As an organisation, you want to be easy to reach for your target group or audience. That’s why many organisations use messaging apps, alongside being reachable by phone or email. But that’s not their only function: messaging is also widely used for collaboration and for maintaining communities.
Mention messaging, and many people immediately think of WhatsApp. With more than 13 million users in the Netherlands, it’s the most widely used communication app and, for many people, the platform for staying in touch. Unfortunately, using WhatsApp does come with some downsides. WhatsApp is owned by Meta, the company that’s also behind Facebook and Instagram. Meta’s main business model is selling personalised advertising, and to do that as effectively as possible, it wants to collect as much information as possible about everyone. Messages in one-to-one chats are encrypted by default, so Meta can’t easily read along, but that protection isn’t there for group chats or chats linked to a helpdesk or support system. And even without reading the messages, Meta can infer all kinds of personal information from usage data.
So this month, we’re looking at alternatives for: chat tools.
Signal
When Meta came under fire in early 2025 over a major change of course, a National Switch Day was spontaneously organised. Since then, Signal has found its way onto more and more people’s phones. With around 2.3 million installations in 2026, it has grown rapidly.
Signal is easy to install on your phone. For the office, there’s also a desktop app that makes it easier to manage in a professional setting. Once you have a Signal account, you’ll find a personal link or QR code in your profile. You can put this on your organisation’s website so people can easily find your organisation on Signal. Already have a ‘Contact us via WhatsApp’ button on your website? Then consider replacing it with a ‘Contact us via Signal’ button. And if you don’t want to replace the WhatsApp option, put the Signal option prominently next to it. That way, at least you’re giving people a choice.
Besides a link to your account, which people can use to communicate one-to-one with your organisation, you can also create and share links that lead directly to a group chat in Signal. People who click the link and don’t have Signal installed yet will see simple instructions for downloading it straight away.
Signal is introducing the option to create an account without a phone number. Handy for organisations that don’t have a spare mobile number. For now, this option is only available via the Android app, but it’s expected to come to other platforms soon.
Signal is a much better choice than WhatsApp, because its security is stricter and because Signal doesn’t process people’s data for advertising or data sales. Signal’s business model is based on donations, which makes it a lot friendlier to your privacy. Still, Signal isn’t the be-all and end-all. Like WhatsApp, Signal is a centralised platform. All communication runs through Signal’s infrastructure (part of which is hosted on the Amazon cloud, of all places), and it’s managed by a single organisation. That’s why we’re looking a bit further at other ways to communicate via chat that give you even more autonomy over your environment.
Delta Chat
Another app (mobile and desktop) that can be seen as an alternative to WhatsApp is Delta Chat. Unlike WhatsApp and Signal, Delta Chat has no central authority in charge of the network. It actually works just like email: anyone can set up a server, and anyone can chat with anyone. In fact, Delta Chat isn’t just like email, it actually is email, but for short, well-secured messages. To do this, Delta Chat uses the same protocol that’s used for sending email. But instead of long reams of text, only short messages are sent back and forth. The app takes care of encryption, so people can email each other securely. Both one-to-one and in groups.
Delta Chat isn’t very popular yet, so if you want to get started with it, you’ll have to persuade people to use it yourself. But its open nature and its use of an existing, proven protocol do give it potential.
PubHubs
Not all the chat groups you want to use as an organisation are public. Sometimes you want the chat to take place in a secure environment that keeps out prying eyes and people with the wrong intentions. Think, for example, of patient associations where participants want to share sensitive personal information, or groups with vulnerable young people. In that case, you may not want to chat via a standard chat app, and you’re better off switching to an environment designed specifically for that purpose.
If you want to set up your own chat environment as an organisation, you’ll need to install the software, which is open source, on your own server (or have it installed) and join the PubHubs network. All hubs are fully independent, but to let people easily ‘hop’ from one Hub to another, your organisation does need to join the central PubHubs organisation, which makes sure people can log in securely and can also arrange moderation at a central level.
To guarantee that security, people who want to chat can’t simply create an account. They first have to identify themselves with a special application that lets them prove they meet the chat groups’ access requirements. With this login method, based on Yivi, people can prove, for example, that they’re over 18 or live in a certain postcode area, without having to upload their identity documents.
Once inside, people can take part in sensitive conversations safely and anonymously. If these thresholds are a bit too high and security plays a smaller role, there are, of course, countless other applications that let you chat independently of big tech.
Messaging like a pro
Many organisations now also use chat as an internal communication channel, with tools like Slack or Teams, for example. Some organisations also use these tools to build and maintain communities, or to communicate with their target group.
There’s a whole range of open source team chat tools that you can host yourself or have hosted. If you manage an open source chat tool yourself, your organisation is in charge of what happens with it. Self-hosting often keeps costs down too. You do have to pay the hosting provider for server space and management, but you don’t have to pay per user per month. Especially if you don’t use such a tool just for your own team or department, but want to involve lots of people from outside your organisation, a solution of your own can work out cheaper.
There are a great many alternative team chat tools. Take a look at eu-alt.nl, European Alternatives or OpenAlternative.co, for example. We’ve picked out a few highlights:
Open core
Two software packages that are often mentioned as alternatives to Slack or Teams are Mattermost and Rocket.Chat. These tools have been around for a long time and are very stable. Unfortunately, they aren’t fully open source, but have an open core. This means there’s an open basic version you can download and use, but it comes with limitations, for example on the number of accounts you can create or the number of messages that can be kept in the archive. If your organisation or community grows, you’ll need to buy a licence to use the full version. Not entirely ideal, unfortunately. Where the companies behind these tools used to focus on small organisations that wanted their own chat, these days they mainly focus on large government organisations for which security is a top priority.
Open source
If you want to go for a fully open source team chat, Zulip is a tool you can use. Zulip is developed by a company in the United States that is owned by a non-profit, so the platform’s development is sustainably safeguarded.
At Zulip.com, you can open an account straight away and get started with Zulip. Unfortunately, though, your data won’t be hosted within the EU. If you do want that (recommended), the only way is to install Zulip on your own server within the EU. You’ll then have full control and ownership of all your data.
Open standard
If you use a chat tool of your own (such as Zulip), you do create a silo of your own: everyone with an account can chat with each other, but people on different platforms can’t talk to each other. To make sure chat services can work together easily, and that participants from one platform can also join groups run by other organisations, you can use tools that support an open standard chat protocol. There are several, but for applications like team chat, the Matrix protocol is very popular at the moment.
If you use a Matrix-based chat tool, people’s account names are followed by the server name, just as with email. For example: @yourname:yourorganisation.nl. The same goes for chat rooms or channels. You can find the PublicSpaces chat room via various Matrix-based chat tools, for instance, by searching for #publicspaces:publicspaces.net.
Element
The developers of the Matrix protocol have also made an app. It lets you chat via the Matrix protocol on the web, your desktop or your phone. In Element, you can chat by text, but if you like, you can also have audio or video calls. Handy if you want to talk to people who are a little less handy with a keyboard.
Besides the Element app, you’ll also need to set up a Matrix server that makes chatting via your own domain name possible. That’s a specialist job, but fortunately there are several providers in Europe who can do it for you.
A selection of Matrix hosting providers:
Interoperability
A big advantage of chatting with Matrix is that people who already have a Matrix account can simply join a chat room or channel without having to create a separate account. And the fact that Matrix is a widely used standard is clear from the fact that Mattermost and Rocket.Chat, mentioned above, can both communicate with Matrix channels too. Even PubHubs, mentioned earlier, builds on the Matrix standard, although, unfortunately, the authorisation it requires to guarantee security means it isn’t interoperable with other Matrix-based platforms.
Do it differently
Finally, one more platform in the ‘out of the box’ category that’s definitely worth exploring if you want to set up an online community or collaborative space with a (perhaps younger) target group. If you remember Habbo Hotel, this one might appeal to you:
WorkAdventure
WorkAdventure is a graphical meeting place that lets you walk around a world of your own in your web browser. As an organisation, you can design your own world (or have it designed) and fill it with all kinds of interactive objects. Videos, games, streams or even a spreadsheet (should you need one). All chat participants walk around the space with their avatars. You can create corners where people can talk together by text or video. A really fun, playful way to break out of the dull experience of a chat tool. Interested? Drop by the office of the makers of this great open source product:
To wrap up
Chatting without big tech is perfectly possible. Which tool suits you best depends mainly on the kind of conversations you want to have and the audience you want to involve. Using open standards also lets you put your own spin on such an environment. Have questions, or just want to chat with the PublicSpaces community on Matrix? Here’s where you’ll find us.
