CommUnity by Personify vs. Samepage vs. Slack

You can tell from the CEO and all staff that this is a very competent company that wants you to succeed with integrity. There is a strong
support and services team that works collaboratively with us to make
sure we are always getting what we need. They provide
24x7 emergency support, online ticket support, email support, a client
community, and the ability to call and talk to the same account manager or
community consultant every time (I even have Mariano's skype and he replies on weekends!). They recently launched a client community - so they are now even practicing what they preach. Our questions in the client community are always answered quickly.

Samepage is well suited to situations: - when there is a need for ongoing collaboration between people - when these people lack tech skills - when there is a need for sharing and showing different kinds of media Samepage is less appropriate in situations (since there are better tools for those particular uses): - requiring more robust communication tools - when the objective is to execute a specific, finite task - when it is necessary a precise control of version history

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• It's easy to use. The admin panel has a number of drag and drop options to modify the experience
• Flexibility. There are a large number of standard block features that can be added to areas. In addition, each dynamic block as a number of settings that allow you to tailor the experience you want to create. You can do this without being a programmer.
• Personalization. There are good tools that allow you to personalize the experience based on whether users are logged in or not, whether they are in particular segments (which we can create) or recommendations based on information the user has provided about themselves.
• Mobile. Small World Labs has a really great way of doing mobile. They give you a drag and drop interface for designing the mobile environment so there is a lot of flexibility with this. We are currently turning this module on.

• All communication is literally on one page, so you don't have to learn its navigation. Cuts the learning curve.
• User interface is very simple. WYSIWYG.
• The mobile app works well and I like how it syncs with the desktop version.
• Just discovered the Dropbox sync. Very cool. Works way better than Dropbox at sharing files!

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Integration with our Association Management System (AMS) didn't go as smoothly as I had wished. Having said that all of the issues with that integration have been addressed.
• Because the platform is updated so frequently you need to stay on top of what is available to you and your end users or you may miss out on key functionality releases.

• Document types could have symbolic representations.
• Exporting process could be shorter - Just with an upward arrow button.
• Task chat can also have a save option to take notes of important messages.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

From the first conversation and beyond, it has been a pleasure working with Small World Labs. Their staff are genuinely interested in understanding our business and our goals, and actively make recommendation on continued improvement and long-term strategy. All of their staff demonstrate a clear understanding of the product and when to expect new features. Furthermore, their CEO, Michael Wilson, is more than competent and has proven to be an industry expert. He understands both the technical side and the community strategy side of the business. In fact, we have already initiated a project to build a second community with Small World Labs for a separate business unit

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.

Incentivized

There are a multitude of options to configure the exact user experience you want and what you want to emphasize.

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.

Uptime has never been an issue.

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.

Incentivized

Speed is not an issue.

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.

Incentivized

The people at Small World Labs are very accessible. I can email, open a ticket, or call and they are there. I'd also point out that senior management is quite available too. We frequently have talks about potential strategies and new things we might be doing, which is great. I think the whole organization genuinely likes what they do and likes helping us succeed.

Samepage support is incredibly active and responsive! They work with you from the outset to make sure you are set up for success and understand all the features

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

In-person training is more ad-hoc based on if they are traveling to you or you are going to visit them. I imagine that if I paid for in-person training that it would be set up as well, but I've just used the standard training that comes with the initial set up and ongoing support.

Online training is through online webinar & how-to posts and videos in the client community.

We had staff turnover at our own organization during the implementation. We were able to get the community up and live in a good timeframe even though that happened and we had to switch some people around for managing the project on our side.

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.

Incentivized

We evaluated a few different community platform vendors over the course of a couple of months. I believe we also evaluated Jive, Lithium, KickApps, and Powered.

I have used many project management and collaboration tools and everyone has its kicks and fall backs. But for the kind of collaboration we require with our external parties right now, we really enjoy collaborating on Samepage. With Sharepoint, we were always running into access issues with our external vendors and it was a hassle to adjust those user settings. However since we started with Samepage, both our team members and external party vendor have been happily collaborating.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Our community has been very active since the re-launch of our site. Have seen some increases in member engagement.
• Feedback from our membership has been nothing but positive since we transitioned off of our older Sharepoint community. Look and feel and ease of use have been real pluses for our members.
• Having the Small World Labs community is allowing us to be more creative with the way we integrate our community into all aspects of our online presence, web-site, social media, etc.

• It definitely has a positive return on investment. We were looking for someone who can help with these.
• It can be used very well for project management, task management, mass communication, and secured documentation.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized