Messaging programs assist your small business’ team to interact and communicate and they are also able to be used more lightly to help them bond whenever they have to know each other more personally. We looked in the most popular options and reviewed Slack, HipChat, and Skype for Business in-depth below. These alternatives covered an array for smaller companies concerning price and features. Continue reading for our comparison and review of these 3 choices, in addition to our best recommendations.
Best Messaging Program for Small Businesses in 2017: Slack
We recommend Slack as the very best messaging program for small companies in 2017 because of its combination of features, user interface, and widespread usage.
Visit Slack
Messaging App Comparison Table: Slack vs HipChat vs Skype for Business
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Greatest For | Most small businesses | Firms who need the most economical solution | Firms that want the added significance of Office 365 Business Essentials included |
| Benefits of Use
Learn More |
Simple to perform basic tasks, but it can take some time to personalize it to optimize its usefulness for your personal workflow | Simple to perform basic tasks, but it can take some time to customize it to optimize its usefulness to your own workflow | Intermediate — fundamental chat functions are Simple to Use, but added features, like Office 365 Business Essentials, will take more information to master |
| Differentiating Features
Find Out More |
|
|
|
| Mobile App | iOS and Android | iOS and Android | iOS and Android |
| Customer Support
Learn More |
|
|
|
| www.Slack.com | www.HipChat.com | www.Skype.com |
Pricing
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $6.67/month per user, billed yearly | $2/month per user, billed yearly | $5/month per user, billed annually |
| Free Version | Yes, using restricted features | Yes, using limited features | Yes, with limited features |
| www.Slack.com | www.HipChat.com | www.Skype.com |
Greatest Messaging Program for Smaller Businesses: Slack
On paper, HipChat and Skype for Business offer a lower cost and additional attributes than Slack. So why did we choose Slack as the best messaging app for small companies for 2017?
Since a tool is only useful if people embrace this, and Slack’s polished user interface, customizable preferences that incorporate it with your personal workflow, and widespread usage make it even more probable that your team will use it more frequently.
Slack also provides a seemingly unlimited number of integrations with other third-party programs that will assist you customize and extend its capabilities even farther. There are choices for the communications, project management, development, marketing groups — and almost any other you can think of. Using these integrations, you are able to send and receive alarms to from project-specific channels in Slack to your other productivity tools of selection.
For instance, if you utilize Trello to help manage your endeavors, you may make a new card by simply typing a particular control into your chat window. In the same way, you can connect to present Trello cards, make updates, and receive alarms in Slack when an upgrade is made in Trello.
Visit Slack
Greatest Messaging App for the Lowest Price: HipChat
HipChat’s primary benefit is that it offers an almost identical pair of standard features, but for approximately 1/3 of the cost ($2/month per user for HipChat vs. $6.67per month per user for idle ).
HipChat doesn’t provide much to differentiate it from Slack other than its lower cost, with the exclusion of unlimited cloud storage versus 10GB per user for Slack. Its standard features are nearly identical and they are wrapped in a less attractive user interface. Though this might not seem like a significant difference, it’s because of that user interface that your workers are more inclined to widely adopt Slack — not just for chatting, but for just how effortlessly it integrates with additional third-party apps your business uses daily.
That said, it will be an attractive alternative for businesses that don’t want to sacrifice features for cost and are willing to exude a more completely realized user experience for your lower price.
Visit HipChat
Best Messaging App for Added Value: Skype for Business
The $5/month per user price bundle for Skype for Business we reviewed also includes a subscription to Office 365 Business Essentials for each user. But if your organization subscribes to the Office 365 Business Premium bundle for $12.50/month per user, then Skype for Business is already included in your price. The principal difference between these two packages is the Business Essentials grade is cloud-based so that you want to get connected to the internet to use it, but the Company Premium tier comprises desktop versions of this software.
Office 365 Business Essentials includes web-based applications like Word, Excel, and Outlook using a 50GB mailbox for every user in addition to 1TB of cloud storage and collaboration tools like HD video conferencing.
While we don’t find Skype’s user experience to be as intuitive or comprehensive since Slack’s, companies that care more about the number of available features and the service’s integration with the Office 365 suite than usability needs to seriously consider it as an alternative.
Visit Skype for Company
In-Depth Review: Slack vs HipChat vs Skype for Company
Free vs Paid Versions
Both Slack and HipChat provide free versions of their app with limited capabilities. Skype for Business, nevertheless, does not.
Here is the way Slack and HipChat’s free versions compare:
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Clients | Endless | Endless |
| Third-Party Integrations | Up to 10 | Unlimited |
| Cloud Storage | 5GB | 5GB |
| Voice and Video Calls | One-to-one | No |
| Message Archive | Up to 10,000 | Up to 25,000 |
Ease of Setup and Utilization
How simple an program would be to use along with the ability to incorporate it into your private workflow are the largest obstacles to its adoption, and communication and cooperation apps will only be useful if they are adopted throughout your team.
Adding members to your own messaging app is the very first step in your team adopting it, and the first stage where Slack and HipChat differentiate themselves .
With Slack and HipChat, administrators may send an invitation email to the team. Once they have signed up to your app, they’re automatically added to some team-wide stations and can join newly established ones. When a user is a part of a station, they remain there until they depart. This organizes and centralizes conversation.
Skype, however, requires users to sign up in their own, add each team member to their private contact list, then conversations are handled as one-offs — which is, every time you talk with somebody, a new chat begins and other users that aren’t invited to it don’t have access to it. For project-related talks, this risks users being excluded and/or overlooking important information from previous discussions.
It’s easy to perform fundamental most basic functions, such as sending messages from different users, using Slack, HipChat, and Skype for Company, but to truly maximize their efficacy you need to dig deeper and personalize the programs to your requirements. Configuring notifications, adding third-party integrations, and incorporating the apps into your workflow are when they begin to realize their potential and boost your productivity.
Like Slack, fundamental functions are very easy to execute but users will need to devote time configuring their alternatives and adding third-party program integrations to customize HipChat for their needs and optimize its usefulness.
Features
Slack, HipChat, and Skype for Business offer many of the exact features to help your team better communicate and collaborate with one another, improving overall productivity and efficiency. These include:
- Create public and private discussion groups
- Send personal messages directly to individual users
- Share images and files publicly and privately by dragging and dropping
- Archive discussions so they can be searchable and retrievable
- Complex notification systems Which Can Be configured to each user’s liking, including muting
- User-controlled accessibility status, including internet or Don’t disturb
- Third-party app integrations to expand and personalize accessible functions
- Sound and video, both individual calls and group conferences
- Screensharing
- Synchronized across desktop and mobile programs
Slack and HipChat are quite equally featured apps; where they significantly differ is in their user interface, user experience, and price. Skype for Company, nevertheless, offers more.
Slack also provides other features to assist your company day-to-day, such as group audio and video calls. While not as full-featured as dedicated video conferencing applications, it is adequate for one-on-one conversations or impromptu breakout meetings.
Slack’s core attributes are very similar to HipChat’s and Skype for Business’. Where Slack excels is in how it organizes and presents them in a glistening and aesthetically pleasing user interface which provides the very best user experience of those three solutions. And when adoption throughout your group is the largest barrier to an app’s success, this experience will make sure that more people do.
Client Support
Slack, HipChat, and Skype for Business all provide self-service online customer care through an assortment of channels. All three solutions offer versions of these:
- Online knowledge bases, including:
- User guides
- How to guides
- Tutorials (both video and written )
- User forums
- Email/ticket-based support
Where they differ, however, is from the telephone service that they provide. Skype for Business is the only support of this three to offer phone service, and it’s available 24/7.
Main Firms Messaging App Options
There are many other messaging programs for small businesses options available on the market that may be a much better fit for the business’ needs. Here are a Few of the others that we enjoyed and what makes them unique:
| Messaging Program | Best For |
|---|---|
| Slack | Polished port and industry-leading user experience |
| HipChat | Most of the Characteristics of Slack to 1/3 the cost |
| Skype for Business | Office 365 Business Essentials is included with paid subscriptions |
| Google Hangouts | Integrates well with other Google products, particularly Google Voice |
| Avaamo | Optimized for mobile consumers and Permits You to invite external participants in to your team’s conversations (clients, vendors, etc.) |
| Adium | Completely free, but only available for OS X customers |
| More targeted to folks than business, but fully encrypts messages for security |
The Most Important Thing
On Skype for Business provides the most features and HipChat is the cheapest priced. But, Slack’s appealing user interface, comprehensive features, and extensive customization and configuration options make it more likely to be adopted by more of your group. And to get a communication and collaboration program, its adoption rate has become the most important factor behind it helping your team to work more efficiently and productively.
Slack general user experience makes it our recommended best messaging program for small companies in 2017.
Visit Slack
