Microsoft Teams replacement : Discord, Mattermost, Rocketchat, Slack, IRC, What else ?

[PorCus]

Hey there everyone,

 

Since Luke mentioned that on the last Wan Show, I looked up and didn't saw any threads about that topic around, so I'm trying my luck.

 

In short :  Now that teams isn't part of Office 365 anymore, what are the alternatives that could be considered as a messaging / chat app ?

So I'll say what we did in our company :

- We are using RocketChat, self hosted with a BBB (Big Blue Button) integration, also self hosted (we run our own datacenter, ASN, VM cluster). We pay a yearly license fee for support and updates. We use that for about 20 users, so smaller scale than what LMG could be.

- From the chat (that supports markdown), we can have multiple channels with same or different members for different topics, and can spawn a video / audio chat from that channel or private chat.

- The chat doesn't needs an APP for the PC, you can run everything in a browser, however some packaged clients exist, notably for Android and iPhone.

- Our users run Mac, Linux, Windows clients.

- The BBB part support whiteboard and screen sharing, as well as PDF and Powerpoint uploads. We also integrated our VoIP plateform to support incoming calls in any chatrooms. We don't pay any fee for the BBB part, beside the server hosting.

- We integrated RocketChat in our SSO. (also self hosted).

 

And from what I know, they also have hosted services, if preferred, but I love having the control on my infra

 

One of the community we support run a Mattermost, which also works decently well, but I don't see a video / visio chat integrated.

 

Hope it can be of a use to someone, maybe Luke will stumble on this too

 

Cheers,

 

Edit : to complete this, I have to mention what we've tried / dropped / skipped:

- Wire (initially phone app) : Some VC investments did not convince us at some point. So we moved away.

- Threema (initially phone app) : I would have loved it, (Swiss owned, German and Swiss based, if I'm not mistaken) but the web / desktop app didn't convinced us at the time being

- Telegram : we use it for monitoring notifications, but nothing critical or private there

- IRC : well I'm from that era, I still have clients on 3 different networks atm, but it's not convenient for less tech-savy / old users.

- Signal : Also the desktop app isn't that flexible.

 

[whispous]

On one hand, using discord would be nice to integrate into a single app that most alreayd have running. On the other hand, I don't want to mix my online self with my work self.

[PorCus]

2 hours ago, whispous said:

On one hand, using discord would be nice to integrate into a single app that most alreayd have running. On the other hand, I don't want to mix my online self with my work self.

Exactly, also it allows the team to disconnect the evening when they are finished working.

 

Side note, if you want to self-host, discord won't be an option.

[Erioch]

Man, I guess I'm too old but I cannot do Discord.  If we ever changed to it a work, I'd have to quit.  Not even joking.

[saintlouisbagels]

1 hour ago, Erioch said:

Man, I guess I'm too old but I cannot do Discord.  If we ever changed to it a work, I'd have to quit.  Not even joking.

What makes Discord unusable for you? I've had good success introducing it to a bunch of non-techie friends in the past year.

[Forbidden Wafer]

For text messages, the best one is Zulip. 

[Erioch]

48 minutes ago, saintlouisbagels said:

What makes Discord unusable for you? I've had good success introducing it to a bunch of non-techie friends in the past year.

It always seems like a mess.  Impossible to have a conversion because of the spam.  I've had it not let me in because you have to have an invite and it wouldn't accept the ones I've gotten.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

1 hour ago, Erioch said:

It always seems like a mess.  Impossible to have a conversion because of the spam.  I've had it not let me in because you have to have an invite and it wouldn't accept the ones I've gotten.

Yeah, I don't get the hype about it either. I get along with it, but looking at a few gaming/company Discord servers they are always are either dead or just a long wall of text. I simply don't get the appeal of a chatroom with hundreds of people in it typing away.

Voice chat quality is ok, but that is it imho.