Team messaging is bought on a free plan and paid for after the history disappears.
This guide ranks twelve products on what the first ninety days really cost: how much searchable history survives, how seats are counted, what an export contains, who owns the vendor, and whether you can run it yourself.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry
says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a
vendor. How that works.
In short
What team messaging software does
Team messaging software gives an organisation shared channels, direct messages and threads for daily conversation, with file sharing, search and integrations so work discussion lives in one searchable place.
In this order: setup effort, what it really costs, how your data comes back out, whether
you can leave, and who each team messaging tool is built for. One rule sits on top of those tests:
Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Why those five, and why there is no
score out of ten, is on the how we work page.
Included in Google Workspace; per user per month, published; 14-day trial
—
Companies already on Google Workspace that want chat without another contract
Teams that do not use Google Workspace for mail and documents
Country is where the vendor is headquartered or contracts from, which is a
different question from where your data is hosted. Where the two tell different stories, the
entry says so.
Topic-threaded team chat with a cloud plan and a self-hosted edition
Ranked #1 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Free tierSelf-hostablePublished pricingNorth America
Zulip sells a hosted cloud service and gives away the server code. Cloud has a free plan, a Standard plan and a Plus plan with a ten-user minimum that adds SAML single sign-on and SCIM.
Import tools exist for Slack, Mattermost, Microsoft Teams and Rocket.Chat, and a cloud organisation can be moved to self-hosting. The catch is behavioural: the topic model rewards discipline and punishes drive-by messaging.
What stands out
Topic threading
Apache 2.0
Self-hosted option
Where it costs you
The free cloud plan searches only the latest 10,000 messages and stores 5 GB in total.
Mobile push notifications for a self-hosted server are limited to 10 users unless the organisation registers for an eligible community or paid arrangement.
Right for
Engineering and research teams with many parallel conversations who will name topics consistently
Wrong for
Teams wanting channels where nobody writes topics or replies
United StatesFree cloud plan with limited history; per user per month above that, published; self-hosted edition at no charge
Async-first threaded messaging from an independent, bootstrapped company
Ranked #2 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingElsewhere
Twist offers two plans: Free and Unlimited. The paid plan lifts the history limit, the integration cap and the storage cap, and both plans allow up to 500 internal members, with external guests counted separately.
The pricing page describes the company as independent and bootstrapped. What goes wrong is the history wall: a free workspace quickly loses searchable context, so the paid plan is close to mandatory for a team that uses it daily.
What stands out
Async threads
Independent
Two plans
Where it costs you
The free plan shows only the last month of comments and messages, though older data is kept on the vendor's servers.
The free plan allows five integrations and 5 GB of file storage.
Right for
Distributed teams that work across time zones and prefer written threads to meetings
Wrong for
Teams that expect instant replies and live back-and-forth
Not stated by the vendorFree plan; one paid plan per user per month, published
Slack-style chat whose free plan keeps unlimited users and history
Ranked #3 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Pumble has four plans: Free, Pro, Business and Enterprise. Free allows unlimited users, channels and searchable history, with one-to-one calls and voice or video messages. Pro adds group meetings and 10 GB per seat, and Business adds administration features.
The cost appears in seat counting: invited members and multi-channel guests each take a paid seat, so a workspace with many outside collaborators gets more expensive than headcount suggests.
What stands out
Unlimited history
Per-seat plans
Bundle with Clockify
Where it costs you
Free-plan meetings are one-to-one only; group meetings start on the first paid plan.
A paid seat is counted for every active or invited member, guests who sit in several channels included.
Right for
Small teams replacing Slack that need history and unlimited members at zero cost
Wrong for
Organisations needing a standalone vendor with no sister products
United StatesFree plan for unlimited users; three paid plans per seat per month, published
Self-hosted channel messaging for engineering, security and regulated teams
Ranked #4 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Self-hostablePricing on requestNorth America
Mattermost offers Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise Advanced, with deployment as a vendor-managed single-tenant cloud or on-premises. The licensing file says compiled builds from Mattermost are MIT and source can be used under AGPL v3 or a commercial licence.
Enterprise Advanced adds air-gapped and zero-trust options. The weak point for a normal buyer is opacity: no tier shows a price, and the free edition is explicitly for evaluation.
What stands out
Self-hosted
AGPL source
Air-gapped option
Where it costs you
Pricing for every tier is quoted by sales; the page shows no per-seat figures.
The free edition is limited-use and meant for technical evaluation, not for production.
Right for
Security-conscious engineering organisations that must host chat inside their own network
Wrong for
Small teams wanting a cheap card-and-go chat tool
United StatesQuoted per organisation; limited-use evaluation edition; self-hosted or vendor-managed cloud
Matrix-based secure messaging, self-hosted, with a community edition under AGPL
Ranked #5 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Open sourceSelf-hostablePricing on requestEurope
Element sells three tiers on its pricing page: Community, Enterprise and Sovereign. Community is free of charge and AGPL, and includes Element Call. Enterprise adds Synapse Pro, scaling and oversight, priced per seat per month through an expert.
Sovereign adds air-gapped installation. The Matrix standard itself is governed by an independent foundation, which supports leaving, but running Synapse is real operations work.
What stands out
Matrix protocol
Self-hosted
AGPL community
Where it costs you
The pricing page offers self-hosted editions only, so you must run or contract the server.
The Community edition is described as for non-professional deployments and evaluations.
Right for
Organisations wanting federated, self-hosted chat that follows an open standard
Wrong for
Teams wanting a hosted workspace running in ten minutes
United KingdomCommunity edition at no charge, AGPL; Enterprise and Sovereign priced per seat per month on request
Small-team chat with built-in tasks; the free plan stops at five members
Ranked #6 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingElsewhere
Chanty has a Free plan, a Business plan priced per user per month, and an Enterprise plan quoted by sales. Free covers unlimited searchable history, audio and video calls between two people, 20 GB per team and task management.
Business adds group calls, roles, retention policies, HIPAA terms and SSO. The vendor's site names a company, Chanty, Inc., but gives no country, so none is claimed.
What stands out
Built-in tasks
Free for five
Per-user plan
Where it costs you
The free plan is limited to five team members and ten integrations.
Data import and export is listed under the Business plan, not the free plan.
Right for
Teams of up to five who want chat and a to-do list together
Wrong for
Growing teams that need exports or integrations beyond ten apps
Not stated by the vendorFree plan; one published per-user Business plan; Enterprise quoted
Self-managed chat platform now marketed at sovereign and mission-critical organisations
Ranked #7 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Self-hostablePricing on requestNorth America
Rocket.Chat lists a Commercial plan for secure collaboration and a separate plan family for citizen engagement. Deployment can be on-premises, private cloud, isolated VPC or fully air-gapped, or on dedicated cloud hosting run by the vendor.
The licence file says content outside the ee directories is MIT, with enterprise directories under their own licence. Most of the page copy is aimed at sovereignty and mission use, which narrows who it speaks to.
What stands out
Self-hosted
MIT core
Air-gapped option
Where it costs you
The Commercial plan has no listed price; the page shows only a Get pricing button.
Enterprise-directory code carries a separate licence, so not everything in the repository is MIT.
Right for
Public-sector and regulated organisations deploying chat on infrastructure they control
Wrong for
Small commercial teams comparing posted per-seat prices side by side
United StatesCommercial plan quoted by sales; Starter plan for evaluation; self-managed deployment
End-to-end encrypted team messaging with SMB and enterprise tiers
Ranked #8 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
Wire has four commercial tiers: Free, SMB, Enterprise and Partners. The SMB tier adds video conferences for up to 150 participants, SSO and SCIM, admin controls and guest roles.
Enterprise adds federation with Wire Cloud, data sovereignty options and multi-tenancy, and the FAQ mentions an on-premises edition. The imprint gives Zug, Switzerland, while the about page describes a Berlin headquarters, so the two are worth reconciling in a contract.
What stands out
End-to-end encrypted
Federation
Free for five
Where it costs you
The free plan is for teams of up to five people and cannot start conference calls above two participants.
The SMB tier stops at 100 people; larger organisations must negotiate a custom Enterprise plan.
Right for
Organisations whose first requirement is encrypted conversations with controlled federation
Wrong for
Large communities wanting big public channels and a wide app directory
SwitzerlandFree plan for five people; SMB per person per month, published; Enterprise custom
Team messenger with a capped free plan for groups up to twenty
Ranked #9 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingElsewhere
Flock offers three plans: Starter for 1 to 20 members, Pro for 20 to 100, and Enterprise for 100 or more. Starter gives unlimited messages but searches 10,000.
Pro lifts search, channels and gives 10 GB per member, and Enterprise adds directory sync and single sign-on. The footer names Titan Solution Ltd SEZC without a place, so ownership and country stay unverified for a buyer.
What stands out
Free for 20
30-day trial
Capped search
Where it costs you
The free plan limits search to 10,000 messages, public channels to ten and storage to 5 GB per team.
The fetched pricing page shows no readable Pro price, so the paid cost cannot be confirmed.
Right for
Small teams of up to twenty wanting a simple messenger to try first
Wrong for
Teams needing a verifiable per-seat price before committing
Not stated by the vendorFree plan up to 20 members; Pro plan with 30-day trial; Enterprise quoted
The incumbent channel messenger, a Salesforce company, with a 90-day free history
Ranked #10 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Slack sells Free, Pro, Business+ and Enterprise+, with Pro and Business+ priced per user per month. Pro and above give unlimited message history and apps; The export table is the sharp edge: only Business+ and Enterprise can export private conversations, and scheduled exports sit on Business+.
Free-plan file links are limited to the last 90 days, so a small team that outgrows the free plan feels the limit within a quarter.
What stands out
Salesforce company
90-day history
App directory
Where it costs you
The free plan keeps messages searchable for 90 days and allows 10 apps.
Exporting private channels and direct messages needs Business+ or Enterprise; Free and Pro export public channels only.
Right for
Companies wanting the widest app ecosystem and a familiar channel model
Wrong for
Teams needing full-conversation export or independence from a large vendor
United StatesFree plan; Pro and Business+ per user per month, published; Enterprise+ quoted
Zoho's chat tool with a free edition and four editions
Ranked #11 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingElsewhere
Cliq has Free, Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions. Standard adds external channels, recording and a custom domain.
Professional adds team management, task management and IP restrictions at the client, and Enterprise adds audit history, eDiscovery and data loss prevention. The site gives no country for the company on the pages read, and the pricing page shows editions without readable amounts.
What stands out
Zoho suite
Free edition
Four editions
Where it costs you
The free edition searches only 10,000 messages and limits groups to 100 participants.
Professional and Enterprise editions require a minimum of ten users.
Right for
Organisations already running other Zoho applications who want chat inside that suite
Wrong for
Buyers wanting a single-product vendor and readable list prices
Not stated by the vendorFree edition; Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions per user; ten-user minimum on the top two
Chat bundled into Google Workspace at no additional cost to subscribers
Ranked #12 of 12 in Best Team Messaging Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Google describes Chat as included with Workspace at no additional cost, integrating with Gmail, Calendar, Drive and Meet. The pricing page lists Business Starter, Standard and Plus per user per month and offers a 14-day trial at no cost.
Persistent spaces support up to 500,000 members. The dependency is the weakness: leaving Chat means deciding about the whole Workspace subscription, and several features are tied to the Business and Enterprise editions.
What stands out
Workspace bundle
Per user
Large spaces
Where it costs you
Chat is sold only inside Google Workspace, so there is no stand-alone price.
Some listed features are premium and limited to Workspace Business and Enterprise plans.
Right for
Companies already on Google Workspace that want chat without another contract
Wrong for
Teams that do not use Google Workspace for mail and documents
United StatesIncluded in Google Workspace; per user per month, published; 14-day trial
Team messaging software gives an organisation shared channels, direct messages and threads for daily conversation, with file sharing, search and integrations so work discussion lives in one searchable place. The differences that matter are rarely in the feature list, so this is
the order we would work through them.
01
Decide whether you need a published price
9 of the 12 tools here publish what they cost; the other 3 quote per organisation. The ones you can compare without a sales call: Zulip, Twist, Pumble, Chanty, Wire, Flock, Slack, Zoho Cliq, Google Chat.
02
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 12 vendors are established in 4 countries across 3 regions (North America 6, Elsewhere 4, Europe 2). That decides whose disclosure law applies to what the vendor holds, wherever the servers are.
03
Consider whether you want the source
1 of these are open source: Element. Hosting one yourself trades a subscription for maintenance.
How history limits shape a Zulip, Twist or Slack bill
Most team messaging products do not stop you using them when the free plan runs out; they hide the past. Twist shows only the latest month of comments on its free plan, Slack keeps 90 days of searchable messages, and Zulip Cloud searches 10,000 messages. Flock and Zoho Cliq also search 10,000 on their free offers. Pumble is the exception, with unlimited searchable history on its free plan.
The data is usually kept, but an archive nobody can search does not help a new starter reading back through a decision. Count the days of history your team actually refers to, then find which plan retains that much before comparing prices, because the cheapest plan that keeps your last quarter searchable is the real entry point.
Ask how many days or messages stay searchable on the free plan
Check whether older messages are kept or deleted after a downgrade
Price the plan that lifts the history limit, not the free tier
What a seat means in Pumble, Wire and Chanty
A seat is not always an employee. Pumble counts every active or invited member, including guests who sit in several channels, as a paid seat. Chanty's Business plan says it gives three guest seats per member for free, while its free plan allows one guest user. Wire's SMB tier covers up to 100 people, and a bigger organisation moves to a custom Enterprise plan.
Zulip cloud's Plus plan has a ten-user minimum, as do Zoho Cliq's Professional and Enterprise editions. Before you buy, list employees, contractors and customers who would be invited, then ask how each is counted and what happens above the seat ceiling. Two products with the same list price can differ by a third once guests are counted.
List every kind of outside guest and ask how it is counted
Check minimum user counts on the plan you need
Find the ceiling after which the plan changes to custom
Self-hosting Mattermost, Element or Rocket.Chat
Self-hosting is the main reason to choose Mattermost, Element and Rocket.Chat, and Zulip also publishes its server. The price is operations: someone must install, patch, scale and back up the server, and the licence decides what you may modify. Mattermost source is AGPL v3 and compiled builds are MIT.
Element's community edition is AGPL, and its professional use moves to a per-seat Server Suite Pro. Rocket.Chat is MIT outside its enterprise directories. None of the three prints a per-seat price anywhere on the pages we read for its commercial tier, so the hosting cost and the licence cost both need a quote before you can compare with a hosted rival such as Pumble or Slack.
Read the licence file for the exact edition you would run
Estimate hours of patching and backup, not only licence cost
Ask for the commercial tier quote before choosing a self-hosted route
Taking conversations out of Slack or Google Chat
Exit is the least tested part of a messaging purchase. Slack's export table shows that Free and Pro plans export public channels only, while exports of private channels and direct messages need Business+ or Enterprise. Google Chat comes only inside Google Workspace, so leaving chat means deciding about mail, drive and documents too.
Zulip documents importers for Slack, Mattermost, Microsoft Teams and Rocket.Chat, which makes moving in simple. Exports in the other direction depend on the plan you hold on the day you leave, so ask for a dated export of your own workspace during the trial rather than trusting a feature list. Exit rights are cheapest to negotiate before the first invoice.
Run a test export during the trial and open the file
Find out whether private channels and direct messages are included
Check whether the importer you need exists on the receiving product
What goes wrong most often when buying team messaging software
Choosing on the free plan and discovering after three months that history older than the limit cannot be searched.
Counting only employees when pricing Pumble or Slack, and forgetting guests and invited members that also consume paid seats.
Picking a self-hosted option such as Mattermost, Element or Rocket.Chat without budgeting hours for patching, scaling and backups.
Assuming a chat tool inside a suite, such as Google Chat or Zoho Cliq, can be bought or cancelled on its own.
07
Frequently asked questions
8 answers
What is the best team messaging software in 2026?
Zulip leads our ranking of 12. Every message in Zulip sits under a topic inside a channel, so a busy channel can be read one conversation at a time.
Kandra Labs publishes cloud prices per user and ships the server under Apache 2.0, so you can leave with an export. The cost is habit: people used to one long stream must learn to name topics, and the free cloud plan searches only 10,000 messages.
Which team messaging tools publish their pricing?
9 of the 12, with the pricing model each one publishes:
Zulip: Free cloud plan with limited history; per user per month above that, published; self-hosted edition at no charge.
Twist: Free plan; one paid plan per user per month, published.
Pumble: Free plan for unlimited users; three paid plans per seat per month, published.
Chanty: Free plan; one published per-user Business plan; Enterprise quoted.
Wire: Free plan for five people; SMB per person per month, published; Enterprise custom.
Flock: Free plan up to 20 members; Pro plan with 30-day trial; Enterprise quoted.
Slack: Free plan; Pro and Business+ per user per month, published; Enterprise+ quoted.
Zoho Cliq: Free edition; Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions per user; ten-user minimum on the top two.
Google Chat: Included in Google Workspace; per user per month, published; 14-day trial.
The other 3 quote per organisation.
Is there a free team messaging tool?
Zulip, Twist, Pumble, Chanty, Wire, Flock, Slack, Zoho Cliq offer a free tier or a free self-hosted edition.
Where are these team messaging software vendors established?
In 4 countries across 3 regions: North America 6, Elsewhere 4, Europe 2.
Zulip: United States.
Twist: Not stated by the vendor.
Pumble: United States.
Mattermost: United States.
Element: United Kingdom.
Chanty: Not stated by the vendor.
Rocket.Chat: United States.
Wire: Switzerland.
Flock: Not stated by the vendor.
Slack: United States.
Zoho Cliq: Not stated by the vendor.
Google Chat: United States.
Which team messaging tools are open source?
Element.
Which team messaging tools can you host yourself?
Zulip, Mattermost, Element, Rocket.Chat. The other 8 are hosted by the vendor only.
What should you use instead of Zulip?
Twist and Pumble are the next two on this page. Twist is for Distributed teams that work across time zones and prefer written threads to meetings; Pumble is for small teams replacing Slack that need history and unlimited members at zero cost.
Who should not buy Zulip?
Teams wanting channels where nobody writes topics or replies. The free cloud plan searches only the latest 10,000 messages and stores 5 GB in total..
If your team messaging software product belongs among these 12, tell us what it does and who it is for. Inclusion is an editorial call; what a listing is and is not is set out under software advice.
