7 crew management apps with built-in chat for UK teams (2026)

If you run a crew in the UK, you need three things in one place: a way to post the work, a way for your crew to pick their own shifts, and built-in chat so nobody is coordinating a Saturday job in a WhatsApp group at 11pm. Most crew management apps do two of the three. This comparison covers seven that come closest, what each costs in 2026, and which kind of crew each one actually suits.

We build one of them (Zelos), so read this as a comparison written by someone with a horse in the race. Every price and feature below comes from the vendors’ own published pricing as of August 2026, and we’ve named what each tool does better than we do.

At a glance

App	Chat	Pricing	Free plan
Zelos	Yes	Flat	Yes
Connecteam	Yes	Per hub	Yes
Sling	Yes	Per user	Yes
RotaCloud	No	Banded	No
Planday	Yes	Per user	No
Deputy	Yes	Per user	No
Rosterfy	Yes	Quote	No

What to look for in a UK crew app

Self-selection, not assignment. Some tools build the rota for you and tell people where to be. Others post the work and let the crew claim it. If your crew is casual, seasonal, volunteer or spread across sites, self-selection fills shifts faster because people only take what they can actually do.

Chat that knows what the shift is. Generic team chat means someone has to explain which job they’re asking about. Chat attached to the shift means the context is already there, and the conversation is still findable in six months.

Working Time Regulations and holiday pay. Be honest about which problem you’re solving. A signup board fills shifts. It does not calculate rest breaks, night-worker limits or accrued holiday. If you need statutory compliance tooling, you want a rota platform, and that decision changes the shortlist below.

A pricing model that survives your headcount. Crew sizes swing. A per-person price is fine at 12 people and painful at 120, especially when half of them work four shifts a year.

GDPR and where the data lives. Post-Brexit UK GDPR still governs how you hold your crew’s personal data. Where a vendor is based and what its default settings are is worth two minutes of your time.

1. Zelos: best for crews that fluctuate in size

Zelos is a task and shift signup app with messaging built in. You post shifts, your crew claims what fits, and every task gets its own chat channel. There is no algorithmic assignment. People choose, by design.

Shift claiming: Post a shift with a time, location and capacity. Crew members browse and claim on a first-come basis, or you switch to approval mode and pick from the queue. You can publish only to people who hold the right skill, certification or location tag, and you can send a direct offer to one person.

Chat: Every task has its own channel. Group and direct messages are included, all with admin oversight, by design. Members cannot see each other’s contact details, and there is no unsupervised one-to-one messaging.

Pricing: Free forever with unlimited members and unlimited admins, 25 concurrent active tasks, a 100-task archive and 10,000 chat messages. Pro is £79/month billed annually, or £99 month-to-month, for unlimited active tasks, full archive, no message cap, CSV bulk upload and auto-updating member groups. Enterprise starts at US$999/month for a white-label app, REST API and webhooks. Never per seat.

UK and EU note: Zelos is built in Estonia and is GDPR-compliant by default, with data held in the EU. Workspaces are invite-only and there is no public directory.

Where it doesn’t fit: No time clock, no payroll, no auto-scheduling, no Working Time Regulations engine, no Zapier. If you need clock-in data feeding payroll, one of the rota platforms below will serve you better.

Best for: Event crews, cleaning and facilities crews, contractor pools, volunteer teams, and anyone whose headcount doubles for three months a year.

“Zelos has been invaluable in helping us collaborate our projects with willing contractors. It gives us real time insight into our peers schedules and availability. Great value and great functionality.”

Contractor coordinator

2. Connecteam: best all-in-one for deskless crews

Connecteam is a deskless workforce platform covering scheduling, time tracking, checklists, forms and internal comms. Crews can be given open shifts to claim, and there is a full chat product with channels and a directory.

Shift claiming: Managers publish open shifts; qualified staff claim them from the mobile app. Shift swaps and manager approval are both supported.

Chat: A dedicated Communications hub with one-to-one chat, groups, an updates feed, surveys and an employee directory.

Pricing: A free Small Business plan covers up to 10 users with access to all hubs. Paid tiers are sold per hub. Basic is $29/month, Advanced is $49/month and Expert is $99/month, each billed annually and each covering the first 30 users, with additional users charged on top. Monthly billing runs $35, $59 and $119. Pricing is listed in US dollars.

The catch: Scheduling, communications and HR are three separately sold hubs. A crew that needs shift claiming and chat is often buying two hubs, so budget above the advertised headline price.

Best for: Construction, facilities and field service crews that want time tracking, forms and chat in one app and are happy to pay for the bundle.

See Connecteam vs Zelos, compared in detail.

3. Sling: best free plan for small crews

Sling is a scheduling and communication app built for shift-based businesses, and its free tier is unusually generous.

Shift claiming: Available shifts are posted to the team and picked up by whoever wants them. Shift swapping is included on the free plan.

Chat: Private messages, group messages and a company newsfeed, in the same app as the schedule.

Pricing: Free for up to 30 users, including scheduling, available shifts, time-off requests and messaging. Premium is $1.70 per user/month billed annually ($2 monthly) and adds mobile time tracking, labour cost tracking and overtime alerts. Business is $3.40 per user/month annually ($4 monthly) for kiosk clock-in, holiday management and reporting. Priced in US dollars.

The catch: The free plan stops hard at 30 users, time tracking is a paid feature, and Sling has no specific UK compliance tooling.

Best for: Single-site crews under 30 people who mostly need a clean rota plus messaging and don’t want to pay anything.

See Sling vs Zelos, compared in detail.

4. RotaCloud: best UK-built rota tool

RotaCloud is built and supported in York, and it prices by headcount band rather than per user, which makes it noticeably cheaper than per-seat tools at small sizes.

Shift claiming: Open shifts can be published for staff to pick up, and cover and swap requests route through manager approval. Reviewers consistently name shift pick-up as the feature that saves them the most time.

Chat: This is the honest gap. RotaCloud handles communication through rota notifications, shift notes, document sharing and alerts rather than a team chat product. If replacing WhatsApp is your main goal, it isn’t the tool.

Pricing: From £10/month for up to five employees on the Standard plan, scaling by headcount band. Time and attendance is a flat £4.50/month add-on regardless of team size, which is unusually good value on a big crew.

The catch: No real chat, and the per-employee cost converges with per-seat rivals once you’re into the hundreds.

Best for: UK hospitality, retail and care teams who want a straightforward rota with British support and holiday tracking.

5. Planday: best for hospitality crews already on Xero

Planday, owned by Xero, is a workforce platform popular with UK restaurants, pubs and hotels. It combines rota, time tracking, HR and staff communication.

Shift claiming: Open shifts can be published for staff to claim, with swaps and cover requests handled in-app.

Chat: Built-in messaging plus a news and announcements feed alongside the rota.

Pricing: From around £2.99 per user/month with a five-user minimum, rising with the feature tier. Free trial, no permanent free plan.

The catch: Per-user pricing scales linearly with a growing crew, and the deeper value depends on being in the Xero ecosystem.

Best for: Hospitality operators who want rota, payroll export and comms tied to their accounting.

6. Deputy: best for compliance-heavy rotas

Deputy is a scheduling and time-tracking platform with strong labour-compliance tooling and one of the more mature auto-schedulers on the market.

Shift claiming: Managers publish open shifts and staff claim or swap them from the app, with approval and qualification rules applied.

Chat: A News Feed for team-wide and targeted announcements, plus messaging. Deputy sells a Messaging+ add-on for richer comms on lower tiers.

Pricing: UK pricing starts at roughly £3.50 per user/month for scheduling only, with a premium tier around £4.90 per user/month adding time tracking. HR and analytics are priced separately. Free trial, no permanent free plan.

The catch: Per-user pricing plus add-ons makes Deputy one of the more expensive options for a large, low-hours crew. Deputy also repriced in late 2025 and migrated existing customers, which pushed some teams to look elsewhere.

Best for: Multi-site operations that need forecasting and rest-break rules enforced automatically.

See Deputy vs Zelos, compared in detail.

7. Rosterfy: best for very large event and volunteer crews

Rosterfy is an enterprise volunteer and workforce management platform used by major events, sporting bodies and government programmes, with a significant UK presence.

Shift claiming: A branded signup portal where crew members apply, get screened, and self-select shifts, with compliance checks and accreditation built into the flow.

Chat: Bulk communications, automated messaging journeys and in-app messaging rather than casual team chat.

Pricing: Quoted annually. Public listings put entry-level contracts in the region of US$7,000 per year, so this is a budgeted procurement rather than a card-on-file signup.

The catch: Cost and setup time. Rosterfy is built for programmes with several hundred to several thousand crew members and a coordinator whose actual job is running the programme.

Best for: Marathons, festivals, stadiums and national volunteer programmes at 500+ people.

How to choose

• Your crew size swings and half of them work occasionally → a flat-fee tool. Per-person pricing turns your quiet season into a bill for people who aren’t working. Zelos and RotaCloud are the two non-per-seat models here, and only one of them includes chat.
• You need clock-in data feeding payroll → Connecteam, Deputy, Planday or RotaCloud with the T&A add-on. This is the clearest reason to pick a full rota platform over a signup board.
• You need Working Time Regulations tooling → Deputy or Planday. Signup boards don’t do rest-break enforcement.
• You want the work claimed, not assigned → Zelos, Sling and Connecteam all support genuine open claiming. Deputy and Planday support it too, but their centre of gravity is the manager-built rota.
• You’re replacing WhatsApp, not a rota → the question is whether chat is attached to the shift. Task-level channels beat a general team chat every time when three jobs are running at once.

Frequently asked questions

What is a crew management app? A crew management app is software for posting shifts or jobs to a group of workers and coordinating them from their phones. Most include rota planning, availability, messaging and some form of time tracking. The difference between them is whether the software assigns the work or the crew claims it.

Which crew management apps let staff pick their own shifts? Zelos, Sling, Connecteam, RotaCloud, Planday and Deputy all support open shifts that crew members can claim from a mobile app. Zelos and Sling make self-selection the default behaviour rather than an option layered on top of a manager-built rota.

Which crew app has the best built-in chat? Connecteam has the deepest standalone chat product, with channels, surveys and a directory. Zelos attaches a chat channel to every individual task, so the conversation stays tied to the job it’s about. Sling and Planday both include competent messaging alongside the rota. RotaCloud relies on notifications rather than chat.

Is there a free crew management app with chat in the UK? Yes. Zelos is free for unlimited crew members with 25 concurrent active tasks and 10,000 chat messages. Sling is free for up to 30 users. Connecteam is free for up to 10 users. RotaCloud, Planday and Deputy all run on trials rather than free plans.

What does crew management software cost in the UK? Most per-seat tools run £2.50–£5 per person per month, so a 50-person crew costs roughly £125–250/month. Flat-fee and banded pricing works differently: Zelos Pro is £79/month billed annually for unlimited members, and RotaCloud starts at £10/month for up to five staff and scales by band. For crews with lots of occasional workers, the pricing model matters more than the headline rate.

How is Zelos different from Connecteam and Sling? Connecteam and Sling are workforce platforms built around a schedule: you build the rota, then people work it. Zelos is a signup board: you post the work, and people claim what fits. Connecteam adds time tracking, forms and checklists across three separately priced hubs. Sling adds time tracking and labour costing on paid per-user tiers. Zelos includes unlimited members on every plan and never charges per person, but has no time clock and no payroll.

Is Zelos GDPR-compliant for UK organisations? Yes. Zelos is built in Estonia, holds data in the EU, and is GDPR-compliant by default with no configuration required. Workspaces are invite-only, members cannot see each other’s contact details, and all messaging includes admin oversight, by design.

Do crew members need to download an app? Not necessarily. Zelos runs in any browser as well as native iOS and Android apps, so someone can claim a shift from a link without installing anything. Connecteam, Sling, Planday, Deputy and RotaCloud are all mobile-first and work best with the app installed.

Try the flat-fee option first

If your crew changes size month to month, start with the tool that doesn’t bill you for it. Zelos is free with unlimited crew members, task and shift posting, self-signup, skills-based targeting and built-in messaging. No credit card, no trial expiration.

Start a free project →

Trusted by crews in 40+ countries since 2018. Prices checked August 2026. Verify current rates on each vendor’s pricing page before you commit.