Flowdock vs. Google Chat

Flowdock is well suited for small teams and to environments that doesn't need too much reliability. I think it has some management problems that can make your life difficult if you have to manage a big amount of users. If you want just a tool communication with basic features (without using any integration or robust features) it can be suitable for you. You should try Flowdock using its free version for a small team and compare with others similar products. Flowdock delivers team chat and collaboration features, but is not necessarily the best product. Maybe some usability problems that disturb me won't be so relevant to you.

Incentivized

Google Chat is well-suited for businesses. Where it fits in my organization is to maintain communication between teams. Collaboration between teams to solve issues our customers cannot resolve without using Google Chat. Our Organization depends on it. When someone needs assistance from another team in the organization, we use Google Chat to solve this issue.

Incentivized

• Possibility to integrate with external services such as e-mail (send messages to a flow inbox from your e-mail), twitter, github, confluence, jira, single sign-on, etc. Using those integrations you can easily improve your team productivity by centralizing all useful information in just one point.
• Very easy to configure. You can get it running for your company or team in a few minutes. Furthermore, almost all platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android) have an app to install and there is a web version that can also be used.
• Powerful communication tool. You can separate differents subjects in to separated "flows" or channels. In addition, you can invite people to join just one channel increasing privacy for others members.
• Free version up to 5 users. If you are a non-profit organization or have a student project, they say that is possible to work with that too. In other case, you have to pay per user/month.

Incentivized

• Google Hangouts Chat allows you to send and receive messages real time with emoticons that can help you express your mood.
• You can download and upload image file that can be use for business process and more.
• Google Hangouts Chat also allows you to make a calls to reach other users.What I like the most is the awesome screen sharing while on call.

Incentivized

• One thing a little bit annoying is that a lot of links to others Flowdock sections (preferences, external services, etc) will open a new window/tab. Each click may take you to a new window and you can get lost easily.
• There isn't a quick access list to members of your organization to start a private chat. I took a while to find how to do that. The interface and usability could be better.
• There isn't an app for Windows Phone.
• Sometimes you try to load some conversation and it doesn't show anything. It is not frequently but happens sometimes.

Incentivized

• I wish it was easier to turn the sound off, I hate being in meetings and my chat is blowing up.
• Needing to "accept" a chat invite from someone within my org seems counter-intuitive.
• Some people have trouble getting their notifications before midnight, somehow?
• Prior to downloading the app, group messages didn't come up for me on my computer.

Incentivized

I go with the flow because I'm a newer employee and Flowdock works as advertised. If it were my decision to choose a team communciator for the organization, I'd recommend we go with Slack for its robust features and ever-changing/evolving software integrations. Slack is the outright innovator in the space and will continue to hold that role for some time.

The updates, support, general reviews on Google Chat are great everywhere. The development of the features is ongoing and this adds a great value to Google as a big company in the market. Other applications are limiting communication while Google Chat is allowing communication to grow. It is very easy to use it and teach others how to use Google Chat.

As stated from the starting we found this application is well suited for a small audience and a group of people across the organization can be communicated easily with no additional hectic of doing any setup. When you have a Gmail account ready then you can easily access google chat and continue the communication. This tool is simple,secure and robust helping the global leading partner for their internal precise communication and handling the tasks in a great way

Incentivized

I have not needed to contact the support folks for Google Hangouts Chat, so I can't speak to this with any accuracy. The online instructions are fairly clearly written, so it is fairly intuitive to start with. I did not feel the need to use the support people anyway.

Incentivized

Slack is a similar software.

Private chat or channels are well implemented in both softwares and both are also very easy to setup.

Besides of some usability problemas I think Flowdock is still better than Slack in this user experience and design.

The second point is the price. Flowdock is half price of Slack ($3/month). If you are a student or a non-profit organization, you are able to get some special license.

Incentivized

It doesn't need to much to get started if you have a personal Google account. If you have a business account setup by your organization, you need permissions to use it, however this is something good to have this customizable part from Google Chat. We can create groups, attach files, and have online conversations from the gmail page, in a new window or using the mobile.

Incentivized

• Increasing productivity by reducing idleness, e-mail flooding, miscommunication and accidentally deleted files. We have increasead about 30% our productivity since whe start using Flowdock.

Incentivized

• Through seamless communication across remote workers, Google Chat has significantly reduced the time spent on back and forth emails.
• Undoubtedly Google Chat is great for communication but because of a lack of task management tools, we have to rely on other platforms for organizing and tracking tasks.
• 200MB file size limit in Google Chat often forces us to use other services like Google Drive for sending large files.

Incentivized