What can replace Slack, Monday, or Basecamp?

Slack: the standard that won't let you sleep

Slack is synonymous with corporate messaging. If you need to quickly discuss something, share a meme, or gather everyone in one channel, it's the go-to. Perfect for technical teams that critically need 2000+ integrations (GitHub, Jira, etc.) and instant reactions.

Pros:

• Connects to virtually everything that exists in IT.
• Almost everyone who has worked in employment knows the interface.
• Channels help at least somewhat divide discussions by topics, without piling everything together.

Cons:

• The free version with a 90-day archive is useless for work. The paid plan starts at $7.25 per user. For a team of 20, that's $145 per month - quite a lot for just chat.
• Slack encourages a "respond immediately" culture, creating a constant stream of intrusive notifications, @mentions, and typing indicators that keep the team in a state of constant pressure.
• Data leaks have been documented, which is a serious risk for large companies.

Monday.com: visualization for a big budget

Monday is a powerful combine. Colorful statuses, Gantt charts, automation. It sells itself through beautiful visuals. Suitable for marketing agencies and large companies that value beautiful reports and 27 types of task views.

Pros:

• Dashboards allow you to quickly understand project status without reading reports. Kanban, Gantt, and graphs provide a complete picture of progress.
• The built-in AI assistant can generate tasks from notes, write emails, and create summaries from long updates.
• You can set up scenarios ("if status X, send email Y"), which saves time on routine tasks.

Cons:

• The interface often seems excessive.
• Basic plan from $36 (minimum for 3 seats). Normal features start on the Pro plan ($13 per person). SSO (single sign-on) is only available on the Enterprise plan with custom pricing.
• They often charge for inactive users, and canceling the subscription is intentionally complicated.
• The platform lags on mobile devices, and automations sometimes break.

Basecamp: classic for conservatives

Basecamp preaches calm. There are no extra features, everything is strict: boards, tasks, files. Suitable for small teams and agencies with simple, long projects.

Pros:

• $15 per user or $299 per month for unlimited. As the team grows, this becomes more cost-effective than competitors.
• Set up in minutes. Ideal if you don't want to train employees on complex software.
• The system regularly asks the team: "What did you work on today?" or "What are your plans?". This allows you to keep your finger on the pulse without tedious meetings and calls.

Cons:

• No subtasks, dependencies, or Gantt charts. Complex development may face difficulties.
• Files from chat don't get into general storage and often get lost in correspondence.
• Weak integration capabilities and lack of flexible notifications.

Remote.Team: calm and secure work

Remote.Team is a product of the Maltese company tile.expert, created for managing distributed teams. Ideal for companies of any size and type of activity that value privacy and deep work concentration.

Pros:

• The system is designed for full asynchronicity, so you respond when it's convenient for you (within working hours, of course). But if a question is urgent, there's "Lightning" - an analog of @, but with priority push notification.
• Slack and Monday.com have standard server-side encryption with provider-controlled keys. Remote.Team has end-to-end encryption (E2EE), where message content is inaccessible even to us as the service operator. For working with confidential information, this is a fundamental difference.
• Inside there's tagged project management, private topics, auto-escalation of overdue tasks to the manager, and anonymous surveys. 24/7 technical support is built right into the chat, with responses from a live person within a couple of hours.
• The service is free for teams up to 10 people. For others - €5 per user per month. This is cheaper than Slack ($7.25) and much cheaper than Monday ($13+).

Cons:

• No integrations with Jira, Trello, or Google Drive. If your business processes rely on integrations with third-party services, we're most likely not a fit for you.
• No built-in audio and video calls. We focus on written communication, where everything is recorded and nothing gets lost. For meetings and calls, we recommend using specialized services like Zoom or Google Meet.
• The platform is built around discussions (topics) and tasks (requests), not visual plans and Gantt charts. For projects with strict calendar schedules, the functionality may not be enough.
• The platform is young, so there are few ready-made case studies and training materials online. Like any new product, we have "growing pains" - minor bugs and shortcomings that we quickly fix thanks to feedback from early users.

Slack, Monday.com, and Basecamp are market-proven solutions.

Remote.Team is a newcomer that considers data protection more important than animations and beautiful dashboards, and the ability to focus on work more valuable than a hundred integrations. Our tool is created for those who need not the most popular, but the most reliable and private platform for teamwork.