Choosing business chat: Slack, Teams or a European alternative

For many teams, chat has become the most important work tool, more important than email. Questions, agreements, decisions and files pass through it all day. That is exactly why it pays to choose deliberately, rather than taking whatever happened to come with a subscription.

What a team really needs

Almost any chat service can send messages. The difference lies in the basics you use every day:

• Channels per team, project or client, so conversations do not get mixed up.
• Threads, so a discussion stays under one message and the channel stays readable.
• Search that is fast and also finds old conversations. Chat becomes an archive of decisions; without good search, you lose it.
• Calls started from a conversation, without creating a separate meeting link first.
• Files you can share without loose copies appearing everywhere.

If these five work well, most companies have what they need. Extra features are nice, but compare on these first.

The hidden cost of per-person pricing

Slack charges per active user. Teams is part of Microsoft 365 and in the EEA is also sold separately. Paying per person feels fair when you are small, but it adds up as you grow. Every new colleague, intern or temporary worker means another licence. You can see the result in many companies: people who only read along now and then do not get an account, and information reaches them through forwarded screenshots or email.

Free plans have a different catch. Slack’s free plan shows only recent history. You notice this when you try to find an agreement from months ago. What started as a free trial becomes a reason to pay, or you lose knowledge.

So do not calculate with today’s team, but with the team two years from now, including the people who only look in occasionally.

Where your conversations live

Chat holds far more than you might think: client names, price agreements, HR matters, passwords someone shared in a hurry. So ask where that data is stored and who can access it. Slack is owned by Salesforce, Teams by Microsoft, both US companies. A server location in Europe does not tell the whole story, as we explain in a European server is not enough. Look at backups, administration and support as well.

Integrations and bots

This is where Slack is strong, and that deserves saying. Its app directory is large, and many services offer a Slack integration first. Teams makes sense if you are deep in Microsoft 365: it works closely with Outlook, SharePoint and OneDrive. Before you choose, list the integrations you actually use. There are often fewer than you expect: an alert from your monitoring, a form, a script of your own.

Chatting with other companies

If you work closely with clients or partners, you sometimes want a shared channel. Slack Connect does this well, provided the other side uses Slack too. For any alternative, check how it handles outside people: guest accounts, shared channels, or one app in which you belong to several companies.

A checklist for choosing

1. Write down how many people need access now and in two years, including occasional users.
2. Calculate the cost for that growth, not just for today.
3. Check how long history is kept and stays searchable.
4. Ask where the data is stored and which law the supplier falls under.
5. List the integrations and bots you really use, and test them.
6. See how calls and files work: built in or through another service.
7. Decide how you want to chat with clients and partners.

Where Conserio fits

We make Conserio, the chat in Binadit Workspace. It has channels, direct messages, threads and instant search. You call through Meet and share files from Drive, without a second copy. You sign in with your Binadit mail account and can have several companies in one app. Conserio has one price per company instead of per person, and is free with six months of history. A Slack-compatible API means existing bots keep working with a new address and token. Everything runs on servers in the Netherlands, from a Dutch company.

Want to compare further? Read about our Slack alternative or Teams alternative.