Rocket.Chat 1.0 is ready to take off

For four years Rocket.Chat team has been building a proof-of-concept. A proof-of-concept that actually works, used by more than 25 million users worldwide, and on more than 350 thousand servers. Today we are proud to announce the release of our first ever Long Term Support (LTS) version, 1.0! This is the first release that contains all the features we have envisioned for our product. It has been a long journey since May 2015, when we released Rocket.Chat on GitHub. From a humble CRM module to a fully-featured chat platform, used by millions of users, huge communities and enterprises, we've learned a lot. The developers' community has been an essential part of our success in creating a better, decentralized future where everyone's privacy is respected without sacrificing innovation and technology.

During these years, we have conquered many challenges. We have grown our community from just 5 to today's 500+ contributors, our core-team from just a few developers to more than thirty employees and we have heavily invested in mobile apps, improved user experience, added federation and many other exciting features.

What's new?

So what is version 1.0 all about? Here are some of the most exciting features we shipped with version 1.0:

Threads

Have you ever been lost in a chain of replies that only seems to get more confusing the more you go back in? Threads are the solution you are looking for. Keep your replies organized and read them sequentially. Check the GIF below to understand how this changes the way you've been using replies:

Discussions

Have you ever felt the need to take part of a conversation away from the main stream of messages to be able to focus on what's being discussed? Look no more! Discussions is the feature for you. You start a discussion from a single message, and that becomes a separate room which everyone can be part of. Check out the following GIF for an example of how to use it:

Federation

Having your own private Rocket.Chat server is great. But sometimes you just need to talk to users on other Rocket.Chat servers. Wouldn't it be great if you could also chat with them? Well, now you can! Rocket.Chat Federation allows servers to communicate with each other. When you enable Federation, your server becomes part of the Rocket.Chat Federated Network, which allows it to find and exchange messages and files with other Federated Rocket.Chat servers. Find out more about how to enable Federation on your Rocket.Chat server by reading its documentation.

Livechat

Version 1.0 brings a totally new lightweight Livechat widget. It's been completely rewritten in Preact, with greatly improved performance and scalability.

Take a look at how Livechat has changed:

This is the first of many new improvements and expansions of Rocket.Chat's Livechat. There are many new and exciting features on our Livechat Roadmap.

Upgrading to 1.0

Before you upgrade to 1.0 (the latest 1.0.x release), please make sure you read our documentation and our community forum posts at our forums.

What's next?

Rocket.Chat has always relied on its community helping develop some of our most important features. You can be a part of it too, Start Contributing Today!.

We have an exciting and bright future ahead of us!

Here's a hint on what our next big feature will be: Rocket.Chat Apps and Marketplace!

Rocket.Chat Apps are integrations, features, and customizations of your server bundled in a single easy to install package. Customize Rocket.Chat with a click of a button. If you are a developer, you are more than welcomed to start building your Apps and making money with Rocket.Chat Marketplace.

Keep an eye out on our social media, blog, and community forum! We will be posting more information, use cases, tutorials and much more about Apps!