E-chat Review October 2018

One huge strength of E-chat is its no-nonsense, straight up registration process. Signing up does not require any email addresses, personal information, credit card information or any information at all. You just simply have to type in your preferred username, input a secure password and re-type it to confirm the password. Faster than you can say "chat", you now have a fully functioning account where you can go chat to your heart's content. This, however, can be a double-edged sword since having a quick registration with not even a slight vetting can also mean that anyone can create an account. There is little to virtually no security. Of course, there are no questions about your identity or whatsoever but do take extra precaution when talking to others. With no security in the site, you never know when you just might be talking to a scammer or worse!

What gives E-chat a slight edge is its active and numerous members. Upon logging in, we have joined several chatrooms and have received 3 private messages in each one on average. With the premise that anyone can meet anyone here, you are bound to have good conversations and some rotten ones. If you've lucked out on a good conversation with someone, your chat history will not be deleted therefore you can go reread your conversation or message the person again. Joining a chatroom and participating in the group conversation is a great way of acquainting yourself with the community. But more about the chatrooms later. By joining one, you will automatically appear online to everybody in that chatroom. They would immediately be sending you private messages (did we already mention E-chat's very eager and active members?) to strike up a conversation with you. You get to see who's online in real time there. 

Chatrooms are the main highlight of E-chat. What sets E-chat apart from other messengers is the availability of chatrooms. But what are they? These are similar to group chats but with a specific theme. For example, the site has topic-specific group chats about LGBTQ, sex, depression, sports, anime, basically anything under the sun. You get the idea. You can join a bunch of groups and you don't have to pay a single cent for it. You can be talking about anime on one chatroom and about sexual awakenings on the next. E-chat's chatrooms are diverse in topics.

If for some reason, you cannot find a chatroom that caters to your undiscovered interests, you can create your own! It is quite easy. Just click on the "Create new chatroom" option found on the bottom part of the page and name your room. Here's a tip, you will need to invite people to your chatroom, otherwise it will be forever empty! To invite people to your chatroom, you will need to send the link of your chatroom to other members. As a chatroom owner, you will get access to the moderator panel, where you can customise your chatroom. In addition to that, you will be able to kick/ban people and remove messages from the chat. 

Mentioning the old-fashioned functionalities of E-chat, it retains its old-school charms with its simplistic layout. Its outdated design almost takes you on a nostalgic ride where it's 2007 and you've just learned about this cool new chat site. If you'd put E-chat side by side with other instant messaging sites, the design falls woefully short. It is bland with its solid white background and chunky fonts. The design, while simple and easy to navigate (that even a seven-year-old or a seventy-year-old can easily learn in less than 10 minutes), will definitely not attract millennials who have high regards for aesthetic and the overall look. There are only a few buttons you can click on and most of them are located on the bottom part of the page. Although the premise of the chat site is simple, the design could have been better to cope up with today's saturated market.

E-chat offers adding chatroom services to your own website. The E-Chat chatbox is an embeddable chat window for your website. It is directly linked to the main system. Please note that you may embed your own chatroom provided you've already created one. You can configure the chatbox depending on the width, border colour, header background colour, language, height, text colour, chatbox type, and users position.

Sadly, E-chat does not have any mobile app available which is a bummer for those dedicated chatters who are always on the go. However, you can still log in on E-chat on your mobile phone via your phone's browser. While it does not beat the convenience of having an actual mobile app for this, it is still an alternative. Although, this would dock some points for this review since the market is already filled with dozens of instant messaging apps for both business and pleasure. This, unfortunately, leaves E-chat behind everyone else. 

Summer can be a bit boring when you are just at home and having no one else to talk to. So I gave E-chat a try to see if I can find some relief from the lethargy. I love how the site is free but the design is very off-putting.  It has a very old design. Honestly, E-chat looks like an 80s website. I've lucked out on a few good conversations. Though I must say, even if chatrooms have varying niches, most of the content is sexual or has sexual undertones. Well, not that I am complaining. 3 stars for this!" - Male college student, 22.