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What are the best on-site Slack alternatives?

25

Options
Considered

116

User
Recs.

Nov 3, 2023

Last
Updated

17 Options Considered

Best on-site Slack alternatives	Price	Platforms	Hosting options
-- Rocket.Chat	-	Web iOS Android OSX Windows Linux	On premises & On Rocket.Chat
-- Zulip	Free/Paid	Web, iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux, terminal	Hosted and Self-hosted
-- Matrix	-	Mac/Windows/Linux/Android/Browser/iOS/and more	-
-- Mattermost	-	Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, Linux	Self-hosted
-- Flock	-	Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, Browser, Chrmoe Extension	Hosted

Rocket.Chat

Top Pro

Free and open source

Rocket.Chat is available for free. It's licensed under the MIT license with source code available on GitHub. See More

Top Con

Developer support is non-existent

Can't even create a clean Ubuntu VM with a working developer install. Unresolved dependencies; fails to build. Docs are terrible; actual devs don't respond to questions; error messages are near-opaque. DO NOT RECOMMEND. See More

CW's Experience

For the most part, feels very similar to Slack. Missing a few features but not vital ones. So far the closest alternative to Slack that is self-hosted. See More

Specs

Platforms:Web iOS Android OSX Windows Linux

Hosting options:On premises & On Rocket.Chat

Service integrations:Yes

DIY integrations:Yes

Top Pro

Native apps for all major desktop and mobile platforms

Rocket.Chat has native apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. See More

Top Con

Web client loses images

In chat rooms with images, before very long, images start to become empty boxes. Useless to pass around visual information See More

David Aslan French's Experience

Loads of features, free, and self hostable. See More

Top Pro

Supports a wide variety of authentication methods

In addition to the usual email / username + password combination, Rocket.Chat supports authenticating via Facebook, Github, Gitlab, Google, Linkedin, Meteor and Twitter accounts. See More

Top Con

No theme customization

Top Pro

Understands markdown better than Slack does.

Links work properly, for instance, with square brackets followed by parentheses. See More

Top Con

No chat audit for enterprise

Top Pro

Very active and helpful community

Top Con

Poor security implementations / protocols

Top Pro

Video conferencing support

Rocket.Chat supports video calls. See More

Top Con

Centralized

Top Con

iOS app is poorly made

The iOS application is not native, being just a browser container. This means that the UX is quite poor, slow, buttons unresponsive. At this moment they do not provide a decent experience. See More

Top Con

Android app is poorly made

The Android application is just a badly wrapped web-view which does not perform well and has no form of offline caching whatsoever. See More

Top Con

Privacy settings are absent

Privacy settings for the server are absent, for instance, you don't have the ability to disable registrations, there's no way to control access to the chat. See More

Top Con

Features not available out of the box

Top Con

No web browser support

Top Con

Email required for registration

Top Con

No way to block new registrations

Without the ability to disable registrations, there's no way to control access to the chat. See More

Zulip

Top Pro

Helps keep track of different conversations

Instead of rooms or channels Zulip is built around topics. This allows you to have multiple conversations at the same time without conversations interfering with each another. It also allows you to reference conversations without clutter. See More

Top Con

No End-to-End Encryption

Not even for private one-to-one messages, let along group chats. See More

MotivatedPasithea's Experience

Love the topic in a stream See More

Specs

Platforms:Web, iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux, terminal

Hosting options:Hosted and Self-hosted

Service integrations:Yes

DIY integrations:Yes

Top Pro

Free and open source software

Zulip is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license. See More

Top Con

Takes some getting used to

As most chat software uses the concept of channels or rooms, getting in the habit of splitting each topic off in a separate category can require some getting used to and discipline. See More

Tjwan's Experience

Compared with Rocket Chat, Teams, Slack and Mattermost, Zulip gives a much better overview (with their channel and topic appproach). You need to use it, before you can appreciate the huge advantage, in giving overview in an environment with an information overload, See More

Top Pro

Easy asynchronous conversations

Its threaded model helps people working in different timezone's communicate effectively. See More

SensibleOphion's Experience

Zulip has a lovely threading model which helps to catch up between different topics very easily and super quickly. It also has tons of features making coordination of team much easier and super quick. See More

Top Pro

Apps for every platform

Aman Agrawal's Experience

The threading model make keeping track of different conversation super easy. Non-frequent users can catch up to and be a part of conversations started months ago. Search is very very fast. Loading time is very quick. See More

Top Pro

Hosted or on-premise

With data export tools so you can migrate. See More

Brock Whittaker's Experience

Very responsive/interactive culture of updating and building great features! See More

Top Pro

Intuitive interface

I struggled with Slack, never finding the settings I like to adjust. With Zulip never had such issues. See More

Matrix

Specs

Platforms:Mac/Windows/Linux/Android/Browser/iOS/and more

Open source:Yes

Mattermost

Top Pro

Good alternative for businesses

You can install Mattermost in a 1-2-3! No docker needed! Its like fun on a bun. See More

Top Con

Only paid version let you integrate with ldap/ad

Leonardo González's Experience

Very good alternative to Slack. It's Very complete and intuitive. The bad stuff of it its that doesn't have very good moderation tools, like muting users and kicking from the chat channel See More

Specs

Platforms:Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, Linux

Hosting options:Self-hosted

Service integrations:Yes - Atlassian, Webhooks, Chatbots, Extensions

DIY integrations:Yes - API Library, OAuth 2.0 Apps, Zapier App with over 700 Integrations

Top Pro

Similar to Slack

Almost all features of Slack are available in Mattermost. See More

CW's Experience

Major bugs with authentication (users would suddenly log in as other users, messages would be sent to the wrong users, etc.) - also does not feel much like Slack See More

Top Pro

Free - OpenSource

You can download and use it as free for self-hosted server. See More

Top Pro

One-line Docker install

With Docker set up, you can install Mattermost with the following command: docker run --name mattermost-dev -d --publish 8065:80 mattermost/platform For other cases, installation instructions can be found here. See More

Flock

Top Pro

FREE plan comes with all essential business tools pre-integrated

Flock's core apps come pre-integrated and are excellent for project management for smal to medium sized teams. These include the To-Do App, Polls App, Reminders, Rich Note Sharing, Code Snippet and even Google Drive! See More

Top Con

Doesn't work on Linux

Flock isn't compatible with Linux. See More

Specs

Platforms:Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, Browser, Chrmoe Extension

Hosting options:Hosted

Service integrations:Yes

DIY integrations:Yes

Top Pro

Cheaper than Slack

It is half the price of Slack and full of nice features like polls, assign to do's, etc. See More

Top Pro

Free video calling and screen sharing

Top Pro

Uncluttered UI, feature packed

Clean and intuitive UI - recent chats bubble up and they have a smart search feature that populates results based on frequent/ recent conversations. See More

AstraChat

Top Pro

Multi-platform

Available on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android. See More

Top Con

No OTR service

Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR) is a cryptographic protocol that provides encryption for instant messaging conversations. Astrachat doesn't include this protocol, that it is often included in other XMPP services. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows , Linux , Mac , Android , iOS

Hosting options:Hosted & self-hosted

Service integrations:Windows , Linux , Mac , Android , iOS

Top Pro

Custom Chat Bots

Top Pro

Offers Hosted and On-Premise Solutions

All the information remains in your own network, not on a third party server or in the cloud with an on premise managed hosted option. See More

Top Pro

Network efficient

AstraChat is tuned to make very efficient use of the network connection and processor so you can be confident that it will use very little of your battery or data allowance. See More

Top Pro

Secure

Messages are received from clients using secured (TLS or SSL) XMPP (jabber) protocol. See More

Top Pro

Direct connect

Winio

Top Pro

Uncluttered intuitive interface

The UI of the app is very clean and easy to use. See More

Output Messenger

Brosix

Top Pro

Great admin tools

The Enterprise version of Brosix allows the Administrator to manage their own and unique network. The Admin has also full-control over the archives of all chats within the network. See More

Top Pro

Affordable

For $1.70 per user per month voice & video chat, screen-sharing sessions, send unlimited files regardless of the size, etc. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Brosix IM facilitates the internal communication and increases office productivity. See More

Top Pro

Excellent solution for companies who would like to encrypt their office communication

Brosix uses strong 256-bit encryption that secures ALL communication channels. See More

Top Pro

Brosix is available on all platforms

This includes Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, Mac. See More

Plumm

Crugo

Specs

Platforms:Web, Mac, iOS & Android

Hosting options:100% UK hosted

Service integrations:Yes

Groups:Unlimited

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