Until 2020 I didn’t have a smartphone. I didn’t need it. (I was happy.)
But when I opened my business it became a necessity.
I needed an easy way to communicate with my overseas clients. Which meant I needed WhatsApp. And I really do enjoy the app.
It’s responsive.
It’s easy to use.
It gets the job done.
I’ve even had audio and video calls on it with great quality.
I didn’t see a need to search for any other solution for my client communications.
As my business grew, I was exposed to more apps and different workflows.
I was introduced to Slack.
At first, I didn’t get why anyone would need any tool other than WhatsApp for communication.
I mean it had everything. And it kept improving.
But honestly - I found Slack so much better.
Notifications, channels, private messages, privacy - Slack won on all fronts.
The larger the group involved, the more complex the workflow - the more I wanted to use Slack. WhatsApp became cumbersome and hard to navigate through all the messages.
My main communication with my clients is still WhatsApp, mainly because it’s what they’re used to using and where they’re located. But my heart is in Slack.
Let’s compare the different features in order to understand why.
Pricing
Both Slack and WhatsApp have a free plan. Their paid options are structured very differently and therefore comparison is a bit more difficult.
Slack charges by the user. Depending on the plan, as of this writing (July 2024) prices can vary from $8.75/user/month to $15+/user/month.
Their enterprise package even has HIPAA compliance - which is HUGE and super important for the healthcare industry in the US.
WhatsApp is completely free (even WhatsApp Business is free), unless you want WhatsApp business API. The APi is priced based on conversations. A conversation is a 24-hour thread with a customer/contact.
You pay per conversation and the business path you choose (Marketing, Utility, Authentication, Service). The first 1,000 conversations each month are free.
After that, you are charged depending on the country of the user’s phone number. The price is calculated based on rate cards and is usually a few cents per conversation.
This may seem cheap but it’s only part of the picture.
Meta (Facebook) delivers the WhatsApp Business API only through its messaging partners, so you’ll need to pay them hosting fees. These fees typically start from $50/month.
In addition, you’ll have to pay solution provider fees, as you need to integrate WhatsApp Business API into your third-party solution. You need to make sure that your chosen provider has a contract with Meta, to protect your data.
Which brings us to the next point - setup and ease of use.
Setup and ease of use
By this point, you already see the problem - WhatsApp Business API is not plug and play. It’s not an out of the box, easy to set up, no code solution.
And for me, this is the biggest downside of this solution.
You know I love tech and have no issues with coding or APIs, but this is not the case for the average user.
In order to really leverage WhatsApp Business, you need the API option. And this means hiring someone to set it up and integrate it for you.
If you use this channel for marketing and user interactions for ECommerce, I get why this would be a worthwhile investment.
But for most service providers, this just doesn’t make sense. Unless it’s where your clientele lives - in which case, go for it.
Once you’ve set up the account, it’s easy to use. The user interface is clean and they’re constantly making improvements. You can automate responses, and you can now edit messages (which surprisingly didn’t exist until mid 2023). You have the options for groups but this is also relatively new and isn’t as intuitive as it could be.
The basis for WhatsApp was 1:1 conversations. Adding a 1-to-many option opened up opportunities, but I think we’re still far from seeing this fully developed as of yet.
Communities have groups in them. You can have a group for different topics, similar to channels in Slack.
Slack, on the other hand, is as simple to use as any cloud based app, and it has mobile and desktop solutions as well.
It was built as a solution for 1-to-many, but also has direct messaging options. You create public or private channels and can easily organize conversation topics. You also have the 1:1 option of direct messaging plus messages from any integrated apps (more on that later).
One of the features I love most about Slack is the conversation threads.
While both of these tools have channel/group options, only Slack really gives me the option of a conversation thread within the channel. This is great because conversations often tend to go on tangents and then we have multiple threads going on at once. I want the ability to be able to read an entire thread from start to finish without having to jump around and find what someone said by scrolling up and up and up…..
And to be honest, the channel structure in Slack is just so much more useful and user friendly. I can define which channels I want to join and which I simply don’t care about.
I can also have private channels for certain people in the group/company. This enables private conversations without leaving the workspace.
In WhatsApp, I can create a group conversation but it’s out of the main community and I’d need to save the number for each member of the group directly to my phone.
Overall, the user experience with Slack is just so much smoother as the group grows larger.
Notifications
I use WhatsApp for business only. Mainly for client communications. I never joined any family groups and it took time to find the right business groups that were worth joining.
When I did finally join, my notification bell was going off like crazy.
It took less than 10 minutes of being in a group to understand that I had to silence all notifications - forever.
This forced me to go into the group every so often and skim the messages to see if there was anything of interest in there for me.
Needless to say, I missed a few really good conversations, and by the time I got to them, chiming in was useless. I also missed notifications about events I would have liked to join.
Slack was no different in terms of having the bell go off every second. But this time I could define hours when I wanted the notifications on or off. I could also define key words for my notifications.
So I never missed a thread about courses, process, conferences, or software again.
What makes Slack even more powerful, is that if I don’t go into a workspace for a while, instead of being bombarded with hundreds of messages all at once, the app highlights channels where there are conversations with my keywords. So I know where to look first.
WhatsApp just doesn’t have this capability. Every time I go into a group chat, I just get overwhelmed by all the messages I have to scroll through.
Sure, I can search for keywords, but it’s just not the same.
Integrations
As a process and workflow specialist, I love when my tools speak with each other. I need them to speak with each other. It just makes the process flow smoother. It enables automations. And it helps ensure I see the messages I need to see.
Slack is perfect for this. It has multiple integrations and you can even have built-in workflows. For those that live in Slack most of the day, it is possible to enhance the app so much so that they’ll practically never have to leave.
WhatsApp just doesn’t have this. It is hard to integrate with anything - unless you speak API. And as I mentioned above, most businesses will need to hire out for this.
The truth is Meta doesn’t make it easy to integrate messaging and for advanced workflows I think it’s a must.
One of my favorite tools at the moment is Fathom. This tool transcribes, records and summarizes meetings. It has built in Slack integration that enables sending part of the call in real time as video messages to Slack groups. Imagine how this could help with customer support!
Another use case, which I actually set up for a client, is to have dedicated channels for customers. When you’re done with a call, you can have the action items from that call automatically sent to your Slack channel. Now everyone’s on the same page.
WhatsApp just doesn’t have this capability at the moment.
Overall, it is just so much simpler to integrate apps with Slack. The tool becomes an integral part of your workflow.
For course and community management this is even stronger. Integrate successes, group coaching calls and messages to members based on completion, schedules, and so much more.
More reasons Slack is better
There are more aspects to compare like support, file sharing, search, privacy and security.
Let’s review the main points of difference quickly.
Support
A quick look at the website for each of these apps will reveal what anyone who has used them already knows: it’s like night and day.
While both apps have online knowledge bases. Only Slack has a dedicated support team that really wants to see you win.
If you’re using WhatsApp API, your support team is external to the app. This is because by design, WhatsApp doesn’t have a customer support team.
Once again, Slack shows that it knows where the true value lies - in its customer base.
File sharing
Slack supports all kinds of files, from PDF documents to video and audio files.
Since the app has so many integration options, the files can be uploaded from your device or via file-sharing apps, such as Dropbox or Google Drive.
Your file storage capabilities depend on the plan you choose. The higher the plan, the more storage space you’ll get. The free plan gives you 5GB which is actually quite nice.
When it comes to storage, WhatsApp is not a storage medium — it uses up the space on your phone and cloud.
And while you can share images, videos, audio files, locations, contacts and documents, there is a limit of 100 MB per file on Android and 128 MB on iOS.
Oh, and as an added bonus, I would mention that Slack automatically transcribes audio files. WhatsApp doesn’t have this option and some people pay loads of money for these transcriptions using other tools.
Search
Slack has advanced search options including messages, files, people, and channels.
You can even pick a certain period or exclude some channels from your search, as well as search within documents (which is HUGE).
WhatsApp search is way more limited and is much harder to actually pinpoint what you’re looking for (even though they can find key words).
Privacy and security
The security level for both apps is pretty similar. There are pros and cons for each. Considering Slack has a HIPAA compliance options, I’m assuming that level of security is much higher than what we’ll see on WhatsApp, but it’s only for the Enterprise level.
Another thing to consider, is that Meta may share some of the WhatsApp data with their parent company.
Summary
I think it’s pretty clear why Slack beats WhatsApp hands down.
And so while I’m happy to have a personal WhatsApp account for sharing a shopping list with my husband or exchanging banter with my bestie, when it comes to work, Slack is the way to go - hands down.
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