Discord vs Slack vs MS Teams: The Best Choice for Your Team
It’s 2022 and the whole world is undergoing a global pandemic. You are sitting in your room and waiting for this nightmare to end. But most importantly, you are missing your friends, your colleagues, and your buddies. You miss the time when everything was normal, and you could enjoy spending time with the people you wanted. You are missing your workplace, not kidding here. When was the last time you had those post-work hangouts?
In times like this, a few software have made life really easy and kept us sane throughout the whole pandemic. A software that is known to the gaming community as Discord has now become a must for day to day works. There are many other software that also have become famous because of the pandemic situation. Software like slack and MS team are being used to monitor the work from home situations.
Discord
Discord is really famous in the gaming community as people on multiple platforms using this as a means of communication. If you haven’t used this software yet well, let me tell you something. This software allows its users to create a server where you can join if you are invited or if the server is public. Discord servers are like Facebook groups as you can add as many people as you want here and you can also add cool features. The discord call time limit is actually limitless. These features set discord on another level from all the other competitors. You can add bots that play music or search for something. Yes, these bots help you find something that you can’t find or if you don’t have the time to find it. If you heard of streaming, you could also stream games, tutorials, DIY’s here. Cool right? Well, they also have a level-up system for users where you can unlock many cool features in different servers. Discord itself is a community, and it’s completely free! If you have a huge fan base and they want to see you stream something on your discord server at 1080p 60fps well he/she must use the premium feature called Discord Nitro. Nitro plan costs $4.99 user/month. Discord nitro is something that you will know as you get used to Discord and know about its limitations. Discord for business is actually applicable as there are many people who use it for daily business activities. For doing something like this you have to understand the software and its basics really well. Discord servers are quite unique and with proper knowledge, you can set it up the way you want to for both textual and voice chats. Discord is based on voice chat.
When playing various games, gamers need high-quality, lag-free voice chat to interact with each other. Discord perfectly suits the bill, offering secure voice contact all over the place. The experience that it offers is absolutely amazing.
A single discord server can have up to 500,000 users, but the owner must contact Discord support for more discord server space to prevent link errors if more than 25,000 are online simultaneously. For a discord server, the maximum number of categories is 50, and the maximum number of channels is 500 in total.
Slack
Basically, Slack is a chat app on steroids. It is intended to be used across various devices and channels for teams and workplaces and is packed with robust features that allow you not only to chat with partners one-on-one but also in groups within Slack multiple workspaces. You can also upload and share files with them, as well as interact with other apps and services, and almost every environment, including the ability to build custom emoji, can be granularly managed. Slack is free of charge-mostly. You can only browse and check for the 10,000 most recent messages from your team, and you will be limited to 5 GB of file storage and 10 applications or custom integrations. You can add Skype, Giphy, Google Calendar, GitHub, IFTTT, Mailchimp, New Relic, and whatever comes to your mind. So Slack is for those people that are working on a project and have a limited number of people working on a single project. There are so many features stuffed in the premium sections but you can actually experience the basics in the free versions.
MS Teams
Microsoft Teams is the teamwork hub that integrates all a team’s needs such as chat and threaded discussions, meetings & video conferencing, calling, content sharing using the power of Microsoft 365 applications, and the ability to develop and incorporate apps and workflows that your company relies on. The Microsoft team’s evaluation for this software is quite unique as they have integrated their office 365 with the system. Launched in 2017 as a competitor to collaboration leader Slack, Microsoft saw the usage of Teams rocket as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened to 75 million daily active users, according to figures published by Microsoft in April. In its history, the company named Teams the fastest rising business app. Teams can be an alternative to, or even substitute, email communications entirely, but it also helps to link employees and their apps more widely, particularly for remote employees. Team is simply for groups of workers within an organization, such as employees of the marketing or design department. Teams can range from an entire organization to a more oriented shared-interest community in size and scope.
A Microsoft 365 Community is automatically formed when a team is first set up, along with related resources such as a SharePoint site and access to OneNote. In a way, teams go a step further than communities, serving as a more concrete thread that links organizational users and applications. It’s also the backbone of Office 365 behind-the-scenes. Think of it as, as a Microsoft spokesperson put it, a’ digital translation of open office space. You can say this collaborative workspace functions as the connective tissue of Microsoft 365 applications as well. They have lobbied for work-from-home connectivity since its introduction. As a central part of Microsoft’s corporate efficiency and teamwork plan, teams have stepped further into the spotlight.
Which One is Best for You and Your Team?
Discord vs Slack vs MS Teams is a really close call and these three are one of the most utilized software this pandemic. Now that you know the basics of how these software work, Slack is no different. Slack is similar to Discord but it’s different in a particular place. Microsoft Teams makes it easy to share files through OneDrive, the cloud storage service of Microsoft, or by directly uploading files to Teams. With a single file upload limit of 15 GB, up to 1 TB of files can be stored per organization and 25 TB per group. File uploads are also allowed by Discord, but with much tighter restrictions. Single file upload cap for Discord is only 8 MB, or 50 MB if upgraded to Discord Nitro, the $99.99 /year paid service for Discord. Another cloud-based service, such as Droplr, is the easiest way to exchange files on Discord. Discord’s integration with Droplr enables users to share files with a specified short link directly from the Droplr Cloud. Preview the screenshots and GIFs directly on the Discord server. The various pricing plans of Droplr include 500 GB, 1 TB, or unlimited storage of files and are cheaper than Microsoft Teams. To make things easy for you, we have actually selected a few factors that will help you understand the Discord vs Slack vs MS Teams battle and the differences between them more precisely. The key points for the Discord vs Slack vs MS Teams battle is below:
Objective
Discord vs Slack vs MS Teams battle might seem very difficult to judge but it actually depends on the goals that you and your team is working on. The main reason to use Discord is to communicate with others. For example, if you want to communicate using your voice you should use Discord. But if your communication involves multiple huge file transfers, you should use the MS team and if you are working on a single project with a few people Slack is the thing for you. The objective is key as the software are similar to one another but it actually depends on what your goal and objective is.
Integrated Apps
Slack and Microsoft Teams allow users to integrate with third-party apps such as Droplr. Again, pricing comes into play with how these apps integrate. Slack integrates with more than 800 apps, but only allows up to 10 Slack integrations on their free plan before switching to unlimited integration on all paid tiers. On the other hand, Microsoft Teams allows unlimited integrations at all pricing levels, but only integrates with approximately 180 apps. Microsoft Teams has the best integration with Microsoft Office products since it is a part of the Microsoft Office 365 family.
Discord, on the other hand, does not communicate with any applications. However, you can combine your favorite games with Discord, as well as social media networks such as Facebook and Spotify. You can also connect Discord’s API to a multitude of bots.
Storage
The free Slack plan allows for 5 GB of storage per account and a limit on the message history of 10,000 messages. With each paying tier, the storage allowance increases while message history limits vanish. Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, requires 2 GB of storage per user and 10 GB of the total for a team on its free software. Their Necessities plan raises the organization’s capacity to 1 TB while providing unrestricted storage in their Premium plan. For teams, there is no limit to message history. The free Slack plan allows for 5 GB of storage per account and a limit on the message history of 10,000 messages. With each paying tier, the storage allowance increases while message history limits vanish.
Microsoft Teams, on the other hand, requires 2 GB of storage per user and 10 GB of total for a team on its free software. Their Necessities plan raises the organization’s capacity to 1 TB while providing unrestricted storage in their Premium plan. For teams, there is no limit to message history. The size limit is 8 MB in Discord, but you can upgrade to the paid Nitro plan and unlock the 50 MB limit. On the other hand, for data, Slack’s limit is 1 GB.
Discord has an infinite background of messages and files. This sounds fantastic, particularly because you still need access to the files in the app that you have shared. However, there is a trick. You won’t be sharing too many files because the file cap is just 8 MB. You can upgrade to Nitro at all times and get 50 MB per file, though.
In Slack, you can also exchange Google Drive files, as well as code or text snippets, which are perfect for use at work. On the other hand, Discord just allows you to transfer files from your own computer.
Notification
A crucial aspect of any chat tool is notifications. With a message every minute, you definitely don’t want to get irritated, so the ability to monitor your alerts is important. You don’t want to skip anything important either, though. You’re in luck, because Slack lets you keep things under control. There is a whole tab with alerts in Slack, in addition to the settings that you will see. You can set up alerts for keywords, so you get notified every time someone types a certain keyword.
Discord’s settings for notification are just as impressive. If you like, you can make a robot talk to you about your updates, which can be helpful while playing. To set up where you get updates, you can change your notifications for and channel and server. You can silence whole channels as well. Numerous ways to access, receive, and handle notifications are offered by Microsoft Teams. These settings include how, when, and where your notifications appear, channel and chat custom settings, appearance, and sounds, disabling unique messages, and so on.
Pricing
The simple paid plan for Slack comes in at $6.67 per user per month, while Microsoft Teams starts its plans at $12.50 per user per month. Pricing can easily become a determining factor between the two tools, depending on company size, requirements, and whether Office 365 is commonly used within an enterprise.
Slack has over 800 different forms of integrations, but if they choose to use more than 10, it allows users to upgrade to pro teams. Microsoft Teams and Slack both have the same price $12.50 per month for premium business accounts, but Microsoft Teams costs $5.00 per month when it comes to basic business accounts, while Slack’s price starts at $6.67 per month.
If you want to get rid of the limitations such as the limit of 10,000 searchable messages and 10 integrations. If you want more features, such as 99.99% uptime, guest access, and 24/7 customer care, you will have to pay even more – $12.5 per user per month. Discord is free, and it has very few limitations. Unlike the free plan in Slack, you will keep your team’s message history. If you like Discord so much that you want to pay for it, there is a Nitro plan, which gives you a few perks. These include 50MB of space, the use of a GIF avatar, higher quality of screen sharing, animated emojis, and a profile badge that says how long you’ve been supporting Discord. The discord character limit is 2000. These factors will play a vital role for the Discord vs Slack vs MS Teams debate as prices do matter.
Security
With all levels of pricing as well as data protection, both Slack and Microsoft Teams support two-factor authentication. Microsoft Teams has the edge of being included in the Microsoft Office 365 family, even though both tools emphasize security. As it is not only already included, but they have better control over how it is used to share data and other files and communications, IT teams at large organizations may lean towards Microsoft Teams as a tool of choice.
For encrypted communications, Discord as a forum is not intended. It does use standard encryption but does not provide its video chats with end-to-end encryption. It’s easy to use Discord easily with the right privacy settings and monitoring. However, when it comes to sites and apps with open chat, there’s always a chance. The best way to use Discord is to only accept requests from friends and engage with people you already know on private servers. This is a really big down for team Discord in the Discord vs Slack vs MS Teams battle.
Now that we have discussed all of these factors, it’s now up to you to decide what you want. There are other factors like the interface, the video call quality and server maintenance issues that you must keep in mind while choosing between these three. Discord call time limit, MS team and Slack call time limit is actually limitless but the number of people at a time varies from each other.
When it comes down to community discord vs slack vs MS Team for the community each have their own taste for their respective. Discord is adored by the gaming community a lot and now businesses are shifting to discord as they are able to communicate with their customers and they are able to get proper feedback.
Even when it comes to education, thanks to this pandemic many universities and their faculties are creating their own servers and taking mocks, classes and exams through these services. slack vs discord for education is the most used nowadays as MS team is used for organizational uses. slack vs discord for education should not be the only concern as MS team has the office 365 feature.
Conclusion
There is a reason why Discord is a social network and a tool enjoyed by players, and all groups and game integrations, as well as the emphasis on voice communication. The number of integrations, the great search feature and the emphasis on text, on the other hand, all make Slack a team chat tool for companies. What you want as your team chat app depends on the objective that you want to accomplish. There are individuals who use Discord for business and Slack for gaming. From the above discussion, we can actually say that Discord is best when it comes to gaming but when it comes to work and projects, MS team would be my choice. But, it’s up to you to decide who you think is the winner for you in the Discord vs Slack vs MS Teams battle.
