Slack alternatives for small teams

The best Slack alternatives for a small team are Microsoft Teams if you already use Microsoft 365, Zulip if you want conversations kept in topics, Mattermost if you must host the data yourself, and nerix if you want chat tied to tasks and documents. Slack itself is still a good tool; teams usually leave over price, message history limits or the wish to keep work and talk together. Here is how the options compare.

Prices checked in October 2026 and they change, so confirm them on the official pages: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zulip, Mattermost.

Why teams look beyond Slack

Slack's free plan keeps messages searchable for 90 days, allows up to 10 apps and offers 1:1 huddles only, according to its pricing page. That suits a short trial. Once the history matters, you move to Pro, listed at 6.75 euros per user a month billed yearly and 8.25 euros billed monthly. Those are fair prices for a mature product, but they add up per person, and some teams would rather have their chat inside a tool that also holds tasks and files.

The options at a glance

Slack

Good at: speed, a large directory of integrations and a design most people already know. Paid plans keep unlimited history, and Slack's pricing page lists AI summaries, search and daily recaps.

Falls short: the free plan's 90-day history and 1:1-only huddles, and a per-active-user bill that grows with the team.

Price: Pro is 6.75 euros per user a month billed yearly, Business+ is 15 euros, on Slack's euro page. Enterprise+ is by quote.

Microsoft Teams

Good at: chat, calls and meetings in the suite many offices already pay for. Microsoft says a free version exists for small businesses, and Teams Essentials is listed at 4 dollars per user a month billed annually.

Falls short: Microsoft's free page lists meetings up to 60 minutes and 5 GB of storage per user, so heavier use means paying. Teams can feel heavy if you only want simple chat.

Price: Free, then Essentials at 4 dollars per user a month, annual. Bundles with Microsoft 365 are priced separately.

Zulip

Good at: every message belongs to a topic inside a stream, so a busy team can come back to a conversation hours later and still follow it. Zulip is open source and can be self-hosted.

Falls short: the model takes a day or two to get used to, and the free cloud plan limits search history to 10,000 messages and file storage to 5 GB in total.

Price: Standard is 6.67 dollars per user a month billed annually or 8 dollars monthly. Plus is 10 dollars annually with a 10-user minimum.

Mattermost

Good at: organisations that must keep data on their own servers. It is built for self-hosting, with options from a single server to air-gapped setups.

Falls short: you run it, or pay someone to. The free Entry tier has server-wide caps, and Mattermost's pricing page asks you to contact sales for the paid plans, so check what applies to your size.

Price: free Entry tier for self-hosting, aimed at teams under about 50 people. Paid prices are by quote.

nerix

Good at: keeping talk next to the work. Team chat in nerix is organised into spaces and topics, with direct chats, voice notes, calls and search, and you can turn a message into a task or a meeting. Private spaces keep private work private. The assistant can also set up spaces and request types from a short description of your organisation, and nothing changes until you apply it.

Falls short: nerix is not trying to match Slack's app directory, so if you rely on dozens of integrations, test those first. It is a newer product, and its chat is one part of a wider workspace rather than the whole product.

Price: Free for one person, 15 euros a month on Plus, and Team at 24 euros per seat a month from three seats. See the pricing page. A free plan covers one seat, so trying team chat with colleagues means a team plan.

How to choose

• You already pay for Microsoft 365. Use Teams and skip a new bill.
• You want calmer conversations. Try Zulip's topic model.
• Your data must stay on your servers. Mattermost or self-hosted Zulip.
• Your pain is that chat, tasks and files live in three places. Look at nerix, and read team chat that keeps the work in one place.
• You rely on many integrations. Slack may still be your best option.

Pilot with one real project for two weeks, with the people who talk the most.

Before you switch

Chat is a habit, so a switch fails when half the team stays behind. Agree a date, move the active channels together and archive the rest. Decide what to keep: most teams do not need three years of banter, but they do need the decisions, links and files, so export or pin those first. Check the notification defaults, since a new tool that pings everyone about everything will be muted within a week. Finally, check what happens to guests and clients who joined your old channels, because many tools treat external people differently from members.

Also think about who is in the room. Contractors, clients and part-time helpers often need to join a channel or a space without getting access to everything, so check how each tool handles guests and what it costs to add them. Mobile matters too: if half your team answers from a phone, install each app on a real phone during the pilot and see how notifications behave at 7 in the evening.

The short version

The best Slack alternatives for small teams are Teams for Microsoft shops, Zulip for threaded talk, Mattermost for self-hosting and nerix for chat connected to work. Free plans exist everywhere, each with a different limit, so read the limit before you commit. Run a two-week pilot and check that your history can move.