WordPress meta contributors have just logged an important milestone in their efforts to explore replacing Slack communication with Matrix, an open source federated chat system. The team hosted a meeting on the Meta Slack channel and the corresponding #meta:community.wordpress.org Matrix room simultaneously, enabled by the project’s new Slack/Matrix bridge.
The bridge allows users to follow the chat and participate from either Matrix or Slack, with messages showing up in real-time. It’s a tool that will make the transition easier as the WordPress project moves towards replacing Slack. The team is still in the process of importing the history for channels but the bridges are already in place for all public Slack channels/Matrix rooms.
DM’s do not work over the bridge, although they work between Matrix users. The bridge doesn’t have access to anything that is private, and the historic data import into Matrix will only apply to public Slack channels. DMs and private channel history will not be ported over.
Meta contributor meeting inside Chatrix instance with room switcher disabled
The Matrix team has created a Gutenberg block that embeds a Matrix client called Chatrix, which can be added to any WordPress page/post or P2 blog, as shown in the screenshot above. This example can be accessed at https://make.wordpress.org/meta/chat/. WordPress.org users can sign in with SSO inside the block and authorize their accounts to connect:
Now that the Matrix server is live at community.wordpress.org, WordPress users who want to attend team meetings or join rooms via Matrix can now do so using their choice of Matrix clients that support SSO. Logging in uses the same credentials as the WordPress.org account.
“Compared to Slack this means a vastly simplified onboarding process,” Automattic-sponsored contributor Alex Kirk said. “Instead of waiting for an e-mail arriving at a special e-mail address, you set the server in your Matrix client to community.wordpress.org and click ‘Login with WordPress.org’ (the name of that button might vary by client).”
As the channels’ history gets migrated over, Kirk said WordPress users will be automatically invited to rooms on Matrix that they have already joined from the Slack side. The team is planning to make more wide-scale public announcements after the Slack/Matrix bridge has demonstrated that it is running stable.
WordPress and Matrix contributors are proposing a new Meta team subproject that would explore replacing Slack communication with Matrix, an open source federated chat system. Matrix already powers a variety of communication tools, including Element, the most mature Matrix client – a universal chat app that is often described as “a Slack alternative.â€
In 2020, Automattic invested $4.6M in New Vector, creators of the Matrix open standard for decentralized communication. At that time, Mullenweg indicated his intention for Automattic to adopt Matrix-based tools and build bridges to WordPress.
The contributors proposing this new exploration outlined a few of the major benefits of Matrix over Slack for the WordPress community’s official real-time communication tool. They contend that the Slack onboarding experience is difficult because it requires an invitation email to a WordPress-hosted email address and users have to identify the correct Slack workspace to join.
The Slack client is also not the best communication tool for some local communities where users are more active on their mobile devices than desktops.
“One of the benefits of Matrix is it supports free choice of clients, one of them being a client that is very similar to Telegram, called FluffyChat,” Automattic-sponsored contributor Alex Kirk said. “There are also particularly lightweight clients (called Hydrogen), a full featured client called Element (previously known as Riot), a client that is more like Discord called Cinny, CLI clients, and many more.”
Kirk’s team has also made it possible to embed a Matrix chat into a Gutenberg block, powered by a plugin called Chatrix. It adds a Matrix client to WordPress pages through the Block Editor or as a popup.
“This could even be set to a particular room, so that users can be asked to join a specific room or Make team by giving them a link to a particular WordPress(.org) page.,” Kirk said. “This could make taking part in Make WordPress teams much easier and possibly encourage more contributions.”Â
Should an open source project use an open source chat system if problems like onboarding can be fixed? Is Matrix a good fit for the WordPress project? Will it be able to provide the same or better reliability as Slack with third-party integrations that speed up contributors’ communication workflows? Are there other benefits like cost savings or features that Slack cannot accommodate? Can all the previous Slack content be migrated? These are important questions the newly formed meta sub-team aims to discuss by beginning bi-weekly meetings. Kirk is encouraging anyone who wants to take part in the meetings to comment on the Make.WordPress.org/Meta post.
“In particular, we’d like to contribute our projects Chatrix and OpenID Connect Server to the WordPress project,” Kirk said. “Additionally, work with people of the community interested in Matrix to see which Slack integrations would need to be ported and how that could be done, as well as understand through testing with other WordPress teams how good or bad the experience is, either on its own, or comparing it to Slack.”
Are you looking for the best team communication tools for your small business?
As businesses move to remote work, they need tools to communicate with team members. Choosing the right tools can boost productivity, enhance morale, build community, and enhance efficiency among your team.
In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best team communication tools for small businesses.
These tools are based on our hands-on experience because we have been a remote company since we started in 2009, and now we have over 200+ team members across 45 different countries. As a remote company, our teams use several of these tools to collaborate.
How to Choose The Best Team Communication Tool for Your Business?
There is a growing need for better team communication tools as more and more businesses adapt remote and hybrid work culture.
For a small business website, these tools improve employee communication and enable them to work more efficiently.
However, there are just so many different communication tools available that it becomes hard to decide which one to choose without spending too much money.
First, you need to decide what kind of tools your team needs to work better.
For instance, if your sales team needs to make calls and follow up on leads, then you need a virtual business phone system like Nextiva and RingCentral.
Similarly, if you need to make sure that teams can collaborate on different projects, track progress, and get work done, then Slack + Asana may be the right tools for your business
You can save money by not opting for separate tools for the same tasks.
For instance, if you are using Google Workspace, then Google Meet is the perfect alternative to Zoom. Similarly, Office 365 with Microsoft Teams will save money on Slack + Zoom.
Nextiva is the best omnichannel communication toolkit for businesses. It combines phone, chat, audio/video meetings, contact management, and more in one communication suite.
Employees can collaborate via chat, SMS, and video calls. Their business phone service offers toll-free numbers and teams can share the same phone numbers to easily manage contacts and leads.
Nextiva offers easy-to-use automated reminders for teams and customers around forgotten tasks, follow-ups, or check-ins to increase workplace productivity.
Plus, it integrates with popular calendars, email, Google Workspace, Microsoft teams, and many more.
We use Nextiva in our own business because it helps us get a virtual business phone number that can be shared across our team members, so we can help our customers. The auto-attendant feature helps guide the call to the right person.
Slack is the most popular small business team communication tool on the market right now.
It is used by many Fortune 500 companies like IBM, T-Mobile, NASA, Target, and more.
Slack offers a digital HQ for businesses and teams. You can organize your virtual workspace in channels. These are chatrooms where your teams can collaborate and post updates. Team members can also do 1:1 chats.
Slack also comes with audio calls, video updates, and integration with almost all top productivity tools, CRM software, virtual phone services, and more.
We use Slack in our management company, Awesome Motive, because it allows for asynchronous communication across teams. Slack has notification features that respect timezones considering we have team members in 45 different countries.
Pricing: Paid plans start from $7.25 per user per month.
Google Workspace is Google’s business productivity suite of applications. It includes Google Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Google Meet, Chat, Forms, Sites, and more.
You can use your own domain name for your Google Workspace account and create a professional business email address for yourself, your teams, and your employees.
Your team space will be hosted on Google’s cloud infrastructure which makes it very fast, reliable, and an extremely secure internal communication tool.
We have been using Google Workspace for over a decade for our business email address. It gives you the familiar Gmail and Google calendar interface which your team will love. We use the Shared Drive feature for cloud storage which is really good for access control on documents & files.
This year the quality of Google Meet calls have improved drastically, so we have cancelled our Zoom subscription and are using Google Meet for our group meetings.
HubSpot is a business communication suite that offers a Sales platform, marketing tools, CRM software, and more.
It allows your teams to easily manage leads and customers using a robust dashboard. Improving communications between team members and customers to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.
Unlike other communication tools on the list, HubSpot doesn’t offer team chat, audio, or video calls. However, as sales software it allows sales and marketing teams to communicate and work together more efficiently.
We use HubSpot to organize our partnership contacts, and it acts as a single source for our various teams.
Pricing: Limited free account, paid plans for marketing, sales, and customer services software with different pricing for each.
Asana is the best project management software for remote teams on the market.
For remote teams, keeping up with their projects and goals is where most communication takes place. Asana makes it super easy for teams of all shapes, sizes, and industries to collaborate and communicate.
Asana doesn’t have chat, SMS, or video conferencing features. All team communication takes place in comments, tasks, projects, and forms. Each task can have its own thread and nothing slips through the cracks.
You can organize work among teams and projects, set long-term goals, add tasks, and then view them in lists, timeline, or card views.
It comes with brilliant tools like templates, rules, forms, and approvals to automate the workflow.
Plus, it integrates beautifully with other popular productivity tools your organization may already be using.
In our business, Asana is an absolute must have. We have tried many other project management solutions like Basecamp, Trello, etc and nothing comes close to Asana. It has provided us with a great way to streamline our internal workflows while giving greater visibility on the progress of each project.
Pricing: Free and paid plans start at $10.99 per user per month.
Microsoft Teams is the Slack alternative created by Microsoft. It supportss multiple teams, channels, one on one chats, private channels, audio/video calls, and video conferencing features.
It works well with Office 365 and you can get it with Office 365 subscription as well. Team members can open, edit, and view files within teams and projects.
Microsoft Teams have superior video conferencing features baked in. Each team member can view that a video conference is happening with an icon on the top and can join in if they are invited.
Teams also have shift management feature which allows managers to create shift, manage time-offs, assign members to shifts, and more.
Pricing: Free and paid plans start $4 per user per month or $6 per user per month with Office 365.
Zoom is one of the most popular video conferencing software on the market. It allows you to run video meetings with chat feature.
It is widely used in business, education, government, and finance sector. Zoom also offers business phone services, mail, and calendar to connect your teams under one platform.
We were big users of Zoom, but as the quality of Google Meet has improved, we have switched away from Zoom to reduce costs in our business.
The cost of Zoom really adds up once you go above 10 users in your organization, and then again when your organization grows to 100+ users.
What Zoom is really good for is large 100+ people meeting especially if you want to do random breakout rooms. It’s also really good for customer webinars because Zoom calls are very reliable and quality is top-notch.
Pricing: Limited Free plan, paid plans start at $149 per user per year but the per user pricing increases after 10 users.
Ryver is another business communication platform that combines various functionalities into one app.
It comes with messaging, task management, and audio/video calls under one roof. It comes with SSO Single Sign-on which allows team members to sign in with the single account used by your organization.
Integrations are also available for many popular productivity and CRM software.
Pricing: Starting at $69 per month for up to 12 users.
Zoho Cliq is the Slack interactive created by the folks behind Zoho software suite. The company offers Zoho CRM, Notes, Calendar, Email, and several other tools for businesses.
Zoho Cliq offers team chat for real-time collaboration. It includes chats, group chats, project management, video conferencing, voice calls, and more.
It integrates well with other Zoho applications as well as many other third-party software.
Pricing: Limited free plan, paid plans start from $2.7 per user per month.
Dialpad offers a collaboration platform for teams and customer support. It includes VoIP service for calls, messaging, group chat, and video conferencing.
It offers omni-channel customer engagement platform as well. Which comes in handy for sales teams to follow up with leads.
It supports Google Workspace and Office 365 integrations. If you operate in multiple countries then Dialpad offerss local number for upto 70 countries.
GoTo Meeting is a popular webinar software and video conferencing platform. It makes it super easy to conduct video meetings with teams, clients, and customers.
Their GoTo Connect suite provides phone, text, and meetings. It allows teams to follow up with leads, offer customer support, and stay in touch with chat and text.
The company offers several addon solutions for businesses particularly those providing remote IT support to customers.
Pricing: Free trial for some products, for paid plans you’ll have to contact sales.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Unlike most other businesses in the world, we have been remote since we started in 2009. This means we have 13+ years of experience running a distributed team and managing team communication. Over this period, we have helped thousands of users choose the best team communication tools.
Below are the answer to some of the most frequently asked questions.
What communication tools are most effective in working closely with the team?
Whether you’re working closely with a remote-team or an in-house team, here are the best team communication tools.
Google Workspace – Email is essential for working closely with a team. Google gives you gmail, calendar, and Google Drive for file sharing.
What is the most effective communication method for remote teams?
For remote teams, the most effective communication method is a combination of written communication along with verbal face-to-face communication over video calls.
For remote team check-ins, the most effective method is virtual check-in software like Standuply that integrates seamlessly with Slack, and it’s completely asynchronous.
What is the best team communication tool for online collaboration?
For online collaboration, the best team communication tools are Google Workspace and Zoom. With Google Suite, you get Google Doc, Spreadsheet, and Slides all of which allow for collaborative work, and their built-in comment feature is really good.
You can also use Zoom whiteboard which is an excellent virtual communication tool for collaboration.
What is the best team communication tool for asynchronous communication?
The best asynchronous communication tool are:
Slack – great for instant messages and group messages. It gives users full control over their time zones and notification preferences. You can also schedule messages to send at certain time in different team member’s timezone.
Email – great for asynchronous communication.
Loom – allows you to easily record videos and screencasts that can be watched by your team members.
Droplr – allows you to create screenshots or quick screen recording to communicate with team members.
Which is the best team communication tool for small business?
In our opinion, the best team communication tool for small business are Nextiva, Google Workspace, Asana, and Slack.
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