Slack vs. Teams: Which is finest for what you are promoting?
We evaluate the highest two collaboration platforms in six classes, from usability to enterprise administration.
Microsoft / Slack / Elenabs / Getty Images
Chat-based collaboration software program is a must have in at the moment’s enterprise setting, with Slack and Microsoft Teams the 2 main choices for the enterprise. The stakes couldn’t be larger — the pandemic made clear that distant work and collaboration are the way forward for enterprise.
Slack, which went public again in 2019, was purchased by enterprise software program big Salesforce in July 2021 for $27.7 billion. Until the acquisition, it wasn’t clear that Slack may survive in opposition to behemoth Microsoft, which has a gazillion income streams to depend upon and is giving Teams away without spending a dime in most Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plans. But now that Slack has sugar daddy Salesforce behind it, with a valuation north of $200 billion and annual revenue of greater than $20 billion, it might probably higher compete.
Microsoft govt Jared Spataro has mentioned that the corporate considers Teams to be as essential to its future as Windows was to its previous. And that was earlier than the pandemic hit. It’s grow to be much more essential since then.
Indeed, Microsoft has been touting Teams’ rising person numbers with nice fanfare, citing 250 million lively each day customers as of July 2021. For its half, Slack has mentioned its personal customers are extra actively engaged, interacting with Slack on common 120 minutes a day and total taking greater than 5 billion actions per week. Slack mentioned its paid buyer base was greater than 177,000 in August 2021.
The winner of this competitors? You. There are two glorious collaboration platforms from which to decide on, each of that are always getting higher as new options are added. But making that alternative isn’t straightforward. In reality, some enterprises have successfully chosen not to decide on.
To make your resolution just a little simpler, we’ve in contrast Slack and Teams for enterprises in six classes: interface and value; integrations; further noteworthy variations; cellular and browser apps; safety, compliance, and enterprise administration; and pricing. (Note that on this story we’re Teams primarily as a piece hub based mostly on textual content chat, not at its videoconferencing options.) Here’s what we discovered.
Slack vs. Teams: Interface and value
Look and really feel: Both the Slack and Teams desktop apps have simply navigated interfaces, with messaging entrance and heart as the main target. There are some stylistic variations. Slack has a freeform, looser really feel that we like however some would possibly take into account a tad chaotic. Teams has a vaguely company look, which feels extra streamlined however generic.
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The Teams appear and feel is properly organized and environment friendly, with messaging entrance and heart. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
Of the 2, Slack provides extra customization choices, with many alternative methods to tweak the sidebar’s look and what seems on it, equivalent to whether or not to all the time embody all direct messages, learn how to type content material, and so forth. By comparability, Teams provides solely three customization choices: default (gentle), darkish, and excessive distinction.
Navigation: Both purchasers supply their predominant navigation in sidebars on the left-hand facet. Teams navigation is extra centered on groups, whereas Slack places extra emphasis on channels, work areas that customers create round tasks, subjects, or groups.
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Slack’s interface is extra visible than Teams’ and a bit extra enjoyable. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
The Teams sidebar consists of icons for Activity, Chat, Teams, Files, and relying on how the group units it up, Calendar, Calls, and extra. The Activity dashboard gives an at-a-glance overview of all the pieces occurring in your group. You can filter the feed by ‘My Activity’ to see conversations through which you’ve been concerned, a helpful option to get centered. Teams’ top-line navigation consists of tabs for Conversations, Files, and a crew wiki.
Slack’s sidebar consists of hyperlinks to channels, threads, direct messages (DMs), and plenty of extra choices, together with “All Unreads,” which shows all unread messages in a single handy feed. The automated Slackbot, a chatbot for assist, can be simply obtainable within the sidebar. Speaking of which…
In-app assist: Teams provides a Help icon on the backside of the sidebar with hyperlinks to Topics, Training, and What’s New. Each tab is well-organized, providing simply accessible assist content material with out you having to go looking — though you possibly can search, too, after all. Especially useful on the Training tab is that every article tells you the way lengthy it would take to learn, so you possibly can determine earlier than clicking if it’s price your time.
But Slackbot, an in-app chatbot, will get our vote. It’s dead-simple to make use of. Just sort a DM to Slackbot with a key phrase or absolutely fashioned query and also you’ll (often) get precisely what you want inside seconds. In dozens of queries, Slackbot solely missed the mark a few times in its reply.
Search: Both supply nice search capabilities. But Slack search feels extra strong to us, particularly if you happen to’re used to fine-tuning Gmail search outcomes. For instance, in Slack you possibly can search utilizing modifiers equivalent to from:@username or earlier than:8/31/2021.
Messaging and chat: Communication through messaging is clearly core to every product, and each do a high quality job on this division. There are some differentiating options to contemplate:
Both supply some textual content formatting capabilities when writing messages. (To see these choices in Slack, click on the “Aa” icon beneath the text-entry field; in Teams, click on the icon that appears like an “A” with a paintbrush over it.) But Teams gives a extra phrase processing-like expertise, with the talents to decide on a font coloration, choose from three font sizes, insert a desk, undo and redo typing, apply paragraph kinds, and such. That could also be overkill for some, however we admire these choices.
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Teams gives loads of textual content formatting instruments when drafting messages. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
Both allow you to enliven messages with emojis. Teams provides further choices natively, equivalent to integration with GIPHY for animated GIFs, although you possibly can add GIFs to Slack by means of an app integration.
Both supply varied ranges of voice and video chat, natively and through app integrations, from throughout the apps. With Slack, your finest bets for probably the most functionalities are through integrations with Zoom, Webex, Google Hangouts, or others. With Teams, videoconferencing is in-built, however you’ve additionally obtained a number of different choices, together with the power to make use of Microsoft’s cloud-based Phone System to name individuals exterior your group. Depending upon how Slack or Teams is configured, you possibly can file video chats and calls in addition to get transcriptions.
Notifications: Given how intrusive these apps can grow to be if you happen to allow them to, it’s crucial to manage when, how, and the way ceaselessly they notify you.
Teams provides you granular controls over what you’re notified about — chats, mentions, replies, likes and reactions, missed calls, voicemails, and so forth. You can select the way you’d wish to obtain these notifications, equivalent to through banner and electronic mail within the desktop app. You may also have messages previewed within the desktop app.
Slack doesn’t present fairly as many notification choices. But we admire the power to make use of completely different notification settings for a cellular machine vs. your desktop and to be notified at any time when somebody makes use of a key phrase you specify.
As for much-needed Do Not Disturb controls, Slack excels. You can silence incoming notifications for half-hour, 1 hour, 2 hours, till tomorrow, till subsequent week, or for a customized time interval. You may also set a notification schedule, so that you obtain notifications solely throughout the hours and days you designate.
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Slack helps you to restrict notifications to particular hours and days. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
Teams additionally helps you to specify quiet hours to mute all notifications, in addition to designate quiet days, equivalent to Sundays; nevertheless, these controls can be found solely within the Teams cellular app.
With Slack, you possibly can mechanically push notifications to cellular while you’ve been inactive on the desktop consumer for a specified time period, from ‘as soon as I’m inactive’ to ‘after I’ve been inactive for half-hour.’ Teams helps you to toggle cellular notifications on and off for Mentions, Calls, and Meetings. You may also mute cellular notifications if you happen to’re in a gathering or utilizing the Teams desktop app.
More options: Both ceaselessly roll out new options. For instance, final 12 months Slack added the power to file quick audio and video clips you can share with people or channels, in addition to Slack Huddles, which helps you to have fast, casual conversations with others in Slack. When you begin a huddle, you launch a dwell, audio-only dialog. In huddles you possibly can share your display and use dwell captions.
For its half, Microsoft lately made its “Fluid components” obtainable on Teams through chat. The “Fluid Framework,” of which Fluid parts are a component, connects Microsoft collaboration and productiveness apps by, for instance, permitting parts equivalent to tables and charts to be up to date in actual time by completely different individuals utilizing completely different instruments. In Teams, which means that customers can, amongst different issues, replace a shared to-do checklist in Teams on the identical time a colleague is engaged on it in Outlook.
Top takeaway: For us, the standouts within the interface and value class are Slackbot’s in-app assist, Slack’s customization choices, and Teams’ message formatting. So, we’re giving Slack a slight edge over Teams right here.
Slack vs. Teams: Integrations
While every product does lots by itself, Slack and Teams each depend upon integrations with different apps and providers to increase their performance. There are some noteworthy variations to contemplate, significantly relating to integration with productiveness suites.
Teams is the winner for Microsoft 365/Office 365 app integration. Not surprisingly, Teams helps you to combine apps from the cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 suite. While working in Teams, you have got full creating, modifying, and formatting capabilities in Word, Excel, PowerLevel, and others and might collaborate with colleagues on a file in actual time. The deep integration with Microsoft OneDrive/SharePoint and Office purposes labored properly in our checks and makes lots of sense for organizations embedded in Microsoft’s ecosystem. Teams additionally has deep integrations with Dynamics 365, Microsoft’s CRM platform.
Slack provides Microsoft integrations as properly, together with Outlook calendar, and electronic mail, OneDrive and SharePoint, however they don’t go practically so far as Teams’ Microsoft 365 integrations.
Slack is the decide for Google Workspace integration. On the opposite hand, Slack gives integrations with a wide range of Google apps, together with Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and Google Sheets. Teams doesn’t do any of that, and even probably the most fundamental of integrations.
Slack excels at Salesforce integration. Unsurpisingly, Slack integrates properly with Salesforce, which purchased the corporate in July 2021. A Slack app for Salesforce helps you to view Slack messages related to a Salesforce file, ship Salesforce data to Slack, and arrange file alerts in Slack channels. And a Salesforce app for Slack helps you to add Slack messages to Salesforce data and ship related Salesforce alerts to Slack channels. Salesforce has introduced quite a few further Slack integrations coming in 2022, together with with Salesforce CMS, Salesforce Education Cloud, and Salesforce Financial Services Cloud.
Teams integration with Salesforce doesn’t go as deep, though it does let Salesforce customers replace Salesforce data from inside Teams and chat in Teams about subjects associated to their gross sales pipeline and repair instances, amongst different capabilities.
Slack provides far more third-party app integrations. Slack (launched in 2013) had a operating begin on Teams (which debuted in 2017), and it reveals by way of integrations. Slack integrates with 2,400+ business, third-party apps in comparison with about 700 for Teams.
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Slack provides greater than 2,400 app integrations, whereas Teams provides about 700. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
Both Slack and Microsoft Teams allow prospects to construct their very own customized apps and integrations. According to Slack, 935,000 customized apps constructed by prospects had been utilized in a typical week as of September 2021. Microsoft permits customized apps and integrations through its Power Platform developer instruments.
Top takeaways: If you’re a ‘best-in-breed’ believer who desires the proper software for the job and doesn’t like going too deeply into anybody vendor’s ecosystem, Slack is your best option. That mentioned, Teams’ integration with Microsoft 365 apps is superb and ought to be strongly thought-about if you happen to’re a Microsoft store.