
Ask HN: Paid alternatives to WhatsApp - reacharavindh
Do y&#x27;all know of a paid cross platform messaging service that respects user privacy in everyday, and not do creepy stuff?
&quot;paid&quot; because I&#x27;d like them to stay in business.
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JepZ
I am wondering why everybody wants a service provider and nobody seems to care
about an open solution. If you choose an provider you are always bound to its
fate. We have 20+ global messaging networks which do not cooperate/communicate
with each other.

I am using XMPP and it works as good as any other messaging app (fast
end-2-end encryption included). And since it is an _federated_ protocol I am
not bound to any provider.

There is just one major problem:

There seems to be a lack of client developers, because most clients are simply
not up-to-date. I am using 'conversations' as an android client, which is
quite good, but the desktop clients seem to lack any development momentum.

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msh
well not paid but signal seems pretty well funded and not likely to sell.

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mrios
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gasit/id659093855?ls=1&mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gasit/id659093855?ls=1&mt=8)

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mrios
Let me know what you think, if you get to try it out.

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iends
What about Telegram? It's free though...

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vemy
Telegram doesn't use encryption by default.

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reacharavindh
Yes, I realized that after I gave it a try. Felt really really dumb
considering they have the facility already.

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tue4Iezi
[https://threema.ch/](https://threema.ch/)

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dnh44
I got threema at launch for iOS. Still haven't managed to find anyone else
using it unfortunately.

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reacharavindh
Same here. Threema sounds best on paper. I'm definitely going to try to use
atleast within my family. But, I don't hope to have a thriving network around
it any time soon.

Too bad the masses don't get the privacy angle in free products. I feel like
FB<->WhatsApp is counting on just that by using a unintuitive "opt-out"
policy. The moms,dads, and not so tech aware citizens won't even know what
goes on underneath. They would be feeling falsely proud to use a 'secure','E-E
encrypted' service not knowing 'privacy' is different from them.

