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Advice on Google Hangouts and Slack
Needs advice
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SlackSlackDiscordDiscord
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GitterGitter

From a StackShare Community member: “We’re about to start a chat group for our open source project (over 5K stars on GitHub) so we can let our community collaborate more closely. The obvious choice would be Slack (k8s and a ton of major projects use it), but we’ve seen Gitter (webpack uses it) for a lot of open source projects, Discord (Vue.js moved to them), and as of late I’m seeing Spectrum more and more often. Does anyone have experience with these or other alternatives? Is it even worth assessing all these options, or should we just go with Slack? Some things that are important to us: free, all the regular integrations (GitHub, Heroku, etc), mobile & desktop apps, and open source is of course a plus."

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Replies (4)
Rebecca Driscoll
Recommends
on
SlackSlack
at

We use Slack to increase productivity by simplifying communication and putting Slack in the middle of our communication workflow #Communications #Collaboration

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Arnaud Lemercier
Expert En Dveloppement Web Et Systmes Dinformations, Designer UX, UI, Co-grant at Wixiweb · | 4 upvotes · 200.4K views
Recommends
on
DiscordDiscord
at

We use Discord to tracking some action and errors (logs / alerting / assertion). it's free and simple to use with mobile application et notifications

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Michael Ionita
Recommends
on
SlackSlack
at

We use Slack because we can let "tools talk to us" and automate processes in our dev team using bots.

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Julien Tanay
Lead DevOps. Every day product hacker. at Dior · | 2 upvotes · 195.8K views
Recommends
on
DiscordDiscord
at

Our Discord Server is our n°1 community stop; we gather feedback from our users from here, discuss about new features, announce new releases, and so on.

We even use it for internal meetings and calls !

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Decisions about Google Hangouts and Slack
Remotor Consulting
at Remotor Consulting Group · | 13 upvotes · 123.4K views

Keybase is a powerful and secure team-organizing software. And because Keybase is so transparently good at what it does, Keybase is a foundational software that facilitates the future of work: effective, inclusive, secure Remote Teams.

Keybase is a free, end-to-end encrypted, open-source program with almost limitless flexibility. Each Keybase user or team is a unique cryptographic identity. Each message or interaction that a user has with a team or other user, is verifiable and digitally-signed. Custom combinations of users/teams/bots, can be designed to catalyze Remote Teams of all kinds, this process can also be automated. Keybase includes Git integration for versioning, bots from multiple platforms to facilitate audio/video-conferencing, a Cryptocurrency wallet, and many advanced privacy features to make you more or less traceable.

Services like Slack and Discord are centralized platforms that perform analytics on your behavior and can sell or leak this data to 3rd parties. Any audio/video features available within Slack or Discord, are bound to be less secure and less flexible than excellent alternatives such as Jitsi. Slack and Discord do have a fun, causal feel to them, which can potentially facilitate social engagement in certain conditions (also many users are already on these platforms).

Centralized and Proprietary team platforms such as Discord and Slack have a large market presence (at least in the USA) based on their first-mover advantage, name recognition, and network effects from size. However these products do not have the flexibility or power of Keybase. Keybase excels on its own excellence, and also has an open and active developer community.

Find us on Keybase: @remotorteam (Keybase username) @remotor.public (Public Keybase Team)

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Stefan Schuchlenz

We chose RocketChat over other communications suites like Cliq or Slack mainly because we can self-host it on our own infrastructure. Since we have quite some projects going on which demand that we stay in touch with a lot of different stakeholders, pricing was an issue, too. With RocketChat, we have a huge set of features basically for free, RC offers apps for all major devices and systems and overall, we're very happy with it. The only downside is the limited amount of apps and integrations, but we can make due with what we have available.

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In terms of Business Tools we chose Slack and Google Hangouts.

  • Slack became the main communication channel among our team due to its popularity, integrations with other tools, and ease of use.

  • Google Hangouts was chosen as the go to video conferencing tool because of its ease in setting up free team video calls and free pricing for our use.

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Mohammad Hossein Amri
Chief Technology Officer at Planally · | 3 upvotes · 251.2K views

we were using slack and at the same time we had a subscription with office 365. after a while we hit the slack free limitation quota. and it got annoying. the search ability was useless in free tier. and more annoying whenever you search, it opens a webpage and doesn't do it in the app.

on mobile there were many cases that I didn't get notification of important discussions. rooms was the way to separate a talk. but it become tedious. each time for a new subject that you wanted to discuss, you needed to add all the team members into a new room. and after a while the room goes silent. you will end up with a tons of not-in-use rooms that you don't want to clean up them for history purposes. also the slack UI for sub discussion is very stupid. if someone forget to check the checkbox to post the subdiscussion in the main discussion thread, other team members even won't notice such discussion is in progress.

we was paying for office 365 and thought why not give the teams a shot. we won't be in worth situation than we are. we moved to teams and we loved it instantly, we had a separate tab aggregated all the files upload. we could reply on other talk. no need of creating a new room. this way room belongs to a team and not a certain topic. our sub discussion was visible to the whole team. enjoyed integration with azure and unlimited history. the best part was integration with outlook. it was a full suit solution. our stats become busy on outlook meeting events. we get weekly analyse. we didn't need to host our wiki seperated. we've created wiki per team. the communication was much more fun.

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Pros of Google Hangouts
Pros of Slack
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 1.2K
      Easy to integrate with
    • 876
      Excellent interface on multiple platforms
    • 849
      Free
    • 694
      Mobile friendly
    • 690
      People really enjoy using it
    • 331
      Great integrations
    • 315
      Flexible notification preferences
    • 198
      Unlimited users
    • 184
      Strong search and data archiving
    • 155
      Multi domain switching support
    • 82
      Easy to use
    • 40
      Beautiful
    • 27
      Hubot support
    • 22
      Unread/read control
    • 21
      Slackbot
    • 19
      Permalink for each messages
    • 17
      Text snippet with highlighting
    • 15
      Quote message easily
    • 14
      Per-room notification
    • 13
      Awesome integration support
    • 12
      Star for each message / attached files
    • 12
      IRC gateway
    • 11
      Good communication within a team
    • 11
      Dropbox Integration
    • 10
      Slick, search is great
    • 10
      Jira Integration
    • 9
      New Relic Integration
    • 8
      Great communication tool
    • 8
      Combine All Services Quickly
    • 8
      Asana Integration
    • 7
      This tool understands developers
    • 7
      XMPP gateway
    • 7
      Google Drive Integration
    • 7
      Awesomeness
    • 6
      Replaces email
    • 6
      Twitter Integration
    • 6
      Google Docs Integration
    • 6
      BitBucket integration
    • 5
      Jenkins Integration
    • 5
      GREAT Customer Support / Quick Response to Feedback
    • 5
      Guest and Restricted user control
    • 4
      Clean UI
    • 4
      Excellent multi platform internal communication tool
    • 4
      GitHub integration
    • 4
      Mention list view
    • 4
      Gathers all my communications in one place
    • 3
      Perfect implementation of chat + integrations
    • 3
      Easy
    • 3
      Easy to add a reaction
    • 3
      Timely while non intrusive
    • 3
      Great on-boarding
    • 3
      Threaded chat
    • 3
      Visual Studio Integration
    • 3
      Easy to start working with
    • 3
      Android app
    • 2
      Simplicity
    • 2
      Message Actions
    • 2
      It's basically an improved (although closed) IRC
    • 2
      So much better than email
    • 2
      Eases collaboration for geographically dispersed teams
    • 2
      Great interface
    • 2
      Great Channel Customization
    • 2
      Markdown
    • 2
      Intuitive, easy to use, great integrations
    • 1
      Great Support Team
    • 1
      Watch
    • 1
      Multi work-space support
    • 1
      Flexible and Accessible
    • 1
      Better User Experience
    • 1
      Archive Importing
    • 1
      Travis CI integration
    • 1
      It's the coolest IM ever
    • 1
      Community
    • 1
      Great API
    • 1
      Easy remote communication
    • 1
      Get less busy
    • 1
      API
    • 1
      Zapier integration
    • 1
      Targetprocess integration
    • 1
      Finally with terrible "threading"—I miss Flowdock
    • 1
      Complete with plenty of Electron BLOAT
    • 1
      I was 666 star :D
    • 1
      Dev communication Made Easy
    • 1
      Integrates with just about everything
    • 1
      Very customizable
    • 0
      Platforms
    • 0
      Easy to useL

    Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

    Cons of Google Hangouts
    Cons of Slack
      Be the first to leave a con
      • 13
        Can be distracting depending on how you use it
      • 6
        Requires some management for large teams
      • 6
        Limit messages history
      • 5
        Too expensive
      • 5
        You don't really own your messages
      • 4
        Too many notifications by default

      Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

      What is Google Hangouts?

      Message contacts, start free video or voice calls, and hop on a conversation with one person or a group.

      What is Slack?

      Imagine all your team communication in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go. That’s Slack. All your messages. All your files. And everything from Twitter, Dropbox, Google Docs, Asana, Trello, GitHub and dozens of other services. All together.

      Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

      What companies use Google Hangouts?
      What companies use Slack?
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      What tools integrate with Google Hangouts?
      What tools integrate with Slack?

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      Blog Posts

      Sep 29 2020 at 7:36PM

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      What are some alternatives to Google Hangouts and Slack?
      Skype
      Skype’s text, voice and video make it simple to share experiences with the people that matter to you, wherever they are.
      Hangouts
      It is a communication platform which includes messaging, video chat, and VOIP features.
      Zoom
      Zoom unifies cloud video conferencing, simple online meetings, and cross platform group chat into one easy-to-use platform. Our solution offers the best video, audio, and screen-sharing experience across Zoom Rooms, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and H.323/SIP room systems.
      Duo
      Duo is a next-generation package manager that blends the best ideas from Component, Browserify and Go to make organizing and writing front-end code quick and painless.
      Google Meet
      It is the business-oriented version of Google's Hangouts platform and is suitable for businesses of all sizes. It allows users to dial in phone numbers to access meetings, thus enabling users with slow internet connection to call in.
      See all alternatives