Chat software comparison. Your opinion please.

[Wonksta]

ArrowChat by far the best moved from the heavy Flashcomms system to this.

[Alfa1]

Originally Posted by Wonksta

ArrowChat by far the best moved from the heavy Flashcomms system to this.

In what sense did you find flashcoms a heavy system?

What do you like about Arrowchat?
How would you compare it to Cometchat?

[yotsume]

WOW Wibiya's system looks great!

http://www.wibiya.com/

Example of it integrated with VB is: http://www.symbiantalk.net/

Oh did I mention this one is free! I will have to test drive this one out.

[Alfa1]

Ask yourself first: Why is it free?

[Boofo]

RealChat is great if you can afford to spend the bucks on it. I ran that a few years ago and loved it.

[yotsume]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Ask yourself first: Why is it free?

Well it has a free version and 3 paid for services. Just a boat load of features. After testing it I do not need all the open social connections this one makes possible. However, other users may like it for their site.

I still rest with Cometchat for now...

[Digital Jedi]

I was running it for a while. I like it. It's just I had the bar too tricked out. I plan on putting it back once I decide on a scaled down version. It was pretty nice to call attention to certain articles using it, though. And I liked the multiple video chat option.

[topcmm]

Originally Posted by hqarrse

q 3rd to 'do not use 123flashchat'. I found a significant security hole in their VB/other forum integration, then my chat was hacked (they may not be at fault there) so I looked up exploits and found this:

http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/14658/

Given the weak coding of the plugins, the hack and the severity of those exploits I have stopped using 123FC and will be trying parachat instead.

What a shame, the security issue has been fixed long time ago in 123FlashChat v7.8 and 8.x, so no longer a problem.

[8thos]

I'm going to try ArrowChat. I need to figure out how their send/receive files function works first though.

Their videochat is better than CometChats. I've experimented with the both demos on their sites using explorer, firefox and chrome.

[Akyeame Kwame]

Flashcoms Community Chat 7 is AMAZING when it works well, which in the few weeks I've integrated it with my vbulletin has been intermittent.

I read a few horror stories about their support, but I figured that if I can get the chat working, it would be pretty much hands-off from there. More on this later.

I'm moving from Flashchat with VirtualJam after 4-5 years. Flashchat had issues with people getting booted and the server going down intermittently and basically I just needed an upgrade.

My forum members put our resources together and purchased Community Chat Unlimited for the $499 price and kept our hosting through VirtualJam as it expires in August and no point of letting it run out without using it.

Support is somewhat slow, but reasonable. Usually within a day or two. They seem to have other jobs and have "run-flashcoms-on-the-side" type of support. I'm fully integrated thanks to their support.

Two issues, one MAJOR that hasn't been resolved and another minor one. The major one is that randomly, some people seem not to see some of the rooms, so we have to create new rooms on the fly that people already in chat can see and those who are just coming in can see.

With this issue, those who come in late seem to see only a phantom room with no name or properties that can't be deleted through the admin tool. In the admin tool as well, the created rooms can't be seen. At any rate, this is a major issue that hasn't been resolved in two weeks though they seem to be trying to working on it. Don't expect to hear from them more than once per day though. If you miss the support window, better try for tomorrow. Luckily we're in the same time zone (GMT) so I've been successful in pinpointing the time in the morning that they're around. I'm trying their month of free FMS hosting to see if they can figure out the issue. From there i'll decide to stick with them or go back to VirtualJam which is significantly cheaper.

The other issue is with custom smilies. When I set the custom smilies xml paths and upload it, it doesn't work. When they do it, using the exact same format for their generic custom smilies, it does work. This will just be a one time issue once they're all set up, but I haven't gotten support to let me know what the problem is? Should the xml file be uploaded using ASCII or Binary or Passive mode? How come the smilies don't show when I do it, but they show the generic smilies that they add when they do it. I just need to 1) get them to use my smilies and make those work and/or show me how to do it/upload it so the xml file works.

Again, this is just 2 weeks in and when the software is up and running it blows everything I've seen out of the water (I and all my forum admins/mods checked out all of the chat software on this thread out as well as a couple of other threads here and elsewhere and none of it compares to flashcoms for looks, powerful features etc).

Oh, but their plugins are too expensive, nearly half the cost of the chat at $200, $250, $150. This is to get some of the same functionality like whiteboard that I got for I think $30 with the VJPack from virtualjam.

At any rate I'll be back to report if/when the bugs are sorted out. When/if they are, this will definitely be worth the money.