mssgs The European alternative to Discord

mssgs is a chat app from Deverence Group B.V. in the Netherlands and a product of the RUAL brand. Users can create communities with channels and voice channels, write direct messages, share stories and play games in the app. The provider positions the service as a European alternative to Discord. Apps are available for iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux, and mssgs also runs in the browser. Communities, channels, direct messages, voice calls, games and the map are free, while Premium extends, among other things, the number of own communities and the file size limit.

According to the provider, mssgs runs on servers in the Netherlands at BIT, a Dutch provider with its own data centre in Ede. A backup is copied to a second location every night, and the servers hold no key for it. The privacy policy refers only to service providers within the EU and rules out transfers out of the EEA, but does not name individual processors. Sign-in via Apple or Google is optional, and registration by email is also possible. According to the documentation, the AI agent included in Premium runs on the user's computer and not on mssgs servers, with users setting up the engine and model themselves. mssgs names Claude from the US company Anthropic among the AI tools that can be connected, and the documentation does not describe which data goes to the model provider.

According to the security page, direct messages including group DMs are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before they are stored. Each conversation has its own key, which is kept separately from the messages. Messages in community channels do not get this additional layer, so that they can be searched and moderated. Connections between the apps and the servers use TLS. Passwords are stored as PBKDF2-SHA512 hashes.