What is the best team chat app in 2026?
The right pick depends first on what you already pay for.
A team chat app replaces internal email and group texts with channels: one per project, client or department, with a history the company keeps when someone leaves. We compared six apps on what matters to a small or midsize business: price per user, what the free plan quietly deletes, calls, integrations, and where your messages are stored.
The short answer. Slack is the best team chat app if chat is the center of your workday, from $7.25 per user per month billed yearly. But if you already pay for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, Teams or Google Chat are included, so start there. Pumble has the best free plan, with no cap on users or history. Zulip sorts conversations by topic, and Chanty suits teams of five or fewer.
What most roundups skip: Slack's free plan shows only 90 days and deletes anything older than a year, several free plans stop at 10,000 messages, and paying for chat on top of a suite that already has it costs a 20-person team about $1,740 a year.
The ranking is editorial: a sponsored spot is always labeled on its card, and no affiliate link changes a score.
The best team chat app for your setup
From $7.25, the most integrations
On Microsoft 365Bundled with business plans
On Google WorkspaceIncluded from $7 with email
Best free planUnlimited users and history
Organized threadsA named topic for every conversation
Teams of five or fewerFree with full history and tasks
6 team chat apps compared
This ranking is for the owner or manager of a 5 to 200-person team picking a first chat tool or getting off internal email. Every ranked app offers team channels and a price you can read on its official page. Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Element, Discord and Flock are covered below, outside the ranking: quote-only pricing, non-business use, or no business plan.
| Best for | What sets it apart | Free plan | Team size | Visit | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Slack | Best overall | Most integrations | 4.3/5 | $7.25/user/mo yearly | ✓ | Connected teams, 5 to 200 people | Visit → |
| 2 | Microsoft Teams | Best if you're on Microsoft 365 | Bundled with Microsoft 365 | 4.1/5 | Included in Microsoft 365 | ✓ | Microsoft 365 companies | Visit → |
| 3 | Google Chat | Best if you're on Google Workspace | Bundled with Workspace | 4.0/5 | $7/user/mo yearly | — | Gmail and Drive teams | Visit → |
| 4 | Pumble | Best free plan | Free with no user cap | 3.9/5 | $2.49/mo yearly | ✓ | Small businesses, nonprofits | Visit → |
| 5 | Zulip | Best for organized conversations | Named topics in every channel | 3.8/5 | $6.67/mo yearly | ✓ | Technical or remote teams | Visit → |
| 6 | Chanty | Best for very small teams | Task management included | 3.5/5 | $3/mo yearly | ✓ | Teams of five or fewer | Visit → |
Scores on five weighted criteria, explained in the method section. Prices checked in 2026 on official pages, before taxes.
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How we compared and scored
The core criterion: the app has to organize a team's conversations into channels, with history the company controls. A personal messenger like WhatsApp or a community tool like Discord doesn't pass. We read every price list on the vendor's own page, then looked at what each free plan keeps and what it throws away.
Messaging and structure (channels, threads, search) is worth 25% of the score, the same as price and free plan. Price weighs that much because it's where most roundups mislead: they forget that a chat app bundled into your office suite costs you nothing. Calls and integrations count for 20%. Data and compliance (where data lives, export, self-hosting) and onboarding with real-world feedback count for 15% each.
We read public reviews and forum threads, starting with the angriest. Three complaints keep coming back: history that vanishes on free plans, price hikes pushed mid-contract, and notification overload. The last one is fixed with team norms, not with a new tool.
- Messaging and structureChannels, threads, direct messages, search, external guests.25%
- Price and free planPublic per-user price, what the free plan keeps, real cost alongside your suite.25%
- Calls and integrationsAudio and video calls, screen sharing, connections to other tools.20%
- Data and complianceData location, export of history, self-hosting options.15%
- Onboarding and feedbackTime to adoption, mobile app, recurring user complaints.15%
No affiliate link changes a score or a rank.
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Slack
Slack is still the benchmark for team chat. You get channels per project, client or topic, threads under every message, huddles (audio and video calls you start in one click from a channel), and an app directory nobody else comes close to. If your CRM, ticketing tool and payment alerts already talk to each other, Slack is usually where those notifications land.
Price is where it hurts. Pro costs $7.25 per user per month on annual billing, or $8.75 month to month. Business+ is $15 yearly and $18 monthly since the 2025 increase. A 20-person team on yearly Pro spends about $1,740 a year. Business+ is also the first plan that lets you pin your data to a region (Paris or Frankfurt in Europe), and you have to ask sales to switch it on.
Who it's not for: a team that already pays for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace and doesn't need deep integrations. You'd be paying twice for chat. It's also a poor fit if you want to stay free for long: the free plan only shows 90 days of history, and since 2024 Slack deletes free-plan messages and files older than a year.
- Huddles inside any channel
- Shared channels with other companies
- Regional data residency on Business+
- ✓The most pleasant chat to use every day
- ✓The biggest integration catalog
- ✓Annual billing saves roughly 16%
- ✗Free plan capped at 90 visible days and 10 apps
- ✗Free-plan messages older than a year are deleted
- ✗Data residency only from Business+
The best pick when chat is the center of how your team works and you're willing to pay for it. Before you sign, check whether your office suite already includes a chat app that would do the job.
Microsoft Teams
Teams isn't a chat app first. It's the meetings and conversation layer of Microsoft 365, wired into Outlook, SharePoint and OneDrive. Team channels and private chats are there, shared files sit in SharePoint, and video meetings are strong. If you already pay for the suite, Teams costs you nothing extra, and that single fact settles the question for most small businesses.
One thing to know: the free version is built for personal use, not for equipping a company. For a real team setup, you want the business plans, where Teams comes bundled with the rest of Microsoft 365. Admins also get central control over accounts, which matters as soon as someone leaves.
Who it's not for: a small team on Google Workspace, or with no suite at all. Teams will feel heavy, and day-to-day messaging is less snappy than in Slack or Pumble. The complaint we see most: a user can't export their own conversations; an admin has to do it through Microsoft's compliance tools.
- Solid video meetings
- Files stored in SharePoint and OneDrive
- The same tool many clients and partners use
- ✓No extra cost on Microsoft 365 business plans
- ✓Calls, meetings and chat in one place
- ✓Accounts managed centrally
- ✗Feels heavy for a small team
- ✗Conversation export is admin-only
- ✗Less pleasant than Slack for fast back-and-forth
The default choice if Microsoft 365 is already paid for. Only buy a second chat tool if your team truly pushes for it, with numbers to back it up.
Google Chat
Google Chat isn't sold on its own. It comes with Google Workspace, starting with Business Starter at $7 per user per month on an annual plan ($8.40 on the flexible plan). For that price you also get business email, calendar, Drive and Meet. Spaces (Google's word for channels) take seconds to set up, and you can share and edit a Google Doc right inside a conversation.
The limits show as the team grows. With history turned off, direct messages disappear after 24 hours. You can't add external guests to a group chat, only to spaces. And the Starter, Standard and Plus plans top out at 300 users.
Who it's not for: a team that runs everything through chat, with dozens of channels, bots and alerts. Google Chat gets the job done, but without Slack's finesse on threads, notifications and integrations. Still, plenty of teams on forums say they moved to Google Chat for one reason: they were already on Google.
- Chat, email, calendar, Drive and Meet in one plan
- Docs shared and edited inside the chat
- Annual plan about 16% cheaper than flexible
- ✓No extra cost if you have Workspace
- ✓Zero learning curve for Gmail users
- ✓Google search across your history
- ✗Not sold separately
- ✗Fewer integrations and settings than Slack
- ✗Plans capped at 300 users
The cheapest team chat when Workspace is already in place. Start there and only switch if your team keeps hitting its limits.
Pumble
Pumble looks a lot like Slack: channels, threads, direct messages and search. The difference is the free plan. It caps neither the number of users nor your message history, which makes it the only free plan in this ranking that never makes anything vanish. You also get 10 GB of storage per workspace.
Paid plans are the cheapest on the market: Pro at $2.49 per user per month billed yearly ($2.99 monthly), Business at $3.99 and Enterprise at $6.99. Twenty people on Pro run about $600 a year, before taxes. Pumble is made by CAKE.com, the company behind Clockify, so you can bundle both.
Who it's not for: teams that live on integrations. The free plan allows only 3, and reviews point to no Google Drive or OneDrive connection, thin admin settings and a weaker mobile app. Group calls are paid only; the free plan sticks to one-on-one.
- Unlimited users and history for free
- Built-in Slack workspace import
- Same company as Clockify
- ✓The most generous free plan here
- ✓Among the cheapest paid plans
- ✓Feels familiar if you come from Slack
- ✗Only 3 integrations on the free plan
- ✗Group calls require a paid plan
- ✗Mobile app lags behind
The first tool to try on a tight budget. Write down your three must-have integrations first: if they're covered, you can stay free for a long time.
Zulip
Zulip files every message under a named topic inside a channel. You read one topic start to finish, then the next, like a well-sorted inbox, instead of scrolling back through a firehose. That's the argument you see again and again on forums: open source communities leave Slack's free plan for Zulip and bring their channel history with them.
It's open source. On the cloud, the free plan keeps 10,000 messages searchable and 5 GB of files total. Cloud Standard costs $6.67 per user per month billed yearly ($8 monthly), and Plus is $10 with a 10-user minimum. Self-hosted, the software is free, and the Basic plan with support starts at $3.50 per user per month.
Who it's not for: a non-technical team that wants something anyone gets without a walkthrough. Topics take some getting used to, and you'll explain them to every new hire. Calls run through an outside video tool, and the integration list is shorter than Slack's.
- Named topics in every channel
- Open source, self-hostable
- Official Slack import
- ✓Long discussions stay readable
- ✓Free self-hosting
- ✓Public pricing
- ✗10,000 searchable messages on free cloud
- ✗Steeper learning curve
- ✗Calls depend on an outside tool
The best pick if your team writes a lot and works asynchronously. For a team that chats fast and calls often, Slack or Pumble will feel more natural.
Chanty
Chanty is a classic team chat with channels, direct messages and calls, plus task management, with Kanban-style boards (columns like to do, doing, done) on the Business plan. Its free plan keeps searchable history with no limit, gives you 20 GB per team and 10 integrations.
The catch is size: free stops at 5 members and 1 guest. Past that, Business costs $3 per user per month billed yearly, or $4 monthly. A 12-person team pays about $430 a year, before taxes.
Who it's not for: a team of ten or more that wants to stay free; Pumble goes further at $0. It's also not ideal if you need a deep integration list or a vendor with a big footprint: Chanty is a smaller player, and its updates are less visible than Slack's.
- Unlimited history on the free plan
- Built-in tasks, boards on Business
- 10 integrations for free
- ✓Full free plan for five people
- ✓Cheap paid plan
- ✓Chat and tasks in one tool
- ✗Free plan capped at 5 members
- ✗Fewer integrations than Slack
- ✗Smaller vendor
A good fit for a team of three to five. If you plan to hire, compare it with Pumble right away, since Pumble's free plan has no user cap.
What a team chat app really costs over a year
Price pages are hard to compare because two of the six apps come bundled with a suite you may already pay for. Here are the entry plans for a 20-person team over a year, at official prices before taxes.
If your suite already has chat
Teams with a Microsoft 365 business plan, Google Chat with Workspace: $0 extra. Adding Slack Pro on top costs about $1,740 a year for 20 people on annual billing. Run that number before you book a single demo.
If you're starting from scratch
Pumble Pro: about $600 a year for 20 people. Chanty Business: $720. Zulip Cloud Standard: about $1,600. Slack Pro: about $1,740. Google Workspace Starter: $1,680, but that includes email, calendar and storage.
If your data must stay in a region
Slack's data residency starts on Business+, at $15 per user per month billed yearly: $3,600 a year for 20. Self-hosted Zulip, Mattermost or Rocket.Chat let you pick the server, but you pay for hosting and for someone's time to maintain it.
- Does your office suite (Microsoft 365, Workspace) already include chat?
- How long does the free plan keep your messages?
- Are group calls included, or paid only?
- Are your three must-have integrations on the plan you're eyeing?
- Where are messages stored, and from which plan can you choose?
- Can you export the full history, private messages included, on your own?
Other team chat apps worth knowing
These names show up in every search. They're not ranked because pricing is quote-only, because they serve a different use, or because their free plan is too narrow for a business. Here's when they're worth a look.
Mattermost: self-hosted chat for technical teams, with a new catch
Quote onlyMattermost is open source chat you run on your own server, popular with engineering teams and regulated industries. Paid plans (Professional, Enterprise) are sold as prepaid annual seat licenses, with no public price. The big change came with version 11: the free Entry edition now shows only 10,000 messages and hides older ones. On Mattermost's own forum, admins describe hitting the wall in the middle of a workday. Team Edition keeps full history, but caps out at 250 users and has no single sign-on.
- Price
- Quote, annual subscription
- Limit
- Entry: 10,000 visible messages
Rocket.Chat: free up to 50 users, then quote-based
Open sourceRocket.Chat is another self-hostable open source chat. Its Starter edition is free for up to 50 users and includes most paid features, with usage limits. Past 50, the workspace can't add new members until you move to a commercial plan, priced on request. A good fit for a 20 to 40-person team that wants data on its own server and has someone to install and update it.
- Price
- Free up to 50 users
- Best for
- Teams with an in-house admin
Element: encrypted messaging on the Matrix protocol
EncryptedElement runs on Matrix, an open, end-to-end encrypted protocol, and comes from a UK company. The Community edition is free and self-hosted for 1 to 100 users, but it's meant for non-professional deployments and evaluations. Business plans start at 100 users, priced per seat on request. Element suits organizations that put sovereignty and encryption ahead of polish; for a 15-person startup, it's more than you need.
- Price
- Business from 100 users, on request
- Strength
- End-to-end encryption
Discord: great voice rooms, wrong tool for a company
CommunitiesDiscord is free and excellent for always-on voice rooms. Nitro Basic ($2.99) and Nitro ($9.99 per person per month) only add personal perks. There's no business plan: no central account admin and no company-grade data processing agreement. Keep it for a customer or gaming community, not your team.
- Price
- Free; Nitro $2.99 or $9.99 per person
- Limit
- No business plan
Flock: a fair free plan for up to 20 people
Free planFlock's free Starter plan covers teams of 1 to 20 members, with 10,000 searchable messages, 10 public channels, 5 GB per team and one-on-one video calls. The PRO plan targets teams of 20 to 100, with a 30-day trial and no credit card. We don't rank it because its official page doesn't show the PRO price in a readable way. Ask for it during the trial and compare it with Pumble before you commit.
- Free
- 1 to 20 members, 10,000 messages
- PRO trial
- 30 days, no card
What gets expensive later
These traps come up again and again in forum threads and reviews. None of them is on the pricing page.
Assuming the free plan keeps everything
Slack Free shows 90 days of messages, then deletes anything older than a year. Zulip's free cloud plan and Flock keep 10,000 searchable messages, and Mattermost Entry shows 10,000. One open source project left Slack for exactly this reason: the 90-day limit made it realize it had overstayed its welcome on a free plan. Pick a free plan that keeps everything (Pumble, Chanty) or budget for the paid tier from day one.
Paying for chat twice
Lots of small businesses pay for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, then add Slack because part of the team prefers it. For 20 people, that's about $1,740 a year for something you already own. If you keep both, decide clearly what each one is for, or conversations split in two and nobody can find anything.
Relying on one vendor with no exit plan
A US nonprofit was hit with a steep Slack license increase, under threat of having its workspace deactivated and its message history deleted. Slack backed down, but the group moved to self-hosted chat anyway. The lesson applies at any size: keep a recent export of your history, and know how long leaving would actually take.
Assuming you control where messages live
On Slack, regional data residency only exists from Business+, and you have to ask sales to turn it on. Even then, some data (profiles, channel membership) can stay outside the chosen region. If your industry has strict rules (health, legal, government contracts), get the exact list of what's stored where before you sign.
Get the most from your team chat app in month one
These habits come from teams that made the switch to chat stick. They work with every app in the ranking.
Write channel rules before you invite anyone
The biggest win comes from norms, not features. Decide three things up front: one channel per project or client, a naming pattern (#client-acme, #project-website), and what deserves an @channel. The teams that complain about notifications are almost always the ones that skipped this step.
Switch to annual billing only after three months
Annual billing saves roughly 16% on Slack and Google Workspace. But a yearly commitment to a tool your team never adopts costs far more than the discount. Start monthly, watch usage for three months, then lock in the yearly rate.
Schedule a quarterly export
On Slack Free or Pro, the export only covers public channels. Run one every quarter and store it outside the tool. One community leaving Mattermost turned its old history into static HTML pages: everything stays readable, with no server or license.
List your three must-have integrations first
Pumble Free allows 3, Slack Free 10, Chanty Free 10. Write down the three connections your team can't work without (calendar, CRM, ticketing) and check them on the exact plan you want, not on the vendor's homepage. It's the top reason teams switch apps after six months.
Self-hosting? Pick the edition that keeps history
With Mattermost, go for Team Edition (up to 250 users, no SSO) over Entry, which hides everything past 10,000 messages. With Rocket.Chat, Starter covers up to 50 people. Self-hosted Zulip has no cap. Budget half a day a month for updates: that's the real price of running it yourself.
Want your chat app wired into your CRM or alerts? Get our automation guides
Go further
These pages pick up where this one stops, depending on the tool you use today.
Questions about team chat apps
What is the best free team chat app?
Pumble, if you want to stay free for good: unlimited users and history, 10 GB per workspace. Its one real limit is 3 integrations. Chanty's free plan is complete too, but only up to 5 members. Slack's free plan shows just 90 days of history and deletes anything older than a year, so treat it as a trial, not a home.
Slack or Teams for a small business?
Teams if you already pay for Microsoft 365, Slack if you don't. On a Microsoft 365 business plan, Teams costs nothing extra, while Slack Pro adds at least $7.25 per person per month. Slack wins when your chat is wired into lots of tools (CRM, tickets, alerts) or when you share channels with other companies. Also look at what your clients use: plenty of teams move to Teams because that's where their customers are.
Is Microsoft Teams free?
There's a free version for personal use. For a business, Teams comes bundled with Microsoft 365 business plans, so if you already pay for Outlook and Office through one of them, you have Teams. Check the exact line on your subscription in the admin center before buying anything else.
What is the most secure team messaging app?
For end-to-end encryption, Element, built on the open Matrix protocol, is the reference. For control over where data lives, a self-hosted Zulip, Mattermost or Rocket.Chat keeps everything on your own server. Among cloud tools, Slack lets you pin data to a region only from Business+ at $15 per user per month billed yearly. Security also depends on habits: turn on single sign-on and two-factor authentication wherever your plan allows it.
Can Discord be used for business?
It can, but it isn't built for it. Discord has no business plan: no central account administration and no data processing agreement designed for companies. It's great for voice rooms and customer communities, not for running your internal team.
What team chat app can I self-host?
Zulip if you want open source with no message cap: self-hosting is free. Mattermost Team Edition handles up to 250 users, without single sign-on. Rocket.Chat Starter is free for up to 50 users. Element Community is meant for non-professional use and evaluations. Avoid Mattermost's Entry edition if history matters: it hides anything beyond 10,000 messages.
How much does Slack cost for 10 or 20 people?
On yearly Pro, about $870 a year for 10 people and $1,740 for 20. Month to month at $8.75, that's $1,050 and $2,100. Business+ at $15 yearly runs $1,800 and $3,600. Before moving up to Business+, ask whether you really need regional data residency or the extra admin controls; that's the main reason a small business would pay for it.
How do I move my chat history to a new app?
Export before you cancel, then import into the new tool. Pumble, Zulip and Mattermost all import a Slack export. On Slack Free or Pro, the export only covers public channels; private messages stay behind. Run the export weeks before your contract ends, and keep a readable copy (files or a static HTML archive) outside any tool.