Protocall

Quick, but important update on the testing/rewards program we started: month one is done, and here's how it actually went.

Biggest single payout was $200, for a genuinely nasty crash: long-press the video message icon while camera permissions are denied, and the app just freezes. Not something we'd have found ourselves anytime soon. Our reaction in the internal notes when we saw it was basically "oh no, you broke it... congrats."

The rest of August in numbers:
— $620 total paid out across the month
— 10 different testers won something
— 13 bugs approved and rewarded, from a one-character UI text issue to that crash above
— every payout is backed by a real on-chain transaction, not just a promise

Some of the smaller finds were honestly the funniest part:

someone discovered that room names over 300 characters freeze the app entirely, which is a very specific way to break something, and also fair, we hadn't thought to test that either.

Running it again in September. If you want in: test the app, find something broken, tell us. Bring a friend if you've got one who enjoys breaking things. And if you're curious about how it behaves across platforms, that's exactly the kind of testing that's most useful to us right now.

community.protocall.ch

We built a messenger for small teams and now we're at the point where we need real people using it, not just us.

So we set up a rewards program: test Protocall, report bugs, throw us ideas, get rewarded for it. Pretty straightforward.

Here's the honest part: we have single digits of followers anywhere we've posted about this so far. So this is either the start of something or a genuinely funny case study in "we built the thing, now nobody knows it exists."

How submitting actually works, in case anyone's curious about the mechanics rather than just the pitch:

1. Click New Topic

2. Select Contributors Space → Bug Bounty Program

3. Add a clear topic title

4. Fill in the bug report form (what happened, how to reproduce it, your device/platform, screenshot or recording if you've got one)

5. Submit, and the team reviews it

The clearer the report, the faster we can actually reproduce and fix it, so a rambly "it's broken" helps nobody, us included.

If you want to be one of the first people poking at this: community.protocall.ch

We've been heads-down on Protocall for a few weeks, and the temptation with any small team is always to chase the flashy stuff — new features, new screens, things you can show off. This update was the opposite. iOS 2.1.6 is mostly the unglamorous work: redesigned message bubbles, a cleaner active call screen, Secret Chats that finally look visually distinct from regular chats instead of blending in.

What’s new:

— New message bubbles and a redesigned context menu in chats
— A redesigned active call screen with updated controls
— Secret Chats now have their own colors, buttons and icons, so they’re easier to distinguish from regular personal chats
— Smoother reactions
— Video messages now show their duration before you play them
— Fast Actions for video messages: Reply or Forward in one tap
— A bunch of bugs fixed along the way

Thanks to everyone who has been testing Protocall and sending feedback so far. A lot of the polish comes from actually hearing what people run into while using it.

We're still early and still very much building this in public — if you want to poke at it and tell us what's broken (or what's still annoying), we'd genuinely love that: community.protocall.ch

We're a small remote dev team — one of a few thousand out there quietly building software for other people's businesses. What probably makes us a little different: we get just as excited about building things for ourselves as we do about client work.

Five years ago, more or less by accident...

one of us was fed up with something in the messenger our team used daily. Instead of just venting about it in the group chat (the irony isn't lost on us), someone else said, "why don't we just build our own?" No pitch deck, no roadmap — just two people annoyed at the same problem on the same day.

What started as an afternoon's frustration is now the thing we all open first thing every morning.

A couple of reasons it stuck around:

• We own it, top to bottom — turns out that alone changes how much you care about something

• We're stingy with features on purpose. Small team, zero tolerance for red tape, so the rule has always been: if none of us reaches for it during a real workday, it doesn't make the cut

The messy middle

Somewhere between 2023 and 2025, we rewrote the whole thing three times. Not because we had to — because there's no deadline when you're building something for yourself, so we kept starting over until it actually felt right. Somewhere in there we also added a built-in wallet, mostly so we could split the kebab bill without leaving the chat. Priorities, you know.

Why we're finally showing this to you

We've shared Protocall with colleagues, friends, family, and clients over the years — and at some point we started noticing the same reaction over and over: "wait, why isn't this a real thing yet?"

So here we are. Right now we've got around 20 people actively testing it with us day to day, and we'd love to get that number higher.

Protocall is a messenger built for small remote teams — the ones who move fast and hate switching between five apps just to get one thing done. It already has one thing we haven't seen anywhere else: video calls built directly into group chats. No "let's hop on a call" in some other app — you're already there.

There's still plenty to build. And honestly, we can't figure out what's actually worth building next without more people using it and telling us what's wrong with it.

P.S. We do have a roadmap — we're just more interested in hearing what you'd change about it than in sticking to it blindly.

Join our Rewards Program
We've set up a program to reward people for testing Protocall, reporting bugs, and throwing ideas at us:

👉 https://community.protocall.ch/ 💙

A small team building for themselves beats a big one building for everyone.

Five years ago we decided to build a messenger for our own dev team for secure communication. Now it's a full alternative to WhatsApp or Telegram, plus one thing neither has: video calls built directly into the chat, the same way you'd use Google Meet or Zoom.

We are aiming to find "our people" - small remote teams and specialists, who are looking for convenient tool for work communication without subscription.

Where we are now:

• Unlimited Group and Private Chats
• HD Video Rooms with up to 100 participants
• Invitations by username from your work chats, by email for outside colleagues, or by sharing a public link with anyone
• Built-in calendar for scheduling meetings right inside the chat where you're already messaging
• End-to-end encrypted Secret Chats and Calls
• Possibility to send files, voice and video messages, media and more

We needed a solution so we've build a really good one. Download and use it too!