Teams vs. Slack: Pros, cons, and what's best

Microsoft Teams (Teams for short) and Slack are two popular workplace collaboration tools/chat apps. Which is the right tool for your team? To help you decide, we’ve compared Microsoft Teams vs. Slack based on their pros and cons, functionality, user interface (UI), and more.

Let’s start with an overview of what Slack and Teams have in common.

Teams and Slack offer lots of similar features, including the ability to send messages to your entire organization, certain people outside your organization, channels, private channels, and individuals. Even at the free level, both offer:

• Unlimited messages
• Message search
• File sharing
• Person-to-person voice and video calls
• Web and mobile apps
• Apps for Mac, PC and Linux
• Two-factor authentication

In terms of popularity, Teams is the winner, with 19% of U.S workers using it in 2020. Microsoft is popular among workers in enterprise companies and government organizations. Slack is more popular with younger, more tech-savvy workers at startups. In 2020, 7% of employees in the U.S. used Slack.

Now let’s talk about where Teams and Slack differ.

UI

When Kinsta compared Slack’s UI to Teams, they found Slack to offer a slicker experience.

“Slack’s user interface is sleek and has become the industry standard,” they wrote. “Slack has doubled down on creating a natural onboarding process, with a step-by-step tutorial for new users.” They say Teams has largely followed Slack’s lead and has a similar UI, minus Slack’s helpful step-by-step interactive onboarding tutorial.

Digital Trends found Slack’s UI to be more customizable. While both collaboration platforms offer both light and dark modes, Slack allows users to choose a sidebar color and create custom themes. Teams just offers a third option: high-contrast.

Free plan goodies

Slack has no limit on the number of users at the free level. Microsoft 365 Business Basic (which includes Teams) has a 300-user limit for $5/user/month, when billed annually. To add up to 500,000 users to Teams, you can purchase Office 365 E3 for $20/user/month when billed annually. This will also net you the ability to host online events with up to 10,000 participants. Plus, no more limits on the number or size of file attachments in chat or personal cloud storage.

While Teams offers screen sharing and guest access at the free level, on Slack these are only available for paid plans.

Slack 1:1 voice and video calls are included in Slack’s free plan. Group video meetings with up to 15 simultaneous callers require upgrading to a paid plan.

“Teams has far superior web conferencing capabilities,” Digital Trends writes. “On most tiers, including the free version (for now), you can host video conferencing meetings with up to 300 people. But it’s worth noting that the free version only offers that 300-person maximum until “further specified.”

The Office 365 E3 tier offers a cap of 10,000 participants. Teams also offers the ability to record meetings in its premium tiers (which Slack does not) and provides screen sharing for all tiers (which Slack only has in premium tiers). This is a boon for team-oriented or larger companies where this type of conferencing is common.”

Shortcuts, bots, and productivity hacks

“Slack is a productivity innovator, with shortcuts and productivity hacks for just about everything,” Kinsta writes. “Even Slack’s web app has a comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts you can use to boost your productivity.”

Slack also offers Slackbot, which can offer pre-set reminders and answer questions about how to use Slack. The app integrates with popular task management apps like Trello and Pipefy. This allows Slackbot to answer questions about deadlines and offer project updates automatically.

Kinsta found Teams’ productivity-boosting shortcuts less organized and intuitively useful compared with Slack. “We miss editing a recent message with a single key, easily marking messages as unread, and similar that can speed up our work,” they write.

Teams offers Microsoft’s in-house Who bot in paid plans that will tell you about your teammate’s specialties, manager, and department. There are also multiple third-party chatbots you can use for specific tasks.

Search

Slack offers advanced search. “For example, you can find messages by emoji with the ‘has:’ search parameter,” Kinsta writes. “This is great if your team uses a specific emoji to identify closed deals or priority messages).” The big limitation is you can only see/search 10,000 messages of history at the free level. Unlimited search is $6.67/user/month when billed annually.

Teams has slightly more advanced search functionality, including the ability to filter your search results by date. “While Slack's universal search is very powerful, its pinning capabilities can't quite match the Microsoft SharePoint file mapping for its ability to easily locate core or evergreen content your team needs to access regularly,” PCMag writes.

Storage

Slack offers 5GB of storage at the free level. The first-tier paid plan bumps you up to 10GB storage/user. The Plus plan offers 20GB per user and costs $12.50/user/month when billed annually. And for teams with big storage needs, there’s the Enterprise Grid plan. With that you get 1TB/user, but you have to contact Slack for pricing.

Teams’ free plan comes with 2GB of storage/user and 10GB of shared storage. Microsoft 365 Business Basic increases the storage to 10GB per license for $5/user/month when billed annually.

Integrations

Free Slack users can access up to 10 app integrations. Upgrading to any paid plan gets you unlimited access to Slack’s 2,200+ apps in their directory. “If you use another productivity app at work, there’s a very good chance it’s compatible with Slack,” Digital Trends writes.

We should also note that Slack integrates with Clockwise. Our integration syncs your availability to your Slack status automatically, gives you a heads-up about what your day looks like, and automatically turns on Do Not Disturb when you’re unavailable.

Teams offers 250+ apps at the free level. Teams’ primary integration is with Microsoft 365. If you upgrade to any paid plan, you get OneDrive, the ability to record your meetings, and customer support. If you’re a Word, Excel, Publisher, or Exchange fan, “This may be the most important consideration for businesses that use Microsoft 365,” Digital Trends writes.

Mobile apps

The Slack Android app has a 3.7-star rating in the Google Play store, and the iOS app has a 3.8 rating in the App Store. The Teams Android and iOS apps have a 4.7 and 4.8 rating on the Google Play and App Stores, respectively. We pulled these ratings in April 2023, so be sure to check them again for the latest update on scoring. In both cases, users complained about bugs, slowness, lack of functionality, and the mobile UI.

Slack pros:

• Available on Android and iOS devices 

Teams pros:

• Available on Android and iOS devices 
• High ratings in the Google Play and App Stores

Slack cons:

• Some reviewers noted that recent updates negatively impacted functionality and have many issues with the app

Teams cons:

• Some reviewers noted that this app provides a poor user experience

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Bottom line

Slack and Microsoft both offer high-quality collaboration app experiences. Both provide tons of great functionality, even at the free level, including unlimited messages, message search, file sharing, video calling, and more.

When it comes to Microsoft Teams vs Slack, we have to give Slack the edge if your team is on GSuite. Connecting Slack with Clockwise means your teammates can know whether you’re in a meeting, outside of working hours, or heads-down on a project without having to ping them.

But if you’re not on GSuite or can’t use Clockwise, which tool is best for you will depend on the needs of your organization.

Slack wins when it comes to:

• Ease of use and onboarding
• Shortcuts and productivity hacks
• Supporting more than 300 users at the free level
• Integrations with an extremely wide variety of apps
• Storage at the free level

Teams wins when it comes to:

• Integrating with Office 365
• Search functionality
• Storage at the paid levels
• Mobile apps
• Videoconferencing

FAQ 

How is MS Teams different from Slack?

Hostinger described the difference between MS Teams and Slack best. “The main difference between Slack and Teams is their focus. Slack is a chat-based collaboration tool that emphasizes communication, while Teams is a comprehensive collaboration suite that offers chat, video conferencing, and integrated document management. Teams is part of the Microsoft ecosystem, while Slack is a standalone tool with robust third-party integrations.”

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Slack generally works well for startups and other small teams who need a chat-based tool. Teams works great for large organizations and enterprises looking for more than chat functionality. Overall, the apps are similar in their chat functions, but it’s best for organizations to consider what else they need beyond the chat aspect to determine which tool will work best for them. 

Is Slack easier to use than Teams?

According to a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft Teams vs. Slack based on G2 user reviews, reviewers found Slack easier to use, set up, and administer. Below are a handful of reviews that describe how easy each of the tools is to use.

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Slack currently has 4.5 stars on G2 and over 31,000 reviews. Reviewer Niki Angela R. wrote, “An incredibly efficient and easy-to-use communication tool. The platform's intuitive interface and well-organized channels allow for streamlined communication, even with large teams.” 

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Reviewer Allyson H. shared similar feelings, “I absolutely love Slack! This is the second company I've worked at that uses this communication app, and it is such an easy and user-friendly product! I love that you can set channels specific to different projects/topics, direct message other users, integrate different apps, etc. Slack allows our otherwise remote team to stay connected throughout the day, with easy access to communication.”

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Microsoft Teams currently has 4.3 stars on G2 and just over 13,500 reviews. Reviewer Carl D. wrote, “Accessibility: Teams can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it easy to stay connected with your team even when working remotely.”

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And reviewer Jayme M. wrote, “Collaboration on Teams is so easy for all levels of technical knowledge. We have varying degrees of tech-comfort on our team and Teams allows us to easily share and collaborate regardless of skill level. We have all become proficient quickly due to the ease of use.”

What are the Best features of each: Slack and MS Teams?

Both Slack and MS Teams offer tons of great and useful features! Some of Slack’s best features include:

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1. The ability to schedule messages to send later.

Receiving (and sending) Slack messages during non-working hours can negatively impact work-life balance. Your colleagues may not be able to resist checking a notification if they see one, which could lead to hopping back online to address a non-urgent request that could’ve waited until tomorrow. Fortunately, Slack makes it easy to schedule a message to send later. All you have to do is: 

• Type your message in the DM or channel
• Add attachments, emojis, mentions, and other formatting choices 
• Click the arrow next to the paper plane icon and schedule a time to send your message!

2. Workflow Builder for automating everyday tasks.

Workflows in Slack help users address repetitive and routine tasks so they can spend their time on more important work. You can use Workflow Builder for things like warm welcomes to new hires, daily stand-ups, status updates, and so much more. Workflow Builder is a paid feature on the Slack Pro, Business+, and Enterprise plans. 

3. The option to create a custom Do Not Disturb (DND) schedule. 

With Slack, you don’t have to let notifications get you in a tizzy. Slack has a setting built that enables users to set a custom DND schedule, which means users tell Slack when they do and don’t want to receive desktop and mobile notifications. The DND feature is a great one, and you don’t have to manually set it every time you want to use it.

Microsoft Teams has its own unique and highly impressive features. Some of the best Teams features include:

1. The ability to quickly access a meeting recap.

Microsoft Teams is known for its supercharged video conferencing capabilities, which means it also has a lot of neat meeting-related features. Once a meeting ends, Teams saves all materials associated with a meeting (think things like a video recording and shared files). Participants can quickly locate all recap materials in the meeting Chat window or the Details section of the calendar invite. 

2. Virtual whiteboards for brainstorming and collaborating.

One of the benefits of Teams is that it helps remote and hybrid workers stay connected. And while the virtual experience won’t always feel identical to a co-located one, Teams offers virtual whiteboards to recreate the feel of an in-office brainstorming session and collaborate in real-time. Participants can drag and drop images on tho the whiteboard, use one of the pre-existing meeting templates, or customize the board to meet their meeting needs. Follow these steps to use a whiteboard in a Teams meeting.

3. The option to work in Together mode.

Microsoft optimized the Together mode to help people during the pandemic. In essence, meeting participants are united in a virtual space instead of separated into individual boxes. It has a unique look and offers teams a sense of connection and camaraderie. Some use cases for the Together mode include meetings where multiple attendees will speak and meetings where attendees might have trouble focusing. 

Overall, no matter which app you choose, Slack and Microsoft Teams are great options for users of all needs and types. 

Going forward

So, which app is best for your team? Only you can decide. We walked you through the UI, free plan offerings, bots, search capabilities, storage, integrations, and mobile apps. Both tools offer high-quality collaboration experiences. Slack wins when it comes to ease of use, shortcuts, and integrations. Teams wins when it comes to integrations with Office 365, search functionality, and videoconferencing. And don’t forget—Slack integrates with Clockwise, and our Microsoft integration will launch soon!

Next up, we compare Teams vs Zoom.