Chat software comparison. Your opinion please.
 

I am in need of a full featured chat room solution that offers vb integration, a good interface and chatting experience to 25 - 60 concurrent users. I do not want a hosted solution. I do not think a chat room should cost more than a few hundred bucks.

Flashchat or IRC are not an option.

I found these solutions:

cometchat
Arrowchat
Avchat
Gchats
phpopenchat
Gagalive
v3chat
Prochatrooms
Flasherize
123flashchat
Addonchat
Realchat
Parachat
Flashcoms seems extremely expensive.
Digichat
sparkweb
Blab IM
Mibbit

Logician explains his views on Digichat, Flashchat, Realchat, Parachat in his blog: http://www.logician.org/8-chat-appli...lchat-parachat

What are your opinions on the above? What chat room would you recommend and why?

Addon chat RULES IMHO.

1) Living breathing tech support that is keen and courteous.
2) last update was not way back in 2002 or something.. :rolleyes:
3) isn't messing with your database / server
4) seems to be an ongoing 'in development' product

Further on that, I don't think its criminal to have developed a software and to just leave it as it is - cool... you sit back and just count the money...but dont expect any interest from me.. With 40,000 + members - I cant be dealing with abandoned software or 'distant' tech support..:erm:


But I am still in a trial period so...

Features missing from Addonchat IMHO are:

Filesharing (that was fun in Flashcat)
Being able to visit the chat in invisible mode (good for Admins to be able to do this IMHO)

So I am still open minded

You forgot to include "None of the above". Or at least "Other".

I'm on a shared server so my chat couldn't handle too many people anyway. For some odd reason my users seem to prefer a shoutbox.

I use FlashChat


My members actually prefer a shoutbox as well.

I used flashchat as well, but I got tired of it getting hacked again and again. Was a real headache.
Upsides: The functionality of flashchat is nice. My members surely liked it. Price is good.
Downsides are the lag, it can't take too many chatters, security keeps being a problem.

Now i want to spend up to 300 bucks for a good chat system.

I would like a chatroom that allows voice, is there such a program out there that would work with Vbulletin??

AV Chat and Gchat do that, but I am sure that there are more of the above. Just click on the links and review the features. Please post your findings here.

I'm looking for one that allows you to display photos during chat. Any ideas?

I installed Sparkweb - members love it, and works fast and simple. As it uses jabber you can also use a client.

Do you have it set up with VB integration sharing member logins ?

Could you post or PM a link to the page where you have sparkweb working?

Sure do :)

You can join at my site (you have to be a member to go to chat) and click on Chat in the main menu to see it working :)

Where can I find installation instructions?

The only chat software I used with vBulletin is addonchat.
Fast, stable and secure and there's a free version.

I use ShoutMix $2/month... very clean, fast and simple.

http://www.shoutmix.com/main/

Why PJIRC not? :mad:

pjirc is java client for irc server
not every user has access directly to an irc server
(in many cases company/university firewalls block connections on all other ports exept 80/http and 443/https)
furthermore irc has limitations to user nicknames and some nicks may be already used by someone else.

ps.
sparkweb seems interesting
i'll try to setup it to my server

sparkweb is great - that's what i use :)

www.mibbit.com is a great for irc as all members can use it - even behind firewalls.

RealChat is very good out of the box and its the most good looking one (according to my taste) but I wouldn't recommend it to any developer out there or any demanding admin. You get stuck with the original features and look (you can only customize the colors and the graphics - but you have to keep the graphics the same size). Its closed source, even if you offer extra payment, so you can't make changes to the software by yourself and the developer refuses to do paid modifications. It also seems quite abandoned. You can't even change the smilie shortcuts or add/remove smilies (you can change the graphics though, as long as your new smilies are not animated and at the same size or smaller) and the predefined smilie shortcuts suck.

123flashchat has more features and even though its closed source (it wasn't in the past, but it is now, sadly), you can pay for modifications. However, its customer support is terrible and its interface looks amateurish and its quite buggy. Its development isn't dead though, so we can hope for the future.

Digichat looks very nice and I got to know it better thanks to this thread. I haven't bought it, as I've already spent ~$1000 in the above products, so I'm not sure we can afford to try a third one, and I feel very sorry I didn't notice it more when I was searching. I had stumbled across their site, but I didn't appreciate the looks of the chat, so I didn't check the features as carefully as I should have. If I had done this, I would have seen that it can be very customized. I feel so stupid. :(

Can a moderator please add the following options to this poll:
Digichat
Realchat
Parachat
Flashcoms
Sparkweb

Hello,

EvoiceCafe We used for our voice chat. It is okay but limited to PC's and the technical support is not very good. Requires Active X and sometimes can be a big hassle to get users to be able to chat. Pricing is okay not great.

Parachat Is what we use for text chat. Not bad priced and easy to integrate with vb. Technical support is good. We have used Parachat for over 4 years now and are happy with it. Price is based on seats just as most programs. They have a hosted version or server which you can host your own.

We tried 123flash chat and had a very bad experience with tech support and decided it wasn't for us.

We currently use PalTalk for voice chat. Not bad Fairly easy to setup but does not integrate with vb currently. You can get a basic room for free or upgrade to more features etc for a small price.

Also have tried irc but let another person said unless you get on a small irc server names are limited and the learning curve for irc is a bit higher in my opinion. They do make some good Java front ends for irc but we choose not to go this route.

We are constantly look at chat programs but have not found the right one to use for both text and voice since we use it for meetings. Certain features we need that some don't seem to be higher priced and just have not found the right fit yet.


Those are my experiences with chats.


R.

"Fast" is good. But I might give up a little speed if the app used 0 server load. In other words, sponsored chat - like an integrated Google Lively.

I like to have control over all my software, including chat box. So I would only use something that can be installed on my server. And on your own server, low server load and speed are connected.

I'm not really a fan of any chat scripts, IMO it takes away from the forum itself :(

I bought Digichat and wish I hadn't. It was ok. Support was horrible and slow. Looking to get something else. I like the looks of 123flashchat but it's ridiculously expensive once you get the modules that you'd need so I dunno.

The vbchat thread certainly has a lot of screenshots, and probably all the answers to your other questions. Do a search: vbchat-all mods-titles only

Anyway, that would be the place to ask questions after you've read through the whole thread.

I would appreciate more opinions on what the best chat software is for boards that have a good number of active chatters.

123flashchat unlimited version is ...... $1599 :eek:

None of the above?

Me too actually. I have flashchat at the moment, which has gone to hell with the 5.x version (full of bugs).

Looking for mainly text based chat, ability to share photos, bad words filter, can handle up to 50 chatters at the same time, can install on my own dedicated server, allows for moderated chat, and preferably a one time fee. Video,whiteboard support, and file sharing is optional.

Anywhere up to $250.

I saw Meebo mentioned recently, but has anyone tried it yet? How hard is it to install?

Meebo is ok, very easy to install - much prefer mibbit though (www.mibbit.com

what about blab?

IDK about those. I use XAT.

Does anyone know of a live chat that allows members to share images while they talk?

I see 123flashchat is leading the poll but no one has actually mentioned it within the thread, can anyone shed some light on it, I'm on there page however if it were my product I would obviously tell everyone its great, I would like to hear from fellow vBulletin admin how intensive it is on the server, as I currently use flashchat which knocks the load up quite a bit.

All the server side solutions including flash will greatly increase your server load once more than a few people join the room. How many you could handle depends on a lot of factors, but in general I wouldn't count on a shared server to support more than 5 or so during busy times.

I recently added AddonChat free. It works, and zero server load since they host the chat on their servers, but the free version is sorely lacking in features.

I need a chat that will log chats. I have flashchat but it dont work right for some reason.

Any suggestions it also must intergrate with VB

IRC and log it :)

AddOnChat is what I'm looking to get because I'm going to need the ability to moderate chats.