The multi-service messaging app Beeper will restart the app on Wednesday to allow you to connect to all your chat apps from one interface, providing a safer version that will no longer require the use of your own cloud service. Additionally, Beeper has introduced premium products that allow access to more accounts than the free tier, including power user features such as reminders, the ability to send messages later, Incognito mode to read messages without marking reads, AI Voice Note Transmission and more.
Now owned by WordPress.com Maker Automattic, which purchased Beeper for $125 million in 2024, the app is almost fully integrated with Competitor Texts.com.
Combining a total of 30 people (including contractors), the messaging app, now operating under the Beeper brand, supports Whatsapp, Instagram, Messenger, X, Telegram, Signal, Matrix, Slack, Google Chat, Discord, LinkedIn, and Google Messaging (SMS/RCS). With Mac Computers only, Beeper can also connect users to Imessage chat, but Apple has shut down this access in previous versions.
Image credits: Automattic/Beeper
According to Automattic, the overall goal is to simplify the problem of too many messaging apps while keeping your messages safe.
The app previously first connected to Beeper Cloud before communicating with the messaging network, said Beeper CEO Kishanbagaria. That system remains the default, but users have the option to switch to beepers on the device, and you can see that the app connects directly to the messaging network and skips the intermediary.
“This keeps end-to-end encryption and ensures that privacy is as good as the official app,” Bagalia told TechCrunch in an interview prior to the app's reboot. However, it remains to be seen whether the companies involved will appreciate bypassing their apps.
“We have good relationships with some of these companies and some of them are fine with this,” Bagalia said. “Other people, we haven't heard much.”
Image credits: Automattic/Beeper
To stem potential shutdowns by messaging network providers, Beeper aims to support the business model of first-party apps wherever possible. For example, if Telegram is showing ads, these ads will also be shown in Beeper.
Additionally, EU regulations requiring messaging platforms to be interoperable could put pressure on messaging app providers to leave solutions like Beeper.
In addition to the renewal, you will also have the option to upgrade to Beeper Plus, a premium plan that costs $9.99 per month. This allows users to connect to 10 messaging services as well as 5 free users can access.
Additionally, additional subscribers have the option to schedule messages to send later, set reminders for chat follow-ups, feel they don't feel pressured to respond immediately, access multiple accounts per network, view AI voice note transcriptions, handled via OpenAI's whisper model with user consent), and swapping custom versions of app icons.
An even higher tier, Beeper Plus Plus, offers unlimited access to accounts starting at $49.99 a month, and is designed with the needs of businesses and social media managers in mind. (Annual subscription is available at a discount of $99.99 per year for Beeper Plus and $499 per year for Beeper Plus.)
Image credits: Automattic/Beeper
After Automattic acquired Beeper, the company combined the team with Texts.com to develop a new product offering both services. With Wednesday's renewal, these apps are now 99% integrated, Bagalia said.
Ultimately, Automattic's latest acquisition, Personal CRM Clay, could be rebranded later) will also be integrated with Beeper, but will remain a standalone app.
“It will mostly be built on the Beeper platform. It will remain free,” Bagalia said. “Clay is a great app [as it] I'm working today. Then, with beavers, you'll get 2x to 10x better just by ingesting more interactions and data. Once that's done, I'm sure Clay will be a very powerful product. ”
Today, Beeper has millions of registered users, including those from Texts.com. A small number of people still using Texts.com are now offering the option to migrate to Beeper as they add the device technology they prefer.
Image credits: Automattic/Beeper
Buggalia said there may still be some issues with reliability when moving to models on devices, but they are resolved when edge cases pop up. At a later point, Beeper Cloud will be deprecated once the company is convinced that models on the device can become everyone's daily drivers.
Going further, Beeper aims to make data available to other companies with user permissions and controls to protect privacy. For example, one day, MCP (Model Context Protocol) Beeper can ask users to connect to the chat app via Claude or ChatGPT to ask things like, “Summary all the important messages for the evening.”
These developments take time as Bagalia says they are also “very privacy-conscious users.” You also need a very transparent solution as to when your data is accessed.
“We don't want to have a server farm that trains your data models. That's not a complete no,” he said.