Naven
Answers
Google Chat vs Microsoft Teams vs Naven: which should you use?
Use Microsoft Teams if your school or employer runs on Microsoft 365, and Google Chat if it runs on Google Workspace: each is built into those suites. Use Naven for a group that mixes people from different places or ages, such as a club, a family or a class's own chat, where you want nothing to install, no phone numbers, and messages screened before they are sent.
What each is built for. Microsoft Teams is a workplace hub: chat, meetings, files, calendars and hundreds of business apps, all inside Microsoft 365. Google Chat is the messaging layer of Google Workspace, sitting inside Gmail beside Drive, Calendar and Meet. Naven is a free messenger that runs in a browser, built for groups of friends, families, clubs and classes rather than companies.
Signing up. Teams and Google Chat work best with an account issued by an organisation; both have free personal versions, but the full experience needs Microsoft 365 or Workspace. Naven needs only an email address you already have.
Who you can reach. On a school or work account, administrators decide whether you can message people outside the organisation. Naven lets you reach anybody by email address or @username, and every new conversation arrives as a request the other person can decline.
Speed and weight. Teams is known for being heavy on memory and slow to start. Google Chat is lighter but lives inside Gmail. Naven is a single web app that opens in a tab, including on an old laptop or a school Chromebook.
Safety and age. Teams and Google Chat rely on blocking, reporting and administrator policies, and do not screen ordinary messages before delivery. Naven screens every message against twelve published categories before it is sent, applies stricter rules for under-18s, and needs a parent's agreement for anybody under 18.
Privacy. None of the three is end-to-end encrypted by default. On Teams and Google Chat, the organisation that owns your account can usually review your chats. On Naven there is no employer or school administrator, but Naven's software reads messages to screen them.
Features. Teams and Google Chat win on work features: document editing, calendars, enterprise integrations, compliance tools. Naven has scheduled and disappearing messages, voice notes, polls, news channels, a public forum, and Naven AI (free, where Google's Gemini in Chat needs a paid plan).
The short version: use the one your organisation gives you for work, and Naven for everything that is not work.