Microsoft Teams alternatives and competitors

We primarily use it as a knowledge management tool for all of our consultants, which are architects.

The whole solution is really great. I appreciate the ability to create content, link content, and then search for that content when I need to. 

I love all of the add-ons the solution offers. You get the base product, and then you can plug in a ton of third-party apps. There's a whole ecosystem of third-party products you can add in if there are any features that may be missing on Confluence itself. That's really great. 

There are very good notifications and links. You can subscribe to a page, and whenever that page gets edited, you're notified of a change on that page.

I suppose just the whole structure and organization is what I really like about Confluence. You have at least 500 odd pages. The way it's structured, again, to speed up the ability to find stuff, is phenomenal. 

The self-service capabilities are helpful. Anyone can create content. We do, in fact. It's not one person running lots and lots of pages of content, it's everyone. You can self-service, update, and change things yourself, which is good. It's a great collaboration endeavor. We are a team of 15 people and we'll leverage the content we've created previously. The ability to collaborate on the content is quite critical to us.

The integration's very good. You still have integration with lots of third party products, and it's very good. 

We've used a lot of time in correcting our knowledge in this product. Can't really think of a negative feature of the product.

This is kind of by design, however, the lack of control in terms of editing the page to make it look the way you want it to look is an issue. It would be nice if there was more flexibility there.

It's only a very constrained format you can use. You cannot change the font and you can't really make them smaller. It is by design, but it doesn't like people playing with those aspects. It's probably gone a bit too far. The inability to format the layout of a page is an issue for us.

The logic for searching for pages is a bit off. I assumed it would be very smart in terms of looking at the content on your page and looking at what people clicked on. I assumed it would be like Google in that it would know what people clicked on previously when they were looking for this keyword, what page do they click on, et cetera. It doesn't. I found some detailed explanation of exactly how the search works and it's quite disappointing. It's very basic. Search largely depends on the title of your actual document. It doesn't look at the words in the document, and doesn't look at the search history, in terms of how people pick pages.

It turns out that the searching algorithms are very basic. When I assumed the product was bad, it was actually due to the fact that most of the knowledge management tools have very smart searching logic. This one doesn't. 

I've been using the solution for probably less than a year. It hasn't been too long.

The solution is reliable. I haven't seen a single bug or issue with the product. It's very stable. 

We have about 15 users on the solution currently.

As a company, we use Microsoft Teams. A lot of our customers say, "Oh, I know, we've got the same features in Microsoft Teams." However, that really isn't the case. Usually, if you're in a Microsoft shop, you would try and use all the Microsoft products. This is one space where Microsoft Teams doesn't cut it. We're using the Confluence instead.

The initial setup is very, very good. It's not complex it all. It's very straightforward and they make it very easy.

The entire setup isn't an intricate process. We didn't have to pour over documentation to try and figure things out. We just followed our instincts and it worked out quite well.

We handled the implementation ourselves. We didn't need any assistance from consultants or integrators.

For us, it's free to use. We don't pay any licensing.

We don't have a business relationship with Atlassian. We're just customers.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

This solution is highly recommended. If you're looking for a product in this space, this is the best. We had another really good tool, however, we find Confluence does the same and a whole lot more. I'd say in the knowledge management space, as far as we've been doing our business, and our job is to find tools for organizations, I'm convinced that this is the top product in this space.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. My one issue is the search capabilities. Otherwise, it's pretty perfect.

I use Slack primarily for communications. This includes communicating with individuals as well as grouping people into cells to work on specific parts of a project. We don't use the features beyond just the basic communicative side of it.

With respect to being a clean and efficient communications platform, I think that it does the job quite well.

It's very good for when you have a large number of people working within the team. It can be a challenge to ensure that people are working within the bounds of the project that they are assigned to, and Slack is effective for ensuring that happens.

I have found it cumbersome to create and set up groups, or channels. I recall having to go through the application, then back to the web site, and then back to the application. I didn't really like that and this is something in the interface that should be improved. If it were possible or easier to create those working groups within the application, without being taken into a browser and working entirely within the software itself, that would be ideal.

I would like to see integration with collaborative tools, such as word processing software or programming environments and coding software, made clear, easy, and as broad as possible. It should handle simple products, all the way to complex ones. It should be easily embeddable inside a channel so that anyone can use it.

I think that changing the privileges to remove restrictions would help the users to adapt to the platform more easily, removing bottlenecks. Having to request access for particular users is time-consuming and it would be better if more people can do these things themselves.

I have been using slack since the beginning of 2019.

I have not noticed any bugs, glitches, or other issues with stability.

We have between 30 and 50 users.

A lot of the work that we're doing now ends up on Microsoft Teams. Whether I like it or not, it tends to marginalize and eventually push Slack out of the picture.

I found the initial setup to be straightforward. You can also bombard people with reminder messages that they should be joining a channel or discussion. In fact, I've had less trouble with slack than I've had with Teams.

From my perspective, this is a good product and I definitely recommend it. My advice for anybody who is implementing this type of product is to first consider what it is that they want to achieve, and then make the decision about which product to implement based on that. If you're trying to pick between platforms, like Teams versus Slack, I would recommend Slack for a variety of reasons. Even if you are using Teams already, I would suggest using Slack in addition because you can't go wrong.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for communication and collaboration on specific topics.

Yammer is an enterprise social software. We have it in our company for five years, but it is not well socialized. A few people in our company use it. We are using Microsoft Teams more.
It is a product that is fading away for us. We may or may not use it in the future.

The user interface and the way we can share and search information are the most valuable. It is very easy to use. 

The way you want to control the communication could be an issue. It depends on what kind of company you are. We are a public company, and there are some regulations that we need to comply with. Its ease of use can be an issue for a company because anybody can subscribe and use it.

There are many competitors that are overlapping. Since Microsoft bought Yammer, it tends to be in the shadow. It is not put in the front from the service perspective.

I have been using Yammer for five years.

It is stable.

It is scalable.

We didn't have to contact them for support. We had a call with them from a security standpoint to see if they can improve the way to control communication with external companies.

The initial setup was straightforward.

I don't know about the pricing. Now that Microsoft has bought Yammer, it should be a part of our subscriptions for Office 365.

I would recommend this solution if it fits the purpose. It is a great tool, but you need to look at whether it overlaps with other tools. 

I would rate Yammer a seven out of ten.