Yep, yuilop: messaging for free

Yep, yuilop: messaging for free

Forget WhatsApp, leave Viber alone, and move along Google Hangouts. Yep, yuilop is here to let you talk, text, message and group chat as much as you want. For FREE! Wellll, almost.

When you hear something that’s surely too good to be true, you have to wonder, so this just got us curious.

yuilop (note the definite lack of a capital) is a hyper powered instant messaging app whose mission statement is to make talking free again. The app is available in over 200 countries  including Germany, Italy, Mexico and the US with more than 5 million active users and growing fast. yuilop is based in Barcelona, so its a truly international service.

Yep, yuilop: messaging for free

It states its cross platform, and indeed has clients for Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone (7.5 and 8). and even an iPod.You can text message normal phones though, and these come through as a second number, so make sure your friends have the yuilop number too. Before I decided to download it, it took a look through its website to find out how all this international calling and messaging works. How can you provide a comprehensive service that also has international dialling across 200 countries for nothing?

The answer is a little hidden further back in the website in the rates section, and its a rather interesting take. yuilop operates on the concept of credits aka Energy. You get 25 credits to start, and you get more credits for using the service through getting your friends to join yuilop, chatting with your friends on yuilop or the last part: the app tips and offers.

I couldn’t find any more information on the app tips part of things, but it seems the offers are actually ads. So, if you watch one of their partner sponsored ads, yuilop will give you a certain amount of credit. Its not clear on how many ads you’ll need to watch to gain Energy, or how much credit you’ll gain per ad that you watch. For those of you who don’t want to use the app to SMS or international calling option, it seems like you won’t need to take the time out to watch the ads as the in-app messaging appears to be free. Can’t complain about free, no you can’t.

Yep, yuilop: messaging for free

The other thing that caught the eye is that it appears to take its security responsibilities seriously by encrypting the data during transmission and confirming your personal information is protected and will not be shared by third parties. That does sound nice, however it would have been even nicer to advise on whether a copy of your messages are kept by the server, or even if it uses a central server, a la the new Skype service. As for keeping your personal information safe, nowhere does it state what personal information you have to give the service in the first place – its a messaging client, not a banking app.

 Overall, yuilop looks both promising and perplexing. It has an international scope, allows you to bridge the gap between traditional calls and texts and the datacentric world of instant messaging. Its available on the big four mobile operating systems. Then it confounds by pushing its security as a feature, but only not mentioning what happens on the back end systems. If it operates in 200 countries, does that mean 200 different authorities have access to your messages?

Yep, yuilop: messaging for free

I honestly can’t tell whether this is potentially the next big thing or another entrant in an already crowded market.with the likes of Truphone, iMessage and Skype. We’d like to like it, but with something like four different messaging clients in use on a daily basis, is there room for one more?

 What the hey, its free, right?