A team chat app for small business that sits next to the work

Klusko is a team chat app for small business, and if you’ve used Slack you already know how it works. Public channels for things the whole company should see (#jobs, say), private channels for the ones it shouldn’t (#payroll), direct messages, threads for side conversations, @mentions, emoji reactions and, yes, GIFs. There’s an unread divider so you land on the first message you missed, and online dots show who’s around. There are no add-ons. Nobody has to configure anything before the first person says good morning, which in a removals firm is usually about 6.40am, from a van, with a photo of a wardrobe that won’t fit down the stairs.

Where it differs is history. Slack’s free plan shows 90 days of messages, as of September 2026, so the chat where you agreed a price with a customer in March is gone by summer. Klusko keeps every message on every plan, Free included. We think hiding your own old messages until you pay is a bit rude. Our Slack alternatives roundup compares the other options, warts and all.

Most work gets agreed in chat and then lost there. Yusuf says the kitchen needs a second day, two people react with a thumbs up, and nobody moves the job. By Wednesday it’s an archaeology dig through the scroll-back.

In Klusko you mention the task in your message and it shows up as a live link, one click from the task itself. If the task doesn’t exist yet, add it to the project first, then mention it in the thread. To be clear, there’s no button that turns a message into a task for you. We’d rather a person decides who owns it and when it’s due, because that’s exactly the bit that gets forgotten when a job lives only in chat. We wrote a longer piece on how to stop losing tasks in chat.

The command bar (Cmd or Ctrl + K) searches messages alongside tasks, projects and people. Type “Harley Road” and you get the parking suspension task and the message where Kasia said the council had confirmed it. The Mentions view lists every message that @mentioned you, and there’s a Threads view for replies that would otherwise hide under yesterday’s messages.

Klusko has no video or voice calls. For a quick call, keep using whatever you use now; plenty of removals crews just ring each other from the van. Everything else updates live for everyone, with no refresh, and the data is stored in Frankfurt, which our security page explains. If you’re weighing it up against Slack directly, read Klusko vs Slack.