Slack vs. Microsoft Groups: Which is the Finest Chat App?

Slack and Microsoft Groups stand on the forefront of a fiercely aggressive collaboration software program area. Each intention to carry in-house and distant employees collectively for higher productiveness throughout the globe. Slack dominated this area for a protracted spell, however as soon as Groups stepped up its evolution to compete extra immediately with Slack — particularly for the eye of small companies — the 2 communication apps are actually extra related than ever in perform and design.

At a look, the variations between the 2 group communication providers are tough to tell apart, but so much is occurring beneath the floor of every. We take a detailed have a look at Slack and Groups so you may perceive how they differ, and which might work finest for you.

Messaging talents

Each Slack and Microsoft Groups provide pretty related dialog threads for messages together with plain textual content and tagging. Each assist GIFs as effectively, although Groups merely offers a extra sturdy strategy to absolutely convey your messages. As an illustration, to insert a GIF into your Slack message, you could enter a command, like “/giphy picture title.”

In Groups, you’ll discover a toolbar on the backside offering entry to a library of GIFs and stickers. Much more, click on the Stickers button to create a custom-made meme. Slack does provide integration with Bitmoji and related providers, but it surely isn’t native and straightforward to entry as seen with Groups.

As for customizing the message interface, Slack presents a greater selection. You possibly can change between mild and darkish themes to vary the general look. For a extra custom-made really feel, you may change the sidebar colours between 10 choices, akin to Dagobah and Nocturne, that complement your general theme.

In the meantime, Microsoft’s consumer merely swaps between three basic themes: Mild, darkish, and excessive distinction. There are not any particular coloration choices regardless of the consumer’s Home windows-based roots.

Pricing fashions

Each apps provide freemium fashions, which is especially engaging for smaller companies that wish to lower your expenses.

Slack presents limitless private and non-private channels, file sharing, 5GB of storage, and 10 app integrations. The free plan additionally locks your viewable and searchable message historical past to 10,000 entries. There’s no indication, nevertheless, that Slack’s free plan limits the variety of customers accessing your workspace.

In the meantime, the Groups platform presents limitless messages, visitor entry, display screen sharing, over 140 built-in apps and providers, and 2GB of storage per particular person (10GB shared). Nonetheless, it limits your group’s entry to 300 registered customers. You’ll want an improve so as to add extra members.

Naturally, each providers provide premium packages. Slack’s Normal package deal prices $6.67 per particular person monthly when billed yearly. It provides limitless apps, will increase the storage to 10GB per member, allows display screen sharing and visitor entry. You even have entry to your complete message historical past.

Need much more? Slack’s Plus plan prices $12.50 per particular person monthly when billed yearly. It will increase storage to 20GB per member, amongst different upgrades. There’s an Enterprise Grid plan too, providing 1TB of storage for every member, although pricing requires a name to Slack’s gross sales division.

Microsoft Groups solely presents two premium plans. For $5 per person monthly when billed yearly, Workplace 365 Enterprise Necessities retains the 300-user restrict however will increase the storage to 10GB per license. This plan additionally provides OneDrive integration, Trade electronic mail internet hosting, assembly recordings, assist from Microsoft, and extra.

The Workplace 365 Enterprise Premium package deal removes the person and storage limits whereas including much more options, akin to enforced multifactor authentication. This plan prices $20 per person monthly when billed yearly.

Storage limits

As beforehand talked about, Slack’s free mannequin consists of 5GB of file storage for a single group. Paid plans enhance the scale to 10GB per person and 20GB per person, respectively. There’s additionally a cap of 10,000 on message historical past for the free model, which disappears for the paid variations.

The Microsoft Groups free mannequin presents 2GB of storage per person and 10GB complete shared storage for a group. Switching to the Necessities plan will increase storage to 1TB for your complete enterprise whereas the Premium plan presents limitless storage. There are not any message historical past limits in Groups.

Built-in apps

Slack’s free mode limits app integrations to 10. This roadblock goes away within the paid plans, and right here companies can take full benefit of Slack’s greater than 800 app integration prospects. Should you use one other productiveness app at work, there’s an excellent likelihood it’s appropriate with Slack.

Microsoft’s Groups platform takes a distinct method. It presents limitless integrations with different apps for all pricing tiers however solely helps round 180 apps. Nonetheless, Groups does have one of the best integration choices with Workplace 365 given its designed to work completely with Microsoft’s suite. This can be an important consideration for companies that use Workplace 365.

Internet conferencing

Slack’s free plan presents limitless 1-to-1 voice or video calls. Nonetheless, in the event you want further callers in a single convention, you’ll want a paid plan, which helps as much as 15 simultaneous callers.

Groups, in the meantime, has far superior net conferencing capabilities. On all tiers, together with the free model, you may convention with voice or video with as much as 250 individuals. Groups additionally presents the power to document conferences (which Slack doesn’t) and supply display screen sharing (which Slack solely has in increased tiers). It is a boon for team-oriented or bigger firms the place the sort of conferencing is frequent.

Helper bots

Each platforms assist bots. In Slack, Slackbot is a personal chat window for saving hyperlinks, experimenting with new integrates, and asking basic inquiries to view extra info. As an illustration, you may message privately with Slackbot and ask, “How do I modify colours?” It then searches by way of the Assist Heart and presents hyperlinks to a few associated articles.

The free model of Microsoft Groups doesn’t embrace built-in bots. As an alternative, you’ll discover Microsoft’s in-house WhoBot within the premium fashions. It includes a Graph AI used to assemble extra details about particular groups or workers — like their specialties, managers, departments, and extra. WhoBot additionally solutions basic questions with worker suggestions for people needing assist or placing collectively groups.

That mentioned, each providers embrace built-in “storage” to find and set up further bots supporting Trello, Zoom, Cisco Webex, GitHub, Adobe Inventive Cloud, and lots of extra.

Platform compatibility

Slack is presently out there on these platforms:

You possibly can seize Microsoft Groups for these platforms. What’s attention-grabbing right here is that Microsoft doesn’t even provide a local Home windows app, only a conventional desktop consumer:

You can too use Slack and Microsoft Groups as a web-based app inside any fashionable browser.

Which collaboration app wins?

Each Slack and Microsoft Groups are wonderful chat functions for organizations and firms. Finally, the selection between the 2 will depend on what you’re on the lookout for in a collaboration app. Should you want a particular sort of app integration, double-check with Slack and Groups to see in the event that they assist your app(s).

Total, Slack is a little more acquainted, a bit extra “snug” given it led the collaboration pack for therefore a few years. It’s additionally an impartial software that may work higher for a gaggle that’s extra platform-agnostic. For that cause, it’s the perfect selection for almost all of companies and groups on the lookout for a dependable collaboration instrument.

Microsoft Groups, nevertheless, actually has its place. It’s higher for bigger, extra advanced firms. If an organization already subscribes to Workplace 365, connecting with Groups is a superb resolution when it comes to options and pricing. Specifically, Groups’ extra sturdy video conferencing must be an enormous attraction for firms with distant employees scattered throughout the globe.

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