Question 1

How does Slack compare to Microsoft Teams, Google Chat and Mattermost?

Accepted Answer

It is the only one of the four that sells chat as a standalone product with a published per person price. Microsoft sells Teams inside Microsoft 365 and now also sells the same plans without it. Google Chat has no price of its own and exists only inside Workspace. Mattermost publishes nothing and quotes every tier. If you want to know what messaging costs before you talk to anybody, Slack is the only one here that will tell you.

Question 2

Can I just buy Slack online?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it takes minutes. Pro and Business Plus both have a self serve path and you can be running the same afternoon. Enterprise Plus needs a conversation with their sales team. If what you want is a chat tool rather than a managed service, buying direct from Slack is the sensible move and we would tell you so.

Question 3

What does Slack actually cost?

Accepted Answer

Pro is eight dollars seventy five per person per month billed monthly, or seven twenty five billed annually. Business Plus is eighteen and fifteen on the same basis. Enterprise Plus is quoted. There is a free tier at nothing, with ninety days of searchable message history. Slack has also been running a fifty percent discount on the first three months, which displays as four thirty eight and nine dollars, and those are not the ongoing prices.

Question 4

What does one Slack seat actually cover?

Accepted Answer

One person in the workspace, billed whether they post daily or read once a month. Slack bills on active members rather than on every invited account, which is fairer than it could be, and the count still includes everybody who shows up. The free tier caps searchable history at ninety days for the whole workspace rather than per person, so the upgrade decision is never about one individual.

Question 5

What is not on the published price list?

Accepted Answer

The governance. How many channels you should have, who may create one, which outside companies may reach in through a shared channel, how long messages need to be kept, and what happens to a departing person's history are the questions that decide whether the tool works. None of them appear on a pricing page, and none of them are answered by paying for another seat.

Question 6

Slack works out cheaper than three hundred a month. Why would I pay you?

Accepted Answer

Below about forty people it does, and we are not going to argue with a rate card. You should not pay us for the software. You pay us because somebody has to design the channel structure, decide who may invite an outside company, provision people and remove them, wire chat into Desk and CRM, and still be doing all of it a year from now. If you already have that person, buy Slack.

Question 7

At what point does Slack stop being the cheaper answer?

Accepted Answer

Around forty two people on Pro billed annually, where the seat bill passes three hundred dollars a month. On Pro billed monthly it is about thirty five people. On Business Plus it is twenty billed annually and seventeen billed monthly. Those figures set Slack's whole bill against our management fee alone, and you would still be paying Zoho for a Cliq licence on top, so we are not claiming a clean crossover. If your headcount is small, Slack is cheaper and that is the end of it.

Question 8

Is Slack metered on people, messages or storage?

Accepted Answer

People. Messages and storage are not metered on the paid tiers, which is a genuinely good design. The consequence is that the only lever on your bill is headcount, so the price of chat tracks hiring rather than usage. A team of eighty that barely talks pays exactly what a team of eighty that lives in it pays.

Question 9

Is Slack a better product than Zoho Cliq?

Accepted Answer

As a chat client, yes, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Slack search, threading and the app directory are all better, and a decade of refinement shows in the details. Cliq wins on one thing, which is that it is already sitting next to Desk, CRM, Projects and People. If chat is the whole requirement, Slack is the better buy.

Question 10

Does Zoho Cliq connect to the rest of Zoho?

Accepted Answer

That is the reason to choose it. Cliq sits alongside Desk, CRM, Projects and People, so a conversation becomes a ticket, a note on the customer record and a line on a report with nothing wired in between. Slack integrates with a very long list of tools, which is useful, and an integration between two products is still not one record moving through one suite.

Question 11

What exactly do you do for three hundred a month?

Accepted Answer

We design the channel structure and the naming, set the private and public split, write the guest and external access rules, provision people and remove them when they leave, configure up to five bots or integrations, connect Cliq to Zoho Desk, CRM and Projects, run the migration off whatever you are on now, and produce the monthly access reporting. Support for your team is unlimited and included. The figure covers up to a hundred users in one organisation.

Question 12

Who holds the Zoho Cliq licence, you or us?

Accepted Answer

You do. You buy Cliq direct from Zoho and we manage it, which is how all of our Zoho work runs with one exception. Managed Zoho Assist is that exception, because there we carry the subscription ourselves. On Cliq the licence, the data and the account all stay in your name, so leaving means we hand back the keys rather than move a subscription.

Question 13

Can you move us off Slack?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and the migration is mostly an audit. The channels people actually use, the ones nobody has posted in for a year, the guests and shared connections still open, and the history you are obliged to keep all get listed before anything moves. Slack export options vary by plan, so tell us which tier you are on and we will work backwards from what it can produce.

Question 14

Is there a minimum term?

Accepted Answer

No. Three hundred a month, month to month, thirty days notice. Slack will sell you a monthly term too, at about a fifth more than the annual rate. The comparison is not only what you pay, it is how long you are committed to a decision that may turn out to be the wrong one.

Question 15

What if we are only five people?

Accepted Answer

Then use a free tier, on Slack or on Cliq, and keep your three hundred dollars. Five people who all sit in one room do not have a governance problem, and ninety days of history is usually longer than anybody looks back. Come back when the second team starts, or when the first person leaves and nobody is sure which shared channels they could still reach.

Question 16

What happens if we outgrow Zoho?

Accepted Answer

Some do. Once the work being discussed is manufacturing, field service or project delivery at scale, the honest answer is ERPNext rather than another Zoho app, and we run that too.

A Slack Alternative for Teams Tired of Paying for Chat Per Person

Every person in the workspace is billed, whether they post or not

The free tier keeps ninety days and then the history stops being searchable

The promotional price is not the price

Cascadia

Without Cascadia

Somebody designs the channel structure before it grows into four hundred channels nobody can name

Somebody writes down who may create a channel, who may invite an outside company, and what is allowed to leave through a shared one

A monthly pass over members, guests, external connections and bots, checked against who joined, who left and what got connected

A price that stays put when you hire ten people

The same named person on every call, who designed your channel structure and remembers why each rule is there

One messaging standard across the whole company, rather than chat in one place and the customer record in another

A single monthly figure per organisation, rather than a line that moves every time somebody starts

Message, ticket, deal and project sitting in one suite instead of stitched together with integrations

An honest no on the first call if Slack Pro really is the whole answer

A monthly read of who is in the workspace and who outside it can reach in, written for you rather than exported and assembled by whoever has the time

Where Slack fits

Where paying per person stops being the interesting problem

Where Slack is strong

What three hundred a month buys when the seat price was never the expensive part

What the first sixty days look like when the channel sprawl stops being your problem

Nothing gets migrated until we have read how your team actually talks

We count the channels, the guests and the outside companies before anything moves

The structure, the permissions and the external rules get built around you, not left on defaults

You run a full month on it, including a real project and a real leaver

Don't Take Our Word For It

A company that doubled headcount and doubled the chat bill

A company already holding Cliq inside a Zoho subscription and paying Slack as well

Dollars a month per organisation, printed here, with your Cliq licence staying yours

Dollars per person, per guest or per channel

Weeks, usually, before your team is on the new setup without us in it

Slack alternative and managed Zoho Cliq FAQs

Ask Us Anything