Build better relationships at work

Alfy is a Slack app from BuddiesHR that automatically pairs coworkers for recurring coffee chats (Microsoft Teams support is coming soon). It matches people in groups of 2 to 5 on a weekly to monthly cadence, suggests meeting times via Google Calendar and offers conversation starters. It is built to help remote and hybrid teams break down silos, onboard new hires and build belonging — all inside the chat tool they already use, with no extra app to install.

Alfy is free forever for teams with fewer than 10 employees, with full access to matching, scheduling and conversation starters. Above 10 employees it costs $1 per user per month, billed monthly or yearly, and you only pay for the people you actually match. Larger teams can start with a 30-day free trial and no credit card is required. Pricing is public on the BuddiesHR pricing page, so there is no sales call needed to find out what it costs.

Alfy runs in Slack today, where it posts matches, opens group DMs and helps people schedule their coffee chats. Microsoft Teams support is on the way: BuddiesHR already offers several apps natively in Teams, and Alfy coffee chats are coming soon to Teams as well. If you are a Teams-first organization and want to be notified when Alfy launches there, you can reach out to BuddiesHR support to be added to the early-access list.

Alfy lets you choose the group size for each round of matching. You can keep it to classic one-on-one pairs, or group people in threes, fours or fives for larger conversations. Bigger groups are useful for onboarding cohorts or cross-team mixers, while pairs work best for focused mentoring or deeper connections. By default Alfy uses smart matching so people do not get paired with the same colleague twice in a row, keeping every round fresh.

Once Alfy posts a match, it acts as a scheduling assistant: it helps participants find a meeting time that works for everyone and integrates with Google Calendar to suggest available slots. For distributed teams across time zones, this removes the back-and-forth of finding overlap, so people spend their energy on the conversation rather than the logistics. Alfy also supplies icebreakers and conversation starters so the first few minutes of a chat between new colleagues are never awkward.

Alfy and Donut both pair coworkers for coffee chats, but Alfy is priced transparently at $1 per user per month and is free under 10 employees, whereas Donut typically starts from a higher flat monthly fee. Alfy supports groups of 2 to 5 people (Donut focuses on pairs), includes Google Calendar scheduling and conversation starters, and is built to be 100% inside Slack with no separate portal. See the comparison table above for a side-by-side view of platforms, price, group size and calendar scheduling against Donut and Random Coffee.

No. Alfy lives entirely inside Slack, so once an admin adds it to the workspace, employees just receive their matches as Slack messages and group DMs — there is no extra app to download, no new login and no separate portal to check. Installation takes about 60 seconds and adding the app does not notify or disturb anyone until you choose to start matching. This is deliberate: tools people have to remember to open tend to go unused, while a coffee chat that simply appears in Slack gets answered.