Reviewed by Francesco D'Alessio
Slack Review (2024)
Best Features, Pricing, Verdict & Alternatives
Who doesn't know Slack. Well, maybe you if you've landed here. Let's give you a rundown of the basics of Slack and how it works as a popular team communication tool.
What is Slack?
Slack is a team communication tool that is well-known in the space.
What does Slack do?
Slack does a range of things, mainly allowing you and your team to communicate using chat functionality as well as video and audio meetings.
There are features inside of Slack that help boost collaboration, and much like a mark of teams, it helps you to do a range of things including screen sharing, screen recordings, and also collaborate in things called huddles.
This feature is called Slack Huddles and essentially, they allow you to do audio messages in real time with each other. This is perfect for collaborating after a meeting or maybe even not switching a video on and making and setting things up. Now, Slack is owned and managed by Salesforce, and also, you can tell that because it weaves into the larger picture of Salesforce CRM as a powerful tool to connect with that. Slack also offers things like threads for chats, integration, and loads of other abilities like Slack Canvas, which we'll talk about a little bit more in this review.
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Best Slack Features
Noting some of Slack's best features, here are some of them: You can create a channel and essentially start from there to organize a set of communication.
- They are also threaded within channels, which makes it ideal for collaborating on a specific type of piece work, meaning that it doesn’t disrupt the main channel's communication style and overload everyone with discussions that are constantly pinging. There’s also an ability to manage file sharing, search across all of your conversations and files, as well as a really friendly iOS and mobile application.
- Slack Canvas is one of the better features that allows you to collaborate together on a document in real time. This is great for meeting notes, but the fact that it's available inside in real time of the Slack experience and that it can be popped open into a new window, makes things a lot more accessible than opening up another tab for the likes of Google Documents.
- Video chats are available inside Slack, allowing you to do built-in voice and video calls with screen sharing support as well. This also allows you to leave asynchronous messages to other people, much like other apps like Loom that allow you to leave messages in real time but allow people to respond asynchronously.
How much does Slack cost?
Slack is free but starts from £5.75 per month for the basic plan with 1 user.
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Run all your work on one platform with customizable products that scale with your needs.
Verdict: Is Slack worth it for your team?
So, should you and your team get Slack?
Previously, Slack was very poor at asynchronous communication for remote teams, unlike specialist tools like Twist, which is designed around asynchronous communication. But to be honest, in this year, 2024, many people are looking at Slack because while it does offer a bunch of real-time communication, it is actually a decent offering as a package now.
The ability to have a range of remote and hybrid communication through the application makes communication a lot more accessible, and features like Slack Huddle, asynchronous video messages, and also other abilities like Canvas do allow for more relaxed forms of communication, which teams are trying to aim towards.
However, Slack is pretty expensive, and for many teams that are trying to scale, it is a very expensive offering. When you look at other alternatives, even using WhatsApp in a small- to medium-sized team is preferred over paying the cost that Slack presents. So, it’s well worth evaluating all of the features that Slack offers so that you don’t over-optimise the subscription that you go for.
For small teams, this is a great way to formalize.
Slack Alternatives
Looking for more Slack-like tools and alternatives: