Slack alternative
A Slack alternative for tiny teams that don’t need a per-seat tax.
Stack Chat covers the 80% of Slack that small teams actually use — channels, DMs, threads, search, canvas docs — for $20/month flat instead of $8.75 per user per month. If you’re 2–25 people, that math is hard to argue with.
Why teams leave Slack
The 90-day free message limit eventually bites everyone.
Slack’s free tier looks generous until the day you search for something from four months ago and find nothing. The limit isn’t storage — Slack still has your messages — it’s an artificial wall designed to push you onto Pro the moment you have institutional memory worth keeping. For a five-person team, that’s $525/year minimum on the annual plan. For a fifteen-person team it’s $1,575/year. The conversion is brilliant; the experience of hitting the wall the first time is brutal. Once you’re paying, the upgrades never stop: Business+ at $15/user/mo unlocks SAML, AI features sit behind another tier, and Enterprise Grid pricing isn’t public.
Per-seat pricing punishes the teams it should help.
Slack scales beautifully for big companies — economies of scale, volume discounts, dedicated CSMs. For a 5-person startup, every new hire is another $105/year recurring. For a 12-person agency, it’s $1,260/year just to talk to each other. The "active user" billing model, where Slack charges for anyone who logged in during the billing period (including contractors, advisors, the freelancer who joined for one project), produces invoice surprises every quarter. Small teams end up doing seat-shuffling gymnastics — deactivating people, then reactivating them when they need to chime in — to keep the bill predictable.
AI and admin features keep moving up-tier.
Slack AI launched as an add-on, then got partially rolled into Business+ and Enterprise tiers. SCIM, SAML, custom retention policies, message exports for compliance — every feature a small business eventually wants is gated above the entry-level $8.75 plan. The pricing page reads like a permission ladder: pay more to unlock the version of Slack you actually need. This is the path enterprise SaaS always takes, and Slack is now firmly on it. Small teams aren’t the customer profile that gets feature investment anymore.
You don’t need 5,000 integrations — you need three.
Slack’s app directory is genuinely the largest in the category, and it’s a real moat for enterprise buyers. But for most small teams, the integrations they actually use are: GitHub notifications, calendar reminders, and an alerting webhook from their monitoring tool. Three. The rest of the marketplace is overhead they’re paying for and never touching. Stack Chat handles those three with native webhook support and basic workflows, at a fraction of the cost. If your real integration need is "push a deploy notification into a channel," you don’t need a $400/seat/year platform to do it.
What Stack Chat does differently
$20/month flat — for the whole workspace.
Stack Chat is included in the $20/month Stack bundle, which covers unlimited users in one workspace plus seven other apps (Slate notes, Stream screen recording, Scribble meeting notes, Momentum tasks, Stack Sync scheduling, Stack Timekeeper, Speak Bar dictation). Standalone Stack Chat is $8/month — also flat, also unlimited users. For a 5-person team on Slack Pro annual ($525/year), you save $285/year (54%). For a 15-person team you save $1,335/year. Hire someone tomorrow? Bill stays $20.
No 90-day wall — full history from day one.
Every message Stack Chat indexes is searchable forever, on every plan. There is no archive tier, no retention upsell, no "upgrade to see messages from before March." The search index is full-text and ranks recent messages above old ones, but the whole history is there. If you need to find what someone said about a vendor eight months ago, you can. This single feature is why most small teams eventually switch off Slack’s free tier — and Stack Chat just gives it to you.
Channels, DMs, threads, canvas docs — the 80% that actually gets used.
Stack Chat ships the parts of Slack you open every day: public and private channels, direct messages, threaded replies, hover reactions, @-mentions, file uploads, and canvas docs (lightweight collaborative pages pinned to a channel). Webhooks are first-class for incoming notifications, and basic workflows handle the "post a message every Monday at 9am" use cases. Web app + macOS Electron client, both on the same realtime layer. It’s deliberately less than Slack’s full surface area — that’s the point. Less to learn, less to pay for, less to maintain.
Slack import that actually preserves the structure.
Slack’s CSV/JSON export is well-documented but most "Slack alternatives" do a sloppy job parsing it. Stack Chat’s import wizard reads the export directly: channels become channels, DMs become DMs, threads stay threaded with the right parent message, timestamps are preserved, user mappings are carried over by email. Attachments are the one quirk — Slack exports them as URLs that expire, so for older archives you’ll re-upload some files manually. The import runs in the background; a year of history for a 10-person team usually finishes in 5–10 minutes.
Where Slack still wins
Honest tradeoffs — read this before switching.
No 5,000-app integration directory.
Slack’s app marketplace is its biggest moat — Salesforce, Jira, Zendesk, Zoom, PagerDuty, and a long tail of vertical-specific tools all ship pre-built Slack apps. Stack Chat has webhooks, basic workflows, and a small set of native integrations, but if your team’s daily workflow runs through three or more deeply-integrated Slack apps, switching costs are real. Audit your actual usage — most teams find they use 2–4 integrations they could rebuild as webhooks, but some genuinely depend on the marketplace.
No Slack Connect / cross-org chat.
Slack Connect — shared channels with external companies, vendors, customers — is one of Slack’s best features and a real differentiator at the mid-market and up. Stack Chat is single-workspace today; if your daily flow includes shared channels with three customer companies, your auditor’s firm, and two contractors, Slack still wins on that axis. We’re evaluating cross-workspace federation, but it’s not on the near roadmap.
Smaller scale ceiling — best at 2–25 people.
Stack Chat is built and tested for small teams. Channels, search, and the realtime layer are tuned for workspaces up to about 25 active users; beyond that we haven’t done the load-testing Slack has done at 10,000+. If you’re a 200-person company, Slack (or Microsoft Teams) is the right tool — that’s honestly not the audience we’re building for. Stack Chat is for the tiny team that’s currently overpaying for an enterprise-grade product they barely use 20% of.
Stack Chat vs Slack — feature comparison
| Feature | Slack | Stack Chat |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | $8.75/user/mo (annual Pro) | $20/mo flat workspace (or $8/mo standalone) |
| Message history on entry plan | 90 days (free) / unlimited (paid) | Unlimited on every plan |
| Channels, DMs, threads | Yes | Yes |
| Canvas / collaborative docs | Yes (canvases) | Yes (canvas docs) |
| Hover reactions | Yes | Yes |
| Webhooks | Yes | Yes — first-class incoming + outgoing |
| Workflow builder | Yes — best in class | Basic workflows (cron + webhook + post) |
| Third-party app marketplace | 5,000+ apps | Webhooks + small native set |
| Slack Connect (cross-org channels) | Yes | Not yet |
| Slack import | — (it’s their format) | Yes — channels, DMs, threads preserved |
| macOS desktop app | Yes | Yes (Electron) |
| 5-seat yearly cost | $525 (Pro annual) | $240 (bundle) |
| Cost to add the 6th user | +$105/yr | $0 |
| Bundled with other tools | No | Yes — 8 apps for $20/mo |
Pricing — at 5 seats per year
Slack
Slack Pro @ $8.75/user/mo (annual)
$525 /yr
Stack bundle
Stack bundle @ $20/mo flat (1 workspace, unlimited users)
$240 /yr
Saves $285/yr (54% off)
Migrating from Slack
- 1
Export your Slack workspace.
In Slack: Settings & administration → Workspace settings → Import/Export Data → Export. Choose the date range (full history is the default). Slack emails a download link when the export is ready, usually within an hour for small teams.
- 2
Drop the export into Stack Chat import.
In Stack Chat: Settings → Import → Slack. Upload the .zip directly. The wizard parses channels, DMs, threads, users, and timestamps. Channels become channels, DMs become DMs, threads stay threaded with the right parent message preserved.
- 3
Re-upload expired attachments (if needed).
Slack export lists attachments by URL, and those URLs expire on the free plan and after a window on paid plans. The importer flags any attachment it can’t fetch; for archives older than a few months, plan to re-upload a small set of files manually. Recent attachments (last ~30 days) almost always come through cleanly.
- 4
Invite your team and recreate webhooks.
User mapping happens by email — invite each teammate to the new workspace and their imported messages are attributed correctly. Then walk through your top 3–4 Slack integrations and rebuild them as Stack Chat webhooks (most are a 5-minute change to the GitHub/Linear/Datadog target URL).
- 5
Run both in parallel for a week, then cut over.
Keep Slack on free tier as a safety net for one week while the team gets used to Stack Chat. Pin a message in your old #general pointing to the new workspace. Cancel Slack at the next billing cycle once everyone has switched.
FAQ
Is Stack Chat actually a Slack replacement, or just a clone?+
For small teams, it’s a genuine replacement for the 80% of Slack you use daily — channels, DMs, threads, search, canvas docs, reactions, webhooks, basic workflows. It is intentionally not a 1:1 Slack clone. There’s no 5,000-app marketplace and no Slack Connect, and we don’t pretend otherwise. The pitch is "you’re paying $400+/seat/year for features you don’t use; here’s the same daily experience for $20/month flat." If you’re 2–25 people, that trade is usually a clear win.
How much does a 5-person team save per year switching from Slack Pro?+
Slack Pro on the annual plan is $8.75/user/month, so 5 seats × $8.75 × 12 = $525/year. The Stack bundle is $20/month flat = $240/year, regardless of headcount. That’s $285/year saved (54%), and you also get Slate, Stream, Scribble, Momentum, Stack Sync, Stack Timekeeper, and Speak Bar included. If you only want chat and not the bundle, Stack Chat standalone is $8/month flat = $96/year.
What happens to my Slack message history when I import?+
Everything Slack includes in the export — public channel messages, private channels you’re a member of, DMs, threaded replies, timestamps, reactions, user @-mentions — comes across with structure preserved. Threads stay threaded under the right parent message; channel membership is recreated based on the export metadata. The one rough edge is attachments, which Slack exports as URLs that expire; recent files transfer cleanly, older files may need re-upload.
Can I keep using my GitHub / Linear / monitoring webhooks?+
Yes — most "Slack integrations" small teams rely on are really just incoming webhooks, and Stack Chat has first-class webhook support. Pointing your GitHub/Linear/Datadog/Sentry webhook URL at a Stack Chat channel is usually a 5-minute change. The richer interactive integrations (Salesforce, Zendesk approval flows) don’t have direct equivalents — if those are core to your workflow, audit before switching.
Should I switch if my team uses Slack Connect with customers or vendors?+
Probably not — Slack Connect (shared external channels) is one of Slack’s genuinely-best features and Stack Chat doesn’t have an equivalent yet. If your daily work involves shared channels with three customer companies plus your auditors, stay on Slack. The cost of running two tools (Slack for external, Stack Chat for internal) usually doesn’t pencil out, so just stay where you are. We’re honest about this — Slack Connect is a real moat for them.
How big a team can Stack Chat handle?+
It’s built and tested for 2–25 active users in one workspace. The realtime layer, search, and channel UX are all tuned for that range. We have customers up to about 40 people running smoothly, but past 50 we haven’t done the kind of load-testing Slack has done at 10,000-seat enterprises. If you’re a 200-person company, Slack or Microsoft Teams is the right tool — Stack Chat isn’t targeting that audience.
Does Stack Chat have a mobile app?+
Today: web (which works on mobile browsers) and macOS Electron desktop. Native iOS and Android apps are in development but not yet released. If push notifications on a phone are mission-critical for your team, that gap is real — most small teams find the mobile web experience acceptable for the occasional check-in, but it’s not as polished as Slack’s native apps. Be honest with yourself about how often your team actually chats from a phone.
What about message search across long history?+
Search is full-text across the entire history with no time-window cap on any plan. Recent messages rank above older ones, and you can filter by channel, sender, and date. For most small-team use cases — "what did we decide about the vendor last quarter" — it works the way Slack search does on Pro. We don’t yet have AI-summarized search the way Slack AI offers, so if "ask a natural-language question and get a summary across channels" is the killer feature for you, that gap exists today.
Verdict
Slack is a category-defining product, and we’re not going to pretend Stack Chat replaces it for everyone. If you’re a 200-person company, if Slack Connect runs your customer relationships, or if your team’s workflow depends on the deep marketplace integrations Slack spent a decade building, stay on Slack. That’s the honest call. But if you’re a 5-person team paying $525/year on Slack Pro for a tool you mostly use to send GitHub notifications, ask "anyone want lunch," and search for things from last quarter — that math is silly. Stack Chat does the daily 80% of Slack for $20/month flat (or $8/month standalone), no per-seat tax, no 90-day history wall, no surprise "active user" invoice line item. Hire someone tomorrow and the bill stays $20. The honest pitch is narrow and confident: stop paying enterprise prices for tiny-team chat. Run the Slack import, give it a week in parallel, and decide. For most 2–25-person teams, the savings and the simpler pricing win out — and the bundle adds seven other apps you’d otherwise be paying for separately.
Ready to switch?
Try Stack — all 8 apps for $20/mo flat.
Stack Chat is one of eight bundled apps. No per-seat fees. Cancel anytime.