- The application sends push notifications when there is any activity on the platform.
- The application also provides auto translations whenever a customer or a collaborator sends a message in another language. Thus, this makes the entire chatting and messaging system quite user-friendly.
- Another benefit of using SendBird is that it allows sharing files through an encrypted system. This helps in protecting the data that is shared and reduces the concerns over data privacy.
- Another benefit of the standard is that it helps automate the entire messaging process. Install the bot interface to create an AI-assisted messaging experience for the customer inside the application.
- Sendbird's chat solution is entirely customizable, making it pretty user-friendly for business owners and managing teams. This broad-spectrum includes eCommerce, enterprise messaging, on-demand, and much more.
- This platform and application support iOS, Android, WEb, Unity, Xamarin, and many more interfaces, making it one of the most adaptable software for open chat services.
- It helps in increasing user engagement.
- It helps in increasing the response rate of the requests and messages.
Cons of using SendBird
Although the application is user-friendly and the users are pretty happy with it, there are still some criticisms that the consumers face.
- There is little flexibility with the moderation of the multi-users per account.
- The prices are not standard and are not open. The company provides different prices to customers, creating a sense of skepticism among users.
- There is a lack of customization in the software.
SendBird is an app available on Insiderapps.com
2. Pubnub
An open-source chat platform to replace slack, PubNub is a service for sending data between devices in real-time. It is one of the top applications for developers to build chat apps, IoT device signaling, real-time GPS location tracking, and much more.
Messages are generally made from publisher to subscriber in 80100ms, regardless of location.
Features of PubNub
- Access COntrols/Permissions
- Canned Responses
- Collaboration Tools
- Data Security
- Deployment Management
- Device Targeting
- Notification Scheduling
- Proactive Chat
- Third-Party Integrations Reporting/Analytics
- Visual Notifications, and much more.
Benefits of using PubNub
There are various benefits for the users while they are using PubNub.
- Scalability: One of the main advantages of using PubNub is that it allows the systems to scale dynamically. PubNub decouples the publishers from their subscribers, which will enable them to work independently. This independence means it can direct the scale as needed without overloading any program components. By distributing these resources, PubNub can scale Internet-wide and with a global reach.
- System alerts and notifications: PubNub simplifies the communication and allows the devices to push notifications in real-time. This allows the instant delivery of critical updates and signs on the backend and to any front-facing clients.
- Balanced Workflows: This software is not only used as an open-source chat service but also allows for managing workflows. It is highly efficient at moving various databases and storing data. A large queue of tasks can be easily distributed among multiple devices for most of the balanced workload.
Cons of using PubNub
Although PubNub is one of the market leaders, there are various criticisms or the issues that the users generally face with using this software.
- Failed message deliveries: The most prominent issue with using this software is that the communication sometimes gets affected by the failed message deliveries. This is one of the main problems with the platforms, as the subscribers do not get to know that they are receiving all communications from the publisher. This leads to missing a certain amount of information and can have various disastrous effects.
- Instability with Quick Selling: Without additional checks and balances, instability can occur when a PubNub program scales too quickly. This leads to a load surge risk, another prominent issue with the platform.
- Dynamic Scaling may be unnecessary: The paradigm may be unnecessarily intricate for smaller-scale operations.
Pricing
- Free: Yes
- Starter: $49/month
- Pro: Customizable
PubNub is an app available on Insiderapps.com
3. CometChat
Another open-source chat service, CometChat, allows users to quickly deploy in-app text messaging to their mobile apps and websites. They provide user-to-user messaging and help connect the users.
Their SDKs, APIs, and UI Kits are quick to launch, incredibly secure, highly scalable, and well documented. Additionally, their robust extension library helps integrate other services and provides a configurable, feature-rich messaging experience for the users.
The primary features of CometChat include WebRTC, file sharing, screen sharing, accurate time language translation, typing indicators, and many more. The platform allows the user to switch from text chatting to a video chatting interface.
The platform also includes broadcast messages, guest login support, earlier messages, blocking or unblocking users, video broadcasting, and other related features.
Features of CometChat
- @mentions feature
- API
- Access Controls/permission
- Activity Dashboard
- Audio/video Conferencing
- Call Monitoring
- Call Recording
- Chat Transcript
- Chat/Messaging
- Communication Managent
- File Sharing
- File Transfer
- Group Messaging
- Multi-Channel COmmunication and much more.
Benefits of using CometChat
- Customizable UI: Since the chat feature is used on your platform; it needs to be highly customizable according to your viewer's lies and dislikes. It affects your brand identity.
- Integration: Another great benefit of using CometChat is that it can be integrated with many other programming languages. Not only the integrations, but there is a possibility of sub-integrations with different frameworks that guide you on the way to integrating chat and video conferencing in the application.
- Easy Installation: The installation of this software on various apps and websites is relatively easy. A fast and simple structure can be done on the platforms once a few integrations and initial configurations are done.
- Teleconferencing: One of the competitive advantages of using this platform is that this supports not only text messaging but also video conferencing as well. It helps in establishing better communications with various collaborators.
Cons of using CometChat
- Integrations: Although CometChat can be integrated with various frameworks, some frameworks like the Ionic-Angular-Capacitor App cannot be combined. IT takes a lot of time to achieve this integration, which is one of the top most required integration for building up of software.
- Pricing: This platform is quite expensive for startups, and SMBs and Mid-sized businesses cannot move ahead with using this platform as it requires high financial resources every month.
- Low Customer Service: The platform's customer service is relatively low and slow to respond to various queries. This reduces customer satisfaction and hampers the entire customer journey.
Pricing
- Free Version: Yes
- Startup: $149/month
- Growth: $300/month
- Scale: $749/month
CometChat is an app available on Insiderapps.com
Benefits of using open source chat services
- Absolute Transparency: One of the most significant advantages of using open source communication is that it leads to ultimate transparency. Since the users can see the various codes, they are inclined to use the softwares more than ever. Also, the availability of the code to the public gives its users a sense of stability.
- Flexibility: Open-source softwares are flexible in that the developers can see the code and make changes accordingly. They can make changes to the app and cater to their company's needs. Not only that, but the developers can also make some changes to the problematic aspects of the app, which is one of the most significant advantages of any open-source chat service.
- Agility: The open-source communication channels allow the software to fit in the need for agility since it gives multiple ways and manners in which a problem can be solved. Moreover, it is continuously changing and developed according to the market needs and community members.
- Enhanced Security: These kind of softwares is more secure than its proprietary counterpart. This is because more people are inspecting the codes, and there are more chances t solve the bugs. This is one of the main reasons open-source channels are highly preferred over their counterparts.
- Cost Efficiency: These softwares are generally free or are available at very cheap rates. They result in licensing and maintenance fees. Moreover, they take less hardware power to carry out the tasks compared to closed source communication channels.
Conclusion
Thus, only 9% of managers are skeptical about using open source communication channels, while 91% of managers say that their expectations are met or are exceeded. Agreed, using open source softwares can be a little complex to install and run compared to the closed softwares, but it is much more secure compared to the closed ones.
