Chat-based collaboration software program is a must have in right this moment’s enterprise setting, with Slack and Microsoft Teams the 2 main choices for the enterprise. The stakes couldn’t be increased — 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 might survive towards behemoth Microsoft, which has a gazillion income streams to depend on and is giving Teams away free of charge 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 government Jared Spataro has mentioned that the corporate considers Teams to be as vital to its future as Windows was to its previous. And that was earlier than the pandemic hit. It’s develop into much more vital since then.Indeed, Microsoft has been touting Teams’ rising person numbers with nice fanfare, citing 250 million lively every 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 general 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 wonderful collaboration platforms from which to decide on, each of that are continuously getting higher as new options are added. But making that selection isn’t simple. In reality, some enterprises have successfully chosen not to decide on.To make your resolution slightly simpler, we’ve in contrast Slack and Teams for enterprises in six classes: interface and value; integrations; further noteworthy variations; cell and browser apps; safety, compliance, and enterprise administration; and pricing. (Note that on this story we’re taking a look at Teams primarily as a piece hub primarily based on textual content chat, not at its videoconferencing options.) Here’s what we discovered. Slack vs. Teams: Interface and usabilityLook 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. Microsoft
The Teams feel and look is nicely 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 at all times embrace all direct messages, kind content material, and so forth. By comparability, Teams provides solely three customization choices: default (gentle), darkish, and excessive distinction. Navigation: Both shoppers provide their principal 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. IDG
Slack’s interface is extra visible than Teams’ and a bit extra enjoyable. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
The Teams sidebar contains 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 every little thing occurring in your group. You can filter the feed by ‘My Activity’ to see conversations during which you’ve been concerned, a helpful approach to get centered. Teams’ top-line navigation contains tabs for Conversations, Files, and a workforce wiki.Slack’s sidebar contains hyperlinks to channels, threads, direct messages (DMs), and lots 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 accessible 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 look — though you possibly can search, too, in fact. Especially useful on the Training tab is that every article tells you ways lengthy it would take to learn, so you possibly can determine earlier than clicking if it’s value 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 (normally) get precisely what you want inside seconds. In dozens of queries, Slackbot solely missed the mark a few times in its reply.Search: Both provide nice search capabilities. But Slack search feels extra strong to us, particularly should you’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 by way of messaging is clearly core to every product, and each do a wonderful job on this division. There are some differentiating options to think about:Both provide some textual content formatting capabilities when writing messages. (To see these choices in Slack, click on the “Aa” icon under 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 colour, 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. IDG
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 provide numerous ranges of voice and video chat, natively and by way of app integrations, from throughout the apps. With Slack, your finest bets for probably the most functionalities are by way of integrations with Zoom, Webex, Google Hangouts, or others. With Teams, videoconferencing is inbuilt, however you’ve additionally bought a number of different choices, together with the power to make use of Microsoft’s cloud-based Phone System to name individuals outdoors 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 develop into should you allow them to, it’s crucial to regulate when, how, and the way ceaselessly they notify you.Teams offers 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 prefer to obtain these notifications, equivalent to by way of 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 totally different notification settings for a cell system vs. your desktop and to be notified every time 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 30 minutes, 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. IDG
Slack enables you to restrict notifications to particular hours and days. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
Teams additionally enables 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 cell app.With Slack, you possibly can robotically push notifications to cell once you’ve been inactive on the desktop consumer for a specified time frame, from ‘as soon as I’m inactive’ to ‘after I’ve been inactive for 30 minutes.’ Teams enables you to toggle cell notifications on and off for Mentions, Calls, and Meetings. You may also mute cell notifications should you’re in a gathering or utilizing the Teams desktop app.More options: Both ceaselessly roll out new options. For instance, final yr Slack added the power to file brief audio and video clips which 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 reside, audio-only dialog. In huddles you possibly can share your display screen and use reside captions.For its half, Microsoft not too long ago made its “Fluid components” accessible on Teams by way of chat. The “Fluid Framework,” of which Fluid elements are an element, connects Microsoft collaboration and productiveness apps by, for instance, permitting components equivalent to tables and charts to be up to date in actual time by totally different individuals utilizing totally different instruments. In Teams, because of this customers can, amongst different issues, replace a shared to-do record 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: IntegrationsWhile every product does lots by itself, Slack and Teams each depend on integrations with different apps and companies to increase their performance. There are some noteworthy variations to think about, significantly concerning integration with productiveness suites. Teams is the winner for Microsoft 365/Office 365 app integration. Not surprisingly, Teams enables you to combine apps from the cloud-based Microsoft Office 365 suite. While working in Teams, you’ve gotten full creating, enhancing, 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 nicely in our exams 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 nicely, together with Outlook calendar, and electronic mail, OneDrive and SharePoint, however they don’t go almost so far as Teams’ Microsoft 365 integrations.Slack is the decide for Google Workspace integration. On the opposite hand, Slack gives integrations with quite a lot 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 nicely with Salesforce, which purchased the corporate in July 2021. A Slack app for Salesforce enables 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 enables 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 circumstances, amongst different capabilities.Slack provides far more third-party app integrations. Slack (launched in 2013) had a working begin on Teams (which debuted in 2017), and it exhibits by way of integrations. Slack integrates with 2,400+ industrial, third-party apps in comparison with about 700 for Teams. IDG
Slack provides greater than 2,400 app integrations, whereas Teams provides about 700. (Click picture to enlarge it.)
Both Slack and Microsoft Teams allow clients to construct their very own customized apps and integrations. According to Slack, 935,000 customized apps constructed by clients have been utilized in a typical week as of September 2021. Microsoft permits customized apps and integrations by way of its Power Platform developer instruments.Top takeaways: If you’re a ‘best-in-breed’ believer who desires the correct instrument for the job and doesn’t like going too deeply into anybody vendor’s ecosystem, Slack is your most suitable option. That mentioned, Teams’ integration with Microsoft 365 apps is superb and must be strongly thought-about should you’re a Microsoft store.