Best Slack Standup Bots

Are your remote daily standups effective? Do they ever last more than 15-minutes and turn into longer meetings that cut into your work time? Are your team members spread across different time zones?

If your standups aren’t effective or are too time-consuming, it might be time for a change. And we get it—conducting daily standups can be extremely difficult when team members work together globally. That’s where Slack standup bots can help.

This quick guide will give you an overview (or reminder) of what standup meetings are, why using Slack for standups can be beneficial, and six Slack standup bots to try. Let’s dig in!

What are standup meetings?

Daily standup meetings are highly recommended in the Agile methodology. These meetings are short, 15-minute connection points for team members to come together to review progress, triage issues, and flag any blockers. The purpose of the daily scrum is to enable teams to move toward the sprint goal and maintain communication with the team. In a typical standup meeting, team members answer the following questions:

• What did you do yesterday, or what have you been working on?
• What will you do today? 
• What blockers (if any) are in your way?

While real-time standups can be an excellent tool for teams, you can also conduct these meetings asynchronously to better suit a hybrid or remote workplace. 

Using Slack for daily standups

Why should you turn to Slack to help coordinate daily standups? Finding a time that works well for all team members can be challenging when working remotely due to time zone differences and conflicting schedules. (Pro-tip: If you need help finding times for your team to meet across time zones, Clockwise can find the best times to meet based on everyone’s timezone, meeting hours, Focus Time, and more!) 

If your team is already using Slack, integrating your daily standup using the chat tool will simplify workflows without having to find time for your distributed team to meet. Asynchronous Slack standups can also be a time-saver. While you should structure standups to stick to a brief period of no more than 15-minutes, sometimes teams run over the allotted meeting time. 

Unnecessary time spent in meetings impacts the amount of time team members have for deep work and their to-do lists. Automating the process will reduce time spent in meetings and provide the same benefits as real-time standups (assuming all team members participate!)

6 Slack standup bots to try

Fortunately, various Slack standup bots organize asynchronous standup meetings in Slack, so you and your team don’t have to find time to meet. With Slack standup bots, you can understand what team members are working on without interruptions and drawn-out meetings. 

There are various options on the market, but we rounded up some of the best options available to help you narrow your search. Below are six Slack standup bots to try, listed alphabetically. 

1. Geekbot

Overview: Geekbot is an easy-to-use helper that integrates with Slack and Microsoft Teams to share information asynchronously.  Shopify, GitLab, and Belmont University run their standups with Geekbot.

Features: With Geekbot, you can choose from the Daily Standup, Quick Check-In, or Daily Sync prefilled template for ease of use. In addition to daily standups, you can use Geekbot for sprint retrospectives, anonymous surveys, private 1-on-1s, meeting notes, and team happiness reports. Geekbot’s Daily Standup template includes the following four questions:

• How do you feel today?
• What did you do since {last_report_date}?
• What will you do today?
• Anything blocking your progress?

Pricing: As of July 2022, Geekbot costs $0 for up to 10 participants (limited time offer) and $2.50/participant/month billed annually for growing companies (plus a free 30-day trial). Enterprise pricing is available upon request. And for what it’s worth, Geekbot only charges for active standup participants, which you can read more about on their pricing page.

Image source: Geekbot

2. Polly

Overview: Polly is a Slack app designed to help users stay connected, respond quickly, and see results in real-time. 

Features: With Polly, teams can conduct quick and easy asynchronous check-ins for Agile teams, in addition to surveys, automated onboarding check-ins, and social games. Your calendar events can trigger the daily standup in a specific Slack channel. And you can integrate Polly with Jira, Confluence, or GitHub for seamless workflows across your apps. Polly’s Daily Standup template includes the following three questions:

• What did you accomplish since the last check-in?
• What are you working on next?
• What’s your status moving forward?

Pricing: At the time of writing, Polly offers four pricing plans for Slack users. A free version with no subscription required, a standard plan at $49/month on a 3-month subscription, a pro plan at $19/month/sender on 6- and 12-month subscriptions, and custom pricing and terms for enterprise groups. When choosing the best plan for you, be sure to pay attention to the number of response limits and workspaces to ensure the pricing plan fits the size of your team.

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Image source: Polly.ai 

3. Standuply

Overview: Standuply runs asynchronous standups via text, voice, and video capabilities. Over 35,000 companies, including IBM, Microsoft, and Google, use Standuply as their digital scrum master, putting standup meetings on autopilot. Standuply’s template includes the following three questions:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What do you plan on doing today?
• Okay, any obstacles?

Features: Team members can easily attach voice and video messages using the /video command. And you can use predefined templates or write your own questions to customize your standup for your team.

Pricing: At the time of writing, Standuply offers four pricing plans. The Starter plan is $0/month. The Team plan is $149/month for unlimited users, $249/month for unlimited users on the Business plan, and custom pricing for an Enterprise tier. On the Team plan and above, Standuply integrates with Google Analytics, Jira, Trello, GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, Giphy, Product Hunt, Medium, and more.

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Image source: Standuply

4. Standup Alice

Overview: Standup Alice is a simple standup meeting bot with limited functionality. Standup Alice asks the following four questions:

• What did you complete yesterday?
• What do you commit to today?
• When do you think you'll be done with that?
• Any impediments in your way?

Features: Standup Alice for Slack reminds team members to participate in daily standups, sends team standup summaries at a specific time, supports multiple teams and workspaces, allows you to customize standup questions, and threads conversations for easy summary readability. Standup Alice’s design is more straightforward and less customizable than the bots mentioned above. 

Pricing: You can try StandUp Alice for free for 45 days. After that, as of July 2022, it costs $0.99/user monthly or $9.99/user annually.

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Image source: Standup Alice

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5. Standup Bot

Overview: Standup Bot automates daily standups, collects answers from the team, organizes them, and posts them in an easy-to-find place. Every day, Standup Bot asks:

• What did you accomplish yesterday?
• What are you working on today?
• Is anything standing in your way?

Features: You can personalize these questions if you choose, but Standup Bot does not allow more than three questions as it reduces consistent response rates.

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The dashboard feature lists all ongoing standups. Users can view reports, manage members, change settings, or add new standups in the dashboard. Adding new standups is easy; you can add different standup meetings for different channels in Slack.

Pricing: At the time of writing, Standup Bot pricing is $19/month for up to 20 users, $49/month for up to 50 users, and $129/month for up to 200 users.

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Image source: Standup Bot

6. Troopr

Overview: Replace your daily standup meetings with Troopr Check-ins or asynchronous standups in which Troopr periodically collects responses and generates summary reports for review. Troopr’s template includes the following three questions:

• What did you get done since last report?
• What's plan for today?
• Any blockers?

Features: Troopr has a deep Jira integration, making it easy to integrate into your current workflow if you’re a Jira pro user. Many templates are available for scrum events, including daily scrum, planning poker, backlog grooming, retrospectives, and more. Netflix uses Trooper Check-ins because of its Jira integration and because its internal security team cleared it for use.

Pricing: At the time of writing, Troopr offers four pricing plans. The Pro plan is $49/month for unlimited users, the Premium is $129/month for unlimited users, the Unlimited plan is $299/month for unlimited users, and the Enterprise plan starts at $400/month. Check out the different features available at each tier, and take advantage of the 14-day trial to explore Troopr.

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Image source: Troopr.ai

Automate your standup today

Daily standups are a great tool for connecting teams and moving work forward, but they can do more harm than good when not conducted properly. Consider automating the process with a Slack standup bot if you're running standups with team members across time zones. Next, read more about automation and Slack AI integrations.

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