It’s not often that a Mac App Store title uses a single line description, but sometimes, that’s all that’s needed. “Slack is for making your working life simpler, more pleasant and more productive.” That’s the entire summary on the page for Tiny Speck’s Slack (Free). It’s a group communication tool made to compete with the likes of Campfire and Hipchat. We’ve been using it for a few days now, and have found it to be a very nicely designed app, offering a number of features we desire, and some we didn’t even know we needed.
At its core, Slack is a chatroom client. Separate conversations can be broken down into channels, denoted by hashtags. Each user in the group can direct message with other people, and even form private groups. File sharing is a simple matter of drag and drop, and we’re really impressed with the third-party app integration. Dropbox, Twitter, Google services and more all connect with ease. We also appreciate the strong web client, and iOS apps, offering full functionality wherever you may be. There are currently three monthly price levels: $0 allows for unlimited users, a 10,000 message searchable archive, and 5GB of storage, while for the price of $8 or $15 a month, per user, respectively, you can have the standard or plus plan. These offer unlimited searchable messages and more storage space, plus analytics and higher level support.