Skype alternative
 

Hi all,
Skype has become unuseable and is challenging my sanity. Slow, buggy and crashing..
Anybody have suggestions for a VOIP app please?
Infrequently I need to call a landline and Skype used to work fine, no longer..

Desktop or mobile, and do you already have an account you need it to work with?

Voipfone work alright for me, I mostly use a hardware phone but their soft phone mobile app worked in India. They will steal your money if you leave the account idle (but then so do most PAYG telcos).

Try ZOOM

Whats App

How can I dial a landline number with Zoom or WhatsApp?

Where are you normally based? Wherever that is, I would look at VoIP providers local to you that provide a soft phone client.

A UK-based VoIP provider will expect a UK address for billing and emergency call location (this may not be insurmountable, but was something I came across last year). Of course, once up and running, you can access the service when outside the country, but for setup you probably need to go with a local provider.

SD

Interesting. Will research further. Thanks.

Skype Alternative Needed
 

Can anyone help. I recently discovered that Skype has gone from a pay as you go service, whereby one could periodically top up their account, to a monthly subscription service. For our 1 or 2 week trips to Europe, a monthly subscription isn't necessary as I only used Skype infrequently when overseas to, for instance, make a restaurant reservation or to perhaps let a hotel know that we were arriving late, etc. Back here at home, I found Skype to be very useful if calling to Europe to arrange a trip or organise a hotel reservation - I don't mind being placed on hold for a period of time when the call only costs pennies per minute. Whatsapp popped up immediately as an excellent alternative, but I do try to keep some of the more loathsome techbros like Zuckerberg out of my life and off of my devices. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good alternative to Skype?

Used to use Skype during overseas trips the same as you however after lockdown eased I use WhatsApp if available or I use a esim that covers Europe and charges at local rates. To be honest I find I can get away with not making voice calls everywhere I go....

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mobiles/what-is-an-esim/

I know a few people who moved off Skype to Viber. I haven't used it, but they liked it.

But can you call a land line from it!?
The only reason I’m using Skype is that I can do so when needed.

Yes. You can use pay as you go credit (just like Skype used to).

https://account.viber.com/en/

I'm indebted to Skype because of the hours I spent talking from Texas to Ireland to a fellow budding author. Many, many hours over a few years. However, I'm getting a lot of crashes while using Skype that need a full restart and reload of Skype. Not quite exclusive to Skype, but almost. It's a @$^@$#%^$ nuisance.

For telephoning, 6 quid a month used to give me the US, where a phone is a phone, on your desk or in yer pocket, but in the UK, Skype would not call a mobile. I now pay a couple of quid to dial land-lines in the UK, though mostly because I need headphones on my PC. Basic cyber-video calling, is, and always was, free.

I don't like What'sApp. I don't know why, but I can't make simple calls with it. If it's on my phone lists, it'll work on my PC, but try as I may, I can't seem to simply dial a new person from my PC. I fear it might be ageing neurons rather than motherboards.

WTF did Microsoft get their hands on Skype ? No problems before they did. I'm not going to "join" their monthly sub. scam. Thanks for the Viber tip, will investigate.

I’ll echo ExSp33’s thanks on he Viber reccomendation!:ok:

I've been using Messenger for a good while now (3-4 years) for 2-3 times weekly 2-hour chats with a friend. It has to be set up at both ends - I use a Windows 10 laptop and she uses an iPad or iPhone, whichever is working. Seems all right and it's free, and I even managed to show some of my films to her over it. She sets it up at the appropriate time and I call her on video, but if I call her at random time, and she is in transit, as long as she has the phone turned on she gets a notification and can answer.

WeChat Out will let you call mobiles and landlines.

We use FaceTime and WhatsApp for the duty calls between foreign lands.

Zoom used to be free (with limitations). That may or may not still be the case.

Because the people that owned it before sold it/out for a lot of money? That's usually the way enterprise works unfortunately. On a much larger scale Thatcher put the UK up for sale, and it is now reaping the "benefits"...............

Microsoft killed Skype, replaced it with Teams. Which is much better, to be honest - we use it heavily where I work, while the “home” version is still free to folks with any free Microsoft account.

An up-vote for Viber, for what its worth.

I’ll second that. Week 2 in Europe and it works like a charm. Highly recommend.
With data on both phones via Maya e-sim and Viber also installed, calling each other is just like at home.

Does Viber allow for credit calls without any monthly subscriptions?

If you mean using pre-purchased credit (like Skype used to do), yes. If you mean call now, pay later on credit, no.

Yes, pre purchased. Thanks

So Skype finishes in May... Won't be a great loss. Everyone has moved on..

Time to delete Skype from my systems, Haven't used it in ages.

Thanks for letting us know !

I hadn't so I will miss it. So useful for those international calls where you know you will be kept in hold for an age. Think UK HMRC as a prime example.

I got an email saying they were closing skype. They suggested downloading MS Teams, which I've done. It seems it's the answer to everything and I darn well hope it is, 'cos I'm kind of committed to Skype for my phone and people list. Just lazy, just assuming Skype would see me out, but now I'm trying to make head and tail of Teams.

I'd be interested if others are going the same route as my brain is not up to speed on such things.

I've tried Teams and find it awful. Pretty much like most MS offerings. I will try Viber as suggested here as it seems a better alternative.

Skype had a good run but its days are numbered. With smartphones and high speed internet now ubiquitous, the ability to dial a landline isn’t really needed anymore. Both parties are likely to be using handheld devices with 4/5G or fast wifi and there are a myriad of apps out there that basically do the same thing.

I used to have a Skype subscription for the wife to call her relatives in the Philippines at US$0.12 per minute to mobile, but now they’ve got broadband at home and the cost through Facebook messenger is zero.

Skype will pass into internet history alongside Napster, Netscape and a few others.

You obviously can't have any dealings with HMRC or majority of UK banks who still all use landlines.

I saw a news item today stating that Microsoft will pull the plug on Skype later this year. I guess they stole enough from it to feed into their own mess called Teams and want to kill off the competition now.

I still have 96p credit on Skype. Will I get my money back?

Public phone boxes have virtually disappeared as well, you rarely see someone inside one, let alone a queue to use it. Some of the messaging apps such as WeChat have a facility to call land lines but this isn’t the primary purpose of the app. The number of people wanting to call landlines has obviously diminished to the point where they aren’t making enough money.

I can remember back to the days when mobile phones were becoming widely available to everyone and weren’t a status symbol anymore. People already had a landline in their homes and went out and bought a mobile phone so now they had two lines, which was handy in the days of dial up internet. However when they moved house, there was a growing trend of not installing a landline and just relying on the mobile. Around this time broadband was rapidly expanding and if you had an ADSL connection and a mobile you were all set up.

Wifi calling may be a replacement for Skype. For those not familiar with this feature, basically as long as a wifi signal can be accessed normal phone calls can be made even from abroad without roaming being involved. I have an account with an Australian telco which offers this feature but note that not all mobile phones support it. When overseas with wifi calling enabled, my phone connects to the Australian network through the internet just a if it was in Australia and connecting through the cellular network. Any calls made or received are charged as though I was in the country. It’s also very useful if you have poor network coverage at home but a decent broadband connection.

Of all the various communication sites that I have read will make up for the loss of Skype, which one is most like Skype ? i.e. to just make International calls from my Windows Laptop ?

I'm not interested in forming :"links" or creating "groups" or lists of favourites, just open the site, select the keyboard option and dial the number, which I may never need to use again, as I have with Skype for over 20 years. ( yes, I have had to occasionally top up my account, but 0800 numbers to the USA from my NZ base were free anyway, on Skype ) I have for long objected to Microsoft forever changing everything, if it wasn't broke why fix it ? This is a disaster, to my US wife and myself at least,

Any suggestions please ?

The closest to Skype that I know of, and have known quite a few people using it in preference to Skype, is Viber.

https://www.viber.com/en/

Hello ExSp33db1rd. Is the main problem connecting to overseas landlines? Whats App is excellent for messaging, mobile to mobile speech and for video calls, providing of course your recipient has a Whats App account. Likewise, Facebook (Meta) Messenger gives face to face video calls via a p.c. or laptop. Both systems also allow multiple people to make group calls. Support for free access to landline numbers has been dropping, along with the physical number of landlines worldwide. Can you encourage your contacts to switch to cell phone or internet communications?