What is Slack and How to Use it? Review of 2025!

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Slack is one of the most popular messaging apps, widely used by companies like Amazon, NASA, Uber, Etsy, and many others, both small and large. According to statistics, 85 percent of its users feel improvement in their communication, 86 percent believe their remote workability has improved, and 88 percent feel more connected to their teams.

With these impressive statistics, many of you might want to learn how to use Slack and improve your workflow management. So, this detailed review and tutorial are going to help you integrate Slack into your workspace.

What is Slack

Slack is a popular business messaging tool, often described as an advanced version of WhatsApp. It supports both real-time and asynchronous communication, making it ideal for hybrid and fully remote work environments. It is a PCMag Editors Choice winner and is adored by large businesses around the globe. One of its standout features is its ability to offer extensive customization options, which is a major selling point for users.

You can use Slack from anywhere around the globe with an internet connection. It can support multiple languages, making it perfect for international audiences around the globe. Another major thing about this messaging app is its clean and user-friendly interface. In comparison to Asana and Atlassian, it has a clean and easy-to-navigate interface. 

To use this platform, you just have to download it on the website or in the mobile app form. Then, sign up and use it for free. This messaging app keeps getting updated from time to time, adding new features to revolutionize the platform. That is another reason businesses prefer this app over others.

Key Features of Slack

Private and Team Messages

Slack is an advanced business messaging app that allows you and your team members to send work messages to each other. It is benefiting businesses as they can keep their private messages on WhatsApp and work-related messages on Slack.

It allows you to create channels where you can add your team members, and do group discussions over there. But, if you want to send any private message to any of your team members, you can do that too. There is a Slack Connect option, allowing you to message individuals outside of your company.

This messaging app offers various message editing options, including bold, italics, listicles, adding files or documents, using third-party apps, mentioning users to draw their attention, and much more. It also allows you to record your audio or video to send to your team member.

Private and Public Channels

Channels are actually a shared space where your team members can collaborate and share messages. Slack offers two kinds of channels: private and public.

Private channels are invite-only, allowing you to add your team members’ Gmail ID to invite them to join the private channel. Alternatively, in the public channel, anyone can search them and can become a part of them just like you can join Public Facebook Groups.

Public channels focus on specific topics, which are outlined in their descriptions. Before joining, you can review the description to understand the channel’s purpose. Moreover, you can access team members’ names, the list of important files present, and apps integrated into the channel through the description.

On the other hand, private channels focus on confidential chat among team members. They also support the Slack Connect feature, allowing you to invite individuals outside of your agency to participate in the channel.

Customizing Your Profile

You will see the profile option on the top menu of the Slack interface. From the profile icon, you can customize your profile as you want. It includes adding profile pictures, changing your language preferences as Slack allows multiple languages, changing the color of the interface, and much more.

Moreover, you can upload your status, telling people whether you are available, sick, or offline. With all of this, you can do other kinds of customizations, too, including setting reminders, archiving the channels you don't want in your interface, pinning important messages and files, and marking messages as unread.

Notifications Updates

Just like profile customization, you can customize your notification preferences in Slack. In the settings menu, you will find a dedicated Notifications tab. Here, you can choose whether to receive notifications for all messages, only important ones, or none at all. 

You can write a few keywords to allow Slack to send you notifications when those specific keywords are used in channels or messages. Additionally, you can set your notifications schedule, customize notification tones for each kind of message, and others.

However, one limitation of this feature is you can't force push notifications during Do Not Disturb time to reach employees during the emergency.

Huddles

Suppose you want to do a quick office meeting to discuss a serious problem or to help your team in resolving an issue. On Zoom or Microsoft Teams, you have to share the link to the meeting or dial in the number of team members to conduct a meeting. But, in Slack’s Huddles, you can hop into a quick voice or video meeting with a click.

You just have to click on the Huddle option, choose whether you want an audio or video meeting, select the members present on your Slack, and initiate the meeting. Slack’s meeting interface is a lot similar to Zoom. 

It allows a lot of options such as adding a topic on Huddle, starting threads or discussions during the meeting, changing the background, sharing your screen, giving different reactions to discussions during the meeting, getting captions of audio meetings, and much more.

However, this feature has a few limitations. You can add only 50 members to one Huddle meeting, and there is no option to record any meeting for future use.

Canvas

Canvas is essentially a digital whiteboard, allowing team members to brainstorm, collaborate, and create lists or files in real-time. Similar to Notion, it allows you to jot down brainstorming notes on the whiteboard while simultaneously reading files or messages of your team. Additionally, you can create your to-do list, design project workflows, or collaborate with your team to create a file. 

Unfortunately, this feature is not available for free on Slack. You have to be a premium member to benefit from it.

Automation/ Workflow Builders

The workflow builder feature allows you to automate a lot of tasks, saving yourself time and energy. You can streamline routine activities, such as sending welcome messages to new members, completing forms, setting up reminders for team members, automating project workflows, creating an approval flow, and much more. 

Slack AI

Slack AI is just like Meta AI, providing you with summaries of chats and messages in the side window. Suppose there are a lot of unread messages in one channel, and you don't want to go through all of them. So, you can use Slack AI to summarize those messages for you. In this way, you can get all the important information at your fingertips. 

Integrations with Various Apps

You can sync your Slack app with over 2000 other apps, enhancing its productivity. These apps are of different types and help businesses streamline their workflows. Some of the famous integrations are Canva, Microsoft Teams, Asana, Zapier, Dropbox, Gmail, Polly, Jira, Blue Jeans, Monday, and others. 

You can see the full list in the Integrations tab in the side menu bar of Slack’s interface. Once you click on any integration, you can download it to make it a part of your Slack. In the free version, you can get access to only 10 app integrations as Slack wants you to subscribe to get access to all the integrations.

Using these integrations in your channels and messages is quite easy. You just have to use “/” in your message, and you will get the list of downloaded app integrations. Choose any of them to use in your workflow.

Search

Slack has a strong search feature. You will see it on the top of the screen when you sign in to Slack. In this search bar, you can enter keywords to find relevant messages from private and public team messages and channels. You can search for the threads, files, and information from across your Slack workspace with the help of the search bar. 

Threads

When you start a conversation in a Slack channel, multiple people may reply to the same message, creating a thread in it. You can access all the threads of a channel in its side window. You can also join any thread you want to participate in.

To view your threads across different private and public channels, you can click on the “Threads” option in Slack’s side menu. This section displays all the threads you have been a part of in various channels. If you want, you can pin any important thread too.

Templates

You can find different kinds of ready-made templates on Slack that serve various purposes and save you from creating a template from scratch. You can make these templates a part of your workflow, workspace, channels, and Canvases.

These templates are of various types, ranging from creating workflows for large-scale projects to automating repetitive tasks. The best thing is you can customize them according to your preferences. Add files, tasks, members, messages, apps, commands, and anything in a template you want.

Mobile App

Slack is available in both forms, web app and mobile app. The interface is simple everywhere, making it a rich business messaging platform. You can download its app on Android and iOS and can access it anywhere you want with an internet connection 

Mobile apps are full of rich features, allowing you to access channels, messages, huddles, canvases, threads, and analytics anywhere you want from your mobile. However, the mobile app has certain limitations too, not allowing you to access a lot of features such as Slack AI, customization, and various admin roles. 

Pricing of Slack

The best thing about Slack is it has four pricing plans, each focusing on different kinds of companies and individuals. So, anyone can access Slack without any difficulty.

The first is a free plan in which you can get 1 workspace, 90 days of messaging history, and a few other features for free forever. It is best for freelancers or start-ups.

The second is a Pro plan, available for 8.75 dollars. It has a bit more features than the free plan, including access to Slack AI and unlimited workflows, but the number of workspaces in it is also 1.

The third is a Business plan that is for 15 dollars per month. It provides a bit more features than the Pro plan, making it a perfect choice for large businesses and teams. Finally, there is an Enterprise Grid which has customized pricing options. In this plan, you can get unlimited workspaces and some advanced features.

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