Top 10 Google chat alternatives for team communication

Google chat is a notable Google workspace integration that makes online team communication highly flexible and efficient.

Google chat provides the simplest way to stay connected with teams across the mobile, desktop, web. You can connect with anyone who has a Gmail, create group conversations, rooms, and more.

Since team communication has become so important in recent periods, Google realized how to establish such an application to help Google workspace users.

Although there were Google hangouts which are considered as the former version of Google chat. But Google chat wasn’t as effective as it was unable to make video calls and team conferences.

Google hangouts were best for instant messaging. But it is being replaced by Google chat and Google meet.

Chat built on instant messaging concept and meet is a complete video communication tool. Both of them are now widely popular because of their compatible functionalities.

From user experience to security, there are no mentionable cons I found in Google chat. But if you think that Google meet isn’t compatible with you, you have to consider other similar applications to meet your purpose.

As there are so many applications available, it is quite difficult to understand which one will be best for you without using it.

Therefore, we have made a quick discussion with the top 10 Google chat alternatives for team communication. So, get a look at what we have included in it,

Contents

What should you consider before choosing an application?

Whatever purpose you have got that brings you here, it is simple that you want to choose the best thing always.

Google chat is mostly used by organizations, teams, businesses, and educational purposes. As they need to bring together all the employees or students to do specific jobs. These types of applications offer all the needed features and functionalities to make online group communication seamless.

Although there are so many options that come when we are going to choose the top 10 google chat alternatives. so, we have focused on some aspects and filtered out the best ones for you.

Let’s see what we have considered to make the list.

Features

Feature comes first when you consider applications to make the decision whether to use it or not. Therefore, we look for the features of google chat similar applications to find out the best alternatives. Google consequently upgraded the integration and added new features into it while it’s being rebranded.

If you are interested, google chat includes features like,

Supports both 1:1 and group conversation
Video calling through google meet bot
Enables file sharing
Good collaborative platform
Assign tasks
Create rooms with desired persons
Compatible in all devices
Can use Gifs and moving animations
Control active status
And so on

Ease of use

Google chat comes with a light and flexible interface that is so easy to use. You can continue with persons and group conversations at a time and can integrate bots to add more fun.

Device compatibility

You can use google chat on desktop and mobile. The application synchronizes automatically and keeps you up to date with the chat teams. Google chat has built a standalone app for desktop users and also a browser extension to get quick access from your browser.

No matter, you are an android or iOS user, you can install this in both. Besides, users can access google chat from Gmail.

Price

There is no individual price for google chat. As it is one of the google workspace integrations, you can get all the premium features unlocked if you have a workspace account.

Google workspace business starter package costs $6 per month and the business standard and business plus package costs gradually $12 and $18 per month.

If you are an organization, educational institution, or small business team, you should purchase a google workspace account to get industry beneficial options.

Integration

As a workspace application, google chat enables other workspace applications integrations including docs, sheets, drive, meet, etc. You can collaborate with your team in docs files and contribute real time editing, modification in google drive files.

Moreover, you can integrate chatbots which are so useful and provide versatile functionalities such as managing tasks, creating polls within-group conversation, connecting with consumers globally, and so on.

These are the important aspects of google chat. We have added this so you can compare google chat with its alternatives that we are going to show next. You can learn more about google chat from here.

Here are the 10 best google chat alternatives you can use instead of it.

Slack
Microsoft team
Telegram
Flock
Skype
Zoom
Jitsi
Signal
Twist
Workplace by Facebook

And we are sharing a closer look at all these applications so you can easily make your decision.

Slack

Slack is one of the main competitors of the google chat application. Once there was no video calling feature in hangouts chats, workspace users used slack to make video conferencing with team members.

Slack is a popular business messaging application and the best one also. It offers a powerful and intuitive environment to collaborate with teams and business groups.

Slack is a freemium service. Though its free version is not so good to integrate for organizational works as messaging is limited (up to 10,000 messages) and you can integrate only 10 tools with slack’s free version.

On the other hand, its paid version is built for making your job easier. You can do it,

Unlimited message
Unlimited integrations with other tools
Create channels that are similar to google chats room
Connect teams of other companies with Slack Connect
Instant messaging
Voice and video calls
Use Gifs and animated emojis in conversations
Workflow builder to automate your daily tasks
Quality search function to find what you need instantly
Share files from drive, dropbox, one drive, and SharePoint
Secured and protected platform

With a simple and customizable interface, slack made it easy for new users to get all functions easily.

Slack offers three paid packages which are pro, business+, and enterprise. You can purchase the pro version for $8 per month and the business+ asks $15 per month. The enterprise option enables customizable pricing as your requirements.

Microsoft team

Microsoft team is a Microsoft 365 integration that is good and recommended for online team management and group communication.

With Microsoft teams, you are fully organized with business teams to share, collaborate and contribute in team works. This feature-rich platform offers all you need in one place. Such as,

Calling, conferencing, online meetings
Screen sharing
Instant messaging
File sharing
Chat in a video call
Integrate with other 365 applications
Whiteboarding
Hand raising feature
Preview camera look before joining in a video call
Customizable
You can integrate it with non-Microsoft integrations
Audio and video recordings
Change background of video call
Real-time collaboration

Microsoft Teams is available for desktop and mobile devices. You can use it through android and iOS devices or install it on your laptop or desktop.

Microsoft teams have both free and paid plans. It includes two individual plans which are business basic and business standard. The basic plan costs $5 per month and the standard costs $12.50 per month.

Needless to say, the platform is secured enough to protect your business information. It includes two factor authentication, gives control to users to decide who can bypass the lobby and who can present, set attendee privileges, remove disruptive attendees, and block anonymous guests. It also has to safeguard against malicious software hidden in files.

Telegram is an open source cloud based instant messaging application that is now so popular and used by approximately 500 million active users.

Telegram provides a handful of features with a flexible and interacting user interface. You have to access telegram with your mobile phone number that verifies with a code sent on your device. So, anyone can’t access your account if they don’t have the exact phone number of you.

You can make this simple yet effective messaging application a workspace with your teams, consumers, and clients. You can create channels that actually offer one way messaging service where admins can post that user can only see.

Besides, you can do a lot of things with telegram including,

Create 1:1 message and groups with up to 2,00,000 members
You can edit sent messages within 48 hours and after that, they have been sent and can be deleted at any time on both sides
Video and voice calling
Video calls are end to end encrypted
Import chat history from other instant messaging applications like Whatsapp, Line
Video stream which can watch 1000 people at a time
Screen sharing
Telegram bot is fun and designed to bring versatility to your conversation
With its instant view feature, users can get a view of web articles with zero page load time
You can use stickers and animated emojis in your conversation
It has telegraph which is a publishing tool to format posts with headings, bold, italic, quote, hyperlinks photos, and embedded media

However, telegram is almost free. You can install it from android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Flock

Another good team messaging application which you can consider as a perfect alternative to google chat. It comes with an interface that looks a little bit like a hybrid of Microsoft teams and Slack.

Although the interface looks like other similar applications, it is still named as a powerful online team communication and collaboration application.

It includes channel features to make group discussion and project work simple. With flock, you can do the following things easily.

Video conferencing
channel messaging
voice notes
file sharing
built-in to-do app to enlist daily tasks and manage them
set reminders for your to-dos
create polls to collect opinions

You can use flock free and also purchase any of its paid plans. Flock has two individual paid plans which are called pro and enterprise. The pro plan costs $4.50 per month and includes 10 GB per team member, multiple team admins, unlimited private and public channels, unlimited searchable messages, screen share like offerings.

And its enterprise plan provides customizable price promotions and includes more than its pro plan. You can get custom onboarding, 20 GB per team member, and integration with internal LMS, HRMS, and other systems in the enterprise plan.

However, flock is also good in security. The platform is SOC 2 compliant, and its data encryption uses TLS 1.2, which is good.

Skype

Skype is one of the pioneer applications of modern communication. If you are a 90s, you may use skype as it has gained huge popularity since being released in 2003.

Though we now have so many advanced communication tools like zoom, google meet, slack, etc, it still has a large number of users around the world.

As of March 2020, Skype was used by 100 million people on a monthly basis and by 40 million people on a daily basis.

It is because the platform has been updated over time and enriched with user-required features and functionalities. If you are looking for a productive online communication application for your organization, then you need to consider Skype.

It comes with a clean and simple interface through which you can take quick action like sending messages, make video and audio calls, creating new conversations, add bots, etc. its user experience is also worth mentioning. With Skype, you can also do such things like

instant messaging
VoIP
video conferencing with up to 50 people at a time (free version)
file sharing
screen sharing
users can call phone numbers, including landline and mobile phones
skype voicemail
share locations for mobile users
large collection of emoticons
text formatting is available
bots for skype

Skype has three individual plans for users of different regions. For users of the United States, it offers $3.29 per month, $8.79 for Indian users, and $7.69 for users based in North America.

From features to pricing, skype seems like a good google chat alternative for sure.

Zoom

According to the current marketplace, zoom is at the top of most using online communication applications. Especially in the pandemic situation, it has mostly been used by students and educational institutions for distance learning purposes.

The application is available for desktop, android, and iOS users. Online conferencing and online meeting with zoom are so flexible. It allows 1000 participants in online meetings which makes it a perfect integration for social media live and webinars.

Zoom includes all the features you may need in such an application. for instance,

HD quality video conferencing
Audio calling and conference
Group messaging
Cross platform messaging
Record meetings and conferences in MP4 and MP4A format
File sharing
Collaborative platform
Screen sharing
Password protection
Waiting and personal meeting room
Host controls
Dynamic voice detection
Scheduling
Search chat
Background changing
Etc

Zoom has pro, business, and enterprise plans and the price starts from $ 14.99 for the pro plan and the business plan costs $19.99. The enterprise plan keeps room for negotiations with the vendor.

Jitsi

Jitsi is another simple but effective video conferencing software that is gaining popularity. You can say it as a set of open-source projects such as Jitsi video bridge, Jitsi meet which makes it available to use for video communication purposes.

The service is almost free and there are no paid plans. You can enjoy all the features for free and you can develop them also. Being a free video conferencing application, jisti includes a range of useful features such as.

Auto-view the active speaker or click on any attendee to see their video
Android and iOS apps
Text chatting (web only)
Lock a room with a password
Screen sharing (if jidesha is setup, only required in Chrome)
Streaming a conference to YouTube live (if Jibri is configured)
Shared text document based on Etherpad
Raise/Lower your hand for attention
Participant talk-time statistics
Push-to-talk mode
Play a YouTube video to all attendee’s call
Audio-only option
Telephone dial-in to a conference (if Jigasi is setup)
Dial-out to a telephone participant (if Jigasi is setup)
Integration in other apps/websites

For users’ security, Jitsi has encrypted password storage, password protection, encrypted instant messaging, call encryption also.

Signal

Signal is a secured private messaging application that is more intended for users’ security and keeps all the user’s data safe from prying eyes. It is an open source based cross platform messaging application that comes with robust features to make video communication easier.

Signal is free and doesn’t include any paid plans. However, it has still mentionable features to make your online communication fruitful. You can use it as an alternative to google chat,

Signal includes features like,

Voice and video calling
Instant messaging
Media sharing
Manually mark messages as read or unread
It provides a personal PIN that you can use to recover your signal profile if you have lost device
You can set timer to keep messages available for a limited time for the receiver
Note to self
Archiving or unarchiving chats
In app payments
Screen Security to prevent Signal previews from appearing in the app switcher on your phone
Backup messages
@mention in group chats

Signal is end to end encrypted which means messages that are shared between you and the recipients can’t even be read by the developers. And also there is no risk to sell information by the organization as it is a non profit organization.

So, you can freely choose signal as a google chat alternative and use it for group video and messaging applications.

Twist

Twist is a cost effective option that can be helpful for small and midsized businesses to bring employees under a particular place. Twist distraction-free space where teams can balance focused work with collaborative conversations.

It comes with an easy to use interface that includes only four main options to keep you checked with what is going on in your application. The options are threads, messages, teams, and search.

It has a channel feature through which you can create channels, give it the desired name and add the desired person to your channel. You can create as many channels as you want.

However, the application is available for macOS, Windows, the web, iOS, and Android. Having the common video communication application features, twist has other features like,

No active status
Full control over the notification
Collaboration available
Supports integrations
More organized than your traditional email

Twist has only two plans, one is free and the other is Unlimited plan. The unlimited plan costs $5 per month and in return for this, it allows unlimited integrations, unlimited file storage, unlimited guests, and priority support.

Workplace by Facebook

Just another online communication tool that is brought to you by Facebook. But it is almost different from other applications included in our list above.

Workplace is more likely a social media platform where you can connect with new people, share posts, and make work done even from a distance. It has over 7 million subscribers today because of its good offering and the features it includes.

With the workplace, you can easily connect with the right people for your business. You can create groups, schedule posts, use video and images to engage people, go live from your phone or laptop, auto translate your posts, reactions, and so on.

You can also use insights to see how your communications are performing with key metrics like post sentiment and reach.

Workplace includes a core plan which costs only $4 per user per month. The core plan offers classic features like,

Workplace groups
Live video
Knowledge library
Integrations with office 365 and google workspace

You can further upgrade your account by purchasing two individual add ons for $2+$2. For larger organizations, it has a workplace for enterprises for which you have to contact their sales team to create a customized plan for your organization.

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Finally, as the days go by, online communication is becoming more and more important. Today, we don’t need to work 9-6 office and desk jobs. Even the traditional education process is going to be removed by distance learning.

Thanks to these applications that make our job easier. You can choose any of the applications stated above as an alternative to google chat. All are provided necessary functions and you can integrate them in your video communication, collaboration, group conferencing, or any personal purpose. Now the choice is yours.