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I've been trying to figure out if Discord is actually a competitor to Slack as I've never seen anyone use discord for anything but gaming. That said, the exper

I've been trying to figure out if Discord is actually a competitor to Slack as I've never seen anyone use discord for anything but gaming. That said, the experience is pretty fantastic for what I've needed it for. Slack is fantastic as well, especially the paid version. If Discord can pivot into the "professional" space, I would certainly try it out. The problem I have is that all of my work situations are tied to MS Teams and that's likely to never change within the ORG I'm contracting for. Teams is absolute trash compared to Slack. Between downtime, the way channels are organized, the way files are organized, the way discussions are organized, the way notifications are presented, I just can't get any comfort level with it. No one at my company even uses Teams for voice/video conferencing because it's so poorly performing (I've not experienced this tho), we all have to use Zoom. I never thought Discord was going to do more than what something like Teamspeak did, but they have really done an incredible job. They have pretty much single handedly made native game voice chat irrelevant.

rcurry 6y ago
I can’t comment on Teams vs Slack, or on its other productivity features but I’ve been using Teams on a daily basis for some fairly large meetings and it’s never faltered - way more reliable than Skype was at least.
- bstar77 6y ago
  My issue is more with how information is presented and data is stored. I think Teams just has too many ways to do things and obfuscates too much at times... finding old docs or old conversations can be tedious and sending messages to wrong "teams" mistakingly is an easy thing to do.
  - hnick 6y ago
    I can't even go fullscreen in a Teams meeting anymore after a "recent" (read: months and months ago) update. My small laptop has 1/4 of the screen taken by UI and taskbar, even in "focus" mode.
cyrialize 6y ago
I use Discord for mostly non-gaming interests. I'm part of a bunch of music specific discords for example. Lots of specific genre subreddits (/r/rnbheads, /r/popheads, /r/hiphopheads, etc) use Discord.
dylz 6y ago
As-is I don't consider Discord a competitor to Slack without massive fundamental changes. Chat and content is heavily censored, you risk permanent bans, incredibly privacy invading, unencrypted, all that. It is pretty much fluff chat en masse the way it is now without huge contractual and infrastructure modifications.
impendia 6y ago
I'm an academic mathematician who has used Discord professionally, in at least two contexts: 1. Once the pandemic set in, some Discord groups popped up, associated to branches of math. For example I'm a member of "The Algebraic Geometry Syndicate" and "Modern Number Theory and Algebraic Geometry". The activity includes: technical math chat; people giving each other advice (e.g. on the job market or online teaching); advertisements of online conferences; some other stuff. 2. I've also been on Discord forums attached to weekend online conferences. These were sort of similar, but short-lived -- and we also encouraged everyone to introduce themselves. We had a "math memes contest" and organized a board games night for all who were interested. Basically, it was an attempt to replicate some of the social aspects of conferences. It seems like Slack is designed for groups of people who all work at the same company. Discord worked well for us -- where participants work/study all over, and where it's super easy to join.
ufmace 6y ago
I don't play video games at all, and I'm on a dozen or so Discord servers for various open-source projects, meetup groups, private projects, Reddit subs, groups of friends, etc.
keithnz 6y ago
we swapped from slack to discord at work. It's been good. It pretty much is the same as slack, the UI, if you compare side by side is very similar ( but look different ). Discords easy voice channels was a deciding factor. The downsides, without paying, is screen sharing is 720p, which Slack doesn't have, and file uploads are small ish, where in slack you can upload relatively big files
Xavdidtheshadow 6y ago
Anecdata, but I find Discord great if you're dealing with a big group of people that need to be moderated; it's got great tooling for that. There's multiple access levels, permissions, etc. exactly geared for that. When you're dealing with a trusted, invite-only group, you don't need many (if any) moderation features. Then, Slack shines for its ability to have organized, opt-in discussion. I really hate that you can't leave text channels on Discord. I've been trying to move friend groups more towards Slack and it's been a huge improvement over group texts / Facebook chat / etc. (of course, for our gaming group, discord voice chat is still superb. But, we only use it once a week and all the rest of our chatter/discussion happens in our new Slack team)
foobarian 6y ago
My main nit with Discord over Slack is lack of threading. After that, the voice/video did not feel suitable for a business setting - the PTT format works for coop play but it's annoying to have it on constantly at work. I prefer explicitly scheduled video calls there. Beyond that, there is a somewhat long tail of little features like integrations, LDAP, etc.
- smileybarry 6y ago
  > the PTT format works for coop play but it's annoying to have it on constantly at work You can switch to "open mic" with a mic threshold (with an "auto" option), which would probably work well in a meeting situation where keyboard noise isn't an issue.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
There is slight overlap but for personal use Discord is far better (family, friends, gaming). It's fun to have a Discord family room where people can drop comments and share stuff as opposed to Facebook using that data for their evil machinations.
dboreham 6y ago
Discord (and matrix) is often used as a support/comms channel by more "gritty" software projects: blockchain and that neighborhood.
kevsim 6y ago
I'm a founder of a company making Jira/Trello competitor [0] and we actually just released a Discord integration this week (we've had a Slack one for ages) because we had a number of customers and potential customers ask for it. So a small N, but it does seem to be gaining in popularity inside companies, at least smaller ones. 0: https://kitemaker.co https://kitemaker.co

rcurry 6y ago

I can’t comment on Teams vs Slack, or on its other productivity features but I’ve been using Teams on a daily basis for some fairly large meetings and it’s never faltered - way more reliable than Skype was at least.

bstar77 6y ago
My issue is more with how information is presented and data is stored. I think Teams just has too many ways to do things and obfuscates too much at times... finding old docs or old conversations can be tedious and sending messages to wrong "teams" mistakingly is an easy thing to do.
- hnick 6y ago
  I can't even go fullscreen in a Teams meeting anymore after a "recent" (read: months and months ago) update. My small laptop has 1/4 of the screen taken by UI and taskbar, even in "focus" mode.

cyrialize 6y ago

I use Discord for mostly non-gaming interests. I'm part of a bunch of music specific discords for example. Lots of specific genre subreddits (/r/rnbheads, /r/popheads, /r/hiphopheads, etc) use Discord.

dylz 6y ago

As-is I don't consider Discord a competitor to Slack without massive fundamental changes. Chat and content is heavily censored, you risk permanent bans, incredibly privacy invading, unencrypted, all that. It is pretty much fluff chat en masse the way it is now without huge contractual and infrastructure modifications.

impendia 6y ago

I'm an academic mathematician who has used Discord professionally, in at least two contexts: 1. Once the pandemic set in, some Discord groups popped up, associated to branches of math. For example I'm a member of "The Algebraic Geometry Syndicate" and "Modern Number Theory and Algebraic Geometry". The activity includes: technical math chat; people giving each other advice (e.g. on the job market or online teaching); advertisements of online conferences; some other stuff. 2. I've also been on Discord forums attached to weekend online conferences. These were sort of similar, but short-lived -- and we also encouraged everyone to introduce themselves. We had a "math memes contest" and organized a board games night for all who were interested. Basically, it was an attempt to replicate some of the social aspects of conferences. It seems like Slack is designed for groups of people who all work at the same company. Discord worked well for us -- where participants work/study all over, and where it's super easy to join.

ufmace 6y ago

I don't play video games at all, and I'm on a dozen or so Discord servers for various open-source projects, meetup groups, private projects, Reddit subs, groups of friends, etc.

keithnz 6y ago

we swapped from slack to discord at work. It's been good. It pretty much is the same as slack, the UI, if you compare side by side is very similar ( but look different ). Discords easy voice channels was a deciding factor. The downsides, without paying, is screen sharing is 720p, which Slack doesn't have, and file uploads are small ish, where in slack you can upload relatively big files

Xavdidtheshadow 6y ago

Anecdata, but I find Discord great if you're dealing with a big group of people that need to be moderated; it's got great tooling for that. There's multiple access levels, permissions, etc. exactly geared for that. When you're dealing with a trusted, invite-only group, you don't need many (if any) moderation features. Then, Slack shines for its ability to have organized, opt-in discussion. I really hate that you can't leave text channels on Discord. I've been trying to move friend groups more towards Slack and it's been a huge improvement over group texts / Facebook chat / etc. (of course, for our gaming group, discord voice chat is still superb. But, we only use it once a week and all the rest of our chatter/discussion happens in our new Slack team)

foobarian 6y ago

My main nit with Discord over Slack is lack of threading. After that, the voice/video did not feel suitable for a business setting - the PTT format works for coop play but it's annoying to have it on constantly at work. I prefer explicitly scheduled video calls there. Beyond that, there is a somewhat long tail of little features like integrations, LDAP, etc.

smileybarry 6y ago
> the PTT format works for coop play but it's annoying to have it on constantly at work You can switch to "open mic" with a mic threshold (with an "auto" option), which would probably work well in a meeting situation where keyboard noise isn't an issue.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

There is slight overlap but for personal use Discord is far better (family, friends, gaming). It's fun to have a Discord family room where people can drop comments and share stuff as opposed to Facebook using that data for their evil machinations.

dboreham 6y ago

Discord (and matrix) is often used as a support/comms channel by more "gritty" software projects: blockchain and that neighborhood.

kevsim 6y ago

I'm a founder of a company making Jira/Trello competitor [0] and we actually just released a Discord integration this week (we've had a Slack one for ages) because we had a number of customers and potential customers ask for it. So a small N, but it does seem to be gaining in popularity inside companies, at least smaller ones. 0: https://kitemaker.co https://kitemaker.co