Slack Alternatives in 2026: Pumble, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, Zulip, Mattermost, Rocket.Chat and Discord (Compared)

For a small team leaving Slack to cut costs, Pumble is the first alternative to try: its free plan keeps the full message history. If your office subscription already includes business chat, evaluate that before buying another subscription; if you need to host the data yourself, start with Zulip. These 7 Slack alternatives solve different problems, and the ability to bring your old conversations with you can matter more than the monthly price.

Slack alternatives at a glance

Verified against maker pricing pages and documentation on 15 November 2026. Prices shown are ordinary starting rates, excluding temporary promotions. Google's page returned different currencies during verification, so no normalized Workspace amount is quoted here; check its local rate and commitment at checkout. Discord's subscription buys individual perks, not a business workspace license. Zulip's table price is for managed cloud hosting, not its optional self-hosted services.

1. Pumble: the first pick for a small team cutting chat costs

Pumble is a hosted team messenger for an agency or small business that wants channels, direct messages, and searchable decisions without paying to keep its history. A 12-person agency could use a channel for each client, keep approval discussions together, and look back at why a deliverable changed. The strongest reason to shortlist it is practical: you can evaluate ordinary team chat without starting a countdown on your old messages. Choose Pumble for straightforward internal communication; check calls, guests, and imports before declaring it a complete replacement.

Free history and calls. Pumble's plan comparison states unlimited users and message history on Free, alongside 10 GB of storage for the workspace. Free includes one-to-one voice and video calls. Group meetings and screen sharing belong to paid plans; Pro supports meetings with up to 50 people. Unlimited messages therefore do not mean unlimited file storage or a free replacement for every group meeting.

Integrations and AI. Free allows up to 3 integrations, while Pro allows 10. The native Clockify and Plaky integrations do not consume those slots. Pumble also documents custom apps and scripts, so the relevant test is whether your actual alert or approval workflow fits, not whether an integration directory looks impressive.

The maker's AI and automation guide describes an AI Assistant addon using your own provider API key, with support for OpenAI ChatGPT and Google Gemini. It can respond in direct messages or when mentioned in a channel, and its thread-summary command summarizes a particular discussion. Private conversations require the assistant to be added. Budget for the model provider and decide which conversations it may access; the assistant is not a reason to skip an integration audit.

Hosting and migration. Treat Pumble as a hosted service: a supported self-hosted offering was not established by the maker pages reviewed. Its Slack import guide documents importing channels, messages, direct messages, and users when those records exist in your export. The limits are 250,000 messages, 2,000 users, and 200 MB per ZIP. Shared files are not copied; links in messages survive. That last distinction can decide the move for an agency whose approval history depends on attached designs.

Best for: Small internal teams prioritizing full history and a low starting seat price.
Standout: Unlimited free message history with a documented Slack importer.
Pricing: Pro starts at $2.49 per seat/month billed annually, verified 15 November 2026.
Free trial: 7 days of paid features; a continuing Free plan is available.

Try the Pumble move before committing

1. 1

   Inspect the Slack export

   Have the workspace owner obtain the export the Slack plan permits. Check its contents and Pumble's ZIP, user, and message limits before selecting it for import. Keep a separate copy of the original export.

2. 2

   Run the documented import

   In Pumble, the workspace owner opens Workspace settings, General settings, then Import & export. Choose Slack, select the unchanged ZIP, and start the import. Imported members do not automatically receive an invitation email, so plan their access explicitly.

3. 3

   Check a client decision end to end

   Find an old conversation, confirm who said what, and open its attachment link. Arrange separate file preservation where necessary. Then test the call and integration that your agency uses every working day before choosing a cutover date.

2. Microsoft Teams: strongest when the license is already there

Microsoft Teams combines business chat, meetings, and collaboration around the Microsoft ecosystem. For an operations team already using Microsoft identities and shared documents, consolidating chat may reduce the number of systems people have to administer. The decision flips if your Microsoft subscription excludes Teams or your essential Slack workflows have no acceptable replacement. Choose Teams because it fits the office environment you already run, not merely because its logo appears beside your office apps.

Slack vs Teams: check the actual subscription

Microsoft sells plans with Teams and plans without it. Confirm the license assigned to each employee before treating Teams as an included benefit. A founder who sees Microsoft 365 on the invoice has not yet established the incremental cost of moving chat.

Free history and calls. Microsoft's free conferencing page promises unlimited chat, group meetings up to 60 minutes, and up to 100 participants on Free. It does not publish a separate numeric message-history cap there. That is a different promise from an immutable archive: assess retention and administration for the business plan you will deploy. Essentials raises meeting capacity and duration, but Free should not be treated as a feature-identical business tenant.

Integrations and AI. Microsoft advertises collaborative apps and file sharing alongside meetings. Check your task, document, and notification flows using the actual business account, especially when people outside the company participate. Copilot is also a licensing question: Microsoft distinguishes eligible Copilot Chat access from Microsoft 365 Copilot features and qualifying add-ons. A starting Teams seat does not establish that every AI meeting or chat feature is included.

Hosting and migration. Teams is a vendor-hosted service, not a self-hosted replacement. Microsoft's Slack-to-Teams migration tool supports public and private channels, membership, message authors and dates, threading, standard reactions, and file attachments. Its exclusions are consequential: direct messages, group chats, workflows, custom integrations, and Slack Connect channels do not migrate through that tool.

For an agency that makes client commitments in direct messages, that exclusion means a separate archive or migration approach is part of the project. For a company whose operating record lives in channels, the documented route is more promising. Either way, map people and destinations before moving content; rebuilding an integration is a separate task from importing its old messages.

Best for: Organizations with a suitable Microsoft 365 subscription and an administrator to manage the move.
Standout: Chat and meetings in the same Microsoft environment.
Pricing: Teams Essentials starts at $4 per user/month paid yearly, verified 15 November 2026.
Free trial: A business trial is offered; a separate Free version is available.

3. Google Chat: the natural shortlist for a Gmail business

Google Chat is the messaging layer in Google Workspace, organized around conversations and shared spaces. For a consultancy already using Gmail, Drive, and Calendar, it keeps project discussion near the files and schedules people use daily. A space can become the place to discuss a proposal while the source document stays in Drive. Choose Google Chat when consolidating your Google workflow matters more than reproducing every Slack habit.

Free history. Google's history controls describe a setting, not a paid rolling-history allowance: personal-account users can turn history on or off, and history-off conversations are automatically deleted after 24 hours. Work and school organizations control whether users can change the setting. No numeric message-history cap is stated on that page. For a business, the useful question is therefore whether the required conversations are retained under your organization's settings, not simply whether Chat is accessible for free.

Calls, integrations, and AI. Chat integrates with Meet, Gmail, Drive, and Calendar; Google also lists apps such as Jira and Asana, plus APIs and webhooks for custom connections. Its product page advertises Gemini conversation summaries, action items, message refinement, and translation. Verify feature eligibility for your Workspace edition before assuming that the starter subscription includes the full advertised AI experience.

An example makes the decision clearer. If your sales lead shares a proposal from Drive and schedules the follow-up in Calendar, Chat can fit that existing work. If a crucial Slack app collects approvals through a custom form, you need to validate a replacement for that interaction. A message saying “approved” is not automatically equivalent to an approval recorded in the system that owns the deal.

Hosting and migration. Google Chat is hosted by Google. The Chat API import documentation supports messages, attachments, reactions, and historical memberships, with a Business or Enterprise Workspace account among its prerequisites. Import-mode spaces must be completed within 90 days or they are deleted. This is a managed migration project or an engineering workflow, not evidence that a personal account has a one-click Slack ZIP importer.

Keep the original export and define a completion checklist before starting. The owner of the project should be able to explain how authors, files, and restricted conversations will appear after migration, not just how many messages were submitted.

Best for: Businesses already operating in Google Workspace.
Standout: Conversation beside existing email, documents, and meetings.
Pricing: Chat is included in Workspace; use the linked regional pricing page for the current Starter rate. A consistent USD figure could not be confirmed in the final check on 15 November 2026.
Free trial: 14 days for Workspace; personal-account Chat is a separate option.

4. Zulip: the best starting point for open-source, topic-based work

Zulip is team chat built around topics inside channels, so several discussions can continue without becoming one chronological pile. For a distributed software company, a deployment question and a hiring discussion can remain separate even when both are active in the same channel. That structure helps when people return after a workday in another time zone and need to follow a specific decision. Choose Zulip for organized asynchronous discussion and a credible self-hosting path; skip it if nobody will adopt topic discipline.

Free history and hosting. Cloud Free includes 10,000 messages of search history and 5 GB of total file storage. Cloud Standard has unlimited search history. Self-hosted Free is a distinct offering with all chat features; the cloud search-history restriction is not its limit. Do not compare “free Zulip” without saying which deployment you mean.

There is a less obvious operating cost: for ordinary self-hosted organizations, the free mobile push service covers up to 10 users, with exceptions for eligible communities. Beyond that, consider the appropriate paid service or your notification requirements. Hosting the software yourself transfers responsibility for keeping it working to you; it does not make storage, maintenance, and support disappear.

Calls, integrations, and AI. Zulip's call documentation describes inserting a voice or video call link using a configured provider such as Jitsi or Zoom. It is not a promise of a native meeting platform with identical features on every device. Zulip also offers integrations, webhooks, and an API. Its pricing matrix treats AI/LLM integration differently across deployments: cloud plans do not include that row, while self-hosted options distinguish self-managed integration from supported enterprise service.

For an engineering lead, the useful pilot is a real topic lifecycle: create a discussion, let colleagues answer across time zones, and have someone unfamiliar with it find the decision later. If the topic names become vague or everyone replies in the wrong place, address that working habit before blaming search.

Migration. Zulip's Slack importer documents message history with attachments and reactions, user information, channels and subscriptions, and custom emoji. It offers a Cloud self-service flow during organization creation as well as a self-hosted path. Supplemental user and emoji information requires additional Slack access. Scope that work before promising that every identity and attachment will arrive intact.

Best for: Distributed teams that value explicit topics and open-source deployment.
Standout: Topics organize discussions within channels.
Pricing: Cloud Standard starts at $6.67 per user/month billed annually, verified 15 November 2026.
Free trial: Evaluate Cloud Free or the self-hosted Free offering; do not confuse them with the same service.

5. Mattermost: for technical operations that need deployment control

Mattermost is an open-core collaboration platform designed to run on your own infrastructure. An infrastructure or security team can bring operational discussion, developer integrations, and calls into an environment it controls. That is a stronger reason to evaluate it than simply trying to reduce the chat bill. Choose Mattermost when deployment and identity control are requirements with an owner and budget.

Mattermost vs Slack: self-hosting does not guarantee unlimited free history

The current editions documentation distinguishes free Entry mode in the commercial Enterprise binary from the separate open-source Team Edition. Entry exposes 10,000 channel messages across all channels. Older messages remain in the database but cannot be viewed or searched through that free mode. For a team leaving Slack specifically because it cannot retrieve old decisions, this is a buying constraint, not a footnote.

Team Edition is a separate MIT-licensed option intended for small teams, hobbyists, or personal use under 250 activated users without single sign-on. It should not be presented as the commercial platform with every feature made free. Likewise, some Entry call and agent quotas on the documentation page are explicitly marked for future enforcement; they are not reliable descriptions of today's enforced limits.

Calls, integrations, and AI. Mattermost's paid offering lists self-hosted group audio calls and screen sharing, developer integrations including Jira, GitHub, and GitLab, and bring-your-own language models. Enterprise capabilities include agent search, summaries, and channel briefings. A technical operator should decide where the model runs and what it can access alongside the chat deployment. Hosting messages locally does not by itself answer every question about an AI connection.

Migration. The Slack migration guide describes converting exports and then bulk-importing users, channels, message history, direct messages, threads, reactions, and attachments. Custom emoji images require separate handling, and integrations need replacement work. This is a technical migration path: assign an engineer, preserve the original export, and validate account mapping before inviting everyone into the destination.

For a security team, the implementation work may be justified by the requirement to control the environment. For a small services firm with no infrastructure owner, the same work is an ongoing obligation that a cheaper hosted product avoids.

Best for: Engineering, security, and operations teams with a self-hosting requirement.
Standout: Deployment control and developer-oriented integrations.
Pricing: Current paid pricing is by sales quote; no public starting per-user rate was displayed on 15 November 2026.
Free trial: Free Entry and a short preview environment are available; Team Edition is a separate offering.

6. Rocket.Chat: evaluate the deployment before the free tier

Rocket.Chat is a messaging platform with self-hosted entry options and paid plans organized around deployment requirements. It fits an operator who needs to decide where communications run and how identities, integrations, and external connections are governed. Its free offerings are useful for evaluation, but the maker's current positioning makes a blanket “free Slack replacement for any company” recommendation misleading. Choose Rocket.Chat for a defined deployment requirement; scope production support before moving the business onto it.

Free history and hosting. The current plan documentation describes Starter as self-hosted for up to 50 users, with searchable history. It states no numeric message-history cap on that page. When the user limit is reached, you cannot add more users; existing users and data remain accessible. This is a user ceiling, not evidence of a history allowance.

Community is the separate MIT-licensed edition. Its current limits include 100 concurrent users and 10,000 push notifications per month. The maker explicitly advises against it for business-critical production deployments. Both “concurrent users” and push notifications deserve attention: a workforce headcount is not a count of simultaneous connections, and stored messages are not the same thing as notifications delivered to phones.

Calls, integrations, and AI. Starter documents video integrations including Pexip, Jitsi, BigBlueButton, Google Meet, and Zoom; Community lists Jitsi and BigBlueButton. Starter also has marketplace apps and the Apps-Engine. The paid Commercial page lists native video, voice, and governed AI as add-ons. Its AI description includes bringing your own model and summarizing threads or channels. Do not read the enterprise feature list as a guarantee that a new free workspace includes those capabilities.

Migration. The Slack import instructions cover users, channels, and messages. Existing usernames can cause imported users to be skipped, while matching channel names can merge messages into existing channels. Plan the destination before importing into an already-used workspace.

Attachments need their own acceptance check. The importer keeps file messages hidden until the administrator runs Download Pending Files and the downloads succeed. Expired source links can leave those messages hidden with errors. A completed text import is therefore not proof that the full conversation is readable.

Best for: Technical organizations evaluating self-hosted messaging with specific deployment needs.
Standout: A documented Slack import and several deployment options.
Pricing: Paid plans require a quote; no public starting per-user rate was displayed on 15 November 2026.
Free trial: Starter and Community are free entry options with different limits.

7. Discord: for a community that lives in voice

Discord is a hosted text, voice, and video platform organized around shared servers and channels. It makes sense for an informal creator collective or community whose members want to drop into a voice room without scheduling a meeting. That social pattern is different from preserving a company's operating record. Choose Discord for live community participation; do not make it the default destination for a business archive.

Free history and calls. Discord's search documentation describes finding past messages using people, dates, channels, and content filters. Neither that guide nor the Nitro page states a paid message-history window. That supports evaluating it without a Slack-style paid history assumption; it does not establish a contractual promise to preserve every message forever. The product offers drop-in voice, video, and streaming as core reasons to use it.

Integrations and AI. Discord's app-management documentation describes apps and bots that add functionality and can be managed through server integrations. Evaluate each app's permissions. The reviewed maker pages did not establish a native business AI assistant included with Nitro, so treat any AI bot as a separate integration to assess, not a built-in replacement for a workplace assistant.

Hosting and migration. A Discord server is a space hosted on Discord, not a server you deploy on your own infrastructure. No supported Slack-history importer was established in the maker documentation reviewed. Plan a fresh start with a separate, accessible archive unless you have independently validated a migration method. Reposting old text through an automation should not be assumed to preserve original authorship, timestamps, permissions, or attachments.

For a community organizer, that boundary may be fine: current participation matters most, and durable reference material can live elsewhere. For a founder whose contract decisions and customer escalations are buried in Slack, it is a substantial reason to choose another destination.

Best for: Informal communities and groups centered on live voice.
Standout: Drop-in voice rooms beside text conversations.
Pricing: Core use is free; optional Nitro Basic starts at $2.99 per account/month, verified 15 November 2026.
Free trial: Use the free core service to evaluate it; Nitro is optional.

What moving away from Slack actually costs

The expensive part can be preserving decisions, files, and access, even when the destination subscription is free. Separate the move into export rights, import coverage, and workflow rebuilding. A destination capable of importing private conversations cannot obtain records your Slack export does not contain.

Slack's own export documentation says all plans can export public-channel messages and file links. Free and Pro do not provide the broad private-channel and direct-message export available through approved options on Business+ and Enterprise. Free workspaces can export file links only from the last 90 days.

That is distinct from Slack's free-plan history rules: view and search cover the latest 90 days, and data older than one year is deleted. Do not assume that an export can recover deleted content, or that buying the destination will restore it.

There are three jobs to budget for. First, inventory the records you need: public channels, private discussions, DMs, and files may have different paths. Second, map identities and permissions so a former employee's messages remain understandable without granting the wrong people access. Third, rebuild the alerts, forms, and automations that made the old workspace useful. Importing a bot's old posts does not install the bot in its new home.

Before the switch, nominate someone who can accept the result. Give them a sample containing an old thread, a restricted conversation, a departed colleague, and an attachment. Have them find the decision and open the supporting file using an ordinary member account. The standard is usable continuity, not an import progress bar reaching its end.

Which alternative should you choose?

Start with the reason you are leaving. If price is the main problem and ordinary internal chat is the job, Pumble is the first pilot. If a suitable business chat license already comes with your office suite, Teams or Google Chat should get the first evaluation instead. The decision rule is whether the existing subscription covers your actual work, including calls, access, and the integrations that matter.

Slack alternatives self-hosted: choose an owner before software

For control over the deployment, start with Zulip for topic-based team discussion, Mattermost for technical operations, or Rocket.Chat for a specific deployment evaluation. Assign ownership of upgrades, backups, restoration, and user access before choosing one. If nobody owns those tasks, self-hosting moves costs out of the subscription column without making them disappear.

A founder should ask for a restoration demonstration, not just an installation demonstration. An internal chat service is useful only while employees can reach it and retrieve its records. That is a practical operating requirement, independent of which open-source license you prefer.

For voice-led informal groups, Discord can be the right fit if a fresh start is acceptable. If meetings are the main reason you are changing tools, use the separate Zoom alternatives comparison to assess that decision rather than expecting chat selection to settle it.

How these were picked

These recommendations compare the seven named products against the same questions: free-history behavior, starting paid price, calls, integrations, AI, hosting, and documented Slack migration. The assessment uses maker pages read on the verification date, not hands-on testing. All seven remain represented under their current product names because their maker pages and documentation were live during this review.

The ranking favors a small operator trying to reduce chat costs, then changes with the requirement: existing office licensing, self-hosting, or community voice. A published limit is reported as a limit; the absence of a published cap is reported as an absence, not converted into an unlimited guarantee. Products outside this shortlist were not scored, and enterprise feature lists were not treated as free-plan entitlements.

The ones to avoid

Avoid Mattermost Entry if your sole requirement is unlimited visible free history. Its channel-history ceiling directly conflicts with that goal. Evaluate the appropriate edition rather than assuming self-hosting removes the restriction.

Avoid Rocket.Chat Community for business-critical production on the theory that open source means fully supported. The maker explicitly draws that boundary. Establish the supported configuration before your business depends on it.

Avoid Discord when a validated Slack archive import is mandatory. No supported maker import was established here. Its strengths in live community conversation do not solve that requirement.

Avoid buying Teams or Google Workspace solely because the first seat looks inexpensive. First check existing entitlements, the required apps, and migration work. A move that saves a subscription but breaks a customer approval workflow has failed the buying test.

FAQ

Slack alternatives free: which should you choose?

Pumble is the first pick for a small team needing unlimited free message history. Its storage, integration, and calling limits still matter. Zulip Cloud Free is another option for topic-based work, but searchable history is limited to 10,000 messages.

Slack alternatives open source: which is the best starting point?

Start with Zulip if you want open-source team chat and can support a self-hosted deployment. Mattermost Team Edition and Rocket.Chat Community are alternatives with different intended uses and limitations. Compare the exact edition, not just the product name.

Slack alternatives for small teams: what is best?

Pumble for a straightforward low-cost chat replacement; Teams or Google Chat when an appropriate license is already included in your office subscription. Pick the one that passes a pilot with your essential call, integration, and imported conversation before moving everyone.

Use the AI business workflow audit checklist to identify the workflows your next chat tool needs to preserve.