Likelihood to Recommend I would definitely recommend Slack to everyone who needs a messaging platform for work. The thing that I most appreciate on Slack is the possibility of talking to my coworkers without using my personal number or personal apps. This way, I can separate what is work and what is not. Slack even has the option to mute notifications after work hours. I'm able to keep track of every project and discuss them in an easy and fast way. Another great thing is that you can keep and check the history of channels and groups, this way the discussions are never lost when someone joins the project in the middle of it or someone leaves, the history is always there. The only thing that bothers me in the platform is the system of threads, where you can easily lose the messages cause they look kind of hidden. If you have multiple subjects with someone and the person only responds in threads, it's very common to lose their messages.
Read full review If you cannot use another more common solution on the market or are looking for an alternative to the known solutions, it is a great alternative. If you have other tools already, and just want to test [them], that's fine, but I think the better-known ones have a better chance of using, knowing, and the learning curve will be shorter.
Read full review Pros Automated Notifications: Integrated tools like Jira, Trello, and Google Drive to receive automated notifications and updates directly in Slack, improving visibility and efficiency within the team Message Encryption: Slack encrypts the messages in transit and at rest, ensuring the security and privacy of sensitive information and making our IT team's life much easier. Reminder Bots: We used Slackbot to set reminders, automate follow-up actions, and provided information based on user queries. SurveyMonkey Integration: Integrated our Slack with SurveyMonkey to distribute surveys and collect feedback from team members, streamlining the feedback-gathering process which was a huge support to our HR and Admin team. Read full review Easy to use: The app is very, very easy to use. Literally just create a chat room (input a name) and access it to chat. Call/video quality: I've experienced better call quality on appear.in than in almost all other chat and video conferencing services out there. Read full review Cons I do wish Slack made it easier to see your DM's. They added a feature that moves them around based on who is active, but if you're trying to find a thread with a teammate who isn't active on Slack at that moment, it's a lot harder to find. I also think they could integrate with AI more and have apps for AI. Lastly, it would be awesome if it would tell you when a coworker was last active. It would be nice to keep track of when people are logging off. Read full review The paid version may have dial-in. But I have always used the free version. Dial-in is typically required for an "official" multi-purpose teleconference platform. I did have some trouble with larger groups (5+) when it was Appear.in but almost always use it for small 1-on-1 or 3 person meetings. Read full review Likelihood to Renew As useful as Slack has become within our company, I feel fairly confident we will continue to use Slack as a communication tool. They continue to improve their software and add value to its use within our office. Customer service delivers, which is an absolute must. Looking forward to how they improve.
Read full review We are using a larger tool suite that already includes video conferencing instead of our older approach of using different apps from different vendors. appear.in has a simple but great set of features but its pricing scheme is not as scalable as we really need in a 500+ employee company.
Read full review Usability As long as you use the basic chat features and nothing more, it really is super easy to understand and use. Once you want to take advantage of some of the more advanced features and capabilities, that's when things get complicated. Anyone who has use SMS or a chat program before will be able to figure out the basics though, so rolling this out should be relatively straightforward and not required exhaustive training. Teaching chat etiquette is something else though.
Read full review Very easy to use, technical and non-technical colleagues have used it with no instructions needed. That says all about the app and services.
Read full review Support Rating I've never had to contact support for Slack which is a great testament to its ease and use. Adding people outside of the organization takes a little getting used to, but ultimately allows for greater collaboration between FTE and contractors. There is no clear alternative to this software, so it's the best we can do for now.
Read full review Never had to contact support, so we cannot give a rating for their overall support. When we noticed the audio was not always great quality, we simply educated our users to mute the mic and use the in-room conference phone which is connected via a dedicated VOIP link and had much better voice quality. The video performance varied by locations network speed and found it got much worse when the room size increased to over 4 connections.
Read full review Implementation Rating It always helps if you communicate to everyone in the organization how important it is to drop whatever other chat tools they are using and jump quickly to Slack. They will all fall in love with it.
Read full review After a recommendation from a partner, as the system is very easy to use, we simply start. Read full review Alternatives Considered Slack is the superior offering for what we do and who we communicate with. The other programs offer basic features, but Slack continues to innovate and is business-first, which is very helpful for our small team. The feature set and integrations are better in Slack than other offerings we have evaluated
Read full review I find Zoom more complicated to use and harder to use because a lot of people do not like having to download things to their computers or devices and Whereby is so easy to get connected with . I like that Zoom offers larger rooms, but at this point the cost is not worth the extra expense.
Read full review Return on Investment We have a story when one guy mentioned in a our site group with tag @here about his wedding, he didnt know that @here works only for people who are online, so most of the people missed the message, slack is not the best place to update about the important things Slack helps to solve and be updated if you have an internal problems and you want to know how the solving goes Read full review In general, any sort of online collaborations saves a lot on your budget. The meetings are rather more on time and can be efficient and short. Easy to drop-by and have a small talk with clients/teammates within COVID era. The URL makes you look fancy instead of a random hash. Read full review ScreenShots