At
Zapier, we're a fully remote team with folks divided across multiple time zones. So we rely on Slack to act as the hub for our entire organization. It's where we post company announcements, collaborate with teammates, and more importantly,create and share (sometimes ridiculous) custom emoji.While Slack is a top-notch, feature-rich team chat app—the ability to upload infinite custom emoji alone gets it five stars from me—there are plenty of other options on the market.
Based on my experience and testing of dozens of team communication apps by my teammates, here's our roundup of the best Slack alternatives.
5 Slack alternatives
- Microsoft Teams for large organizations broken down into teams
- Google Chat for Google Workspace users
- Discord for always-on voice chat
- Zoom for video conferencing and screen sharing
- Element for self-hosted team chat
- Other Slack alternatives
Why pick a Slack alternative?
Despite Slack's robust feature set, some teams might come up against a few barriers that make it a less-than-ideal communication solution. Here are some of those key limitations:
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Audio and video calls aren't the focus. Slack's video and screen sharing features aren't as reliable as some other tools. If your team depends on real-time calls to collaborate, dropped or low-quality calls can really hurt your productivity.
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Disjointed file sharing experience. Slack supports file sharing. But if your team primarily works with and collaborates on Microsoft Word and Excel files or Google Docs, for example, you'll find it takes more clicks to share these files in Slack than it would in Microsoft Teams or Google Chat.
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Pricing. Slack offers a free plan, but this version lacks many key features that make it useful for the workplace. If you upgrade to a paid plan—$7.25/user/month (billed annually) for the lowest tier—and add
Slack AI for an additional $10/user/month, the costs add up fast. If you're a large business, that's probably not a problem. But for startups and small businesses, this can be a big obstacle. Some of the other apps on this list are included with software you're already paying for.
How we evaluate and test apps
Our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of
how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.The best Slack alternatives at a glance
|
Best for |
Standout feature |
Pricing |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Teams |
Large organizations broken down into teams |
Tight integration with Microsoft ecosystem; robust meeting options |
Included with Microsoft 365; plans from $4/user/month (billed annually) |
| Google Chat |
Google Workspace users |
Tightly integrated with Google products; great search feature |
Included with Google Workspace; plans from $6/user/month (billed annually) |
| Discord |
Always-on voice chat |
Easy setup with always-on audio |
Free basic features; $3-10/month (billed monthly) for the Nitro plan |
| Zoom |
Video conferencing and screen sharing |
Reliable video and screen sharing with text chat options |
Free for up to 100 participants for 40-minute meetings; paid plans from $13.32/month/host (billed annually) |
| Element |
Self-hosted team chat |
Fully encrypted messaging that you can install on your own server |
Free for up to 200 users; paid plans from €5/user/month |
The best Slack alternative for large organizations broken down into teams
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams pros:
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Tight integration with Microsoft ecosystem
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Better audio and video quality than Slack or any Slack alternative
Microsoft Teams cons:
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Difficult to set up without a dedicated IT team
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Limited options to search through chats
If you're a Microsoft-focused organization, let me save you from having to scroll any further: the best Slack alternative for you is Microsoft Teams.
With a Microsoft 365 Business Basics package and above, you get access to Teams and cloud versions of the full suite of Microsoft Office apps, including Word, Excel, and OneDrive. These are live versions of the apps, so you can collaborate on them asynchronously or in real-time via a
Teams video or audio call. Slack also integrates well with some Microsoft apps—but as you'd expect, the integration isn't as tight as what you'd experience using Teams.When it comes to organizing chats, Teams takes a more streamlined approach—it groups them initially by team structure, whereas
Slack groups chats into channels by topic. Anyone can create a channel in Teams, but new ones will exist as a subcategory of an existing team. It might sound a little confusing, but the ultimate result is a neat and compartmentalized side panel. Because of all these layers, it does mean you'll sometimes need to do a bit of clicking around to find the channel you're looking for.Teams is also compatible with
Microsoft Copilot, an AI add-on that costs $30/user/month (quite a bit more than what Teams costs otherwise). It does most of what you'd expect fromAI meeting assistants: generate transcriptions, summaries, sentiment analysis—that kind of thing.The main downside to Teams is how much work it is to roll out: if you don't have a dedicated IT staff, it's going to be tricky to set up. But considering the size of organizations Teams seems to be built for, that's probably not much of a barrier—especially if your team is already using the Microsoft suite of apps.
You can also use
Zapier's Teams integration to connect it with the rest of your tech stack. This way, you can automatically do things like turn a Teams message into a task in your to-do list app or project management tool. For more inspiration, check out otherways to automate Microsoft Teams, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.Microsoft Teams pricing: From $4/month/person (billed annually) to use Teams on its own; from $6/month/user (billed annually) for Microsoft 365 Business Basic, which includes Teams, plus core Microsoft apps like OneDrive, Word, and Excel.
Check out our full breakdown of how these two apps stack up, feature for feature:
Slack vs. Teams.The best Slack alternative for Google Workspace users
Google Chat
Google Chat pros:
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Integrated with Google Workspace
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Wide range of search filters with results showing up in real time as you type
Google Chat cons:
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Limited feature set
If you're deep in Google Workspace apps, you already have access to a solid Slack alternative:
Google Chat (formerly known as Google Hangouts Chat).Google Chat's interface follows the same design and organization principles as the rest of Google's apps, so there's almost no learning curve. It does lack some polish, though. For example, some seemingly simple actions, like browsing a list of public rooms to join, are mysteriously buried behind multiple clicks.
Beyond the superficial, Chat gives you chat organization tools similar to Slack. You can send direct messages and group messages, group related replies into threads, and set conversations to be either public or private.
Where Chat really shines is how seamlessly it integrates with Google's ecosystem of apps. For example, when you paste a Google Doc link in a Google Chat meeting, it automatically changes permissions so that all meeting attendees can access the file. Setting up a meeting is just as easy. Tag Google Meet and your coworkers, and say when the meeting should happen, and it'll create a calendar appointment complete with a Google Meet link for video conferencing.
If you have access to
Google Workspace Labs—an invite-only program for Google Workspace users to try new AI features—you can pull the power ofGoogle Gemini (the AI chatbot) into Google Chat to do things like summarize the chat, generate a list of action items, and answer specific questions about the chat.With
Zapier's Google Chat integration, you can connect with the other apps you use most, turning your chat app into a work hub. For example, you can automatically get notifications in the right channel before important events or when a new form response comes in. Learn more abouthow to automate Google Chat, or get started with one of these templates.Google Chat pricing: From $6/user/month (billed annually) for Google Workspace, which includes Google Chat and other Google productivity apps.
For a more detailed breakdown, check out our app comparison:
Google Chat vs. Slack.The best Slack alternative for always-on voice chat
Discord
Discord pros:
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Easy setup
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Ability to create separate text channels to organize your conversations
Discord cons:
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File uploads are limited to 10 MB in the free version; 50 or 500 MB in the paid versions
Listing Discord as a Slack alternative surprises some folks. After all, Discord was originally built as a gaming tool, and these days, it's marketed more broadly to online communities—not companies. But if you look past the branding, you'll find
Discord can work for business chat for one key reason: excellent always-on audio.If talking out loud is how you get work done, Discord is a great remote coworking tool. Click any voice channel in the Discord sidebar to enable the audio, and you'll immediately be able to hear everyone else who enabled the audio. This means you can talk to colleagues while working remotely in a shared Google Doc, or you could
share your screen in any application and collaborate that way.Slack's version of always-on audio channels is
huddles. For the most part, they're used the same way as voice channels, but the process isn't as seamless and the audio quality isn't as solid.Discord also offers regular text conversations with threads and video chats, if you want to see your teammates face-to-face.
Discord doesn't offer much in the way of official integrations, at least not for business-facing apps. But you can
use Zapier to connect Discord to any of the other apps you use, allowing you to build just about any Discord integration you can imagine. For example, you can automatically get an alert in Discord when a meeting is about to start or when a new task has been added to your project management tool. Here are even more ideas forways to automate Discord. Or click on one of these templates to get started.Discord pricing: Free for basic features; $3-10/month (billed monthly) for the Nitro plan, which includes higher-quality screen sharing, larger file uploads, and more emoji.
Learn more about how these two apps stack up:
Slack vs. Discord.The best Slack alternative for video conferencing and screen sharing
Zoom
Zoom pros:
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Reliable and easy to use
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Includes collaboration features and allows for
video recording
Zoom cons:
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Doesn't feel as much like a chat app
Video and screen sharing features aren't the primary features in Slack, which is probably why so many Zapier users
connect Slack to Zoom. If these are the key features you're looking for in a Slack alternative, you might want a dedicated video conferencing app instead. Zoom consistently tops our list of thebest video conferencing software, and for good reason: it works. You can share your entire screen, just one section of your screen, or an individual app. You can also share only audio from your computer, if you want toface-mute while coworking. And it's really reliable, working even on weaker internet connections.While Zoom started as a video conferencing app, it's now adding features that make it more of a workspace app. The video conferencing features are still front and center, but it also offers chat, a mail client, and a connected calendar. It even has Zoom Docs, an AI-driven document editor, to help you generate new files based on meeting content, with real-time collaborative editing. If you're on a paid plan, you can use the
Zoom AI Companion to summarize unread messages and ask questions about your chat. Zoom is slowly becoming its own version of a software suite.With
Zapier's Zoom integration, you can take the busywork out of managing coworking sessions. For example, you can automatically attach Zoom links to your calendar events and get notifications for upcoming hangouts. Learn more abouthow to automate Zoom, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.Zoom pricing: Free for up to 100 participants for 40-minute meetings; from $13.32/month/host (billed annually) for the Pro plan, which includes the AI Companion and longer meetings.
The best Slack alternative for self-hosted team chat
Element
Element pros:
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Fully encrypted messaging built on an open source protocol
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Can install entirely on your own server
Element cons:
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Setup can be difficult
Some conversations are too important to host on a third-party server, which is where Element comes in.
Built on the open source
Matrix protocol, Element is team chat software you can install on a private server. It's the most feature-complete self-hosted Slack alternative our team could find. All messages are encrypted. Similar to Slack and otherteam chat apps, you can group conversations into channels, create threaded replies, send voice messages, host video and audio chats, and even share polls.The user interface is extremely streamlined, rare among open source applications, and there are plenty of options for controlling which notifications users do and don't get.
Even better: there are
multiple clients, meaning people who don't like the default Element app can install something they prefer instead. It's a great deal of flexibility, and paid plans get even more powerful thanks to bridges. These allow you to connect to Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams rooms, either to pull in your archive of messages or to connect to parts of your company still using those services.Plus, Element doesn't have any AI integrations, which is a huge plus for people who are concerned about the privacy and security implications of that technology—a category of people that overlaps with open source enthusiasts.
Element pricing: Free for up to 200 users; from €5/user/month for the Business plan, which includes a fully managed cloud-based option, complete with video calls.
Looking for an Element alternative for self-hosted chat? Although not as streamlined as Element,
Rocket.Chat,Mattermost, andZulip are all solid options worth looking into.Other Slack alternatives
You really can't go wrong with any of the five Slack alternatives on this list. But if you're not interested in going with a big name or a self-hosted option, here are some other options.
- Campsite is worth considering for teams with a greater focus on asynchronous work. Here's how content marketing specialist Kiran Shahiduses Campsite to simplify team communication.
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Lesser-known apps like
Pumble andRyver tend to get good reviews. - Lark is a good Slack alternative if you're looking for more of an all-in-one business operations tool.
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New AI-first chat apps, like
Glue, are starting to enter the scene. - Project management apps like Asana and ClickUp come preloaded with solid chat features—so if you want to avoid app bloat, you might already have what you need.
Which Slack alternative should you use?
All the apps listed above offer the same thing Slack does: a way to communicate with your team. But how they go about accomplishing this differs from app to app. If you're looking for a no-frills app that makes it easy to voice chat with your teammates, go with Discord. If you want a more feature-rich team chat app that integrates seamlessly with the apps you use most, and those apps happen to be part of the Microsoft or Google Workplace suite of apps, then the answer is obvious: go with Teams or Chat.
Every app listed here also offers robust free plans (the only caveat being that the free plans for Teams and Chat are limited to personal use). So if a few have piqued your interest, try them out before signing up. And if you end up sticking with Slack in the end, that's still a win.
Related reading:
- How to communicate with clients asynchronously
- How to overcome the biggest remote work challenges
- How to collaborate across time zones
- Why messaging apps are still useful in the office
This article was originally published in August 2024. The most recent update was in December 2024.