Slack alternative
A Slack Alternative for Teams Tired of Paying for Chat Per Person
Slack charges every person in your workspace, every month, and publishes the number so you can do the arithmetic yourself. Zoho Cliq is one app inside a suite you may already be paying for. We manage it for three hundred dollars a month per organization, and you keep your own Cliq license.
With Cascadia you get
- Someone watching who has access
- Channels people can actually find
- API work where connectors stop
- Built around how teams work
- Your account, your history
- User counts watched before billing bites
The short version
Why teams pick Cascadia over Slack
We exist for the business where sending the message is the easy part, and the hard part is that the conversation also has to reach a ticket, sit against a customer record, and still be findable two years later.
What you get here
- 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 organization, 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
What ships in the standard plan here
A per person line that grows with headcount, a channel list that grows on its own, outside companies holding access nobody has reviewed, and a history nobody has decided how long to keep. Everything past the invoice is still yours to plan and run.
- 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 organization, 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 paying per person stops being the interesting problem
The channel structure designed rather than grown, external access rules written down, joiners and leavers handled the week they happen, retention settled before anybody needs it, and Cliq wired into Desk, CRM and Projects so a conversation lands on the record.
One figure per organization, whoever you hire next
The channel design, the permissions, the external access rules, the joiner and leaver process, the Desk and CRM wiring, and up to five bots or integrations.
Nothing here is metered on people
Three hundred a month covers the tenth hire and the hundredth. Slack prices every one of them. That is a defensible way to sell chat, and it is also a number that only ever moves in one direction.
The person who designed it is the person who answers the phone
You are not explaining your channel structure to somebody meeting it for the first time. Slack support is capable and their documentation is excellent.
One suite, so the message is already next to the ticket
Cliq sits beside Desk, CRM, Projects and People, so a conversation reaches the ticket and the customer record with nothing in between.
Who this comparison is for
Every person in the workspace is billed, whether they post or not
Slack bills on active members, and the count includes the people who read rather than write. A forty person company on Pro annual is two hundred and ninety dollars a month for chat.
The free tier keeps ninety days and then the history stops being searchable
Ninety days is enough to try Slack and not enough to run a company on it.
The promotional price is not the price
Slack has been showing four dollars thirty eight and nine dollars against a fifty percent discount on the first three months. Those are real numbers for a quarter.
How switching works
- 1
Nothing gets migrated until we have read how your team actually talks
We sit with the people who live in chat all day, and with the people who quietly avoid it, and we write down where decisions actually get made rather than where the org chart says they do.
- 2
We count the channels, the guests and the outside companies before anything moves
The channels somebody posts in weekly, the ones opened for a project that finished two years ago, and the shared connections with clients and contractors nobody has reviewed since.
- 3
The structure, the permissions and the external rules get built around you, not left on defaults
Defaults let anybody create anything and invite anyone, which is fine right up until it is not.
- 4
You run a full month on it, including a real project and a real leaver
The first month of live messaging runs with us alongside it.
What clients say about working with Cascadia
“I’ve always dreaded website management, but Cascadia has done an incredible job with my WordPress site, making it one less thing for me to worry about.”
“I’ve worked with Cascadia for several years now. They are always ready to help in any way I ask and can implement my ideas with ease. A company that values their clients!”
“Cascadia has been great to work with! We recently needed some updates, and Cascadia was quick to get them completed! We highly recommend Cascadia Web Services.”
“Cascadia is very responsive and we’re happy with them as our primary IT vendor.”
“They do great work, been using for years. Prompt responses to requests.”
Ready to move from Slack?
Talk to us about your setupAsk us
Slack alternative questions
Straight answers about switching, pricing, and what moves with you.
See Managed Zoho CliqHow does Slack compare to Microsoft Teams, Google Chat and Mattermost?
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.
Can I just buy Slack online?
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.
What does one Slack seat actually cover?
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.
Slack works out cheaper than three hundred a month. Why would I pay you?
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.
At what point does Slack stop being the cheaper 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 license 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.
Is Slack metered on people, messages or storage?
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.
Is Slack a better product than Zoho Cliq?
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.
Does Zoho Cliq connect to the rest of Zoho?
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.
What exactly do you do for three hundred a month?
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 organization.
Who holds the Zoho Cliq license, you or us?
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 license, the data and the account all stay in your name, so leaving means we hand back the keys rather than move a subscription.
Can you move us off Slack?
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.
Is there a minimum term?
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.
What if we are only five people?
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.
Want messaging that does not bill you for hiring?
Three hundred a month per organization covers the review, the channel design, the permissions, the migration, the integrations and the ongoing tuning, with nothing metered and nobody counted up to a hundred users. Your Zoho Cliq license stays yours.