Best Messaging Software for Discourse

Slack is a cloud-based project collaboration and team interaction software solution specially designed to seamlessly facilitate communication across organizations. Featuring powerful tools and services integrated into a single platform, Slack provides private channels to promote interaction within smaller teams, direct channels to help send messages directly to colleagues, and public channels that enables members across organizations to start conversations. Available on Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS apps, Slack offers a plethora of features that include chat, file sharing, collaborative workspace, real-time notifications, two-way audio and video, screen sharing, document imaging, activity tracking and logging, and more.

Discord is a free game communications app designed for both desktop and mobile platforms. Millions of players use the popular game platform every day to chat with friends over voice or text, or even stream gameplay in crystal clear quality for other Discord users. Not only can you organize a voice/text party in seconds, you can also use the service to find other players/teammates, search for certain types of groups/activities, or just talk games during your off time. The best part is that Discord is not designed for any specific genre or type of game; you can use it to coordinate communications for any game imaginable!

Telegram messages are heavily encrypted and can self-destruct. Telegram lets you access your messages from multiple devices. Telegram delivers messages faster than any other application. Telegram servers are spread worldwide for security and speed. Telegram has an open API and protocol free for everyone. Telegram is free forever. No ads. No subscription fees. Telegram servers are spread worldwide for security and speed. Telegram has an open API and protocol free for everyone. Telegram is free forever. No ads. No subscription fees. Telegram keeps your messages safe from hacker attacks. Telegram has no limits on the size of your media and chats. Help make messaging safe again – spread the word about Telegram.

Mattermost is a flexible, open source messaging platform that enables secure team collaboration. Build intuitive workflows and collaborate across large teams without worrying about security or data privacy. Get up and running quickly with hundreds of existing integrations, or build out custom workflows that scale to tens of thousands of concurrent users. Many of the world’s leading privacy-conscious enterprises work better with Mattermost by connecting people, tools, and automation to increase collaboration. DevOps teams use Mattermost to power collaboration at every stage of the DevOps lifecycle. Mattermost unifies people, tools, data, and automations to help your team increase innovation and agility. Mattermost is an open source Slack alternative. It's written in Golang and React and runs as a single Linux binary with MySQL or PostgreSQL. Use the features you like (file sharing, real-time group chat and webhooks—to name a few) and access the source code.

Chat for distributed teams. Zulip combines the immediacy of real-time chat with an email threading model. With Zulip, you can catch up on important conversations while ignoring irrelevant ones. Zulip has modern apps for every major platform, powered by Electron and React Native. Zulip is 100% open source software, built by a vibrant community of hundreds of developers from all around the world. With 120,000 words of developer documentation, a high quality code base, and a welcoming community, it’s easy to extend or tweak Zulip. Zulip has a significantly larger and more active development community than other modern open source group chat solutions like Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, and matrix.org. Zulip has more than 90 native integrations. Several hundred more are available through Hubot, Zapier, and IFTTT. Or build your own integrations with Zulip’s powerful API.