Slack... pricing is a problem
We, like many other smallish organisations I'd imagine, were quite happily using Slack's free tier prior to COVID-19 coming along.
With an overnight switch to fully remote working, we had an immediate need for easy to use video calling and small group video collaboration plus screen sharing etc.. all the useful bits that Slack rolls into their "Standard" tier.
Faced with needing to jump up a tier and start paying for it, we inevitably had a look around at the alternatives and quickly realised that we could roll out Teams, complete with all the bells & whistles we needed, for the princely sum of about £2 per seat on top of our existing Office365 / Exchange seats - or indeed free for a year under MS's Teams Exploratory Experience licence compared to an additional £5.25 per seat for Slack.
Simple choice really... the "pain" of switching collaboration tools was non-existent and I have to say, especially for a MS product, we've been pretty surprised at how well Teams has largely "just worked" and tied into existing accounts via Azure AD for a simple end-user experience.
Assuming we're not the only organisation around that needed to fix an unexpected urgent need for collaboration, discovering that Teams filling a Slack sized hole pretty effectively, well... maybe the time is ripe for change.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
