Teams rely on Glue AI to move work forward, but growing teams bring new demands.
Engineers want richer control, automation leads push for cleaner orchestration, and leadership needs a platform that scales without creating friction.
At some point, the limitations feel close, and the search for Glue AI alternatives becomes a practical next step.
If your workflows feel constrained or your agents need flexibility that matches your technical goals, exploring other options makes sense. A better fit can strengthen collaboration, streamline decision-making, and support the pace your team expects.
In this blog post, we break down the 10 best Glue AI alternatives. Let’s get started! 💪🏼
Top Glue AI Alternatives for Smarter Team Chat & Automation
- Top Glue AI Alternatives at a Glance
- What Should You Look For In Glue AI Alternatives?
- The Best Glue AI Alternatives
- 1. ClickUp (Best for teams that want AI + automation with project and task management)
- 2. Coworker.ai (Best for no-code AI agent building)
- 3. Slack (Best for chat-based workflow automation)
- 4. Microsoft Teams (Best for Microsoft 365 AI-powered automation integration)
- 5. Google Chat (Best for simple Google Workspace collaboration)
- 6. Mattermost (Best for self-hosted team communication)
- 7. Rocket.Chat (Best for omnichannel communication needs)
- 8. Twist (Best for thread-based async communication)
- 9. CrewAI (Best for multi-agent AI orchestration)
- 10. AutoGen (Best for conversational multi-agent problem solving)
- Raise the Bar With ClickUp
Summarize this article for me pleaseTop Glue AI Alternatives at a Glance
Here’s a glimpse of the top Glue AI alternatives and what they bring to the table. 👇
| Tool | Best for | Best features | Pricing* |
| ClickUp | AI-powered project automation and chat-to-task orchestration for product, ops, and enterprise PMO teams | ClickUp Brain for Contextual AI answers, Automation for trigger-based workflows and repetitive task handling, Agents for AI task execution across projects and docs | Free forever; Customization available for enterprises |
| Coworker.ai | No-code agent building for fast workflow automation across multiple departments | Visual drag-and-drop agent builder, webhook triggers, sandbox testing with version rollback, performance monitoring dashboards, role-based permissions | Custom pricing |
| Slack | Chat-native process automation and message intelligence for real-time collaboration and growing teams | Emoji and keyword triggers, AI summaries, canvases for project context, CLI support for custom app deployment, channel pinning | Free; Paid plans start at $8.75/month per user |
| Microsoft Teams | Enterprise collaboration and AI automation for Microsoft 365 organizations | Copilot AI for recaps and drafting, Power Automate integration, eDiscovery retention controls, channel moderation, SharePoint + Outlook syncing | Free; Paid plans start at $7.20/month per user |
| Google Chat | Lightweight AI messaging and Chrome-native communication for Google Workspace teams | Gemini message summaries, message-to-task conversion, space pinning, keyword filtering, Apps Script bots | Free trial; Plans start at $8.40/month per user |
| Mattermost | Secure self-hosted team messaging for regulated or compliance-driven industries | On-prem deployment, SSO/SAML controls, incident playbooks, full export logging, plugin marketplace for deep integrations | Free trial; Paid plans start at $10/month per user (billed annually) |
| Rocket.Chat | Omnichannel messaging across internal teams and public chat channels for support and field ops | Real-time translation, role-based permissions, chatbot automations, analytics dashboards, message retention policies | Free; Paid plans start at $8/month per user (billed annually) |
| Twist | Async, thread-first communication for distributed teams and focus-driven + complex workflows | Dedicated threaded spaces, thread reminders, long-form updates with rich formatting, PDF thread exports, selective notifications | Free; Paid plans start at $8/month per user |
| CrewAI | Multi-agent orchestration for technical teams building AI systems in Python | Role-defined agent behaviors, sequential/parallel/hierarchical routines, multi-LLM selection, execution logs, memory systems | Custom pricing |
| AutoGen | Conversational agent problem-solving for research and engineering groups | Dialogue-based agent reasoning, code execution sandboxes, replayable conversations, response caching, termination conditions | Free (open-source) |
How we review software at ClickUp
Our editorial team follows a transparent, research-backed, and vendor-neutral process, so you can trust that our recommendations are based on real product value.
Here’s a detailed rundown of how we review software at ClickUp.
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Should You Look For In Glue AI Alternatives?
When searching for Glue AI alternatives, you want a tool that understands context, connects deeply with your systems, and uses AI to automate tasks without constant babysitting. That sets up a clear set of criteria:
- Pulls message intent using full thread history rather than single-message triggers
- Supports nested conditionals, data transforms, regex filters, and multi-step logic
- Creates tasks with fields like priority, sprint, labels, assignees, and linked resources
- Summarizes long threads with decision points, blockers, follow-ups, and timestamps
- Runs project management automations at scale with queue handling, parallel execution, and no sudden rate limits
- Offers SSO, SCIM provisioning, IP allowlisting, audit logs, and data residency controls
- Includes a visual builder with test mode, version history, and rollback options
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Best Glue AI Alternatives
Here are our picks for the best Glue AI alternatives. 📝
1. ClickUp (Best for teams that want AI + automation with project and task management)
ClickUp is the world’s first Converged AI Workspace. Your tasks, projects, documentation, automations, and AI stay connected in one system, so your team avoids Work Sprawl and moves through planning and execution in a single flow.
Glue AI enhances automation, but it doesn’t run next to your real project data. ClickUp gives you AI, workflows, and project visibility under one roof, which means you make changes once and keep every team aligned without rebuilding context.
Here’s a closer look! 👀
Speed up everyday decisions using Contextual AI
ClickUp BrainGPT strengthens your operational decisions because it understands your workload, dependencies, task history, and cross-team activity. You ask for clarity and get answers that reflect the work your team has already completed.
Suppose you manage operations for a company running several parallel initiatives.
You ask BrainGPT to scan activity across a new implementation project. It reads tasks, comments, and linked docs, then gives you a clear status narrative: what’s on track, which owners need support, and upcoming risks you should review before your next standup.
You move faster because you skip the detective work.
📌 Try this prompt: Review this implementation project. Show current progress, call out risks, and list the next steps I should assign before tomorrow’s review.
Keep processes consistent through automation
Operations teams lose time when routine actions slip through gaps. ClickUp Automation handles those moments so your workflows move forward without manual effort.
For instance, suppose your PMO team manages project intake.
A new request arrives through a ClickUp Form. Automation creates the project task, assigns an owner, sets a due date, and adds a checklist based on project type.
Another automation updates your portfolio dashboard when the intake task reaches approval. You enforce consistency without extra oversight.
Scale your operations using AI agents
ClickUp Agents help you manage large, repetitive workloads without spreading your tools thin. Agents take on routine actions, scan your workspace, and support oversight tasks that normally slow PMO and operations teams.
For example, suppose you oversee a portfolio of 40+ active projects.
You create an Agent that reviews your project dashboards each morning, checks for slipped timelines, and posts a short update inside your weekly review task. Another Agent reads status changes across engineering tasks and prepares a summary you share in your leadership sync.
You gain a support layer that watches your workspace, so you spend your time making decisions instead of hunting for information. Here’s how to build your own:
ClickUp best features
- Keep every discussion tied to strategic work: Talk through tasks, share ideas, and attach decisions directly to deliverables with ClickUp Chat
- Turn scattered inputs into actionable intelligence: Use ClickUp Brain MAX to interpret tasks, chats, and docs, summarize what matters, and guide your next steps across the whole workspace
- Capture quick thoughts without slowing down: Dictate updates, requirements, or meeting takeaways to work 4x faster with ClickUp Talk to Text in Brain MAX
- Bring every tool together: Connect your CRM, ticketing tools, messaging apps, and content systems through ClickUp Integrations, so AI works with full context
- Store team knowledge where work happens: Build internal playbooks, client documents, briefs, and research inside ClickUp Docs so information stays accessible and linked to tasks
ClickUp limitations
- There are limits for AI use on the free plan
ClickUp pricing
free forever
Best for individual users
Free Free
Key Features:
60MB Storage
Unlimited Tasks
Unlimited Free Plan Members
unlimited
Best for small teams
$7 $10
Everything in Free +
Unlimited Storage
Unlimited Folders and Spaces
Unlimited Integrations
business
Best for mid-sized teams
$12 $19
Everything in Unlimited +
Google SSO
Unlimited Message History
Unlimited Mind Maps
enterprise
Best for many large teams
Get a custom demo and see how ClickUp aligns with your goals.
Everything in Business +
White Labeling
Conditional Logic in Forms
Subtasks in Multiple Lists
* Prices when billed annually
The world's most complete work AI, starting at $9 per month
ClickUp Brain is a no Brainer. One AI to manage your work, at a fraction of the cost.
ClickUp ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (10,500+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,500+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about ClickUp?
A happy user put it like this:
🔍 Did You Know? One of the first real neural-network-style models was proposed in 1943 by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts: a tiny ‘artificial neuron’ that laid the mathematical groundwork for what much later became deep learning.
2. Coworker.ai (Best for no-code AI agent building)
Coworker.ai lets you build AI agents without touching a line of code. The visual workflow builder connects your existing tools so agents can pull customer data from your CRM, check inventory in your database, and send updates to Slack in one automated sequence.
You’re essentially teaching agents to handle the repetitive stuff your team does manually: processing support tickets, updating spreadsheets, and qualifying leads. The Glue AI alternative tracks what each agent does through monitoring dashboards, so you can see which tasks got completed and where things went sideways.
Coworker.ai best features
- Schedule agents to run at specific intervals or trigger them based on incoming webhooks from your existing systems
- Export agent performance metrics and task completion logs to analyze bottlenecks in your automated workflows
- Assign different permission levels to team members so they can view, edit, or deploy agents based on their role
- Test agent workflows in sandbox environments before pushing them to production channels
- Roll back to previous agent versions when updates cause unexpected behavior in your automations
Coworker.ai limitations
- The template library offers fewer starting points than mature Glue AI alternatives
- Workflow logic requires some technical thinking, even though you’re not writing code
- Integration options don’t cover as many niche tools as enterprise platforms
Coworker.ai pricing
- Custom pricing
Coworker.ai ratings and reviews
- G2: Not enough reviews
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
🧠 Fun Fact: The concept of Swarm Intelligence, where many simple agents working locally can create complex collective behavior, draws directly from biological observations (ants, termites, bees, bird flocks). In AI, this idea was first formalized in 1989 by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in the context of cellular-robotic systems.
📖 Also Read: How to Prioritize Your Work Tasks
3. Slack (Best for chat-based workflow automation)
With Slack, you can trigger automations when someone drops a specific emoji on a message, mentions a keyword, or posts in a particular channel. A developer on your team can push a commit to GitHub, and Slack automatically creates a thread in your engineering channel, tags relevant people, and adds it to your sprint board.
Plus, Slack’s AI summarizes long threads, so you’re not scrolling through 200 messages to figure out what decision got made. What makes this interesting for technical teams is the API ecosystem. You can pipe data from your internal tools into channels and build custom automations that respond to events across your entire stack.
Slack best features
- Pin critical messages or files to channel headers so new team members immediately see important documentation and links
- Create canvas documents that combine meeting notes, project timelines, and embedded files within a single collaborative space
- Set up channel-specific notification preferences to mute low-priority spaces while staying alert for urgent channels
- Archive inactive channels to declutter your workspace while preserving searchable message history
- Use Slack CLI to deploy and test custom apps locally before distributing them across your organization
Slack limitations
- AI summarization and advanced features require paid plans
- Free tier limits message history, which means you lose context over time
- Automation depth doesn’t match dedicated workflow platforms for complex sequences
Slack pricing
- Free
- Pro: $7.25/month per user
- Business+: $15/month per user
- Enterprise Grid: Custom pricing
Slack ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.5/5 (37,045+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (23,910+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Slack?
Per a G2 review:
Find the best Slack alternatives:
4. Microsoft Teams (Best for Microsoft 365 AI-powered automation integration)
Teams makes sense when your organization already lives in Microsoft 365. Copilot sits inside the interface and can draft messages, generate meeting recaps, or answer questions by searching across your SharePoint documents and Outlook emails. The Power Automate connection means you can build flows that react to Teams activity; someone mentions a deadline in chat, and a task automatically appears in Planner.
Engineering teams can embed custom apps directly into Teams using the Toolkit, which keeps proprietary tools accessible without context switching. Compliance controls are particularly helpful for enterprises navigating regulations; you can establish retention policies, track user activity, and enforce data governance across all channels.
Microsoft Teams best features
- Record training sessions or all-hands meetings and have Teams automatically generate chapters based on topic shifts in the conversation
- Pin tabs for frequently accessed SharePoint sites, Power BI dashboards, or internal tools directly within team channels
- Configure eDiscovery settings to search and export chat data for legal or compliance audits
- Assign moderation permissions in channels so designated members can delete messages or control who posts announcements
- Sync Teams calendar with Outlook to show your availability and automatically decline meeting conflicts
Microsoft Teams limitations
- Copilot licensing costs stack on top of your Microsoft 365 subscription
- The interface gets cluttered once you add multiple tabs and apps to channels
- Performance degrades in channels that accumulate extensive message history, unlike alternatives to Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams pricing
- Free
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $7.20/month per user
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard: $15/month per user
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium: $26.40/month per user
- Microsoft 365 Apps for business: $9.90/month per user
Microsoft Teams ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (16,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (10,000+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Microsoft Teams?
A G2 review shares:
🔍 Did You Know? Even in high-stress or high-stakes environments (like hospitals), better communication practices directly improve teamwork and outcomes.
📖 Also Read: Best Time Management Techniques Proven To Work
5. Google Chat (Best for simple Google Workspace collaboration)
Inside Google Chat, you get spaces for team discussions, direct messages, and basic threading. Gemini AI handles message drafting and conversation summaries, but the real utility shows up in how Chat connects to the rest of Google’s apps. You’re reviewing a spreadsheet and realize you need input from your team. So, you can start a chat directly from that Sheet, and everyone has instant context.
Apps Script lets developers build custom bots that watch for specific keywords and respond automatically, though you’ll need some coding knowledge to set that up. Guest access works well for temporary project collaboration, particularly when you need to bring in external contractors or clients for a defined period.
Google Chat best features
- Pin important spaces to the top of your sidebar so you don’t lose track of active projects in a crowded workspace
- Filter messages by specific people, date ranges, or keywords to find relevant discussions from months ago
- Mention entire spaces using @space to notify everyone subscribed to that conversation thread
- Set out-of-office responses that automatically reply to direct messages when you’re unavailable
- Convert messages into Google Tasks that sync with your existing task list and calendar
Google Chat limitations
- Automation requires custom development or third-party tools for anything beyond the basics
Google Chat pricing
- Free trial
- Starter: $8.40/month per user
- Standard: $16.80/month per user
- Plus: $26.40/month per user
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Google Chat ratings and reviews
- G2: Not enough reviews
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (2,365+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Google Chat?
One Capterra reviewer notes:
📮 ClickUp Insight: When a task gets lost in chat, 41% of workers dig through threads to find it, 22% say it never gets done, and 19% try to recreate it later from memory.
You’re basically working with a system where 40% of discussions are lost to the void. Teams start screenshotting messages, DM’ing reminders, or creating shadow docs to compensate for chat’s fragility.
ClickUp AI, working within ClickUp Chat, changes that dynamic. It automatically surfaces commitments, flags unassigned action items, and connects them to relevant projects. No more lost details. Just a record that keeps pace with the conversation.
6. Mattermost (Best for self-hosted team communication)
Mattermost runs on your own infrastructure, which matters when you can’t let communication data touch external servers. Healthcare companies, defense contractors, and financial institutions use it because they control where messages live and who can access them.
Playbooks guide teams through standardized processes; when your on-call engineer is paged about an outage, Mattermost walks them through your incident response checklist while logging every action. You can plug in AI tools through webhooks and build custom bots that interact in channels.
Mattermost best features
- Configure SSO and SAML authentication to integrate with your existing identity management systems
- Set up dedicated channels for each playbook run so all incident communication stays organized and searchable
- Deploy plugins from the marketplace or build custom ones to extend functionality for your specific workflows
- Export complete message archives in standard formats for compliance reporting or data migration
- Configure IP whitelisting and rate limiting to protect your instance from unauthorized access attempts
Mattermost limitations
- Self-hosting means you need DevOps resources to handle server maintenance, security updates, and scaling
- The third-party integration catalog is smaller than cloud-native chat platforms
Mattermost pricing
- Free trial
- Professional: $10/month per user (billed annually)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
- Enterprise Advanced: Custom pricing
Mattermost ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.3/5 (350+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (165+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Mattermost?
From a Reddit post:
📖 Also Read: We Tested the Best MatterMost Alternatives
7. Rocket.Chat (Best for omnichannel communication needs)
Rocket.Chat combines team messaging with customer-facing communication channels in one platform. You can handle internal team chats while simultaneously managing customer inquiries from WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and live chat widgets. The Glue AI alternative offers both cloud-hosted and self-hosted deployment options, giving you flexibility based on your infrastructure needs.
Real-time translation breaks down language barriers across global teams, automatically converting messages between dozens of languages during conversations. Additionally, the team communication app’s marketplace hosts hundreds of apps and integrations, from CRM systems to help desk tools.
Rocket.Chat best features
- Create custom roles that define exactly what permissions each team member has across channels and administrative functions
- Set up automated triggers that move conversations between agents based on keywords, wait times, or customer priority levels
- Monitor agent performance through analytics dashboards showing response times, resolution rates, and conversation volumes
- Configure message retention policies that automatically delete or archive conversations after specified time periods
- Deploy chatbots that handle common customer queries before routing complex issues to human agents
Rocket.Chat limitations
- The interface can feel cluttered when managing both internal and external communication channels simultaneously
- Omnichannel features require higher-tier plans, limiting access for smaller teams
Rocket.Chat pricing
- Free
- Pro: $8/month per user (billed annually)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Rocket.Chat ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.2/5 (335+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (155+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Rocket.Chat?
Based on a G2 review:
🧠 Fun Fact: One of the earliest autonomous robots, Elmer and Elsie, was built in 1948–49 by neurophysiologist William Grey Walter. These little ‘tortoise’ robots used simple light-sensors and bump-switches (wired to vacuum-tube circuits) to navigate toward light and avoid obstacles.
Here’s a glimpse:
8. Twist (Best for thread-based async communication)
Twist organizes everything into threads instead of real-time channels. Every conversation lives in its own dedicated space, so you’re not watching messages fly by in chronological chaos. This structure cuts down notification fatigue because you respond to threads when it makes sense for your schedule, not immediately when someone posts.
This Glue AI alternative separates urgent DMs from threaded discussions, helping you distinguish between ‘answer this now’ and ‘respond when you can’. Any message converts into a task that shows up in your to-do list, bridging the gap between conversation and action.
Twist best features
- Mark threads as unread after you’ve viewed them, so they stay visible in your inbox until you’re ready to respond properly
- Subscribe to specific threads that matter to your work while ignoring others in the same channel to reduce notification noise
- Attach files up to 100MB directly to thread messages without relying on external file-sharing services
- Export entire threads as PDF documents when you need to share decision context outside the platform
- Set thread reminders that ping you at specific times to follow up on discussions that need your attention later
Twist limitations
- Real-time team collaboration feels deliberately slower than instant messaging platforms
- Integration options are limited compared to mainstream communication tools
Twist pricing
- Free
- Unlimited: $8/month per user
Twist ratings and reviews
- G2: 4/5 (20+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (35+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about Twist?
According to a G2 review:
9. CrewAI (Best for multi-agent AI orchestration)
CrewAI gives you a Python framework for building teams of AI agents that actually work together. You define agents with specific roles: one researches competitive pricing, another drafts marketing copy, and a third reviews for brand compliance.
The framework supports different workflow patterns: sequential (agents work in order), parallel (agents work simultaneously), or hierarchical (a manager agent coordinates worker agents). You can point different agents at different LLM providers, mixing ChatGPT for complex reasoning with faster, cheaper models for routine tasks.
Memory systems let agents learn from previous work, so they improve at their specific roles over time rather than starting fresh with each task.
CrewAI best features
- Define custom task dependencies that control which agents must complete their work before others can start their assigned steps
- Configure agent backstories that shape how they approach problems and communicate with other agents in the crew
- Override default agent behaviors for specific tasks when you need different reasoning approaches for edge cases
- Export crew execution logs that show the full conversation history between AI agent examples and their decision-making process
CrewAI limitations
- Python programming knowledge is required to configure agent systems and workflows effectively
- Documentation leans heavily on code examples, which can be challenging for teams new to AI orchestration
- Multi-agent interactions become difficult to debug when agents coordinate in unexpected ways
CrewAI pricing
- Custom pricing
CrewAI ratings and reviews
- G2: Not enough reviews
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (45+ reviews)
What are real-life users saying about CrewAI?
According to feedback shared on G2:
🔍 Did You Know? The quality of communication matters far more than frequency. Teams got more done when they spent time sharing ideas clearly and thoughtfully, rather than just talking often.
10. AutoGen (Best for conversational multi-agent problem solving)
AutoGen, developed by Microsoft Research, focuses on agents that solve problems through dialogue rather than rigid workflows.
Agents debate approaches, challenge each other’s reasoning, and negotiate solutions through back-and-forth conversation. This matters for complex tasks where the solution path isn’t clear upfront; agents can explore different approaches and critique each other’s logic until they reach consensus.
The AI agent tool executes Python code during conversations, so they can run calculations, analyze data, or test hypotheses without leaving the discussion. You can jump into agent conversations at any point to provide guidance or make judgment calls, keeping humans in control when needed.
AutoGen best features
- Set maximum conversation turns to prevent agents from debating indefinitely when they can’t reach consensus
- Configure code execution sandboxes that isolate agent-generated code from your production environment for security
- Define termination conditions that end agent conversations when they achieve specific goals or meet success criteria
- Cache agent responses to avoid redundant API calls when agents discuss similar problems multiple times
- Implement custom speaker selection functions that control which agent speaks next based on conversation context
AutoGen limitations
- Extended multi-agent conversations consume significant tokens, increasing API costs quickly
- Moving from development to production deployment requires additional infrastructure beyond the framework
AutoGen pricing
- Free (Open-source)
AutoGen ratings and reviews
- G2: Not enough reviews
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
What are real-life users saying about AutoGen?
A Reddit user writes:
📖 Also Read: Productivity Hacks and Tips for You
Summarize this article for me pleaseRaise the Bar With ClickUp
Teams evolve fast, and the tools that once worked smoothly start feeling tight when the work gets heavier, the stakes get higher, and everyone wants cleaner ways to communicate and automate.
Exploring Glue AI alternatives becomes more about finding something that fits the way your team moves.
ClickUp gives you that flexibility. You get AI that understands real project context, automation that follows your processes, and agents that handle repetitive oversight without adding another layer of complexity. Everything stays connected, so your team works with clarity.
Sign up for ClickUp today and build a workspace that grows with you. ✅
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
