Is It New Slack For Generation Z Entrepreneurs?
Yes, you heard it right. Today, i am gonna talk about my experience with more awesome, less painful, beautifully designed platform and its dozens of feature that makes it one of the best team collaboration platform available in the market right now which is known as
Wait, Let the name be in Chamber of Secrets for the sake of suspense.

So, Its all started with a simple google search when i was just randomly searching for a solution of my problem which was “Free Alternative of Slack”. Being a student entrepreneur who’s bootstrapping his startup and the only source of income is his savings and pocket money, worth of single penny gets 100x. Me and my friends weren’t in a condition to afford some paid subscription for collaboration and we needed basic premium features(like chat history etc). So, we decided to switch to something that can prove to be a free alternative and yeah for that we were willing to drop some special features from our bucket. As, i starting searching I came across some few different platform but there was one which was trending on Github. Being a developer and FOSS(Free and Open Source Software) lover, I got fascinated towards it. I checked it out and went through documentation/Getting Started/How to Use Guide and Guess What?
It had all the features. Yaayyyy !!! :D
Lets Have a Look Into Chamber of Secret.
So, this platform has been named as Rocket Chat.

As, Rocket.Chat’s define themselves “The Ultimate Open Source Web Chat Platform”. Believe me it is but i don’t want you to believe me blindly and obvio why would you do so? So, let draw some light on the facts that can prove that its the next Gen Web chat solution.
- Multi-Platform
As other platform, Rocket.Chat is available for each platform i.e Android, iOS, Windows App, Web, Firefox OS and list goes on. So, i don’t need to worry about platform.
My Reaction After this- “Uhhh !! Okay, others are also available for all platform. Though, its available on some extra platform but it doesn’t matter.”

- Setup As You Want
Have you ever felt that there should be your company name instead of chat’s brand name? I don’t know about you but i like to personalise each and everything before using it. And yeah who doesn’t want its company name on the screen.
My Reaction After this- “Ummm. This thing is getting interesting as much as i am reading.”

- All Features
Are you a frequent user of following feature:
* Share Files (PDFs, Images, Videos etc) with your peers.
* Video Conferencing.
* Live Chat.
* Screen Sharing.
* Tex Math Rendering.
* User base can be scaled easily. (1..10..100..1000..10000.. goes on).
* Each and every other feature.
* Self Hosted.
* Support.
* Ask if you need something.
* Developers API
My Reaction After this- “Whhhhaaatt!! It has got every feature. No need to drop any required feature and so much of privacy”.

To be serious by this time, i made my mind that there’s going to be some catch. No one gives these much of features.
- Companies are Adapting Rocket.Chat instead of other
So, being a student I have less experience and its true whenever we think of buying something we look for reviews. We go on Youtube, we Google it and we ask our friends to get some professional advice. So, best way to get reviews about a product is to see which companies(clients) are adapting that product and in the case of Rocket.Chat, this list too is huge. Not just clients this platform also holds many awards and have been getting awesome feedback. So, it made a huge positive impact on me. Not just Rocket.Chat, recently Uber ditched Slack and made its own chat platform and it makes sense.

I want to keep this blog short because no one likes reading too much and we don’t have got that much time right??? So, lets wrap it up by my final thoughts.
So, at the end i decided to switch to Rocket.Chat but one of the main question that people ask me and makes sense is that “If someone needs to self host rocket chat on its own server/cloud, then wouldn’t be bad idea to switch to it?”- Yes, this concern makes sense as cloud is very expensive and i would like to defend it by …..
Nowadays, usually Devs/Designers or startups get free cloud credits through lot of promotions/student packs/events and a lot more(Some new company comes or from various hackathons). Not just that most of the startups get incubated under most popular program like Google Launchpad Accelerator, Microsoft Bizspark, AWS activate, Oracle Cloud Accelerator Program, etc under which they can spare some credits for their chat platform and as Rocket.Chat is so flexible that it can run on every cloud system just by taking a little assets , it makes easy for startups like us to afford it. In return of some credits, we can get premium service and believe me at the end it will worth a lot by having your own platform. Also, it gives professional feel to your startup HEHEHE :D .

So, in the end.
I would like to say do try demo of Rocket.Chat — demo.rocket.chat
Say Hola to Them- Twitter, Facebook, Github
It’s my personal experience, team is very friendly even if you don’t want to switch from slack that’s Okaayyy !! But do have some chit chat with them. Go to their site and message them right from the chat box. They are very awesome team and can guide you on many things and yeah yeah yeah .. It’s free guys. No need to pay. (For me this is the best thing. LOL!!!)

Do comment on my blog and share your experience with me. :)
