Videocall, Group Chat, and Information Tools

Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

11 Mar 2020, 12:04 p.m.

COVID-19

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2020 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

As large groups rapidly adapt to online learning/working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom/Google Meet and Slack are turning into unexamined defaults. I recommend these useful alternative online collaboration tools for groups:

Indie groupchat (special cheap/free hosted plans available for open source projects, nonprofits, groups of friends, & other noncommercial entities): Zulip. [Disclaimer: I have worked (paid) for Kandra Labs on Zulip.]
Indie-ish videocalling (works in the browser, no need to install new software, guests don't need a login): Whereby.
Not-the-big-companies-as-far-as-I-know phone/web conference calling: Uberconference (not related to the ridehailing company Uber).

Also: right now, I am appreciating the women who wrote and maintain: