6 ms·

Slack vs. Microsoft Teams vs. Google Hangouts

39 points by someear 10y ago

SubiculumCode 10y ago
Why not Mattermost? https://about.mattermost.com/ https://about.mattermost.com/ Own your data.
- someear 10y ago
  I think mattermost is an appealing alternative, but don't think it has the potential to dominate the enterprise market, but more develop as a successful niche player for the most security conscious companies. It's also something I imagine the other players will address at some point for some kind of a premium enterprise offering.
  - leipert 10y ago
    You do not even have to be too conscious about security as a company. A lot of contracts with companies and/or government agencies in the EU (at least in Germany) require that you handle data according to EU/German laws. If you use a SaaS which does not host in the EU it is a lot harder to satisfy those requirements. To be compliant it is a lot easier to spin up your own Mattermost in a data center here.
  - SubiculumCode 10y ago
    Reason?
- lwhalen 10y ago
  I think some of it is a branding fail on Mattermost's part (or a branding win on Slack's). Case in point - I was recently in talks with a non-tech company who are HUGE users of freemium Slack. They don't want to actually spend money on it, but they have a person whose (partial) job description is to monitor all 15+ Slack channels for 'anything that looks important, and archive the conversation wholesale into the company wiki'. If they paid for Slack, their annual cost would be $10k+. I proposed to build them a Mattermost server for a flat rate of $5k and they're responsible for the hosting costs (~$20/mo for a VM somewhere). For a small recurring fee I would handle regular updates, etc, to the server. CEO's response was "Nope, we like Slack", with no further explanation or elaboration. The rest of the teams had been demo'd on Mattermost, agreed it did All The Things(tm), agreed it was the superior solution because then Jim in shipping wasn't tasked with copy/pasting convos into the wiki, etc, but in the words of the CFO, "<CEO> is irrationally attached to being a 'Slack user'". Not so much that they'd be willing to pay money for it though. tl; dr - people are strange.
  - tedivm 10y ago
    This is changing though- the lack of attention giving to the freemium slack is causing a lot of problems for the communities I'm in, and the majority of them are exploring other options. For instance, I reported a DoS bug that can cripple freemium communities and they basically told me "oh well". For obvious reasons I'm not going to go into details here, but I've got a script I can point at a slack freemium slack community to wipe out a lot of it's functionality that I built as a proof of concept and they just don't seem to care. There are also huge issues with moderation and harassment on the freemium Slack. Since there is no way to block or ignore a user it gives trolls an insane amount of power (and before someone tells me that you can mute notifications from a person, I'll mention that all the troll needs to do is create a new chat room, force invite the person to it, and continue trolling to bypass it). Personally I find it really frustrating that slack has kind of destroyed a bunch of IRC communities, but is refusing to build the tools needed to manage these replacements. As more and more freemium communities are figuring this out and migrating I imagine the people pushing Slack because it's what they are familiar with is going to drop.
    - empath75 10y ago
      If you have a problem user on slack, you ban them from the team. If the team has gotten so large that it's impossible to moderate in that way, you shouldn't be using slack, imo.
      - tedivm 10y ago
        Agreed, completely. Slack is very much an inappropriate tool for most communities that aren't using a paid plan. That was in fact the point of my post- for lots of people using the freemium version to manage communities does not actually make any sense.
- matmo 10y ago
  That is definitely a plus, but the mobile app(s) for mattermost are pretty bad. I'm guessing it was built a long time ago on cordova or one of those other "write once, run everywhere" frameworks where they just run everything in a WebView.
  - it33 10y ago
    While the first generation Mattermost mobile apps used web rendering, we have next generation apps in React Native releasing end of March that are rendering natively. The next generation apps are much faster, and we're excited to release them soon. Here's the source: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-mobile https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-mobile There's instructions on how to get early access as well.
    - matmo 10y ago
      Awesome, I'm glad to hear that. I still use the current mobile app despite my criticisms, but I'm definitely looking forward to the new one(s)!
- maturz 10y ago
  There is also http://rocket.chat http://rocket.chat (Open source) http://ryver.com http://ryver.com (free hosted, will add additional premium features later for project management) http://riot.im http://riot.im (open source) http://zulip.org http://zulip.org (open source)
  - jjawssd 10y ago
    Maybe something has changed but Mattermost has been far more reliable than rocket chat in my experience
    - compuguy 10y ago
      I've managed a rocket.chat server at a previous job, and its very stable as well. The big plus is that its completely free (including ldap support) vs slack and mattermost.
      - leipert 10y ago
        Mattermost is open source as well. If you use gitlab (CE or EE), you can easily setup Mattermost with LDAP as well: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-mattermost https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-mattermost
        compuguy 10y ago
        I'm aware. But the important features for a small company (external auth, ldap) are on a paid tier for Mattermost. Its good that mattermost can tie into gitlab's authentication via ldap (no ldap group permissions though with the OSS tier). Edit: Gitlab doesn't officially support SSO on top of SSO (AD/LDAP, etc), so its at your own peril: https://docs.mattermost.com/deployment/sso-gitlab.html https://docs.mattermost.com/deployment/sso-gitlab.html
- it33 10y ago
  Mattermost Team here, thanks for the mention! One reason for propreitary SaaS over open source used to be setup--but now that Mattermost is on Bitnami it's easier than ever to deploy Mattermost to AWS, Azure, GCP and OCP: https://bitnami.com/stack/mattermost https://bitnami.com/stack/mattermost
dimitar9 10y ago
how about amazon chime
ainar-g 10y ago
There is also Atlassian Hipchat. https://www.hipchat.com/ https://www.hipchat.com/ Has anyone used that? Any pros/cons?
- compuguy 10y ago
  The hosted version doesn't have support for kvm, and until recently video chat required an internet connection.
- chambo622 10y ago
  Feels old, clunky, and not fun to use compared to Slack. The hosted solution has also had major reliability problems over the past 6-12 months (may not apply if you use the on-prem offering). The mobile apps are very outdated and tend to botch notifications and message delivery/syncing. On the bright side, the desktop client uses very little RAM compared to Slack.
  - shrewduser 10y ago
    i don't understand how slack is as heavy as it is.
    - rrdharan 10y ago
      It's an Electron app, so it's basically running an entire second copy of Chrom{e|ium}. UPDATE: Err, or first copy, if you don't use Chrome as your primary browser.
- shrewduser 10y ago
  it's been around a while, i'm not sure why it never took off the way slack did. i'd also love to hear from a user.
  - gaastonsr 10y ago
    I think it lacks usability in OS X. I never felt comfortable using it. Slack, since the first moment I opened I simply got it.
csours 10y ago
I haven't experienced MS Teams, but Skype 4 Business can go and die in a garbage fire as far as I'm concerned. The mobile client just sucks monumentally, and the desktop client is missing functionality that every other good chat client has had for years.
- cmarschner 10y ago
  Teams is neat. I looked back at Slack at first, but no more. Multiple teams, threaded conversations, mobile app (IPhone) works nicely as well. It's there to stay.
- nunez 10y ago
  Skype for Business isn't Skype. It's Lync with a worse logo. Lync PBX is pretty good but their IM offering is overblown for most.
- FailOverPeer 10y ago
  Any thoughts on Cisco spark? I have yet to see it mentioned in the few threads about hangouts alternatives... any reason for that? Just curious what HN users have against it.
  - someear 10y ago
    I think Cisco spark is a niche product that is going to be important to big enterprise, but solely as a communication tool, specifically to facilitate meetings and calls. Just my opinion, but I don't think it has much of a future has a 'hub' of all activity for a company.
dgellow 10y ago
I've started using Discord[0] with a team, we are pretty happy with it. It's great how you can easily see who's in a call and can join and leave without any cost (you don't have to invite someone to the call, or ask to be invited, etc) [0] https://discordapp.com/ https://discordapp.com/
- dgellow 10y ago
  I forgot to say: the entire service is free!
JBlue42 10y ago
We're testing out Teams at work because of our O365 subscription. About 15 people now. Most seem to like it other than the massive amount of whitespace the chat window takes up. I personally hate the massive animated emojis. Though a little hokey, it's free for us and people really just want some sort of chat system. I've looked at rocket chat but I'm a jr level sysadmin with CTO/Sr Sysadmin boss in a Windows-only environment. I'm a little hesitant to let it loose in our 100+ person environment but Skype for Business sucks and Slack would be too expensive.

39 points by someear 10y ago

SubiculumCode 10y ago

Why not Mattermost? https://about.mattermost.com/ https://about.mattermost.com/ Own your data.

someear 10y ago
I think mattermost is an appealing alternative, but don't think it has the potential to dominate the enterprise market, but more develop as a successful niche player for the most security conscious companies. It's also something I imagine the other players will address at some point for some kind of a premium enterprise offering.
- leipert 10y ago
  You do not even have to be too conscious about security as a company. A lot of contracts with companies and/or government agencies in the EU (at least in Germany) require that you handle data according to EU/German laws. If you use a SaaS which does not host in the EU it is a lot harder to satisfy those requirements. To be compliant it is a lot easier to spin up your own Mattermost in a data center here.
- SubiculumCode 10y ago
  Reason?
lwhalen 10y ago
I think some of it is a branding fail on Mattermost's part (or a branding win on Slack's). Case in point - I was recently in talks with a non-tech company who are HUGE users of freemium Slack. They don't want to actually spend money on it, but they have a person whose (partial) job description is to monitor all 15+ Slack channels for 'anything that looks important, and archive the conversation wholesale into the company wiki'. If they paid for Slack, their annual cost would be $10k+. I proposed to build them a Mattermost server for a flat rate of $5k and they're responsible for the hosting costs (~$20/mo for a VM somewhere). For a small recurring fee I would handle regular updates, etc, to the server. CEO's response was "Nope, we like Slack", with no further explanation or elaboration. The rest of the teams had been demo'd on Mattermost, agreed it did All The Things(tm), agreed it was the superior solution because then Jim in shipping wasn't tasked with copy/pasting convos into the wiki, etc, but in the words of the CFO, "<CEO> is irrationally attached to being a 'Slack user'". Not so much that they'd be willing to pay money for it though. tl; dr - people are strange.
- tedivm 10y ago
  This is changing though- the lack of attention giving to the freemium slack is causing a lot of problems for the communities I'm in, and the majority of them are exploring other options. For instance, I reported a DoS bug that can cripple freemium communities and they basically told me "oh well". For obvious reasons I'm not going to go into details here, but I've got a script I can point at a slack freemium slack community to wipe out a lot of it's functionality that I built as a proof of concept and they just don't seem to care. There are also huge issues with moderation and harassment on the freemium Slack. Since there is no way to block or ignore a user it gives trolls an insane amount of power (and before someone tells me that you can mute notifications from a person, I'll mention that all the troll needs to do is create a new chat room, force invite the person to it, and continue trolling to bypass it). Personally I find it really frustrating that slack has kind of destroyed a bunch of IRC communities, but is refusing to build the tools needed to manage these replacements. As more and more freemium communities are figuring this out and migrating I imagine the people pushing Slack because it's what they are familiar with is going to drop.
  - empath75 10y ago
    If you have a problem user on slack, you ban them from the team. If the team has gotten so large that it's impossible to moderate in that way, you shouldn't be using slack, imo.
    - tedivm 10y ago
      Agreed, completely. Slack is very much an inappropriate tool for most communities that aren't using a paid plan. That was in fact the point of my post- for lots of people using the freemium version to manage communities does not actually make any sense.
matmo 10y ago
That is definitely a plus, but the mobile app(s) for mattermost are pretty bad. I'm guessing it was built a long time ago on cordova or one of those other "write once, run everywhere" frameworks where they just run everything in a WebView.
- it33 10y ago
  While the first generation Mattermost mobile apps used web rendering, we have next generation apps in React Native releasing end of March that are rendering natively. The next generation apps are much faster, and we're excited to release them soon. Here's the source: https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-mobile https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-mobile There's instructions on how to get early access as well.
  - matmo 10y ago
    Awesome, I'm glad to hear that. I still use the current mobile app despite my criticisms, but I'm definitely looking forward to the new one(s)!
maturz 10y ago
There is also http://rocket.chat http://rocket.chat (Open source) http://ryver.com http://ryver.com (free hosted, will add additional premium features later for project management) http://riot.im http://riot.im (open source) http://zulip.org http://zulip.org (open source)
- jjawssd 10y ago
  Maybe something has changed but Mattermost has been far more reliable than rocket chat in my experience
  - compuguy 10y ago
    I've managed a rocket.chat server at a previous job, and its very stable as well. The big plus is that its completely free (including ldap support) vs slack and mattermost.
    - leipert 10y ago
      Mattermost is open source as well. If you use gitlab (CE or EE), you can easily setup Mattermost with LDAP as well: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-mattermost https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-mattermost
      - compuguy 10y ago
        I'm aware. But the important features for a small company (external auth, ldap) are on a paid tier for Mattermost. Its good that mattermost can tie into gitlab's authentication via ldap (no ldap group permissions though with the OSS tier). Edit: Gitlab doesn't officially support SSO on top of SSO (AD/LDAP, etc), so its at your own peril: https://docs.mattermost.com/deployment/sso-gitlab.html https://docs.mattermost.com/deployment/sso-gitlab.html
it33 10y ago
Mattermost Team here, thanks for the mention! One reason for propreitary SaaS over open source used to be setup--but now that Mattermost is on Bitnami it's easier than ever to deploy Mattermost to AWS, Azure, GCP and OCP: https://bitnami.com/stack/mattermost https://bitnami.com/stack/mattermost

dimitar9 10y ago

how about amazon chime

ainar-g 10y ago

There is also Atlassian Hipchat. https://www.hipchat.com/ https://www.hipchat.com/ Has anyone used that? Any pros/cons?

compuguy 10y ago
The hosted version doesn't have support for kvm, and until recently video chat required an internet connection.
chambo622 10y ago
Feels old, clunky, and not fun to use compared to Slack. The hosted solution has also had major reliability problems over the past 6-12 months (may not apply if you use the on-prem offering). The mobile apps are very outdated and tend to botch notifications and message delivery/syncing. On the bright side, the desktop client uses very little RAM compared to Slack.
- shrewduser 10y ago
  i don't understand how slack is as heavy as it is.
  - rrdharan 10y ago
    It's an Electron app, so it's basically running an entire second copy of Chrom{e|ium}. UPDATE: Err, or first copy, if you don't use Chrome as your primary browser.
shrewduser 10y ago
it's been around a while, i'm not sure why it never took off the way slack did. i'd also love to hear from a user.
- gaastonsr 10y ago
  I think it lacks usability in OS X. I never felt comfortable using it. Slack, since the first moment I opened I simply got it.

csours 10y ago

I haven't experienced MS Teams, but Skype 4 Business can go and die in a garbage fire as far as I'm concerned. The mobile client just sucks monumentally, and the desktop client is missing functionality that every other good chat client has had for years.

cmarschner 10y ago
Teams is neat. I looked back at Slack at first, but no more. Multiple teams, threaded conversations, mobile app (IPhone) works nicely as well. It's there to stay.
nunez 10y ago
Skype for Business isn't Skype. It's Lync with a worse logo. Lync PBX is pretty good but their IM offering is overblown for most.
FailOverPeer 10y ago
Any thoughts on Cisco spark? I have yet to see it mentioned in the few threads about hangouts alternatives... any reason for that? Just curious what HN users have against it.
- someear 10y ago
  I think Cisco spark is a niche product that is going to be important to big enterprise, but solely as a communication tool, specifically to facilitate meetings and calls. Just my opinion, but I don't think it has much of a future has a 'hub' of all activity for a company.

dgellow 10y ago

I've started using Discord[0] with a team, we are pretty happy with it. It's great how you can easily see who's in a call and can join and leave without any cost (you don't have to invite someone to the call, or ask to be invited, etc) [0] https://discordapp.com/ https://discordapp.com/

dgellow 10y ago
I forgot to say: the entire service is free!

JBlue42 10y ago

We're testing out Teams at work because of our O365 subscription. About 15 people now. Most seem to like it other than the massive amount of whitespace the chat window takes up. I personally hate the massive animated emojis. Though a little hokey, it's free for us and people really just want some sort of chat system. I've looked at rocket chat but I'm a jr level sysadmin with CTO/Sr Sysadmin boss in a Windows-only environment. I'm a little hesitant to let it loose in our 100+ person environment but Skype for Business sucks and Slack would be too expensive.