Ryver to Compete with Slack with Free Team Communication Platform

PHOENIX, AZ - 9/9/2015 (PRESS RELEASE JET) -- Ryver ("river"), a new software platform redefining how companies communicate, today opened its free software to the public. Until now the platform has been in beta and has garnered more than 300 active organizations. Ryver is now poised to take on competitors like Slack and Yammer in the growing business communication market.

Ryver set out to solve team communications with its platform, but quickly learned all the features, bells and whistles in the world wouldn’t make a difference without being completely free. While there are many features in Ryver that are changing the way teams communicate, the powerful differentiator is Ryver gives users the authority to streamline communications without running into pay wall restrictions.  The new ground breaking book, “Team of Teams” by General Stanley McChrystal, strongly influenced Ryver’s design  The goal of Ryver is to enable companies of all sizes to build a "managerial nervous system."

“It took us over $9MM and three years to create a product that delivers what Slack and others are lacking. Now, we have a free solution that solves the problem of team communication in a smart, powerful way without having to worry about budgets or crippled products.” said Pat Sullivan, CEO of Ryver.  “With all the beta testing we did, one single thing became totally obvious: for team communications to work in the real world, it has to be free. There can be no hesitation to build a new team and add new users due to cost.  Any product that is not free will fail to bring the full power of "Team Communications" to an entire company and all it's important stakeholders.

As good as Slack is, it has two major flaws: a severely crippled free version and worse, once a paid user, the paid product has to have a centralized administrator to control who gets added to teams due to the cost. This type of centralized control means that users cannot build the type or size teams they actually need unless they jump through hoops to get permission to do so. In addition to the permissions, each new user costs anywhere from $8 to $49 per month with Slack. Ryver totally eliminates all of this hassle because every team member has total freedom to instantly create the team they want and need. Even guests can be given the right to add new guest users. And they are always free.

"We needed the ability to build large, diverse teams that always allow every stakeholder to know what is going on and have a say. We needed employees, customers, vendors, investors, advisors and contractors all to be part of the conversations,” said Jeff Saville of the Center for Entrepreneurial Innovation. “We simply could not afford to do this with any other product. Ryver allowed us to build any size team we needed with no concern about cost."

Here is how Ryver compares to the “free” Slack:

• Unlimited users and guests vs. no guests at all
• Unlimited search of all information vs. only the last 10,000 chats (on average amounts to 20 day’s worth or less) for free
• Unlimited storage vs. 5GB for free
• Users have total control vs. centralized control and admin roadblock
• With Ryver even guests can be given the right to add new guest team members

Ryver organizes team conversations, chats, relevant files, graphics, and even important emails into a single location, all without the barrier of cost. It eliminates the challenge of finding important and time sensitive team emails in bloated inboxes.. Ryver allows teams of any size to be flexible with options to create both open and private conversations with important customers, colleagues, and vendors without concern for cost. Ryver also offers capabilities that Slack doesn’t, such as Facebook^tm-like threaded posts, a centralized notification center and files organized by team.  Ryver supports Zapier for integration with over 400 applications and will release shortly its Open API for deeper integrations with many other applications.

Ryver plans to generate revenue through an add-on task management system launching in Q4 of 2015. The Ryver Task Manager works seamlessly with Ryver Team Communication. “Ryver Tasks will bring team communication to a new level, enabling teams to get things done in ways previously not possible with a mere integration to Task Managers.” added Sullivan.  

Users can sign up to join Ryver at http://ryver.com/.

About Ryver

Ryver is a cloud-based software platform that's redefining how teams and companies communicate. The product is designed for businesses that need to communicate in ways not possible with email. Ryver makes communication fast, relevant and effective. Ryver is available via Web browsers and Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android native apps. Ryver's co-founder and CEO, Pat Sullivan, previously co-founded of ACT! and SalesLogix and is a two time winner of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. For more information visit www.ryver.com. 

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