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3 Workplace Collaboration Alternatives to Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a pretty powerful collaboration tool - but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Maybe you had a bad experience with Windows 10. Maybe you’ve found yourself frustrated by one of the many glitches common with the platform. Maybe it doesn’t work so well in your IT environment. Whatever your reasons, there are plenty of alternatives - here are a few of the best.

When it was first introduced, Microsoft Teams came with its fair share of bugs. That left a bit of a bad taste in the mouth of many who might otherwise have used it consistently. Never mind Microsoft’s recently spotty reputation where quality assurance is concerned. Even so, for those who were willing to look past its shaky launch and set aside their preconceptions, it ended up being a match made in heaven. 

And at the time of writing, there’s really nowhere to go for it but up. Many of the platform’s early bugs have now been ironed out, and what remains is an incredibly powerful tool for enterprise communication and collaboration. Moreover, there’s a totally free version for small and mid-sized businesses, available without an Office 365 license. 

In spite of its merits, Microsoft Teams isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. There are plenty of reasons why you’d want to seek an alternative, from incompatible infrastructure to a desire to shift away from Microsoft products. With that in mind, here are a few workplace collaboration alternatives to Microsoft Teams. 

Slack

Slack is, without a doubt, the titan of workspace collaboration. It’s the tool Microsoft created Teams to compete with. It’s not hard to see why it’s so popular, either. It looks good, it’s easy to use, and it’s incredibly feature-rich, with everything from search to rich text to file uploading and archiving to group voice calls. 

While it doesn’t feature anything like a built-in calendar or project management app, those features are easy enough to integrate with a bit of finagling. You can download Slack here

Flock

User-friendly, affordable, and convenient, Flock offers seamless integration with virtually every major workplace application. This includes Google, MailChimp, Jira, and Trello, among others. It’s also a bit more feature-rich than Slack, while also loading and running a bit faster. 

It does lose out to Slack in a few areas, though. It offers fewer integrations and its search functionality isn’t quite as powerful. Otherwise, it’s an excellent contender. 

HeySpace

HeySpace is an intuitively-designed communication and project management platform. Web-based and cloud-hosted, HeySpace also includes a built-in rich text editor, along with all the other functions one might expect in an instant messaging tool. One of its biggest draws is that it also features Kanban board functionality, a-la Trello.

One might expect such a feature-rich platform to come with a hefty price tag, but it doesn’t. HeySpace is totally free to use for smaller organizations, with a more advanced, extensive premium version available for $5/month per user. 

In Closing

Whether you’re managing a development team or simply working within the IT department to keep the lights on, all three of the tools above are excellent alternatives to Microsoft Teams. They’re only a fraction of what’s available to you, though. A starting point for your research into the perfect collaboration tool for your fellow tech professionals.

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