Per the SimpleX website:
https://simplex.chat/jobs/
SimpleX Chat Ltd is a seed stage startup with a lot of user growth in 2022-2023, and a lot of exciting technical and product problems to solve to grow faster.
I can’t seem to figure out what the business plan is for a private messaging app that collects even less data than Signal.
They are going to sell to enterprises, I think, as threema does.
And some functions may be payed in the future
From the FAQ:
We are focusing on product-market fit, and as such the business model is still a work in progress. However, the app will have a freemium model with extra features or capabilities for paid users (taking into consideration a potential formula like 5% paying $5/month is $3/user/year - ~90% gross profit margin).
The other income stream would be via business services, for entities needing direct and customized support to integrate with the SimpleX protocol or related resources. There will also be a revenue-sharing model from customers to network operators, to provide an incentive for them to continue running nodes, which will increase decentralization and reliability of the network.
Non-exploitative commercial models with fully open source code are not easy to achieve, and we’re committed to finding the best possible fit for our context. Everything will be fully communicated as this plan progresses.
I think they’ll try to heavily lean into business/solutions for organizations in the future. I can’t imagine paid features being useful to regular users.
I have to wonder how successful this model will be though. At the very least, I think they need to simplify their UI/UX and make things more striaghtforward for an average user. As of right now, I wouldn’t call it the most user friendly, even if things do work. The process of using + (in my opinion) convoluted settings menu + lacking UI compared to competitors has definitely made it hard for me to recommend to people I know anyways.
I have recommended it to a lot of people and the UI/UX seems very easy to use for them.
And it has more personalization options than majority of apps.
I think the reality is that they don’t have a fully realized business model yet, but the amount of money they have raised is quite small in the grand scheme of things, and the app is designed in such a way that there is not a huge reliance on the business in terms of infrastructure, etc.
They are also working on decentralizing their protocol governance entirely, which should put the future of the platform in the hands of the community even more.
So basically, I am still waiting to see how this plays out for them too, but I am also not very worried about SimpleX either at the moment.
That’s true. The personalization and features are there, I just think they could be presented in a cleaner way.
While not ugly, the UI definitely isn’t “modern” in the same was as Signal is for example. I think a lot of people find this sort of UI confusing or hard to work with now that so many apps the average user is used to have such modern UIs (most apps from big tech and the like).
I think some of the biggest improvements to be made besides outright overhauling the UI, would be simplyifying the settings menu, and adding more contrast to the colours.
In an online world where aesthetics are becoming more important to remain competitive, I think SimpleX would have to at least do some work on that front before offering enterprise solutions.
edit: to address the other thing I briefly mentioned about the process being complicated, I’ve found that older and less tech-savy individuals I’ve tried to use SimpleX with find the concept of QR codes or links too complicated. While not a problem for most people, and being a necessary part of the protocol, it is still an unfortunate drawback of the technology when it comes to some users. I also had someone who would accidentally unlink or lose conversations somehow, and didn’t know what they were doing. I think it was a mistake on their end rather SimpleX being the problem, but for users that do encounter things like that, it can be hard to use over something like Signal, where that sort of thing would never happen.
Not sure if I’m oversimplifying things or have a wrong read but in a scale of more privacy IM apps, SimpleX is kind of in between Signal and Briar.
The simple fact that they don’t support stickers because of the privacy violation kind of transpass the realm of average Joe adopting the tool and honest myself included.
Right there is where I see it maybe been used by activists that face problems using Briar.
Once Signal implemented the feature to hide my number, I don’t have a reason to have SimpleX installed anymore and I actually removed from my phone to reduce the attack surface.
Briar needs IDs. Briar (AFAIK) leaks IP address and is very limited atm. A lot of activists use iPhone. Briar isn’t available for iPhone. Briar have very little options, the only one that is remarkable is the “offline” communications in case of a disaster. Briar ISN’T more secure than SimpleX. And you need to have another device as a Briar serves to receive messages.
Signal uses phone number. Even if you hide it, you are using phone number. Besides of that, Signal have some security/privacy caveats, like being centralized. Signal, furthermore, have a weak implementation of multi device. SimpleX is working on a better implementation of multi device that will be secure. You can use SimpleX and have unlimited profiles (so you can run different profiles on phone and on computer, making it something like multi device; you cannot to that with Signal). You are not tied to a phone number. SimpleX is decentralized. And you have more personalization options that most apps.
SimpleX beats out Signal in security/provacy. Simplex beats out Briar in security, privacy and options.
And in SimpleX you can send stickers as images ATM, and not all people send stickers tbh.
Evgeny talks a bit about this subject on the June 5th Watchman Privacy episode, kind of towards the end.
He is also quite accessible and active on the SimpleXChat group within Simplex itself. The group is findable with the Simplex directory service.
What do you mean ?free messenger
Multi-device is quite insecure. I have heard two people in real life getting access to their friends’ Whatshapp messages just by scanning a QR code. The acess is valid for 6 weeks or more I believe.
I am quite worried about SimpleX’s ability to pay their bills. The money will run out at some point and without a strategy and a ready-to-use implementation thereof they might vanish from the scene. I sure hope this doesn’t happen.
What? Stickers? Who even uses them? Surely you’re joking.
GIFs and stickers are very much used among friends and families. At least some people use them all the time.
What? Stickers? Who even uses them? Surely you’re joking.
Regular people who just want a fun messaging app.
Same goes for that instagram/snapchat feature they added to signal where you can blast a message to all your contacts.