Companies switch because Teams is included in Microsoft 365 they already pay for. Gain: $0 extra cost, native Office integration, built-in video calls. Trade-off: clunkier UX, fewer third-party integrations (2,600+ in Slack vs ~700 in Teams).

Startups and tech teams switch for better free tier and voice features. Gain: unlimited message history free, superior voice channels, screen sharing. Trade-off: less professional appearance, no enterprise compliance.

Google Workspace users switch because Chat is included in their subscription, integrates with Gmail/Calendar/Drive, and provides adequate functionality without extra cost.

Organizations switch for self-hosted option, open source codebase, and data sovereignty. Popular with security-conscious companies and those needing on-premise deployment.

Teams prioritizing async work switch for topic-based threading. Gain: conversations organized by topic not time, open source, self-hostable. Trade-off: smaller ecosystem, less polished UI.