VIPole vs Slack: choosing the collaboration service for your team
A messenger is a matter of taste. The debate about the best messenger for teams seems everlasting and resumes with every new feature any of the apps on the market acquires. Creating a universal best messenger to fit anyone’s needs is a mission impossible, as the same feature may seem useful for one person and annoying for another. Slack is among the first in the row when we speak about team collaboration services. As our customers often ask, in what way VIPole secure messenger is different from Slack, today we will examine the specifics of the two services, including the features, reliability and pricing.
Slack looks cute and entertaining and it has mastered the art of discussions in numerous project-oriented chats. VIPole is the enterprise collaboration software with efficient and professional interface for all the ways to connect users, including chats, voice and video calls and conferencing. Both services help teams achieve more through well-organized communication, so let’s see who does it better.
What we do and why we are appreciated
To choose the most efficient service for your needs, you must first clearly define your wishes and goals. Both Slack and VIPole have tools for boosting productivity and make intercorporate discussions fast and handy. However, to meet all the business requirements Slack needs integrations with services for file sharing and calls, while VIPole allows to collaborate in the secure environment without switching between multiple apps.
Slack is great for chatting, but it becomes a full-featured business service only when complemented with integrations. When being a Slack user, you need simply to make a call, you have to entrust your data to a third-party service, and it’s hardly possible to control and safeguard all the nodes where your data travels. The more integrations — the higher is the risk of breaches and leaks. In VIPole, contrariwise, your personal data and the information about your connections always stays safe. VIPole is a universal tool by design, where all the features put together create a secure communication and collaboration ecosystem.
In VIPole, you not just discuss work, you organize it. VIPole calendar and the task manager help to make assignments, monitor the progress in real time, and share feedback. All content, including messages, files, passwords and notes is easily searchable. The file manager and the password manager on top of other features make VIPole a full-fledged virtual office where you easily switch between projects. Session and renewable VIPole voice and video conferences allow holding urgent and regular meetings with up to 256 participants. When a group discussion in a chat is followed by a conference call with file sharing, it’s easy to get things done. In Slack, voice calls and conferences are in beta-testing, and the video feature is planned for the future, therefore Slack fans can’t do without additional communication tools, e.g. Skype.
Another specific list of features that distinguishes VIPole from Slack and makes it especially useful for big teams is contact list management that allows to control connections centrally and on the individual level. Users can edit the profile pages of their contacts for handier interaction, e.g. assign images and names. (In Slack, the names of users are created once and forever). Chats in VIPole can be renamed if the mission of the team changes, and you can create issue-related lists of one-to-one and group chats. In addition, VIPole offers tools to protect your privacy, including blacklists and hidden contacts.
Businesses today, regardless of their size and field, need be mobile not to let the future leave them behind. This is why both Slack and VIPole make asynchronous communication on desktops and smartphones with different operation systems seamless. VIPole runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS. Slack does not include Linux in the list of compatible operating systems, but it works with all others.
Security by design and control within the team
Enterprises need to stay secure while maintaining efficiency and productivity. Both Slack and VIPole make teams connected and discussions well-structured. However, the approach to security and control differs, so let’s compare the reliability of the two communication services.
How safe is Slack really? A quick glance at the headlines reveals that unfortunate cases are not exceptional when it comes to privacy in Slack.
Entrusting sensitive data to Slack seems to be a risky business:
In October 2014, data leaks during the sign-in process in Slack were uncovered.
In March 2015, 500,000 email addresses and other personal account data (phone number, Skype ID, etc.) stored on Slack servers were compromised.
In April 2016, Slack bot token leak exposed business critical information.
In May 2016, 18F’s Slack account may have accidentally exposed a bunch of government information to outsiders. (18F is a digital services agency within the US federal government).
A recent scandal — Rhode Island teachers were fired after leaked Slack messages showed them making fun of students.
VIPole was designed in a way to make such leaks impossible. The data is stored encrypted on user devices and on the server, and all user messages, files, voice and video are transmitted encrypted. The only way to get access to data requires knowing the encryption keys that only users themselves own. Brute force attacks are infeasible against AES-256 encryption that is applied in VIPole. VIPole business solutions allow the admin either to centrally manage the passwords and the encryption keys of the team or to grant the users the full control over their data.
The bigger is the company, especially with distributed offices, the more difficult it is to protect and control corporate communications. Slack is a convenient chat platform, but the administrator options there are mostly limited to adding and removing users and to moderating conversations. In VIPole, the system owner has much more powers, as there is a separate admin panel for complete control of user activity and connections, their security settings, access to documents and for history management. You control how, when and with whom your employees communicate and collaborate in VIPole.
Admin powers
Slack is a service uniting independent users that are masters of their settings and contact lists. When they get together in a chat, the admin can regulate their activity only within the chat, not beyond it. In VIPole, the admin is the master of all team members, their settings and history. As a business-oriented system, VIPole provides the dashboard for adding and removing users, managing their contact lists, monitoring active sessions and instantly deleting the full chat history for certain or for all users. While in Slack the chat owner can only exclude a user from the chat, in VIPole the admin has the power to assign passwords to team members, disable access to their own accounts for users and delete user accounts permanently if necessary. VIPole on premise and cloud solutions for enterprises allow to configure unified and individual security settings that meet the security policy of the company.
Pricing
Both VIPole and Slack offer business solutions and the opportunity to use the service for free. One of the core differences is that any VIPole for business package offers the full-featured version of the messenger, while Slack provides the full-featured version only in the Plus package, which costs 12,5 USD per user per month. VIPole cloud-based solution costs 9 USD per user per month, and VIPole server costs 5.5 USD in the standalone edition. While Slack provides only chats and file sharing for this price, VIPole has much more features for uniting teams, including voice and video calls and conferences.
It is important to note, that Slack has only the cloud solution, while VIPole can be easily deployed both in cloud and on-premise.
Get more than just chats
Slack is often used for interactions within teams because of it’s attractive user friendly interface that makes everyday working conversations more entertaining. With channels, bots and hashtags Slack is a nice solution for asynchronous group communication. However, as a business tool it works properly only when integrated with Skype, Dropbox and Jira, for example.
VIPole is multitask, bringing group chats, calls, conferencing, project management, password management and file management together. Here are the reasons why VIPole is so much better for teams of any size:
1. Scalable cloud and on premise solutions. With VIPole server, you strictly control your data flows, and service providers have no access to them.
2. A single cross platform app accumulating many features. Saves you from switching between apps and folders.
3. Not just chats and the task manager, but also voice and video conferences unite teams in VIPole.
4. The comprehensive admin dashboard. With unified security settings for all team members, you protect your company data from the possible unconscious actions of the employees.
5. Moderated chats and conferences. Projects are discussed in goal-oriented threads, it’s easy to control the progress.
6. Fully controlled contact lists of team members. The admin can assign fixed contact lists to users and disable changing it independently — if necessary.
7. Limited access to file downloading and file deleting from remote devices. Whether your employees are in the office, at home or on a business trip, you always can monitor their logs and control their activity.
8. Organized documents in the file manager, structured by chats and date. Employees need to reach files quickly and securely, from any device, anywhere. VIPole unites them in a secure space and they are stored encrypted and synced across all user devices.
Full feature comparison
VIPole offers end-to-end encrypted messaging and collaboration solutions for teams and enterprises dealing with commercially or personally sensitive information, and individuals wishing to protect themselves from hackers, identity thieves and malware. More at www.vipole.com
