Microsoft Teams, Slack, And Zoom – Which One To Choose For Team Collaboration?

There are plenty of alternatives, and we made a decision to help save you time and make a comparison of three hot team communication programs — Microsoft Teams vs. Slack vs. Zoom. The prevalence of remote work has reached its peak, and a lot of organizations are dealing with the same question — what’s the ideal collaboration tool for working at home? Possessing a fantastic team collaboration tool is not only vital to boost everyday communication, but also to keep overall team productivity on precisely the same level as in the workplace.

Features Comparison

We will make a comparison between a few of the most requested features in those communication tools to help you determine which one matches your business the maximum.

Chat And Messaging

If it comes to file-sharing in chat, you can do it in Microsoft Teams or Slack by drag and drop or downloading chosen files. When sharing files in Microsoft Teams, the size limit for uploading a file is 15GB, whereas the Slack file upload limit is 1GB. Both team collaboration tools offer a complete storage limitation of up to 1 TB in paid plans. At precisely the exact same time, Zoom chat lets you send files together with the maximum file size of 512MB and has boundless cloud storage in the paid plan. Together with the lack of face-to-face communicating, figuring out who’s responding to whom at a bunch chat often seems confusing. All these group collaboration tools let you create conversation threads to keep you on track with dialog replies. Slack leveled up this feature by allowing you to transfer conversation threads to personal conversations as well. If it comes to the number of consumers in these category communication apps, Microsoft Teams provides an unlimited number of consumers in the free program as well as 300 users in the paid ones. On the flip side, Slack supplies an infinite amount in all programs, whilst Zoom meetings scale up to 1000 people in the paid plan. When using any of these tools, your messages and shared content stay synced and searchable at any time. In the event you need to chat with an external consumer, Microsoft Teams supplies guest accessibility to the group’s resources so they can share files and combine a group conversation. If you want to bring outsiders into your Slack workspace, for each paid plan, administrators can add as many as five single-channel guests to get every single team member. Participants out your Zoom accounts can also join the meeting, which means that every guest will reveal in the participant’s record with a orange background behind their titles. As an admin, then you can decide whether to keep the information delete it. Using Slack, all of your messages and files will be retained for your lifetime, however, in the event that you’d like, you might also customize retention settings. The maximum length of time to put away messages in Zoom is ten decades, and the minimum quantity of time is one day.

Meetings And Calling

All these communication tools provide video calling, but the platforms differ in the number of people who may join the assembly. Slack’s paid plan offers calls that can support up to 15 individuals. If you select Zoom, you can bring audio and video to your meetings together with support for up to 1000 video players. In the event you need to go again through meetings and search for significant discussion items, Microsoft Teams allows you to record your calls and supplies automatic transcripts in paid plans. To the contrary, if you want to record Slack meetings, you will have to integrate another app. Zoom, since the application mostly focused on video conferencing, also offers MP4 or M4A local recording so that you can record your meetings with searchable transcripts. Each of those online communication tools allows you to talk about your display and communicate complex ideas more clearly. To eliminate distractions in the video feed during the meeting, Microsoft Teams uses smart background-blur technology. If you would like to display images as your background in a meeting, both Microsoft Teams and Zoom provide a digital desktop attribute.

App Integrations

Microsoft Teams provides 250+ programs and services in its own paid plans, such as Office 365 programs. It permits you to incorporate apps directly from the Microsoft Teams store or as a fast attachment. You can add custom tabs for easier access to third-party programs, which helps one to customize your online workspace. Zoom includes a plethora of add-ons available to browse through, too, including the one with Office 365. These integrations broaden the options of the platform and help teammates become more productive whilst using it. On the opposing side, this tool frequently integrates with different platforms, and among the examples is its popular integration using Slack. On the other hand, Slack offers 800+ integrations in compensated plans with a number of different apps. The huge number and wide range of programs available means you can easily adjust your workspace with resources your colleagues use.

Security

In case you wish to sign into your accounts without re-entering your email and password during a fresh session, Microsoft Teams has implemented a single sign-on (SSO) through Active Directory. Slack administrators of compensated groups can incorporate their services example with a variety of SSO including OneLogin, Okta, Centrify, and Ping Identity. With SSO, Zoom user logs in using your company’s identity supplier like Microsoft Active Directory, Centrify, Okta, or Google. If you aren’t signed in to your Office 365 Enterprise account anyplace else, if you start Microsoft Teams, you would be asked to supply either single-factor or multi-factor authentication. Those settings will be dependent on what your organization has decided they would like the process to entail. The same holds for Slack and Zoom that additional an additional layer of security and enabled two-factor authentication for your consumer’s account. In regards to encryption, all 3 services enable bonded communication where only the intended recipient can read the secured message. Microsoft Teams and Slack offer encryption of data in transit and at rest, meaning that data stored on any device and in transit through the network is secured. When using a Zoom Client, all customer data sent from a single client or browser into the Zoom Cloud encrypt in transit.

Conclusion

All these collaboration tools have free plans available, which make them attractive for smaller companies that want to save money. However, if you want to get the most out of them, you’ll have to get a paid plan. We hope to have made it easy for you to choose the right tools that work for you. For more help, please write to us at [email protected]