Advantages/disadvantages of email vs. slack or something else?
July 26, 2024 11:34 AM Subscribe
We are a small non-profit who don't get a lot of face-to-face time. What are the advantages and disadvantages of email vs. other platforms?
We all do jobs that are a mix of organizational administration, operations, and other stuff. Most of us have roles that keep us away from our computers for most of our work time. We have some overlapping spheres of responsibility, but the majority of our work is autonomous and involves many, many day-to-day decisions that each worker is trusted to make on their own. Our workplace is non-hierarchical. We currently collaborate via email and a once-a-week all-team meeting, plus various informal conversations when we can squeeze them in.
I've heard people say that email is not the best way to coordinate tasks and communicate in a workplace but it's hard to for me visualize how other platforms would offer advantages. If you have an opinion about using slack or other platforms, what do you see as the advantages or disadvantages compared to email, or compared to other platforms?
We all do jobs that are a mix of organizational administration, operations, and other stuff. Most of us have roles that keep us away from our computers for most of our work time. We have some overlapping spheres of responsibility, but the majority of our work is autonomous and involves many, many day-to-day decisions that each worker is trusted to make on their own. Our workplace is non-hierarchical. We currently collaborate via email and a once-a-week all-team meeting, plus various informal conversations when we can squeeze them in.
I've heard people say that email is not the best way to coordinate tasks and communicate in a workplace but it's hard to for me visualize how other platforms would offer advantages. If you have an opinion about using slack or other platforms, what do you see as the advantages or disadvantages compared to email, or compared to other platforms?
Best answer: The main advantage of email is it's asynchronous. If I left for the day, you shouldn't be watching your inbox for a reply, but that's usually better than waiting for an answer on Slack, etc. It's likely in part culture, since you can stare at either program waiting for a reply.
Slack feels more real time. And that's the main advantage. It's great for collaborating since it's basically a real time text conversation. In Slack, when anyone says anything in a conversation, everyone sees it immediately (assuming they are all looking at Slack). Ever notice overlapping conversations in email? Where someone asks a question and maybe two people reply with conflicting answers? That's less likely in Slack because it's more real time.
Email is better for documentation and audit trail, as kristi noted. If you need to go back weeks later to see who agreed to do what and by when, email is far better for that. But if you need to solve a problem quickly, especially something that was not anticipated, Slack can be a better tool.
Put another way, email is great for project planning, task coordination, etc., while Slack is better for triage when something goes wrong.
posted by Meldanthral at 12:21 PM on July 26 [2 favorites]
Slack feels more real time. And that's the main advantage. It's great for collaborating since it's basically a real time text conversation. In Slack, when anyone says anything in a conversation, everyone sees it immediately (assuming they are all looking at Slack). Ever notice overlapping conversations in email? Where someone asks a question and maybe two people reply with conflicting answers? That's less likely in Slack because it's more real time.
Email is better for documentation and audit trail, as kristi noted. If you need to go back weeks later to see who agreed to do what and by when, email is far better for that. But if you need to solve a problem quickly, especially something that was not anticipated, Slack can be a better tool.
Put another way, email is great for project planning, task coordination, etc., while Slack is better for triage when something goes wrong.
posted by Meldanthral at 12:21 PM on July 26 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I have used Slack and Discord, and have pretty much fully migrated to Discord. It allows single- and multi-user DMs (Direct Messages), multiple text channels (for different topics, usually), built-in voice chat and screen sharing, the ability to create threads within a channel (say, a thread on the coming summer fundraiser, in the Events channel). It has mobile and desktop apps, as well as a web interface. In a channel or in a thread, you can reply to someone's post and it is tagged as such, so when someone sees your reply, they can click to scroll up to exactly what you were replying to. It doesn't allow deeply threaded replies, so it's not like Reddit or old bulletin board forums where you'd have replies to replies nested six or seven deep, but it works.
In Slack and in Discord, you can subscribe to several different "Servers". In my Discord app, I participate in servers for several video games I play, a server for our local board game group, a few servers that friends have set up for keeping in touch, and so on. It's easy to hop from one server to another, so it's not like if you are using Slack or Discord, it's just for that one thing. It's easy to share images, sound and video clips, document / PDF attachments, that sort of thing. You can also create events with reminders, and people can indicate their interest in participating. Overall, I find it a lot easier to keep up with groups this way, rather than by email.
I even have a Discord server that is basically just me and my folks, so I have an easy way for both of us to share our screens remotely, and I can voice chat them through fixing computer issues.
Email does have the advantage, as mentioned above, of being locally archived by each user for a permanent record if they wish. It's also familiar. But it gets very awkward trying to collaborate with several people, because group emails get very messy very quickly. It's not always clear who is being replied to, or what part specifically. It's also fairly platform-independent, and since it is usually (or can be) privately hosted/managed, you're far less likely to risk losing everything if a dotcom suddenly folds.
Discord, Slack, and the like are very proprietary, and you're kind of at their mercy as to whether they'll be around in a few years or even next, given how volatile tech can be. They're very convenient apps, and I use them both, but I certainly wouldn't build things out so that your org is utterly reliant on a service like that. If it stops, what then?
posted by xedrik at 12:23 PM on July 26
In Slack and in Discord, you can subscribe to several different "Servers". In my Discord app, I participate in servers for several video games I play, a server for our local board game group, a few servers that friends have set up for keeping in touch, and so on. It's easy to hop from one server to another, so it's not like if you are using Slack or Discord, it's just for that one thing. It's easy to share images, sound and video clips, document / PDF attachments, that sort of thing. You can also create events with reminders, and people can indicate their interest in participating. Overall, I find it a lot easier to keep up with groups this way, rather than by email.
I even have a Discord server that is basically just me and my folks, so I have an easy way for both of us to share our screens remotely, and I can voice chat them through fixing computer issues.
Email does have the advantage, as mentioned above, of being locally archived by each user for a permanent record if they wish. It's also familiar. But it gets very awkward trying to collaborate with several people, because group emails get very messy very quickly. It's not always clear who is being replied to, or what part specifically. It's also fairly platform-independent, and since it is usually (or can be) privately hosted/managed, you're far less likely to risk losing everything if a dotcom suddenly folds.
Discord, Slack, and the like are very proprietary, and you're kind of at their mercy as to whether they'll be around in a few years or even next, given how volatile tech can be. They're very convenient apps, and I use them both, but I certainly wouldn't build things out so that your org is utterly reliant on a service like that. If it stops, what then?
posted by xedrik at 12:23 PM on July 26
Best answer: Task management is best handled in a dedicated app with a workflow that keeps track of deadlines, task state, assignee. This can be as simple as a spreadsheet or in a dedicated tool like Asana. I hope you have one of these. These sorts of tools can be integrated with both email and Slack, so the communication platform is not really the differentiator for task management.
Slack/Teams/Discord have a few advantages:
posted by shock muppet at 1:05 PM on July 26 [1 favorite]
Slack/Teams/Discord have a few advantages:
- Emojis are a great way to summarize the consensus of a crowd. 25 đź‘Ť is a lot easier to parse than 25 emails
- Emojis as a lexicon add richness to a conversation, and express sentiments that you would not receive via email. Slack lets you add custom emojis. I might add a :dumpster fire: emoji, but I would never send the same thing over email (for good and ill)
- Slack has integrated polls, you don’t need to augment with SurveyMonkey or similar
- Slack has workflows. Much better for work intake than sending a free-form email, and replaces a custom form.
- People send shorter messages
- No filtering. If you love email rules, you’ll hate Slack
- Chattier and more distracting
- Laggy desktop app performance
- Emoji laden newsletters are the worst
- Duplication of messages due to cross-channel posting
- Harder to find things, since you named your email folders but someone else named your channels
posted by shock muppet at 1:05 PM on July 26 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I agree with most of what's been said.
As Meldenthral says, Slack (and Discord) feels more real-time. This makes it good for water-cooler chat, but if you're not tuned in to the constant chatter, it's hard to catch up, and it is difficult to rank the importance of messages in that stream. Slack does support channels and threads, but people can be inconsistent about them. Discord supports forum-type channels, which kind of solves the threading problem.
As a non-profit, you should be able to get a free Slack account; you should also be able to get a free Google Workspace account where you can set up a mailing list—if you're relying on e-mail, you should not be CC'ing each other, you should use mailing lists. You have to meet people where they live, and if the consensus is that one platform works better than the other, go with that. I personally like e-mail, but I also acknowledge it is useful to have some kind of realtime group chat (text message, Signal, whatever) when needed.
posted by adamrice at 1:56 PM on July 26
As Meldenthral says, Slack (and Discord) feels more real-time. This makes it good for water-cooler chat, but if you're not tuned in to the constant chatter, it's hard to catch up, and it is difficult to rank the importance of messages in that stream. Slack does support channels and threads, but people can be inconsistent about them. Discord supports forum-type channels, which kind of solves the threading problem.
As a non-profit, you should be able to get a free Slack account; you should also be able to get a free Google Workspace account where you can set up a mailing list—if you're relying on e-mail, you should not be CC'ing each other, you should use mailing lists. You have to meet people where they live, and if the consensus is that one platform works better than the other, go with that. I personally like e-mail, but I also acknowledge it is useful to have some kind of realtime group chat (text message, Signal, whatever) when needed.
posted by adamrice at 1:56 PM on July 26
Best answer: I found slack terrible for asynchronous communication. I worked on a project that tried it in conjunction with email, with lots of people in the office all day and a few people like me doing things on their feet most of the day and in the office a little bit. For people like me it didn't work, I wasn't about to throw a heap of time at reading through all the day's conversations just in case there was something for me, it's a waste of time. In the end I said to everyone I'm glad you've got somewhere online to chat but if you need me to see something and act on it send me an email. On that project I was senior enough to pull that off, it can be very inefficient for those that can't opt out though.
posted by deadwax at 2:55 PM on July 26 [1 favorite]
posted by deadwax at 2:55 PM on July 26 [1 favorite]
Best answer: You definitely need to set expectations if you use slack, and it might help if you stick with email. How often are people expected to check their messages? How do you indicate who needs to make a decision vs. who just needs to be kept informed? It worked when my boss’s email was useless due to the number of incoming messages and she wanted a separate place to keep up with our small team. Everyone was in the field most of the time, so the app was nice for quick updates and sharing photos. It sounds like a nightmare if the expectation is that people a checking many times a day and it can also lead to performative work rather than just doing the thing. And then you have to use email anyway for folks outside your organization.
Free Slack only allows you to see 90 days of history. You can download archives, but they’re not easy to search.
posted by momus_window at 4:27 PM on July 26
Free Slack only allows you to see 90 days of history. You can download archives, but they’re not easy to search.
posted by momus_window at 4:27 PM on July 26
Best answer: I also work in a small non-profit, almost never face to face. We generally use Slack and while some people grumble a bit, I can't imagine going back to relying on emails. Emails just aren't a replacement for the back and forth conversations you can have in a chat context. There's a level of formality and remoteness with email that is fine if that's what you want, but if you want to be able to have discussions without calling a meeting or collaborate, then I think Slack or similar is necessary.
The downsides: Sometimes if you're searching for something, you end having to look in email and Slack (and maybe Drive or whatever you use for documents too). Sometimes some people aren't good at keeping up, which means you have to send them emails to get them to do something (or schedule a meeting). This is more of a cultural problem than a technical one. You need to establish a norm that, while you don't need to read everything in every channel you are in, you have to read and respond to direct messages and mentions.
The Slack Pro plan (with history) is free for small non-profits.
posted by ssg at 5:10 PM on July 26
The downsides: Sometimes if you're searching for something, you end having to look in email and Slack (and maybe Drive or whatever you use for documents too). Sometimes some people aren't good at keeping up, which means you have to send them emails to get them to do something (or schedule a meeting). This is more of a cultural problem than a technical one. You need to establish a norm that, while you don't need to read everything in every channel you are in, you have to read and respond to direct messages and mentions.
The Slack Pro plan (with history) is free for small non-profits.
posted by ssg at 5:10 PM on July 26
Best answer: I've had similar questions for my (much larger, much less independent work, but physically scattered) office. We're a Microsoft 365 shop with Outlook and Microsoft Teams. We love the immediacy of Teams chat feature, but our legal department restricts personal chats to a 24 hour retention (team chats have a 100 day retention, which is even longer than our email default detention).
Email has a huge advantage for organization and retention of information. If I want to make a proposal or sent out a list of instructions, it goes out via email. If I want to alert someone that there's something wrong with one of our systems or to ask a question, either an individual or team chat is the first place to go.
I think the longevity of email is its chief advantage. Too many chat topics in our office simply disappear, and are hard to find even if they are in the 100-day retention category. Email sent last week will still be there for reference a month from now, even if I hit delete.
posted by lhauser at 5:16 PM on July 26
Email has a huge advantage for organization and retention of information. If I want to make a proposal or sent out a list of instructions, it goes out via email. If I want to alert someone that there's something wrong with one of our systems or to ask a question, either an individual or team chat is the first place to go.
I think the longevity of email is its chief advantage. Too many chat topics in our office simply disappear, and are hard to find even if they are in the 100-day retention category. Email sent last week will still be there for reference a month from now, even if I hit delete.
posted by lhauser at 5:16 PM on July 26
Best answer: Not to complicate things, but to complicate things: There are options in chat. Slack, Mattermost, Discord, Matrix, Rocketchat, Zulip, and ehhhh Campfire.
Email is primarily governed via cultural agreements, and the end-users get to work however they want.
Async chat is often structured, or suggests structure, that can have downstream effects (Which channel do I post message x/y/z in?), along with cultural agreements on use.
Integration with chat can be powerful, as can helper bots.
Big questions I'd ask:
- Is something broken? What are the desired gains?
- Is someone complaining about email because it's old and that's how they get bills?
A well designed topic/channel hierarchy with integrations and cultural agreements can be powerful and efficient (like allowing sub-conversations to still be visible but ignorable), but it can also be a nightmare.
Chat is also a product. Depending on technical savvy of your people, that can mean more support and confusion.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 5:43 PM on July 26 [1 favorite]
Email is primarily governed via cultural agreements, and the end-users get to work however they want.
Async chat is often structured, or suggests structure, that can have downstream effects (Which channel do I post message x/y/z in?), along with cultural agreements on use.
Integration with chat can be powerful, as can helper bots.
Big questions I'd ask:
- Is something broken? What are the desired gains?
- Is someone complaining about email because it's old and that's how they get bills?
A well designed topic/channel hierarchy with integrations and cultural agreements can be powerful and efficient (like allowing sub-conversations to still be visible but ignorable), but it can also be a nightmare.
Chat is also a product. Depending on technical savvy of your people, that can mean more support and confusion.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 5:43 PM on July 26 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Strong opinions ahead! I have seen Slack add hours of work to each of my and my colleagues’ workweeks because
- it creates a feed of water-cooler discussion that no one needs and everyone feels compelled to catch up on and participate in (major “big happy family” energy)
- it muddies decision-making processes by dragging out “casual” conversations about strategic priorities where no one has prepared and prioritized, and where there isn’t a clear decision point where the team will take action - as opposed to scheduling a specific time to sit together, discuss options, and decide on a way forward
- it encourages colleagues to relate to work as if it were social media, with an endless stream of notifications, keeping us always on, making everything a fire to put out
For highly autonomous teams, I find Slack and other chat-based systems to be a distraction and a timesuck. Strong, well-documented processes and protocols (shared drives are great), supportive but unobtrusive management, purpose-driven meetings, and clear, concise emails for me, please.
If your current setup doesn’t feel as productive as it could be, a good place to start would be to figure out what *specific* pain points or bottlenecks the team wants to address, and then to think critically about how best to address them.
I have seen many teams reach for platforms (to manage communication, data, task management, etc) because they think the platform will make things better - but the problem is actually something sticky in their processes, documentation, management, meetings, or email culture. Adding a new piece of tech often just makes things worse.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 6:44 PM on July 26 [4 favorites]
- it creates a feed of water-cooler discussion that no one needs and everyone feels compelled to catch up on and participate in (major “big happy family” energy)
- it muddies decision-making processes by dragging out “casual” conversations about strategic priorities where no one has prepared and prioritized, and where there isn’t a clear decision point where the team will take action - as opposed to scheduling a specific time to sit together, discuss options, and decide on a way forward
- it encourages colleagues to relate to work as if it were social media, with an endless stream of notifications, keeping us always on, making everything a fire to put out
For highly autonomous teams, I find Slack and other chat-based systems to be a distraction and a timesuck. Strong, well-documented processes and protocols (shared drives are great), supportive but unobtrusive management, purpose-driven meetings, and clear, concise emails for me, please.
If your current setup doesn’t feel as productive as it could be, a good place to start would be to figure out what *specific* pain points or bottlenecks the team wants to address, and then to think critically about how best to address them.
I have seen many teams reach for platforms (to manage communication, data, task management, etc) because they think the platform will make things better - but the problem is actually something sticky in their processes, documentation, management, meetings, or email culture. Adding a new piece of tech often just makes things worse.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 6:44 PM on July 26 [4 favorites]
Response by poster: Thank you all for your excellent responses. Rrrrrrrrt’s comment hits the nail right on the head.
This thread has helped me catalogue all of the reasons that using emails useful, moving away from email would be a huge hassle, and other platforms probably wouldn’t meet our needs.
posted by mai at 6:52 PM on July 26
This thread has helped me catalogue all of the reasons that using emails useful, moving away from email would be a huge hassle, and other platforms probably wouldn’t meet our needs.
posted by mai at 6:52 PM on July 26
Strong, well-documented processes and protocols (shared drives are great), supportive but unobtrusive management, purpose-driven meetings, and clear, concise emails for me, please.
I realize this sounds as though these are easy choices - that’s not what I mean to convey! Rather, that working on achieving these goals has been far more important to the success (or struggle) of the non-profit teams I’ve worked on than using one kind of platform vs. another.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 6:56 PM on July 26
I realize this sounds as though these are easy choices - that’s not what I mean to convey! Rather, that working on achieving these goals has been far more important to the success (or struggle) of the non-profit teams I’ve worked on than using one kind of platform vs. another.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 6:56 PM on July 26
I advise "yes and" so that you have both long-lived email and transitory spontaneous chat.
Note on 'asynchronous' -- if you go offline or leave a device to be somewhere else, both email and instant messaging (teams, slack, discord etc) queue up to wait until you're back. Fundamentally, they're messages like post-its stuck on your screen, there's no more sync or async in either.
So I think the contrast between email and instant messaging is permanence and impermanence: that the personal mailbox creates an archive of that person's slice of institutional knowledge vs the central multipurpose chat being harder to search, especially if there's no management of topics in a chat and a lot of transitory or ephemeral (or even off-topic, noisy) messaging.
Don't forget document stores, wikis or knowledge bases for intentional institutional knowledge, and, as mentioned above, task trackers is vital to make transparent the blockers getting in the way of task completion.
posted by k3ninho at 3:57 AM on July 27
Note on 'asynchronous' -- if you go offline or leave a device to be somewhere else, both email and instant messaging (teams, slack, discord etc) queue up to wait until you're back. Fundamentally, they're messages like post-its stuck on your screen, there's no more sync or async in either.
So I think the contrast between email and instant messaging is permanence and impermanence: that the personal mailbox creates an archive of that person's slice of institutional knowledge vs the central multipurpose chat being harder to search, especially if there's no management of topics in a chat and a lot of transitory or ephemeral (or even off-topic, noisy) messaging.
Don't forget document stores, wikis or knowledge bases for intentional institutional knowledge, and, as mentioned above, task trackers is vital to make transparent the blockers getting in the way of task completion.
posted by k3ninho at 3:57 AM on July 27
There are various ways email can be implemented, and I didn't see any distinctions made above.
In a small organizatiion just getting started, I can imagine everyone just using their home email.
Most organizations big enough to have an IT Dept, even if that is just one guy, host their own email server, and give everyone a "work email" address. This has a lot of advantages, but the overhead can be significant. Email companies will fit in the middle, and give you email under your company name. You wouldn't have to have your own physical computer, but you would still have to create accounts for new hires, and end access when people leave.
Any other messaging app is going to have similar maintenance iissues.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:55 AM on July 27
In a small organizatiion just getting started, I can imagine everyone just using their home email.
Most organizations big enough to have an IT Dept, even if that is just one guy, host their own email server, and give everyone a "work email" address. This has a lot of advantages, but the overhead can be significant. Email companies will fit in the middle, and give you email under your company name. You wouldn't have to have your own physical computer, but you would still have to create accounts for new hires, and end access when people leave.
Any other messaging app is going to have similar maintenance iissues.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:55 AM on July 27
Most organizations big enough to have an IT Dept, even if that is just one guy, host their own email server, and give everyone a "work email" address.
"Host their own email server" now means "Buy M365 or Google Workspace for their organisation." That's a huge market reselling and managing MS Office/Outlook/Exchange for smaller organisations, bullied into it by technologies bolted on to combat spam, Sender Protection Framework (SPF) and Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), which actually make it harder to run your own web server.
posted by k3ninho at 8:46 AM on July 27 [1 favorite]
"Host their own email server" now means "Buy M365 or Google Workspace for their organisation." That's a huge market reselling and managing MS Office/Outlook/Exchange for smaller organisations, bullied into it by technologies bolted on to combat spam, Sender Protection Framework (SPF) and Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), which actually make it harder to run your own web server.
posted by k3ninho at 8:46 AM on July 27 [1 favorite]
Slack means that remote or less-consistent employees are quickly left out of the loop so I would avoid it
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:19 PM on July 27
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:19 PM on July 27
37signals (makers of Basecamp) wrote the definitive piece on what is wrong with group chat (like Slack), which echoes a lot of what you've decided above.
Of course, they are not neutral (since their products Basecamp and Hey compete with Slack), but every point they make ring true. Unfortunately, for the past 5 years, I've only worked in companies where chat has replaced email, and once you're in that situation, you can't really change it. Many co-workers have only ever worked this way. But if you're in a small organisation where you are still setting communication norms, then this is the right time to be asking that question.
posted by snarfois at 6:50 AM on July 29
Of course, they are not neutral (since their products Basecamp and Hey compete with Slack), but every point they make ring true. Unfortunately, for the past 5 years, I've only worked in companies where chat has replaced email, and once you're in that situation, you can't really change it. Many co-workers have only ever worked this way. But if you're in a small organisation where you are still setting communication norms, then this is the right time to be asking that question.
posted by snarfois at 6:50 AM on July 29
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I don't know the details of all platforms, but I know in the past some platforms made it hard or impossible to save your own copy of a conversation thread, and others only allowed it if the administrator enabled the option.
posted by kristi at 12:14 PM on July 26