Microsoft Teams vs Slack, Which is better?

hi i'm brian mckenzie with trust radius and in this video i'm going to compare two giants in the collaboration tool space microsoft teams and slack i'll go over the key features of each and help you decide which tool is best for your business i use slack in my current position and i've used teams in all my previous roles as a result i'll be using footage from an active instance of slack and i'll use a test organization for the team's footage slack and teams are both collaboration tools but there's a few key differences in what they offer before we even start digging into the details both of them are known for their chat and video conferencing features but it's worth noting that almost every team's pricing tier also includes some microsoft office software such as word excel and powerpoint there's no comparable features in any of slack's offerings so if you're looking to pick up an office software suite and a collaboration tool in one purchase teams is uniquely positioned to meet your needs for businesses just looking for a collaboration tool with chat and video conferencing features though slack and teams are very competitive with each other when it comes to the interface there's a lot of similarities between teams in slack in teams you can see activity relevant to you in the activity tab which includes anywhere you were mentioned or someone replied to you from chats we can message anyone in our organization or invite contacts to send messages to the best feature of microsoft teams though is its namesake teams this feature lets you create subgroups of your organization that you can easily chat and share files with you can even create multiple channels in each team in case the team needs further organization you can also make a wiki for your team where you can include important information that needs to be accessible quickly and the files tab lets you easily share files with other members of the team the biggest strength of the team's functionality is organization you can set up a team where it's easy to find the information you need regardless of topic on the flip side it's also easy to create so many teams and channels that it becomes difficult to find anything so to get the most out of teams you really have to find that sweet spot between too many channels and not enough slack's interface is similar to teams we have all this information on the left side of the screen we have the channels that we're part of and each channel is highlighted if we have unread messages and a red exclamation mark will show up if we've been mentioned in any of the channels you can also check on any threads you've commented on using this threads button at the top slack doesn't have teams functionality but you can create group messages by adding multiple people to a private message for the most part though channels are where you do most of your chatting on slack this means that most organizations will have lots of channels available to you you can join a new channel by searching for them yourself or automatically if someone mentions you in a channel you aren't in while there's no designated area for file sharing you can share files in any channel or message and can search by file if you're looking for something that someone shared in the past the lack of a team's functionality can make slack slightly less organized compared to microsoft teams but it can also help prevent siloing since people can check in on channels that they aren't a part of as long as it isn't a private channel users can also help keep their slack app organized by removing channels that they don't use often this structure makes it so that even if your organization has lots of slack channels it isn't overwhelming for the end user our slack instance has over 500 channels for example but i'm only a member of about 30 so i'm never buried in slack notifications between teams and slack slack's interface is easiest to use you might have to teach someone how to join a channel but beyond that it's intuitive it's easy to see when you've been mentioned and it's easy to see what channels need your attention teams isn't hard to use per se but the team structure makes it a little more complex than just having a list of all of your channels on the left side of the screen that said the team's feature does allow for more organization and subdivision compared to slack so if you need to be involved in a lot of channels teams can be a little more manageable all in all slack has the better interface if users will not need a lot of subdivided communication channels but teams is more capable of handling complex channel infrastructures teams and slack both also include web conferencing features using teams i can call users from my teams or from my contacts one nice feature that's unique to teams is that i can set contacts by phone number and call them that way if they aren't near their computer or don't want to use teams for some reason slack only lets you call people who are in your slack organization though the interface is very simple you just click on their name and then press the call button in the top right corner both tools support video and audio functionality notably for users that don't want to use slack's video conferencing tools it does have built-in support for other conferencing tools such as zoom cisco webex meetings and even microsoft teams slack has a few notable limitations when it comes to video calling that aren't present in teams first web conferencing isn't included in slack's free trial offerings and is only accessible through the desktop version of the application it also has a meeting cap of 15 people team supports conferences for at least 300 people and allows calling from mobile app in all of their plans including the free one when it comes to video calling microsoft teams is built from skype giving them an edge in that their tool has been in development for a long time as a result it supports more consistent video quality and smaller calls and can support a much larger number of participants if you want your chat tool to also be your web conferencing tool teams is a better choice slack's web conferencing features should be seen as a small bonus for internal communication not a replacement for a dedicated web conferencing tool teams in slack also include a number of integrations that make other software work with their collaboration tool as well as bots to automate tasks from managing channels to previewing links microsoft teams provides built-in integrations and support for microsoft apps this makes it easy to share documents built in applications like word powerpoint and more every team also has a sharepoint and onedrive storage available to them this makes storing and tracking files a breeze if you're using a microsoft infrastructure there are also third-party integrations but they aren't built into the software and they aren't as well supported as the microsoft software integrations that come baked into microsoft teams in contrast slack boasts a huge variety of third-party integrations from g suite to third-party cloud storage many enterprise applications build and support their own integrations with slack while third parties can also create slack apps such as bots to handle tasks such as chat polling when it comes to integrations the choice between teams and slack should be clear if you are primarily using microsoft software team's built-in support for microsoft makes it an easy choice you won't need many additional integrations you can just install teams and be ready to go for businesses that need more third-party integrations slack provides a much wider variety of well-supported third-party apps this can make it more difficult to set up but you can fit it into almost any it infrastructure slack and teams both offer a variety of different price points that are appropriate for businesses of different sizes only teams offers a forever free version which supports video conferencing and chatting features the footage for this video was all collected from the free version of teams so you can see that it includes all the essential features of the software slack on the other hand does offer free trials upon request from the vendor these trials generally last based on number of messages which depending on the size of the business could be a while the rest of the team's packages range from 5.00 per user per month to twenty dollars per user per month it's worth noting though that every tier above the free tier is nearly identical in terms of teams functionality the only difference is that the twenty dollar per user per month plan supports up to five hundred 000 users versus the 300 users supported by the cheaper plans the reason the plans are priced differently is that more expensive plans include more microsoft products if you just want teams as a collaboration tool the five dollar tool is probably the best one for you also if you already have several microsoft products you may already have teams included with them if this is the case you won't have to pay any extra for the collaboration tool one notable limitation is that 300 user maximum on all tiers except the most expensive if you have more than 300 users but don't want the microsoft products included in the 20 per user per month tier slack may be a better option all microsoft team plans also require an annual commitment so make sure you're aware of that before you make a purchasing decision slack offers three pricing plans which are discounted if you commit annually i'll be using these annual prices as my comparison point since all team subscriptions are annual commitments anyway the standard tier costs 6.67 per user per month and includes all of the features i've mentioned so that's chatting file sharing and video conferencing this is the tier i've been collecting footage from the difference between this tier and the higher tiers that slack offers are largely management and data security features higher tiers can adjust posting permissions for users integrate data loss prevention tools and add single sign-on to better secure the organization when it comes to pricing microsoft teams is the cheaper option even taking into account slack's annual pricing discount if you're on a budget you can't beat the free version of teams or that it's feature complete at the 5 per user per month tier businesses with over 300 users however are forced into the most expensive pricing package with teams so slack can be a more affordable option for organizations of that size that don't want to make use of microsoft software so we've gone over interfaces features and pricing but which is better teams are slack i think the answer to that largely depends on how you feel about microsoft products if you want to use or already use microsoft software predominantly in your business you can't beat the affordability and pre-built integrations of microsoft teams for microsoft shops microsoft teams is the way to go for sure additionally if you want to use your collaboration tool as your web conferencing tool microsoft teams can realistically perform both tasks while slack really can't be your dedicated video conferencing tool for most businesses if you want a little more flexibility with your other software or third-party tools like g suite and dropbox slack offers the wider variety of integrations that are often better supported albeit at a higher price point slack also provides an easier to use interface which can save time on training and increase adoption if you're changing from another collaboration tool if you're still on the fence about teams or slack consider checking out some verified user reviews of each software at chessradius.com at the link in the description if you want to see more videos like this one consider liking or subscribing so you're sure not to miss the next video

Channel: TrustRadius

Views: 9,063

Rating: 4.909091 out of 5

Keywords: Microsoft Teams, Slack, Teams, Comparison, collaboration, microsoft teams tutorial, slack tutorial, slack review, microsoft teams review, slack vs teams, slack vs teams 2020, slack vs teams comparison

Id: wc0q2qypH7I

Length: 10min 29sec (629 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020