Open source team chat communication tool
4.3/5 (76 review)Pluspunten
1. Installation is a breeze. I was able to install Rocket Chat, get SSL configured, and had a running server set up in an hour without having to wave through endless linux commands.
2. Inbuilt support, for Video call using Jitsi, and inbuilt notifications.
3. Slack like user interface , which my team can instantly connect to.
Minpunten
1. The Quote a message, can be improved, it is visually not very clear.
2. The Video call doesn't ring inside the application, only gives a button to join which makes people skip it some times.
3. On Windows, if the app is running in background, you need to go to the notification panel to bring it to front, if you start from the Start Menu, it doesn't come to front.
Overall, the shortcomings are very less and trivial. The software is very stable and a breeze to use.
Overall, Rocket.Chat provides all of the chat solutions I am looking for. Public channels, private channels, private messaging, Webhooks and integrations, including SMS and a website chat widget. Setup is incredibly easy using Docker or Ubuntu Snap.
Pluspunten
It's open source, easy to deploy and customize. It allows for easy integrations using Webhooks, with Twilio's API, and has a live chat widget for your website.
Minpunten
There are still a couple of quirks in the iOS app, but overall it runs smoothly. Accessing and registering for the Rocket.Chat cloud marketplace is not as intuitive as it could be. The marketplace also requires a paid plan.
Rocket Chat allows our widely distributed development and management teams to work almost as if we were in the same location. The ability to add third-parties to meetings ad-hoc gives us a completely integrated solution. We are very satisfied!
Pluspunten
The feature set is very strong. It allows our distributed teams to work much more tightly together. For our developers, the voice and screen-sharing allow widely separated coders to pair-program as if they were in the same room. The messaging is robust, and the voice quality is good. Overall, Rocket Chat is extremely solid, plenty strong enough to be used in a mission-critical capacity.
Minpunten
Most complaints center around the various quirks of the Jitsi subsystem, and related usability issues. For example, the only calling choice offered is "Video Chat". All we want is a voice call. Most of our machines intentionally do not have webcams, yet we have no choice but to select "Video Chat" and then dismiss the dialogs warning us that no camera was found. Every time, with every call. It gets tedious. This is a great example of a very small thing gradually becoming a significant usability issue. Also, for those of us who do have cameras, the default initial setting for a call should be camera OFF for heavens sake. There have already been a couple of embarrassing accidents.
I used this product as a secure chat interface to get away from facebook.
Pluspunten
Well, amazingly it's free for personal and commercial use. On top of that it works very well, and you can even deploy in a docker, which means you can get it up fast. It has tons of functions that you can integrate to compete with the discord and slack. Tons. Also, you can integrate bots, which seems like the latest thing.
Minpunten
I can't really think of any Cons, except maybe not great for the technologically challenged. This software is robust, so you can get lost in settings pages if you don't know where to go. Still, I think anyone who can follow directions can get this working.
Dear Adam,
Thanks for the feedback on your experience with our platform. We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
As working in an organization, we generally communicate with our colleagues in the form of some short text messages in case of any requirements. Rocket chat is very fast and it supports file sharing. When I send some data which is confidential, I can send it through rocket chat cause it provides message-level security along with private chat option. I can create separate group channels for group conversations and can communicate with clients in much faster and in an easy way. We can have video calls with the clients. My overall experience of using this software is highly satisfiable.
Pluspunten
1) It is a free and open source chat application.
2) Privacy chat feature is available and it is more secure.
3) The incoming message is translated to English if another user is communicating in some other language.
4) We can integrate our rocket chat with chatbots.
5) Can install plugins like Drupal for theme customization.
6) Supports different types of authentications like facebook, LinkedIn
7) Rocket chat community support is very good.
8) We can subscribe to different global channels for gaining knowledge.
Minpunten
I did not find any flaws with this software.
Thanks for your feedback!
a company may use rocket chart as its own patform or channel of communication and collaboration and it will be useful since its fast and friendly to use and work with
Pluspunten
rocket chat allows multiple users to join and collaborate in channels that allows for free flow of communication on a regular basis, it is a very interactive tool for project managers to communicate to large number of people and to allow them to share information freely. one can also use rocket chat to send direct messages to users who have access to the rocket chat platformone can download rocket chat on the mobile platform both Android and iOS and on desktop both for Windows, macOS and Linux
Minpunten
sometimes if the app fails you have to use the browser to log in
Dear Joram,
Thanks for the feedback on your experience with our platform. We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
Rocket.Chat is an overall-nice & free alternative to other enterprise messaging tools.
A few words about setting it up:
- The server runs on-premises, so all chat data currently resides in our own infrastructure - this was also one of the reasons we chose this.
- Secondly it supports LDAP, so this played well with our Active Directory accounts.
- Voice calling requires additional setup, which we decided to skip.
- Mimetypes for supported file attachments need to be configured by hand, one-by-one
And about usability: first of all, it does lack some nice-to-haves here and there:
- It cannot be integrated with SharePoint, so there are no status updates when going in a meeting.
- Since the desktop client is an Electron app, notifications are a bit lacking; these aren't persistent and besides showing a small blip in the system tray icon, you can't really tell whether there are any new messages.
- Also due to the client being an Electron app, it cannot support systemwide shortcuts
- It lacks the "threading discussion" that you see in other chat apps.
However, all basic features are in place. Pasting images and links gives you a nice preview and text formatting is simple and works as expected.
Also, it has a nice Off-The-Record mode where messages are not persisted.
And finally, features are still being developed so new features are added constantly.
Pluspunten
- Supports LDAP authentication
- On-premises server
- Platform availability (both web, mobile and Desktop)
- Good & clean usability
Minpunten
- Some things are still not working in the mobile native app (e.g.: voting on polls)
- No support for threaded chat
- No straightforward integration with SharePoint
- Electron client app only, so notifications are a bit lacking
Overall I have been using Rocket Chat for over a year now and it's been a great tool for collaboration and communication internally.
Pluspunten
Rocket Chat is, in my opinion, the best alternative to Slack that is available today. The best part about Rocket Chat is that you can install it on your own local servers so you're no reliant on someone else storing your data on their servers on the Internet. This can be particularly valuable for those who may distrust the Internet a good deal. Rocket Chat offers a wide variety of features that make it, again in my opinion, the best contender to face off against the Slack platform.
Minpunten
Rocket Chat can sometimes be tricky or actually impossible to update and the features and settings can sometimes be a little difficult to understand what exactly they do.
It works nicely (desktop and mobile), very intuitive.
Pluspunten
We use rocket chat in our company. It was the most convenient switch after (sad) years using Skype. Rocket is a rich tool for collaboration: group chats, file sharing, privileges, chat customization, etc. All at a cost of zero!
It's open source meaning there is a lot of eyes at this product code and quality. Updates are available often too.
Minpunten
It is not possible to quote a message originated in a different chat room, so if you have an important message to share for others, most likely you end up copying it and then pasting.
Dear Jose,
Your helpful comment are much appreciated and your feedback will help us to continually improve our platform. Thank you very much!
About quoting from different channels, if you use the "Permalink" option on the message pop up menu, a link will be copied to your clipboard, if you paste that link in another channel, a message preview will appear (similar to the reply one). This enables you to quote other messages in different channels
I have been using Rocket.Chat web application since 11 months and still going god with it. Best responsive design and live push notifications and will intimate us through Mail if we needed. Can also display overall information about our colleagues in their profile section and can also avail 2-factor authentication if needed. Also have chat bot integration and third party integration
Pluspunten
Best User Interface
Easy Installation and Easy to use
Chat Bot Support
Third Party Integration
Public/Privates Rooms
Can create ultimate number of groups
Can also Display overall profile information
Web Push/ Push Notifications (Automatic)
Light Speed and fast responsive messenger
Themes available
Minpunten
Can add more themes and GIF images to it
It'll be good if you share your recent updates on it like about your software updates or about your new versions
Dear Giridhar,
Thanks for the feedback on your experience with our platform. We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
I can discuss with my group about the ongoing projects without visiting each and every employee working on same project. Apart from project we can also discuss the problems faced during any phase of the development.
Pluspunten
We can use Rocket.Chat to communicate directly, that is one to one, or we can use it for group chats. The user interface is very user friendly. The best thing about this software is that it is an open source product. I can chat with my colleagues even if I am not in the office. It also has a web version which makes it easy when the desktop application is not working
Minpunten
We can not drag and drop files in the group chats, we have to open the file attachment window to open an file. Sometimes while chatting, in the middle of the chat the desktop application hangs a lot.
Dear Sandeep,
Thanks for the feedback on your experience with our platform. We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
Its the best chat tool for organisations and its the closest you can get to slack
Pluspunten
Its free to use
its also great for sharing files
you get emails for all rocket messages, makes it easy to catch missed messages
its open source
Its way better than sending emails to colleagues
you can host it in your own server
Minpunten
When its running in the background the desktop app doesn't open when you open using the shortcut icon to open it.
there is nothing to hate about this app
Instead of emailing, you can send a message quickly to a person, group or company wide. Very easy to use and a very effective communication tool.
Pluspunten
The amount of resources this application needs to run in the background is remarkably low. It is free, open source and maximizes your time when sending along a quick message. We use it in the sales team to get a quick answer if we are unsure of the answer. A great and effective tool which makes us appear smart and knowledgeable.
Minpunten
Updates. The platform while quick to work out bugs does require you to re-start the app after the update.
Dear Joe,
Thanks for the feedback on your experience with our platform. We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
Pluspunten
Our internal Slack instance quickly outgrew the free features & space available. With Rocket Chat, we have more space (so chats aren't reset daily) and features, as well as greater control over features. My team now uses Rocket Chat almost exclusively to communicate within our department and with other departments/teams. It's a great alternative for communicating during remote work or multitasking without disturbing co-workers.
Minpunten
There have been some stability/compatibility issues; I often had problems loading chat in Firefox (even after clearing my cache and/or restarting my machine) but haven't had any issues after changing to using Chrome as my browser.
Dear Katrina,
Your helpful comment are much appreciated and your feedback will help us to continually improve our platform. Thank you very much!
Pluspunten
Rocket chat has been made in a perfect way. You have many options to work with. It is perfect for companies, but also it is perfect for personal uses.
Minpunten
The only thing I don't like is that they don't have good mobile app. There is a mobile app already but it doesn't work as it should.
Dear Berin,
Thanks for the feedback on your experience with our platform. We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
A free chat communication system which I can host by myself for data security reasons.
Pluspunten
The team behind Rocket.Chat delivers an ongoing effort to improve the software and add new features. Feature requests and bug reports are handled professionally.
You can deploy the server on premises or in the cloud. It also has lots of clients (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac OSX, ... and of course web!)
Most of the admin settings can be configured via the web interface.
I use Rocket.Chat within a docker container and Traefik for SSL termination and proxy. Works like a charm.
Minpunten
Administration is not that easy and the documentation sometimes lacks in depth descriptions. Some functionality is not yet available in all clients.
Pluspunten
Can be deployed easily on your own infrastructure. Easy to integrate with other applications, using web hooks. The fact that it's open source makes it accessible to so many companies!
Minpunten
Some functionality doesn't seem to be thought through, for example the colour of the room title changes based on the room title and can't be customised. It would be great if you could just pick a colour. The current threaded conversations don't stop multiple conversations in a room turning into a complicated conversation. The slackbot equivalent 'Hubot' isn't heavily worked on, so lags behind Slack in this department.
Dear Will,
Thanks for the feedback on your experience with our platform. We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
Pluspunten
Cost effective hosting
Good Integrations
Simple to use
Minpunten
Customer Support
Help documentation is a bit lacking
Dear Rocketeer,
Thanks for the feedback! We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
Given our open source nature, it is sometimes difficult to keep our documentation updated, we are always doing our best to keep it updated and our awesome community does a great job in helping us with this task.
Pluspunten
This is a great full featured chat utility that packs a lot into the free software.
This is easy to host on your own servers with the available snap installs.
Not only offers a great chat enviroment but easily ties into your website for a live chat option.
Minpunten
Other chat utilities are building in threads which is a nice feature to have. Some of the self hosted setup can be challenging but not overly difficult.
Dear Tyler,
Thanks for the feedback on your experience with our platform. We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
We needed a way to control users access to in a chat. We wanted out company chat in our pockets and didn't want to use Slack. We wanted a branded chat that we could include our customers in as well. This fit that need perfectly. If those bugs were just out of the way we'd be in business.
Pluspunten
Rocket.Chat has so many features it's crazy. I mean, there's a feature in here to authenticate using Wordpress! So cool! They have both React Native and native apps so getting this customized and deployed is pretty easy. It works pretty well out of the box minus a few bugs. It's got a large community backing most of the repositories which is a huge plus. Overall there's a lot going for it.
Minpunten
Bugs... OMG the bugs are ruthless. Right out of the gate the React Native version didn't have avatar uploading working. We had to pay $1000 to contract out a developer to fix the issue for us. The issue wasn't really a fix more than it was a hack so we weren't able to push it back into the main development branch.
There's also a problem with notifications right out of the box. That is really frustrating and we still don't have notifications working on our platforms.
Dear Darin,
Thanks for the feedback on your experience with our platform. We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
If you are having issues updating the desktop app, please manually download and install the latest version at https://rocket.chat/install . We have this issue as a known bug on a prior version and the fastest way to get rid of it is to download the desktop app again.
Pluspunten
Love that you can set up channels and configure admins and users. It works great and can be locally hosted and tied in to workgroup usernames.
Minpunten
None does what we need it for and we will keep it
The communication between teams of the company stayed so much better.
Pluspunten
This is a great software, when helps me and my team to have a better communication.
Minpunten
Your installation by GitHub an your first configuration are hard.
All and all we like Rocket.Chat. It is a very inexpensive option for businesses that are 50+ people but aren't big enough to be a giant fortune 500 company will a lot of money to spend on internal chat. If you have less than 10 people on your team then go with Slack. It's more refined and you'll be spending the same amount. But once you go over 10 people Slack becomes a lot more expensive.
If you're looking for a simple solution that gives more flexibility with permissions and save a good chunk of money Rocket.Chat is your best bet. Most of the time you won't miss having something like more expensive.
Pluspunten
- Extremely inexpensive for business compared to something like Slack or Teams
- A plethora of customization when it comes to permissions
Minpunten
- Missing some of the refinements that exist in things like Slack (i.e. notification settings are finicky sometimes, settings / preferences can be difficult for a lot of users to understand)
- Anyone with our URL can technically sign up whenever they want. We just keep our public rooms locked so there's no info there
- Even as the admin the amount of settings can be daunting at times.
Dear Shaun,
Thanks for the feedback! We sincerely appreciate your insight because it helps us build a better customer experience!
About the sing up problem, you can change the settings for user registration, you can either, have users be manually allowed on the server by the admins, or give them a secret url that can be used to register in the server. Check out our Documentation on managing account settings at https://rocket.chat/docs/administrator-guides/account-settings/#registration
Pluspunten
Rocket Chat is a completely open source and scalable platform. I love all the options that are offered from: message history, public & private channels, video, admin options, and more. The options are unlimited and I don't think I would ever use them all; but I'm glad they are there.
Minpunten
Support & Sales are diffcult to contact. I like talking to an actually person over the phone when making larger scale changes to my organization.
Pluspunten
I use this product daily at work when I am trying to connect with other employees within our company. It is easy to use and very fast.
Minpunten
I have not found anything I do not like about it.
Very satisfied . I have used Slack, Teamwork Chat before, but Rocket Chat is very economical to me ( free- minus the VPS cost). ANd it has everything we need.