5 Things I Love About Ryver

If you are part of any organization, you’re using digital technology to keep in touch with that organization’s members and goings-on. The fact that you are reading this tells me that you are not among the percentage of the world’s population that communicates solely around the village common or campfire. (If that’s part of your weekend plans, then that’s different. Read on.)

That being the case, you’re probably communicating about your most vital projects via e-mail, text message, or social media messengers. That’s all fine and dandy, but it’s not necessary anymore, because a disruptive shift is taking place in messaging generally and project management specifically.

I’m talking, of course, about team collaboration tools, which seem to become more numerous by the moment. Still, their use is a relatively new phenomenon, and many of the organizations most likely to benefit have never heard of even one of these platforms. Try polling ten of your non-tech, non-early-adopter friends and relatives about how they would use Slack, a leader in this space. You’ll most likely get blank stares and/or some comment about pants.

I’ve been a casual user of Slack for about a year now, and I enjoy its combination of simplicity and power. It’s like an old-school chat room, but with purpose. Users are invited by an administrator to topic-specific areas called “channels”, and initiating a private message with any other user is easy as pie. This brings teams together in a straightforward, user-friendly fashion.

What I don’t like about Slack are the limitations of its free version. In a large team, seemingly recent messages and documents are inaccessible because new activity has supplanted them. Depending on the needs of your organization, this issue can range from irritating to deal-breaker. Get ready to open your wallet for a paid plan, if it’s the latter.

There is an alternative, though. Well, there are quite a few. So when I decided to establish this sort of platform for a group I recently joined — one which spans several states and is growing quickly — I did a little research, and found that for my purposes, Ryver was the way to go. It has several benefits that I love, and here they are:

1. It does pretty much everything Slack does, without limits, for free.

Without going into too much detail — especially since Ryver has done that for me — Ryver replicates my favorite things about Slack, but it never curbs my searches for old files or messages, and it doesn’t place limits on the number of users. So, I can build out the entirety of my organization without worrying about losing anything useful, or leaving anyone out. Ryver will grow with my organization.

2. Integrations

Thanks to connection hero Zapier, Ryver can integrate with hundreds of other applications, such as vital social media accounts, and even other project management tools, like Trello.

3. Video Conferencing

Through a partnership with FreeConference, Ryver users can kick their conversations up a notch with audio or video conferencing. The platform is surprisingly robust for being free, and, depending on your needs, could replace larger, costlier applications. Did I mention that it’s free to use?

4. Chats and Posts

Ryver lets me decide if I want to join into a stream-of-consciousness chat with my colleagues, or post a specific topic of importance under which applicable replies can be stored. I can even “promote” a chat message to “post” status, and grab any relevant existing chat messages to add in. This allows your most organized users to clean up, file, label and categorize to their hearts’ content, all the time making your team’s most important ideas more effective and more easily referenced.

5. Ryver is right here in PHX.

The driving force behind Ryver is Pat Sullivan, co-founder of other well-known Valley services, Act! and SalesLogix. Added to the reasons above, Ryver’s address in Scottsdale makes it a must-use for me. Its success can only be good for the rest of the Phoenix area’s growing community of entrepreneurs.

So there you have it. Even if you don’t live anywhere near Phoenix, there are four good reasons to give Ryver a shake at modernizing, optimizing, and awesomizing your team’s communication. If you need one more, their customer service is crazy responsive, and will fill in the info gaps that I’ve left. Happy chatting!