Top 10 Glue Alternatives for HR Teams

Glue promised to be the fix for all your employee engagement issues: the ‘glue’ that held everyone together. 

But after a few sessions, cracks started to show. The learning curve hinders adoption across teams, dashboards lack depth, and there’s an absence of the advanced features you need as the organization scales. 😖

Many teams exploring Glue alternatives have reached the same conclusion: it’s good, but it’s not quite there. 

So, here’s a lineup of some of our picks that offer better performance, more customization, and a smoother user experience. 🎯

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Top Glue Alternatives at a Glance

Here’s a table comparing all Glue alternatives in this blog. 📊

*Please check the tool’s website for the latest pricing.

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What Should You Look for in Glue Alternatives?

When looking for Glue alternatives, here’s what to look for. 👀

• Real-time feedback and surveys: The ability to conduct short, frequent, and often anonymous surveys to quickly gauge employee sentiment and identify issues as they arise, rather than relying solely on annual reviews
• Comprehensive survey customization: Look for platforms that offer customizable survey builders and a library of research-backed question templates tailored to specific teams, departments, or lifecycle stages (e.g., onboarding, exit)
• Sentiment analysis: Tools that use AI to analyze open-ended feedback and comments to understand overall employee morale and detect potential issues before they escalate
• Multi-level recognition system: The platform should facilitate both peer-to-peer recognition (e.g., social feeds, “kudos” cards) and top-down recognition from managers and leaders to foster a culture of appreciation
• Goal setting and tracking: Features that allow employees to set personal goals (like OKRs or SMART goals) and align them with broader company objectives, with ongoing progress tracking and regular check-ins
• Actionable insights and AI-driven recommendations: Dashboards and reports should provide clear, data-driven insights and suggested action plans, rather than just raw data, to help managers and HR make informed decisions
• Seamless integration: The tool must integrate with existing HR Information Systems (HRIS), payroll, and daily communication tools to ensure it becomes a natural part of daily workflows and avoids data silos
• Mobile accessibility: A user-friendly, mobile-optimized experience is essential for engaging remote, hybrid, and frontline workers who may not always be at a desk

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The 10 Best Glue Alternatives

Looking for a smarter way to engage your employees? Here are the best Glue alternatives that bring context, team communication, and automation together. 🎯

1. ClickUp (Best for AI-driven task management, team collaboration, and workflow management)

Sign up to ClickUp Chat today!

Work today is broken.

Our projects, knowledge, and communication are scattered across disconnected tools that slow us down.

ClickUp fixes this with the everything app for work that combines project, knowledge, and chat in one place—all powered by AI that helps you work faster and smarter.

Let’s explore how ClickUp for HR teams helps bring teams together and keep them connected. 

Break communication siloes with ClickUp Chat

ClickUp Chat makes team communication easier by embedding conversations directly into your workflow. It gives you two ways to connect: Public or private Channels for team chats, and Direct Messages for one-on-one or small group chats.

You can instantly create a ClickUp Task from any message, so to-dos never get lost. Just hover over a message, hit ‘Create Task,’ and voilà. It’s added to your workspace, complete with context, assignees, and the right List location.

Need visibility beyond a single message? Choose from four types of Posts: Announcement, Discussion, Idea, and Update, to flexibly structure communication however you need. 

Explore its advanced features: 

Catch and take action with ClickUp Brain

ClickUp Brain, the platform’s AI-powered assistant, helps your workflow move forward, turning every chat into insight, alignment, and action.

Been away for a bit? The Catch Me Up feature helps you hit the ground running. Choose a time frame and instantly see everything you missed, neatly summarized. 

ClickUp Brain’s AI Project Manager instantly summarizes what’s happened, highlighting key updates, decisions, and next steps based on simple natural language prompts.

And when it’s time to take action, just type @Brain or @My Brain to summarize chat context, create related tasks, generate replies, or continue a conversation with smart AI follow-ups.

Streamline communication with ClickUp Ambient Agents

ClickUp Ambient Agents are smart assistants that live inside your workspace, helping you automate routine tasks. 

You can choose from Prebuilt Agents for core productivity tasks or create your own Custom Agents tailored to your team’s workflow.

For example, a Prebuilt Answers Agent responds to team queries using verified workspace data.

Eliminate AI Sprawl with ClickUp Brain MAX

ClickUp Brain MAX is an AI desktop app that connects directly to your strategic work (tasks, docs, chats, and files) so every response is grounded in real context.

This unified AI hub replaces multiple disconnected tools. Its contextual AI leverages ClickUp’s work graph, understanding how tasks, projects, meetings, and connected apps relate to each other.

That means your AI assistant knows exactly what’s happening across your workspace, helping you make decisions faster and eliminate ‘AI sprawl.’ 

Brain MAX also brings multi-model AI support, allowing you to choose from leading models like ChatGPT, Claude Sonnet, DeepSeek, or Gemini, for every scenario.

ClickUp best features

• Search across your workspace: Find tasks, docs, messages, and files across ClickUp and connected tools like Google Drive or GitHub with ClickUp Enterprise Search
• Keep a finger on the pulse: Run regular surveys using ClickUp Forms to assess employee engagement levels and identify issues
• Centralize company knowledge and policies: Make important policies, processes, and information easy for people to find by consolidating them within ClickUp Knowledge Management
• Track the metrics that matter: Use ClickUp Dashboards to track engagement metrics, survey results, and participation in HR initiatives
• Run smarter meetings with automatic summaries: Start quick audio and video calls within ClickUp to collaborate in real time. You also get summaries, transcripts, and next steps instantly with ClickUp SyncUps
• Unify your tools and data: Connect apps like Slack, Google Calendar, GitHub, and Figma through ClickUp Integrations to keep your updates and workflows perfectly in sync
• Keep conversations actionable: Tag teammates, link related tasks or Docs, and turn chats into tracked, visible actions with @mentions

ClickUp limitations

• With so many key features and views, it can take time to fine-tune ClickUp to match your team’s workflow

ClickUp pricing

ClickUp ratings and reviews

•  G2: 4.7/5 (10,000+ reviews)
•  Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,000+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about ClickUp?

One reviewer sums it up nicely:

2. Lattice (Best for AI-powered performance management, talent development, and employee engagement)

Designed to help HR leaders, managers, and executives strengthen employee engagement, Lattice combines analytics, feedback, and automation.

Its integrated HRIS connects with communication models that support performance reviews, goal-setting, and employee coaching, enabling teams to act on real-time insights.

For organizations evaluating Glue alternatives, Lattice stands out for its People + AI approach, pairing human understanding with intelligent automation. It helps managers deliver personalized coaching, HR teams handle repetitive queries, and executives make data-backed decisions on pay and performance.

LatticeTalks best features

• Automate HR queries with the Lattice AI Agent to handle leave policies, benefits, and employee requests
• Facilitate career growth with personalized coaching, goal tracking, and progress analytics
• Build transparent review cycles using AI to highlight strengths and development areas objectively
• Empower managers with 1:1 tools, agenda builders, and automated action tracking

LatticeTalks limitations

• Certain administrative workflows require multiple steps, such as switching between admin mode and user mode to perform different tasks
• Historical performance and feedback data can be difficult to access or analyze intuitively, complicating decision-making for managers and HR

LatticeTalks pricing

• Talent Management: $11/month per user
• Engagement Add-on: $4/month per user
• Grow Add-on: $4/month per user
• Compensation Add-on: $6/month per user

LatticeTalks ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (3,500+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 (150+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about LatticeTalks?

Real users share their experience:

3. Culture Amp (Best for data-driven employee engagement and performance insights)

Culture Amp is a ‘decision intelligence’ engine that helps organizations understand and improve how their people work, grow, and stay engaged. It combines continuous feedback, chat platforms, and behavioral science to turn employee sentiment into measurable business outcomes. 

The platform’s intuitive dashboards reveal what drives productivity, retention, and belonging, giving leaders the clarity to make confident, people-first decisions.

Drawing from over 1.5 billion data points, it translates patterns of engagement and performance into actionable insights. From running surveys to analyzing global benchmarks, Culture Amp helps teams to build high-performance cultures at scale.

Culture Amp best features

• Launch AI Coach to deliver personalized, science-backed coaching insights that boost performance and growth
• Collect feedback at scale through 40+ customizable communication plan templates with AI comment analysis
• Connect HR data with third-party solutions across leading HRIS systems for faster, more accurate insights
• Accelerate decision-making with AI-driven recommendations and predictive insights powered by People Science

Culture Amp limitations

• Dashboards are visually clear, but getting into detailed trends can be time-consuming
• Frequent alerts and notifications can feel overwhelming, especially for managers of large enterprises

Culture Amp pricing

• Custom pricing

Culture Amp ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.5/5 (1,500+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (100+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Culture Amp?

A user sums it up perfectly:

4. Vantage Circle (Best for centralized employee engagement, recognition, and wellness)

Vantage Circle consolidates recognition, wellness, perks, and feedback, using behavioral science with AI to make engagement more personal. You can automate milestone celebrations with birthday and service anniversary points, digital yearbooks, and rewards.

The platform helps you recognize achievements instantly through peer-to-peer, social, or panel-based recognition programs.

From syncing with your existing HR systems to offering region-specific reward catalogs, Vantage Circle helps companies create a people-first culture.

Vantage Circle best features

• Promote wellness holistically with fitness tracking, mindfulness sessions, and corporate challenges through Vantage Fit
• Launch quick feedback loops using AI-powered, fully anonymous employee surveys via Vantage Pulse
• Offer global perks and cashback with curated discounts from 1000+ brands through Vantage Perks
• Access actionable insights on engagement, performance, and sentiment using real-time analytics dashboards

Vantage Circle limitations

• The rewards catalog can feel limited or repetitive after prolonged use
• Not all points can be utilized in a single transaction, and a convenience fee may be charged for certain redemptions

Vantage Circle pricing

• Custom pricing

Vantage Circle ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (10,000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (5,000+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Vantage Circle?

A user explains it best:

🚀 ClickUp Advantage: If your team chats are full of ‘Hey, can someone remind me about this later?’, you must use ClickUp Automations to set up Chat Automations that deliver reminders, updates, or status alerts automatically.

Setting one up takes just a few clicks:

1. Open your Chat Channel and hit the ⚡ Automate button
2. Choose Create Automation
3. Set your Trigger, Conditions, and Actions (like sending a message when a task status changes)
4. Click Create, and you’re done

5. Nectar (Best for peer-to-peer recognition, rewards, and employee appreciation programs)

Designed for HR leaders, managers, and distributed teams, Nectar combines recognition, team communication, and customized challenges.

As an alternative to Glue, Nectar takes a more people-centric approach. You can celebrate achievements, reward milestones, and tie recognition directly to company values. The platform also supports internal communications, so announcements, updates, and shoutouts happen in team-wide channels. 

You can also track engagement and cultural health with detailed dashboards and analytics that show recognition activity, participation rates, and impact by team or department.

The platform also offers a flexible rewards catalog where team members can redeem points for gift cards, company swag, or custom perks. 

Nectar best features

• Automate recognition and rewards through the Recognition & Rewards module
• Launch company-wide Nomination Programs to celebrate outstanding contributions
• Personalize experiences with Value-Linked Recognition Tags that tie shoutouts to company principles
• Create engaging announcements with the drag-and-drop Communication Builder

Nectar limitations

• Limited integration with broader HR and workflow systems can make it harder to embed the tool into complex tech stacks
• Notifications and communication channels may feel cluttered or overwhelming

Nectar pricing

• Custom pricing

Nectar ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (7,000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,000+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Nectar?

Here’s a snippet of what users have to say about Nectar:

6. Coworker.ai (Best for enterprise teams automating complex workflows with AI memory)

Coworker.ai is built to think and act with the context of your company. Designed for tech teams, product managers, and AI-driven organizations, it connects securely to your internal tools and data to create what it calls your ‘company brain.’ Powered by its OM1 memory architecture, it handles complex, cross-functional work.

You can ask it to identify at-risk sales deals, summarize code commits, draft technical documents, or even coordinate updates across Jira, Slack, and GitHub.

Ask complex questions like ‘Which customers are likely to churn?’ or ‘What features are shipping this week?’ and get precise, contextual answers. 

Coworker.ai best features

• Analyze, plan, and execute complex tasks with Deep Work Mode across 40+ integrated apps
• Store and recall context across 120+ dimensions, including projects, teams, goals, and communications
• Get automatic updates on team progress, blockers, and performance across connected systems

Coworker.ai limitations

• It relies on large-scale data ingestion; companies with scattered or siloed sources may struggle to build an effective ‘company memory’
• Requires setup across 40+ apps and integration into multiple systems before full value is realized

Coworker.ai pricing

• Pro: $29.99/month per user
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Coworker.ai ratings and reviews

• G2: Not enough reviews
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

7. Read AI (Best for real-time meeting analytics, engagement tracking, and conversation insights)

Read AI prevents the confusion you feel after a meeting where you zoned out.

It’s an AI productivity copilot that joins your digital workspace, attending meetings, scanning emails, and syncing chats to summarize discussions, extract action items, and surface insights. The platform works within Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Gmail, and Slack.

Its Search Copilot helps you instantly find what was said in a meeting, promised in an email, or mentioned in a chat thread. Meanwhile, AI agents like Monday Briefing, End-of-Week Agents, and Post-Meeting Recap personalize your workflow, delivering tailored summaries, weekly insights, and suggested next steps.

Read AI best features

• Capture discussions with Meeting Assistant for summaries, transcripts, and playback highlights
• Eliminate communication challenges in the workplace through Speaker Coach with engagement metrics and talk-time analysis
• Track progress with the For You Page, which is your personal dashboard for meeting topics and recurring themes
• Boost team productivity with Optimization Reports that recommend better scheduling and meeting habits

Read AI limitations

• Summaries and AI-generated notes can be too general or miss subtle conversation details, especially in fast-paced or in-person discussions
• Functionality is heavily dependent on integrations with specific platforms like Zoom, limiting versatility for teams wanting an instant messaging app

Read AI pricing

• Free
• Pro: $19.75/month per user
• Enterprise: $29.75/month per user
• Enterprise+: $39.75/month per user

Read AI ratings and reviews

• G2: 4/5 (30+ reviews)
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

What are real-life users saying about Read AI?

Here’s what a user had to share:

Bonus: Over 60% of our survey respondents spend more than an hour a day typing, and 36.75% regularly feel discomfort or pain in their hands.

Typing fatigue isn’t just an annoying side effect of the way we work. It’s a productivity killer.
But it’s easily fixable.

Brain MAX’s Talk-to-Text is your shortcut to a healthier workday.

Dictate updates, brainstorm ideas, or meeting notes hands-free, and give your wrists (and your focus) a break.

8. Patchwork (Best for flexible workforce scheduling, shift management, and compliance tracking)

Healthcare doesn’t stop for admin, and Patchwork was built with that reality in mind. Designed specifically for NHS clinicians and healthcare teams, it offers an intuitive platform for managing shifts, rotas, and workforce planning.

From booking locum shifts to managing leave, exception reports, and payments, the Patchwork platform gives you full control over your work. It connects hospitals, departments, and agency partners through a collaborative staffing network, making flexible work safe and compliant.

Clinicians can use this tool for instant messaging at work, book shifts, view their teams’ rotas, and get paid without delay.

Patchwork best features

• Manage locum shifts effortlessly with Patchwork Bank and automated payment tracking
• Collaborate across NHS organizations using Collaborative Bank with a single onboarding process
• Plan and update rotas, leave, and exception reports through Patchwork Rota
• Simplify workflows, agency staffing, and cost visibility with Agency Manager

Patchwork limitations

• It relies on NHS trust adoption, making its applicability limited outside the UK healthcare system
• Primarily focused on temporary staffing and shift management, which may not fully address other workforce aspects, like full-time recruitment or long-term workforce planning

Patchwork pricing

• Custom pricing

Patchwork ratings and reviews

• G2: Not enough reviews
• Capterra: Not enough reviews

9. Slack (Best for AI-powered team collaboration and connected workflows)

Slack blends communication, AI assistance, and workflow automation into a single workspace where teams, tools, and projects connect seamlessly.

With Slack AI, teams can instantly summarize missed conversations, extract project insights, and search across entire company knowledge bases.

For tech teams and product leaders exploring Glue alternatives, this team communication app provides a user-friendly, clean interface enhanced by intelligent agents like Agentforce and Slackbot. These AI companions can handle repetitive tasks, such as updating sales proposals, setting reminders, and surfacing insights from connected tools like Salesforce, Asana, and Google.

Slack best features

• Automate custom workflows with Workflow Builder to create time-saving automations directly within channels
• Collaborate in Channels to bring conversations, files, and tools into one transparent workspace
• Host live discussions using Huddles for quick, audio or video-based collaboration
• Record and share updates with Clips to communicate asynchronously

Slack limitations

• Searching old messages and files can be time-consuming and inefficient, unlike Slack competitors
• The desktop application may require frequent reloading or logging in again, causing usability frustration

Slack pricing

• Free
• Pro: $4.38/month per user
• Business: $9/month per user
• Enterprise+: Custom pricing

Slack ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.5/5 (36,000+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (23,000+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Slack?

Here’s what one user found most useful:

10. Mattermost (Best for secure, self-hosted collaboration in mission-critical environments)

Mattermost is a secure, open-source collaboration platform built for growing teams that operate in high-security, compliance-driven, and mission-critical environments. It’s self-hosted, meaning you have complete control over your data, infrastructure, and privacy.

The platform combines real-time messaging, file sharing, and voice calls with integrated playbooks and DevSecOps workflows.

You can collaborate through persistent channels, automate tasks with slash commands and bots, and connect with tools like GitHub, Jenkins, and Jira.

Mattermost best features

• Run standardized workflows using integrated Playbooks for incident response and release management
• Summarize meetings with AI using self-hosted Mattermost Agents that preserve sensitive data 
• Enable role-based access control (RBAC) and advanced security configurations for sensitive HR processes

Mattermost limitations

• Search functionality can be basic and less effective in finding specific messages or code snippets, unlike Mattermost alternatives
• The volume of code formatting requirements (e.g., markdown for code snippets) can be cumbersome for technical users who frequently share scripts or queries

Mattermost pricing

• Professional: $10/month per user (Billed annually)
• Enterprise: Custom pricing
• Enterprise Advanced: Custom pricing

Mattermost ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.3/5 (300+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.4/5 (100+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Mattermost?

Here’s a quick take from a verified user:

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Fixing the Cracks in Employee Engagement With ClickUp

Glue aimed to be the cohesive force for your team, but as we’ve seen, true engagement doesn’t happen in a silo. It happens where the work gets done.

When you separate your engagement tools from your daily workflow, you create friction—the very thing you are trying to eliminate. The alternatives listed above all offer robust solutions: Lattice and Culture Amp are powerhouses for deep HR analytics, while Slack and Mattermost excel at keeping lines of communication open.

However, the ideal alternative shouldn’t just measure engagement; it should facilitate it by removing barriers. If you’re looking for a tool that doesn’t just “glue” things together but fundamentally integrates your people, processes, and communication, ClickUp is the clear choice.

Sign up to ClickUp for free, and it just might be the missing link your team’s been looking for. 🔗

Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.

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