Rocket.Chat versus POWR

Rocket.Chat is a SaaS and genuine Free Open Source Software platform. They are developing an impressive range of communication and collaboration solutions for a wide variety of organizations, catering to industries like financial services, healthcare, and governments.

Rocket.chat, being Open Source, lets you review the code yourself or contribute to the project in their GitHub Repository. Unlike most providers, Rocket.Chat holds an MIT license, granting you full ownership and control over your code, data, privacy, and security. Detailed documentation for developers is available on the Rocket.Chat website, allowing you to build upon their framework and customize integrations.

One of their core products is Team Collaboration which you can set up as a privately hosted alternative to Slack. Of course, the use case for their software highlighted here is Customer Service and Engagement.

With Rocket.Chat you can manage live chat, email, SMS, and social media channels in a single security oriented hub. The options and features at hand are mostly limited by your imagination.

Setting up, self-hosting, and maintaining your own server is free. However, you will need technical prowess or hire developers to leverage most of the possibilities of their stack. Some Enterprise Edition features are only available with a subscription, which you can try out with a 30 day free trial.

A 30 day free trial is also available for their robust and scalable cloud hosted SaaS Enterprise solutions. If your organization requires more strict control, the entire infrastructure can be hosted on premise.

POWR offers a complete suite of no-code eCommerce solutions with more than 60 apps and plugins, mostly aimed at platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, and Shopify.

Their live chat plugin connects through Facebook Messenger. Meaning, POWR may not be a good choice for businesses that have concerns about Facebook’s policies and reputation.

The customization tool for the chat widget is easy to use but constrained, even with their more expensive plans.

POWR’s commercial approach is different from their competitors’. They have a dual pricing system for their products that may seem simple at first but can get complicated and costly quickly.

Firstly, they offer complete suites that are billed by a maximum amount of traffic on your website. The plugins will stop working if this amount is exceeded. A free suite with a restricted number of apps is available for sites with traffic up to 250 views per month.

Secondly, they offer subscriptions per app or plugin for a set price. This applies to their live chat plugin as well. A free plan with limited features is available. Their paid plans starts at $5.49 per month. There are no free trials available.

Customers of POWR are mostly small businesses. A few of them share their success stories on the POWR.io website.