Pumble is a good team communication app, but it has its limitations. Here are 5 Pumble competitors to consider for your company.
Strong internal communication keeps ideas flowing, teams aligned, and projects on track. But with dispersed and remote teams, staying connected is challenging.
Thankfully, good team communication apps can help. While Pumble is a popular choice, it’s not for everyone.
Below, I review 5 great Pumble alternatives so you can find one that keeps your team united and thriving.
If you don’t have the time to read through our research, jump down to our quick comparison table.
Our Top Picks
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The best alternative to Pumble
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Good for AI-assisted comms
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Good for enterprise companies
Why trust us?
Our team of unbiased software reviewers follows strict editorial guidelines, and our methodology is clear and open to everyone.
See our complete methodology
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Tools considered
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Tools reviewed
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What Is Pumble?
Pumble is a team communication and collaboration app. It has a user-friendly interface that’s very similar to Slack’s, and it offers many of the same features.
Companies can use Pumble as an internal instant messaging app, create channels for different teams or topics, share files and other media, and even spin off into discussion threads to keep comms organized. Pumble also offers voice and video calls and screen sharing and recording.
Overall, it’s a good solution—particularly for smaller teams looking for a free plan. However, any company that needs the full range of features and more than 10GB of storage must opt for the Enterprise plan, which costs $12.99/user/month.
Further, Pumble offers only a handful of third-party integrations, with no project management, CRM, or document storage partners. I’m not sure it’s the best fit for large or growing companies with advanced app integrations and automation needs.
Why Are People Moving Away From Pumble?
Pumble boasts a good overall rating (4.7 on Capterra), and most users have left positive feedback on the app. That said, some users have shared notable limitations and concerns about Pumble’s searchability, integrations, and limited customization options.
For example, one user admitted: “Pumble’s search feature is not great, and requires basically knowing exactly what whole word terms you’re searching for. Partial words won’t get you anywhere.” Another customer mentioned issues with searching through threaded messages, saying, “It’s a bit hard to find and check where is the post who started the thread.”
Concerning the app’s integrations, one reviewer stated, “I think it needs integrations with Notion and Figma.” Meanwhile, another user said, “We had some difficulty transferring our message history over [from Slack].”
Finally, in one review, a customer shared: “I hate the fact that, I can’t customize my workspace in Pumble with my own logo and color schemes.” Another also noted that ” it lacks some of the advanced features that more premium tools offer, such as extensive customization options and AI-driven insights.”All things considered, I understand why Pumble isn’t right for everyone despite its many positives.
The 5 Best Pumble Alternatives of 2025
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Connecteam — The best alternative to Pumble
Connecteam is an all-in-one team communication, operations, and HR management app.
Why I chose Connecteam: In addition to its extensive offering and affordable pricing, Connecteam’s user-friendly design, feature-rich mobile app, and hands-on customer support make it the leading Pumble competitor.
Let’s dive into Connecteam’s core team communication features.
Secure in-app team chat
Connecteam’s team instant messaging lets you message employees in 1-to-1 settings or in a group chat for different departments, locations, teams, or topics. In addition to messaging with rich-text formatting, Connecteam offers file sharing and lets users send images, videos, audio files, GIFs, and more to share information in whichever format works best.
I also liked the ability to see employees’ online statuses, schedule messages to send at future times, and view read receipts. These are great for ensuring employees can switch off from work when needed but don’t miss essential comms when they’re back online.
What I found most impressive? The chat also integrates directly into Connecteam’s task management feature. Employees can view all necessary information and start discussions from within tasks instead of switching between features.
Finally, Connecteam’s chats—and all its other data—are end-to-end encrypted. Moreover, you can moderate content, restrict permissions, and prevent users from downloading chats and media to their personal devices for peace of mind.
Social media-style newsfeed
Connecteam’s company updates tool is a social media-style interactive feed. You can post announcements, news, and more company-wide—or share these with limited groups. Plus, similar to chats, you can publish information live or schedule posts for later.
The newsfeed lets you add text and post images, videos, and GIFs to make posts engaging. You can even customize the feed with your brand colors and logo, and posts can be translated into multiple languages—perfect for global teams.
I like that employees can like, react, and comment to posts and even add @mentions to tag each other. I also appreciate that you can restrict reactions and comments to specific posts when needed—for instance, during emergencies.
You can also ask employees to confirm they’ve read something and track views, clicks, and other engagement metrics through your admin dashboard.
Employee feedback tools
Connecteam’s built-in employee communication surveys are an easy way to gather team feedback. You can use ready templates to create custom surveys from scratch using drag-and-drop tools and open-ended or multiple-choice questions—and even pick if questions should be mandatory or optional.
I was also impressed by the options to make surveys anonymous and the ability to send push notifications to remind employees to complete surveys. These are excellent ways to increase participation rates.
In addition, Connecteam offers polls, which are useful for real-time feedback and opinions, such as when you’d like to know where you should host the next team event.
Searchable knowledge hub
You can use Connecteam’s company knowledge base to store company policies and procedures, FAQs, project documents, guides, manuals, and other important information in a single, central location.
The best part? It lets you store PDFs, images, videos, podcasts, and more to deliver information in the best format for learning.
I also particularly enjoyed the ability to organize files into folders and sub-folders. Moreover, employees can access what they need easily using the search bar and from anywhere with their smartphones.
Company directory, events, helpdesk, and more
The Connecteam employee directory software lets you save and quickly locate every employee’s contact details. You can also store the details for their emergency contacts and save information for external partners and vendors. This way, there’s no need to use your personal address book for work-related information.
Additionally, the platform doubles as a company event app, letting you create and organize virtual or in-person events, share details, collect RSVPs, and even send reminders. Finally, Connecteam has an internal help desk that lets you quickly resolve employee queries. It also offers many more operations and HR management features, making it a 1-stop shop for work management.
Key Features
Online team chat
Company newsfeed
Surveys and polls
Searchable knowledge base
Employee directory
Employee helpdesk
Pros
User-friendly interface
Free trial and free version available
Smart alerts and push notifications
Mobile-first tools, accessible from anywhere
Cons
No video conferencing tools yet
Pricing
Free-for-life plan availablePremium plans start at $29/month for 30 users
14-day free trial, no credit card required
Start your free trial -
Simpplr — Good for AI-assisted comms
Simpplr is an employee engagement and communications software solution.
Why I chose Simpplr: The platform offers a range of team communication tools and a mobile app that makes it a suitable Pumble competitor.
Let’s explore Simpplr’s key communication-specific features.
Company intranet and directory
Simpplr’s intranet serves as a centralized information hub for your employees. Users’ intranet homepages show them personalized content such as relevant news, updates, articles, and even URLs.
Employees can also switch from their homepages to their social feeds on the intranet. Simpplr’s newsfeed displays the latest posts, images, and videos. The interactive feed also lets them like and comment on posts, though I was disappointed by the lack of other emoji reactions—for instance, an upvote or lightbulb emoji.
Lastly, in addition to hosting its company news and blogs, Simpplr’s intranet also houses its people directory. You can find every employee’s profile, including their names, job titles, org structure, contact details, and more, which makes it easy to reach people.
Newsletters and content builder
Simpplr’s content builder lets you create custom newsletters and email campaigns from scratch using templates, drag-and-drop tools, and smart blocks—my personal favorite.
Smart blocks are dynamic sections that auto-populate using information from the hub. For instance, if you add a “content” smart block to your newsletter, it automatically pulls in the latest news from the intranet, and you can edit from there.
Simpplr also offers AI tools to help with content ideation and generation. Moreover, its content governance feature automatically deletes old or expired posts, keeping things clean.
Employee surveys and polls
I think this is one of Simpplr’s best features. You can create your own employee surveys and polls using over 100 ready employee engagement and satisfaction questions or write new questions from scratch.
In addition to offering long-form surveys with many open-ended and multiple-choice questions, Simpplr offers quick pulse surveys, which employees can answer by choosing 1 of 5 emojis with a single click.
I was also impressed that Simpplr not only provides basic engagement metrics such as response rates and responses but also shows AI-driven insights into employees’ sentiments.
While Simpplr offers more features, such as a recognition hub, I don’t think it’s a complete communication solution. For instance, I wish it offered a messenger and voice and video calling.
Key Features
- Central intranet
- Newsletter and content builder
- AI-powered content management
- Employee engagement tools
Pros
- AI-assisted content creation
- 200+ integrations
Cons
- No in-app chat
- No voice or video calling
Pricing
Contact vendor for price Trial: Yes — 14-day, by request only Free Plan: No
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Staffbase — Good for enterprise companies
Staffbase is an internal communication and content creation app.
Why I chose Staffbase: Despite a high price point, 1,000-employee minimum requirement, and limited customer support, Staffbase made it to my list of Pumble competitors thanks to its very comprehensive features that are great for businesses that can afford it.
Let’s take a closer look at what Staffbase offers.
Multiple communication channels
Staffbase provides several ways to share information and keep your employees in the loop. The internal feed lets you post important updates in text, images, videos, files, and more. You can share these with everyone or create groups based on locations, departments, and interests. Employees can like and comment on posts, and you can even disable this functionality when required.
Employees can also find the latest news, pending surveys, assigned training, IT tickets, and more on their personalized intranet homepages. I’m a fan of this centralized hub where everything is easy to find.
Further, Staffbase’s in-house chat tool lets users communicate with each other in 1-to-1 or group settings. Plus, you can create and send email newsletters to the entire company or custom distribution lists and design digital signage (electronic displays of information) for your office space—all from the same platform.
While I appreciate all these features, I was disappointed that Staffbase doesn’t offer a mobile app for admins. You must publish social posts and perform other admin tasks from your computer.
Content planning and creation
Staffbase also has some impressive content-creating and editing tools. You can use a drag-and-drop builder and ready templates to craft internal newsletters. Staffbase Companion—the AI bot—can also help with content generation.
I appreciate how collaborative the tools are. There’s a digital whiteboard-like tool to plan content with colleagues, an editorial calendar to schedule posts, and proofing tools that let users collaborate on documents in real time.
Employee surveys
In addition to articles and newsletters, Staffbase lets you create custom surveys with questions of your choice. You can also select questions from ready templates, like the free pulse survey template. Once ready, you can distribute these through multiple channels like chat, social feed, email, and even push notifications on employees’ mobile apps.
Key Features
- Company intranet
- Social feed
- Team chat
- Collaborative editing tools
Pros
- AI bot for content generation
- Push notifications
Cons
- Only for companies with over 1,000 users
- No live customer support
Pricing
Contact vendor for price Trial: No Free Plan: No
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Workvivo — Good for large workforces spread across multiple offices
Workvivo is an employee engagement and team collaboration app with plenty of internal communication tools.
Why I chose Workvivo: In addition to the essential team communication tools, Workvivo offers some stand-out features like live video streaming and podcasts.
Below, I discuss some of Workvivo’s key features.
Personalized activity feed
Your employees can see all the latest posts and updates on a personalized feed that shows them content most relevant to their locations and roles. Workvivo lets you post text, images, videos, and files on the newsfeed and publish them company-wide or in specific teams, departments, or community spaces (these are spaces employees can join based on shared interests).
While all employees can post to the newsfeed, I appreciate that Workvivo lets you limit posting permissions. This can be especially useful for larger companies where the feed can get quickly cluttered.
Newsletters
With Workvivo, you can create and publish newsletters to share important information, relevant articles, and the latest news with everyone or specific team members. However, I was disappointed in Workvivo’s content editing tools compared with those of other apps. The newsletter template is limited to 6 blocks where you can add articles, events, and news, but you can’t customize them for other purposes—for instance, to give kudos.
Live video streaming and podcasts
Workvivo lets select users—those you’ve granted permission—to start live video streams from their desktops or mobile devices. Further, you can record live streams and let workers who missed them play them back. This could be particularly useful for global teams where employees from some locations might miss live videos due to time zone differences.
What’s more—Workvivo also lets you add podcasts to employees’ feeds. You can upload your own podcast and customize it with a title, cover photo, and description, or stream a public podcast using an external URL.
Employee feedback tools and critical comms
Workvivo offers customizable surveys and polls you can build from scratch. You can add multiple question types, mark questions as mandatory, and distribute surveys to workers’ smartphones via push notifications.
Workvivo’s critical communications functionality lets you push urgent comms out to employees and even override their phone’s do-not-disturb (DND) setting. I find this so valuable for construction, healthcare, and other industries with health and safety risks.
Key Features
- Personalized activity feed
- Newsletters
- Live video streaming and podcasts
- Employee surveys
Pros
- Critical comms push notifications that override users' DND settings
- Live video streaming
Cons
- Newsletters have limited customization options
- Doesn't cater to companies with fewer than 250 employees
Pricing
Contact vendor for price Trial: No Free Plan: No
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Slack — Good for large workforces spread across multiple offices
Slack is a team collaboration and internal communication app.
Why I chose Slack: Despite its relatively higher price point, Slack’s user-friendly interface, reliable features, and 2,000+ integrations have earned it a spot on my list of Pumble competitors.
Here are Slack’s key communication and collaboration tools.
Direct messaging (DMs)
Slack lets you send employees direct 1-to-1 messages or create DM groups with multiple team members. The platform supports rich-text formatting: You can share everything from images and videos to GIFs, voice notes, and files.
I was also impressed with some of Slack’s great customization tools. For instance, you can schedule messages for later, mark them as unread, and set reminders to respond. I only wish I could override users’ DND settings in emergencies.
Dedicated channels and discussion threads
Slack lets you organize comms into dedicated channels for different teams, departments, business areas, topics, etc. You can invite relevant members and choose to keep channels public or private.
While the interface and functionality are exactly the same as those of DMs, some of Slack’s tools work better for its channels. For example, you can pin important messages and files to the top so everyone can access them instantly.
Moreover, users can start discussion threads—like sub-messages—to keep communications organized. Slack also lets you create shared channels with external partners who can access only that particular channel, which is helpful.
Huddles
You can start a voice or video huddle with a single click from within a DM for a private chat or channel when you want to include everyone in that channel.
While I love this virtual-coffee-chat-like feature, I was disappointed at the lack of screen-sharing and recording capabilities. Additionally, huddles are restricted to 50 people, so they’re not ideal for town halls or bigger meetings. This means companies needing accommodation for large meetings must use and pay for an additional platform—like Zoom or Skype.
Knowledge sharing canvases
Slack has a built-in “canvas” feature that you can use to collaborate with employees in DMs or within channels. This digital whiteboard lets you use rich-text formatting, add tables and checklists, and even insert emojis. Moreover, Slack provides canvas templates for newsletters, meeting agendas, and more—so you don’t always have to start from scratch.
Key Features
- Direct messaging
- Channels and threads
- Voice and video huddles
- Canvases
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- 2,000+ apps and integrations
Cons
- Notifications can't override users' DND settings
- Huddles are limited to 50 users
Pricing
Starts at $8.25/user/month Trial: Yes Free Plan: Yes
Compare the Best Pumble Alternatives
| Topic |
Start for free
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| Reviews |
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| Pricing |
Starts at just $29/month for the first 30 users
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Contact vendor for price
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Contact vendor for price
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Contact vendor for price
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Starts at $8.25/user/month
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| Free Trial |
yes
14-day
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yes
14-day, by request only
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no
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no
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yes
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| Free Plan |
yes
Free Up to 10 users
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no
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no
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no
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yes
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| Use cases |
The best alternative to Pumble
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Good for AI-assisted comms
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Good for enterprise companies
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Good for large workforces spread across multiple offices
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Good for large workforces spread across multiple offices
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| Available on |
Summary of Top Pumble Alternatives
Pumble is a popular team communication and collaboration app, but concerns with its usability and lack of customizations and integrations have prompted some companies to look for alternatives.
I think Connecteam is the best Pumble alternative today. It offers various communication tools, such as a work chat, social feed, surveys and polls, a central knowledge hub, and an employee directory.
Plus, it goes beyond communication with excellent features for task management, time tracking, payroll, HR management, and so much more—all at affordable prices.