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Skype is terrible. The call quality sucks, it's overpriced, video calling sucks, screen sharing sucks, and recently text messaging stop working almost completel
by iamleppert 8y ago
Skype is terrible. The call quality sucks, it's overpriced, video calling sucks, screen sharing sucks, and recently text messaging stop working almost completely. So what did they do? They moved the ability to text to some arcane sub-menu, it's still there, albeit non-functional.
That was the last straw for me before my account got the axe.
- xevb3k 8y agoWhat’s a good alternative, that has native apps for Mac/Windows/iOS/Android, and isn’t attached to a social network? (Ideally with the ability of callout, buy a phone number etc)
- savanaly 8y agoSlack/discord.
- saagarjha 8y ago> native
- Rjevski 8y agoFYI, Skype is no longer native either. They killed off beautiful native clients and replaced them with Electron shit.
- saagarjha 8y agoI'm still using the native client, which really isn't all that bad. But the new one is horrendous.
- stephenr 8y agoThe native (they called it "Classic" on the download page) is no longer available for download. I found this out the hard way.
- nasredin 8y ago>>>I found this out the hard way. Lesson learned. Stallman up and stop relying on proprietary systems that spy on you and cooperate with murderous regimes.
- stephenr 8y agoBeing proprietary had nothing to do with it. They made a technical decision to shelve/bin their native desktop app code, in favour of Electron. There are 5K public repos on GitHub alone that match a search for "Electron" are they all spying on me and cooperating with murderous regimes?
- v_lisivka 8y agoGnome3 made technical decision to use JavaScript, but users revolted and forked Gnome2 written in C (now: Mate). Gnome is free software, while Skype is proprietary. Skype users have no right to revolt.
- larkeith 8y agoDiscord has apps for Windows/Android/iOS/Linux, as well as a surprisingly good web interface. I've switched over completely from Skype and been consistently impressed.
- pandapower2 8y agoUnsure if you can buy a number but we have found Google Voice a good replacement, at least in terms of ability to make cheap phone calls.
- lawl 8y agoFor VOIP I've just been using TeamSpeak3. I'd prefer mumble, but TS3 is more user friendly and running a server on a cheap VPS is simple. No callouts/phone numbers though, pure VOIP, and probably hard to get a customer to join a TS3 server if you try using it professionally. But imo gaming VOIP is miles ahead of everything else, because gaming has relied on it for a long time. None of the non-gaming VOIP solutions (I know of) even have voice activation, which drives me crazy. For text, my friend circle has shifted to just using whatsapp web, again, I'd prefer Signal,or Matrix (or even IRC), but there's the network effect shrugs. I can live with TS3 and whatsapp over Microsoft Skype any day of the year.
- rglullis 8y agoHey, I looked into your HN profile but there is no contact info. I'd like to get in touch with you. I am working on a side project, to offer VoIP (Matrix, XMPP, SIP) and social media hosting services. When pitching the idea to people, network effects are indeed cited as the issue to solve. I am trying to provide an answer by selling package plans, basically as a means for enabling the privacy-aware people to help bring their contacts/friends/family along. Anyway, it would be great to get in touch with you, I'd like to send you an invite link and see if you could validate some of the ideas. :)
- aldarn 8y agoCheck out Dialpad (https://dialpad.com https://dialpad.com) - it has native apps for all the platforms that you listed, and no attachment to social networks. You will also receive a phone number. Feel free to ping me if you have any questions. Disclaimer: I am affiliated with Dialpad.
- xevb3k 8y agoSo far, it’s clear from the replies there isn’t really an alternative with a similar feature set. I guess this is why Skype persists (anyone what to start up an alternative? :)).
- Kliment 8y agoThere are plenty alternatives what sucks is that there are too many of them and having 20 applications just to fucking chat with people is awful.
- xevb3k 8y agoI’ve not seen an idea suggested that solves all the issues Skype does in one package, and doesn’t add other baggage. To be fair, Skype also appears to be trying to add a lot of baggage too.
- circa 8y agoI've moved most of my users to Microsoft Teams and its not much better.
- randiantech 8y agoCompared to corporate skype is orders of magnitude better imo. Teams at least is on the right direction from a ux perspective.
- pandapower2 8y agoThe last straw for me was having an account stolen after foolishly resetting the account password while on hotel wifi. No TFA, that part was my fault. The investigation took weeks and the final resolution was "the account is gone, the credit in it is gone, just create another account."
- drb91 8y agoWait, does that mean they do password resets over plain text?
- rrdharan 8y agoPresumably the commenter got tricked into giving up their credentials to a fake Skype phishing page served via a hacked/insecure/malicious WAP.
- pandapower2 8y agoUnknown. The reset was done by a family member so I can't be sure. They are pretty tech savvy and work in IT but who knows. If it was a phishing page it was presumably (hopefully?) a reasonably convincing one. The password reset happened two days into a seven day vacation. The account takeover happened while we were flying home. That the attacker waited until we were likely to be completely offline for several hours makes me suspicious that either hotel staff or staff at the hotel's Internet provider were involved. We have contacted the hotel but they seem uninterested.
- notatcomputer68 8y agoThat's clever! I wonder if they would go to all that effort just for a Skype balance. Maybe tried to use the Skype as a staging point for attacking other things?
- rwmj 8y agoWhen the Skype account of a friend of mine was taken over, it was used to DM spam links to all the contacts.
- user5994461 8y agoAgreed. Slack is so much better for voice calls, video calls and screen sharing. Just kidding. Slack supports none of these features and neither the other competitors. There is just nothing comparable to skype.
- pmalynin 8y agoWhat? Slack for sure supports voice calls and screen sharing.
- rorykoehler 8y agoBarely. It has never worked even remotely good enough to use in a professional setting whenever I tried using it. Skype is way better in terms of call quality and stability.
- gleb 8y agoZoom is good for all of the above. But very confusing UX for maintaining the friends graph and chatting arguably.
- scrollaway 8y agoDiscord supports all those things, really well. Far better than Skype.
- Onawa 8y agoI adore Discord's seamless voice chatting abilities, as well as its chat functionality. Unfortunately since they have initially decided to focus on strictly cloud-based deployments with no option for local deployments, it's a not a viable alternative where strict control is needed over deployments.
- komali2 8y agoEr, is this awkwardly employed sarcasm? Slack absolutely has video calls, voice calls, and screen sharing. I use all 3 features nearly daily...