It doesn’t matter if you run a large company with hundreds of employees or a small team with a dozen individuals.

With a secure, instant messaging solution like Brosix, you can keep your team on the same page, improve collaboration, maximize productivity, and come together as a group to overcome challenges.

An Introduction to Brosix

The core Brosix software comes in a desktop-based package, but it also supports all iPhone and Android devices — ensuring everyone in your organization is always within reach. It also implements end-to-end encryption in its instant messaging software to protect your conversations and shared files against possible breaches.

Instant messaging is a big step up from emails as far as internal business communications go. After all, even the savviest professional’s email inbox can get cluttered with messages from social media, friends, newsletters, and the ever-present spam.

But then again, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to business communications.

That’s why, in this post, we’ll take a look at Brosix’s features and strengths to help you decide if it’s the instant messaging solution for your organization.

Let’s begin.

1. Easy to Set Up

Configuring your private Brosix network is an effortless process that can be done in a jiffy.

Just go to their sign-up page then enter the fields needed to start your team.

After you’ve filled in the details, Brosix will ask for the emails accounts of your teammates so you can give the platform a try.

Once you’ve added the email addresses of your teammates, you can now install Brosix to your device.

The succeeding steps are generic account setup processes that can be accomplished within minutes. You also get to send out email invitations to other team members from the get-go.

What’s important is for you to get your unique Brosix network identifier, which will be displayed by the end of the setup.

After the installation of Brosix on your device and the provision of your network number, users will be guided through an initial configuration process — also called the “Welcome Screen” — where they need to specify their recording and playback devices. Once done, they will be given instant access to the application’s instant messaging features.

2. User-Friendly Interface

The Brosix desktop application has a fast, lightweight interface that makes key features easy to find.

To start instant messaging, launch the app and click on any name in your contact list. This should immediately open the instant chat window where all of Brosix’s features are accessible.

Brosix uses a compact application window that can easily be minimized or left in the background. You can also launch new tasks via the “Actions” menu, including text chats, file sharing, and other team communication tools.

 

 

Since it takes little screen space, users can focus on their work while Brosix remains active in the background — alerting them whenever they receive new messages or activity requests.

3. Wide Array of Collaboration Tools

Speaking of activities, Brosix has a comprehensive set of features that takes online collaboration to a whole new level.

Staple features like group chat rooms and file sharing are, of course, among the first features you’ll probably need when communicating with your team. The good news is, Brosix kept the user experience as simple and efficient as possible with these functionalities — making sure flashy visuals and unnecessary micro-interactions don’t get in the way of your objectives.

In addition to these basic features, Brosix empowers team communication with the following collaboration tools:

Audio and Video Calls

For more intensive discussions, Brosix lets you host audio and video call sessions with other team members. This is incredibly useful for users regardless if they use Brosix on a computer or mobile device.

Screen Sharing and Co-Browsing

Sometimes, showing colleagues exactly what you see on your screen is a better way to convey your points. With Brosix’s screen sharing tool, you can do exactly this.

Brosix is also equipped with a unique co-browsing feature that allows team members to share a fully-functional web browser in real time.

If you only need to share quick snapshots with your colleagues, you can opt instead for the “Send Screenshot” option under the “Actions” menu. This is handy if you’re not in the process of discussing ideas or plans yet, but are merely asking for someone’s feedback, sharing a resource, or providing instructions to other users.

Interactive Whiteboard

For strategies and creative discussions, you can use Brosix’s interactive whiteboard feature to visualize your ideas.

The whiteboard is complete with tools for drawing lines, circles, rectangles, and free-form figures — similar a native image editing application like Microsoft Paint. Users can also plug in text and images into the whiteboard at any time.

4. Welcome Module for Onboarding

Brosix can help you onboard new employees into the platform with a “Welcome Module,” which is a plugin that allows you to broadcast company-wide announcements, updates, and other information as soon as they log in.

The Welcome Module can be created from the Brosix online dashboard. Under the “Settings” submenu, select “Configurations” and click “Enable” on the “Welcome Module” section.

The next steps involve specifying the URL of the page you want users to see. You can also assign a title for your Welcome Module and adjust the display settings using the drop-down menu.

Your URL can be your website’s news page, a project management platform login screen, or a blog posts that welcomes new employees to your organization.

5. Wide Array of Enterprise Features

The collection of enterprise features is one of Brosix’s key selling points.

If you decide to go with their “Ultimate” pricing plan, you’ll get full access to the control and personalization of your private team network. This allows you to tailor the Brosix application to your organization’s specific needs.

Below is an overview of everything Brosix has to offer enterprises:

Multiple Administrator Accounts

Managing a growing communication network for your company can be too much for one person to handle. With Brosix’s Ultimate plan, you can assign multiple members of your team as network administrators, granting them specific access privileges to manage conversations and the platform’s back end.

Brosix lets you decide the permission level of each administrator. This allows you to add an extra layer of protection for sensitive areas of the Brosix platform.

More Granular Features Control

To make the Brosix interface more efficient and streamlined, enterprise users can fine-tune the experience of specific members by controlling which features they can access.

This can be done by turning modules on or off through the “Users Administration” page. Alternatively, you can go to the “Module Permissions” page under the “Settings” section to manage the features for your entire network.

Aside from modules, you may also manage who certain user groups can contact. This encourages focused communication between teams that actually need to collaborate.

Administrators can also manage chat rooms from a central location to make sure the Brosix platform is being utilized productively. They can manually create or close chat rooms, manage the participants, or change the chat room’s type on the fly.

Sync with Active Directory

If your company uses Active Directory, you can use the Brosix LDAP Sync tool to automatically synchronize user accounts between the two platforms.

Just be mindful that you need to enable your NET API, specify the IP addresses that you want to use, and provide a security key. You will then be able to use the sync tool using either the GUI wizard, which will walk you through the steps, or a custom command line.

Apart from the Active Directory integration, you can also use Brosix as a softphone dialer or as a data source for Smarsh — a cloud-based, archiving solution for electronic communications.

6. Additional Features

With the Brosix features outlined above, we’ve barely scratched the surface.

It still has loads of features under the hood — most of them are surprising for products at such a low price point.

Here’s a quick rundown of these features:

Live Chat for Websites

With Brosix, you can easily integrate a live chat functionality into your website using the “Web Guests” rule. This eliminates the need to invest in a third-party help desk software, which costs around $20.

Up to 1,000 User Licenses for Free Trial Users

For free trial users, your Brosix private network can contain up to 1,000 free licenses that can be managed on the “Licenses” page of the web dashboard. Regular accounts, on the other hand, require you to only pay for the number of users in your network, making it easy for you to scale Brosix according to your company’s needs.

Statistics

Brosix gives you a bird’s-eye view of your private network on the “Statistics” page. Some of the metrics included are the total number of users, accounts with a contact list, total app downloads, and so on.

Chat History Archives

In case you need to pull up past conversations for reference purposes, Brosix keeps a complete record in the “Chat History Archives.” For security purposes, enterprise users can set a time limit that determines how long stored conversations are kept on Brosix servers.

Custom Logo

Although Brosix is not entire white-labelable, you have the option to upload a custom logo for the desktop app and the web dashboard. You simply need to upload the image file and select “Enable” once you’re satisfied with the image preview.

Verdict

At the end of the day, Brosix more than delivers in the communication department.

Now, you might not need all the features mentioned in this review, however, since Brosix only has a price tag of less than $3 per user, there’s really nothing to complain about.

We recommend it as a must-try for businesses that require a solid company culture that relies on effective internal communication.