Item: Flock
Rating: 3
Author: Lee L Kennedy

Overall Satisfaction with Flock

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Flock as a messaging tool for the entire company. Each department had different channels, specialty groups had channels, and we also used it for one-on-one communication.

We'd used Slack in the past but dropped it due to the limited message storage with the free version. We moved to Glip (a message service that comes with the RingCentral suite of tools), but as we moved away from RingCentral, we needed a new tool. Flock was a decent tool compared to the rest. Unfortunately, there was a similar messaging limit with Flock, but we stuck with it anyway.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Good value (we used the free plan and it did plenty).
There were some additional messaging properties (sending stickers, being alerted when changes were made to GDocs, etc) that were nice.
Few bugs, UX issues, or errors.

Cons

Gifs--a popular feature of messaging programs like Slack--were pretty weak with Flock. You didn't get to choose which one you wanted (like the way Slack used to be), but the selection seemed to be pretty limited/bad, and it also seemed like the gifs were sped up? So they looked pretty bad.
There were only ~5 reactions available (like, thumbs up, laugh, sad, angry?). Although better than Glip (you can only "like" in Glip), it would be nice to have more variety there.

Return on Investment

It was free, so it got the job done without costing anything.
The fact that it did not 100% satisfy the team meant that it is going to take us some time in the future to find an alternative.

Alternatives Considered

Glip and Slack

Flock is similar to Glip, with only two notable differences: the gifs are worse but the reactions are slightly better. Integrations are a little better, albeit a bit confusing. For example, there is a built in video conferencing feature where you can video chat with someone, but you can only do it for 20 minutes? In general, it's about the same. Slack, on the other hand, is much more fun with gifs and a full list of reactions.

Other Software Used

Asana

Likelihood to Recommend

We originally moved to Flock because we thought it did not have the messaging limit that Slack has--and that would have been our only reason. Unfortunately, it has the same limit. So it's basically just a lesser version of Slack, with fewer fun features like gifs and reactions. I'm not sure why anyone would pick Flock over Slack if you are going for a free messaging service.

Flock Feature Ratings

Comments

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It's pretty Flockin good?