Messaging Apps Overview
If you want to create a group chat for your XR group, there are loads of different options and making the right choice can be difficult. In this document, we will compare the four apps most commonly used by XR groups:
Have you thought about your purpose and communication needs? For example who needs to know, will you invite them and manage the membership, is it a long or short term chat? You may well choose more than one app, or more than one chat within that, and manage them differently for different reasons.
Whatever you do - make sure you don't just default to the same channel for all your conversations!
If you don't want to read the detailed pages, here is a quick breakdown of the different scores for each messaging app:
 WhatsApp |
 Telegram |
 Mattermost |
 Signal |
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Ultimately which tool you decide to go with comes down to what you and the other people in your group are comfortable with. However, our recommendations can be summarised as:
If your group...
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...organises lots of different things at once, use Mattermost. The extra features and discoverability should really help to make your group more productive.
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...organises a lot of actions, use Mattermost combined with Signal for the added security. Also don't forget to enable disappearing messages.
Whatsapp is widely used by people outside of XR
But it is not secure and is limited in its functionalities so M&M does not advise using it for organising. It also doesn’t sync up with Mattermost or other XR broadcasts.
Telegram is used by XR UK for broadcasts
It’s an encrypted messaging service similar to WhatsApp but with greater flexibility and features. You can edit and pin messages, see the chat history, locate media and each chat can hold a large number of people. It’s also accessible on nearly any device. A limit on message word count can impact broadcast posts.
Mattermost is XR’s main messaging app for working groups
It functions on its own server making it particularly secure. It is accessible on any device and has tons of flexible features and ways of storing and searching for information. The drawback is that it can be overwhelming in layout and content and requires time to master. It’s more similar to Slack or Discord.
Signal is used by action planning groups
It’s the most secure encrypted chat, with a disappearing message function. It’s also visually clean and crisp. However, it’s not possible to pin or thread messages or edit your messages after 15 minutes, making it less useful for mass communications.
Where possible please use existing chats, rather than creating more new ones. Let’s work together to prevent information overwhelm.
Consider one closed group chat for organising actions (usually a temporary group on signal or private Mattermost channel) and one open chat for participation (usually on Telegram/public Mattermost)