Alternatives to Slack

Team messaging and collaboration platform

Pricing: Free tier, $8.75/user/mo Pro, $15/user/mo Business+ From $8.75/mo

Common pain points:

  • Expensive at scale — costs add up quickly with large teams
  • Free plan limited to 90 days of message history
  • No end-to-end encryption
  • Heavy resource usage on desktop

4 Alternatives to Slack

Mattermost

Open-source, self-hosted Slack alternative for team messaging

Open Source

Free self-hosted, $10/user/mo cloud Professional

  • Self-hosted with full data control
  • Unlimited message history on all plans
  • Open-source with active community

Rocket.Chat

Open-source team chat with omnichannel support

Open Source

Free self-hosted, cloud plans from $4/user/mo

  • End-to-end encryption support
  • Omnichannel — combine team chat and customer support
  • Built-in video conferencing

Element

Decentralized, encrypted messaging built on the Matrix protocol

Open Source

Free self-hosted, Element Server Suite from $5/user/mo

  • End-to-end encryption by default
  • Decentralized — no single point of failure
  • Bridges to Slack, Teams, Discord, and IRC

Zulip

Topic-based team chat designed for both live and async conversations

Open Source

Free self-hosted, Cloud free for small teams, $8/user/mo Standard

  • Topic-based threading keeps conversations organized
  • Designed for asynchronous communication
  • 100+ native integrations and webhooks

Detailed Comparisons