Yammer vs Slack - Which One is Best for Team Messaging [2023 Update]

Better communication creates better solutions!

Enterprise collaboration platforms as a gateway to connect team members of the organization and to a wide number of users across the globe. A single platform mingles all in one place to build empowering solutions for the world!

Technology is primarily engaging people, a possible reason why we see an immense rise in chat collaboration applications these days. The ultimate use could be personal or workplace engagement- tools are available for every need at every place to stay always connected.

The results of poor communication across teams could prove expensive to the organization. To attend such situations, we have many enterprise-ready chat applications like Troop Messenger, Yammer, Flock, Slack, etc., to ensure the best business productivity.

People knew Yammer since 2008 when it has been launched at TechCrunch50 by one of its founders David Sacks. Later in the year, 2012 Yammer has been acquired by Microsoft for US$1.2 billion.

Slack has been launched in the year 2013 with more than 30% of paying customers. It is a cloud-based application that serves all team sizes founded by Steward Butterfield.

Though teams are segregated as per project, client, remote location, or based on geographical area, these collaboration tools keep them connected.

And in case, where if teams of the entire organization would want to communicate with each other; to ascertain this scenario, we have a private social networking team collaboration application like Yammer to fill this gap.

Slack has also been integrated into a myriad number of social media networks to stay upgraded.

Having said this, it is time to draw upon the differences between the two for facilitating informed decision-making. Take a look.

Yammer vs Slack: Product Tour 

Yammer-Product Tour  

Yammer is available across diverse platforms such as Windows, Mac, and Mobile phones. It is a part of your Office 365 suite and comes in variants of  Yammer users, Yammer groups, and Yammer networks. Yammer is exclusively built to have its presence in both internal organization’s users and external networks. The latest entrant in the block is its Windows desktop application, which enables the easiest way to join group conversations.

Yammer is a tough competitor when it comes to ranking the best social network for the workplace where it brings remote teams together. The sign-up process for Yammer is quite simple. Anyone can simply connect with this private social networking application with their work email. Yammer sends a verification mail to a new user to complete the sign-up process. Once you log in to the application, Yammer asks you to join the relevant groups to keep you updated.

With Yammer, you can

• Write your first post
• Follow your co-workers
• Start a Group
• Check your Inbox
• Check Private Messages
• Check Notifications
• Browse External Networks
• Create a new network and invite people.
• View recently accessed files.

Slack – Product Tour

“A single workspace for your small-to-medium size company or team”, is what Slack Says. Small organizations or teams can rely on Slack totally for an unlimited period of time. Based upon the pricing plans the users choose, they can create a wide number of workspaces and switch between them and also could share channels among diverse workspaces.

The hassle-free sign-up process allows a new user to join an existing workspace or a new workspace with any of the public domain mail ids. Slack facilitates an URL for each workspace, and now Slack users can log in to the application with these workspace URLs. With Slack, your teams are better connected with all the information being transferred just at their fingertips. The project name you give at the time of the Sign-up process can be seen as a channel within the application's interface.

With Slack, you can

• Add Public and Private Channels
• Invite people
• Talk with Slack bots
• Integrate a wide range of Apps
• Install Google Drive
• Check Analytics
• Customize Slack
• Sign into another workspace
• Access the application with feature-based keyboard shortcuts.

Our Verdict

Yammer allows the users to prioritize conversations and announcements through Inbox from the application itself, whereas we don’t see this provision for Slack.

Yammer vs Slack: Features Comparisons

Yammer

One of the primary functionalities of Yammer would be connecting and engaging people across organizations via private social networks. An exclusive social networking platform for businesses and companies to communicate on myriad topics of the world! The users can toggle between Discovery, All, and Following feeds to view the conversations.

Few Functional Features

• Secure and transparent communication across teams to organize projects.
• Simple to use UI and easy to understand UX.
• Offers two kinds of networks: internal and external.
• Each internal network is allotted one primary email domain.
• Integrates with other tools of Office365.
• Invite people to join networks.
• People Directory to send an invite
• Like or share conversations across groups.
• Poll and Post

Slack

Communication in Slack happens through channels and it supports a vast app directory to enhance team collaboration. It offers high-end data security like 2FA and SSO to protect all your organization’s information. Slack keeps a backup of your work for further retrieval through Archiving feature.

Few Functional Features

• Organized Conversations
• Private and Public channels
• Searchable message history
• Slack app directory with more than 1500 apps to integrate.
• Voice and Video calls.
• Screen Sharing
• Configure Slack to suit your business needs.
• High-level data encryption while in transit.
• Admin-level settings and permissions

Our Verdict

Though Yammer is simple to use, Slack’s feature stack is quite vast, powerful, and functional. For better team communication, we might need highly workable and convincing collaboration features like Troop Messenger.

Yammer vs Slack: Pricing Comparisons

Yammer

Yammer comes absolutely free with its basic version for an unlimited amount of time. Any user can log into Yammer with their work email id and add other co-workers to start conversations across the internal and external networks.

• A subscription to Office 365 is not required to start using Yammer.
• But, of course, to gain enterprise and administrative access, one needs to purchase an Office 365 suite license.

Slack

Slack as a freemium application has pricing plans to accommodate everyone’s needs. The Slack free plan offers a limited number of features for free for an unlimited amount of time, but to experience the full-level feature stack, one needs to opt for paid plans. Slack comes with three different pricing plans Standard, Plus, and Enterprise Grid with features segregated according to each.

• The free plan comes with a few basic features along with 5GB storage(total), 10k searchable messages, 10 app integrations, and two-factor authentication.
• The standard plan is at $6.67 per active user/per month
• Plus plan is at $12.50 per active user/per month
• The Enterprise Grid Plan offers 1TB of storage per member, along with features that suit enterprise-level companies.

Our Verdict 

Yammer is cheaper when compared to Slack!

Yammer vs Slack: Integration Comparisons

Yammer

Integrations help to get your work done easily and effortlessly! We know Yammer is a part of the Office 365 suite and it also supports a good number of integrations.

• Integration with Share point enhances the Yammer usage experience. Users can add their Yammer feeds to Share point pages.
• Yammer simply lets you integrate with other operations of Office 365 even while you are in conversation on Yammer. Users can open Outlook to set a meeting invite, can go with Skype video conferencing, work on an Excel sheet, upload files, and many more...
• One of the integrations includes a Yammer feed. It extends an embeddable JavaScript widget to display a snapshot of a specific feed to applications like Skype for Business, CRM, and CMS tools.
• You can integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Yammer to add a social network layer for enhanced communication across business owners.
• Yammer can be integrated with other applications such as Microsoft Flow, Yammer Connect, Salesforce, and Yammer APIs. Check out the app directory for all Yammer Apps.

Slack 

Slack says, “Add apps, get work done”. There is an endless number of apps that you can add to your workspace to pull reports, make calls, and store data in the cloud within Slack itself.

• Slack users can pick from a wide category of App integrations; such as apps for daily tools, Essential apps, New&Noteworthy apps, brilliant bots, app collections, and from many more...
• Slack helps to integrate Google Drive, Microsoft One-Drive, DropBox, and Box applications for file management.
• Other integrations like Jira-Integration+ for Productivity, Azure Pipelines for Developer tools, Kudoboard for HR and Team Culture, Zoom for communication, etc., can be bought to Slack.

Our Verdict

Comparatively, Slack supports a number of integrations to Yammer. The App Directory Slack is quite immense.

Yammer vs Slack: UI/UX Comparisons

Yammer

Yammer's user interface is quite simple to use and easy to understand. The user is allowed to create an internal or external group or even can post or send a private message from the functionalities derived in the left pane. An easy-to-navigate user interface helps Yammers to get into the use of the application faster.

Slack

Slack’s interface is promisingly impressive with colorful background hues. The user can invite people, create a channel or search for a group of channels from the left user pane. Slack bots welcome first-timers to facilitate the necessary support services, and they also help the user to check the Slack help center page from the UI itself only.

Our Verdict

Slack’s interface appears more appealing than Yammer's.

Yammer vs Slack: Security Comparisons 

Yammer

Yammer from Office365 comes with enterprise-level security, and compliance to provide secure online space for business enterprises, whereas the basic version doesn’t extend any admin security controls.

All conversations and feeds in transit and at rest are encrypted with AES-256-bit key encryption. Yammer data is totally secured under strict guidelines at Microsoft’s global network of data centers with round-the-clock video surveillance, biometric and pin-based locks, strict personal access controls, and detailed visitor entry logs.

Slack 

All workspace data is super-secured at Slack. It does provide safety to data through security bots. Slack is a certified ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27017, ISO/IEC 27018, and HIPAA-accredited team collaboration business chat application. Slacks' GDPR policy is made available for the users on their website.

The other security features include; SAML-based SSO, SCIM provisioning, Granular app management, Custom Message Retention, Slack Enterprise Key Management (Slack EKM), and Support for Data Loss Prevention(DLP).

Our Verdict

Yammer and Slack are both up to the standards in providing data security and data prevention and loss.

Yammer vs Slack: Support Comparisons

Yammer 

Yammer users need to describe their issue by navigating to the Contact Office Support page of Microsoft. Its help center educates Yammers with in-detailed Feature-training material like attaching a file to a message, Enabling or Disabling email and Phone notifications, Keyboard shortcuts, and more to go on...

Slack

Slacks help center leverages extensive help support for its users. Slack users can post their queries to Slack bots within the application itself. On the Slack help-center page, users can find the Slack education column from which they can get to know about Slack Demo, Slack Foundry, and Slack Tips.

Our Verdict

An interesting point to be noted here would be; Slack’s help-center support is quite extensive and advanced when compared with Yammer.

Yammer vs Slack: Analytic Report Comparisons

Yammer 

We know that many users of the world use Office 365 for their daily office work procedures. According to recent analytics, it is observed that Fortune 500 companies across the globe collaborate via Yammer.

Slack 

Slack is one of those trusted business chat application brands across the world used by diverse sizes of organizations. Slack’s analytic reports say that there is an immense change in the work culture after adopting Slack. At around 80.4% of respondents convey, “The use of Slack has increased transparency in work collaborations which finally has yielded productive results”.

Our Verdict

Yammer is a social networking people collaboration application, there are chances that it might dominate Slack in this arena.

Yammer vs Slack: Search Comparisons

Yammer

The search functionality of Yammer seems to be simple and limited. Yammer users can enable search options on internal and external network groups and start conversations as per the choice they make.

Slack 

Slack’s search functionality provides a search on channels, messages, and files to simply select. Simplify your file search from the search facility of your files and all files.

Our Verdict

Yammer and Slack both make good search result to a certain extent. When it comes to the case of Search comparisons, Troop Messenger has the most advanced search options to filter images, videos, contacts, locations, text, files, and URLs.

Wrapping it up

Yammer and Slack both are good for team communication. Each has got its own set of pros and cons. If we take Yammer, which is popular across the world for its private social networking among internal teams and external networks. Slack has also gained its global share consistently. The latest entrant in the block, The Troop Messenger is no less competitor to any other business chat application. Give a sure shot for it to attain reliable, secure, and seamless team communication!

To sum it up, it is up to the reader’s discretion to choose the best-suited collaboration tool as per their team's needs.

Disclaimer

The aim of the article is to be informative. We intend for users to take an informed decision for an effective and productive experience. The comparison shown between Yammer vs Slack in the blog is only towards that end and has no intention of pitting one against the other team collaboration app brands. The images, logos, any concepts, etc., used in this blog, purely belong to their respective companies or applications (Yammer and Slack).

Readers are advised to consult and confirm with the respective service providers regarding details of features, the latest updates, prices, and policies before utilizing any of their services. This further informs the reader that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog solely belong to the author’s perception, and not necessarily to the author’s employer, organization, committee, or other group or individual.