What's the best community chat app?

Question

I love Slack, but am wondering if there is a better app for creating a community around a particular topic. Something that is beautiful, easy, reliable, and allows anyone to join the conversation. Also, an app that allows people to search for communities and join them publicly.

Cedric Amaya · Accepted Answer

Open source, similar to Slack so low learning curve, multiple clients (desktop, mobile, and web). Try it out!

Tweegenic1 · Answer

Flock is best free chat app. All-in-all it fits perfectly in your requirements! 
There are a lot of reasons that Flock is the best! One being that it greatly reduces your dependency on apps for task tracking and setting up reminders due to its inbuilt PM tools.

Arun Augustine · Answer

Discord IMO is slicker for community/topic based conversations

Chakib Tsouli · Answer

I used this quite a few times, and I think it ticks all the boxes.

Mohammed Rafy · Answer

It's a new platform and it's impressive. You can create your own community like a social network.

Sam Rye · Answer

I didn't realise that I hadn't already added Mobilize, and they just released their 2.0

I like their ability to include people in discussions without requiring them to sign up for an account.

Manish Bhattacharya · Answer

You can try 'Stride by Atlassian' or Flock.com, they are almost Slack with more freebies.

Sarah Miller · Answer

I like it.

Srinivas Vedantam · Answer

Been around for a while and works like a charm.

Alec Jones · Answer

Hey, they don't seem to have Facebook Groups on PH - but that is what I would recommend. It isn't the prettiest, but it is definitely reliable, easy, and allows anyone to join.

Tim Kinnane · Answer

Rocket.Chat started as an open source Slack clone, but is now used and extended by a diverse range of communities with specific needs. Because its open and self hosted, there's a freedom of customisation, but also the privacy and security benefits of not relying on a platform ecosystem that might have adverse changes or go away.

Sam Rye · Answer

Mighty have been building a really impressive mobile-first product which covers social networking, publishing, courses and more. They've even made it easy to monetize

Karthik Manjunath · Answer

TMinus is a community based countdown app. A countdown is usually based on a topic or an event you're looking forward to.

Beautiful & easy - Subjective . But I would say it's easy to use. 
Reliable - The App is in Beta. 
Allows anyone to join the conversation - Yes. 
Search for communities and join them publicly - You could search for countdowns that would interest you and join them publicly.

Dailen · Answer

This really feels like it returns to the roots of what a "real time" community can be. Bulletin boards are more like knowledge base repositories and less like communities to me. Discord fits the bill here if you ask me.

Farooq A Rahim · Answer

Discord is too good..!

Daria Zwierz · Answer

I like its design and the system of badges.

Dev · Answer

Great for polls, discussions, debates and analytics

Aswin Bakshi · Answer

It's easy and straightforward to use and it has multiple third-party plugins.

Ace Queen · Answer

Lower-cost version of Slack with more functionality. It can have the occasional bug but the support team is quick to address them. Also handles files, code and images better.