Likelihood to Recommend Well suited for businesses of all sizes. HOWEVER, I would say keep the chat groups limited at the departmental level, ensure that your moderator or the individual responsible for the group keeps it on topic, and have your IT team monitor it from time to time. Google Chat gets used so much in our organization that we have rules and regs in our Employee Handbook regarding its proper use (and when used PROPERLY, it can be very effective).
Read full review Mattermost is definitely appropriate for a growing company with team members spread out across the u.s. and Canada. It’s given me the ability to have access to anyone with the information I need or the ability to develop friendships, working relationships with people I otherwise wouldn’t have access to
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review We collaborate as a team with great efficiency and ease, we solve any problem or need together through the Mattermost chat. Communication is made regardless of the distance where my colleagues are, it is very fast and does not slow down the progress of our work. We can create many channels and be more efficient, we enhance the internal productivity of each department. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Some of the features in paid plans could be free, however, they have much offered in free plan (self-hosted) The Desktop App we use on windows has some bugs, like when Mattermost is down and comes back up, the app needs restart Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Mattermost has been an excellent tool for our business, allowing for a very cost-effective means of communicating, collaborating, and sharing project and business documentation and resources. The free community edition allows for simple installation on existing cloud server resources which results in significantly lower recurring costs compared to the competition
Read full review Usability It's not perfect. There are occasional glitches, drop-outs, and it takes a bit to get everything loaded and working. But it is significantly better than Zoom or
GoToMeeting when you're in instructional settings. I know my teacher friends here like it and the administrators and parents seem to be satisfied too.
Read full review It's an extremely easy to use software, and I would recommend it to every company that is growing. I think they could improve their notification system, as it gets a little spammy sometimes and important notifications get lost. Also needs to improve the number of private chats that you are allowed to create.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review We have not had to contact support for Mattermost ever. All that we have needed has been available in the documentation or website. One of our DevOps team members set it up in a couple of hours. The whole team was using Mattermost that same day. No support needed.
Read full review Implementation Rating This went as expected. No surprises or major hurdles.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Prior to Google Hangouts, our company used Spark. Spark was not integrated into our email, therefore it couldn't be easily accessed in the same browser. With Spark we also couldn't search our emails for keywords in a conversation, searching had to be done manually. The one feature I enjoyed about Spark was a request to get a user's attention: If I had an urgent question and I wanted to ensure the recipient saw my message/question, I would request their attention and the message screen would pop up on their screen.
Read full review Before Mattermost, we used Stride first, and then
Slack as our communication platform. Stride got discontinued so it is not comparable, but
Slack got very costly for us, with basically the same features as Mattermost - a matter of fact, the "reply" feature is surprisingly non-existent on
Slack (you can reply by opening a different thread, but that is hard to follow in most cases), and not only exists in Mattermost but very straightforward. We have considered using
Discord too, but then chose Mattermost for its open-source nature, and the possibility of running our very own self-hosted servers, with total control.
Read full review Return on Investment In my work it allows us to report troubles that may cost loss of investment thru Google Hangouts Chat we were able to communicate on how to fix it. I hope we can make it on our own choice of colors to heightened workers vibe It is connected to your email Read full review Very high performing data migration functions and easy to navigate. Creating analytics on multiple big data is a very simple and reliable report with multiple benefits. Collaboration is effective, and easy project documentation. Lead generation is excellent and easy on access control management. Read full review ScreenShots