13 best Slack alternatives to boost team communication

Zoom Team Chat is part of Zoom Workplace, a team collaboration platform that brings all your communications together. It offers chat for teams to collaborate in real time or asynchronously through channels, group chats, and one-on-one conversations. And with Zoom AI Companion built in with eligible paid plans, you can instantly summarize long chat threads to catch up, get help drafting professional messages, summarize Zoom meetings, and propose new tasks.

While Slack offers huddles for quick, informal calls, it relies on third-party apps for an actual phone system and full-featured video meetings. A conversation in Zoom Team Chat can become a video meeting or a collaborative whiteboard session with just a few clicks. The Zoom approach automates workflows, reducing the need for multiple subscriptions, and creates a consistent, familiar experience for your entire team.

Other Zoom Workplace features include:

• AI-first productivity: Get instant summaries of chat threads or meetings with Zoom AI Companion, plus help composing messages to save time and enhance team communication.
• Continuous chat: Keep the conversation going before, during, and after meetings with chat channels that centralize all communication, including in-meeting chat history, so ideas are saved.
• Integrated workspace: Create and manage tasks or co-author documents with Zoom Docs alongside your team conversations, keeping everything in one place and reducing subscription costs.
• Streamlined collaboration: Instantly start a video meeting, phone call, or collaborative whiteboard session directly from any chat conversation.

Microsoft Teams is the communication hub for Microsoft 365, offering integration with apps like Word, Excel, and OneDrive. Its main benefit is allowing users to create and co-author documents directly within a chat or channel, making it a good tool for teams that rely on Microsoft’s productivity suite. The platform combines chat, AI, video meetings, and file storage into a single interface designed to improve project-based work.

For teams deeply embedded in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, a key advantage of Teams is its native document collaboration. While Slack can connect to Microsoft 365 apps, the workflow isn’t as fluid as editing, sharing, and managing files within the application built for it. However, the interface can feel complex and less intuitive than other options, and it can sometimes be challenging to navigate for quick, simple conversations.

Rocket.Chat is an open-source platform that gives technologically minded organizations control through self-hosting. This makes it a great choice for industries with strict data privacy and compliance needs, like government, healthcare, and finance. It stands apart from Slack by offering more comprehensive security, such as readily available end-to-end encryption. Because it’s open-source, development teams can customize the platform to fit their workflows.

Compared to Slack, Rocket.Chat’s main advantage is the flexibility and security control that come from its self-hosting model. The ability to host the platform on your own servers gives you total control over your data. However, setting up and managing a self-hosted server requires significant technical expertise and dedicated IT resources, making it a less practical choice for teams without a technical staff.

Pumble is a team communication app designed to be a simple, affordable alternative to Slack. It offers a user experience similar to Slack with public and private channels, direct messages, and threaded conversations. Its biggest draw is the free plan, which offers unlimited message history for an unlimited number of users. This is a key advantage over Slack’s free tier, which limits access to message history.

Teams can also access core chat functionalities and one-on-one video calls at no cost. This focus on affordability does come with trade-offs, though. Pumble has a much smaller library of third-party app integrations and lacks the advanced workflow and security features required by larger enterprise organizations.

Mattermost is a collaboration platform built for technical teams that require a high level of security and control. It offers developer-centric tools, including deep integrations with GitHub and GitLab, a command-line interface, and features for sharing code. Its automation tool, called Playbooks, helps teams manage complex, repeatable processes. Unlike Slack, all its plans include searchable message history, so no conversation is ever lost.

For engineering teams, the ability to self-host on a private cloud or on-premises provides a high level of security and data control. However, Mattermost’s specialized focus is its primary drawback. The interface is less intuitive for non-technical users, and it lacks the range of integrations for business departments like marketing, sales, and HR.

Google Chat is integrated into Google Workspace. It’s made for teams that rely on Google’s tools, connecting with Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and Meet. The platform uses Spaces as dedicated, topic-based areas where teams can share files from Drive, manage tasks, and hold conversations. For teams using Google Workspace, this creates a more unified workflow for collaborating on documents and projects than Slack’s app-based integrations offer.

The ability to start a video call with Meet or collaborate on a Google Doc directly from a conversation improves workflows for users who live inside the Google ecosystem. Chat may not be the best option for teams that don’t use Google Workspace. It also offers fewer third-party integrations and less customization than other platforms.

Twist is a collaboration tool that organizes conversations into threads, creating a structured, asynchronous space for your team to talk. Unlike traditional chat apps, every conversation in Twist needs a subject line and exists within its dedicated thread. And unlike Slack, this structure prevents important discussions from getting buried in a fast-moving, real-time chat stream.

Twist can help teams move away from an always-on work culture and protect time for focused work. But for teams that need to have fast-paced, real-time conversations about urgent issues or quick decisions, Twist’s structured and slower nature can be a significant drawback.

Discord started in the gaming world but is now known for its high-quality, always-on voice channels, offering a different approach to team communication channels. This feature allows team members to drop in and out of voice conversations freely, creating a casual and collaborative audio space without the formality of scheduling. Alongside its voice features, Discord also offers text channels, video calls, and screen sharing. Some users report that its voice and video quality is clearer and more reliable than what’s offered natively within Slack.

The quality and ease of use of its voice channels are excellent for creative teams that value spontaneous, informal conversation. However, Discord’s gaming-oriented design and branding can feel out of place in many corporate environments. Plus, its lack of native integrations with standard business software, such as project management tools or calendars, makes it less suited for business workflows.

Flock is a team platform that bundles simple productivity tools directly into the chat interface. Alongside standard features like public and private channels, it offers built-in tools such as shared to-do lists, polls, notes, and reminders, allowing teams to manage tasks and organize information within a conversation. This creates a more integrated experience for managing simple projects than Slack, which often requires external app integrations for the same functionality.

Flock is a good choice for teams with straightforward project needs, but its simplicity can also be a drawback. Teams that require more advanced task management or sophisticated features may find Flock’s built-in tools too basic and have to integrate other software into their processes.

Chanty is a collaboration tool that focuses on turning conversations directly into actions. Its primary feature is a simple built-in task manager that allows team members to convert a message into a task, assign it to a team member, and set a due date. Teams can track tasks on a visual Kanban board; this built-in system is more direct for creating and tracking tasks than relying on Slack’s app integrations.

Chanty offers a simple approach to task management, making it easy for teams to stay organized and assign work directly from a discussion. However, the built-in task manager might not be suitable for complex projects, and it lacks the advanced features for teams that need to prioritize tasks with precision.

Ryver combines chat with the structure of threaded posts and task management. It offers chat channels for quick conversations and includes Posts for long-form discussions. Ryver also features a built-in Kanban board, which allows teams to turn any message into a task and track it visually through different project stages.

Ryver’s all-in-one approach allows for a cohesive workflow, and its flat-rate pricing can be cost-effective for growing teams. Compared to Slack, it also offers unlimited guest access on all its plans. However, the interface feels less modern than many competitors, and some users find the mobile app less polished and reliable for on-the-go work.

Element is a collaboration app built on Matrix, an open, decentralized communication protocol. Unlike traditional chat apps that store data on central servers, Element gives users control over where their information is stored. It features end-to-end encryption, protecting messages, video calls, and file transfers when enabled. The default encryption for Element allows for a higher level of security than base Slack, which limits more advanced security to its most expensive plan.

Element’s decentralized architecture means there is no single point of failure or control, offering a resilient and confidential way to communicate. However, this advanced security model introduces complexity that can be challenging for non-technical users. Concepts like managing encryption keys and choosing a server can create a steep learning curve, and the user experience can feel less polished than alternatives.

Zoho Cliq is the team messaging app designed to fit the Zoho software suite. Its strength is its integration with other Zoho products, including Zoho CRM, Projects, and Books. This allows teams to receive notifications, share reports, and manage business workflows from a central interface. Cliq offers unique features like the ability to fork a message from a channel into a separate, private chat. This tool helps keep channels on-topic, which is an advantage over Slack, where side chats can easily create extra noise for your team.

For committed Zoho users, the workflow between chat and other business-critical Zoho apps is more powerful than what can be achieved with a third-party integration. However, this dependence is also its main weakness; for teams that don’t use Zoho products, Cliq has limited appeal and offers fewer integrations than competitors.