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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 19, 2026 · Our methodologyResearched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team
How to choose a team chat app for a small team

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.

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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.75 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.150 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

Bill has worked in software and digital marketing for more than 20 years. He spent nine years as an engineer at HP, served as COO scaling a platform past 200,000 users, and ran Google’s $70M/year search syndication partnership at Alot.com. 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.

Read Bill’s story How we verify pricingSpot an error? Tell Bill