Slack

Slack is an instant messaging software as a service for teams. It's free to use it forever with quality value offered in their basic plan and upgrades are very affordable too and provide a lot of useful functionality. Pricing is very reasonable. You can get Google Apps integration which is great for businesses currently at $8 per user, per month. Though you can still utilize ten integrations with your free account which is tremendous value they're providing. Features like keyboard shortcuts and auto completion make the messaging functionality versatile and more productive which is good. The extensibility of Slack is awesome. There are over one hundred apps available to install instantly inside your account and it's very easy to do including a basic version of GoToMeeting with video. There are a lot of other video apps too. Apps for fun, security, productivity, project management, accounting, marketing, office management, design, HR, customer support, analytics and more. I'm very impressed with the versatility of this team messaging system and can see now why it is so popular with this much flexibility basically built into the solution. You can use a mobile Slack app which is very similar to the online version. There's a cool little snooze feature that lets you notify others that you're taking a break. The user interface itself is super simple and intuitive to use. It couldn't be any easier to use a software in my experience. And the automated wizard tutorial option when first entering your account gives you everything you need to know easily, and points out the main three steps. The ability to play Youtube videos or audio tracks or basically any media you can utilize online is a cool feature. The search function is good in Slack in that you can search by query with canonicalization. The emoji feature while limited in conveying sincerity enable a sort of imagery that helps make your words more meaningful and you get the whole set in Slack. You can also import a chat history from a few of their competitors which is a feature that differentiates Slack. I like that you can enable or disable notifications for individual channel too.

Considering you can utilize free apps which essentially do the same thing as Slack like Google Chats, the viability when upgrading to a paid subscription is not most relevant in it's core functionality though it is very good and retained intact, but for the further integrations possible which make having Slack as a core operational setup that is customized and unique. While streamlined in your workflow by using a common third party service access portal.

Overall, I highly recommend Slack for it's core functionality, price point and extensibility. With so many powerful and varied apps to utilize inside of Slack the price point is justified in your ability to have one central location when accessing multiple software integrations. And with the communication functionality of the Slack instant messaging at the core, you can create a highly customized business software with no coding for free. With paid subscriptions very reasonable beyond the free forever plan based on the massive ROI made possible by your ultimate customized business tool available with a central Slack account.