My small company (less than 30 employees) has been using Skype for internal group meetings and messaging. Since it’s closing, we’re looking for alternatives.
I think few people in the company are privacy minded (one of the higher ups had to get scolded to stop using some random AI to listen to all his meetings and write summaries), so we need something with a low barrier to entry.
We have basically no IT department, so self hosting would be a challenge. We do self host a redmine server via docker, and we have to connect to it via VPN when we’re off-site (we have several full time remote employees).
Our feature requirements are:
-Group and individual messaging
-Screen sharing
-Meetings up to 2 hours
-Inexpensive
-Meetings with up to 10 participants
-Windows (some people use Skype from their phones also, but not a requirement)
-Minimal friction to setup and use
-Minimal bugs (mature)
Some of the ideas floated:
-Teams
-Discord
-Google Meet
-Signal
-Telegram
-Jami
I really don’t think we could pull off Matrix, but am I wrong? Which of these ideas bothers you the least? Is there something else I’m overlooking?
Thanks for all your advice. Here’s a report on my experiences for anybody that may have a similar question. I demo’d Zulip with Jitsi, Jami, and Nextcloud Talk today.
I’ve actually used Signal desktop for years, and love it, but don’t really want to mix work with personal, and if I didn’t already use it, I’d squirm about the required mobile app on my personal phone. Telegram might be a little easier that way-- I don’t think you have to have an app to make an account, just a phone number.
I liked Zulip, but I didn’t like Jitsi. It required a google account or a github account to host a meeting, it ran in browser instead of embedded in the Zulip app somehow, and the Jitsi desktop app seemed to be from 2003.
Jami was ok. I was able to set it up pretty easily, but I didn’t know if others in the org can handle that it’s P2P so you can’t leave messages for others off hours. Also there seemed to be a lot of complaints about its reliability in its own forum.
NextCloud talk on the free servers didn’t really work. I could get voice and text, but screen sharing just errored. I think I’d have to set up a TURN server or something like that. So if that requires hosting anyway, might as well do Matrix. Also the free servers were really slow.
So next test for me is Matrix. Is there a way I can try it out for free to see if I can recommend it to the rest of the company? Without spending hours on it? I’ve probably wasted more company time on this project than I would’ve saved in subscriptions.
Why would you not go with Teams? I assume you all are using Microsoft Office if you were using Skype. Pretty sure Teams is included in the Office 365 license.
It’s literally Microsoft’s successor to Skype.
We don’t have 365 licenses, so it’s $4/user/month that we weren’t paying before. But this was my chance to get the company on something better, so I was investigating options.
I really think the hour meeting limitation is going to be a problem for the free accounts, but dealing with that seems more likely than the company paying $800/year, or whatever the headcount is.
I think signal would be the easiest to set up and agrees to all your requirements. It’s got windows and iOS android apps.
Good if you have company phone numbers as it requires a phone number to create an account.
For the meeting point: Lokas - Record and transcribe your meetings in complete privacy.
As someone who’s been on Discord for almost 10 years: don’t use Discord for your company. There’s no backups, account management, or other kind of enterprise / B2B support.
Has there been any discussions regarding Jitsi?
Came here to toss in this suggestion, too.
Slack can do most of that.its owned by Microsoft so if you were already comfortable with Skype it’s not a huge departure. There is HIPAA compliance, but there is also Microsoft.
However it enshittifies over time and I’m planning to move away for my team.
Slack is not owned by MSFT. Maybe you are thinking of Teams. Slack is owned by Salesforce.
