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iPhone App: BeeJive IM

Thu, Dec 11, 2008 | by David Potts

iPhone Applications

iPhone App: BeeJive IM

First I should take a moment to introduce myself. I’m David and I just started here at iPhonefreak. My main focus here is to review the many different iPhone/iPod Touch applications that are floating around the App Store to help you sort the good from the bad,

Now on to the good stuff. BeeJive IM is hardly a new application, but it is one of my favorites.

Price: $15.99
Developer: http://www.beejive.com/iphone/
iTunes Link

I can imagine what you’re thinking right now, “Who would pay $16 for an IM app when I can use AIM for free?” Well going by the app’s 591 reviews and 4 ½ star rating, apparently quite a few people.

When this application was first release I balked at the price and went in search of a cheaper alternative, but none of them managed to completely satisfy. Finally, in a moment of frustration, I came back and bought this overpriced IM app that everyone seemed to love. And now, several weeks later, I’m happy to report that I’ve never looked back.

Don’t get me wrong, a price cut wouldn’t hurt. But I’d gladly fork over another $15 for this app now that I know what it can do.

BeeJive has all the features that I liked from the other IM apps (like clickable links, email forwarding of IM’s when the application isn’t open, and the ability to use the widescreen keyboard) and combines them all in one app. BeeJive also throws in a few new features like the ability to email a chat transcript or to switch between conversation by simply shaking the phone.

And the best thing about BeeJive IM? It has never crashed on me.

BeeJive supports AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Myspace, and Yahoo at the moment.

*A word of warning: The entire IM application game could shift dramatically when Apple finally implements push notifications.

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3 Comments For This Post

  1. wolfenstiennu1 Says:
    December 11th, 2008 at 12:38 pm

    David, Nice article. I was the same way, $15.99 – I don’t think so. I had been using their web app, which work great too. From time to time I would clear out my cache, history, and cookie. When I did that all my accounts disappeared. I kinda got tired of that, so I said what the heck, $15.99 not that bad. So I bought it. I’m very pleased with it. I like the fact that you can stay logged into their server and if you closed it and reopened it within a set time frame, any IMs sent while it was closed pop up. I also us it to cut down on the number of text messages, I have all my friends cell loaded into one aol account. I have the aol mobile set to forward to my cell if I log out. So if I go past the time and Bejive signs you out, I just get the IM forwarded as a text, then I know to sign back in. All in all I think it worth it and I don’t even use it a whole lot. It is nice to have a good mobile IM app.

  2. David Potts Says:
    December 11th, 2008 at 1:50 pm

    Thanks, I appreciate your feedback as well. You bring up a lot that I didn’t even touch on.

    To be honest, this app won me over just by actually starting up and connected right away. After playing with some of the other IM apps (both free and paid), that was an amazing feat all by itself.

    I think I also saw somewhere that the developer(s) was looking into adding facebook support. If that happens, Beejive would be even better just for the increased amount of people it could reach.

  3. Izumikonata Says:
    December 27th, 2008 at 8:06 am

    This looks like a really great app. However… I have a problem with the price. With services like AIM and MSN on the computer for free, why should an application like this be over 10 dollars? I understand it has great features, but this is a bit ridiculous!