TeamSpeak

TeamSpeak's own download page presents two products at once, and the arrangement is the first thing a buyer has to understand: TeamSpeak 6, marked as new and shipping as a beta, and TeamSpeak 3, the older client that is still the only one on mobile. There is no TeamSpeak 5 on sale — the company says that name belonged to a development concept, and that version 6 is the successor. The company leans on its age and its architecture more than on features, describing itself as the control-first option with your infrastructure, your data and your control, and the Play listing calls it the preferred voice chat solution for gamers, friends, family and small businesses. One date in its own terms is the most important fact about the line-up: support for TeamSpeak 3 continues through a phased transition the company targets for completion by the end of 2027, so the version most people are still running has an expiry date and the version replacing it is not finished.

TeamSpeak is client and server with nothing peer to peer, which the listing states plainly: to talk to anyone you must be connected to a server, and connecting directly to another user is not possible. There are three ways to get one, and the company names all three: a server you host on your own hardware, one you rent from TeamSpeak through the account system, or one you rent from a third-party host provider. Self-hosting is a genuine firewall, a router and a running process rather than an app you install, and the setup guide walks through the port that has to be forwarded and the licence that has to be accepted. What the server gives you is depth rather than reach: unlimited channels and sub-channels, and a permission system fine-grained enough to be a selling point in its own right. Version 6 adds group chats, direct messages and a discovery list for finding public communities, and the company says servers are cross-compatible, so users of either client and the mobile app can share one server if the owner has set that up.

The free tier is real and it is capped in a way that matters: one virtual server with 32 slots, at no licensing cost. Raising that ceiling is where the two versions part company, and this is the most useful thing to know before choosing between them. On TeamSpeak 3 you can buy a licence that lifts the cap, running from 55 dollars a year at the small end to 500 dollars a year for the largest, and those licences may not be resold or used to run servers for third parties. On TeamSpeak 6 you cannot buy anything: the beta licence is 32 slots, renewed every two months for the duration of the beta, and the company says outright that upgrading to a larger licence is not yet possible. Nor do the two systems talk to each other at the licence level: a TeamSpeak 3 licence is not compatible with a version 6 server and there is no migration path. If you would rather not run anything, TeamSpeak hosts servers itself, starting at 4.99 dollars a month for a small plan and rising with the number of slots and bonus slots included, on a card or a store payment. A commercial licence and the developer kit are priced only on request, and the mobile clients cost 99 cents, which is unusual for a service whose desktop clients are free.

The age rule is 13 and up, or the local age of digital consent where that is higher, and the terms deliberately refuse to name a single number, saying the requirements differ by country and service. Encryption is where this platform's marketing and its documentation disagree, and the difference is worth stating precisely. The site advertises military-grade encryption, and the licensing page says all TeamSpeak servers feature end-to-end encryption and zero data tracking. The support article is narrower: TeamSpeak 3 encrypts voice packets with AES, and that is an optional server feature, switched on globally or per channel, which the article says may conflict with local law. The end-to-end encryption article is a definition rather than a claim about this product, and end-to-end encryption in the product itself is an option for private group chats. Self-hosting is where the privacy story is genuinely strong: the privacy policy states that in typical self-hosted use TeamSpeak does not operate the server and does not listen to or record voice communications. The company is equally clear that this is not immunity — it does not monitor what happens on a self-hosted server, but it says illegal conduct remains illegal, and self-hosting is not a free pass. Reports go to the server's owner where that is appropriate, or to the company by email, and the penalty ladder runs from warnings and delisting to suspension, termination and referral to law enforcement, with child-safety violations met by immediate permanent action without warning. One consequence of the account model deserves emphasis: if you lose your recovery key, nobody at the company can restore the account, and it says that is a hard limit rather than a policy.

Groups that want to own the thing they talk on: gaming clans, communities and small businesses, and the company addresses businesses as squarely as it addresses gamers, selling the absence of a mandatory subscription and the absence of a third-party cloud. It is the wrong choice for anyone who wants to open an app and be talking in a minute — the product's own documentation puts a server, a forwarded port and a licence acceptance in front of the first conversation, and the Play reviews make the same point from the user side. Mobile users are the ones paying the price of the version split: the app is the older client, and it costs money.

The only platform in this batch that asks the reader to run something, and the one whose own documentation contradicts its advertising. The privacy claim about self-hosting is unusually honest and unusually strong — the company does not operate the server, does not listen to it, and says so in a policy rather than a slogan — while the encryption claim on the marketing pages is not supported by the support article describing an optional, server-configured feature and a generic definition standing in for an end-to-end guarantee. The version situation is the practical trap: the client nearly everyone uses is scheduled to end by the end of 2027, its replacement is in beta with a licence that cannot be raised and no migration path from the old one, and the free tier is documented in support articles rather than anywhere a buyer would look, with no page listing free and paid together. What is left is a product that does one thing better than anything beside it, which is giving a group full control of its own voice server, at a price in configuration that the company is at least honest about.