Team chat apps are irreplaceable for the modern office. They allow for faster communication and more effective collaboration between the team members – no matter if they are remote or in-house.
There are numerous team chat apps on the market and all of them provide different functionalities. It is recommended to test and get familiar with more than one before you choose so that you can make sure to pick the one that best fits your business requirements.
What makes a chat app good for teams? Several features are the most important:
- Being able to organize conversations: not every conversation needs to involve your whole team. It is preferable to be able to create different channels and threads and to tag people to keep the conversation more organized
- Search and filtering features: your team should be able to quickly find relevant information to avoid having the same conversation all over again
- Audio and video chat: voice and video communication is important for effective collaboration, especially with the option for screen sharing
- Easy navigation and control: with having various conversations, team members need to navigate quickly
- Collaboration-specific features: file-sharing, link previews, integration with other apps, and other useful features are important to make collaboration easier.
Here are the 5 best chat apps for teams available currently on the market.
Best team chat app for a chat-powered workplace
Slack
Available for: Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, Web
Slack is a team chat app designed with the user in mind. There is a general channel to be used by the whole company as well as different channels dedicated to specific teams and projects. Conversations in the channels can be broken down into threads for more convenience, and members can tag other users to ensure that important conversations are being seen.
There is a great search option so you can easily filter by user, channel, date, and more. File-sharing is quick and easy with drag-and-drop or linking, and links can be previewed without leaving the app.
There is an option for audio and video calls with a single click, and Slack can seamlessly be integrated with other apps.
The user-friendly design and the emoji reactions that allow users to respond to messages quickly make Slack overall a great team app chat.
There is a free plan for unlimited users, one-on-one calls, and message history of 10K, and paid plans start at $8/month/user with screen sharing, unlimited history, and team video calls.
Microsoft Teams
Available for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Web
Microsoft Teams offers the opportunity to organize your team members in one or more teams within the organization, with each team being broken down into channels. Furthermore, conversations in the channels can be broken down into threads for very neat and organized communication.
There is a big emphasis on audio and video calls, and extensive collaboration features and integration with Microsoft Office suite.
Microsoft Teams is included with Office 365 Business Essentials and the price starts at $5/month/user.
Google Chat
Available for Web, iOS, Android
Google Chat is formerly known as Hangouts and allows you to break down conversations into channels and threads to keep them organized. YOu can add as many rooms as you want, and users can join or leave them.
There is extensive integration with Google apps which makes for easier collaboration. You can easily share Google Docs and schedule meetings with Google Meet. There is a strong search functionality – you see the results in real-time as your time, and there are a lot of filtering options.
Google Chat is included with G Suite and pricing starts from $6/month/user.
Discord
Available for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Web
Discord was originally created with gamers in mind but it can work as a team chat as well – mainly because it offers exceptional always-on audio. With the voice channels you can keep the microphone off, then with a push of a key to start talking whenever you want – quite handy if your team is working on a shared Google Doc for example.
There are also text channels but no option to break down conversations into threads, and an option for video calls if you need to communicate face-to-face.
Discord is free for basic features and the paid plan is $9.99for larger file uploads, custom emoji, and GIF avatars.
Mattermost
Available for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, Web
This app is open-source so you can download it and install it on your company’s servers. There are great features – there are channels broken down into threads, a search option, and filtering by users, channels, and dates, as well as audio and video chat.
The interface is similar to Slack and in case you need a self-hosting team chats app, this one is definitely a good choice.
Mattermost is free when you download the open-source version and there are also paid plans starting at $3.25/month/user.
24Stack
Available for Android, iOS, Web
24Stack is a fully-featured help desk and live chat software. It enables you to streamline all of your communication channels into one unified dashboard, which can be easily accessed by your whole customer support team.
The software is a great choice for businesses of all sizes and industry types.
