Franz
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Franz is a 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.
License model
- Freemium • Open Source
Application types
Country of Origin
Austria
EU
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
Features
Franz News & Activities
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- lstar1990 liked Franz
POX added Franz as alternative to Quick Web Apps- VicQueiroz liked Franz
RemovedUser added Franz as alternative to Luviconnect- does not think Lightweight wrapper is a important feature of Franz
- K0RR added Franz as alternative to postmoogle
Franz information
Developed by
Stefan Malzner Licensing
Open Source (Apache-2.0) and Freemium product.Pricing
Subscription ranging between $3 and $8 per month + free version with limited functionality.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 2.4Alternatives
74 alternatives listedSupported Languages
AlternativeTo Categories
Social & Communications, OS & UtilitiesGitHub repository
- 4,603 Stars
- 581 Forks
- 388 Open Issues
- Updated Apr 9, 2025
Comments and Reviews
More polished then most of the alternatives out there (Rambox, Station, Wavebox). One inexplicably missing feature and the primary reason I'm still using Wavebox is navigational shortcuts (e.g. alt+left arrow & alt+right arrow).
The program itself is a bloated, laggy mess. If you're not familiar, basically it has a whole instance of chromium inside the program, just so it can render a webpage, where the buttons and chats are divs or whatever. You get a program hundreds of megabytes big, sucking up a bunch of memory, just to send some texts back and forth. Apparently this is how we develop GUI in 2019.
What's worse is the model. Initially it was free to use, but the author soon revealed that to be a classic bait and switch. A new update now requires you to make an account to use the program at all. To be clear: make an account means you give the owners of Franz all your chat account names and passwords and they record all of that data and probably sell it to God knows who. And, the author's main interest is to make people pay for that, hence naturally he forced everyone to use an account to cajole people into buying the subscription. He claims that this is because of the costs of infrastructure. Yes, I bet vacuuming up everyone's chats puts a big strain on the infrastructure! Meanwhile, the irony of demanding payment for something that is essentially a parasite sitting on top of another free chat service seems to be lost in translation.
I found it amusing to read the Github issues that followed the requirement for accounts, and the authors' disingenuous handwringing about "listening to the community". Shortly after, of course, he told the community to get lost, because he wants his money, see, and if you've been supporting the app from the beginning by using and giving feedback, but don't think it's fair to be cast by the wayside like this, then sucks to be you, buddy! Oh, he phrased it in a much more polite way, of course, as only a true slimeball could.
Don't fall for the bait and switch, don't waste your time with this crapware, and don't support evil developers who see their users as bags of money, not people. Let this awful client follow the fate of its namesake - an angry, vicious man at the helm of an oppressive, bureaucratic dictatorship that brought about one of the greatest tragedies in history.
Three services before a demand for payment, useless if one is looking for a free something to use causally!!
Franz was my first foray into the world combining chat and messaging into one application. At that time it was free and open source, but now it has moved into a subscription tier, and the free version is very limited with ads. So I no longer carry the impression that it's truly open source. Nevertheless, I have moved on from Franz as the services are more like web page wrappers, resulting in sluggish usage.
"I paid for the annual Franz subscription a year ago. This year, they deducted money again for the annual subscription without any warning. I've tried contacting customer support multiple times, but haven't received any response. I've written several times requesting a refund, but they haven't processed it, likely because they are not responding. It seems like the application has been inactive for a while, and they are simply deducting money. It appears to be fraudulent."
It's a nice and actively developed app, but far too expensive and limited for the cheaper or free plan. Free users even get nagged with waiting time sometimes. That's not acceptable imho.
You need an account for either Franz or Rambox. I was not liking the Franz setup.. starts asking the messaging services I use. This looks like work to set up.. and I was looking for something magically integrated. Rambox allows a Google login and seems a little more unified.
Magically, wtf. The app can use whatever logins you already have one the supported networks (like you have to have a Facebook account is you want to use it within Franz). Sure it starts with setting up the existing accounts, the program is exactly for that purpose.