Crew management apps with built-in messaging for UK teams (2026)

Read our practical guide to shift team communication.

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 29 September 2026, and we’ve named what each tool does better than we do.

How messaging works in Zelos Team Management

Every task and shift has its own chat thread. Admins can also send group messages to a segment of the crew, direct messages to one member, and notices to everyone (notices can’t be replied to). Messages reach the team by push notification on iOS, Android or browser, with read receipts in one-to-one and group threads. All messaging includes admin oversight by design: crew members can’t message each other privately or see each other’s contact details.

Plans. Messaging is included on the free plan, with unlimited crew members and admins and a 10,000-message cap. Pro (£79/month billed annually) removes the cap and keeps complete history. There are no per-person fees on any plan.

Not included. There’s no message search. Conversations are found through the task they belong to. Chat history export is available on request through support.

Messaging overview · Pricing · Help: Live messaging, Notices, Groups

Feature comparison

Product	Built-in chat	Chat on free plan	Free plan	Pricing basis	Entry price	Source
Zelos Team Management	Task and shift threads, groups, admin–member direct messages, notices	Yes	Unlimited members, 25 active tasks, 10,000 messages	Flat per organisation	£79/month billed annually	Pricing
Connecteam	One-to-one, groups, channels, read receipts	Yes	Up to 10 users (all features) or 30 (free Limited plan)	Per hub (first 30 users)	US$29/month per hub billed annually	Pricing
Sling	One-to-one messages, announcements; group messaging from Premium	One-to-one messages only	Up to 30 users	Per user	US$1.70/user/month billed annually	Pricing
When I Work	Team messaging	No free plan	14-day trial	Per user	US$2.50/user/month	Pricing
Planday	Team communication	No free plan	30-day trial	Per user, minimum 5 users	£2.99/user/month	Pricing
Deputy	Messaging and news feed	No free plan	Free trial	Per user, £20/month minimum on monthly plans	£3.25/user/month	Pricing
Rosterfy	Bulk and automated messaging	No free plan	—	Annual quote	Custom quote	Pricing

Free plans and pricing models checked against each vendor’s public pricing page on 29 September 2026.

Best for shift-specific conversations: Zelos Team Management attaches a thread to each task or shift, so the briefing, questions and updates stay with the work.
Best all-in-one workforce suite: Connecteam combines chat with time tracking, forms and training.
Best free option for a fixed crew under 30: Sling includes scheduling, one-to-one messages and announcements on its free plan. Group messaging needs Premium.
Best for UK hospitality already on Xero: Planday includes team communication from £2.99 per user per month.

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: See the plans above. Enterprise starts at £799/month, billed annually, for a white-label app, REST API and webhooks. Launch fees depend on scope.

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: Connecteam is free for up to 10 users with all features, or up to 30 users on its free Limited plan with basic features, including chat. Paid tiers are sold per hub. Basic is US$29/month, Advanced is US$49/month and Expert is US$99/month, each billed annually and each covering the first 30 users, with additional users charged on top. Monthly billing runs US$35, US$59 and US$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: One-to-one messages, announcements and a company newsfeed on the free plan. Group messaging is on Premium and Business.

Pricing: Free for up to 30 users, including scheduling, available shifts, time-off requests and messaging. Premium is US$1.70 per user/month billed annually (US$2 monthly) and adds mobile time tracking, labour cost tracking and overtime alerts. Business is US$3.40 per user/month annually (US$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. When I Work: best for shift swaps and drops

When I Work is a scheduling platform whose strongest feature is letting employees trade shifts among themselves without a manager in the middle.

Shift claiming: OpenShifts can be published to eligible staff and claimed from the app. Drop, pick-up and swap requests route through configurable approval rules.

Chat: WorkChat handles one-to-one and group messaging alongside the rota.

Pricing: Essentials starts at US$2.50 per user/month, Pro at US$5 and Premium at US$8, with a 14-day free trial. Time and attendance is a separate add-on. The vendor does not publish that add-on price.

The catch: No free plan, and the add-on structure means the advertised per-user price isn’t the whole bill if you need a time clock.

Best for: Retail, hospitality and healthcare crews with a stable rota who trade shifts constantly.

See When I Work vs Zelos, compared in detail.

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: Lite £3.25, Core £4.25, Pro £6.50 per user/month; £20/month minimum on monthly plans. 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 moved to Lite, Core and Pro plans in October 2025 and is moving most existing accounts onto them.

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: Annual quote. Custom quote. Rosterfy says it is built for organisations managing 100 or more volunteers.

The catch: Cost and setup time. Rosterfy says it is built for organisations managing 100 or more volunteers, and the practical fit is 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 a very large scale.

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 Team Management is the only flat-fee model here. Connecteam is flat for the first 30 users on each hub, then charges per user. If your pool is mostly casuals under award or ERA rules, see casual staff management apps.
You need clock-in data feeding payroll → Connecteam, Deputy, Planday or When I Work. 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. Our shift team communication guide covers what to send once you’ve switched.

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 Team Management, Sling, Connecteam, When I Work, 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.

Which crew management apps put chat next to the shift? Zelos Team Management attaches a chat thread to every task and shift, so the briefing, questions and changes stay with the work they’re about. On the other apps in this comparison, you set up one-to-one chats, group chats or channels yourself. Connecteam, for example, lets admins create a team chat for a shift.

Can crew claim open shifts and discuss them in the same app? Yes. Zelos Team Management, Sling, Connecteam, When I Work and Deputy all let crew claim open shifts from a mobile app and include messaging. In Zelos Team Management, the discussion happens in the thread attached to that shift.

How is Zelos messaging different from Connecteam chat? Both offer one-to-one, group and one-way broadcast messaging with read receipts. Connecteam’s chat adds polls, file attachments and message search, and sits alongside training, timesheet and forms modules in the same app. Zelos Team Management messaging is narrower and contextual: every conversation attaches to a task, shift or member profile, all messaging carries admin oversight, and there’s no unsupervised one-to-one messaging between crew members by design. Connecteam is free for up to 10 users with all features, or up to 30 users on its free Limited plan with basic features, including chat. Zelos Team Management covers unlimited crew members with a message-volume cap instead. Connecteam suits small crews that need training and time tracking in one app. Zelos Team Management suits larger pools where the constraint is headcount cost.

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 with all features, or up to 30 users on its free Limited plan with basic features, including chat. When I Work, Planday and Deputy all run on trials rather than free plans.

What does crew management software cost in the UK? Per-user tools on this list start at £2.99 (Planday) and £3.25 (Deputy) per person per month. USD-billed tools start at US$1.70 (Sling) and US$2.50 (When I Work). A 50-person crew on a per-user tool costs roughly £150–£325 a month. Zelos Team Management Pro is £79/month billed annually for unlimited members. 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, When I Work, Planday and Deputy 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.

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