Slack Vs. Zoho Connect: Communication Comparison In 2024

Effective management and a streamlined workflow require excellent collaboration between your internal and external teams. You need a system that can facilitate seamless communication across all departments within your organization, as well as your outsourced team.

So, how do you choose a robust, user-friendly, and cost-efficient communication tool for your business? If you are an IT team offering after-hours call services, you need a communication platform that allows uninterrupted communication. But is that enough?

An ideal communication tool offers a wide variety of features, such as real-time interaction, video calls, file sharing, and integration capabilities. The right platform is easy to use and has a neat interface with a short learning curve.

Besides, it must be a scalable solution. As your business scales, you will want to add more users, features, and third-party integrations to your communication platform.

We’ve reviewed two tools that are dominating the online communication industry. Zoho Connect and Slack are our best choices for effective team collaboration. Read this post till the end to see which one is better.

Key Features :-

• Create public and private channels for brainstorming sessions and uninterrupted discussions.
• Get conversation history to stay up-to-date with the project’s progress
• Connect with your team and external users with video calls, voice calls, and one-on-one chat
• Quick and easy file sharing within the messaging channels
• Integrates with Asana, Google Drive, Zoom, Zendesk, Dropbox, and other such business apps.

Slack is a business communication app that offers seamless collaboration and advanced functionalities for communication. Its unique selling point is the level of customization you get.

The tool can integrate with thousands of third-party apps, which you might currently be using for HR management, CRM, accounting, and more.

Communication-wise, the tool allows you to initiate a video conference, voice call, a simple one-on-one chat, or a group discussion.

The platform’s interface is simple, so getting your team on Slack and explaining its features will be easy. It has three channels: Public for your entire organization, private for selected members, and direct channel for a specific colleague.

You can create channels for different projects and invite the relevant team members to join. Once they have joined, they can view all the messages, files, and documents shared through direct messaging.

Any Slack member can create a channel and give it a name so that the team can easily decide whether to join. Some projects, as mentioned above, are private and open to only those invited to join.

Coming to the downside, Slack’s performance needs improvement. While it has a great interface and excellent navigation features, the app might not run well when integrated with multiple apps.

Likewise, you might encounter a bug when using multiple channels simultaneously. The only fix is to close the app and reopen it to get back to your conversation.

Poor connection is another common issue with Slack. It may take a while for the recipient to connect with you through video and voice calls. Resolution quality can also fluctuate, but it mostly depends on your individual internet connection.

Key Features :-

• Initiate a conversation with your team easily
• Create projects, assign tasks, and keep track of different employee activities.
• Real-time messaging functionality
• Voice and video calls
• Let your employees and team members give feedback through polls and surveys.

Like Slack, Zoho Connect is a communication tool that works like a social media platform for organizations that want to bring their business associates, customers, vendors, and other professionals into a single centralized place.

The goal of the platform is to promote seamless communication and improve work efficiency. Its key feature is its team collaboration. With its multiple channels, there’s no need for you to open multiple email threads or schedule your meeting using spreadsheets and other traditional tools.

In addition to its communication platforms, Zoho Connect is known for its task management system. The tool enables your employees to create, assign, and complete tasks within the system efficiently.

You can also create surveys to collect feedback from your employees. Like Slack, Zoho Connect allows excellent integration capabilities. In addition to the third-party apps, Zoho Connect works with Zoho CRM, Zoho Mail, and the entire Zoho suite.

The navigation is pretty straightforward. Coming to the pricing, the tool is quite a scalable solution and has varying pricing plans that suit the needs of different sizes and types of businesses. From a startup to a multinational company, the tool supports all kinds of organizations.

While it has a great set of features and a neat interface, some users have complained about the steep learning curve. You might find Zoho Connect’s workflow a little overwhelming.

Another downside to Zoho Connect is its limited integration options. While it does support third-party apps and almost all Zoho tools, its integration options are not as extensive as other collaboration tools.

Both Slack and Zoho Connect are known for their seamless communication and collaboration options, but each has a different interface, varying integration options, and different sets of tools.

Slack

Slack allows you to connect with your team through voice and video calls. Plus, its real-time messaging functionality enables your teams to keep up-to-date with different projects.

The direct messaging, group discussion, and one-on-one chat options allow users to discuss their projects effortlessly. As mentioned earlier, Slack supports communication through channels.

You can create private and public channels. It prevents unnecessary chaos between teams. You can dedicate a channel for a specific project and invite your team to maintain all conversations about the project within that channel.

Since it works with Dropbox and Google Drive, the tool supports quick and easy file sharing. You can import a file from these cloud-based file storage platforms directly into Slack.

Zoho Connect

Zoho Connect enables users to create groups where they can initiate discussions. It works just like the Slack channels.

Its document-sharing functionality allows you to create and upload documents within groups. In Zoho Connect, you can create private and public groups and decide who can join them.

Groups are for different kinds of collaboration. For instance, you can create a group for stakeholders or senior-level employees in your organization. These groups can also be for a specific topic, such as a particular project you are currently working on.

Public groups are accessible to all. So, for important announcements that require your entire team, you can create a public group and drop a message there. Private groups are for special discussions that involve specific team members.

Verdict

Slack offers a broad range of communication channels, and its intuitive interface with a short learning curve makes it an ideal choice for companies of all sizes.

Zoho Connect also features a vast range of communication options, like video calls and real-time messaging, but it has limited integration options.

Slack

Slack is a communication and collaboration tool that boasts a wide variety of features designed to promote uninterrupted communication between internal and external teams.

Slack brings your stakeholders, employees, vendors, and members together through its real-time interaction capabilities. It works for businesses of all sizes, especially those in the IT industry. It’s an ideal platform for businesses that rely on faster and more effective communication.

Zoho Connect

Zoho Connect offers a broader range of functionalities that go beyond communication. Its primary focus is promoting collaboration between teams, but it offers more features than just real-time messaging.

In Zoho Connect, you can create and manage projects. Assign tasks to your team, check progress, and keep your employees up-to-date about the project status.

From document management to workflow automation, the tool is a one-stop platform for your team collaboration.

Verdict

Zoho Connect is your best bet if you want a collaboration tool that offers much more than simple communication channels.

It can help you manage projects, documents, and your team in one place. Slack is best for businesses that need a cloud-based app just for communication purposes.

Slack

Slack has a free plan for beginners and small startups that want its basic features. The free plan comes with a 90-day message history, one-on-one chat and video calls, and a workspace.

Medium—and large-scale companies can sign up for premium plans, which consist of three tiers: a standard plan starts at $6.67 per user (annual billing) and goes up to $12.50 per user per month (annual billing). There is also an Enterprise plan with custom pricing.

Premium users get additional features like group meetings, unlimited integrations, unlimited message history, and a 99.9% uptime.

Zoho Connect

Zoho Connect has a free plan that gives you access to basic communication tools, including group discussion, real-time messaging, announcements, file sharing, team collaboration, and integrations.

Its premium plans are quite affordable. Starting at $1 per user/month (annual billing), the platform offers unlimited groups and manuals, translation options, webhooks, surveys, custom events, and more.

Its Ultimate plan costs $3/per/user/month and offers all features included in the Enterprise plan, plus some add-ons like the dashboard, team schedule, time tracking, custom menu, custom roles, public board, and live broadcast.

Verdict

Price-wise, Zoho Connect is a clear winner. Given its free plan, free trial, and affordable pricing plans, it’s obvious that small-scale and mid-sized companies can enjoy the best communication and collaboration tools without breaking the bank.

Slack

Slack is a customizable platform. You can change its look, color, dashboard, and sidebar to suit your unique requirements. From emojis to its layout, every element of Slack is customizable.

The most interesting customization is the theme and colors. You can pick from different themes, depending on the tone you’d like to set for your workspace. From cheerful to productive themes, the options are countless. You can also create your own themes.

Other than that, you can customize Slack emojis, notification sound, workspace icons, sidebar, etc.

Zoho Connect

Likewise, Zoho Connect offers several customization options for different features. You can start by setting up custom modules, which store and process data on Zoho Connect.

Then, you can use its customized forms. Send them to your teams and external members of the organization in a survey format. This will give you a chance to collect their feedback.

Zoho Connect also allows its users to customize the reports and analytics. You can change the visuals and select the information you’d like to be displayed in the reports.

The look of these reports can also be customized. You can change the font, color, column width, and field section to ensure that the data is displayed in your preferred format.

Verdict

Each platform has an excellent range of customization options, but if you are looking for a tool that offers the highest level of flexibility in customization, Slack is the best choice.

Slack

Slack has kept its interface quite straightforward and the navigation super simple. Any user, including beginners who’ve never tried any communication tool before, will find Slack easy.

Slack is mainly known for its channels. Fortunately, switching between different channels, whether private or public, is easy. You get an option to name each channel by project or specific topic, so it’s easier for your team to open their desired channel from the dashboard.

Additionally, it has a search bar where you can type the channel name, message, and files to locate it. Not only that, but you can customize the sidebar. Pin the important messages or the channels that you use frequently so you can quickly access them when needed.

Zoho Connect

Zoho Connect has a clean dashboard that comprises all crucial features of the application. You can access tasks, files, groups, and everything in one place.

You can customize the layout so that it aligns with your preferences and is easier for your team to navigate. There’s an option to integrate the calendar right into the dashboard. This enables your team to schedule meetings without switching screens frequently.

Verdict

Both Slack and Zoho Connect have a friendly dashboard, although Slack outperforms the latter because of its advanced navigation features.

Slack and Zoho Connect are popular communication tools used mainly for their collaboration features.

While Slack offers the best suite of communication channels, Zoho Connect has become an ideal choice for businesses that want a fully integrated communication tool with features that go beyond simple communication channels.

Zoho Connect is part of the extensive Zoho Suite, so it works seamlessly with Zoho CRM and other Zoho products.

Slack, on the other hand, is an independent communication tool that focuses on streamlining your workflow by offering advanced communication and collaboration options.