Replacing Donut on Microsoft Teams? 7 alternatives compared
Donut was built for Slack, and on Microsoft Teams it does less. Its Teams app documents only Intros (random pairings with Outlook scheduling), while Watercooler, Celebrations, Shoutouts and Journeys are documented for Slack. If your organization runs on Teams and wants onboarding buddies, mentoring, surveys or reporting next to coffee chats, here are seven tools worth a look, with their prices and their limits.
Based on public information as of By the RandomCoffee team
The short answer
- A large organization on Teams that needs coffee chats, onboarding buddies and mentoring with SOC 2, SSO and HRIS sync: RandomCoffee
- A dedicated coffee chat app for Teams and Slack, free for up to 24 active users: CoffeePals
- A formal mentoring program run by HR or L&D, with goals and cohorts: Together
- The lowest price per user, for a team without strict security requirements: Alfy by BuddiesHR
- Free random intros for one Teams team, with Outlook scheduling: Donut
How we compared them
We started from the tools named in ten published lists of Donut alternatives, kept the ones that actually match people (not recognition, trivia or polling apps) and have a live Microsoft Teams app, and checked each one against the same six criteria. Every fact about a third-party tool, ratings included, comes from its own public pages or its Microsoft Marketplace listing.
- Microsoft Teams depth: an official app, and what employees and admins can actually do inside Teams
- Program formats: coffee chats, onboarding buddies, mentoring, cross-team networking
- Security: SOC 2, ISO 27001, SSO and provisioning, where data is hosted
- HRIS integrations: automatic sync of employee data for matching rules
- Public pricing: the entry price with its unit, copied from the vendor's pricing page
- Setup: free plan or trial, and how quickly a team can launch a first program
At a glance
| Tool | Best for | Teams | Slack | Security | Price from |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RandomCoffee | Large organizations running several connection programs in Microsoft Teams | Official app (Microsoft Marketplace WA200004991): matches, reminders, booking, surveys, broadcasts and program setup inside Teams | Official Slack app (Slack Marketplace); every program also runs by email | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, SSO (SAML 2.0), SCIM, GDPR ready, data hosting in the US or the EU | Free plan (one program); Pro from $19 per month billed annually for the smallest user tier; Enterprise on quote |
| CoffeePals | Coffee chat specialist built for Teams | Official app, Microsoft 365 Certified (Microsoft Marketplace WA200003040), 4.3/5 from 34 ratings, updated September 2026 | Yes (Slack Marketplace app) | SOC 2 Type 2 (report under NDA from Pro); SSO with Entra ID or SAML 2.0 on Enterprise; ISO 27001: Not publicly listed for CoffeePals itself; hosting on AWS in the US | Free up to 24 active users; Pro from $49 per month billed annually ($59 monthly) for 1 to 25 active users |
| Together | Formal mentoring programs run by HR or L&D | Official app that Together says brings every feature into Teams (Microsoft Marketplace WA200004731), 4.5/5 from 140 ratings; requires a Together account | Notifications only (new matches, upcoming sessions) | SOC 2 Type II; SAML SSO on all plans; ISO 27001: Not publicly listed; Google Cloud hosting, region: Not publicly listed | Custom pricing on quote, billed on actively matched users, implementation and support included |
| LEAD | Flat monthly pricing with onboarding check-ins | Official app (Microsoft Marketplace WA200001572), 5.0/5 from 3 ratings; listing last updated September 2023 | Yes | LEAD's pages differ on SOC 2 (a SOC 2 process under way on its trust page, 'SOC 2 compliant' on its virtual coffee page); SOC 2 report: Not publicly listed; GDPR claimed; SAML not supported, per its Slack Marketplace listing | Free up to 24 people per round; Standard from $49 per month billed annually ($59 monthly) for 1 to 23 active members |
| Alfy by BuddiesHR | Lowest price per user | Official app (Microsoft Marketplace WA200012165, published as The Jeffrey Company), 5.0/5 from 2 ratings, updated September 2026; not supported in shared channels | Yes, same app | Not SOC 2 certified, per BuddiesHR (built according to SOC 2 principles); SAML not supported, per its Slack Marketplace listing; data in AWS Paris and Hetzner Germany | $1 per user per month billed annually (one app), $1.25 billed monthly; free under 10 users; 30-day trial |
| Dewdropz | Organizations that run only on Microsoft Teams | Teams-only app (Microsoft Marketplace WA200003267), 5.0/5 from 11 ratings; listing updated June 2024 | No | Not publicly listed | $3 per active user per month, billed monthly, with a monthly minimum; 14-day free trial |
| CultureBot | Lightweight all-in-one engagement bot | Official app (Microsoft Marketplace WA200008374), 4.8/5 from 5 ratings, updated October 2026 | Yes | Not publicly listed | Free plan (celebrations only); intros from Standard at $50 per month billed annually (team-size tier shown for 24 users) |
1. RandomCoffee
Our solution- Best for
- Large organizations running several connection programs in Microsoft Teams
- What it does
- RandomCoffee is an employee connection platform for coffee chats, onboarding buddies, mentoring (including reverse mentoring), cross-team networking and ERGs, with surveys, broadcasts, pages and analytics in the same place. In Microsoft Teams, employees receive their matches and reminders, accept, book a slot, pause or answer a survey without leaving Teams, and HR admins set up programs in Teams or in the web app. Trimble runs 17 RandomCoffee programs in parallel and has created 10,000+ one-to-one connections; in total, 1,250+ organizations in more than 30 countries use RandomCoffee.
- Teams & Slack
- Microsoft Teams: Official app (Microsoft Marketplace WA200004991): matches, reminders, booking, surveys, broadcasts and program setup inside Teams Slack: Official Slack app (Slack Marketplace); every program also runs by email
- Security
- SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, SSO (SAML 2.0), SCIM, GDPR ready, data hosting in the US or the EU
- Pricing
- Free plan (one program); Pro from $19 per month billed annually for the smallest user tier; Enterprise on quote
- Limitations
-
- Fewer public reviews than some competitors: the RandomCoffee Teams listing on Microsoft Marketplace shows a single rating.
- More platform than a small team needs if it only wants random coffee chats; a lighter bot can be quicker to set up.
- SSO is on the Enterprise plan; HRIS sync and SCIM start on Pro.
2. CoffeePals
- Best for
- Coffee chat specialist built for Teams
- What it does
- CoffeePals automates coffee chats and connection programs inside Microsoft Teams and Slack, from random pairings to onboarding buddies, mentoring and CEO coffee lotteries. Paid plans include 35+ program templates, and the Max plan adds anonymous pulse surveys and AI summaries. It is the tool most often named in the published Donut-for-Teams lists we reviewed.
- Teams & Slack
- Microsoft Teams: Official app, Microsoft 365 Certified (Microsoft Marketplace WA200003040), 4.3/5 from 34 ratings, updated September 2026 Slack: Yes (Slack Marketplace app)
- Security
- SOC 2 Type 2 (report under NDA from Pro); SSO with Entra ID or SAML 2.0 on Enterprise; ISO 27001: Not publicly listed for CoffeePals itself; hosting on AWS in the US
- Pricing
- Free up to 24 active users; Pro from $49 per month billed annually ($59 monthly) for 1 to 25 active users
- Limitations
-
- SSO is Enterprise-only, and HRIS user import requires the Max plan or above.
- Data is hosted on AWS in the US (us-east-1); EU hosting option: Not publicly listed.
- CoffeePals says participants are notified in Teams or Slack; participation by email: Not publicly listed.
3. Together
- Best for
- Formal mentoring programs run by HR or L&D
- What it does
- Together is mentoring software: 1:1, group, peer, reverse and ERG mentoring, plus Colleague Connect for onboarding buddies and a separate Coffee Chats product. Matching is configurable with HRIS data, and a Health Monitor flags pairs that are inactive or poorly rated. Absorb Software, an LMS vendor, acquired Together in December 2024.
- Teams & Slack
- Microsoft Teams: Official app that Together says brings every feature into Teams (Microsoft Marketplace WA200004731), 4.5/5 from 140 ratings; requires a Together account Slack: Notifications only (new matches, upcoming sessions)
- Security
- SOC 2 Type II; SAML SSO on all plans; ISO 27001: Not publicly listed; Google Cloud hosting, region: Not publicly listed
- Pricing
- Custom pricing on quote, billed on actively matched users, implementation and support included
- Limitations
-
- Pricing is on quote, and a free plan or self-serve trial is not publicly listed: buying starts with a demo.
- Built around formal mentoring; Coffee Chats is a separate product with single-session matches.
- On Slack, Together documents notifications only.
4. LEAD
- Best for
- Flat monthly pricing with onboarding check-ins
- What it does
- LEAD.bot, the app made by LEAD, is a Teams and Slack bot for coffee chats, cross-team matching, peer mentoring and onboarding buddies with 30/60/90-day check-ins. It charges a flat monthly fee per band of active members rather than a price per seat. Onboarding and buddy programs sit on the Engagement plan, from $99 per month.
- Teams & Slack
- Microsoft Teams: Official app (Microsoft Marketplace WA200001572), 5.0/5 from 3 ratings; listing last updated September 2023 Slack: Yes
- Security
- LEAD's pages differ on SOC 2 (a SOC 2 process under way on its trust page, 'SOC 2 compliant' on its virtual coffee page); SOC 2 report: Not publicly listed; GDPR claimed; SAML not supported, per its Slack Marketplace listing
- Pricing
- Free up to 24 people per round; Standard from $49 per month billed annually ($59 monthly) for 1 to 23 active members
- Limitations
-
- The original lead.bot domain now leads to a domain sale page; the company operates from lead.app, which can confuse buyers and IT reviewers.
- The Teams listing has 3 ratings, and its last update is the oldest among the Teams apps in this list.
- Onboarding and buddy programs require the Engagement plan.
5. Alfy by BuddiesHR
- Best for
- Lowest price per user
- What it does
- Alfy is the random coffee app of the BuddiesHR suite: it pairs or groups 2 to 5 colleagues on a set cadence, with conversation topics and optional calendar help. It is sold alone at $1 per user per month billed annually, or inside a seven-app Culture OS bundle (birthdays, kudos, polls, org chart and more) at $2. Teams under 10 users get every app for free.
- Teams & Slack
- Microsoft Teams: Official app (Microsoft Marketplace WA200012165, published as The Jeffrey Company), 5.0/5 from 2 ratings, updated September 2026; not supported in shared channels Slack: Yes, same app
- Security
- Not SOC 2 certified, per BuddiesHR (built according to SOC 2 principles); SAML not supported, per its Slack Marketplace listing; data in AWS Paris and Hetzner Germany
- Pricing
- $1 per user per month billed annually (one app), $1.25 billed monthly; free under 10 users; 30-day trial
- Limitations
-
- New on Teams (version 1.0.0, 2 ratings), and not supported in shared channels.
- BuddiesHR states it is not SOC 2 certified, and its Slack listing states SAML is not supported, which can slow an enterprise IT review.
- The Marketplace publisher name (The Jeffrey Company) differs from the brand.
6. Dewdropz
- Best for
- Organizations that run only on Microsoft Teams
- What it does
- Dewdropz is built only for Microsoft Teams. It combines random coffee pairings, a Coffee Station that posts watercooler topics in channels, and peer shoutouts, with nudges and reporting. You pay only for users matched at least once in the month.
- Teams & Slack
- Microsoft Teams: Teams-only app (Microsoft Marketplace WA200003267), 5.0/5 from 11 ratings; listing updated June 2024 Slack: No
- Security
- Not publicly listed
- Pricing
- $3 per active user per month, billed monthly, with a monthly minimum; 14-day free trial
- Limitations
-
- A permanent free plan is not publicly listed, and the monthly minimum ($49 on the plan card, $39 in a footnote) weighs on small teams.
- Dewdropz is built only for Teams, so organizations on both Teams and Slack need a second tool.
- SSO and SOC 2: Not publicly listed.
7. CultureBot
- Best for
- Lightweight all-in-one engagement bot
- What it does
- CultureBot is an engagement bot for Slack and Teams that bundles celebrations, kudos, AI watercooler topics, games, polls and employee intros. In Teams, intros create a group chat for each pair with a conversation starter, and people can snooze or opt out. Matching is one building block among many, not the core of the product.
- Teams & Slack
- Microsoft Teams: Official app (Microsoft Marketplace WA200008374), 4.8/5 from 5 ratings, updated October 2026 Slack: Yes
- Security
- Not publicly listed
- Pricing
- Free plan (celebrations only); intros from Standard at $50 per month billed annually (team-size tier shown for 24 users)
- Limitations
-
- Intros are not included in the free plan.
- Advanced matching criteria: Not publicly listed; intros are one module among many.
- SSO and SOC 2: Not publicly listed.
What to look for in a Donut alternative on Teams
Start with what happens inside Teams. An app that works with Teams can mean a lot of things. In some apps, Teams is where a match lands and nothing else happens there. In others, employees accept the match, book a slot, pause or answer a survey without leaving Teams, and admins set up programs from Teams too. Ask each vendor to show the full flow in your own tenant, from the first message to the follow-up survey.
Plan for the second program. Coffee chats are often the first program, rarely the last. Within a year, many HR teams also want onboarding buddies for new hires, a mentoring cohort or cross-team networking after a reorganization. A tool that runs all of them on the same employee data saves you a second purchase and a second security review. Trimble, for example, now runs 17 RandomCoffee programs in parallel, from a global coffee club to ERG programs and integration of acquired companies.
Bring IT in early. In an organization of several thousand people, IT will ask about SOC 2 or ISO 27001, SSO through Microsoft Entra ID, automatic provisioning and where data is stored. Among the tools above, RandomCoffee, CoffeePals and Together publish SOC 2 Type II. LEAD’s own pages differ on its SOC 2 status, BuddiesHR states it is not certified, and these details are not publicly listed for Dewdropz and CultureBot. See our security page for what we share.
Model the price at your real headcount. Entry prices are not comparable at a glance. RandomCoffee, CoffeePals, LEAD and CultureBot price by band of users, Alfy and Dewdropz charge per user, and Together quotes. A tool that is cheapest for 25 people is not always cheapest for 2,500.
Ulteig, an engineering firm with 15 offices, named seamless integration with Microsoft Teams as one of three factors that set RandomCoffee apart. It has since grown to nine programs and 1,700+ connections.
Free options and their trade-offs
Free is a fine way to start, as long as you know where the ceiling is. Matching people by hand in a spreadsheet is free too, but it costs HR time at every round: see RandomCoffee vs Excel, Google Sheets and ChatGPT.
- Donut on Teams is listed at $0 with unlimited Intros. The Donut Teams FAQ still describes free use as a limited-time offer for early adopters, so plan for the price to change.
- CoffeePals Starter is free forever for up to 24 active users, with one program, pairs only and a weekly cadence. Beyond 24, only the first 24 people enrolled get matched.
- LEAD Free covers up to 24 people per round on one matching calendar.
- RandomCoffee Free runs one program with one admin seat. See pricing for the limits and the Pro tiers.
- Alfy by BuddiesHR is free for teams under 10 users. The CultureBot free plan covers celebrations only, without intros.
- Microsoft Icebreaker is an open-source Teams app template that pairs team members every week. It has no license cost, but it is not a Marketplace app: you deploy it on your own Azure subscription and maintain it yourself.
One newer option to watch: Tribe by Kaizynn runs on Teams, Slack and Google Chat. It is free at any size with a monthly quota (one coffee chat round per month), and unlimited use costs $1 per active user per month, or $0.75 billed annually. Its Marketplace listing had no ratings yet, which is why it is not in the main list.
When to stay on Donut
Donut is a solid choice in two cases. If your organization works in Slack, Donut is a mature platform there: Intros, Watercooler and Celebrations, Journeys for onboarding, Shoutouts for recognition, HRIS sync with 50+ systems from the Standard plan, and a SOC 2 Type II report. And if all you want on Teams is free random intros for one team, with Outlook scheduling, the Donut Teams app does that today, and switching may not be worth the effort.
The case for moving is strongest when Teams is your main workplace and you want more than intros: onboarding, mentoring, surveys, reporting, or the security paperwork a large organization expects. For a wider view beyond Donut, see our guide to employee connection platforms.
Other tools we looked at
Several tools show up in lists of Donut alternatives but solve a different problem. HeyTaco, Bonusly and Kudos are recognition tools, and HeyTaco says itself that it does not do coffee pairing. Halftime is a two-minute daily team game, and Halftime says it is not a coffee chat tool. Coffeeno and fikaTime, still cited in some lists, now point to domain sale pages. If you need enterprise mentoring software beyond Together, Chronus, Qooper and MentorcliQ also have Teams apps.
How to choose
- If you are a large organization on Microsoft Teams and need several programs (onboarding buddies, mentoring, coffee chats) with SSO, SCIM and HRIS sync, shortlist RandomCoffee.
- If you want a dedicated coffee chat app inside Teams and Slack that a small team can start for free, try CoffeePals.
- If mentoring is the core project, with goals, cohorts and L&D reporting, and you are ready for a sales-led purchase, talk to Together.
- If you prefer one flat monthly fee per band of members and want 30/60/90-day onboarding check-ins, compare LEAD.
- If your organization runs only on Teams and wants pairing, watercooler topics and shoutouts in one app, trial Dewdropz.
- If coffee chats are a small part of what you need and you mainly want celebrations and kudos in one bot, look at CultureBot.
Frequently asked questions
Does Donut work with Microsoft Teams?
Yes, with a narrower feature set than on Slack. Donut's official Teams app (Microsoft Marketplace listing WA200006072) documents Intros only: it pairs members of a Teams team, suggests a chat, a call or an Outlook slot, and lets people snooze or opt out. Watercooler, Celebrations, Shoutouts and Journeys are documented for Slack, not for Teams.
What is the best free Donut alternative for Teams?
It depends on the size of the group. CoffeePals Starter is free forever for up to 24 active users (one program, pairs, weekly). LEAD's Free plan covers up to 24 people per round. RandomCoffee has a Free plan with one program. Alfy by BuddiesHR is free under 10 users. Microsoft's open-source Icebreaker template has no license cost, but you deploy and maintain it on your own Azure subscription.
Which Donut alternative is best for onboarding buddies on Teams?
RandomCoffee runs onboarding buddy programs in Teams next to coffee chats and mentoring, with HRIS sync on Pro and Enterprise to keep new-hire data current. CoffeePals offers onboarding templates such as Onboarding Pals, LEAD includes buddies and 30/60/90-day check-ins on its Engagement plan from $99 per month, and Together covers buddies through Colleague Connect. Donut's onboarding product, Journeys, is documented for Slack and email, not for Teams.
How much does Donut cost on Microsoft Teams?
Donut's pricing page lists Teams at $0 per month with unlimited Intros. Its help center FAQ for Teams says Teams pricing is not available yet and that early adopters use it for free for a limited time, so the long-term Teams price is not public. On Slack, Donut's paid plans start at $74 per month billed annually.
Which Donut alternative supports SSO and SOC 2?
RandomCoffee (SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, SAML SSO, SCIM, US or EU hosting), Together (SOC 2 Type II, SAML SSO on all plans) and CoffeePals (SOC 2 Type 2, SSO on Enterprise) publish both. LEAD's own pages differ on its SOC 2 status and a SOC 2 report is not publicly listed, BuddiesHR states it is not SOC 2 certified, and SOC 2 and SSO details are not publicly listed for Dewdropz and CultureBot. Donut has SOC 2 Type II, but sign-in goes through Slack, and Donut's Slack listing states SAML is not supported.
Can the same tool run on Teams and Slack?
Yes. RandomCoffee, CoffeePals, LEAD, Alfy by BuddiesHR and CultureBot each have a Teams app and a Slack app. Together's Slack integration is limited to notifications, Dewdropz is Teams-only, and Donut offers its full product on Slack but only Intros on Teams. RandomCoffee also runs every program by email for employees who use neither.
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