Franz Reviews

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.