
Slack vs. Microsoft Teams vs. Google Hangouts - someear
https://www.polly.ai/blog/2017/03/09/enterprise-messaging-platform-wars-slack-microsoft-google.html
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csours
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.

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FailOverPeer
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.

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someear
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.

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dgellow
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/)

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

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SubiculumCode
Why not Mattermost?

[https://about.mattermost.com/](https://about.mattermost.com/)

Own your data.

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someear
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.

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leipert
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.

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JBlue42
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.

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ainar-g
There is also Atlassian Hipchat.

[https://www.hipchat.com/](https://www.hipchat.com/)

Has anyone used that? Any pros/cons?

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brightball
I use both daily. Honestly, I don't get the fuss about Slack. It's the exact
same service.

The differences in Slack are emoji attached to messages and threaded replies
that just came out.

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briandear
Exact same until you need to easily deal with code formatting. Slack uses
Markdown Hipchat uses nonsense. Also Hipchat's reliability is garbage: getting
@mentions hours later or not at all. Hipchat is horrible. You also have audio
and video calling in Slack.

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brightball
Hipchat has AV calling. I've never experienced delayed @mentions and we've
been using it for 3 years with close to 100 people.

With Slack you use backquotes for code. With Hipchat you type /code first.

Same service.

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dimitar9
how about amazon chime

