Flowdock vs. Workplace from Meta (discontinued)

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

Well suited: - leadership communication. When our CEO posts a video to all company - it always gets the highest engagement - recognition/achievements posts - live streams for education, knowledge sharing - we are a company of 12000 associates and there is no other corporate channel for us to gather more than 500 people in one place. Less appropriate: - sharing some very targetted messages - it's impossible to do at Workplace without creating a group. So we use email channel for such targetted communications - instant communication like in a chat (probably it's less appropriate in our specific case because we use MS Teams for such quick communication instead of WP chats)

Incentivized

• Mobile app experience
• Software integrations
• Notifications

• Bring groups of people together to share info, stories, updates, etc.
• The chat app is pretty decent.
• Workplace Live is a good large-group meeting broadcast platform.
• It's pretty intuitive to use for anyone who's used Facebook.
• It provides different levels of "security" for groups, allowing you to have open, closed, and "secret" groups.
• It's easy to paste images into your posts and comments, without having to necessarily go through the process of saving an image as a file, etc.
• It has search capabilities for finding old information.
• It's available for both desktop/laptop and mobile devices.
• It's secured to allow only those within the company to see company-related info (but it also has a few inter-company groups, which can be useful, too).
• Workplace Chat has the ability to set it to Do Not Disturb.
• You can set notifications, including email notifications, if you want to be alerted to new activity in your groups, etc.
• You can use Markdown to format your text

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

• It would be helpful if a review confirmation checkbox was able to be placed by files that needed to be read or reviewed. Along the same line, approve, review again, etc. would be helpful checkboxes to add by files, proposals.
• The layout is clean but suffers a bit from the center column width with two sidebars and a lot of empty space. It almost looks like a going out of business sale retail store where you notice the empty shelves. Workplace feels a bit bare at times. I think some good design modifications can help. Now on mobile, it is a great layout. I am addressing specifically the desktop browser login.
• An admin control dashboard would be really effective and even more so with more users on the platform.

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.

Having to download multiple apps just to use the tool is very cumbersome. Facebook would have make this better by wrapping it in as a main feature within their app, but having to use multiple apps to see discussions and walls is so frustrating.

Incentivized

Workplace by Facebook is an excellent fit in respect of support and documentation. It has excellent tutorials and documentation, as well. The UI and UX are already great as it is developed and maintained by Facebook, so most of the times, there is no need for any support or documentation.

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

Workplace by Facebook is so much more than just a project management tool like Basecamp or Slack. The ability to disseminate information to employees is easier and better with Workplace by Facebook. It can also be used for informal messaging and sharing of information. It combines the best features of both with the same look and feel as Facebook.

Incentivized

• Our company uses it by default.
• I enjoy the ability to communicate outside of text messages...keeps the conversation on in it's own bucket.

• We can meet the project times, that with the communication in real time.
• We provide solutions to our suppliers in a reliable and efficient manner.
• When a business can save time and at the same time respond to the demands of customers, this translates into greater market capture of action for the company.

Incentivized