A European alternative to Teams and Slack

More and more organisations want to depend less on American tech companies. With OpenIM your team chats on your own domain, in the European Union or on-premise at your own location. It runs on open standards, so you're never locked in.

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Why organisations look for an alternative

The CLOUD Act

Microsoft and Slack (Salesforce) are American companies. Under the CLOUD Act, US authorities can demand data from them, even when it is stored in Europe.

Chats not end-to-end encrypted

Teams and Slack encrypt chats in transit and on their servers, but not end to end. So the provider can in principle read the messages.

Lock-in

Your chats, accounts and integrations are tied to one vendor. Moving is hard and you don't set the price per user.

Digital sovereignty

The Dutch government and the EU are also looking for ways to depend less on American cloud services.

Teams and Slack are good products with many features. Microsoft also offers storage in Europe through its EU Data Boundary. But storage in Europe is not the same as European control: the company that provides the service decides which laws apply.

Teams, Slack and OpenIM side by side

TeamsSlackOpenIM
ProviderMicrosoft (US)Salesforce (US)OpenIM (NL)
Where data is storedEU possible, under US lawEU possible, under US lawEuropean Union or your own on-premise location
End-to-end encrypted chatsNoNoYes (OMEMO)
Open standardNoNoYes (XMPP)
Run it on your own serversNoNoYes, on Business
Sign in with your directoryMicrosoft Entra IDSSO on paid plansOptional LDAP or Active Directory
Large video meetingsYesLimitedNo
PricePer user per monthPer user per monthFrom €60 a year per domain

Moving from Teams or Slack to OpenIM

  1. Pick a plan. The own domain plan for up to 10 people or Business for larger teams.
  2. Create the accounts. You do that in the domain portal. On Business you can also connect your LDAP or Active Directory, so people sign in with the account they already have.
  3. Install an app. For example Conversations on Android or Monal on iPhone and Mac. On Windows and Linux, Gajim works well.
  4. Set up group chats for your teams, like the channels you had before.

When Teams fits better

Does your organisation work fully in Microsoft 365, with shared documents and large online meetings? Then Teams does things OpenIM doesn't. OpenIM is a chat app: messages, group chats, files and calls. For large video meetings you can combine it with an open source tool such as Jitsi Meet.

Frequently asked questions

That depends on how you set it up. Microsoft offers a data processing agreement and storage in the EU. But because Microsoft is an American company, the CLOUD Act still applies. For many organisations that's a reason to choose a European provider.

Usually not: chat history can't be moved over. Accounts and group chats are quick to set up. With LDAP the accounts come from your directory.

Yes. On the Business plan we set it up and maintain it on your own infrastructure.

The own domain plan is €60 a year per domain, for up to 10 accounts. Business starts at €100 a month, depending on the number of users and what you need.

Want to see if OpenIM fits your organisation?

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