Cheap alternative to general communication tools
January 31, 2019
Cheap alternative to general communication tools
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Workplace by Facebook
We use Workplace by Facebook as our centralized communications and file-sharing tool that integrates with some of the other collaboration tools that we use, like Box and Jira. Workplace by Facebook previously replaced our premium Slack channel and has been a better solution for centralizing and organizing team communication, as well as extending remote productivity.
- Cheaper pricing -- All of Workplace costs just $3 per user, and it replaces most of the vital tools that Slack charges more money for per month.
- Since most of the tools follow the design of the rest of the Facebook interfaces, it's quite easy to learn and on-board.
- It's really easy to configure privacy and security settings, and the security offered by Facebook is pretty good in general as well.
- While the integrations bring collaboration to Workplace, it would be nice to have more collaboration, presentation, and productivity tools that are native to the platform.
- Some of the interfaces can be slow to load -- This is a shared issue with Slack, and I haven't seen a collaboration platform get this right yet.
- Sometimes, there's too little contrast from the rest of Facebook. People tend to interpret the platform as more of a social setting, which can detract from the discussion, compared to other workplace-only tools like Slack.
- Positive -- Cheaper than alternative tools like Slack that offer similar functionality at higher prices.
- Positive -- Easy on-boarding because of the familiar interface and good UI.
- Negative -- Missing some integral tools that has forced us to incorporate some alternative collaboration tools as well in our workflow.
We recently migrated from the premium plan of Slack to Workplace by Facebook. We found that the security and privacy options were more easy to control, and that Facebook's UI was generally better-designed and more intuitive. Since Slack's extension/integration ecosystem is completely open, there had been some poor-quality integrations that have detracted from our team's efficiency, and I believe this has gotten better since we transitioned to Workplace by Facebook.