What apps similar to slack are there for businesses?
Today, Slack and Microsoft Teams are the two largest and most recognizable business messaging apps in the world. However, it wasn’t always that way for Slack which began life as a startup and was not born out of Big Tech like Microsoft Teams. The Slack timeline started a couple years before Slack was launched in 2013 as a standalone instant messaging tool for businesses. Stewart Butterfield, the cofounder of Slack had developed and released a beta version of a computer game called Glitch. While the game was not popular, there was great feedback from players about the digital communication within the game that allowed players to share and chat with each other. It was this unexpected reaction that led Butterfield and his cofounders to pivot, and spin out the messaging and chat platform Slack.
Early adoption of Slack was driven by digital natives working in fast-paced teams across multiple locations. Prior to the new norms of work after COVID-19, these teams were typically in the technology, design and creative, media and publishing, marketing and advertising agencies and the consulting and professional services industries. Slack allowed employees to replace multiple communication channels like email, SMS and phone calls with one work-specific solution.
In 2024, Slack had an estimated 42 million daily active users across more than one million organizations, while Microsoft Teams had 320 million daily active users in more than 10 million organizations around the world. Microsoft Teams benefits from its free inclusion in many Microsoft 365 plans that are deployed widely across desk-based workforces. These outlined user volumes are still significantly less than personal messaging app WhatsApp, which is estimated to have more than 1.6 billion daily active users. This is based on the phenomenal statistic that WhatsApp has 83% of their 2 billion monthly active users accessing the chat app everyday.
Slack alternatives sit within the instant messaging segment of a much broader category that is workplace communication tools. Not surprisingly, email and cell phones are still the most widely used tools for workplace communication, followed by instant messaging, then video conferencing and the ever-enduring office phone. Enterprise messaging debates these days often reference Zoom and Webex, but we are going to focus specifically on messaging applications for teams in a business environment. Here we are going to discuss apps similar to Slack including 8seats, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat and Mattermost to help you find the most suitable application for your business.
Who is Slack's biggest competitor?
Instant messaging for business is somewhat of a duopoly dominated by Microsoft Teams and Slack. Microsoft Teams launched in 2017, although Microsoft did not need to build their audience for the product from scratch. The migration of Skype for Business, was followed by Microsoft Staffhub, a frontline worker tool for shift scheduling and staff communication being merged into Teams, and then finally, features from Microsoft Classroom became part of the Microsoft Teams product offering.
Microsoft Teams also benefits from existing relationships that Microsoft have with companies and their IT departments globally. Bundling of Microsoft Teams in Microsoft 365 Business plans alongside access to a work email account, OneDrive, SharePoint and Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) reduces friction for product adoption. In most situations, rolling out Microsoft Teams removes the need for an organization to prepare justification with a financial business case and intensive IT security review on the solution.
Two other notable competitors and alternatives to Slack are Google Chat and WhatsApp. Google Chat is a free inclusion with Google Workspace licences and is therefore a cost-effective option for companies that procure employee work email accounts from Google and utilize their Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet products.
WhatsApp is less of a traditional competitor to Slack, because unlike Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Chat that rely on a company email address for user access, WhatsApp is tied to a cell phone number and can be accessed by anybody. While the use of WhatsApp on workers’ personal devices for business communications introduces risks related to company data, IP and customer information being shared and retained by the participants in group chats, it does provide a free and familiar tool for connecting frontline teams.
Is Slack still the best?
Salesforce completed the USD $27.7 billion acquisition of Slack in July, 2021. The deal brought Slack together with the world's largest CRM provider, with a view to defining the future of enterprise software in the post-COVID era where more teams work remotely. Since the Slack acquisition, the focus has been on delivering enterprise-grade solutions, including the release of GovSlack for communication on a government-certified cloud environment, Slack GPT an AI powered-set of features that summarize threads, draft replies and help pull insights from data and the launch of Slack-First Customer 360 allowing teams to collaborate on Salesforce data in Slack.
This biggest complaint that businesses have about Slack is the cost. It is more expensive than its competitors, particularly those that are bundled free with other services or that don’t need you to be purchasing a company email address for access. The pricing increase announced in 2022 did not help change peoples minds, with businesses now paying USD $8.75 per user per month for Slack Pro and USD $15.00 per user per month for Slack Business+ plans.
Why do people still use Slack?
The benefit of B2B SaaS products these days is that you can almost always start a free trial and decide whether a solution meets your needs before having to pay anything. Often, there are even free forever plans that you can continue to use at no cost with limitations in place on your account, for example restricting the number of users that you can add to your account or the length of time for which your data is retained. Slack has been incredibly successful over the years at attracting teams to try their free plan and then retaining them long term.
Here are five of the best things about Slack:
Simple and intuitive user interface with direct messages, channels and threads helps keep conversations organized.
Customization for companies and teams to configure Slack to meet their needs. Set up themes, create custom emojis and stickers or integrate fun apps to encourage employee interaction and help build a positive team culture.
Search function that enables granular filtering to find what you are looking for in old messages, channels and shared files and documents.
Integrations with 2,500+ apps allow users to connect with other tools that they use and create workflows, reducing the need to switch between applications.
Guest access for external collaborators lets companies invite contractors, customers and other external stakeholders to work with their team in specific channels.
Why would your business leave Slack?
Slack is the world's most popular business messaging platform that was not developed by Big Tech and bundled in with other products and services to drive its adoption and success. As a result, Slack has had to continue to innovate and be the first to market with new features, functionality and integrations. So, why are teams leaving Slack?
Communication overload
The big benefit of Slack connecting teams and encouraging communication and collaboration can also lead to its downfall. Productivity can be impacted if Slack becomes too distracting. To avoid communication overload, team members should organize their Slack by starring their important channels, leaving channels that are no longer relevant and muting channels that are not important right now. Respect your colleagues' Slack status and only tag the required people in communications, trying not to overuse the @here command that notifies everybody in a channel.
Data security concerns
In 2024, it became public that Disney had experienced a data breach of their Slack account and that they were going to ditch Slack and transition to Microsoft Teams. Large amounts of sensitive data in Slack and Integrations with third-party apps make it a target for hackers, with phishing attacks and social engineering common threats.
Cost
Businesses that already use Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace may change to their respective communication tools Microsoft Teams and Google Chat as they are included at no additional cost in their subscriptions. Businesses that do not have company email addresses may change to 8seats, WhatsApp or Telegram for a tool that only requires a cell phone number and does not require a Microsoft or Google licence for each user.
More suitable alternatives
Organizations and industries all have their own specific needs and you may require features that Slack doesn’t offer, or you are searching for a business chat app that is better suited to a specific use case. For example, frontline workers that are not office-based, employed in industries including retail, hospitality, restaurants, facilities management, construction and mining have a much higher representation of casual and part-time workers. This leads to increased employee turnover and businesses deploy simple tools that allow quick adoption by workers and easy management of user access. If the time has come and you are looking for cheap slack alternatives for free trials, there are plenty of alternative systems to Slack that could better meet your needs.
Which app is better than Slack?
The list of Slack competitors could be extensive, but we have narrowed down the list of apps that are better than Slack to four. Here are the tools that are definitely worth trialling if you are looking for a solution for your team. The trials are free, why not sign up and get started now.
8seats
If your business is looking for a team chat app for workers, in particular those that do not have a company email address, then one of the best slack alternatives is 8seats. 8seats Workspaces support centralized management of users, a unique feature in messaging apps that do not require an email address for access. Team members can be invited using their cell phone number when they start their employment and then removed from the workspace when their employment ends.
8seats gives workers a business messaging app that is separate from their personal messaging apps like Messenger, Telegram, Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat. 70% of employees don’t want to use personal messaging apps for work as they consider it a personal space. At the same time, organizations get the benefit of enterprise grade security and the protection of their data and intellectual property, sensitive customer information and personal employee information.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a business collaboration tool developed by Microsoft that brings together instant messaging, voice calls, video conferencing and file sharing in one application and integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft 365 applications. Microsoft Teams integrations with thousands of third-party applications include CRM systems, project management tools, employee surveys and polls, document signing and execution platforms and time and attendance tracking software. Suitable for small and large companies, Microsoft Teams is cost effectively bundled in Microsoft 365 plans.
Mattermost
Mattermost is a self-hosted team communication platform designed for mission-critical environments best suited to industries including government, finance, defense and healthcare. Mattermost is open source, allowing organizations custom plugins and themes, and to tailor the UI and workflows as needed. Well suited to organizations that require independence and transparency, Mattermost is not tied to specific vendors like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft or Google for private cloud hosting. Enterprise-grade security and full data control make Mattermost attractive to large enterprise organizations.
Google Chat
Google Chat is to Google, what Microsoft Teams is to Microsoft. Google Chat is bundled free with Google Workspaces and integrates natively with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive and Meet. Users can easily share their Docs, Sheets and Slides files in the chat and collaborate with colleagues. Spaces enables you to organize chats, tasks and file sharing around specific projects or teams. Google flaunts that their Google search technology is implemented to help users find messages, files and documents that have been discussed and shared on the platform and that their AI-powered message suggestions will help speed up your work. If your business is using Gmail for your email accounts, then Google Chat is a worthwhile application to try first.
