Beeper FAQ
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Beeper is constantly evolving - we release new features every week. This information is up-to-date as of April 2024.
General
Beeper is a universal chat app. With Beeper, you can send and receive messages to friends, family and colleagues on 14 different chat networks, all from a single app.
Beeper is free to use, with optional paid subscription. You can use Beeper on all your devices — your messages sync seamlessly. There are Beeper apps for Android, iPhone, iPad, ChromeOS, macOS, Windows and Linux.
Our approach to chat is different that the other big chat apps. Chat is our only business. We love chat and are 100% dedicated to making the best chat app on earth. Read more about our mission on our blog and in our chat manifesto.
Beeper consists of two main components:
- A client app that runs on your devices.
- A web service that connects Beeper to other chat networks.
Client apps are available for many platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Chrome OS. We are considering releasing a webapp in the future.
Beeper’s web service consists of a Matrix homeserver and infrastructure to run open source bridges that connect to 14 different chat networks.
Learn more about how Beeper works.
Beeper is free to use. We will also offer an optional paid subscription at some point in the future, which includes additional features like being able to add multiple accounts per network and more.
Our goal is for Beeper to support most of the features that you use on a daily basis on chat apps like WhatsApp, Google Messages and Telegram. Beeper supports all the core features like sending/receiving messages, adding a new contact, group chats, image/video, emoji reactions, stickers, replies, emojis, disappearing messages, broadcast channels and threads. For other features, like video calls, polls and creating new group chats, you will need to open the native chat app to perform that action. See the full features support list here.
We hate the idea of private, siloed chat networks and do not want to contribute to the problem. So we decided to build Beeper on top of the open source chat protocol called Matrix - an open network for secure, decentralized communication. Technically, Matrix is open decentralised pubsub layer for the internet for securely persisting and publishing/subscribing JSON objects (reference).
When you create an account on Beeper, in addition to unifying 13 chat networks into one app, you are also gaining access to chat with people on the Matrix network.
We love being part of Matrix community and give back by contributing financially to the Matrix project, upstreaming fixes that we make and open sourcing all of our bridges.
We’d really appreciate it if you report any bugs or problems you experience in the app. Take a screenshot of the issue, then tap the ⚙️ gear icon → Report a Problem. If you encounter an issue with a specific chat message, please long press on the message and hit Report a Problem. No message contents are included in reports. Feature request or general feedback can be sent in using the same method.
Security and Privacy
You need to trust the software that you use, especially for something as important and as personal as chat.
We aim to build trust with you through our software design decisions, like how we’ve open sourced privacy critical portions of our codebase for you to inspect and self-host, and how we’ve developed Beeper as an extension of an open source chat protocol.
Beeper encrypts your chat history with zero-access encryption before it is stored on our servers. This means that only you can read your chat history - Beeper (the company) does not have the decryption keys that can decrypt your chat history.
Also, we’re proud of our simple, transparent business model - we sell an optional paid subscription and use the profit from that to offer a free plan, which expands the addressable market for our paid subscription plan. This means our business is aligned with the long term interests of everyone who uses Beeper.
Beeper Cloud backs up an encrypted copy of all your Beeper Cloud chat history on Beeper servers. This allows you to install Beeper on a new device and view your entire past chat history.
All messages and attachments (like videos and images) stored on Beeper servers, whether sent and received on end-to-end-encrypted chat networks, are secured using zero-access encryption. All messages are encrypted using your public key and can only be decrypted locally on your device(s) using Recovery Code (a private key) that is created when you first create a Beeper account. This code is never transmitted to Beeper.
Zero-access means we (the company and people who created Beeper) cannot read the contents (message text, images, video and attachments) of any messages backed up on Beeper servers. If you lose access to all your devices and your Recovery Code, we will not be able to recover your chat history. Please do not lose your Recovery Code!
When sending and receiving Signal, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, Google Messages and WhatsApp messages, Beeper bridges acts as a relay. For example, if you send a message from Beeper to a friend on WhatsApp, the message is encrypted on your Beeper client, sent to the bridge, which decrypts and re-encrypts the message with WhatsApp's proprietary encryption protocol.
⚠️ Using native end-to-end encrypted chat apps independently may be more secure than connecting to them to Beeper ⚠️
All other chat networks do not support encryption by default. Connecting to these networks is simpler. Beeper acts as a simple receive-and-forward relay.
Even though these networks do not support end-to-end-encryption, messages sent from Beeper Cloud to these networks are encrypted in transit to our servers using TLS encryption and are also secured in transit to the recipient’s chat service’s servers using TLS.
Self-hosting is an option for users who would like the benefits of a unified chat inbox, but prefer not to use Beeper’s hosted web service. We have open sourced all of our bridges on github.com/beeper. Instructions for self-hosting are available here https://github.com/beeper/bridge-manager, and a simple-to-use site is available: https://self-host.beeper.com. We do not provide technical support for self-hosting, but you may ask questions in the community chat #self-host:beeper.com
In order to provide the service, Beeper collects device information, including OS, hardware, public IP addresses, network routing information, information on the installed Beeper client, and other device settings. Beeper also uses user account information, such as email addresses and phone numbers, to authenticate users to their accounts.
See our Privacy Policy for more details on how we collect and use personal information.
Get in touch with our security team at security@beeper.com to disclose any security vulnerabilities.
Upon discovering a vulnerability, we ask that you act in a way to protect our users' information:
- Inform us as soon as possible.
- Test against fake data and accounts, not our users' information.
- Work with us to close the vulnerability before disclosing it to others.
Beeper is part of Automattic's bounty program on HackerOne.