When considering online communication platforms, Slack without doubt sits at the very top of the ranking with about 8 million users. However, having its limitations and functionality gaps may not be the best communication tool for everyone. Well the good news is that there are in fact over 100 slack app alternatives available – and some are even free or provides features that will actually suit you better.
Going through over 100 choices and finding the best alternative is a hard and time-consuming job. So, we have narrowed down your search to 10 best alternatives for you to choose from.
Before we move into details, let us take a look at the features offered by Slack for a better comparison.
Slack is a freemium communication tool that offers a limited number of features for its free users. Surely, in a really short span, Slack has managed to become the leader of the team communication industry. In particular, it is widely preferred for its top-notch functionality and user-friendliness.
While most people do seem to like how slack operates, to a lot of beginners it might come off as somewhat complicated. Moreover, a lot of users find Slack to be rather costly compared to what it offers.
Now that you are familiar with the features and benefits that Slack offers, we can move on to our Slack app alternatives.
Founded in 2014, flock is a team messaging platform. It promises to bring all your team’s communication and information together in one place. In fact, it poses a tough competition to slack with its similar features, better speed and affordable rates.
Apart from these features unlike Slack, it allows you to turn discussions into tasks by creating to-dos for you and your team. In addition, it also allows you add due dates to them.
Also, other features include guest accounts, one-way announcement channels, poles, notes etc. And cherry on top, flock is also available in multiple languages, including Spanish and Portuguese.
Rocket.Chat is an unlimited, open-source, and customised team communication tool. Consequently, Rocket Chat offers some unique features that free and even paid Slack versions lack -making it a suitable slack app alternative.Hence, it is a great choice for people who wants to host their own chat services.
The best part about Rocket.chat is that it is super easy to migrate from any other services to Rocket.Chat. In addition, the tool offers many other features for instance - endless customising options and integrations. Moreover, it has features like screen sharing, app marketplace, real-time automatic translation of more than 50 languages, voice messages and end-to-end encryption and a lot more. Thus,these makes it a worthy alternative to Slack.
However, the only drawback is that it doesn’t have a dedicated customer support.
Chanty is an easy, faster and affordable Slack app alternative if you have a small team to work with. Also, its built-in task manager and automatic interface makes this the perfect chat tool for the new and less tech savvy users.
Likewise Chanty offers a special feature called Teambook that organises all your files, links, tasks, and conversations into folders. Besides that, another key differentiation of Chanty is the focus on AI for smart responses that allows predictive texts.
Likewise Rocket.Chat, Mattermost is an open-source and customise friendly communication tool. Consequently, with its self-hosted, promising and modern communication features it can serve as a good, affordable alternative to Slack.
Furthermore, Mattermost also provides a secure option which supports end-to-end encryption.
Besides, it is one of the few collaboration apps that acts as a social network and provides multi language support.
Glip is a team collaboration tool developed by RingCentral. Although it requires an app to access most of the features, it offers very similar features to slack in a better price- definitely a worthy slack app alternative.
In addition, Glip has built-in features like screen sharing, document collaboration, tasks, calendar and notes. It also offers 24/7 priority support and more admin and privacy controls. Therefore, it is a good alternative to consider.
It is an open network that unlike most team communication tools, does not confine you to a team only space - instead allows you to collaborate and communicate with anyone else on Fleep.
So, this app will be your go to if you are heavily reliant on external communication and want to reach out and chat with other people and organisations without leaving the client.
Microsoft team is a group chat software offered as a part of Microsoft Office 365. In fact, it could be a slack app alternative for you if you are looking for a communication tool for your Enterprise.
If you already have access to a Microsoft Office 365 plan, then you can already start using Microsoft Teams without any signing up required. You can also sign up for the free version and enjoy a heap of useful features offered.
However on the downside, it might be slightly confusing to sign in / sign up and accessing Teams might be time consuming and sometimes difficult for new users.
Zulip is an open-source messaging tool. It is similar to Slack in many ways for instance features like nested topics which works in a similar way to Slack channels. But at the same time, unlike Slack it offers a lot of interesting features for the same price range .
Other than these, functionality including fast search, keyword shortcuts, code syntax highlighting, markdown, excellent security credentials etc. really make it a good slack app alternative to consider.
Ryver is a unique team communication tool that integrates group chat, task management, and a powerful workflow engine into one app. At the same time, including features similar to Slack, Ryver with its Trello-like built-in task manager offers you a lot more for a great price.
It also allows easy sharing options through integration, screen sharing and a lot more. Indeed, the concept of combining team chat with a project management allows you to get the best of both worlds. So it is definitely a tool worth considering as a cheaper and greater slack app alternative.
However, it might be somewhat complicated and confusing for new users and especially if you are not tech-savvy, it may take some time before you are able to utilize it fully.
This is a messaging platform by Google available as a part of the G Suite package. Unlike previously discussed Slack alternatives, Google Hangouts isn’t free – but it’s cheaper compared to slacks premium packages, and provides a wide range of options and facilities for the price.
G-suite account - $6 / user / month
One of the major perks of using Hangouts is being able to view files from Drive and Docs directly in conversations. Similar to Slack channels, hangouts offer a service called Rooms that also allows you to send private and group messages using Communication threads within the tool. Another amazing feature is that it currently 28 supports languages in the Hangouts Chat interface.
In brief, we have discussed the best alternatives available for you to enjoy a faster, cheaper, and flexible team communication process. So now it is for you to test and decide which alternative suits you the best!
