Microsoft Excel vs. Slack

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Excel
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application available as part of Microsoft 365 (Office 365), or standalone, in cloud-based and on-premise editions.
$6.99
per month
Slack
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Slack is a group messaging or team collaboration app that aims to simplify communication for businesses. Features include open discussions, private groups, and direct messaging, as well as deep contextual search and message archiving, and file sharing. Slack integrates with a number of other tools, such as MailChimp, Dropbox, and Google Drive. Slack was acquired by Salesforce in December 2020. The product is free to use, and also has paid plans with more features and greater controls. The…
$8.75
per month per user
Pricing
Microsoft ExcelSlack
Editions & Modules
Excel with Microsoft 365
$6.99
per month
Excel for 1 PC or Mac
$139.99
perpetual license
Free
$0
Pro
$7.25*
per month per user
Business+
$12.50*
per month per user
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft ExcelSlack
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details*Per active user, per month, when paying once a year. Pro is $8.75 USD per active user when paying month to month. Business+ is $15.00 USD per active user when paying month to month.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft ExcelSlack
Considered Both Products
Microsoft Excel
Chose Microsoft Excel
Like I've put in previous questions, Microsoft Excel seems more advanced. I'm always going to prefer using Microsoft Excel if it's just me working on a task. If I have to work with other then Google Sheets is going to be preferred. The online version of Microsoft Excel seems to …
Chose Microsoft Excel
Google Sheets is a comparable product to Microsoft Excel and it's more flexible when it comes to sharing because it can be shared with anyone who has the link or Google Drive access to it. However, Google Sheets does not have all the functions, especially when it comes to …
Chose Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is much different than other products that I have reviewed - it is for the purpose of organizing, summing, working, and categorizing data. Meanwhile, Lucid Charts is for flow charts - a completely different product. They are both great. I have never used …
Slack
Chose Slack
Slack has had strong market penetration so I've found that staff are generally already familiar with it which is helpful in terms of quick, easy adoption. It was generally less expensive, more powerful, smoother to integrate and easier to adopt than competing options.
Chose Slack
I used teams at my previous job and loved it. When I came to my current job, I felt very uneasy with switching to Slack. It wasn't that it was hard to learn or that it didn't do that same thing, it was just a little bit of a learning curve. Also, at my last job, Microsoft Teams
Chose Slack
Having used these 3 software, I believe Slack covers a much wider use case scenario, the user onboarding experience is seamless, the platform is very user friendly and intuitive, very well organized as compared to the other competing software that's out there in the market. …
Features
Microsoft ExcelSlack
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Slack
7.9
625 Ratings
2% above category average
Task Management00 Ratings7.7428 Ratings
Gantt Charts00 Ratings6.961 Ratings
Scheduling00 Ratings7.8361 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings8.1394 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings9.4598 Ratings
Search00 Ratings8.3605 Ratings
Visual planning tools00 Ratings7.4273 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Slack
8.8
633 Ratings
9% above category average
Chat00 Ratings9.6632 Ratings
Notifications00 Ratings8.8629 Ratings
Discussions00 Ratings9.2617 Ratings
Surveys00 Ratings8.1410 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase00 Ratings7.8409 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting00 Ratings8.9110 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts00 Ratings8.7182 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook00 Ratings8.9120 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Excel
-
Ratings
Slack
8.4
600 Ratings
5% above category average
Versioning00 Ratings8.2324 Ratings
Video files00 Ratings8.3538 Ratings
Audio files00 Ratings8.5525 Ratings
Document collaboration00 Ratings8.0426 Ratings
Access control00 Ratings8.3409 Ratings
Advanced security features00 Ratings8.3360 Ratings
Integrates with Google Drive00 Ratings9.0211 Ratings
Device sync00 Ratings9.0452 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Microsoft ExcelSlack
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 8.9 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Airtable
Airtable
Score 8.6 out of 10
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Airtable
Airtable
Score 8.6 out of 10
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Microsoft ExcelSlack
Likelihood to Recommend
9.3
(76 ratings)
9.2
(628 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(7 ratings)
10.0
(25 ratings)
Usability
8.4
(22 ratings)
9.0
(248 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.9
(68 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.7
(5 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.2
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft ExcelSlack
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
I don't really know another program as powerful as Excel. I've used Google Doc programs but do not feel they come close. So far, anytime I've needed a table of some sort for data, whether it's budget oriented or information off a survey, the best system has been Excel. We do web audits on occasion and we create an Excel worksheet featuring every URL of the pages we're auditing, notes, data about the content, information about files attached to the page and other information to help us determine what pages need updating, deleting or otherwise. We also use Excel primarily to export our Google Analytics to in order for us to create reports for clients that need to see specific information about their traffic.
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Salesforce
Slack is great for tracking commits to new coding projects. You can take parts of code that still need to be implemented later and easily search through the history of comments if there is something that goes wrong with a code commitment. It can be difficult for people that only like Teams to adjust to a new platform if you are using both to communicate.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • It is very good at embedded formulas and tying cells to one another
  • It allows me to compare deals terms on a side-by-side basis and talk my clients through it easily.
  • It is very helpful as well in terms of allowing me to filter/sort results in many different ways depending on what specific information I am most interested in prioritizing.
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Salesforce
  • Huddles Run smoothly without any interferences.
  • Smooth individual calls quick and easy without any interruptions.
  • seamless notifications across multiple devices
  • The ability to easily tag a team member to urgently attend to a specific escalation.
  • Slack being user friendly and able to integrate easily with other platforms and apps.
  • How to easily open up different channels for different escalations and needs.
  • a safe direct messaging option.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Excel offers collaboration features that allow multiple users to work on the same spreadsheet, but managing changes made by different users can be challenging. Excel could improve its features by offering more granular control, better tracking of changes, and more robust conflict resolution tools.
  • Itcan be a barrier to productivity when importing and exporting data from other applications or file formats. To improve its features, it should offer better support for standard file formats and more robust error handling and reporting tools.
  • Excel can be challenging for finance students and working professionals, but it can be improved by offering more robust tutorials, better documentation, and more user communities and support forums.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • Would love a better integration with GitHub. For example, notifications when your PR is updated, when review is requested, @-mention in comments, etc.
  • Improved "Later" tab, for example the ability to create to-do lists or making the "Later" tab into a more powerful to-do list (annotate items with notes)
  • More powerful integrations, e.g. Google Calendar could render a calendar view within Slack, rather than sending the daily schedule
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
Excel remains the industry standard for spreadsheets and has maintained simple and straight-forward formula writing methods. Although there is a learning curve to do more complex calculations, there are countless help sites and videos on the Internet for almost any need.
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Salesforce
To be more transparent, I give 10 because Slack serves our collaboration needs. It provide us a good platform for team communication relaying important update within the company, it has even mobile app where you can install in your phone to monitor any updates within that team that needs your immediate attention and intervention.
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Usability
Microsoft
I'm giving it a 7 because it is my go to. But the fact other prefer Google Sheets when working with a team does get irritating. I've used the online version of Microsoft Excel that other teams can get into and it still seems behind Google Sheets. It's a little clanky and slow? If that's even a term.
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Salesforce
My rating was 7. Its intuitive interface and user-friendly features like channels, threads, and integrations make it excellent for team communication and onboarding. However, its usability is held back by the resource-intensive desktop app and cluttered feeling in large workspaces. The mobile app's performance and unreliable notifications have also been noted as weaknesses.
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
I have rarely, if ever, had issues with its availability.
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Salesforce
Yes, the app works 24/7. I don't even recall having any period that we could not use since the implementation. Even the maintenance periods are barely noticeable and our work is not impacted by it when it happens.
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Performance
Microsoft
Excel load and performs calculations immediately. It integrate well with all Microsoft Office applications and does not slow them down.
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Salesforce
Slack is a soft app, we don't have many issues with it. I recall one or two people complaining about something during our usage period, but I didn't have a bad experience. When the app is slow, usually the problem is with my computer or my internet. The app works just fine.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
I have not had to use it often, but it is good.
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Salesforce
Whenever I've had to troubleshoot an issue with Slack (which, to be honest, has not happened very often), their online documentation has been easy to locate, easy to understand, and effective in resolving my issue. Slack's ever-growing popularity also means that there's a large community of practice out there that can be depended upon.
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Implementation Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
I was not part of the implementation team, but I recall being 100% happy and excited to learn and use a new tool. I'm still am to be honest.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Out of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, IBM SPSS, and Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel is by far the most common tool used for anything data-related across organizations. Accordingly, our organization has also implemented Microsoft Excel as a first-step tool. We recently adopted Microsoft Power BI (the free version), and use it occasionally (mostly for creating dashboards), but it is less commonly understood by stakeholders across our organization and by our clients. Accordingly, Microsoft Excel is more user-friendly and because of its popularity, we can easily look up how to do things in the program online. Google Sheets is a comparable alternative to Microsoft Excel, but because it's cloud-based and we have sensitive data that needs to be protected, we chose against using this software. Finally, a few users (including myself) have access to and utilize IBM's SPSS. For my role, it's a helpful tool to do more rigorous analyses. However, because of its cost and limited functionality as a simple spreadsheet, we only use it for more complex analyses.
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Salesforce
I like Slack better than ClickUp, because I would spend 30-60 minutes a day updating my ClickUp tasks. The way ClickUp was used was very micromanaging. I billed by the hour, so I was willing to put in the time to alert the boss what tasks I was working on.
One of my jobs used Hive - I mostly just ran it in the background in case anyone messaged me. I did not use it often.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Microsoft
N/A I was not involved in this process.
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Salesforce
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Microsoft
Each user can use it to whatever level of expertise they have. It remains the same so users can contribute to another's work regardless of whether they have more or less expertise
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Salesforce
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Excel has positively impacted the business as it has increased our efficiency.
  • It also saves us the time that we would have spent on making the calculations that it does for us.
  • Since it works on all devices and is compatible with both Windows and Mac, we do not have to invest in any other alternative.
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Salesforce
  • Slack has been incredibly helpful in connecting various tech apps and ecosystems, creating a more streamlined and responsive process.
  • Slack has made it significantly easier to communicate with our team members across multiple time zones, creating a more engaging environment for our all-remote team.
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ScreenShots