Summary
- Beeper’s new Android app is out of beta, featuring support for practically all major messaging platforms in a single app.
- Beeper has also lifted its waitlist requirement, allowing anyone to join and try out its unified messaging experience.
- The company has been acquired by Automattic, known for products like WordPress, Tumblr, and Pocket Casts.
Just shy of a month ago, Beeper took a big step towards its future, leaving iMessage support (mostly) behind and aiming to become the best all-in-one chat application around. Frankly, as long as you aren’t dependent on Apple’s messaging platform — and most people reading Android Police probably aren’t — last month’s beta more or less lived up to that promise. Now, Beeper’s ready to share its latest experience with more people, all while helping to guarantee the future of the company.
There are two big pieces of news here. First, Beeper’s new Android app, the one it launched in March, is out of beta, and with the waitlist requirement removed, anyone can join. Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky says over 10,000 users have already joined this new app — roughly 10 percent of the 115,000 users Beeper has seen since 2021. More than 460,000 potential users have shown interest by signing up for the waitlist, and with today’s move, that means anyone can join right now, without having to wait for a spot to open up.
On its own, that’s pretty big news. Beeper’s latest app was built from the ground up to bring messaging from apps like Telegram, Signal, RCS, and so much more into a single space on Android, and if you were lucky enough to try out the beta, you know just how many updates the service has seen in the past month alone. A Beeper account also gets you access to clients Windows, Mac, Linux, and more. The team intends to offer optional paid subscriptions in the future, but for now, every feature remains free.
Beeper’s acquisition signals a big messaging push from Automattic
But perhaps more important is the second piece of news: Beeper is being acquired. Automattic, the company behind WordPress and the owner of Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and other various web stables, is the new owner behind Beeper, setting up a promising future for the platform. Migicovsky tells me that Matt Mullenweg, the CEO and founder of Automattic, was an early investor in the team, and their shared passion for open source applications made it an easy decision.
It also builds on an earlier Automattic acquisition. Texts.com, a similar all-in-one chat app that offers iMessage support, was purchased by the company in late 2023, with the two teams (and products) set to merge once the dust settles. This all sets up Automattic as a surprising player in the messaging game moving forward. And while I can’t speak to Tumblr, Pocket Casts has been rock solid in my eyes since that service was bought out in 2021, giving me hope that Beeper will see the same attention from here on out.
For now, though, if you’ve been waiting to try out Beeper’s unified messaging app, you’ve never had a better time than today.
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