Gitter

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Element

A VoIP application and platform designed for creating communities and connecting gamers, and people rallying around specific causes. The Discord client is a free to use and can handle text, image, video and audio communication between users in a chat channel. Currently over 250 million users use the software to connect with others across the globe.

Matrix.org is an open network for secure, decentralized communication. It gives you a simple HTTP APIs and SDKs (iOS, Android, Web) to create chatrooms, direct chats and chat bots, complete with end-to-end encryption, file transfer, synchronised conversation history, formatted messages, read receipts and more. All conversations on Matrix are replicated over all the servers participating in them, meaning there are no single point of control or failure.

Slack is a new way to communicate with your team in a faster, better organized, and more secure than email. The software is designed for business looking to improve their communication work flow. Slack offers features like persistent chat rooms organized by topic, private groups, and direct messaging that is built for teamwork.

Signal is a cross-platform encrypted messaging application that has a strong focus on privacy. The application is developed by Signal Messenger LLC and provides users with features like one-to-one and group messages, which can include files, voice notes, images and videos. The software is famous for being used by the whistleblower and privacy advocate Edward Snowden who once said "I use Signal every day, it is the most scalable encryption tool we have".

With Telegram people can communicate and via instant messaging and voice over IP. Telegram is a cloud-based software and services that have a focus on privacy, speed and security. The client was initially created by the brothers Nikolai and Pavel Durov, the creators of the Russian social network VK back in 2013. Today the application is used cross-platform by over 400 million users world-wide.

Threema is a messenger application that puts security and privacy first. The application is designed to generate as little user data as possible. The service is fully GDPR-compliant and the company has its own servers hosted in Switzerland. With Threema you can keep in touch with friends, family and co-workers while enjoying privacy and rest assured that you personal data is not commoditized.