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Home › Start here › Chat with my team
Start here · Team & projects

How to choose a team chat app for a small team

A team chat app gives your team channels for topics and projects plus direct messages, so quick questions and updates move out of email. For a small team, the choice comes down to how much message history you need, how many guests you work with and whether chat already comes with the office suite you pay for. Of the 2 team communication tools we track, Slack and Microsoft Teams list a free plan or free tier (limits are in the table above).

By Bill Belcamino · Page updated September 23, 2026 · Our methodologyResearched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team
How to choose a team chat app for a small team
Bill Belcamino
Bottom line up frontby Bill Belcamino, founder of HelpCompare
Editorial assessment

Bottom line up front: Should a small team pay for Slack or use Microsoft Teams?

Check first whether chat already comes with the office suite you pay for; if not, Teams Essentials starts at $4/user/mo and Slack at $7.25/seat/mo, or $40/mo against $72.50/mo for 10 people.

The free tiers limit different things: Slack's keeps 90 days of message history and Teams' caps group meetings at 60 minutes, so weigh history if decisions will live in chat. The risk small teams underrate is what ends up in there. People paste client files, passwords and API keys into channels because it's quick, and all of it stays searchable by everyone, including guests and anyone whose account wasn't removed when they left. Set two rules on day one: secrets go in a password manager, never in chat, and removing a leaver's chat account sits on the same checklist as their email, done the day they go.

My read of the verified data on this page, checked against vendor sources on September 23, 2026. Disagree or spot an error? Tell Bill

How to chat with my team, step by step

The software this job takes

What to look for

Common mistakes to avoid

What to settle before you buy

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free team chat app for small teams?

Of the 2 team communication tools we track, Slack and Microsoft Teams list a free plan or free tier (limits are in the table above). Free tiers can limit message history, integrations or guests, so check those limits against how your team will actually use chat.

What are cheaper alternatives to Slack for small teams?

Compare what you would pay for your actual headcount, not the per-user list price alone. Check whether chat is already part of the office suite you pay for, and what you would lose on history and integrations by moving. The table above shows each tool's verified entry price and billing unit.

How do I pick a team chat app?

Pick the one that fits how your team already works: the office suite you use, the guests you invite and how much history you must keep. Run a trial with the whole team on real work before you commit, since habits are hard to move later.

How we built this page

We start from the job, not the product. The phrasings people search for this job (for example “team chat app”) come from our research into how small and mid-size teams describe it. Which software categories the job takes is our editorial judgment. Every tool, entry price, billing unit and date comes from HelpCompare’s open dataset, recorded from each vendor’s own pricing page; nothing is estimated, and where a vendor publishes no price we say so. We take no affiliate commissions and publish no scores of our own. See our methodology or download the data from Open Data.

More jobs in Team & projects

Cite this page: HelpCompare, “How to choose a team chat app for a small team”, helpcompare.com/start/chat-with-team/ (updated ).

Source links on this site are checked every month; last check . How sources are checked.

From shortlist to switched

Built for the leader who owns the selection, answers for the spend, drives the rollout, and lives with the results. HelpCompare covers the whole decision, not just the first step.

01 · CompareWhich tool fits your team, side by side.133 comparisons 02 · Price & approveSourced, dated pricing and a one-page brief for sign-off.Decision brief 03 · SwitchWhat moves, what you rebuild, what it costs.264 guides 04 · ShareDownload and cite the data. CC BY 4.0.Open data
Bill Belcamino, founder of HelpCompare
About the author

Bill Belcamino

Founder and author, HelpCompare

Engineer by training, operator by experience, marketer by choice. Bill spent eight and a half years as an engineer at HP, was COO of Auctiva (the number one third-party selling platform on eBay, past 200,000 users) and ran Google’s $70M/year search syndication partnership at Alot.com. Then he spent 13 years building his own web properties with his own money at stake. He has bought, trialled, integrated and cancelled more SaaS tools than he can count, and started HelpCompare because the real cost of switching tools is the part nobody covers.

“I’ve sat on both sides of the table: the agency recommending the tool and the client paying for it.”

Researched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team. No paid sponsorships, no affiliate commissions.

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