Best Franz Alternatives
Franz is described as 'free messaging app / former Emperor of Austria and combines chat & messaging services into one application. Franz currently supports Slack, WhatsApp, WeChat, HipChat and many more. You can download Franz for Mac, Windows & Linux' and is a very popular instant messenger in the social & communications category. There are more than 50 alternatives to Franz for a variety of platforms, including Mac, Windows, Linux, Online / Web-based and Android. The best alternative is Rambox, which is free. Other great apps like Franz are Station, Hamsket, Ripcord and Ferdium.
Franz alternatives are mainly Instant Messengers but may also be Group Chat Apps or Video Calling Apps. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Franz.
Free and Cross Platform messaging and emailing app that combines common web applications into one.
Rambox vs Franz opinions
syntaxVery similar concept. Rambox is also open-source and supports more applications.
michalcianiaVery similar to Franz. Same base (Electron) and same concept (multi tabbed window with separate sessions). But Rambox is very immature and raw in design UI details, notification, user experience, so now I prefer to stay at Franz.
javaorcaDoesn't have problems with notifications for whatsapp and google chat as Franz has
RemovedUserIt's better, open-source, and cheaper.
MurzOpensource app with large list of supported messenger types!
Very similar plus it's opensource
edmundlaugassonRambox has similar concept like Franz and has more services than Franz which makes it extremely cool. However, Rambox is still too raw - it forgets your configuration when you try to restore from backup and when you have more than 25 services then you just do not see more than 25 and navigating between them is uncomfortable.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Microsoft Edge
- Google Chrome
- Brave
Station is the first open-source smart browser for busy people. A single place for all of your web applications.
Discontinued
From the GitHub repository: “This project is not actively maintained.”
Station vs Franz opinions
Had the services I wanted that Franz didn't, even with its recipes some apps were impossible to add.
Easier than franz to use, configure and consume less ram from computer!
Beautiful design and more easy to configure, right. A lot of apps, right. But, no languages support (only english) and really not consume less ram. On my test : 4 services connected on both (Franz and Station), Station takes about 2,1 Go of Ram ! Franz consume 700 mo. In comparision, I have also 30 opened tabs in Chrome and it consume about 1 Go of my Ram.
400+ apps. Very modern design. It has also a notifications manager.
Hamsket is a fork of Rambox that was started when Rambox moved from being totally free to a "freemium" model.
Hamsket vs Franz opinions
RemovedUserThis is the tracker-free version of Rambox which is the best alternative for Franz
- Free Personal • Proprietary
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Discord
- Slack
Ripcord is a desktop chat client for group-centric services like Slack and Discord. It provides a traditional compact desktop interface designed for power users.
Add all your services in one place for quick and easy access and never search your tabs or bookmarks again!
Ferdium vs Franz opinions
UraaelIt's Ferdi after the Ferdi developer threw a wobbly and walked away (Ferdi being forked from Franz after THAT developer started pricing a little too aggressively). If you liked Ferdi you'll like Ferdium 'cos it's the same, innit. Ferdium seems to be still getting updates but its future is anyone's guess at this point.
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.
- Freemium • Proprietary
- Online
- Windows Mobile
- Android
- iPhone
- Java Mobile
- Symbian S60
- HP webOS
- Blackberry
- Android Tablet
- Windows Phone
- iPad
- Kindle Fire
Chat everywhere! IM+ is the most widely used mobile IM app! Connect all-in-one to MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, AIM, Jabber, ICQ, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter on ALL popular mobile platforms.
The widest selection of unique features that you won't find in any other IM client!.
IM+ vs Franz opinions
Does not support the same range of messengers
Free open source Electron based multi instant messaging (IM) client.
Combine all your IM applications (or whatever you want) in a single browser (Electron) window.
Set your favorite apps on Biscuit, and they will function immediately. You won't need to spend time looking for your apps within your mountain of tabs.
No screenshots yet
Tangram is a new kind of browser. It is designed to organize and run your Web applications. Each tab is persistent and independant. You can set multiple tabs with different accounts for the same application.
Tangram vs Franz opinions
emascandamUnlike many alternatives that rely on Blink, Tangram relies on WebKit and thus some users might see memory improvement (it still used a lot of RAM though).