Compare
Against what you already use.
Every row here is a fact rather than a judgement, and every app in the table wins something. A comparison where one product wins everything tells you what the author wanted, not what is true.
| Rindit | Telegram | Signal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Group chats can be end-to-end encrypted | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Encrypted by default | No — you turn it on | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| A social feed in the same app | Yes | No | Channels only | No | Yes |
| Deleting your account removes your messages from other people's chats | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| Timeline shown in the order things were posted | Yes | — | Yes | — | No |
| Native apps for iPhone and Android | iPhone, in testing. No Android | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Independently audited cryptography | No | Yes | Partly | Yes | Partly |
| Ads targeted using your messages or social graph | No | No ads at all | No | No ads at all | Yes |
| How it is paid for | Free, advertising | Free, no ads | Free, ads in channels | Free, donations | Free, advertising |
| People already on it | Nobody yet | ~2 billion | ~900 million | ~70 million | ~2 billion |
| Largest group | 100 | 1,024 | 200,000 | 1,000 | 32 |
User numbers are the companies' own published figures and move constantly. Everything in the Rindit column is checkable in the app or in its source.
The two rows that decide it
Encrypted groups, and a feed, in one app
Read the table down the first and third rows. WhatsApp and Signal encrypt groups and have no feed. Telegram and Instagram have a feed and do not encrypt groups. Rindit is the only column with a yes in both — which is the entire reason it exists.
Nobody is on it
The last row is the one that matters most, and it is the one we lose worst. A messenger is worth what your friends' presence on it is worth, and right now that is nothing. No feature in the other rows fixes that; only people do, which is why the honest thing to sell today is the waiting list rather than the product.
Where each of them beats us
- WhatsApp encrypts everything by default and has been audited. Ours is opt-in and has not.
- Telegram runs groups of two hundred thousand. Ours stop at a hundred.
- Signal holds less about you than we do, on purpose, and always will — we hold a social graph because the product needs one.
- Instagram has a decade of content and the people who make it.
- All four are in both stores and have been for years. Rindit runs in a browser, with an iPhone app in testing and nothing on Android.
- WhatsApp and Signal show you no advertising at all. Rindit is free because ads pay for it, and that is a real difference rather than a footnote.