Chanty

Chanty launched in 2017 with a straightforward pitch: small teams want Slack's core experience without Slack's price or complexity. It's a chat app first, but it folds in task management and calls so a small business can run on one inexpensive tool instead of three.

What Makes Chanty Special

The free plan is genuinely useful. Up to 10 users get unlimited message history — something Slack stopped offering on its free tier years ago. For a tiny startup or a small agency, that alone can be the deciding factor.

The other differentiator is built-in task management. You can turn any message into a task, assign it, set a due date, and view everything in a Kanban board inside Chanty. It's not Asana, but for a small team it removes the need for a separate project tool. "Teambook" is Chanty's organized hub for tasks, conversations, files, and links, so things don't get lost. Voice and video calls and screen sharing are included on paid plans.

Day-to-Day Experience

It's clean, fast, and easy to learn — there's almost no onboarding required. The interface is simple by design, which small teams appreciate. Threads, mentions, reactions, and pinned messages all work as expected. The mobile apps are decent.

The Honest Trade-offs

Chanty is a value play, and it shows in places. The integration directory is small — you get the essentials (Google Drive, Trello, GitHub, Zapier) but nothing like Slack's catalog. Advanced admin and security controls are thinner. It's less proven at scale; you won't find many 1,000-person companies running on Chanty. And while task management is a nice extra, serious project management still needs a dedicated tool.

Who Should Choose Chanty

Small businesses, startups, and budget-conscious teams under about 50 people who want chat plus light task management without paying Slack or Teams prices. If your team is small, the free or low-cost paid plan delivers most of what you actually use a chat app for. Larger organizations should look at Slack or Teams instead.