Best All In One Messenger: Voice Calls, Video Facetime, Send Text & Attachments

I thought it important to make a seperate thread that talks ONLY about ALL IN ONE messengers that can do everything that whatsapp can and more.

The Apps discussed here should have an All In One function to be able to place voice calls, place video calls, send text messages and attachment files. Personally i`m not too bother about video chat as i dont use it but some require it it. I think at bare minimum the app should be able to perform voice and text messaging all inclusive within the same App.

A number of times in other threads i got excited to download a talked about app rated as an “Alternative to Whatsapp” only to discover it is JUST a text only boring messenger that cannot even place a voice call.

I have a joke theory that there are whatsapp, employees operating on these forums steering folk to a “so called alternative” only to find out the alternative messenger can only do text, then the person whom wanted to try the new alternative gets fed up and goes back to using whatsapp to make his/her calls. LOL

My incomplete findings so far are:

Threema (interesting but not open source, It may be ok though requires a small one time fee and is not free, also no video chat)

Signal (requires a telephone number, which can reveal alot about whom you are. Somewhere in some datamining database your telephone number is linked to you location, address, personal info) Signal maybe ok in the future as there are talks about removing the need for phone number but currently it is still required)

Jami (has never properly fuctioned, ive tried it a few times in different platforms and fails alot, couldnt even send a 4mb file without getting stuck at 600kb)

Riot works well tho is a strange chat room type interface but can do it all, and also capable of self hosting. My first try of Riot was not good as the server was down and the app would not load, then next day it suddenly worked fine.

I am sure there are more All in One messenger Apps out there, feel free to share, i`m sure many people are interested in hearing about other messaging Apps that can do it all : All in One voice, text, video & ability to send file attachments as one inclusive App.

Conversations is an open source XMPP app for Android with all of the capabilities you mention and end to end encryption. The problem is that not all XMPP servers support all of these features. Furthermore, your contacts might be using a client which does not support them. However, if all clients and servers involved in a connection do support the relevant features then this constitutes a functional, federated whatsapp replacement. Finally, XMPP servers can be self hosted.

Do any of these adopt the inter-IM data exchange protocols mentioned in the other thread? I think that’s the most important, that they start being able to talk with each other. Then we can all chose which we want

Threema does have video chat (one-on-one, no group video chat).

1 Like

Do you mean matrix bridge type functionality? That’s a red herring as you still need accounts with the untrusted services.

Nope I mean this Alternatives to get off the whatsapp crack-pipe, say NO to whatsapp!

Very interesting but far too new to have been adopted by anyone yet. The document is dated 2020 and states that it is a work in progress on which production systems should not be built. I’m also reminded of this…

and this…

:grinning:

WIRE: https://app.wire.com/

2 Likes

Suffers from the centralised model, as do Signal, Threema, etc. Jabber/XMPP and Matrix are the only ones I know of which support federation.

aTalk https://atalk.sytes.net/atalk/ is little known but should be mentioned. Not available for Apple though

Another Jabber/XMPP client. Not sure what its capabilities are though. Does it support OMEMO, voice & video calling?

yes it does. Worth a try?

Definitely. Once I’ve figured out how to add voice & video to my server. :sunglasses: :+1:

Edit: I just created an account on another server to try aTalk. Conclusions: a bit buggy and has a UI that would be much too confusing for non-technical folk trying to escape from whatsapp. One to watch though.

1 Like

@Vaughan
Many years ago duckduckgo had a free xmpp server i had got some family members to install Jitsi for windows and we used to talk on pc, of course was years ago but was able to do webcam, desktop sharing video, text and voice. I dont know how secure it was back in those days but was fun to use.

As for conversations IM messenger i had a look at their site and requires a small fee for the app to use their server comes with an annual fee of 8 Euro after a 6 month trial period.

I realize you can use your own server to avoid this fee, so i decided to download conversations IM from the /e/ app store and try it. (btw i went to f-droid first and the download failed).

So i wanted to try conversations and installed it, then to avoid the fees, i signed up elsewhere registering for an free xmmp account at 5july.org which supports omemo encryption. I then did the same for my PC, installed pidgin, installed lurch plugins which give it omemo encryption. etc ( probably pidgin is the wrong one to install for this test but it was the 1st one i found in a quick search)

Anyways when i run conversations IM i dont see any option to call or video chat, i am guessing the one they sell on goolag play store is a different client for which to do voice and video? anyways, couldnt figure it out to try/ test. … and if a friend or family member uses an iphone, i would have to research an xmpp client for them that does calls videos etc. The issue with family members is they may not be too techy, they want to install it and use right away I live far away from them so know i can try to explain how to set it up but i dont own an iphone so when they hit the first hurdle encountered they will giveup and continue using whatsapp oh no!

@maestr0
Thanks for pointing out Threema now does video calls, i had not used it, the wikipedia page had no mention of video calls, but see that they have indeed recently implemented video calls out of beta 2 months ago.

@ebob
As for wire theres a bit of a scandal going on. See harvey186`s post called wire is dead. Edward Snowden tweeted about Wire when it got sold “This is a grim turn for a once-promising app” Wire had moved its holding company to the United States in February 2019, without disclosing this until November 2019. Due to the extensive online surveillance activities of the United States government, many people concerned with protecting their privacy argue against trusting any service that is based in the USA. This techcrunch article maybe of interest,.

I use Threema Messenger and happy with it! Video Calls are in Beta Phase.

I got Conversations from F-droid so maybe a temporary problem or device specific. The voice and video call buttons appear in the chat once established and both users are added to contacts and registered for presence updates. Bear in mind that not all servers support these options.

I tried Riot before, because it lookes modern (they do a good job in PR) and I saw it mentioned in many dicussions about messengers on the internet. But I would not recommend that to anybody. The Android experience was just terrible (on my Linux machine everything was working fine though).
But I can definitely recommend Conversations used with a proper configured server. I use it now for more than one month and it is just working like a charm! Also audio and video-calls (which I nearly use everyday). Just keep in mind, that the selected XMPP-server is crucial for a smooth experience. Check the server before account creation at

Wire is my choice too for today. It’s easy to setup and use; doesn’t need your phone number to sign-in; encrypted; open-sourced; provides voice and video calls; has no third-party trackers inside the apk; centralized (so you and your contact don’t need to be online at the same time to exchange messages). There are some questions regarding ownership, but for now it seems the good choice to me.

1 Like

I read about rocket chat. But no time so far to set up my own Server. They offer their Servers AS well, but i did not want to use them.

@Griepen
I have been looking at the rocket chat website since you posted it, seems an interesting open source project with the ability to host on your own server. I tried to read their privacy section but seems that they have intermingled what their web page is doing with their app, so seems a bit confusing.
They say they wont sell your data, however they admit they would be very happy that if they are bought up by some business aquisition or merger they will happilly transfer the data they have collected about you to them which i find a bit of a contradiction. it also says they may be required to disclose your Personal Data if required to do so by law or in response to valid requests by public authorities.
I am not 100% sure as like i said they seem to have mixed information mingling what they do with their website data collection and the app. It may well be a great app but it does seem they collect some kind of personal data which they could use to identify you. If you had a personal server it maybe different? their default servers are located in US and Europe, which they say you can choose which u prefer on installation.
I tried to see if there were any other online security privacy related reviews about rocket chat but was unable to find much. perhaps another forum member can shed some light on their practices.