the state of Instant Messaging in 2026:
- have you gotten nitro yet? please?? come on, we even give you 3-day trials if you're getting your hands on some orbs :3
- have you gotten premium yet? pleaseeee oh and of course we'd let problematic people and governments thrive on our platform if you don't mind :3
- the ones who limit you to 5 paired devices, while also requiring a working camera on the old(!!) device when you're transferring chats on iOS, but hey, we're not any 3-letter agency, so of course you can use our "Secure Backups" if you'd like :3 - oh you want to back up more than just 45 days of media? too bad, you need to pay for that :3
*** DecryptionError: Unable to decrypt complaints about this messenger. *** (2026 edition)- get a bouncer or you're out of luck (in terms of message history). or try to use one of those fancier newer servers that actually support this :3
- you'd have to trust a bunch of nerds to keep the servers up and running (and we won't save chat history unless you're using a specific version of a specific client for one specific protocol, otherwise you're out of luck).
- look, we took email and turned that into an IM! isn't that great? :3 oh and you should look into setting up our own email server solution (or just use our own servers) instead of letting you use your already-existing mail server since those might rate-limit you heavily- oh and did you know that one of the main people is slopping a lot of stuff together and even posted promotional slop on the fediverse? isn't that great? :3
- get an iDevice or you're out.
- get an Android phone or you're out.
- trust your carrier to deliver that message correctly or it's basically gone.
- trust your carrier to deliver that message in higher quality correctly or it's basically gone. but you can retry if you'd like! oh and it's usually not encrypted when sent across mobile operating systems yet, oops
- throw money at us for a one-time purchase tied to either apple, google or our own licensing system (you can't transfer between them at all!) or you're out. oh and we're not that open source either.
IMs who haven't made it onto the list: basically same as 2025 - XMPP, Revolt, Polyphony