QQ offers services that provide online social games, music, shopping, microblogging, movies, and group and voice chat software.

Other features were later added, such as chatrooms, games, personal avatars (similar to "Meego" in MSN), online storage, and Internet dating services.

On 31 July 2008, Tencent released an official client for Linux,[14] but this has not been made compatible with the Windows version and it is not capable of voice calls..

In 2003, however, this decision was reversed due to pressure from other instant messaging services such as Windows Live Messenger (WLM) and Sina UC.

[21] QQ International offers non-Mandarin speakers the opportunity to use most of the features of its Chinese counterpart to get in touch with other QQ users via chat, VoIP, and video calls, and it provides a non-Mandarin interface to access Qzone, Tencent's social network.

The client supports English, French, Spanish, German, Korean, Japanese and Traditional Chinese.

[22] The client's interface is in English, French, Spanish, German, Korean, Japanese and Traditional Chinese.

QQ International for iPhone and iOS devices was released at the end of 2013,[23] fully equivalent to its Android counterpart.

In India, Tencent has partnered with ibibo[24] to bring services such as chat, mail and game to the developing Indian internet sphere.

Rather than solely a web-based IM, WebQQ 3.0 functions more like its own operating system, with a desktop in which web applications can be added.

In response, Tencent called 360 a malware and denied users of installing 360 access to some of the QQ's services.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information reprimanded both companies for "improper competition" and ordered them to come to an agreement.

[39] On March 6, 2015, QQ scored 2 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard.

It lost points because communications are not end-to-end encrypted, users can not verify contacts' identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen (i.e. the service does not provide forward secrecy), the code is not open to independent review (i.e. the code is not open-source), and the security design is not properly documented.