Slack Alternatives

    Slack is described as 'unified communication platform built with an optimized workflow to keep modern teams focused and productive. A familiar chat interface facilitates discussions while advanced features are easily exposed based on context' and is one of the leading apps in the Social & Communications category. There are more than 100 alternatives to Slack for a variety of platforms, including Online / Web-based, Android, iPhone, Windows and Mac. The best alternative is Mattermost, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Slack are Discord (Freemium), Element (Freemium, Open Source), Zulip (Free Personal, Open Source) and Rocket.Chat (Freemium, Open Source).

    This page was last updated Oct 14, 2021

    1. Mattermost

      • Freemium • Open Source
      • Mac
      • Windows
      • Linux
      • Android
      • iPhone
      • Android Tablet
      • iPad
      • Self-Hosted
      • JavaScript
      • Go (Programming Language)
      • Cloudron
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      Mattermost is an open source alternative to Slack.
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      Mattermost vs Slack opinions
      Almost everyone thinks Mattermost is a great alternative to Slack.
       all • positive • negative      relevance • date
      shelehovchanin Same functionality. Same interface. At the same time, there are much fewer restrictions. IN my experience, the free version is great enough for a team of 100 people
      Top positive comment  over 2 years ago

      6
      Its the same but you keep your server where you want so no one is playing with your data, and you can have an unlimited history depending on what you need for free so really way better !
      Top positive comment  over 4 years ago

      3
      liger1978 Great interface, you control your data.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      -1
      It's faster for one thing. It's far superior in terms of data ownership, and it's extremely scalable.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      0
      svelle Has more flexibility due to its extensive plugin system compared to other alternatives.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      0
      Mudie Looks and works very much the same as Slack and complete control over your data housed separately from anyone else.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      0
      jaydeland Open source with control over your data.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      -3
      Show more comments ▾
      7 of 19 comments

    2. Discord

      • Freemium • Proprietary
      • Mac
      • Windows
      • Linux
      • Online
      • Android
      • iPhone
      • Chrome OS
      • Android Tablet
      • BSD
      • iPad
      • Electron / Atom Shell
      • FreeBSD
      • Playstation
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      Whether you’re part of a school club, a gaming group, a worldwide art community, or just a handful of friends that want to spend time together, Discord makes it easy to talk every day and hang out more often. Create an invite-only place.
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      Discord vs Slack opinions
      Most users think Discord is a great alternative to Slack.
       all • positive • negative      relevance • date
      TheBeast Good app for your personal use. Wouldn't recommend for an Enterprise setting which is what Slack is more geared towards.
      Top positive comment  almost 5 years ago

      14
      jbrown Very very similar in terms of use and features. Of course, discord is marketed as for gamers while slack is for teams but usage is almost identical.
      Top positive comment  over 1 year ago

      10
      thompsonmj Slack is a project productivity and communication enhancement tool with integrating with other collaborative tools like GitHub, document editors, storage, etc. Discord is for recreational chatting.
      Top negative comment  about 3 years ago

      9
      leyline Discord is much simpler to use in terms of connecting new servers/workspaces to your account, but slack has conversation threads which sometimes come in handy if a conversation is between 2 people but wants to stay in the main channel so others can reference it. 95% i would choose discord though.
      Positive comment • about 1 year ago

      1
      Dillxn Discord is now rebranding to be more enterprise-friendly. It can be customised to fit your every need.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      1
      slack is bassicly discord, & discord has GAMING OPTIONS un like slack
      Positive comment • over 3 years ago

      -7
      rdlu It's cheap and very well implemented. Audio features are perfect. It's not enterprise, obviously, but it IS definitely a reference to follow.
      Positive comment • over 3 years ago

      -2
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      7 of 14 comments

    4. Element

      • Freemium • Open Source
      • Mac
      • Windows
      • Linux
      • Online
      • Android
      • iPhone
      • Android Tablet
      • iPad
      • Self-Hosted
      • Matrix.org
      • Cloudron
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      Element is a secure collaboration and messaging app based on the Matrix protocol. It’s decentralised to deliver digital sovereignty, and based on an open standard for easy connections and interoperability. It is end-to-end encrypted by default.
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      Element vs Slack opinions
      Almost everyone thinks Element is a great alternative to Slack.
       all • positive • negative      relevance • date
      brinerustle because its open source, decentralised, and end-to-end secure. Plus the folks at matrix.org are working to get us out of our communication silos by creating standards for communication interoperability!
      Top positive comment  over 3 years ago

      4
      Federated, free standard and free software
      Top positive comment  over 3 years ago

      3
      Privacy by design and based on matrix protocol!
      Positive comment • 11 months ago

      0
      Federated, decentralized, encrypted, open-source.
      Positive comment • over 2 years ago

      3
      User6044478 Open Source / Free Software,
      Positive comment • over 3 years ago

      0
      User6044478 decentralised, federated, end-to-end encrypted communication.
      Positive comment • about 4 years ago

      7
      Free and opensource with better performance and features for team communication.
      Positive comment • about 4 years ago

      3
      Show more comments ▾
      7 of 9 comments
    5. Zulip is a group chat app in which messages are threaded by topic, helping you have long-running, organized conversations.
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      Zulip vs Slack opinions
      Almost everyone thinks Zulip is a great alternative to Slack.
       all • positive • negative      relevance • date
      abijith Three reasons: 1. Open source. 2. Stream 3. Topics
      Top positive comment  almost 4 years ago

      6
      Zulip is open source and the methods of communications used is vastly different. It is specially useful in professional environments where different teams might want to participate in different conversations at the same time. Zulip solves this problem by including topics, where in each channel/stream, multiple topics can exist at once, at the same time.
      Top positive comment  over 2 years ago

      3
      the threading model is the best i've used for keeping up with active communities, and the open-source community is excellent.
      Positive comment • 11 months ago

      1
      It's a little different, for sure, but what it does, it does better than slack. Not a open source copy of slack like mattermost. If you want slack and nothing else, but in open source, stick to mattermost, if you want something that exceeds that, choose zulip.
      Positive comment • 11 months ago

      1
      paulocoghi More than feature parity with Slack, it's better because of Streams and Topics. It offer the same free tier with 10.000 max messages and better paid plans to the hosted version, and also provide the open source self-hosted option to install it on your own server and also remove the max messages limits. 5 stars
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      2
      The concept of topics to each message is a super useful feature :)
      Positive comment • over 2 years ago

      2
      superbiche Open Source without limitations when on premises. Much better information categorisation with Streams & Topics. Vibrant community.
      Positive comment • almost 3 years ago

      3
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      7 of 16 comments
    6. Rocket.Chat is a Web Chat Server, developed in JavaScript, using the Meteor fullstack framework.
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      Rocket.Chat vs Slack opinions
      Almost everyone thinks Rocket.Chat is a great alternative to Slack.
      JohnFastman Does everything Slack does AND it's open source. However, it's also self-hosted. This means you have to put in the effort to set it up, but you control your own data, which is a huge advantage to your privacy - your chats and files don't sit on someone else's servers, ready for them or hackers to look at.
      Positive comment • almost 5 years ago

      8
      open source, locally hosted so you own your data.
      Positive comment • almost 3 years ago

      1
      Rocket.Chat comes very close to slack regarding it's core features and handling.
      Positive comment • over 3 years ago

      5

    8. Matrix.org

      • Free • Open Source
      • Mac
      • Windows
      • Linux
      • Online
      • Android
      • iPhone
      • Android Tablet
      • iPad
      • Self-Hosted
      • WebRTC
      • Python
      • JavaScript
      • Go (Programming Language)
      • Cloudron
      • Java
      • Perl
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      Matrix defines a set of open APIs for decentralised communication, suitable for securely publishing, persisting and subscribing to data over a global open federation of servers with no single point of control.
      No screenshots yet
      Matrix.org vs Slack opinions
      Most users think Matrix.org is a great alternative to Slack.
      It can be easily bridged to many other chat systems, including Slack, which makes transitioning *much* easier. It's also open source and decentralized (self-hostable + communication with other servers).
      Top positive comment  about 4 years ago

      0
      Respects your Freedom. Increasingly popular
      Top positive comment  almost 4 years ago

      0
      somegirlfromit Matrix is a protocol, not a client.
      Top negative comment  about 2 years ago

      18
      User6044478 Open source, fecentralized, federation, chat-voice-video function.
      Positive comment • almost 4 years ago

      -1
      Free open source instant messaging service with federation.
      Positive comment • about 4 years ago

      -1
      free, end-to-end encryption
      Positive comment • about 4 years ago

      0
      nrg200 Capable of everything Slack can do, but can be self-hosted - keeping a team's data in-house.
      Positive comment • over 4 years ago

      -1
    9. Jitsi (previously SIP Communicator) is an audio/video and chat communicator with full encryption that supports protocols such as SIP, XMPP/Jabber, ICQ/AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo!, GTalk/Hangouts extensions, as well as OTR, ZRTP, etc.
      show more ▾
      Jitsi vs Slack opinions
      Some users think Jitsi is a great alternative to Slack, some don't.
      Jitsi is for video chat, slack is a team collaboration platform. In Slack, text messages are common, in Jitsi video chat is the main focus.
      Negative comment • over 1 year ago

      6

    10. Wire

      • Free Personal • Open Source
      • Mac
      • Windows
      • Linux
      • Online
      • Android
      • iPhone
      • Android Tablet
      • iPad
      • Self-Hosted
      • Software as a Service (SaaS)
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      Wire is the most secure collaboration platform featuring messenger, voice, video, conference calls, file-sharing, and external collaboration –all protected by the most secure end-to-end-encryption. Why Wire?
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      Most users think Wire is a great alternative to Slack.
    11. AirSend is a simple collaboration space for professionals and small teams that brings all your conversations, files, notes, and to-do lists into one place so that you can get work done faster and easier.
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      AirSend vs Slack opinions
      Almost everyone thinks AirSend is a great alternative to Slack.
       all • positive • negative      relevance • date
      nejinv19 I have used Slack extensively, one thing I like very much about Airsend is the ability to manage files along with messaging.
      Top positive comment  over 1 year ago

      2
      olgafedorova Free. Has all the messaging features. One on one messaging is a bit convoluted but overall it's great
      Top positive comment  over 1 year ago

      1
      thiagoao I think the combination of communication and task/file management makes Airsend an excellent tool. They are always including new features. Best of all it is Free.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      0
      hazzelle721 Collaboration is made easy
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      0
      JackN it's a great software, free (for now)
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      0
      Marco_Rater The best feature here is the ability to add outside organisations. So you can get one airsend org to talk to another org. Which is really awesome
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      2
      JenniferES The software is fantastic, and it's free
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      0
      Show more comments ▾
      7 of 18 comments
    12. Hangouts is a messaging app that lets you send and receive messages, photos and more, and even start free video and voice calls – one to one or with a group!
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      Hangouts vs Slack opinions
      This alternative is disputed. Hangouts is still a legitimate alternative to Slack, but it might have issues that some users think are important.
      Hangouts is more peer-to-peer communication and it's an instant messenger. Slack is a team based and collaboration oriented platform with different features. Hangouts is not something like Slack.
      Negative comment • almost 3 years ago

      12
      Hangouts doesn't support file uploads other than images
      Negative comment • over 3 years ago

      2
      Vijayprakash Google Hangout is the best communication tool because of its quality
      Positive comment • over 3 years ago

      -15
    Showing 10 of 211 alternatives