Microsoft Teams surpasses Slack with 13 million daily users

Microsoft finally reveals the exact number of users of its Microsoft teams competing with Slack. The software maker claims that more than 13 million people daily use Microsoft Teams, as well as more than 19 million active users per week. This is the first time that Microsoft has revealed an active number of users. The company's latest update indicated that 500,000 businesses were using this service in March.

This figure is higher than the 10 million daily Slack users. Slack revealed its daily number of 10 million active users earlier this year and used the same figure in April in a financial deposit. The edge Slack has requested an update on active users, but the company is in a period of silence after its initial public offering (IPO), so there is no new number.

Whatever it is, Microsoft wants to let everyone know that he has adopted Slack. It's certainly a feat just two years after the launch of Teams, but Microsoft against Slack is not a well-defined competition. Microsoft groups teams with its Office 365 subscriptions for businesses, while Slack is a separate pay service. This gives Microsoft a clear advantage for certain types of businesses, but Slack continues to win the hearts of small businesses and startups who value using Google's G Suite rather than relying on Word, Excel and Outlook.

Microsoft has aggressively pushed the teams, and these numbers of active users are arriving just as the company will be heading to Las Vegas next week for its annual conference of partners. Recent reports suggest that Microsoft's sales teams are seeking to encourage users to use them in the coming year. We could see Microsoft grow even more with these active daily user accounts if the company continues to publish them.

Along with the user numbers, Microsoft is now providing an update on some new Teams features. Priority notifications will be available later this month, and they will ping any recipient every two minutes on their phone or desktop until there is an answer. Microsoft targets them in newsrooms or hospitals where urgent answers are needed. Reading receipts will also be available later this month.

Multichannel publishing will also be available soon and channel moderation is coming this month. An ad feature, which allows team members to highlight information about a channel, is available today.

Microsoft has gradually changed its teams over the past two years, and the big change was a free version introduced last year. The teams also received an impressive number of new features in March and continue to be updated regularly. While Microsoft discourages the use of Slack internally and even banned the free version, Slack did not stay still. Slack links email to its chat service and adds a set of useful integrations, including Zoom and even the Microsoft Office 365 service.

Microsoft might consider Slack a big competition in a field it usually dominates, and it's clear Slack was concerned about the pressure from Microsoft teams a few years ago. However, the two services are very different and serve different clients. There is clearly room for both, and some healthy competition will only result in better features for both long-term applications.