Lark is the enterprise collaboration suite from ByteDance, unifying instant messaging, documents, calendar, meetings, and email in one platform. The free plan supports teams of up to 20, video meetings reach 500 attendees, and Pro starts at $12/user/month.
DingTalk is an enterprise communication and collaboration platform launched by Alibaba in 2014, serving over 25 million enterprise organizations and 700 million users with instant messaging, video conferencing, attendance, approvals, and low-code development.
Founded in 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton and acquired by Meta for $19 billion in 2014, WhatsApp has more than 3 billion monthly active users with default end-to-end encryption and WhatsApp Business and API services.
Microsoft Teams is Microsoft's enterprise collaboration platform launched in 2017, with 320 million+ monthly active users. It supports up to 1,000 participants per meeting and deeply integrates Microsoft 365 and Copilot AI as a core tool for modern work.
Slack is a leading team collaboration platform founded in San Francisco in 2013 and acquired by Salesforce for USD 27.7 billion in 2021, with 30 million+ daily active users, known for channel-based communication, 7500+ app integrations, and powerful search.
Freshchat is Freshworks' omnichannel customer messaging platform aggregating web, mobile, social, and WhatsApp channels, with a Freddy AI bot that deflects up to 86% of requests, serving 74,000+ businesses.
Zulip is an open-source team chat platform created in 2012 and released under Apache 2.0 in 2015, maintained by Kandra Labs and headquartered in San Francisco, United States. Its unique Stream+Topic threaded model makes async communication efficient and orderly, with unlimited users and self-hosting on the free plan.
Wire is an end-to-end encrypted communication platform founded in Zurich, Switzerland in 2014, offering encrypted messaging, voice and video, with open-source core code and self-hosting support, adopted by German federal agencies.
Viber is an encrypted instant messaging and calling app with over 1 billion registered users, offering end-to-end encryption by default, free HD voice and video calls, and low-cost Viber Out international calling.
Symphony is a secure communication platform for the financial industry founded in 2014 in New York, United States, offering end-to-end encrypted messaging, compliance archiving, and trading workflow integration to hundreds of thousands of financial professionals.
StarLeaf is a UK cloud video conferencing and unified communications platform founded in 2008, supporting up to 300 participants per meeting with a 99.999% uptime guarantee. The platform ceased operations in 2022; this page documents its capabilities and selection lessons.
Skype is a VoIP pioneer founded in Luxembourg in 2003 and acquired by Microsoft for USD 8.5 billion in 2011, offering free audio/video calls and low-cost international calling, now being replaced by Microsoft Teams.
Rocket.Chat is an open-source team communication platform initiated in 2015, offering free self-hosting, end-to-end encryption, and Matrix federation, officially serving 12M+ users and 100,000+ organizations - a Slack alternative for organizations that prioritize data sovereignty and compliance.
Matrix is an open, decentralized communication protocol initiated in 2014 by a UK team, with native end-to-end encryption and federated self-hosting. The specification now at v1.19 is widely adopted by governments, enterprises and open-source communities as a data-sovereign messaging infrastructure.
LINE is a national-level instant messaging app launched by NHN Japan in 2011, with over 190 million monthly active users across Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand. It has grown from a chat tool into a super app spanning payments, news, e-commerce, and music, and LINE Official Account is the standard channel for businesses to reach Japanese users.
KakaoTalk is South Korea's national instant messaging app launched in 2010, covering over 97% of Korean smartphone users and evolving into a super app that combines chat, KakaoPay payments, KakaoBank banking, and mobility services.
Google Chat is the team messaging tool built into Google Workspace, supporting 1-on-1 and group chats with threaded discussions, deeply integrated with Gmail, Drive, and Meet, and supporting bot automation.
Chanty is a lightweight team chat platform founded in 2017 in Ukraine; the free plan supports 10 members with unlimited message history, and the paid plan starts at about $3/user/month with AI summaries and Kanban tasks, a high-value Slack alternative.
Brosix is a peer-to-peer encrypted instant messaging platform founded in Bulgaria in 2006, using AES-256 encryption and a private-network architecture to deliver chat, voice/video, screen sharing and remote control for teams.
Telegram, founded by Pavel Durov in 2013, is a cloud instant messaging app with more than 900 million monthly active users, known for cloud sync, 200,000-member supergroups, 2 GB file transfers and an open Bot ecosystem.
Mattermost is an open-source team collaboration platform founded in 2014 in Palo Alto, California, supporting private deployment with unlimited users. Adopted by NATO and the US Department of Defense, its free edition includes 10GB file storage for data-security and compliance scenarios.
Flock is an enterprise team messaging and collaboration platform launched in 2014 that combines group chat, HD video conferencing, task management and 150+ app integrations. The free plan supports 20 people; Standard is $4.50/user/month.