Slack
4 comparisons available
About Slack
Slack is a cloud-based team communication platform founded in 2013 by Stewart Butterfield (Flickr co-founder), released from a failed gaming company (Glitch) and now the dominant business messaging tool with 42 million daily active users. Slack's channel-based model organizes conversations by topic, project, or team rather than email threads — channels persist, are searchable, and allow team members to join/leave as context demands. Slack's integrations ecosystem (2,600+ apps) connects with GitHub, Jira, PagerDuty, Datadog, Salesforce, Google Drive, Zoom, and virtually every business tool — turning Slack into the notification hub for engineering organizations. Slack's Workflow Builder automates repetitive processes without code: new employee onboarding flows, incident response runbooks, and standup collection all run natively in Slack. Slack Huddles (2021) provide lightweight audio/video calls directly in channels, competing with Teams calls and Zoom for quick synchronous communication. Slack Connect extends channels to external partners and customers, enabling cross-company collaboration in shared channels. Slack's search and file sharing make it a lightweight knowledge repository. Slack was acquired by Salesforce for $27.7B in 2021 — Salesforce integration deepened via Slack Sales Elevate and Salesforce channels. Slack's enterprise edition adds data loss prevention, e-discovery, and compliance export. The main competitor threat is Microsoft Teams, which reached 300 million DAU with Office 365 bundling. Slack holds its premium position with developers and tech companies through superior UX and the integrations ecosystem but faces pressure from Teams' zero-marginal-cost bundling strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Slack vs Microsoft Teams — which should my company use?
Slack for tech companies, startups, and organizations prioritizing developer experience, app integrations, and UX quality. Microsoft Teams for organizations already on Office 365 — Teams is included at no extra cost and integrates tightly with Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Azure AD. The decision is often financial: Teams' zero-marginal-cost bundling is hard to justify paying for Slack against, unless the team productivity difference is measurable.
How does Slack pricing work?
Slack Free allows unlimited messages for up to 90 days, 10 integrations, and 1:1 video calls. Pro ($7.25/user/month) unlocks full message history, unlimited integrations, and group video. Business+ ($12.50/user/month) adds SSO, compliance exports, and 99.99% SLA. Enterprise Grid serves large organizations with centralized administration across workspaces. For small teams under 10 people, the free tier is often sufficient for internal communication.
What are Slack's Workflow Builder automations?
Workflow Builder is Slack's no-code automation tool for creating multi-step workflows triggered by events (new channel member, form submission, emoji reaction, scheduled time, or webhook). Common uses: daily standup prompts that collect team updates in a channel, incident response runbooks that page on-call and gather status updates, new hire onboarding flows that send orientation tasks, and customer feedback collection via Slack forms. Workflows run entirely within Slack without external services.
Top Alternatives to Slack
Microsoft Teams
Bundled with Office 365 — 300M DAU, deeper Microsoft ecosystem integration, lower incremental cost
Discord
Community and voice-first chat — Discord for developer communities; Slack for internal team workflows
Google Chat
Bundled with Google Workspace — free for G Suite teams; fewer integrations than Slack
Mattermost
Open-source self-hosted Slack alternative — full data control for regulated industries
Loom
Async video messaging — Loom for recorded video updates; Slack for real-time text and threads
Zoom
Video meetings — Zoom for synchronous video calls; Slack for async team communication