RocketChat, Open Source Slack alternative

Slack is one of the most popular team collaboration and communication tools on the market. Slack offers a generous free tier. Why would someone want to look for a Slack alternative? Many companies and groups start on the free tier. As their usage grows, they run into a few things.

Loss of essential chat history: Reaching the 10,000 message history leaves lots of empty channels and direct messages.

You don’t own your data: The free tier has limited data export (only messages and links to files from public channels). Data from private channels and direct messages (DMs) are locked in Slack unless you upgrade to the Business+ tier.

Upgrading to the paid version of Slack can be expensive. Before you start using a tool like Slack, ask yourself the following questions:

Is having a complete history of communications important for your organization? If you want to refer back to a previous conversation, it may not be there.
Do you need to keep access to your data? The loss of chat history and limited export will limit what data you can export and access.
Do you have it in your budget to upgrade to a paid plan? At the writing of this article, the Business+ Plan (which allows you to export all your data) is $15/user/month. Multiply that cost by the number of Slack users in your organization.

Avoid those potential pitfalls by starting with a Slack alternative. It can save you a lot of time and money in the future because the switching costs are really high (especially if your data gets locked into Slack’s system).

RocketChat, a Slack alternative

RocketChat is a Slack alternative you should consider. Founded in 2015, RocketChat is a Slack alternative trusted by over 12M users worldwide and named one of the Top 5 Most Popular Live Chat Software by Capterra, a popular review platform.

Not only that RocketChat is a solid Slack alternative, but it is also open source software with over 1000+ contributors working to continuously improve the product. You can trust that RocketChat will be around for a long time and continuously get better.

We use RocketChat at OS Bundle, you should give it a try too. Click here to learn more about getting started with the Open Source Bundle and RocketChat.