25 Best Slack Alternatives in 2021 (Free and Paid)

Slack is one of the best-known team chat and collaboration tools. It offers a variety of features such as real-time chat for internal communication, video calls and lots of integrations. However, it’s not always the best solution for work communication. So, we went ahead and put together a list of the best Slack alternatives for you.

There can be many reasons why you may be looking for Slack alternatives. Many have noted that because Slack is team-centric, they often end up having 10 Slack teams as new “inboxes” to check. Others may find the 10,000 message history limit crippling, dislike the lack of ‘Read’ indicators to see who’s read your messages. Or you may miss having native task management inside the collaboration tool where discussions happen and decisions are made.

The good news is that there are a lot of Slack competitors on the market. Some of them are near-identical to Slack in their capabilities, others are quite different, which means that they may fit your workflow even better than Slack! We did the research for you and selected 25 of the best solutions for this overview of Slack alternatives. Check out their top features, pricing, and find the best one for you and your company.

25 Best Slack Alternatives for Team Chat

 

1. Fleep

9-Fleep-screenshot-devices Of course we’re biased, but hey — it is our blog. Here’s our #1 Slack alternative. Fleep has everything you need for ultimate team collaboration: team chat, video and voice calling, native task management and integrations.

Top features:

  • Team communication and chat
  • Communicate & collaborate with any other Fleep user
  • Audio-video calling and screen sharing
  • Integrations with Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive for file sharing
  • Lightweight task management
  • Pin important messages in every conversation

Why this tool stands out: Fleep may just be the best solution for you if you work with people outside your team as much as you do internally. Unlike most team communication tools, Fleep does not confine you to a siloed team-only space. Instead, you can communicate and collaborate with any other Fleep user, belong to several teams and work with any other team on the Fleep platform.

Pricing: Basic functionality is free to use, Business subscription from 5EUR / user / month

Don’t just take our word for it. Try Fleep for free >>

2. Blink

Blink

The Blink Employee App is a mobile first, all-in-one employee portal from frontline workers. It was created for the unique needs of large distributed workforces, where the majority of the employees don’t sit in front of the computer in an office setting, but work in customer-facing roles. For these deskless workers, an employee app on their personal phones is the suitable solution rather than already popular desktop-based platforms like Slack.

Top Features:

  • Team and peer to peer messaging
  • Personalized company feed
  • Unlimited cloud storage in the document hub
  • Shortcuts, custom forms, and reports
  • Read receipts and polls
  • Admin portal with engagement analytics
  • Fully brandable with company colors and logo

Why this tool stands out: Blink is unique in this list in that it focuses mostly on non-desk workers, so they put a lot of emphasis on the mobile experience and usability. At the heart of their mission is employee happiness and all features were developed with the end users in mind. Although most of Blink’s customers are large companies, it is recommended for any company in industries like healthcare, transport, retail, hospitality or facilities management.

Pricing: From $3.40 per user per month. A free 14-day trial is also available where no credit card is required.

3. Troop Messenger

troop messengerTroop Messenger is an easy team messaging platform. It connects diverse teams to discuss and share work within a single interface. This tool allows seamless and faster team communications along with great vendor-client collaboration facilities.

Top Features

  • Team and individual messaging
  • Group conversations
  • File sharing and previews
  • Voice-video calling
  • Audio messaging
  • Screensharing
  • Advanced search filters
  • Private chat for confidential conversations

Why this tool stands out: It brings all internal teams to one place to bring great work outcomes. This tool has a rich feature-stack that comes with seamless functional flows, unlike its competitors. The UI and UX are well-designed making the tools learning curve easy. It has covered everything in the tool, right from direct messaging, voice-video calling, secured application login, to live chat support. The unique selling proposition of Troop Messenger would be its ease of use.

Pricing: This SaaS freemium application comes free with basic functionalities. The pricing structure features Premium@ $1/per user/per month and Enterprise@ $5/per user/per annum.

4. Rocket Chat

Slack Alternatives

Rocket Chat is one of the top open source slack alternatives. It is designed for anyone who wants to host their own chat service.

Top features:

  • Audio and video conferencing, screen sharing
  • Live-chat widgets for websites
  • Voice messages
  • Real-time automatic translation in more than 35 languages
  • Endless customization: themes, integrations, and white labeling
  • Marketplace for apps

Why this tool stands out: Rocket Chat is completely free to use and you can make it completely your own by means of customization. The downside of open source projects, though, is that there’s no official customer service (although you can seek help in the online forums on GitHub).

Pricing: Free

5. Mattermost

Mattermost Mattermost is an open source Slack alternative, just like Rocket Chat. Even more, Mattermost is self-hosted, promising modern communication behind your firewall.

Top features:

  • Messaging with search and integrations
  • Threaded discussions
  • Complete customizability
  • Custom emojis
  • Multi-language support
  • Enterprise edition available

Why this tool stands out: Mattermost stands out as the open source Slack alternative that can also be self-hosted.

Pricing: Free plan for small teams, Enterprise plans from $39 / user / year

6. Ryver

slack alternative Ryver

Ryver integrates group chat, task management, and a powerful workflow engine into one app, and promises to keep it affordable for teams of any size.

Top features:

  • Unlimited collaboration & file sharing
  • Group chat
  • Threaded topics
  • Personal and team task managers
  • Voice and video calls (including screen sharing)
  • Workflow automation engine
  • Flat-rate pricing

Why this tool stands out: Ryver offers a combination of team chat, task management, and workflow automation in one app. Other apps require integrating multiple apps for such functionality. Additionally, Ryver’s flat-rate pricing is very straightforward.

Pricing: $49/month for 1-12 users, $99/month for 13+ users, and Enterprise plans starting at $399/month

7. CA Flowdock

Flowdock Flowdock has a unique way of combining team chat and team inboxes of differences services on a single, shared dashboard. It promises to replace chat applications in your workflow and free your mailbox from automated emails.

Top features:

  • Flows for organized group chat
  • 1:1 conversations (“flows”)
  • Threaded conversations
  • Video calling with appear.in
  • Team inbox to see notifications from different services
  • Integrate support or other services with Flowdock

Why this tool stands out: Flowdock has focused on integrating your entire team’s workflows and services into their application, so you can always have an overview of what your team is working on.

Pricing: From $3/user/month, with a 30-day free trial available

8. Flock

Flock Flock is a collaboration hub for your team. It is a messaging platform, promising to bring all your team’s communication and information together in one place.

Top features:

  • Direct chat and group conversations
  • Audio and video conferencing
  • File sharing
  • Option to add guest accounts
  • One-way Announcement channels
  • Shared To-Do’s

Why this tool stands out: In general, Flock is not too different from Slack. The main differentiating feature is that in Flock, you can turn discussions into tasks by creating to-dos for you and your team, and add due dates to them. Additionally, Flock’s is more affordable than a lot of the other options.

Pricing: Limited use for free, $3 / user / month for full functionality

9. Twist

Twist Twist is a communication tool by Doist. According to Twist, it offers a calmer and more organized way to work together.

Top features:

  • Conversations organized in threads
  • Snooze notifications
  • Flexible setup with multiple workspaces and groups
  • Choose who gets notified
  • Schedule notification-free time

Why this tool stands out: The team behind Twist is betting against real-time messaging. So, Twist is designed for asynchronous communication. This shows in how Twist is set up completely differently from most team chat tools that optimize for instant communication.  In Twist, threads keep all conversations clearly separated by topic so responses do not get buried in an endless stream of group chat.

Pricing: Free with limited message history, $5 / user / month for full functionality

10. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams is a group chat software offered as a part of Microsoft Office 365. When it launched, many perceived Microsoft Teams as the conglomerate’s competitor to Slack. Even later updates to Microsoft Teams draw parallels with Slack (e.g. “Microsoft Teams is properly taking on Slack now”). The main difference is that Microsoft Teams is not a product, it’s a feature — it does not come as a separate product, but only with Office 365.

Top features:

  • Group chat
  • Full integration across Office 365 apps
  • Voice and video chat
  • Threaded messaging
  • Join multiple internal teams
  • Schedule meetings

Why this tool stands out: Because it’s Microsoft. What this means is that the whole experience is optimized for large and medium enterprises — unlike most of the others on this list. So, if you’re at a big company that uses Microsoft Office 365 already, then it is highly likely Microsoft Teams will be your company’s chat-based tool of choice.

Pricing: Free with up to 300 users with core features, $6/month and upwards for a more fuller set of features

11. Glip

Glip RingCentral Glip is a team messaging and collaboration app that promises better, faster team collaboration.

Top features:

  • Team messaging
  • Share and collaborate on files
  • Task management
  • Screen sharing
  • Video meetings
  • Notes for text editing in conversations

Why this tool stands out: While nothing really stands out about Glip, it does have more built-in features (like document collaboration, Calendar and Tasks) than Slack or your average Slack alternative.

Pricing: Free plan for unlimited everything (posts, storage, integrations, guest users) and 500min of shared video chat. Standard plan at $5 / user / month with 1,000 min of shared video, advanced administration controls, Data retention policies etc.

12. Wire

Wire Wire started out as a beautiful, secure instant messaging app. Since then, Wire has been re-invented as a secure collaboration platform, more geared for work communications.

Top features:

  • Group conversations and 1:1s
  • Team admin capabilities
  • End-to-end encryption
  • Voice and video calls
  • Self-destruct messages
  • Sketch for quick editing images

Why this tool stands out: Wire is one of the very few team communication or collaboration apps that comes with end-to-end encryption. As such, “secure” is Wire’s unique selling point.

Pricing: From 4EUR / user / month to 6EUR / user / month, depending on your preferred billing period

13. Missive

Missive Missive is a communication app that combines email and chat. Missive makes it possible to collaborate around any inbox, and use team chat within the same tool.

Top features:

  • Team chat
  • Manage team inboxes and individual ones
  • Collaborate on social media inboxes
  • Assign conversations and tasks
  • Organize conversations with shared team labels
  • Automation for workflows

Why this tool stands out: While many collaboration tools claim to “kill email” or want to move you away from email, Missive embraces email. It makes email collaborative, and allows for chat around that collaboration. Even more, they recently added functionality that lets you collaborate on social media and SMS accounts.

Pricing: Basic functionality can be used for free, and upgrades available from $8 / user / month.

14. JANDI

JANDI JANDI is a business messaging app with built-in workplace productivity features. According to Forbes, it is South Korean contender to the list of companies catering to the business communication needs of the Asian market.

Top features:

  • Group communication and 1:1s
  • Collaborative file management
  • Assign tasks to yourself and others
  • Integrations with key apps
  • Administrative panel

Why this tool stands out: While nothing major stands out about JANDI, it’s all in the details. As a PR representative explained in an interview to Forbes, JANDI optimizes their user experience to fit the culture and expectations of the Asian market — from emoji galore to allowing for a more hierarchical structure inside the app, and not openness as a lot of the US and Europe-based companies might.

Pricing: Basic functionality is free to use, full functionality with an upgrade from $5 / member / month

15. Chanty

chantyChanty is a simple AI-powered team chat tool that toots its own horn as a top Slack alternative. It promises seamless team communication, for free, forever. While it is still in beta, it is worth keeping an eye on Chanty in the coming years.

Top features:

  • Simple team chat
  • Unlimited message history
  • File sharing
  • Search across your workspace
  • AI-powered messaging and replies

Why this tool stands out: Chanty’s key differentiator seems to be a focus on AI for “smart responses”, so you don’t have to type your replies in routine cases where Chanty is able to predict it. Still to be seen whether Chanty will take this AI approach even further from smart replies.

Pricing: Chanty promises to be “Free…Forever”.

16. Cisco Webex Teams

Cisco Webex Teams Cisco Webex Teams (previously Cisco Spark) is teamwork app with video meetings, group messaging, file sharing and interactive whiteboard drawing.

Top features:

  • Direct and team messaging
  • Voice and video calling
  • Whiteboard for sketching and idea-sharing
  • Schedule
  • File sharing
  • End-to-end encryption

Why this tool stands out: Webex Teams is much more than a secure, end-to-end team communication app — it supports a range of collaboration tools, Whiteboard being the highlight. It’s not too often you see a teamwork app that allows for such a creative and interactive way to collaborate. (And even the drawings are end-to-end encrypted!)

Pricing: From $24 per month for up to 8 people, to $69 per month for up to 100 people.

17. Cisco Jabber

Jabber Jabber, another Cisco product, combines instant messaging, voice and video calling, desktop sharing, conferencing and presence.

Top features:

  • Instant messaging
  • Powerful video conferencing
  • Screen sharing
  • Audio and video messages
  • Jabber bots
  • Access Cisco Jabber directly from Microsoft Office apps

Why this tool stands out: Cisco Jabber is definitely a corporate chat tool that works well with other Cisco products (Outlook, WebEx, Cisco phones). As such, it stands out as a tool for corporations that use other Cisco products as well.

Pricing: Cisco Jabber is available on a quote basis. You can contact the vendor for pricing details or to request a quote.

18. Zoho Cliq

Zoho Cliq Zoho Cliq (previously Zoho Chat) is their chat tool that is built for work. On Zoho Cliq, you can communicate, collaborate, and reach consensus. Zoho itself is a company that specializes in low-cost, online office software, promising to automate your entire office. Zoho Cliq is a part of this offering.

Top features:

  • User-centered chat
  • View multiple conversations at once in column-style layout
  • Audio and video chat
  • Unlimited storage
  • Integrations with third-party apps and other Zoho tools
  • Bots for automation

Why this tool stands out: Zoho Cliq is one of the few team messengers that has a column-style user interface. That means you can open several conversations in the same window, rather than switch between them.

Pricing: Basic functionality available for free, full from $3 / user / month

19. Zoho Connect

Zoho Connect Zoho Connect, another Zoho product, is a team collaboration software that takes the form of a social network. While it is much more than a team chat app, it has all the functionality for internal team communication and more.

Top features:

  • Feeds with posts
  • Channels for real-time communication
  • Forums
  • Events & calendar
  • Tasks
  • Like, comment on and share posts

Why this tool stands out: Zoho Connect stands out for its social take on collaboration. Much like an intranet, Zoho Connect promises you’ll have everything you need for collaboration in one place, not just the chat.

Pricing: Limited functionality available for free, paid versions pricing depends on the size of your company, ranging from $0.4 to $0.8 / user / month

20. HighSide

clearchat-becomes-highside-inc2 HighSide (previously ClearChat) is a secure Slack alternative for organizations handling regulated or sensitive data. Their goal is to develop the world’s most secure team chat, file sharing and file storage platform, and make it easy enough for an organization’s least technical member to use.

Top features:

  • Channels for team communication
  • Direct messaging
  • File sharing
  • End-to-end encryption
  • Custom data retention policies

Why this tool stands out: While it’s still early days for HighSide (it’s in beta), there’s no question about what makes it stand out — it’s security! HighSide is betting on high levels of security and compliance with the highest level requirements.

Pricing: Free for basic functionality, additional features available on a quote basis

21. Hibox

Hibox Hibox is a collaboration tool that integrates team chat, video conferencing and task management with AI assistance.

Top features:

  • Group chat
  • Task management
  • Audio and video calling
  • Group calendars
  • AI assistant to help

Why this tool stands out: Hibox combines three key functionalities of team collaboration into one. While it is not the only tool to integrate team chat, video calls and tasks, Hibox also has an Artificial Intelligence assistant bot that adds an entire layer of functionality to the tool.

Pricing: Free for limited functionality, full functionality from $4 / user / month

22. Blizz by TeamViewer

Blizz Blizz from TeamViewer keeps your team connected through chat messaging, video and voice calling, screen sharing, and more.

Top features:

  • Team messaging
  • Face-to-face HD VoIP video and audio calling
  • Instant or scheduled group meetings with up to 300 people
  • Screen sharing
  • Session recording
  • End-to-end encryption

Why this tool stands out: Blizz is definitely all about communication. They have thought through and implemented all the functionality necessary for written communication and calls. From messaging to voice calls, conferencing and even session recording, they’ve got you covered when it comes to communication.

Pricing: Limited functionality available for free, upgrades from $6 / user / month

23. Hubgets

Hubgets Hubgets offers real-time communication for teams of all sizes. Instantly reach your team members through voice, video and chat from your browser, while having access to your entire business knowledge base.

Top features:

  • Instant messaging
  • “Millennial-friendly” voice and video chat
  • File sharing
  • Hubgets page for working with external partners
  • Team Boards for posting updates
  • Business PBX for enterprise customers

Why this tool stands out: Hubgets has approached communication and collaboration a little differently, allowing for communications beyond instant, real-time messaging. Their Boards and Topics offer knowledge sharing and communication in new, unique formats that really stand out.

Pricing: Limited functionality available for free, paid plans from $2.50 / user / month.

24. Atolia

atoliaAtolia is a collaborative platform that aims to facilitate team working and teleworking by gathering many collaborative tools in a single space. The software has 3 main features: communication (instant messaging, exchange of documents, video call), organization (shared agenda, project management), and formation (knowledge exchange and internal resources).

Top features:

  • Shared agendas
  • Project Management
  • Team messaging
  • Exchange of knowledge and documents
  • Voice and video calls

Why this tool stands out: Atolia allows you to easily work with your teams. You can keep your collaborative tools and synchronize them with Atolia.

Pricing: Basic functionality is free and advanced features are available for 5€ or 9€ per user.

25. Crugo

Crugo Crugo does position itself as an alternative to Slack, but goes beyond team chat and video calling, as it also offers tasks and calendars on its team collaboration software.

Top features:

  • Group chats and direct messaging
  • Audio notes
  • Audio & video calls
  • Shared calendars and reminders
  • Task management
  • File sharing and versioning

Why this tool stands out: Crugo is a nice solution that goes the extra mile to offer an all-round collaboration tool with task management and calendar scheduling.

Pricing: Basic functionality available for free, upgrades from 5EUR / user / month

Looking for something different?

While doing our research, we found a ton of tools that can work as Slack alternatives, but are different enough that we decided to list them separately. So, below we’re highlighting three Slack alternatives that take the form of a social network for work and seven tools that pack in way more functionality than Slack — but can still work well as alternatives to it.

Social networks that work as Slack alternatives

Yammer

Yammer Yammer is much more a social network for the workplace than a team chat application. Nevertheless, it fits into the Slack alternatives list pretty well. That’s because at its core, Yammer is all about connecting with people across your organization to work together.

Top features:

  • Chat messaging
  • Groups as lists of users
  • Share files
  • Social network functionality
  • Polls
  • Office 365 integration

Why this tool stands out: For some companies, collaboration is very social. Yammer is definitely for those companies, as it functions as a social network for your company. So, while most Slack competitors are team chat tools — Yammer is for team collaboration in a slightly different, more social setup.

Pricing: Free for core features, $3/month per user for Yammer Enterprise. Also, Yammer Enterprise is already included with SharePoint Online and Office 365 Enterprise plans.

Workplace by Facebook

Workplace by Facebook Workplace is a collaborative platform made by Facebook. You can use it to communicate with colleagues, and it also offers social network features for a corporate environment.

Top features:

  • Groups for communication
  • Chat
  • News feed with posts
  • Live stream videos
  • Share files, images

Why this tool stands out: Workplace stands out as the “Facebook for work”. It’s a social network first and foremost, for community and culture building, communication, collaboration in the workplace.

Pricing: Core features are available for free, and the premium tier with enterprise features and customer support costs $3 / user / month, with a 90-day free trial.

Jostle

JostleJostle is a cloud-based intranet software that works as a communication platform (and more!) for companies internally.

Top features:

  • Discussions / forums
  • Member directory
  • Content management (“News”)
  • Surveys
  • SAML SSO

Why this tool stands out: As an intranet software, Jostle obviously stands out on this list. As such, a lot of Jostle’s user interface is dedicated to channels for sharing announcements one-way, and the two-way communication (discussions) is just another part of the interface.

Pricing: Depends on the team’s size, but maximum $8 / user / month

Workvivo

workvivo

The Workvivo Employee Communication App is a communication platform that brings all your corporate apps and content together through a familiar social experience. It puts engaging communications in the hands of every employee, regardless of role or location, through a fully branded employee app, give all employees the ability share, digest and contribute information from one location through an intuitive user experience and replaces existing content-centric intranets to a people-centric experience.

Top features:

  • Personal Activity Feeds
  • Collaboration Spaces
  • Recognition through shout-outs
  • Pulse Surveys and Analytics
  • Integration to Slack, Sharepoint, Zoom and other communication and content tools
  • People Directory and Interactive Org Chart
  • Fully brandable with company colors and logo

Why this tool stands out: Workvivo is a communication platform that was built with employee engagement in mind. By using a familiar social experience, employees are able to connect and communicate, but also to align with company goals and values to create a feeling of being part of a community. This social approach to communication has been shown to significantly increase engagement levels in each of Workvivo’s global customers.

Pricing: Not provided by vendor. Pricing only available on request at info@workvivo.com.

Collaboration suites and project management software as Slack alternatives

Freshconnect

FreshdeskFreshconnect is a team collaboration tool, built to simplify team communication. Freshconnect puts context, from the CRM/helpdesk, at the heart of team conversations, so everyone is on the same page and work gets done faster.

With Freshconnect, your team can collaborate to solve support tickets and close sales deals and message each other in real-time. More importantly, your team can log into Freshconnect and access all your important team conversations – even the ones linked to tickets and deals and casual 1:1 conversations – in one place.

Top features:

  • Contextual collaboration inside CRM and helpdesk
  • Group chat and 1:1 team conversations
  • Conversations can involve not just people in the org but also partners and third-party vendors

Why this tool stands out: Freshconnect’s key differentiator is its contextual collaboration feature. Users of Freshdesk and Freshsales can use Freshconnect to start discussions around support tickets and sales deals, right in their CRM and helpdesk. This way, they make sure that internal discussions are tied to context and save all the time they’d otherwise have spent looking for the email/conversation to bring someone else up to speed.

Pricing: Free! (In their Helpdesk, they say “Freshconnect is free right now, and you can add up to 100 collaborators without having to pay anything at all. If you’re looking at adding your 101th collaborator, please write to support@freshconnect.io.”

ProofHub

proofhub

ProofHub is an easy to use project management and online collaboration tool. It promises to your teams, projects and clients together in one central place.

Top features:

  • Tasklists
  • Custom workflows and kanban boards
  • Online proofing tool
  • Discussions and group chat features
  • Whitelabeling
  • Reports and time tracking

Why this tool stands out: ProofHub is a proper project management software that qualifies as a Slack alternative only insofar as it offers some communication features via “discussions” and group chat features.

Pricing: starts at $45/month (billed annually)

Bitrix24

Bitrix24 Bitrix24 offers a free collaboration platform that combines communication with CRM, task management, projects, time tracking and documents sharing.

Top features:

  • Social network
  • Tasks and projects
  • Group chat and video
  • Document management
  • Calendar and planning
  • Email

Why this tool stands out: Bitrix24 is much more than a Slack alternative, as it offers a comprehensive suite of social collaboration, communication and management tools. So, it stands out in how it promises a complete solution that ensures ease of communication.

Pricing: There’s a range of pricing options, from the Free plan to paid cloud plans ranging from $39/month to $199/month, and self-hosted versions.

Quip

QuipQuip is a productivity suite that combines documents, spreadsheets and checklists with team chat. So, it’s definitely more than just a Slack alternative. With very experienced founders and 13 (!) office dogs, Quip is on a mission to build a new class of productivity tool.

Top features:

  • Collaborate on documents
  • Spreadsheets for teams
  • Chat built into every document and spreadsheet
  • Checklists
  • Connect with Salesforce

Why this tool stands out: Quip is one of the few on this list that does not put team chat at the centre of their tool, but rather combines it with other elements of their suite, documents and spreadsheets. It’s a unique approach, and definitely worth a closer look if you’re looking for a collaboration suite.

Pricing: $30 / month for a team of five, and $10 per every additional user.

uShare.to

uShare.to uShare.to calls itself a “workplace technology” for rich, private label team communication. Its functionality includes conferencing, chat and sharing information from any collaboration system in instant workspaces.

Top features:

  • Group and 1-on-1 chat
  • Video conferencing with screen sharing and annotations
  • Multiple workspaces with multiple teams
  • Option to have a private workspace for personal use
  • Integrations with most popular systems

Why this tool stands out: Service providers can private label uShare.to — and this is something Slack and most Slack alternatives do not offer.

Pricing: $50 / user / year, making it a little over $4 / user / month

Samepage.io

Samepage.io Samepage is a collaboration software combining team chat, video conferencing, task management, file sharing, real-time document collaboration, and more.

Top features:

  • Share & edit all kinds of content in real time with Pages
  • Team chat
  • Threaded conversations
  • Video calling
  • Tasks
  • Calendars

Why this tool stands out: This tool is built around its core functionality, Pages. They act as a canvas for teams to collaborate by creating content, sharing tasks and communicating real time. In this, their approach is slightly different from most team chat apps.

Pricing: Limited functionality is free to use, full functionality costs $7 / member / month

Azendoo

Azendoo Azendoo is a work communication and collaboration application that helps teams plan and share tasks, work on projects and communicate effectively.

Top features:

  • Team communication
  • Polls
  • Calendar
  • Task management
  • Time tracking
  • Social network-like activity feed

Why this tool stands out: Azendoo probably has the most extensive feature list of all the tools on this list. Its complete “work tracking” solution is so feature-rich it probably has everything you need to get work done — outside of emails & meetings.

Pricing: Staring from $7.50 / user / month

Stackfield

Stackfield Stackfield combines encrypted project management software and team chat. It’s an integrated platform, so it offers more than just messaging — in fact, it promises to cover all aspects of collaboration.

Top features:

  • Team communication
  • Thread-based discussions
  • Tasks and “Approvals”
  • File sharing with commenting on them
  • End-to-end encryption
  • Events for appointments

Why this tool stands out: While Stackfield is quite impressive in its feature-richness alone, its main selling point seems to be its data security standards. Based in Germany, they emphasize their end-to-end encryption and compliance with not only European data privacy policies (GDPR), but also the German ones, which in many cases are even stricter than EU laws. So, if that’s important to you, Stackfield might just be the tool for you.

Pricing: From 29EUR per month (for up to 10 users) upwards, with a free trial available.

Wimi

wimi Wimi offers a digital collaboration suite that helps companies stay organized and make teamwork more efficient. Wimi goes beyond team communication, as it also offers files & drive, tasks, calendars and video conferencing.

Top features:

  • Workspaces for project management
  • Chat via channels and direct messaging
  • File sharing and management
  • Task management
  • Calendars
  • Voice and video calls

Why this tool stands out: Wimi truly stands out as a “all-in-one” solution. From messaging to calendars to documents with version management, Wimi is a complete package. Very few tools even try to do this much inside one platform.

Pricing: Free for up to 3 users, $9 / user / month and up for upgrades

Skype for Business

Skype for BusinessSkype for Business, also a Microsoft product (formerly known as Microsoft Office Communicator and Microsoft Lync) is an instant messaging software available with Microsoft Office 365.

Top features:

  • Instant messaging
  • Voice over IP (VoIP)
  • Video conferencing
  • Screen sharing
  • Advanced integrations with other Microsoft software

Why this tool stands out: Skype for Business keeps its focus on “meetings”, i.e. voice and video conferencing. Separate from Microsoft Teams and Yammer, but still a part of Microsoft’s portfolio, Skype for Business is best suited for the distributed teams that have a need for a lot of voice or video calling. As such, less focus is put on other collaborative features or messaging itself.

Pricing: Offered as a part of Office 365, starting from $8.25 / user / month

There are many tools that didn’t make the list, and even more tools that would have, once upon a time, belonged to this list but have since changed their focus or shut their doors (HipChat, Stride, Redkix and Mainframe, to name a few). As online work communication and collaboration tools are a relatively new field, and it’s constantly evolving, we look forward to seeing how the world migrates away from email to more and more tools that offer team communication. Follow Fleep on Twitter and Facebook to keep an eye on our news and updates!

“25 Best Slack Alternatives for Team Chat Software in 2018” on the Fleep Blog

Further Reading: