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One Chat to Rule them All, and in the Loudness Bind them
March 16, 2018

One Chat to Rule them All, and in the Loudness Bind them

Joshua Weaver | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Slack

  • We currently use slack at our organization for our main non-verbal internal communication.
  • We've tried to mitigate our reliance on email internally as we used to see emails slung around without much thought. Now we just fire off a quick message.
  • We have some remote employees communicate with Slack as a primary internal communication tool.
  • Additionally we utilize a third-party chat solution for a product site that allows end-users to communicate with us via slack. They don't know they are talking to us via slack but the chat widget integrates with a specific Slack channel. Slack is flexible in this way.
  • We use slack to send us reminders to follow-up with customers and leads by way of a scheduled notification/reminder from our internal custom CRM
  • We will toss files back and forth at times when we need to share something quickly
  • API Integrations
  • 3rd Party Support
  • File/Image support
  • Mobile App works well
  • Audio and Video Calls
  • Text formatting and Code sharing (for developers)
  • Notification Options
  • Performance can be slow at times
  • Using slack creates a reliance on it - like any social media, feeling that you may fall behind if you don't view it for a time
  • It can be easy to miss messages if they're not directly addressed to you (which many users may forget, although this is hardly a fault of slack — they do their best to balance message notification configuration with options)
  • I'm not sure how measurable it is to determine impact of a chat app on business.
  • It does help us to maintain effective communication avenues between our office and remote employees.
  • It helps us schedule easy reminders which can keep us accountable to our customer/lead follow-ups which definitely helps alleviate some stresses with customers.
I've used Discord which is a direct Slack competitor in tech/gaming communities and I have found both have strengths and weaknesses. Once I've gotten accustomed to certain text formatting features of Slack, I've found switching over to using Discord was sometimes disappointing when a formatting feature was absent. Slack has some nice code/syntax highlighting/sharing features which Discord does not have.
I think slack is great for smaller teams. In a larger setting, I would be worrisome that it would devolve into a cacophony of noise. This could also be overwhelming to some individuals.
I'm involved in several other slack groups in the coding community and they can get rather busy quite quickly. Since our company is somewhat small, I feel like it fits us pretty well and remains manageable and easy to keep up with.

Slack Feature Ratings

Project Management
7.0
Scheduling
5
Mobile Access
9
Search
7
Communication
9.3
Chat
9
Notifications
10
Discussions
9
Surveys
Not Rated
Integrates with GoToMeeting
Not Rated
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts
Not Rated
File Sharing & Management
6.2
Video files
7
Audio files
7
Document collaboration
5
Access control
5
Advanced security features
Not Rated
Integrates with Google Drive
6
Device sync
7

Using Slack

Everything just works. I think the navigation and usability is quite intuitive. I have never had to look up any information or google how to use a feature of Slack (both in the desktop form and on the mobile app). I've never heard any complaints from our other employees either. I have been asked to remind people how to set up reminders, ironically. Although that itself is really simple too (you type "/remind" and then the reminder details).
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Feel confident using
Familiar
Cumbersome
  • On-boarding users in our org
  • Chatting - Formatting Text
  • Configuring and customizing Slack is great and quite simple
  • 3rd Party API integrations and webhooks are easy to integrate
  • Switching between different Slack Groups can create slow loading times
  • Threaded messages can be confusing to some users
Yes - The Slack Mobile App is fantastic. Every feature that I have seen on Desktop is pretty much represented on mobile. Some things like "reactions" are harder to access due to the requirement of having to press and hold on a message, but that is at least intuitive as a user experience. It works as expected and is relatively quick on my iPhone 7.