Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.
By brunman on
I would like to add chat at my site .
The drupalchat module is it free for business use ?
https://drupal.org/project/drupalchat
if not would you recommend me an alternative module for same usage?
Thank you very much .
Comments
node.js
Reading the project's homepage, it becomes clear that the module is free - as is every module that you download from the drupal.org website.
However, to use it, the module has to connect to a chat service, and the module is designed to integrate with the services of node.js for that.
node.js runs its own http service, and has to be customised to listen to particular ports etc. For this reason, most shared hosts don't run, or allow you to run, node.js. You'd have to find a shared host that explicitly supports it (and there are a few - but none that I've used). If you're running Drupal on a VPS or dedicated server, there's nothing stopping you from installing and configuring node.js yourself. Or: You can use a commercial node.js service, such as the one linked from the project homepage. In that case, you'd be paying for the node.js service - but the module itself is still free.
This signature is currently blank
Note that drupalchat works
Note that drupalchat works without nodejs. So you can install it and use it for free on your site (works ok in a shared hosting environment) it just won't scale very well with a large amount of simultaneous users. After about 5-10 users it begins to lag. This is where nodejs comes in. It will allow you to scale up. Also note that the maintainers provide a testing nodejs server for free. Just follow the project page to set up.
Thanks
Thanks Nicoz
I somehow missed that on the project page - somehow I read it that the node.js setup was compulsory.
Thanks for setting the OP (and me) straight
This signature is currently blank
No problem, James. I only
No problem, James. I only know because I researched and played with pretty much every chat module a couple of weeks back. FYI I did end up settling on this module too. It has seen the most development, has the most features, works as advertised and (of course) can scale if need be.