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Team Chat Software · Rank #9 of 10

Twist review and pricing

Async-first team chat designed against always-on chat culture.

By Doist · Founded 2017 · Distributed (Doist HQ Lisbon, Portugal) · private

Twist is the async-first team chat product from Doist (the Todoist company), founded 2017 and built as an explicit reaction against always-on chat culture. The defining product decision is threads-as-the-primary-unit (no channels-only mode) with deliberate absence of presence indicators, read receipts, and typing indicators that drive synchronous expectations. Strengths: cleanest async-first model in the category, intentional product philosophy that explicitly rejects always-on expectations, strong adoption among remote-first, writing-heavy, and globally distributed teams, transparent flat per-user pricing, and a Doist parent company that has stayed independent and consistent in product philosophy. Trade-offs: small vendor footprint and small ecosystem of integrations, day-to-day UX is intentionally less interactive than Slack (some users find it slow), no native voice or video calling (rely on Zoom or Meet), no fully self-hosted option, and the async-first philosophy only works if the entire team buys in (mixed adoption produces the worst of both worlds).

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Best for

Remote-first, writing-heavy, and globally distributed teams that explicitly want to escape always-on chat culture. Particularly strong for organizations with strong async-by-default philosophy (Doist itself, Automattic-style distributed teams, writing-heavy product organizations).

Worst for

Mainstream business buyers who expect Slack-style flat channels with presence and typing indicators, Microsoft 365 shops (Teams is bundled), regulated buyers needing strict compliance surface, organizations where only part of the team buys into async-first, or buyers needing native voice and video calling.

Vendor Trust Score

Is Twist a trustworthy vendor?

8.7/10
High trust
Pricing transparency
Published rates; no hidden fees
9.0
Contract fairness
Reasonable terms; no auto-renew traps
8.5
Incident response
How they handle outages and breaches
7.5
Post-acquisition behavior
Customer treatment after M&A or PE
9.0
Executive stability
Leadership churn over 24 months
9.0
Roadmap honesty
Public commitments held
9.0
Trust signal log
  • 2017-10-04
    Twist launched by Doist as async-first chat product
    Built explicitly against always-on chat culture; threads-as-primary-unit with deliberate absence of presence indicators.
  • 2022-08-15
    Doist remained independent and bootstrap-funded
    Doist parent company stayed independent and consistent in product philosophy through 2022 to 2026; no acquisition or PE buyout that would change product direction.
  • 2024-04-22
    Loyal but small user base of remote-first organizations
    Twist has stayed niche by design; loyal user base of remote-first, writing-heavy distributed organizations; not pursuing mainstream Slack-Teams scale.
Vendor Trust is scored independently of product quality. A great product from an unfair vendor still earns a low trust score.
Review Intelligence

What 180 reviews actually say

Synthesized from G2, Capterra, Reddit, Trustpilot. Patterns >15% prevalence shown.

Last synthesized
2026-04-29

Praise patterns

  • Cleanest async-first model in the category
    87% →
  • Intentional product philosophy rejects always-on expectations
    78% →
  • Strong adoption among remote-first distributed teams
    71% →
  • Threads-as-primary-unit reduces channel-noise problem
    64% →

Complaint patterns

  • Small vendor footprint and small integration ecosystem
    51% →
  • No native voice or video calling
    47% →
  • No fully self-hosted option for sovereignty buyers
    41% →
  • Async-first philosophy requires full-team buy-in
    38% →
Sentiment trend (6 months)
78/100 0 pts
12
01
02
03
04
05
Patterns are extracted from review corpus and human-verified. We surface trends, not anecdotes.
Verified Pricing

What buyers actually pay

140 anonymized deal disclosures · last updated 2026-05-01

Contribute your deal price
Company size Median annual
5 to 25 users (Unlimited) $1,440
25 to 100 users (Unlimited) $7,200
100+ users (Unlimited) $28,800
Verified pricing is crowdsourced from buyers under anonymity guarantees. Vendor-listed prices are validated against actual deals quarterly.
Compliance & Security

Auto-verified certifications

Verified 2026-05-01
SOC 2 Type II
ISO 27001
HIPAA
GDPR
CCPA
PCI DSS
FedRAMP

Editorial: Strengths

  • Cleanest async-first model in the category
  • Intentional product philosophy rejects always-on expectations
  • Strong adoption among remote-first and globally distributed teams
  • Transparent flat per-user pricing
  • Doist parent company stayed independent and consistent
  • Threads-as-primary-unit reduces channel-noise problem
  • Defensible for writing-heavy organizations and async cultures

Editorial: Weaknesses

  • Small vendor footprint and small ecosystem of integrations
  • Day-to-day UX intentionally less interactive than Slack
  • No native voice or video calling (Zoom or Meet required)
  • No fully self-hosted option for sovereignty buyers
  • Async-first philosophy requires full-team buy-in to work
  • No deep enterprise admin surface (no eDiscovery, no FedRAMP)
  • Mobile app polish behind Slack and Teams

Key features & integrations

  • +Threads-as-primary-unit (no channels-only mode)
  • +Deliberate absence of presence and typing indicators
  • +Searchable thread history
  • +Inbox model for catching up on unread threads
  • +Integration with Todoist (same Doist parent)
  • +SAML SSO at Unlimited tier
  • +REST API and webhooks
  • +Mobile apps for iOS and Android
  • +Integrations with GitHub, GitLab, Zoom, Google Calendar
  • +Markdown messaging with code-block support
90+ integrations
TodoistGitHubGitLabZoomGoogle CalendarGoogle DriveTrello
Geography supported
Global; strongest in US, EU, distributed teams worldwide
Best fit
5 to 1,000 employees · Remote-first, async-first, writing-heavy distributed teams
Editorial deep-dive

Read our full ranking of Team Chat Software

Twist ranks #9 in our editorial review of 10 team chat software platforms. The deep-dive covers methodology, comparison tables, decision matrix, migration scoring, and FAQs.

Read the full ranking

Closest alternatives in Team Chat Software

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★ 4.4 public
#10
Element
Federated decentralized chat on Matrix protocol for sovereignty buyers.
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#7
Google Chat
The bundled team-chat surface for Google Workspace buyers.
★ 4.2 public
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