It is largely based on recognized open standards such as the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) and Transport Layer Security (TLS).

The trade press praised the decentralized and open nature of the transmission network and simple, intuitive usability with user guidance familiar from other applications.

It enjoys recognition as a serious attempt to raise the mass suitability of XMPP-based messaging to a competitive level.

[6] In the wake of the Edward Snowden disclosures in June 2013, and Facebook's buyout of WhatsApp in February 2014,[7] "secure" messengers for mobile devices were gaining popularity.

Initial Conversations source code was contributed to the public repository on January 24, 2014,[8] and the first official version, 0.1, was released on March 24, 2014.

[3][10] Conversations was added to Google Play later in spring 2014, and to the alternative Android software repository F-Droid with version 0.1.3 on April 6, 2014.

[18] Version 2.2.0 implemented previously optional extensions to record voice messages and share location in Conversations in May 2018.

"[28] Anticapitalist webhost company, Autistici, wrote detailed setup instructions for Conversations for their XMPP service.