Franz Reviews

Summary: It was a very positive experience for years, I understand that the developer wants to make money, but not like this.

Positive: It's still valid for occasional use if you have patience and use quite a few messaging apps.

It's still an app that lets you have several messaging tools at once from the same interface, and if you're patient and not in a hurry, I suppose it's relatively usable.

Negative: With the latest version, it practically forces you to buy the paid version, since it imposes wait times to open the application. I might buy the paid version if this one weren't so resource-intensive and slowing down the entire operating system, but I'm not going to pay for a clearly degraded application full of bloatware. What I liked about Franz was its speed; even before the latest version, it was getting worse and worse, but now it's literally unbearable. It's much better to use the applications separately.

Summary: Shameful attempt to force people to pay over the odds for a level of service they don't actually need.

Positive: The free version gave me the ability to have 3 messaging apps in one place, to see notifications for each, the ability to switch quickly between apps and sync with my phone and other devices. There was a 10 second wait before messages opened if you hadn't been on the app for a while. This was annoying, but not worth paying $4 a month to remove.

Negative: Sometimes the messaging apps would glitch and you would have to disconnect and then reconnect the service. Worse, they've increased the penalties for using the free version. I wasn't prepared to subscribe, because all the additional features in the professional version were unnecessary to me. Now they've made the free app unusable, a cynical downgrade.

Now, free users have to wait 15 seconds to revisit Franz every single time they navigate away for more than a minute. The messenger apps don't automatically open when the wait is up. You have to click to continue. In practice this adds 20 seconds every time I go to check a notification, which is wasting around half an hour a day.

I won't be using Franz any more. As soon as I have a moment to find an alternative, I'll delete it gladly.