Microsoft Teams Vs Slack : The Countdown begins to choose one

1.  BLOGS >> Microsoft Teams Vs Slack : The Countdown begins to choose one Microso? Teams Vs Slack : The Countdown begins to choose one 08 May '2019 Md Mohsin Ansari Team communication tools like Microso? Teams, Slack, Flock, Skype for Business, etc., are reinventing new methods of communication for seamless o?ce interactions across various teams in an organization.   In the year 2016, Bill Gates was against the decision of purchasing its competitor Slack, instead, he wants the organization to improvise Skype for Business. The initial release of Microso? Teams to public happened in the year 2017, and very recently the stable release 1.2.00.4664 of the product happened this year in the month of February. As we understand most of the corporate work routines run on O?ce 365 suite, the Microso? Teams is one of the essential pa?s of it.   On the other hand, Slack made its public appearance in the year 2013 by Stewa? Bu?e?ield. Recently Slack has launched a new logo in the month of January of this year, and there was much di?erence of opinions among netizens on the new logo as many of them liked the old logo when compared to the new one. Slack allows the users to check all the latest updates from @slackapi.   Initially, in the year, 2014 Slack has $43 million funding for its operations, to round it up to additional funding of $200 million in April 2016.   Let us look into the quick comparison at both the tools       Table of Contents  Sign-Up Flow Inviting andAdding User

2. Inviting and Adding User Guest Access Capabilities Design (UI and UX) Collaboration Integration Pricing File Storage Search Help Center   Quick Infographic Comparison between Microso? Teams Vs Slack    

3.     The sign-up ?ow - Which Application O?ers Smoother Setup?  Microso? Teams

4. Though Microso? Teams comes with O?ce 365 suite, the workplace collaboration application is open to all public with a free sign-up trail of one month. You can sign-up with any of your public domain mail ids such as Google, Yahoo, etc., or you can directly access your Microso? Teams with your Microso? domain id if you are a subscriber of O?ce 365.   Once you are done with entering your mail id and password, a veri?cation code has been sent to your registered mail id. Now you can sta? using Microso? Teams by downloading the desktop app or a Web app.       Slack The Sign-up Process of Slack sta?s with creating a workspace. Slack’s unlimited free trial allows the users to log-in to it with their respective workspace URL with a limited set of features. Any user can create a workspace from scratch with any of their Gmail, Yahoo, etc., public domains. To ?nish the sign-up process you are asked to give your name and password.   Slack facilitates an unlimited number of workspaces in its Enterprise Grid pricing plan, where the users of can switch between one workspace to others within the user inte?ace itself.  

5.   Our Verdict: The Sign-up process at Microso? Teams is pre?y simple and easy when compared to Slack.   The similar post you might like:   Discord vs Slack   Ryver Vs Slack   Yammer Or Slack   Inviting and Adding User  Microso? Teams This workplace collaboration application provides a feature where you can invite others (or) guests to your organization for enhanced to associate with them on your projects. Your guests could be your clients, vendors, and non-employees or any others.   The le? panel of the user inte?ace has the feature of “Invite others to the Org”. This will take you to the page of invite people, from where you can sta? inviting people by giving your guests email and their display name. Fu?hermore, you can choose the “Add more” option to invite more people.      In addition to inviting guests to your organization,  Microso? Teams allows you to add more people to your team. The moment you log-in to the application, it welcomes you with the features of “Add more people, Create more channels, Open the FAQ,”.  

6.     Slack The intuitive user inte?ace of Slack lets you to Invite people from the le? panel of your workspace.   Guests like vendors, clients, contractors, freelancers, and others are invited to Slack in both of it's free and paid plans. Invite few or many at once with their public/private domain mail ids. You are also allowed to share an invite link to your invitees.         Our Verdict: Slack allows to share an invite link to its guests, whereas we don’t see this in Microso? Teams.   Guest Access Capabilities The concept of vendor-client collaboration with the workforce of your organization is quite crucial at times where they need to connect to the outside world to collaborate on various client projects.   Microso? Teams send invites to others to communicate with the internal teams of the workplace. The other new player Troop Messenger also facilitates the in-house teamwith this guest collaboration feature the Orange Member Any user with their public/private mail ids can become an

7. facilitates the in house team with this guest collaboration feature, the Orange Member. Any user with their public/private mail ids can become an Orange Member to interact with the teammates of Troop Messenger.   The “Invite people” section of Slack allows inviting guests into the application.   Design (UI and UX) - Which Application Gives Comfo? Over Chaos? Microso? Teams The UI and UX pa? of Microso? Teams is quite engaging and engrossing to the user. You can simply understand the features and their functionalities just at the glance of the home page screen. All your teams are listed on the le? panel dashboard along with the other features of “Activity”, “Chat”, “Calendar”, “Get the app”, “Store”, and “Help”. Few essential tools like One Note and Wiki are in-built in this application.   Sta? a new conversation with your teammates by sending the forma?ed text, with a?achments, with smileys, GIFs, and with stickers to relish more personalized chat experience.   Also, check out for ?les that you had exchanged with other teams and team members, Microso? Teams full tutorial with recent updates, along with a plus tab for more integrations. The people pane of the user inte?ace allows you to see all your team members at one place.       Slack Despite Slack’s user inte?ace looks simple and clean, sometimes the users o?en get confused with the navigational ?ow of the features and their functionalities. Your workspace name is displayed at the top of the le?-pane with along with your name. This section fu?her allows you to send direct messages to Slack bot and the other team members of your channel.   The other features that you could notice from the Slack user inte?ace would be; @mentions, set a purpose, se?ings, starred channels, invite people and many more to include.   

8.   Our Verdict: Microso? Teams user inte?ace looks to be simple to understand and easy to use, whereas compared to Slack.   Messaging, Audio, Video - Which collaboration is ahead? Microso? Teams Messaging across Microso? Teams is quite interesting, as it allows the one-to-one user to be more collaborative with the features of ?le sharing, places, a?achments, forma?ed texts, smileys, GIFs, Stickers, @mentions, meet now, and also lets the users integrate and use many third-pa?y apps.            Say, for instance, you can integrate Trello for project management and YouTube for sharing your preferred videos.   

9.   It is really good to see on the user inte?ace with the feature of Meet now(video conferencing) literally at no cost. Microso? Teams is extending this feature-functionality to its users in its free trail itself. But the users could not ?nd the audio calling option anywhere on the user inte?ace of the free trial.   Slack Send direct messages in Slack by choosing your team members. This collaboration experience can be fu?her enhanced with the associative features of Add a ?le from your computer, @mentions, smiley layout, post, code or text snippet, etc.,   When we move onto the sections of audio and video calling, now Slack suppo?s audio-video calling in its free plan for one-on-one user chat, whereas you would not be able to share your desktop screen during a video call in the free plan, you would ce?ainly migrate to Slack’s paid plan to avail this feature. While the new chat application in the block, the Troop Messenger is allowing the users the facility to share their screen for free during a video call.     Our Verdict: Microso? Teams allows the feature of, “Meet Now” in its free plan to make video conferencing with your team. Though Slack o?ers one-on- one audio-video calling, it doesn’t provide the same for workspaces in its free plan..   Integration - Which Application is On Good Terms With All?  Microso? Teams The Microso? Teams o?ce collaboration application does suppo? a wide range of integrations to help the user. This application allows the user to directly integrate all the necessary apps right away from the applications user inte?ace itself.   When you try to open the “Store”, a feature from the le? panel of the applications home page, you are taken to the world of diverse apps to integrate them into your teams with the option of uploading custom apps too  

10.   Slack Slack suppo?s more than 1500 app integrations into it. You are totally allowed to integrate a whopping number of apps of a distinct type. Tools related to project management, productivity, ?nance, ?le management, security, and compliance, etc.,   The Apps column of your workspace facilitates a provision to the user to directly browse apps and integrate them into your workspace. You are navigated to, “Browse Apps” page, where you can ?nd the “View App Directory”, and, “Manage Apps...”, When you go to view app directory, you are taken to a new window, where a wide range of Apps for integration are segregated as per their domain area.      Our Verdict:  Slack suppo?s more than 1500 wide range of app integrations according to the pricing plan the users choose.   Pricing - Which Application Breaks the Bank? Microso? Teams Microso? Teams comes in three di?erent pricing variants. Any users across the world can, “Sign-up for free”, with limited features of unlimited messages and search, guest access, 300 maximum users, 140+ integrated apps and services, one-to-one group online audio and video calls, channel meetings and few more to go.  

11. Microso? Teams is a pa? of O?ce 365 Business Essentials and O?ce 365 Business Premium, with the pricing of $5.00/user/month and $12.50/user/month respectively.     Slack Slack o?ers a free trial to its users for an unlimited amount of time with limited features, and then there are Slack Standard Subscription plan, Standard Plus plan, and with one more pricing variant of Enterprise Grid plan.   When you switch,  to Slack’s standard subscription plan for Rs.500/active user per month when billed annually, with this upgrade the users can really experience the features of the full archive, Google authentication, Unlimited apps for integration, custom retention policies, forward emails into slack, custom pro?les, etc.,   For Enterprise Grid plan, the pricing page of Slack asks the user to contact sales for pricing structure. Here the Slack users can have unlimited workspaces, suppo? for data loss prevention(DLP), shared channels between workspaces, built-in security, and compliance, 1 TB storage per member, etc.,    

12.    Our Verdict:  Microso? Teams o?ers its free plan only for a month, whereas the basic-free plan of Slack is meant for an unlimited amount of time. .    File Storage - Which gives more?  Microso? Teams We know how impo?ant is the ?le storage for any team collaboration application. On a daily basis, the users of the organization exchange an unlimited number of ?les. In order to cater this, Microso? Teams o?ers 2GB/per user and 10GB of shared storage in its free plan and it provides 1TB/user in both of its O?ce 365 Business Essentials and O?ce 365 Business Premium suites.     Slack Slack o?ers 5GB total in its free plan, 10 GB storage per member in Standard plan, 20GB storage per member in Standard Plus plan and ?nally 1TB storage per member in its Enterprise grid plan.   Our Verdict:  Slack o?ers 1TB storage only in an enterprise grid plan, but whereas Microso? Teams provides 1TB of storage per user in both of its paid versions   Search   - Which has more Power?  Microso? Teams This instant team messaging application allows you to search for di?erent things across the user inte?ace. The search functionality is commonly available for Activity, Chat, Teams, conversations, ?les, wiki, etc., When I write about the search functionality of any applications, I understand that Troop Messenger has an extensive search capability to ?lter out di?erent forms of data. The search by images, search by videos, search by location, global search ?lter, date-time ?lters, etc., are known to be few noted.     Slack

13. Slack allows you to search for messages, ?les, and channels. Fu?hermore, you can make a search for your ?les from all ?les. The “Browse Apps”, the page also o?ers the user to search by name or by category to choose a wide range of app integrations into your Slack business collaboration tool   Our Verdict:  Slack has be?er search functionality.   Help Center - Which Application has a Be?er Helping Hands? Microso? Teams It would be quite helpful for almost all the users if they can navigate to application’s help page within the application’s user inte?ace. Microso? Teams and Slack both provide such facility to their teams.   The le? pane of Microso? Teams home page shows you the help icon, from where you can traverse to feature help topics, training, what’s new and about.   You can narrow down your search from the search bar of Search help. On top of that, the users can see, “Microso? Teams with a full tutorial with recent updates” to understand the latest upgrades from your team's page.     

14.     Slack The moment you log-into the Slack, the Slack Bot welcomes the user to assist them. It allows us to directly chat with bots for all the basic queries, and in case if it doesn’t understand our question, it allows the user to navigate to Help Center from the user inte?ace itself.     Our Verdict: Slack is a bit head of Microso? Teams in extending help suppo? with the help of Slack Bots.   Conclusion It is quite essential to choose the best o?ce collaboration application to run uninterrupted corporate o?ce routines. Be it be Microso? teams, Slack, the one thing to take into consideration is having smooth chat experience with necessary communication features.   Disclaimer The aim of the a?icle is to be informative. We intend users take an informed decision for an e?ective and productive experience. The comparison shown between Microso? Teams vs slack in the blog is only towards that end and has no intention of pi?ing one against the other team collaboration app brands. The images, logos, any concepts, etc., used in this blog, purely belong to their respective companies or applications (Microso? Teams and Slack).   Readers are advised to consult and con?rm from the respective service providers regarding details of features, latest updates, prices, and their policies before utilizing any of their services. This fu?her informs the reader that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog solely belong to the author’s perception, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, organization, commi?ee or other group or individual.   MICROSOFT TEAMS VS SLACK TEAMS VS SLACK SLACK VS TEAMS Team Collaboration like never before