Slack is one of the best communication platforms in the world. It is useful for startups, small teams, and large companies alike. Businesses and people all over the world use it to start projects, train new employees, plan events, review contracts, and help teams work better together. Freelancers, consultants, and people who make courses use it to keep in touch with clients and build communities around their brands. You can use Google Search to find dozens of Slack groups for freelancers, digital marketers, and software developers.
Slack: Description
At its heart, Slack is an instant messaging app that makes it easier and faster for people in a business to talk to each other. It helps your business grow faster and get more done by cutting down on unnecessary meetings and email conversations. It has an easy-to-use interface that lets you manage and organize thousands of messages and group chats using channels that are based on topics. You can also send Direct Messages to a specific person on your team if you want to talk to them without bringing in anyone else.
Slack works with more than 2000 apps, so you can share files, make video calls, and track the progress of a project without leaving the chat window. With more than 12 million daily active users (DAU) and more than 142K paying customers (and growing fast), Slack is one of the leaders in the corporate communication industry because of this and many other features that I’ll talk about in a moment.
Slack: Pros and Cons
Pros
- Great way for teams and organizations to talk to each other
- Easy to use interface and settings that can be changed
- Offers a lot of ways to connect to other tools and services.
Cons
- Too many channels and notifications can be a lot to handle.
- Costly for bigger groups or enterprise-level plans
- needs to be connected to the internet to work.
Key Features Table
| Features | Details |
|---|---|
| Company | Slack Technologies |
| Initial release date | August 2013 |
| Platforms | Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android |
| Pricing model | Freemium (Free and paid plans available) |
| Free plan features | Up to 10,000 messages, 1:1 voice and video calls, 5GB storage, 10 app integrations |
| Paid plan features | Unlimited messages and integrations, group voice and video calls, advanced administration tools, priority support, 1TB or more storage |
| Integrations | Over 2,000 third-party app integrations available |
| Security features | Two-factor authentication, SSO, encryption, data retention policies, compliance certifications |
| Collaboration features | Channels, direct messaging, file sharing, screen sharing, voice and video calls, collaborative apps and workflows |
| Official link | Visit Website |
Slack: Customization
Slack is great because it is easy to customize and gives users a lot of options. For example, you can set up specific alerts so that you only hear about the important messages. In the top right corner of the app, you can quickly filter conversations to see which files you’ve added to them and which messages you’ve marked as favorites.
With Slack, you can let people know when you are in a meeting, sick, or on vacation, and you can set a date and time for when your status will change back to normal. There are a lot of ways to make Slack the best messaging app for you. You can choose the icons that best show your status, type custom messages, and set times as needed.
All of this doesn’t even mention that Slack gives its users a powerful API that they can use to build apps that work with Slack. Using the API to their advantage, software developers can make custom integrations that link to specific parts of conversations. Also, you can turn processes into automated workflows with the Workflow Builder to keep things running smoothly.
Slack: Customer Service
We gave Slack a 4.69 out of 5 for customer service because it offers different ways to get help, like by phone, email, and chat. It has longer business hours: Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central Time, customers can get help.
Slack also has a knowledge base and help center where users can find articles and videos that give them specific help. Each plan has a different level of support, and the top two tiers are the only ones that offer 24/7 support with a response time of four hours or less.
Slack: Mobile Functionality
Slack has apps for both Android and iOS devices that let you stay in touch with your team and work together on the go. Using the app, you can message or call any person or group, share and edit documents, and access the knowledge base, which stores your team’s past conversations (and files) and automatically indexes and stores them. Also, the app works well with Google Drive, Salesforce, and Dropbox. These integrations give the app more features.
You can customize your notifications as much as the desktop version lets you, and having a full list of your direct messages (DMs) makes it easy to get back to one-on-one and small group conversations. We also like how easy it is to switch between screens with swipe gestures. For example, you can swipe right to see a list of your workspaces or swipe left to go back to your last conversation.
On the other hand, the mobile app makes it easy to start a new conversation or send a message. You can now start a new conversation or send a message to an existing one without first looking for it in your channels or direct messages list. You’ll also be able to call your team by clicking the “Call” button, and being able to see all your mentions in one place will save you a lot of time.
There are a few performance issues here and there, like slowdowns and occasional freezes, but nothing that ruins the whole experience. Like the desktop version, Slack is updated often, so most problems are fixed quickly. Again, don’t expect everything to work perfectly.
Interface and Performance
It’s a joy to use Slack. It is so easy to use that you almost don’t have to think about it. At the top left of the screen, you can see a list of channels that are already set up for group work. Below that, you can see one-on-one or small-group chats that use direct messaging. Some team messaging apps don’t know when to use “chat” and when to use “channel,” but Slack always makes it clear. The app doesn’t use the word “chat.” Instead, it uses a term from Twitter called “direct messages,” which makes it clear that the messages are private.
The clean interface is easy to recognize because it is dark purple and white/gray, but you can change the way it looks if you want to. Speed is what slack is for. Microsoft Teams sometimes drags because it has so many enterprise-level features, but Slack is light and airy. Some users might not even know that there is a lot of power under the hood and that you can add a wide range of apps and bots to the interface. They look like they were made for Slack.
Even though Slack didn’t come up with the “mention” or “hashtag,” it uses them a lot in its interface. When it comes to team messaging, Slack is probably where a lot of people did it for the first time. If you use a hashtag (like #mychannel) for a channel in Slack, people can quickly click on it to go to that channel. Now, these interface parts seem like old hat, but in 2013, they were very new.
Slack: Pricing and Options
The free plan gives users a taste of things, but it doesn’t have as many features as the paid plans. You’ll be able to use personalized notifications, an unlimited number of private and public channels, and one-on-one voice and video calls right inside the messaging app. The free plan also lets you search through 10,000 messages and lets you share files in a useful way.
The first paid plan, Pro, costs $6.67 per month and includes voice and video calls for up to 15 teammates, Google authentication so you can sign in to Slack with an existing account, and an unlimited number of integrations with other tools of your choice. There is also 10 GB of file storage for each team member, custom retention policies for messages and files, and customer service that is open 24/7.
The next plan is the Business+ plan, which costs $12.50 per month and gives users 24/7 customer support with a four-hour first response time, unlimited channels, and SAML-based single sign-on (SSO). For that price, you’ll also get 20 GB of storage space per team member, data exports for all messages (if needed), and Active Directory sync with OneLogin, Okta, and Ping Identity.
The final plan is Enterprise Grid. To get a full quote, you’ll need to talk to the sales team. It has everything from the previous tiers plus support for up to 500,000 users, centralized controls, policies that can be changed, and priority support that is available 24/7/365 with a four-hour first response time.
That’s not even mentioning the 1 TB of file storage per team member, the unlimited number of workspaces, and the ability to integrate with DLP, e-Discovery, and offline backup providers. Enterprise Grid has everything you need and is best for bigger businesses.
Final Words
Slack is a team commination app with a lot of features. It lets users share files, work together as a group, and automate routine tasks. Overall, Slack is the best fit for hybrid and remote work environments because it helps teams stay in touch no matter where they are. Its channels give you a place to talk to your coworkers and people outside of your company quickly. Sign up for the free version of Slack today and see if it meets the needs of your business.
FAQs
Slack is a casual way to talk that is easy to use. Because of this, it is better than Gmail for sending messages that are more like a conversation and for communicating within a company. Even if you choose to use Slack as your main way to talk to people, there are many problems with just using Slack.
Bright colors, responsive themes, an intuitive homepage, practical tools, excellent APIs, appealing fonts, and entertaining characters like emojis are all features of Slack. Slack enables app integration and feature customization for efficient workflow. Slack is a well-liked office app because it’s simple to use, adapt, and comprehend.
