Slack

Score9 out of 10

10,089 Reviews and Ratings

What is Slack?

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 company has raised $340M in funding and boasts 800k users.

Categories & Use Cases

Chat
Instant messaging tool allows users to communicate with select other users in real-time threads.
Category average: 8.9
Mobile Access
Mobile access is the ability to access the software from a smartphone or tablet.
Category average: 8.5
Discussions
Users can join groups or message boards for forum-style collaboration.
Category average: 8.5

Task Management
This includes the ability to plan, track, collaborate and report on tasks.
Category average: 7.9
Visual planning tools
Includes visual tools such as pinboards, mind-maps, or charts for collaborative brainstorming and/or workflow planning.
Category average: 7.8
Gantt Charts
Gantt charts are charts that show tasks or events along the y-axis displayed against time along the x-axis.
Category average: 7.5

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using Slack.

Based on HG Insights installation data

View all Reviews

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

24.8%

6,081 installations of 24,552

“Slack is mainly used by our coding team and also the Dev Ops side of the house.”
— Security Engineer, Novatech

#2 most frequent

Information

18.3%

4,504 installations of 24,552

“We use Slack for the majority of our asynchronous work-related communication.”
— Software Engineer, Cleanlab

#3 most frequent

Manufacturing

6.7%

1,650 installations of 24,552

“Effective communication for staff working in the office and remote.”
— Content Manager, Forgeway Limited

Pros

Seamless integration with third-party applications
Real-time messaging and prompt information sharing
User-friendly interface and ease of use

Cons

Potential for noise from excessive or poorly managed channels
Challenges with user adoption and channel management
Occasional implementation issues

Clifton Hunter

Quality Assurance Analyst in Quality Assurance at STRATEGY SYNERGY (11-50 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Slack to communicate testing schedules, release readiness, regression testing progress, and deployment timelines with developers and project stakeholders. Slack enables quick discussions with developers, DevOps engineers, business analysts, and product owners to clarify requirements, reproduce defects, and validate fixes.

Pros

Slack provides instant messaging that allows QA Analysts, developers, and DevOps engineers to resolve issues much faster than email.
Slack workflows automate repetitive tasks such as collecting daily QA status updates, reporting release readiness, or notifying stakeholders when testing milestones are completed.

Cons

While Slack is excellent for communication, it is not designed to manage test cases, track defects, or plan sprints.

Return on Investment

Slack has shortened the time required to report, investigate, and resolve software defects.
The platform has strengthened knowledge sharing by making conversations, technical discussions, and documentation easily accessible.
Slack has increased team productivity, improved cross-functional collaboration, reduced response time for critical issues, supported faster software delivery, and helped us consistently deliver higher-quality applications while meeting business goals and customer expectations.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Teams, Discord, Mattermost and Workplace from Meta (discontinued)

Other Software Used

Atlassian Jira, GitHub, Jenkins, Atlassian Confluence, Postman

Shrikant Joshi View profile

Sr. Director engineering in Engineering at HG Insights (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Slack is deployed across our company as a default messaging and collaboration tool. It serves the following use cases. 1. direction communication with any employee. 2. Slack channels to communicate with the product team. Channels are used heavily in our organization for work and fun related activities. 3. Slack is also used across products / teams. for e.g. communication at engineering organization as well as at company level messaging.

Pros

Customer issues: Threads feature allows us to group a particular issue in a single thread and discuss within that thread. I can use the thread link to embed in JIRA ticket for tracking progress in JIRA (which is our details engineering tracking system).
Ability to add folder to Slack channel helps keep important information, documents easily accessible. e.g., we use this to keep a "ramp up" folder that can be used by any new joiner.
Global search is effective when I forget which group a particular message was in.

Cons

I cannot create a group of more then 9 people and there is not easy way to convert that group to a channel. This is typically the journey, you start with a small group but then for some groups it makes sense to convert to a channel to allow more people to participate.
I am not happy with alerting or unread messages. Threads is a weak link here. Any discussion here is not indicated in some prominent way. I have to go to the "threads" link at the top to view all the unread messages. I often visit the threads channel only couple of times a day and I end up missing some time sensitive questions.
The alert pop up is transient, so I often miss alerts that are important to be replied quickly.
Quality of huddle is pretty bad especially for videos. It forces us to go on Zoom even for a 1-1 huddle that can be easily done in Slack.

Return on Investment

Our leadership team uses Slack communication to directly reach employees. This allows us to be aligned with the company objectives.
Communication amongst the team stays effective and at one place. This improves the alignment.
Slack has proven to be effective in managing site incidents. Allows us to dynamically pull resources as needed and get a fix in place.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Teams

Other Software Used

Anthropic Claude, Zoom Workplace, Google Workspace

Muhammad Rohan View profile

Director in Information Technology at Devtics Technologies (1-10 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am using Slack for my daily professional communications and integrations with my apps like Google Docs and Loom Video. I like how it can make channels for each project/task and you can discuss all the details of that specific topic there. I also like the integration of my Project Management software "Trello", because it can tell me about the updates happening in trello and I can update that cards back by staying in Slack.

Pros

Communication
Project Management
File Sharing
Integrations with various Apps

Cons

Backup of messages for low tier packages
Nicer way to show the data from integrated apps
Time zone / Notifications

Return on Investment

Arrangement of my projects
Effective communication
Huddle feature let me call my teammates
Available for free

Alternatives Considered

Skype and ClickUp

Other Software Used

Trello, Adobe PhotoShop, Google Sheets

Max Trummer View profile

Merchant Success Manager in Sales at Rebuy Engine (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Slack as our primary communication tool. Not just for internal messaging, but for work flows such as when a customer gets their first sale using our tool, or if they churn or if they install. We really love the integrations with other apps and salesforce. The ability to communicate via message, group chat, channel or huddles with live video is awesome.

Pros

Communication
Integrations
Workflows

Cons

Enablement

Return on Investment

Automated workflows
Helps sales
Reduces churn

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Teams and Notion

Other Software Used

BILL Spend & Expense, Navan, 1Password

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Slack as an instant messaging platform. We also use the huddle feature for quick and simple audio and video conferencing. Slack offers statuses, threads, and various reactions. Video conferencing offers screen sharing, hand raising, and the ability to draw on the screen for everyone in the huddle to see and participate.

Pros

Instant messaging.
Video conferencing.
Screen sharing and screen drawing.

Cons

Video streams can become unstable even on good internet connections.
Could be more affordable.
Notifications can be a pain to turn off all at once.

Return on Investment

Improved collaboration between team members.
Easier file sharing.
Quicker information travels.

Slack

What is Slack?

Categories & Use Cases

Slack Key Features

Top Performing Features

Chat

Mobile Access

Discussions

Areas for Improvement

Task Management

Visual planning tools

Gantt Charts

Who Buys & Uses Slack

Most Frequent Users

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Information

Manufacturing

Most Frequent Users

Small Businesses

Mid-sized Companies

Enterprises

Most Frequent Users

United States of America

Canada

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Most Frequent Users

Engineering

IT

Marketing

Slack Reviews

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