A free Slack alternative for small teams and communities

If you want a Slack alternative because paying per person feels wrong for a small group, or because the free plan hides your older messages, Barside is worth a look. Barside is a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac. Its Spaces give a team or a community a shared room with chat, polls, shared notes, links and files. Spaces are free, with no price per member.

Barside is also a different kind of app. Slack is a workplace chat platform with thousands of integrations and apps for computers and phones. Barside is a notes app first, with chat, meetings and paid communities built in. This page compares the two honestly, so you can tell in a few minutes which one fits your group.

The short answer

Slack is excellent at what it was built for: busy companies with many channels, many tools and people on their phones. It has channels, threads, huddles, canvases, workflows and more than 2,600 apps in its marketplace.

People look for a Slack alternative for three common reasons: the price per user, the limits of the free plan, and wanting something simpler for a small group. Barside answers them in its own way:

• Spaces are free. You create private Spaces, invite people by email or share a link they use to ask to join, and talk. Nobody pays per seat.
• Chat sits next to your work. Share a note from your library into a Space, save a shared note back to your own workspace, and keep meetings, tasks and recordings in the same app.
• Communities can charge. A Space can have a one-time, monthly or yearly price, paid through the owner's own Stripe account.

If your team is large, lives on phones or depends on integrations, Slack is still the better tool. If you are a small team, a club, a class or a creator on Windows or Linux (or on a Mac), read on.

Why people look for a Slack alternative

These are the reasons that come up most, stated fairly. Prices are from Slack's pricing page, as of September 2026.

• Paying per person. Slack Pro costs US$8.75 per user a month when you pay monthly, or US$7.25 when you pay yearly. Business+ costs US$18, or US$15 yearly. A 10-person team on Pro pays US$87.50 a month, or US$870 a year on yearly billing.
• The free plan's limits. Slack's free plan shows the most recent 90 days of messages and files, and Slack deletes workspace data older than one year. It allows up to 10 apps, and huddles are one-on-one only.
• Too much for a small group. A family, a study group or a five-person studio rarely needs workflows, user groups and admin settings. They need a room, a place for files and a way to meet.
• Chat far from the work. Slack holds conversations and links to your documents. Some people want the conversation next to the notes, tasks and recordings it is about, on their own computer.
• Communities. Slack is built for workplaces, where the company pays for everyone. Creators who want members to pay to join need another tool.

Barside Spaces at a glance

Open Spaces in the sidebar or on the desktop bar and sign in with Google or an email code. The sign-in is only for the online parts: your personal notes stay on your computer and work without an account. Choose Create Space, type a name and a description of what the Space is for, and pick a color. Every Space you create is private: people join by invitation, or ask to join with its share link and wait for your approval. The description shows under the Space's name and on invitations, so people know what they are joining.

Each Space has five tabs:

• Chat. Messages with replies, edits, reactions and @mentions. Press Enter to send and Shift+Enter for a new line. Paste a screenshot, attach up to 12 files to a message, add emoji or, when the owner turns them on, GIFs.
• Notes. Shared notes keep their formatting, images, video and audio. Anyone can choose Save to my workspace to keep an independent copy.
• Resources. Shared links, added with Add link or from your bookmarks.
• Files. Documents for members to download. Barside never opens a downloaded file by itself.
• Members. The people in the Space, with their role and status, and the invitation tools. Members see everyone unless the owner hides the list; then they see only the owner, the moderators and themselves. Invite by email address, even before someone has Barside, or by handle or user ID. Invitations expire after 7 days.

Around the chat you get what a small group needs. Polls take a question, 2 to 10 options, one or several choices and an optional closing time. Alerts can be All new activity, Mentions only or Off, with quiet hours, email alerts and a mute for each Space. Your status can be Online, Away, Do not disturb or Invisible. The desktop bar shows how many unread messages wait, and a star keeps your favorite Spaces at the top of the list.

Owners and moderators can pin a message with the Pin button under it. A slim Pinned bar above the chat opens the list, and choosing a pin jumps to it in the chat, even when it is far back. A Space holds up to 50 pins, and the owner can let everyone pin.

For owners, Manage Space holds invitations, moderation and settings. Share link makes an address that shows the Space's card on barside.space, never its members or posts; people choose Ask to join, and owners and moderators answer in Join requests. When members may invite others, Invitations from members need approval, on by default, holds their invitations until an owner or moderator approves them. The settings also cover Who can upload files? and Who can share resources?, Slow mode, Who can pin messages?, and Who can post? for a read-only announcements Space. Owners and moderators also see member numbers: who joined and who posted in the last 7 and 30 days, messages per day and the top contributors. If you would rather not show how many people are in a Space, turn off Show the member count in Space settings, and only owners and moderators see the number. A second switch, Show the members list, keeps the list itself private: members then see only the owner, the moderators and themselves, while owners and moderators still see everyone, and people still show with their own messages. The full walkthrough is in the guide to team chat and paid communities with Spaces.

Slack vs Barside: feature comparison

Everything in the Slack column comes from Slack's own pricing and help pages, as of September 2026. The two apps are also shaped differently: a Slack workspace holds many channels, while each Barside Space is one room, so a team with five busy channels will usually want a few Spaces.

Pricing compared

Prices are as each company's own page shows them, as of September 2026.

The difference grows with the team. Ten people on Slack Pro pay US$870 a year on yearly billing; the same ten people pay nothing to chat in Barside. Barside Plus is a personal subscription for backup, sync and agents, and nobody needs it to use Spaces.

If you charge members for a Space, Barside keeps 8% of each payment, or 5% while you have Barside Plus, and Stripe charges its own processing fee. There is no monthly fee for the Space itself.

Where Slack is better

Slack does a lot that Barside Spaces does not try to do. If any of these matter to you, stay with Slack.

• Phones. Slack has apps for iOS and Android as well as Mac, Windows and Linux. Barside is a desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac.
• Integrations. Slack connects to more than 2,600 apps, and workflows automate routine steps. Barside Spaces has no app directory, bots or workflows. The AI apps you connect to Barside cannot read Spaces either; only the owner's Space helper and AI moderation work with a Space's messages.
• Scale. Channels, user groups, admin roles and enterprise plans are made for hundreds or thousands of people. Barside Spaces is made for small groups, and its meetings hold 6 people, while a Slack huddle on a paid plan holds up to 50 (25 with video).
• Threads. Slack keeps side conversations in threads. A Barside reply quotes the earlier message in the main chat.
• Speed of delivery. An open Space checks for new messages every four seconds, so a message can take a moment to appear. Mentions and invitations are checked every 30 seconds in the background.
• Other companies. Slack Connect shares channels with partner organizations. Barside has no shared channels between organizations; you invite people into a Space instead.
• Exports. Slack owners and admins can export channel history themselves. A full Barside Space export is handled by support on request.

One more honest point: Spaces travel over HTTPS and the server checks membership for every read, but Spaces are not end-to-end encrypted, and hosting administrators can access the data. The privacy guide lists what Spaces stores.

What you gain with Barside

• Chat and notes together. The share button on a note, Share note to a Space, copies it with its formatting, images, video and audio, after a preview of exactly what goes out. Your password vault, AI keys, reminders and the rest of your library never go with it. Members bring shared notes home with Save to my workspace.
• Answers from your own AI. The Space helper answers member questions from the Space's shared notes, resources and text files, using the AI the owner connected in Settings → AI: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter. Replies carry an Auto-reply label, and with Ask me first each draft waits for the owner's approval. See the AI helper that answers community members.
• Calm by design. Slow mode makes members wait between messages (5 seconds to 1 hour), and a flood guard is always on: a member who sends more than 5 messages in 10 seconds waits a minute. Barside counts down and keeps the draft.
• Moderation help from your own AI. In Manage Space → AI moderation, the owner lets the AI connected in Settings → AI check new messages from members for spam and scams, harassment and hate, sexual content, threats and violence, someone's private information, and the Space's own rules. It reports problems to the moderators, or also removes clear cases if the owner chooses. It runs on the owner's computer while Barside runs, checks messages in small batches to keep AI costs low, and every member sees a note that it is on.
• Paid communities. Manage Space → Pricing & payments turns a Space into a paid membership, with payments to your own Stripe account. People who ask to join through a share link pay only after you approve them, when they accept the invitation. Files in a paid Space are for members only, and access ends when a membership ends. See file sharing for teams and communities.
• Meetings next door. The Meetings tab runs free video meetings for small groups, with invitations by email and calendar, captions and recording into your notes. Team Mode keeps meetings, Spaces, your calendar, tasks, notes, agents and Library in the sidebar, and opens on Meetings.
• A library that stays yours. Everything you do not share stays on your computer, unless you turn on Barside Plus cloud backup or sync. See local-first storage with private backups.

How to move from Slack to Barside

Barside has no Slack importer, and its note importer does not read Slack's JSON export. Plan a clean start and keep Slack's export as your archive.

1. Export what you want to keep. In Slack, owners and admins on the Free and Pro plans can export messages and file links from public channels, as JSON in a ZIP file. On the free plan, file links cover the last 90 days. Private channels and direct messages need an approved request on Business+, or an Enterprise plan.
2. Install Barside from the download page on each person's computer: Windows, Linux or Mac. Open Spaces and sign in with Google or an email code.
3. Create one Space per channel you actually use. Most small teams need two or three: a main room, a project room and perhaps an announcements Space with Who can post? set to Only owners and moderators.
4. Invite people from the Members tab by email address. They sign in with that address and accept in Spaces. Invitations expire after 7 days, so send them when people are ready. Or post the Space's Share link in your old Slack channel: people choose Ask to join, and you approve them in Join requests.
5. Bring the documents. Copy the canvases and pinned docs you still use into Barside notes, then share them to the Space. Put key links in Resources and files in Files, up to 20 MB each (a video up to 100 MB). Post the house rules in the chat and pin them, so newcomers see them first.
6. Set the rules. In Manage Space, choose who can upload files and share links, make a trusted person a moderator, and turn on Slow mode if a room gets busy. If you connected an AI in Settings → AI, AI moderation can check new messages for spam and abuse while your Barside runs.
7. Move the calls. Schedule your weekly meeting in the Meetings tab and send the invitation by email, or add it to Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar.
8. Run both for a week or two, then stop posting in Slack once everyone has settled in.

Who should switch, and who should stay

Barside is a good fit if you:

• are a small team, a family, a class, a club or a creator's inner circle;
• work at Windows or Linux computers during the day;
• want chat, shared notes and small meetings for free, with no price per person;
• want to charge members for access, or answer their questions with your own AI.

Stay with Slack if you:

• rely on integrations, bots and workflows;
• need chat on a phone, or on a Mac;
• run a large organization, many channels or channels shared with other companies;
• need calls for more than 6 people, threads, or exports you run yourself.

Some teams use both: Slack for the company, and Barside for notes, meetings and a private room for a small group.

Other Slack alternatives worth a look

If Spaces is not the right fit, these are the tools we would check first.

• Discord. Text, voice and video chat in servers you set up, made for friends, games and communities rather than for work. The basic service is free, and Nitro, a paid subscription, adds extras.
• Microsoft Teams. Chat, meetings and file sharing from Microsoft. The free version holds meetings of up to 60 minutes with up to 100 people.
• Zulip. Open-source team chat where every conversation has a topic, so busy rooms stay readable. Host it yourself or use its cloud, with free or discounted plans for non-business use.
• Mattermost. Self-hosted collaboration for organizations that must keep everything on their own servers, such as governments and large companies.

To compare platforms built for groups that pay to join, see the best community platforms. For video calls, read the Zoom alternative. For creators moving a paid community, read the Skool alternative.

Works well with Spaces