iMessage Alternatives
iMessage is described as 'Love iMessage on your iPhone? You'll love it on your Mac, too. Messages lets you send unlimited messages to anyone on a Mac, iOS device, or Apple Watch' and is an app in the Social & Communications category. There are more than 50 alternatives to iMessage for a variety of platforms, including Android, iPhone, Android Tablet, Online / Web-based and Windows. The best alternative is Signal, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like iMessage are Skype (Freemium), Wire (Free Personal, Open Source), Pidgin (Free, Open Source) and Conversations (Free, Open Source).
- Signal is a messaging app with an unexpected focus on privacy, combined with all the features expected from a modern IM app. Signal has received a lot of praise from all around the world for its security and privacy-respecting technologies.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Android
- iPhone
- Android Tablet
- iPad
- Ubuntu Touch
Signal vs iMessage opinions
jamiegray it's safe, secure, cross platformUltraProgrammer It works cross platform, is free, open source, and end to end encrypted - Skype is the most popular free voice-over IP and instant messaging service globally. It allows users to text, video and voice call over the internet. Users can also call landlines and mobiles at competitive rates using Skype credit, premium accounts and subscriptions.
- Freemium • Proprietary
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Blackberry
- Chrome OS
- Windows S
- Android Tablet
- BSD
- Windows Phone
- iPad
- Android Wear
- PortableApps.com
- Wire is the most secure collaboration platform featuring messenger, voice, video, conference calls, file-sharing, and external collaboration –all protected by the most secure end-to-end-encryption. Why Wire?
- Free Personal • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Android Tablet
- iPad
- Self-Hosted
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Pidgin is an easy to use, multi-protocol chat client client used by millions. Connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, XMPP, and more chat networks all at once. It has built-in support for NSS, offering client-to-server message encryption for protocols that support it.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- PortableApps.com
- Xfce
- Conversations is a privacy focused, open source XMPP Texting [Jabber] client for Android 4.0+ smart phones with wife-approved easy encryption [OTR, OMEMO, or GPG]. [Note] **You can download the compiled apk for free from F-Droid**: ...
- Free • Open Source
- Android
- Android Tablet
- Facebook Messenger is a faster way to message. Reach friends right on their phones, get and send messages fast, message everyone at once and more.
- Free • Proprietary
- Windows
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Blackberry
- Windows S
- Android Tablet
- Windows Phone
- iPad
- Apple Watch
- Android Wear
- Trillian is an instant messaging app that works on phones, tablets, and desktops while keeping your chats neatly synchronized between all of them! We think conversation should be easily shared between all of your devices, not trapped as text messages on your phone.
- Freemium • Proprietary
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Blackberry
- iPad
- Adium is a free and open source instant messaging application for Mac OS X, written using Mac OS Xs Cocoa API, released under the GNU GPL and developed by the Adium team.
- Open source Jabber (XMPP) client with multi-account support, clean and simple interface. Being both free (as in freedom!) and ad-free, Xabber is designed to be the best Jabber client for Android .
- Empathy is a messaging program which supports text, voice, video chat, and file transfers over many different protocols. You can tell it about your accounts on all those services and do all your chatting within one application.
Discontinued
Empathy is currently unmaintained. Last version, 3.25, released in August 2017, can be still downloaded from the official website.