Wickr Me is closing – Now what?

AWS has announced it has closed Wickr Me to new registrations and will phase out the service by the end of this year. AWS’ aim is to move users to a paid for platform. This is unsurprising as AWS will be looking to recoup its (undisclosed) investment in Wickr as it moves into the communications space.

As we’ve extolled many times in the past, free apps should have no place in enterprise communications.  If you want good security, without the risk of your data being mined for marketing purposes or sold on to third parties, then as a business, you should be prepared to pay to ensure you have control of your data.

So far, so good.  However, for many organisations, suddenly being faced with a bill for something that was previously ‘free’ is a catalyst for all sorts of budget and procurement conversations. If something is ‘free’ people are generally prepared to put up with issues, however, when paying for a service, you might as well get something that is as good as it can possibly be for the budget spent.

Analyst reviews indicate that AWS/Wickr Enterprise, while flexible, lags behind other comparable products for both manageability and features.

With published prices starting at $5 per user per month for a basic package, rising to $15 per user per month for a more comprehensive service, and a ‘please call for more details’ message for on-premises options, Wickr is no longer a cheap option.  Indeed, we have been approached by several organisations who have been quoted eye-watering amounts for continued use of the service.

Armour Mobile and SigNet by Armour provide a range of options suitable for most use cases, at about half the cost quoted to some security conscious organisations we’ve heard about, while still providing data sovereignty and supporting compliance with GDPR.

For more information about how to plan your organisations migration from Wickr contact us today.