This. People talk about various alternatives, but I haven't seen one. The requirements are pretty simple

1) Chat and group chat (persistent)

2) Simple file transfer and image posting in chat

3) Good quality voice calls, video calls and group voice calls

4) Apps for android/iOS with shared contact lists

5) Single application for all of the above (to enable a single group set, switching between group chat and group call with one button)

6) No server setup

7) Free or freemium on all platforms (With all features 1-5 in the free tier)

Are there any good alternatives? Is there even an alternative?

There's also

8) the phone line to skype voip bridge

9) a static phone number for your voip that you can answer anywhere in the world

10) reasonably affordable subscriptions for the phone line to skype bridge.

11) Simple hardware you can use as a phone by simply logging into to skype

I know there's alternatives, but it has served me quite well for several years and changing means having to buy new VOIP phones.

Skype has its warts, huge ones, like very misleading errors.

Just today I got an email: "Your Skype Number will expire on" even while it has auto renew set to on.

Then after login it says "your skype number has been cancelled". No it has not been cancelled.

What ended up being the problem was that the skype database no longer knew how-to bill from paypal. Even while it had used that for another subscription the other day. There was also no bounced payment, it just forgot.

I knew when I read "cancelled" that it meant something else from earlier similar problems. Skype is quite messy and every time I get an email "Skype has improved XYZ" I do wonder what it ended up breaking. I know I should find an alternative, but as long as it sort of works...

These type of security issues do make me wonder again though.

I switched to Wire a year ago and haven't looked back. It meets all your requirements, and has end-to-end encryption (based on Signal Protocol) too.

I tried to use Wire with Zhovner (the author of this article) and it consumed 2 full CPU power for a simple voice call. My laptop heated up to 83°C, Zhovner's laptop was also hot. That's pretty strange since Wire has only interface written in javascript, all the core things are in Rust.

Maybe a Wire client bug... I've used Wire for voice+screen share, and my MBP i7 didn't heat up or make noise.

3) Is not true for me though, it's awful mostly, but that's my pet peeve (all coders assume everyone else is on a 1000mbit connection as well all the time) and MS is really bad at making anything work on bad connections. Office 365 isn't even getting past the 'wait while loading' while Google drive/docs is completely usable when I have a bad connection (which is often). The software that was written for bad connections, like Whatsapp and Wechat, for me, have much better quality. But no video (which I personally don't need, but it violates your 3rd demand).

> 3) Good quality voice calls, video calls and group voice calls

In my experience, voice quality issues is almost always due to the people and not the technology.

Well Skype just disconnects often and it takes a while to get back. While the 'others' don't have that as they assume the connection will break / is too slow?

WhatsApp has had video for a while now...

I'm guessing on your slow connection the update is still pending...

For me, whatsapp video doesn't work at all. When I use it with my girlfriend (I have iOS, she has a new Android phone) her video has a real bad quality while I can see hers perfectly fine. Voice quality is good as well. Video quality is perfect on Duo and Skype and we're both on WiFi, so that's not the issue.

Don't know if it's due to the geography (across countries in Europe), but I couldn't find a solution yet. Calls work fine as well.

I'd love to get rid of Duo but have to keep using it as I don't want to use Skype on my phone.

Discord does most of this.

I've entirely moved to using it for voice comms with people where I'm suggesting the platform. It's guest support is pretty robust, so just fire someone a link and they can dial in from their browser if they don't have the app. Call quality is better than Skype, there's separate persistent chat rooms too. I like it a lot.

I like Discord, but their interface leaves a lot to be desired. Their sign out button is hidden away, and I wouldn't have found it if it wasn't for this article: https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/209572128-H...

Their tagline is "Free Voice and Text Chat for Gamers".

Yeah, they're definitely targeting that market initially - but I'm seeing communities outside that sphere start using it: https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2015/10/19/reactiflux-...

It's not perfect, but if you're looking for voice, group voice, and group text chat, it's a great solution. Very, very simple setup, little overhead.

It is missing Video and Screen sharing, though.

What about wire.com? I think it's a nice app with focus on end-to-end security.

+ screen sharing

That and video seem to be the only things missing from Discord.

Not for long - https://blog.discordapp.com/year-end-teaser-search-screen-sh...

Discord lacks video calls I think, but it's good enough that it's displaced all the alternatives for me.

Riot.im is almost there, together with e2e crypto, foss stack, server federation and bridges to slack, irc etc.

Riot is a good alternative to IRC, Slack and other team/community chat systems.

It's not an option for the international 1 on 1 most Skype users are used to. The closest option seems to be Wire, but I've yet to try it.

Google hangouts?

Hangouts is not a bad idea actually. I think the chrome plugin actually makes it look like a decent desktop app too (?)

I very much prefer not to have to use a browser window for chat/voice/video.

Have you tried Allo/Duo?

Aren't those unavailable on desktop?

http://appear.in/yourconferencename is rather convenient and should be usable by anyone with a browser.

appear.in regularly pegs my CPU at 100% :(

Try http://meet.jit.si instead :)

and silently drops connections.

you keep talking for 10 minutes before you realize the other end was kicked out of the meeting...

My mother literally got broadband to Skype with her grandchildren.

literally?

John McWhorter: Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally)

no, just metaphorically.

Literally. That was the use case.

I started using Pidgin with the Skype plugin, because the company I work for uses Skype for Business (Lync in other words) and that program doesn't log anything, and in business logging is vital. Pidgin is open source, as are all the plugins, making it a good choice for business knowing you aren't installing anything you should not be, and it handles files etc ok, but doesn't do video at all.

WebRTC is almost there, and I think in the next few years most such emails will have a link to a WebRTC based service. It is easier than Skype really. Just click a link and it starts a video call. There are jsut a few browser compatibility issues that need sorting out.

The only problem right now is that there's no WebRTC support on iOS :(

You mean in Safari on iOS? Native apps can support WebRTC, like Facebook Messenger does.

A lot of people use Discord now. I mean, you can use it inside of a browser, what can be easier than that?

Seems to be designed for games only, or did I end up in a targeted landing page?

Games are the target niche - but really - anyone can use it. At the end of the day - it's just a chat product - that has some gamer centric features.

It's for gamers, but it's just chat and voice. I think it's smart of them to capture a niche because they have integration with streaming to Twitch. For example, it hides the names of contacts/server invites when you're streaming video online.

I got a lot of friends to switch to whatsapp. The audio quality and stability is usually better.

How do you use whatsapp from a laptop without signing up using a phone first? Doesn't seem convenient at all.

On a desktop?

And it requires uploading every contact on your device to their servers. Nope.