My remote team and I have been using the free version of Microsoft Teams, but we’re facing constant issues, missed notifications, random call crashes, and inconsistent video call stability.
These problems have started to affect our workflow, especially since we rely heavily on real-time communication for collaboration.
We’ve already tried a few alternatives:
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Slack: Great for messaging, but the free version only supports 1:1 calls, which is a deal-breaker for group calls.
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Discord: The screen sharing quality and device connection issues made it unreliable for our work needs.
We’re now looking for a free tool that supports group chats, video calls, reliable notifications, and decent call quality.
If you know of any platforms that can replace Teams effectively, especially for dev/test teams working remotely, we’d appreciate your suggestions.
Bonus if you can highlight how the features or limits compare to the free version of Microsoft Teams.
Thanks in advance!
Hey there! Our dev team ran into the same issues with Teams, especially the missed pings and unreliable call drops. We switched to a combo of Google Chat + Google Meet (free) and it’s been surprisingly solid.
Meet allows up to 100 participants per call for 60 minutes, and Chat handles real-time messaging quite well, even threaded conversations like Slack.
Best part? Notifications are way more consistent across devices, and it integrates nicely with Google Calendar for scheduling. While it’s not as integrated as Teams, it’s free, stable, and pretty lightweight for day-to-day collaboration.
If you’re up for something outside the mainstream, we’ve had success using Element, which runs on the Matrix protocol.
It’s open-source and 100% free, even self-hostable if you want full control. You get group messaging, video calls, file sharing, and it’s secure by design (great if your work involves QA/dev with sensitive environments).
It’s a bit more setup than plug-and-play tools, but for our team, it brought unmatched reliability and we haven’t looked back since leaving Teams. Bonus: no hidden limits like Slack’s message history cap.
We stumbled onto Zoho Cliq after running into the same Slack/Teams headaches. Honestly, it’s underrated.
The free version allows unlimited users, group messaging, up to 100 participants in video calls, and even screen sharing. Notifications are prompt, and it has channels like Slack, with threading support.
For a dev team like ours, the integrations with GitHub, Jenkins, and Jira helped smooth our workflow. It’s not as flashy as Discord, but it’s built for teams like ours and has been way more stable than what we had with Teams.
Happy to help 