Why people choose Slack
Arriving as a ready-made alternative to email, Slack has taken the familiar format of instant messaging and infused it with a broad set of collaboration features.
It enables both one-on-one and team-level communication, structuring conversations around specific themes through dedicated channels and threads.
It also allows file-sharing, screen-sharing, and integrates with a large number of other popular products, such as Google Docs, Trello, Jira, etc.
It allows teams to keep and organize all their relevant conversations and files in one place while providing all essential communication tools for remote teams. It is quick, fairly simple, and effective.
Why people ditch Slack
However, while admittedly a powerful tool, Slack is not an ideal fit for every team. The key downside for many is its affordability.
Yes, Slack has a free plan, but it is hardly suitable for any substantial professional communication. The free plan imposes significant limitations on chat history (only last 90 days) and storage (up to 5GB for the whole team), as well as available integrations (up to 10). Essentially, it is designed to give teams a taste of what it can do, but any serious doing requires a switch to a paid plan.
The basic paid plan charges $8.75 monthly per user. While it removes the limitations of the free plan, the cost itself can outweigh the benefits. As an illustration, a modest 10-person team would pay Slack $87.50 a month, while a 100-person organization would pay $875 (it is $10,500 annually). Regardless of the budget, this is a sizable investment.
In June of 2024, Slack’s users started receiving official emails stating that the messages and files from free workspaces will be deleted after one year. The policy change is to be enforced from August 24, 2024.
It can also be quite impractical for large or complex projects where many facets of work need to be discussed. Some have found Slack’s frenetic pace of communication itself to be distracting and often trivial.
In short, it does not work equally well for everyone.
Why consider Pumble
Pumble holds the essence of what Slack does well while eliminating its biggest downsides. Pumble is a super-easy team collaboration app to sign up, set up, and involve others — it is available across all mobile and desktop platforms.
Have organized group and private conversations. It enables real-time communication in all its relevant forms, from 1-on-1 conversations to invitational group chats and public channels. Group discussions can be dedicated to specific teams, projects, or particular aspects of work. Conversations can be further structured via threads that allow a more detailed discussion on particular points of the conversation without overwhelming the whole channel. Users can also pin important messages to the top of the conversation, save messages, put reactions on them and mention (e.g. @johnsmith) specific people in order to draw their attention to a message.
Start video conferencing inside the app. Pumble also gives an opportunity to all of its users to organize video conferencing inside the app. Teams can collaborate in a live session, both one-on-one and group video or voice calls. During the meeting participants can talk, share their screen, send messages inside a call, and the host can record a meeting for the one who could not attend it.
Share and search for more files. Furthermore, users can share files, browse through files contained within specific conversations, and sort and filter the search results so that they can easily find exactly what they’re looking for — with no limitations to how far you can go in your messaging history.
Stay focused with smart notifications. Pumble also features smart notifications, enabling users to stay up-to-date with all relevant information while also allowing them to set their preferences, mute channels they only use periodically, or activate a do-not-disturb mode that stops all notifications when we need focused, continuous work.
Best of all, Pumble does all of this for free!
What users say about Pumble
According to existing Pumble users, the main reasons for switching from Slack to Pumble include a better cost-value ratio, unlimited free chat history, a simple, user-friendly approach to communication, and trust built by previously using Clockify (a time tracker created by the same team).
User reviews
“The Slack plan that we had didn't have the feature of keeping the history of our chats, which might be not critical for some departments (such as marketing), but for projects' discussion, it's important to see what has been discussed previously to have a paper track.”
“If you’re a new business needing to communicate with a number of people, this app is the answer and I feel more people should know about it. Other competitors are charging extortionate rates for similar products and it makes absolutely no sense why everyone isn’t just using this.”
”Overall, I find it very easy to use. Same as much as slack. In fact, we migrated everything from slack to pumble now. I do not worry about messages being deleted anymore.
It doesn't have a limit on message and files history compared to slack. This is what matters most to me as I really would love to review messages from time to time to check message threads.”
”It's free and very similar to Slack in terms of functionality. Very easy to use. The interface is great. You can have multiple workspaces as well.”
“What I have received so far is definitely amazing. It's a very good app and I'm lucky to have found Pumble. Everybody in my team now uses Pumble and they love it too.”
“Easy to use, simple and clean layout. Using the software is not really complicated and it does not have a steep learning curve. I also like that you can download the app. Good alternative for Slack or Teams if you don't need all the bells and whistles.”
“Pumble is very easy to set up and start using. The chat features are easy to customize and I can create groups to keep everyone in the same project up to date with any developments. The sync between the browser and mobile app is very good, so I can be reached even while on the go.”
“Easy to use, free, functional and always improving. Definitely give this one a try if you're looking for a Slack alternative! Clean and intuitive UI, good team behind Pumble (same team as Clockify).”
Awesome free plan
Pumble is committed to keeping its core features free forever!
Pumble has a generous free plan that provides unlimited chat history to an unlimited number of users. This means that ANY team with ALL of its members can FOREVER keep all the relevant information and files shared through its ongoing conversations.
To illustrate, let’s say a team of ten people exchanges 50 messages a day per member (a conservative estimate). If using Slack, when you need urgent information from older projects or messages to tackle current tasks, you’ll not find it. This limitation would require the team to store all relevant information and files elsewhere, or risk losing them forever. With Pumble, there is no such worry.
With the FREE plan, you’ll get:
- Unlimited messages history
- Unlimited channels
- Threads
- Notification preferences
- Reminders
- Schedule messages
- Voice and video messages
- Save and pin messages
- 1:1 video conferencing
And a lot more. The FREE plan also doubles the available storage provided by Slack — 10GB storage per workspace.
Affordable paid plans
Pumble’s paid plans are a highly affordable route towards making the most of the app. The PRO plan starts from $2.99 monthly per seat or $2.49 annually per seat. The BUSINESS plan starts from $4.99 monthly per seat or $3.99 annually per seat. The last paid plan is the ENTERPRISE plan, where teams can enjoy more advanced features.
Learn more about Pumble’s pricing
PRO plan
Pumble’s first paid tier is called PRO, and it removes most of the restrictions from the FREE level, and is aimed at small and medium-sized businesses.
Features included in the Pumble PRO plan:
- Video conferencing with screen sharing
- 10GB storage per seat
- Possibility to customize your sidebar
- Up to 10 integrations (soon)
Subscribing to the PRO plan, teams can enjoy all the benefits of the free plan while gaining 10GB of storage space per seat. Organizations can also create separate workspaces for different teams, projects, and companies, and easily switch between them.
BUSINESS plan
The BUSINESS plan builds on the PRO plan by adding advanced user permission controls, doubling the amount of storage space per user, and letting you have conversations with people outside the organization (clients, collaborators, vendors, etc.) in your Pumble channels.
This is what you’ll receive on the BUSINESS plan:
- All PRO features
- 20GB storage per seat
- Different workspace permissions
- Guest access
- User groups
- Meeting recordings (soon)
- Unlimited integrations (soon)
Switching to the Pumble BUSINESS plan will cost you only $3.99 per seat annually, which is almost $9 per user less than Slack. If you're a big organization, your cost will be significantly smaller with Pumble.
ENTERPRISE plan
The ENTERPRISE plan is designed for big companies and businesses with thousands of employees. Pumble’s ENTERPRISE subscription offers the messaging app’s most comprehensive range of features. Some of the functionalities you’ll get on the ENTERPRISE plan include:
- All PRO and BUSINESS features
- Single Sign-on
- Data retention
- 100GB storage space per seat
Pumble ENTERPRISE subscription features comprehensive functionalities for enterprises to manage teams and workflows securely and effortlessly.
Pumble is a simple, powerful, and efficient communication and collaboration tool designed to fit any budget and any professional scenario.
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