To cpo@slack.com
Re Teams has 320M users. You have better ones. Don’t lose them.
Prepared for the CPO at Slack
Competitor brief · week of April 21
This week’s priority action
Microsoft Teams holds 37% market share in team collaboration. Slack holds 13%. But the numbers hide the real story: Slack leads in intentional adoption — startups, agencies, and SaaS-first companies that actively choose their tools. That’s your moat. This week’s priority: double down on the developer and engineering segment before Teams’ new unified chat UI converts the undecideds.
What changed · last 7 days
Microsoft Teams
30d sentiment
+6 pts
1,247 reviews · drivers: unified UI, M365 bundle
Discord
30d sentiment
+3 pts
534 reviews · drivers: developer communities, free
Google Chat
30d sentiment
−4 pts
312 reviews · drivers: abandoned feel, limited features
Zoom
30d sentiment
stable
445 reviews · drivers: meeting fatigue, pricing
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1 · Teams’ new unified UI is closing your UX gap
In early 2025, Teams unified chats and channels under one view, a direct response to Slack’s more intuitive interface. For three years, “Teams is clunky” was a reliable competitive weapon. That argument is weakening. Your moat is now Slack AI, your 2,600+ integrations, and your 98% enterprise retention rate — not the interface. Make sure your positioning reflects this shift.
2 · Google Chat is failing publicly — those users are yours to take
Google Chat sentiment dropped 4 points this month. The recurring complaint in reviews: “feels like an abandoned side project.” These users are already SaaS-native, already pay for cloud tools, and are actively looking for alternatives. A targeted campaign toward Google Workspace admins evaluating chat tools could be highly efficient right now.
3 · Discord is quietly replacing you in early-stage engineering teams
Discord is used by developer communities and open-source projects as a free Slack alternative. The driver is always pricing: free tier, voice channels, no seat limits. Not a threat to your enterprise business today, but this is where your next enterprise deals start. Losing the entry point means a harder sell two years from now when those teams scale.
This week’s priority action
Launch a targeted migration campaign for Google Chat users
They’re warm, SaaS-native, and actively dissatisfied. A simple “Switch from Google Chat” landing page with a migration guide could capture this demand before a competitor does.
Effort
Medium
Perceived impact
High
Window
This quarter
Notable verbatim
“Teams just rolled out the new unified chat and honestly it doesn't feel like Teams anymore. Slack better not rest on its laurels.”
Reddit r/sysadmin · 2.3k upvotes · April 22
“Google Chat feels completely abandoned. We're moving to Slack next month. At least someone there cares about the product.”
G2 · Google Chat · 2★ · Head of Engineering · April 24
“Discord runs our entire eng team for free. We'll switch to Slack when we hit Series A but not before.”
HackerNews · 512 points · April 19
Sources analyzed: 2,538 reviews · 41 Reddit threads · 14 articles · 3 release notes
Slack · Microsoft Teams · Discord · Google Chat · Zoom
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