Top 5 Free Slack Alternatives for Team Communication in 2025

In 2011, the cost of miscommunication reached $37 billion per year across the corporate world. On the flip side, leaders who maintained effective communication skills produced 47% more for shareholders than those with poor team communication.

How much money can you afford to lose over some miscommunication? Wouldn’t you rather think about boosting your profits than worrying about how to unify your team?

Your communication tools just aren’t cutting it. Email is useful but antiquated. Online forums are for hobbyists. And phone systems don’t give you instant and convenient communication. You could make your whole team use WhatsApp for group conversations, but then how do you keep information secure?

Slack entered the scene in 2014. You thought, maybe this is the solution. Maybe my communication woes are over. But they weren’t. Slack wasn’t everything you hoped. Then the quest for a Slack alternative began, and now you’re here. Keep scrolling to find out which one we recommend.

What is Slack and Why You Might Want a Free Tier Alternative

Slack was supposed to be the chat room for the business world. It’s customizable to a fault. You can organize your team into group chats, projects, cliques, you name it, as well as make audio and video calls and create to-do lists.

As an employer or team lead, you control the extent to which your team members can customize their groups, their names, and their communications. Slack is designed to keep your attention inside its ecosystem as much as possible.

You can share documents, links, sync emails and calendars, and use available third-party integrations, including Google Workspace. And it’s wildly popular.

Slack is the iPhone of the business team communication and collaboration world. Slackers have likely never tried any other platform, and why would they? If it works, it works, right? Still, Slack isn’t perfect. What it does, it does well. But Slack isn’t all that it could be - and that’s why you need a free Slack alternative, especially as a small team.

Slack Pricing: It Could Be Cheaper

While there is a free plan, it’s severely limited. In today’s business environment, you want to communicate with your whole team at once. The free version only allows you to make audio and video calls between two users at a time.

If you plan to use team chat for messages only, as you would with Facebook Messenger, then the plan is sufficient. But if you’re going to upload anything for file sharing, you’ll have to upgrade to paid plans. The free plan only allows you to use 5GB of storage across the entire team.

Slack's Pricing

• Slack’s free plan also only lets you search up to 90 days back. That seems like a lot, but when your team hits enter after each phrase, like we all tend to do, you will only be able to access the most recent files.

• The Pro account cost starts at $87 per person annually or $7.25 per person per month. This is more expensive than other pure messaging and internal team communication apps at this tier. It does remove some of the restrictions. File storage is now 10GB per person rather than 5GB across the team. Group calls go up to 15 people, and you can search your entire message history.

• Business+ cost starts from $180 per user per year, and it includes everything in the Standard Tier. Storage increases to 20GB per person, and you get 24/7 support. This is all relatively expensive for a glorified version of Google Chat.

• The Enterprise+ price is discussed with the sales department and calculated personally. In addition to all features of the Business+ plan, it provides an enterprise search (unified search for all applications), Integration with Enterprise Mobility Management, and Anomaly Event Response (additional security feature for automatic session termination).

What’s Wrong With Slack?

If you want a pure team communication tool that allows you to organize group chats and hold one-on-one video conferences, then Slack is perfect.

The problem with Slack is that it’s Pavlovian. Just like Facebook and Twitter mobile apps, it’s designed to grab your attention and make you impulsively check the feed. There is no easy way to flag messages, and thus, a message from a coworker in the “casual” Slack channel notifies you just as fiercely as a message from your boss.

Thus, you might get sucked into a conversation about a recent series episode when you were supposed to be working.

Slack is messy. While you can organize groups by project or search through a channel, you can’t see the big picture of what’s happening with your team. There is no way to see trends across conversations or keep track of all the conversations happening (there are always too many).

5 Open-Source Slack Alternatives

If you’re tired of the disorganization in the Slack team chat app and the lack of priority settings, then an open source Slack alternative might be right for you. We’ve gathered the best platforms that are more mindful and better organized than Slack. Keep scrolling to see our top five.

1. Bitrix24 - a Free Slack Alternative

Bitrix24 is more than just a communication app. It’s a panoply of workflow and business team collaboration tools with a built in task management and user-friendly interface. Inside Bitrix24’s ecosystem, you can quickly switch from email marketing projects to team chats and back again without a fuss.

Within a few minutes, you can shoot off an alert to your whole team, assign tasks, check your lead management tools, and then jump into your next project. All of this can be accomplished without leaving the app.

Monitor team productivity, send group and direct messages, add unlimited users, automate tasks, and hold video conferences, as well as utilize other productivity tools, all within one software that integrates seamlessly into the existing workflow. Integration with all common platforms and a simple user interface allow you to easily get used to the new program and take advantage of all new features.

Key Features

Bitrix24 is a free slack alternative that offer other vital tools like CRM, team communication, marketing management, project management tool, and so much more, all in one place.

• Seamless communication. Have group and one-to-one conversations without leaving the project and task management software.

• Enhances collaboration features. Instead of a simple team chat app, Bitrix24 gives its users an Activity stream. This tool allows users an overview of what’s happening with each team they’re involved with and often only requires a click to communicate acknowledgment. This activity stream gives team members a chance to show involvement and attention without being sucked into irrelevant conversations. Users have more control when they see messages. They can like, follow, and unfollow threads, and set message and group message priorities.

• Easy access for remote teams. Cloud-based and desktop versions are available, making it a perfect Slack alternative for file sharing and team productivity. You can even access all vital data and conversations via a mobile device on the go.

• Instant messaging and video chats. Bitrix24 includes the same real-time communication tools as Slack and more. Video calls work for up to four people on your browser. There are no plugins required.

• Screen sharing. You can screen share in HD for incredibly productive video conferencing sessions. And even if you don’t have a high-speed connection, the screen sharing feature still works in standard definition.

• Team social network. Would you like a “social network” for just your team? A place where employees can post about ideas, enabling collaboration and room to workshop solutions? Bitrix24 includes a social network with instant updates, the ability to like posts and tag them, and create user groups.

• Audio and video calls. Help with video conferencing to keep up with the team and establish more personal communication.

• Vital additional features for remote teams. Bitrix24 comes with free email templates, email marketing tools, and employee email management. Add this on top of a first-class CRM suite, built-in task manager, and more team collaboration tools than you can handle. This is the best team communication and management tool on the Internet, with end-to-end encryption to ensure the security of all your business data.

How Much Does Bitrix24 Cost?

Free plan. Absolutely free to start with unlimited users. The free version gives you the entire suite of tools minus a few project and task management features.

Standard plan. If you have a large team, you can sign up for one of the paid plans. The standard version is $99 a month, and it will give you 100 GB of storage and let you use your own logo.

Professional plan. If you need more storage, time management tools, records management tools, and your own domain name, then sign up for the professional plan. It’s $199 a month for 100 users.

Enterprise plan. If you are a larger team, sign up for an Enterprise plan. It costs $399 per month and allows for up to 250 users and provides 3TB of data storage.

2. Rocket.Chat

Rocket.Chat is an open-source team chat solution. The creator wanted to make an endlessly customizable Slack alternative. This is a team chat solution for those who don’t want to be siloed into a product with limited functionality.

Key Features

To take advantage of an open-source platform like Rocket.Chat, you need to be able to code programs. This doesn’t mean you need programming skills to use Rocket.Chat. It comes loaded with some great features upfront that Slack just doesn’t include.

You can quickly migrate your information from Slack over to Rocket.Chat in a matter of minutes. Soon you’ll be Slacking on Rocket.Chat securely.

But not everything is as it seems with Rocket.Chat. The users complain that customer support help documentation doesn’t compare to other chat software help documentation. This forces users to wait on hold with Rocket.Chat’s limited customer service.

The search feature is buggy. Mobile chat notifications don’t always appear on a user’s phone. And updates will sometimes interrupt your workflow.

Otherwise, for a free, chat-exclusive tool, Rocket.Chat includes some great features Slack lacks. The ability to white-label Rocket.Chat is extremely valuable to teams who want to appear entirely self-sufficient.

How Much Is Rocket.Chat?

If you want to run Rocket.Chat on your own server and you don’t need all the customer support, then Rocket.Chat is free.

Free plan. The starter plan includes a ton of features including end to end encryption, up to 1,000 users (more is not recommended), public and private chat channels, mobile, and desktop app, video conferencing, etc. This is basically Slack’s paid version for free (if you have your own server).

The Pro plan. The Pro plan is $8 per user per month when billed annually It includes a file storage migration tool, advanced hosting, white-labeling, and standard customer support.

Enterprise plan. The cost is provided per request. Additionally, all Pro plan features also include AI tools, permission and role customization, premium support, voice calling, and guest user access.

3. Yammer (Microsoft Teams 365)

Yammer is Bitrix24’s Activity Stream without all the other awesome tools Bitrix24 offers. It’s essentially a social media platform for your team.

Why is Yammer a great Slack alternative? It’s easy to use. Employees already spend time on Facebook, and Yammer emulates Facebook.

What’s Yammer’s biggest downfall? Lack of extra features and few customizations. No project management, video conferencing, scheduling, analytics, or any other business-related management tools.

Key Features

This program is less of a chat tool and more of a message board. What it’s best at is replacing non-urgent company-wide emails and awkward water-cooler announcements. No more neon Comic-Sans from Beth, the head receptionist.

Now, you can chat with Yammer. You can create groups, chat, and public and private channels within. But this isn’t Yammer’s main purpose.

If you’re looking for a feature-rich project management tool with unlimited message history, Yammer isn’t the option for you. It’s for businesses that primarily use email for communication between employees and teams and want to experiment with other tools.

Navigation is super streamlined and easy. A stream of content appears on your home page, just like most social media platforms, and you can like, comment on, or filter stream updates.

When it comes to profiles, Yammer is less flashy than Facebook. This isn’t actually a social network, after all. There is no banner, but there are useful profile data fields that give your fellow employees a snapshot of your skills and interests.

How Much Does Yammer Cost?

Yammer is not a separate feature but a part of the Microsoft 365 suite. You can get access to the tool via connecting Microsoft Viva Suite for $12 per user per month or Microsoft Viva Employee Communications and Communities for $2 per user per month.

4. Google Chat - Seamless Google Workspace and Google Drive Integration

Google Chat can be accessed as a part of the Google Workspace. It is profoundly integrated with the other suite tools as well, allowing you to view files from Google Drive and Google Docs directly in Google Chat.

As a default, all Google chat rooms are private. All message history and files won't be accessible to any other party unless you invite them in. In Slack, you are choosing whether the channel is private or public while you initially set it up.

Google Chat is Google's Slack alternative and Microsoft Teams alternative. PC Magazine complains that it's a little more closed-ended than Slack, but that its integrations with Google Workspace make it a nice choice for those who already have a Google Workspace account.

Key Features

If you’re already using Google Workspace tools, you might want to use the Google Chat app. Create a space for group conversation within the ecosystem for quick file sharing and easy team collaboration on documents together. It integrates seamlessly with Gmail, providing access to rooms and direct messages through Gmail.

Google Chat assumes you want privacy when creating rooms or groups. You have to add or invite everyone you want in a room specifically. This could be an inconvenience for those used to Slack, where you have the option of creating public or private chat rooms.

Even if you do choose to make a room public, it does not appear automatically for people to join. You would have to send a company-wide email and invite everyone to your Holiday Party chat.

How Much Does Google Chat Cost?

Google Chat is a Slack alternative with a free plan. However, since it's available as a Google Workspace suite, you can opt for one of the plans, starting from $7 per user per month.

5. Chanty - Seamless Communication

If you’re tired of having to pay to search your message history, Chanty is your Slack alternative. This team communication tool is a Slack clone that adds a few organizational features.

Key Features

Their Teambook allows you to organize your conversations, tasks, links, and files into folders readily accessible in the menu on the side. If you’ve used Discord, you’ll recognize the UI with its large and colorful icons.

It’s meant for people who don’t want to tinker. But if you want to tinker, Chanty supports a number of integrations. It offers task management tool, screen sharing, audio and video conferencing, a user-friendly interface, and unlimited messaging even for a free plan.

How Much Does Chanty Cost?

Chanty is free for up to 5 team members. This includes all features. If you want to add more users, it’s $3 per user per month.

Don’t Waste Money: Use the Completely Free Slack Alternative

Why would you want to waste any money on miscommunication? You certainly didn’t build your company hoping to experience daily breakdowns in communication, did you?

Why go with the Slack messaging app when you could adopt the largest chest of collaboration tools on the planet? Bitrix24 isn’t just a messaging app or a company-wide social media service. It’s a solid Slack alternative and the solution to all your collaboration woes. Access instant messaging, create to-do lists, implement third-party integrations, take advantage of productivity tools, hold audio and video conferencing, and elevate your project management! Sign up for your free account now.