All 100 ideasEmail and chat
#72 of 100 · Email and chat
Encrypted chat as easy as WhatsApp
An encrypted messenger as easy as iMessage that signs up without a phone number and moves chat history across devices.
Asks per year
What the askers want
- Would pay25%
- Want it local or private17%
- Object to subscriptions0%
- Want it open source or self-hosted8%
- Want AI to do it0%
Share of the 12 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.
What exists on Show HN
Never launchedOne Show HN launch does part of this. Nothing does the whole job.
Instead of: Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, Skype
The idea, as matched
An end-to-end encrypted messenger as easy and polished as WhatsApp or iMessage, that does not require a phone number and makes multi-device sync and history transfer easy.
Jev first matched 20 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 12 of 20.
Every ask, newest first
Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.
Reader’s note. Video-call encryption asks excluded.
- Nov 2024Wants a Signal fork that signs up with just a username, with no phone number. Read it: a post: “Why Isn't There a fork of Signal?”
- May 2024Would pay for an easy-to-use private messenger that works across devices and keeps chat history. Read it: a comment in “[dead]”
- Jan 2022Wants an ergonomic and secure communications app. Read it: a comment in “Swiss army restricts use of messenger apps for military purposes”
- Dec 2021Wants an end-to-end encrypted messenger that also supports easy backup, export and moving to a new phone. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Any messaging app that is both e2e encrypted and support backup/export?”
- Mar 2019Would pay for a private messenger that needs only a username, not a phone number. Read it: a comment in “Telegram gets 3M new signups during Facebook apps’ outage”
- Nov 2018Wants a group chat service not tied to a phone number. Read it: a comment in “Source: Google Hangouts for consumers will be shutting down sometime in 2020”
- Jan 2017Wants an open, encrypted-by-default chat platform that teens will actually use and is not marketed as privacy-focused. Read it: a comment in “Lawyer rewrote Instagram's privacy policy so kids and parents would talk privacy”
- Nov 2015Wants a secure messaging tool with iMessage-quality interface and wonders why none exists. Read it: a comment in “Please Stop Writing Secure Messaging Tools”
- Aug 2015Asks for a libre solution for encrypted voice calls and messages. Read it: a comment in “Bugged, Tracked, Hacked”
- Aug 2015Would happily pay for secure communication that encrypts real-time chat and stored data with the user's own key. Read it: a comment in “The network is hostile”
- Nov 2014Wants a secure messenger that never uploads the user's contacts. Read it: a comment in “Secure Messaging Scorecard”
- Aug 2014Wants a secure messaging app working on iOS and OS X, other than iMessage. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Decent, secure IM app that works on iOS and OS X?”
Building this?
Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.
Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own
This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.
$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.