Podio is a cloud-based platform for organizing team communication, business processes, and reporting in project management workspaces; also it may be used as a light CRM platform. It enables workflow automation and integrations. It includes a free version and paid packages with additional features.
$14
per month per user
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
Zeplin
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Zeplin, from the company of the same name, is a platform supporting collaboration in application development by engineers and designers by providing an API with popular collaboration, development and prototyping tools and creating a space where productions can be shared and reviewed.
$15
per month
Pricing
Podio
Slack
Zeplin
Editions & Modules
Plus
$14
per month per user
Premium
$24
per month per user
Free
$0
Pro
$7.25*
per month per user
Business+
$12.50*
per month per user
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Free
$0
up to 1 project
Advanced
$15
per month per seat (up to 50 projects)
Basic
$15
per month per project
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Podio
Slack
Zeplin
Free Trial
No
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
A discount is available for annual pricing.
*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.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Podio
Slack
Zeplin
Considered Multiple Products
Podio
Verified User
Manager
Chose Podio
I only listed Slack because it is similar in that you can coordinate with external and internal teams. You can share files and chat with other individuals. Slack is severely lacking compared to Podio though. Podio has the capabilities to track tasks, finances, projects, …
We were trying to find a cost-effective solution (we're a small company) that would allow us to store all our client contacts and notes and help save our team time. Podio's globiflow feature does this really well. Other options we looked at didn't have these features or gave …
Podio is decent for task management. We selected Podio to learn about the product and how to work with the product going forward. It feels like more of a project management tool than a CRM. The limited reporting and contact management features leave much to be desired. There …
We now use Slack which is similar in functionality. We still don't use it much.
Slack
No answer on this topic
Zeplin
Verified User
Professional
Chose Zeplin
Actually, we didn't select Zeplin. After a long time of internal discussions, the majority of the team decided that we want to move to Figma. We still use Zeplin as a legacy, but we don't use it for new features. In my opinion, it's less flexible than Figma, which allows …
Out of all of the products that I have used to support design-to-development handoffs, Zeplin is my favorite. It’s pretty lightweight and easy to use (once you get the hang of it). Zeplin also has a smooth interface and is, generally, clearer to use than other tools, such as …
These other tools are really helpful products for creating and sharing wireframes / prototypes. However, Zeplin is the best tool for the actual hand off between the design and development teams once the design is actually ready to share. Zeplin fills this gap and improves the …
Zeplin is simpler. Zeplin lacks prototyping on par with InVision. Zeplin doesn't give a direct code for Android and iOS like Figma does. Zeplin doesn't have a lot of advanced features like InVision, for example, whiteboard. But Zeplin is good for at its job which is to share …
Zeplin is a really nice lightweight app, that is easier to use than InVision for sharing purposes. InVision does primarily handle prototyping, which Zeplin does not do. Abstract is my product of choice but is also a slightly different tool — almost a GitHub for design. It …
[Citrix Podios's] customer support is very quick and they provide you an option to convert your project into small tasks so that you can better assist your team and extract maximum work out of them hence I will totally recommend its usage. I could not think that keeping track of tasks could be this much easier and smart. It is a fully customizable tool that manages my tasks efficiently and deal with them effectively.
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.
I still have some issues, especially with color integration between the style guide and also project. When we update the colors, it's not automatically sync to every project. Aside from that, zeplin solves my problem for hand-off design from design to developer. I set zeplin is source of truth design file
Very easy for people without coding or technical skills to set up and maintain information in "Apps".
Platform is very easy to learn and adopt--it's intuitive.
Project management potential is awesome--instead of having to fit your projects into a structure that is industry specific, you can build an app that tracks what you want, in the order you want it.
Has a "relationship" field that allows you to relate an individual item or record to a record in another app. It effectively gives some of the functionality of a relational database.
Very useful for information sharing when staff members are in different regions or places.
Ease in automatically building design style guides, saving time that might be spent on building style guides in another tool (such as InDesign).
Users can use Mac, PC, or web versions of this app to collaborate on a single project, enabling us to work with a wider pool of contractors.
Accelerates the design-to-development workflow, as it’s very easy to import Sketch or Photoshop files through plug-ins, and HTML/CSS codes are automatically created based on designs.
Provides cross-platform specifications for web, iOS, and Android, which can save developers time in figuring out specifications beyond the “main platform" on their own.
A customizable profile status – would love to work with Podio in silent mode (logged in while working, but "not available" for requests when in heavy work mode)
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
Podio customer service is great. The cloud and mobile service is fast (almost instant, continuous syncing). With a solid user base, and backed by Citrix, this is a serious business solution. They're also constantly working on improving and making it more powerful. I anticipate it only getting better
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.
It takes a while to understand how to wield the power of 'relationship' fields and unlocking the flow of data across Podio apps and workspaces. Once the lightbulb comes on, the options and builds are effortless and limitless. Because of the unrestrained customization, you truly start with a blank slate and must endure a potentially frustrating learning curve to crack to (no)code. But once you get it, all the power is readily at your fingertips.
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.
Zeplin's component management and style guide help us to be consistent across whole product and it so easy to use for non-technical person. It is now easy to collaboration for designes between different teams like stackholders, product owner, UI/UX, developers and testers. Now there is only one point of reference is Zeplin so it is so easy to get details without asking designer or developer again and again.
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.
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.
Podio support was always responsive and very quick to provide answers and assistance during the history of using this product, their support team has always been top notch. There have been several cases where calling podio support a feature was not available and they provided either workaround solutions or added the features straight into their roadmap.
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.
Zeplin has classic support with a chat from the website. It's working fine, and we're also getting the support needed when needed. However, Zeplin is very good at closing the incidents and moving on. It was a while ago we had a case with their support so that it might have improved since then.
I have not yet found a permanent solution that meets all of our needs. We continue to use different tools across our different departments, and none of our tools really communicate with one another to our satisfaction. We remain optimistic, however, that a company will emerge that embraces an abstract, highly customizable interface and also provides exceptional customer service with an open-minded development team that does not simply say no to everything by default.
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.
Zeplin is great to inspect and share user interfaces, specifications and assets, perfect for developers. Tools like InVision and Marvel are much better to create prototypes for both developers, coworkers and even stakeholders, but they don't have this kind of feature (inspection) as Zeplin does. So each of them can be used for different purposes, offering different approaches to share and interact with layouts for apps and websites.
Podio is great for task assignment and tracking. The ability to enter and assign tasks from mobile and track their completion saves me several phone calls a day.
Podio outdoes email as my go to place to search for information. The ability to forward emails into the system, organize by projects and contacts, and search it all saves considerable time and confusion.
Podio has considerable potential to reduce overall admin time spent organizing information (filing, tracking, etc) The ability to keep a single record of a given piece of information without being tied to email vs file structure works very well.
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.
Development time has reduced as the design updates are communicated in real time to developers and they don't have to write the boilerplate code as it's already generated.
Employee engagement has improved as every stakeholder is aware about the design changes from the beginning and can give their inputs.
Designers save a lot of time as they don't to explicitly communicate when the update or publish their designs and also it just takes a couple of clicks to publish their designs. Also, lot of rework is saved as every stakeholder is involved right from the beginning.
