Slack vs. Microsoft Teams: which is better?

[jennysowyrda]

This week we're discussing Slack vs. Microsoft Teams. 

As we continue to operate in a more remote friendly world, communicating with your team is more important than ever. There are dozens of options for how to chat with co-workers and stay connected, but two have risen to the top of the pack. Slack and Microsoft Teams. 

Which one do you prefer? What do you love about it? 

Share your opinion in the comments! 🙂 

[RonTheWebGuy]

I use both almost daily and I prefer Microsoft Teams

[PamCotton]

Hello Community!

🎉  I would like to invite and welcome this week's new users of the Community 🎉

We would love to hear your opinion on this debate, 

@CEdmunds, @seocharles @CLR @colLC @Daniellekay @DanKeane, @DianaWebprofits @Dmitry1 @emilybrogan @emmathompson_0 @HannaG @championuk @MidwayConcrete, @JuliaBaas, @LincJeff, @jennifer24w @KDon  @kwidrick  @krubenstein3 @LaurenSimo 

Thank you,

Pam!

[emmathompson_0]

I haven't had any experience using Slack so I'm probably not the best person to comment. After various improvements, Teams has been the "Go-To" this year - It's so easy to use.
My new employer uses Google Meet which just slows every other programme you're using down.. hopefully we'll move over to Teams soon! 

[PeterC]

Thanks for the mention @Pam.  If you can define "best", it might be an easier question to answer 🙂 

Concerning HubSpot, you have a Slack integration out of the box, so that's one-up for Slack. 👍

For everything else, it is probably inertia within the organisation that drives adoption of one or the other (as mentioned by @danielruby in an earlier post).  If you replace Slack with Teams in an organisation who are already familiar with Slack, you'd probably have a riot!

Teams is a lightweight when it comes to features - but even the least technical users will pick it up quickly.  Integrated calendar, phone and video calling, Office365 integration, even collaborative-document editing (Office365 stuff) all make Teams a very 'inclusive' tool. (Lack of emoji is an annoyance in Teams!  Pro tip: Pressing the Windows key & the period key together show hidden emoji 😉)

In Teams, a chat conversation is just a single thread, so a reply to an earlier message often comes out of context with the current subject. (The desktop Teams App doesn't have a "Reply" function - it's only in the mobile app.)  Slack allows multi-threaded chats to happen - so a conversation can pop out into a separate thread, and replies seen in context.  It's a simple thing that makes a huge difference and makes sure that important conversations don't get lost in the noise of general chat.

Slack has a much deeper feature set - software developers love it for all the short-key codes you can use. File management tools in Slack are light-years better than Teams 'basic' tools.  (In Teams, you can't even see a folder tree - you have to go to the associated SharePoint site to do anything useful.)  But with a deeper feature set comes steeper learning curve - which is typically the barrier to adoption amongst the masses.

In summary:  If you have a tech-savvy group who need to communicate, then they will become frustrated with the limitations of Teams far quicker than Slack. But if your group needs to include 'everyone' in the organisation, you will achieve greater acceptance using Teams. (And your tech-savvy team will probably quietly install Slack)

(And one day, I'll learn to write shorter posts.)

[DWaters6]

Thank you for this explanation 

[jimbanks]

Internally we use Teamwork for managing projects. It does a great job of collating files, reports, tasks.

But, almost all of our clients use Slack, so we have ended up using that to communicate with clients.

I find it intrusive, it's always on, always interrupting, but it can also be beneficial.

I hate the threaded conversations, it's just awful.

I think our agency doesn't work with the sort of businesses that use Teams.

And we are a Google & Mac stack business so aligning with Microsoft would just not work for us.

I can't even remember the last time I did a call that was Skype.

[JessicaH]

Hi @Nynke_HM @dianalcont @Daniel_Bleich @ndwilliams3 @mkarsten @Herman @Dan1 @Jonno_Price @PeterC @JeremyHong, I wanted to bring this thread to your attention.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter! Slack or Microsoft Teams - which has been the best solution for your companies? 

Thanks!

Jess

[Dan1]

Hi @JessicaH , 

Thanks for looping me in. I have not used Teams before, but I have used Slack for a long time. 

One of the strongest benefits of Slack is the number of integrations it has, at my previous company it became the backbone of the business due to how much it integrated with other critical systems. eg) Our customer support channels, HR etc. 

Like many have mentioned in this thread Slack can be very distracting. I think the key is to get your company on the same page around communication etiquette. You may need to reiterate that if an urgent response isn't required then its better to email, giving your colleague the chance to reply in their own time.

I would actually say if you are very small team, you can use Whatsapp desktop for free and get much of the communication and search functionality you need. This doesn't work for big teams 🙂 

Kind Regards, 

Dan

[dianalcont]

Thanks for including me in the discussion @JessicaH 

We use slack and love it. The interface is easy to use. I've never had an issue with it being down or causing my laptop to slow down which is a plus.

The mobile app is convenient as well - although I made a rule a while ago that I don't want to be accessible 24/7 so have taken it off of my phone. Now in a world where we aren't "WFH" but rather living at work - I find this to be HUGE for creating boundaries for work life balance.

We don't use microsoft anything so I can't give a fully fair assesment on how they compare ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[mjeffs]

I agree with @dianalcont wholeheartedly. I haven't used Microsoft team either.

[ndwilliams3]

I use both for different things.

I'd say if your company is Office 365, then go with Teams. The single login and native integration with Sharepoint and Onedrive, video conferencing and Calendar make it great for communicating and collaborating across the entire company. Especially when the Team hierarchy is relatively  static and doesn't need a whole lot of specific conversation channels.

If your Team structure is more fluid with micro teams setup around projects and their specific needs for resources, then Slack might be be the better way to go.

For developers and IT teams I think Slack is the way to go. With the chat and channels organization, it is much easier to navigate multiple collaborations and conversations with micro teams. 

[mkarsten]

I haven't had any experience with Slack, we use Teams. At first it seemed more of a pain than help, but with the improvements they've made this year, we've come to depend on it. It still freezes for some at times, and every once in a while it thows a fit during meetings, but overall have been happy with it.

[Jonno_Price]

Hi Jessica and thanks for the notification. 

Personally a fan of Slack as that is the tool I use most with clients and also for networking  / mastermind groups. It has great integrations and is very intuitive. 

As a consultant working mainly with tech, SaaS type companies almost all clients have been on Slack. 

That said, if I was in a company that used the MS ecosystem, had MS 365 etc I would totally opt for MS Teams. 

[sharonlicari]

Hey guys! 

We'd love to hear your thoughts about this topic! which tool do you prefer: Slack or Microsoft teams?

@Mike_Eastwood @Krystina @MAC-MCB @ShanePunt @PeterC @danielruby @AnnieRECIPE @mike-ward @Aakar @jimbanks 

Thank you 

Sharon 🙂

[ShanePunt]

MS teams causes my laptop to free all the time, so slack hands down.

[danielruby]

We use Slack, although in part that might be due to inertia - Slack has been core to our internal communication strategies both at Demand Sage and at prior companies.

Demand Sage on Product Hunt

[jennysowyrda]

Thanks everyone! 

@NCO it sounds like @hcollins has quite a few tips about Teams!! 🙂 Thanks for sharing! 

I want to bring in a few of our newer contributors to get their thoughts

@zack510, @mjeffs, @coreymhwrd, @DRWBTribe, @samuelschnee, @lypratt, @LT-PIXB, @Case_Aldridgewelcome to the Community! This week we're discussing Slack vs. Microsoft Teams and I wanted to see if you had any opinions or experiences to share 🙂

[hcollins]

For a long time I was anti Teams and wanted to have Slack in our company, but as I started to use Teams more and more with the movement away from Skype, I found there were a lot of positives about it, even though it's not as user-friendly as it could be. Since COVID, Microsoft have been releasing features weekly as well, so there are a lot of hidden capabilities that I have still not discovered.

I have been able to create Flows which have simplified tasks and automated tedious processes and integrate a lot of outside platforms without the Teams App (ie. Survey Monkey) That said, it's not easy to work with and can be confusing to get the hang of and there really aren't tutorials out there for how to get the best out of Teams. If you don't mind taking time to learn what the platform can do, I think it's really good, but if you want simplicity and straightforward, Slack is definitely better.

[jennysowyrda]

I want to tag in a few contributors to get their input on this matter!

@Andi7, @NCO, @jonathan456, @archai46, @Marlize, @hcollins, @sven_montanus - would love to hear your thoughts on this matter! 🙂 Slack or Microsoft Teams - which has been the best solution for your companies? 

[NCO]

Hi @jennysowyrda - nice to hear from you.

We're big fans of Slack and above all else, love its versatility/ ability to integrate with every other tool or platform that we use (in most cases, a native integration). The free plan gives plenty of options to small teams and has what seems like endless options for customization. Personally, I happen to prefer the Slack notifications to those of Teams.

If you live in all things Microsoft (ie. Outlook), Teams may fit well into your stack - if you're looking to bring your other platforms into one central communication hub, I'd vote for Slack and its robust API.