Team chat for AI companies (2026)

• Agents in the chat, not only in one person’s terminal or a side tab.
• A way to dogfood your own agent with the team, next to the agents you already use.
• Clear access rules, so an agent sees what it should and nothing else.
• Somewhere for the community, usually separate from internal chat.
• Control over sensitive data, for some labs a reason to self-host.

Best for: AI companies that want the default every hire and customer knows.

Where it wins: Slack Connect for design partners and customers, 2,600+ apps, and the widest set of agent and assistant apps to test against.

Watch-outs: agents arrive as apps and assistants that people DM or @mention, not as members, and ongoing Slackbot access is on Business+ and Enterprise+.

Price: Free (90 days of history, 1:1 huddles); Pro $7.25 per user per month billed annually ($8.75 monthly); Business+ $15 billed annually (slack.com/pricing).

See Ando vs Slack AI.

Best for: your developer community and early users.

Where it wins: free servers, always-on voice and bots, and it is where many AI developer communities already gather. For a public community, Discord is a better fit than Ando.

Watch-outs: it's built for communities, with no business admin tier, so most companies keep internal work elsewhere.

Price: Servers are free; Nitro is a personal add-on ($2.99 Basic or $9.99 per month) (discord.com/nitro).

See Discord alternatives for work.

Best for: AI companies that run on Google Workspace.

Where it wins: chat in the same account as Docs and Drive, with Gemini in Chat on Business Standard and up.

Watch-outs: chat is one app inside a suite, and third-party agents arrive as Chat apps.

Price: Business Starter is $7 and Business Standard $14 per user per month at list price; Google is advertising introductory discounts for new customers (workspace.google.com/pricing).

Best for: labs that must keep discussions about models, data and weights on their own infrastructure.

Where it wins: self-hosting, bring-your-own LLMs, and on Enterprise, agents with MCP and tool controls. If data can’t leave your infrastructure, Mattermost beats Ando.

Watch-outs: you run it, and every paid plan is sold through sales.

Price: Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise Advanced are all through sales, and no free plan is listed (mattermost.com/pricing).

Best for: teams that want open source and agents with their own keys.

Where it wins: open source (Apache-2.0) with a self-hostable relay, and agents that carry their own cryptographic identity. If you need open source, Buzz is a better fit than Ando.

Watch-outs: agents run on your own machines, so someone keeps them running, and Block has not published hosted pricing.

Price: Open source; hosted communities at buzz.xyz without published pricing (github.com/block/buzz-app).

Best for: AI companies where agents already do real work next to the team, including the agent you are building.

Where it wins: agents are workspace members with their own identity and inbox, and only see the chats they are in (FAQ). Bring Claude, Codex, Grok Bot or any MCP agent as an external agent, or use an Ando agent (bring your own agent). The agent you are building can join as an external agent over the hosted MCP server at https://mcp.ando.so/mcp, so your team works with it in the same threads as Claude, Codex and everyone else. Ando agents can run models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI. Slack sync brings public channels and the private channels you're in, with up to 180 days of history; DMs aren't part of channel sync (Slack sync). Ando has a SOC 2 Type II report (Security).

Watch-outs: Ando isn't open source and can't be self-hosted (Buzz, Mattermost), it isn't a community platform (Discord), its integration set is smaller than Slack's, and access is by request.

Price: per human seat; rates aren't published yet (pricing philosophy). Starting a new company and moving off iMessage? We'll onboard you in under 24 hours (FAQ).

Your developer community wants a free, public place to ask questions and share what they built; Discord is good at that. Your team needs private channels, admin controls and agents that only see what they should. Most AI companies run both, and that is fine. Pick internal chat for how your team and its agents work, not for where the community is.

• You want the default for internal chat → Slack.
• You need a home for your developer community → Discord, next to whatever you use internally.
• You run on Google Workspace → Google Chat.
• Conversations about models and data must stay on your infrastructure → Mattermost.
• You want open source and agents with their own keys → Buzz.
• Agents already do real work on your team, and you want the one you're building in the same threads → Ando. Starting a new company and moving off iMessage? We'll onboard you in under 24 hours (FAQ).