Teams vs Slack: which one is best for your company in 2026? - Round 1

In this article

• Introductions
• Chat & messages
• Video & voice calls
• Search
• Productivity
• Limits

Slack and Microsoft Teams are the two leading platforms in the collaboration space, with Microsoft Teams reaching over 320 million users, compared to Slack's 40 million. Both tools share a common purpose: to help professionals communicate more efficiently, internally and externally, while reducing reliance on email. If you're in the process of choosing a collaboration platform or considering a switch between the two, this article will guide you through the key differences. We'll cover essential topics such as collaboration features, limitations, user interface, integrations, pricing, AI features, notifications, and more.

Introductions

To my left:

• Slack: While Slack was originally popular among tech companies, it has since expanded to serve a broad range of users. Today, it's widely adopted by corporations, SMBs, distributed teams, associations, communities, and even educational groups. In some organizations, Slack is used by specific departments, like IT, while other departments rely on different tools such as Google Chat or Microsoft Teams. You can read more about the challenges of managing such hybrid Slack/Teams environments in our dedicated article.

To my right:

• Microsoft Teams: Teams has experienced rapid growth, largely due to its integration with Microsoft/Office 365. It is now widely used across various sectors: including enterprises, SMBs, educational institutions (schools and universities), public organizations, and healthcare providers. With the shutdown of Skype as of May 2025, Teams' user base is expected to expand further, including potential use in personal contexts.

🥇Winner: no winner in this section, it's just to introduce our two competitors.

Chat & messages

Slack and Teams share many core features, including direct (one-to-one) messaging, group messaging, message editing and deletion, marking messages as unread, reactions, pinned messages, emojis (including custom ones), rich formatting, and typing indicators.

However, each platform has its unique touches. Teams, for instance, allows you to see when a message has been read, offers a wide variety of GIFs and stickers, and lets users mark messages as “important.” Slack stands out with its support for message threads, enabling more organized conversations within channels, something Teams currently lacks in "chats" as threading is currently only available in Teams "channels".

🥇Winner: Equality since both platforms offer largely the same core features, and the differences are minor unless specific ones are particularly important to your workflow.

Video & voice calls

When it comes to real-time audio and video communication, Teams has a clear advantage, as these features are deeply embedded in its core design. In contrast, Slack introduced Huddles later, in 2022, as an add-on feature.

Slack also comes with limitations: the free plan supports only 2 participants per Huddle, and even on paid plans, the cap is 50 users. Teams, on the other hand, supports meetings with up to 300 participants across all plans.

Beyond participant limits, Teams also offers a broader set of meeting features, including recording, integrated whiteboards, Outlook calendar syncing, and the ability to delegate screen control, capabilities that are not natively available in Slack.

🥇Winner: Teams, since their video calls feature is objectively much richer than Slack ones: number of users, calendar link, whiteboard, etc.

Search

Both Slack and Teams treat search functionality as a core feature, aiming to help users efficiently retrieve past messages. The search bars are prominently placed at the top center of the interface and support queries across messages, files, people, and group chats or channels.
Both platforms also allow filtering by author (from), date, specific channel, and can exclude automated content from apps or bots.\

However, Slack goes a step further with additional capabilities: Extra filters like with (to specify recipients), filters for messages with specific reactions, and options to find only pinned, saved, or threaded messages. The ability to sort results by relevance or date.
And most notably, a powerful search syntax that lets users create highly customized queries directly, without navigating menus.
Example: budget from:@James in:#marketing

🥇Winner: Slack comes out on top, offering a more refined search experience that truly helps users locate messages with ease.

Productivity

Slack and Microsoft Teams are both built to boost productivity by streamlining internal and external communication. As such, they share a number of core features aimed at making everyday collaboration smoother.

• Common features
  • Pinning Messages: Both platforms allow you to pin important messages within a conversation. This is especially useful in busy channels where key information can easily get buried.
  • Chatting with Yourself: We all do it 😉, and thankfully, both Slack and Teams support “chat with yourself” functionality. It's perfect for jotting down quick notes, drafting messages, or saving to-dos for later.
  • Notifications: With the overload of notifications we all face, both tools offer efficient ways to manage them. You can customize notifications globally or at the channel level, and both platforms include a “Do Not Disturb” mode.
    That said, the customization options differ slightly:
    • Slack lets you set keyword-based alerts.
    • Teams offers device-specific settings (e.g. different behavior on mobile vs. desktop), and allows you to mute notifications during meetings.
  • Slash commands: They might feel a little "techie" at first, but slash commands can really streamline your workflow once you get the hang of them. However, the way they're used, and the features they unlock, differ between Slack and Teams. Here's a non-exhaustive comparison:

• Specific features While Slack and Teams share many common features, each platform also brings its own unique strengths. Here's a look at some of their standout capabilities:

  • Slack

    • Save for later
      Slack allows you to save any message to a dedicated “Later” section, making it easy to revisit important content. A simple but highly practical feature.
    • Timed reminders
      Slack lets you set timed reminders on messages, for example, “remind me in 1 hour”, to ensure nothing is missed.
    • Lists
      Introduced in June 2024, Slack Lists let you manage tasks and projects directly within Slack. It's a lightweight alternative to tools like Trello, ClickUp, or Monday — perfect for teams who prefer to stay within the same workspace.
    • Canvas
      Designed to centralize information, Canvas allows users to create and share rich documents inside Slack. It offers functionality similar to Notion, making it ideal for knowledge bases, onboarding guides, or meeting notes.
    • Bookmarks
      Just like browser bookmarks, but at the channel level. You can pin frequently used links for quick access, especially useful in project-specific or cross-functional channels.
    • Sections
      Slack supports "section" organization, making it easier to keep channels grouped by topic, project, or client.
    • Email to channel
      Despite Slack's aim to reduce email usage, it also supports routing emails into channels, useful for centralizing external communication or notifications directly into relevant workspaces.

  • Teams

    • Translations
      Teams supports real-time message translation, making global collaboration easier. It's especially helpful for multinational teams working across different languages.
    • Outlook sync
      With its deep integration with Microsoft Outlook, Teams allows seamless meeting scheduling, email syncing, and calendar management. The two apps work hand in hand to streamline communication and coordination.

🥇Winner: Slack clearly positions itself as more than just a messaging platform. With features like Lists, Canvas, and Folders, it's evolving into a true work operating system, a centralized hub where collaboration, content, and task management all come together to support the flow of work across the company.

Limits

Both platforms are somewhat discreet about this, but like most things, especially in software, there are limits. We've compiled some of them below, many of which you probably weren't aware of.

🥇Winner: Teams is globally more generous in most domains, probably due to their enterprise positioning.

That’s it for Round 1, ending in a tense 3–3 tie. Our two contenders will now take a short break before the final round begins. Soon, we'll find out who will earn the title of the next collaboration champion.

To come in round 2: ecosystem, pricing, AI, API, external discussions.
Stay tuned ⏳