Flowdock vs. Zoho Cliq

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

If you have a website through which your clients engage (either sales or support) your offerings, then you absolutely need a live chat tool. Having used Zoho for a while now, I can absolutely recommend it. If you have not used a chat tool before but you have an online store then you should definitely explore this option. They offer a free trial so you can test it to see what response you get but for sales related websites, this will pay for itself.

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

• instant messaging so team members can quickly talk to each other
• creating different channels for specific teams or projects, which keeps conversations organized
• notifications that alert you about important messages, helping you stay updated

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

• Zoho people notifications can be added in Cliq like birthday reminders, leave trackers
• Cliq PC app is bit heavy, can be light weighted

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.

Cliq is essential software for our communication. Because we are an office of both in-house and remote employees we must have a unified communication platform to speak to another in real-time. Cliq offers us that platform in an easy-to-use format that allows for both 1:1 and team communication occurring all at once.

Based on my experience with Cliq it is very cool and easy, I will give 10/10, because of their quality.

Incentivized

It's available 24X7. We have never faced any serious issues with the connectivity. Whenever we faced issues, it has been traced to a browser issue or Windows app issue or a mobile issue.

Incentivized

No issues

Incentivized

Any time that I have had an issue, and there haven't been many user support jumps right on and helps me right away.

Incentivized

Excellent support. Online training and supporting videos, and resources are more than sufficient to get started. Moreover, their support channel, especially the chat window, is very helpful and provides an instant solution to all our queries. For any complicated issue, they always get back by email with the solution and on occasions even call back.

Incentivized

Implementation is very simple and easy. Create a Zoho account (free or paid), send/ receive an invite, log in, verify your credentials and get started. Admin would have created the channels for you, and you start contributing. The entire process is smooth, and you can get started within minutes. The Admin has to work at the backend, initially, and decide on the permissions for the individual and the team and set up permissions for access to other applications too. This needs to be planned out, tested and implemented.

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

Essentially the same style of platform. Aside from any "bots" (which I don't use anyways), they appear to do the same thing. But Zoho Cliq comes packed into the Zoho One platform. It's a useful component in a suite of communication tools that allows our office to work and speak to one another in an abundance of ways.

The system works perfectly well. At times, we have faced issues with the desktop application - it doesn't start, or takes time to start, or even logs off on its own. However, the browser as well as the mobile application work perfectly well, and we have never faced issues with them

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

• Positive - Easier Comms with specific Clients. Encouraging more to use it to engage with me
• Negative - Yet another comms channel to manage would like to have less. But see previous positive
• Positive - Came as part of my Zoho One subscription so low cost
• Has a wealth of options still to investigate as part of Cliq

Incentivized