Microsoft finally gives Teams what it needs to take on Slack: A free version
Slack is still a more mature product with way more integrations (about 700+ vs Teams' 140), and both products are proprietary technology, but competition is always a good thing (otherwise Microsoft would never have released a free tier – well they call it Preview). Here are some key differences between Slack and Microsoft Teams:
Thus far, Microsoft has pushed Teams' extensive integration with the company's other products—Office, Skype, SharePoint—as its major distinguishing feature, but Slack has had one important capability that Teams has lacked. The starting price for Slack is free. The free version has all sorts of limitations—only 5GB of files can be saved, only 10,000 lines of chat can be viewed, and integrations with other applications are restricted—but it's enough to get a sense of how the product works and how it can fit in an organization. The free version also means that Slack has found a role in various non-paying spheres, such as open source development, serving a similar role to the one once served by IRC.
Today, Microsoft is offering a free version of Teams that anyone can sign up to and use. Like the free Slack tier, there are limitations to the free Teams, but Microsoft has picked a very different set of restrictions than Slack's. There's no 10,000 message limit—even free users can access and search all their chat history—and the data limits are substantially higher, at 10GB plus 2GB per person. Free Teams supports group voice and video calling, too; Slack's free tier is restricted to 1:1 video calls. Application integrations are unrestricted, and Microsoft is of course continuing to promote the tie-ins with the online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
On the other hand, the free Teams is limited to 300 people. Slack, in contrast, has no such limit.
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Microsoft finally gives Teams what it needs to take on Slack: A free version Microsoft is also adding some neat new features for video chatting. |