Show HN: Open Source alternative to services like Intercom.io and Smooch
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: Show HN: Open Source alternative to services like Intercom.io and Smooch
#2Hey all,
One of the creators, this is the first project we've taken from inception to open source, and are working towards building a hosted service [0]. A big motivator for building it was the high costs associated with competitors like Intercom.io and Smooch
It mainly comprises of 3 code bases, the server[1], the client[2] and then an application[3] to speak to the client.
As always would love to hear feedback, good and bad! Also if you have any questions let me know :)
[0]: https://minimal.chat [1]: https://github.com/minimalchat/daemon [2]: https://github.com/minimalchat/client [3]: https://github.com/minimalchat/operator-app
Re: Show HN: Open Source alternative to services like Intercom.io and Smooch
#3Hey all, One of the creators, this is the first project we've taken from inception to open source, and are working towards building a hosted service [0]. A big motivator for building it was the high costs associated with competitors like Intercom.io and Smooch It mainly comprises of 3 code bases, the server[1], the client[2] and then an application[3] to speak to the client. As always would love to hear feedback, goo…
Hey! Nice! This project might be just the thing for our open source project's homepage, to allow non-technical folks to engage with us easiest!
It feels like it would be really beneficial for it to work with matterbridge (https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge), then people could pipe it into whichever tool they prefer.
Any plans to have it speak an established protocol, like xmpp?
Re: Show HN: Open Source alternative to services like Intercom.io and Smooch
#4Hey all, One of the creators, this is the first project we've taken from inception to open source, and are working towards building a hosted service [0]. A big motivator for building it was the high costs associated with competitors like Intercom.io and Smooch It mainly comprises of 3 code bases, the server[1], the client[2] and then an application[3] to speak to the client. As always would love to hear feedback, goo…
Glad to see one more project, can already see some bugs :) would love to contribute. Shameless plug http://raspchat.com/ I have done similar hobby project which runs server on Raspberry Pi at my work place and it can handle quite some load. Last time it got posted on 4chan it was spammed by ~5K connections constantly pounding spam messages, but it handled traffic well (it did slow the whole thing down to it's knees).
Re: Show HN: Open Source alternative to services like Intercom.io and Smooch
#5Hey all, One of the creators, this is the first project we've taken from inception to open source, and are working towards building a hosted service [0]. A big motivator for building it was the high costs associated with competitors like Intercom.io and Smooch It mainly comprises of 3 code bases, the server[1], the client[2] and then an application[3] to speak to the client. As always would love to hear feedback, goo…
Hey! Nice! This project might be just the thing for our open source project's homepage, to allow non-technical folks to engage with us easiest! It feels like it would be really beneficial for it to work with matterbridge ( https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge ), then people could pipe it into whichever tool they prefer. Any plans to have it speak an established protocol, like xmpp?
Thanks ^_^
I havent heard of matterbridge before, so I definitely will star that and take a peak, looks cool
We've thought about working with xmpp because it would allow us to cover a lot of things people use to connect with, and plan on building out an operator (our speak for the other end of a web visitor's conversation) for it!
Re: Show HN: Open Source alternative to services like Intercom.io and Smooch
#6Nifty start. The need for a hosted service like this is more for secure apps where third-party services may have some privacy implications.
I think the default UI needs a little more work. Intercom also lets you email users based on certain triggers, is there an email integration that you are building towards?
Edit: Just curious, what made you code the server in Go?
Re: Show HN: Open Source alternative to services like Intercom.io and Smooch
#7Hey all, One of the creators, this is the first project we've taken from inception to open source, and are working towards building a hosted service [0]. A big motivator for building it was the high costs associated with competitors like Intercom.io and Smooch It mainly comprises of 3 code bases, the server[1], the client[2] and then an application[3] to speak to the client. As always would love to hear feedback, goo…
Glad to see one more project, can already see some bugs :) would love to contribute. Shameless plug http://raspchat.com/ I have done similar hobby project which runs server on Raspberry Pi at my work place and it can handle quite some load. Last time it got posted on 4chan it was spammed by ~5K connections constantly pounding spam messages, but it handled traffic well (it did slow the whole thing down to it's knees).
Nice! please make an issue for the bugs!! We've done some initial load testing, and are super pleased with using go channels as the server layer medium.
Re: Show HN: Open Source alternative to services like Intercom.io and Smooch
#8Nifty start. The need for a hosted service like this is more for secure apps where third-party services may have some privacy implications. I think the default UI needs a little more work. Intercom also lets you email users based on certain triggers, is there an email integration that you are building towards? Edit: Just curious, what made you code the server in Go?
Thats a good point re: secure apps/third party services. we also wanted to run a hosted service for the lazy who may not want to bother learning how to run each of the pieces ;)
Thanks for the feedback too, in complete honesty, it was a combination of we were interested in the language, and overheard it was good with concurrency... that was enough for us to give it a shot.
Edit: Also apologies for not answering your question re: email integration, its going to be one of the first major integrations we do!
Re: Show HN: Open Source alternative to services like Intercom.io and Smooch
#9The hardest part is not the client and the server...but the CRM (the Intercom part).
Here's something a lot of us would use - we want to bring our own socket API (for example pure websocket, xmpp or something like Pusher.com ) and connect it to a full fledged Intercom-like tool.
This is the "Gitlab for Intercom". The problem that happens is that people usually don't want to rip out their client side messaging SDK, especially if you have a mobile app.
I am personally looking to pay for something like this (we use Pusher.com internally).
Are you focusing on the socket server or the CRM application (like Intercom) ? Because the socket server part is a don't care for everyone. Pusher or Firebase is super cheap. It's the CRM that's tricky. Smooch is one end of the spectrum and it focuses on integration with other tools (helpscout,etc) while Intercom is obviously a CRM. I don't think you'll be able to build both.
If you can build this out with excellent featureset like Intercom and can integrate with something like Pusher (and not lock to your own server), I'm gonna throw money at you!
Re: Show HN: Open Source alternative to services like Intercom.io and Smooch
#10Looks great! Maybe add more docs so it's easier to setup.