The best Slack alternatives for team collaboration

Slack has emerged as a popular platform for team communication and collaboration, but many organizations are seeking alternatives that cater to their unique needs and preferences. We’ve rounded up a list of the best Slack alternatives, offering a range of features and pricing options to suit a variety of users.

The best Slack alternative

We have several options in our list of the top Slack alternatives, but a few might stand out depending on your needs. We recommend Microsoft Teams for businesses heavily reliant on the Microsoft ecosystem, Discord for casual users and smaller clubs or communities, Mattermost for organizations in need of a self-hosted solution, Flock and Chanty for teams seeking simplicity and ease of use, Zulip for those who prefer threaded conversations, and Rocket.Chat for users who value open-source platforms and customization. 

Hit the links below to learn more about each platform.

Microsoft Teams: Comprehensive collaboration for Office users

Microsoft Teams offers a feature-rich platform for collaborative messaging, file sharing, and video conferencing. It also features integrations with Office programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive, letting you edit documents and manage tasks without leaving the Teams environment. The way Teams works is in the name; you can set up teams of people, each containing up to 500,000 users. You can then break these teams into more specific channels with threaded posts to keep everything organized.

It is available for free with limited features, while the paid version starts at $5.00 per user per month. Key features include meeting recordings, more storage per user (unlimited, depending on the plan), desktop versions of all Office apps, better security, and more administrative tools for your Team.

Discord: Versatile communication for gamers and beyond

Initially designed for gamers, Discord has evolved into a popular platform for team communication and collaboration. It offers free voice, video, text chat, screen sharing, push-to-talk, and customizable server options.

The free version of Discord offers more features than Slack, such as video conferences with up to 50 participants or basic video calls with up to 25 participants. Other free Discord features include screen sharing and unlimited storage. On the other hand, Slack’s free plan only allows one-on-one video calls, no screen sharing, and limits your message history to the most recent 10,000 messages.

Discord also offers a subscription plan called Discord Nitro, priced at $9.99 per month, which unlocks additional features such as higher resolution screen share, 1TB of storage per member, and more fun features like animated avatars and emojis.

Mattermost: A secure, self-hosted solution

Mattermost is a self-hosted, open-source alternative to Slack, prioritizing security and data privacy. It offers a variety of team communication features like group messaging, file sharing, and video conferencing.

The free version of Mattermost gives you unlimited users, file storage, channels, and message search history, all limited to Slack’s free version. Pricing options start at $10 per user per month, with features such as single Sign-On w/SAML, AD/LDAP user sync, and enterprise-grade security features to protect your organization’s data.

Flock: User-friendly collaboration tool for streamlined workflows

Flock is an easy-to-use team collaboration tool with features like messaging, file sharing, and video conferencing. It offers a free plan with unlimited group messages, ten public channels, and one-on-one video calls. For larger teams, paid plans start at $4.50 per user per month (billed annually), offering unlimited channels, group video conferencing, and multiple team admins. Enterprise plans are available as well. Though not as feature-rich, it’s a more affordable platform than Slack for group messaging and meetings.

Chanty: Simple messaging and task management

Chanty is a team collaboration tool focused on simplicity and ease of use. It includes features like messaging, file sharing, and task management. Chanty offers a free plan that rivals Slack’s free plan, offering unlimited conversations, message search history, audio calls, and voice messages. However, it is limited to ten members. For larger teams, paid plan starts at $3 per user per month, offering unlimited third-party integrations and group audio and video calls.

Zulip: Organization and threaded conversations

Zulip is an open-source team communication platform with a unique threaded conversation model, similar to email. They offer cloud and self-hosted options, with a free version with 10,000 messages of search history and file storage of up to five gigabytes. Paid plans start at $6.67 per user per month, paid annually, or $8 per user monthly, which gets you unlimited message search history, commercial support, and the ability to brand Zulip with your company’s logo.

Rocket.Chat: Customizable open-source collaboration

Rocket.Chat is another open-source alternative to Slack that offers features such as unlimited messaging and file sharing with the free version. Paid plan pricing is customizable, with features like video conferencing, guest users, more admin controls, and push notifications. Rocket. Chat’s open-source platform allows for more customization and may be more suitable for companies prioritizing data privacy and admin controls.

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