Best Team Chat Apps for Small Teams

Team chat apps for small and growing teams, ranked by how well they replace internal email: channels, threads, search, calls and integrations. Slack is still the default for most software teams thanks to its huge app directory, Microsoft Teams and Google Chat make sense when you already pay for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, and Discord works for communities and informal teams. Chanty, Pumble and Flock are the budget picks with generous free plans, Twist suits async teams that prefer threads over a live feed, and Zulip, Rocket.Chat and Mattermost are the open-source options you can host yourself. See our full Slack alternatives comparison on the blog.