My employer has tried Slack and RingCentral for remote development work. We use Slack chat all the time, but RingCentral seems a bit better for screen sharing.
Whatever compression algorithm Slack is using is probably fine for a webcam, but when screen sharing, compression artifacts make the text completely illegible for seconds at a time after scrolling, and even after it has caught up, it’s not as clear as RingCentral. We end up using Slack calls a lot because it’s well integrated into the chat features, but the compression is a major pain.
On the other hand, I find RingCentral’s screen annotation tools kind of awkward to use. They have a variety of options, but you can’t select them quickly enough, and opening the palette hides the mute button! And you have to click another button to clear it. Slack only lets you draw on the screen, but you don’t have to select a tool and it fades away on its own, which I found a lot easier to use.
I can’t really recommend either one, but RingCentral is less bad for screen sharing.
Update (April 2):
Slack video calls seem to have a limit of 15 people. RingCentral can do a lot more.
My employer is becoming concerned about potential security issues in RingCentral and Slack and is looking for alternatives. Candidates include Amazon Chime, Jami, Jitsi, Mattermost, Riot.im, Tox, and Zulip (with Jitsi), but we haven’t tried them yet.
I learned that RingCentral is a kind of rebranding of Zoom. Having not tried Zoom, I’m not exactly sure how similar the clients are, but some of my review of RingCentral may apply to Zoom as well.
My employer has tried Slack and RingCentral for remote development work. We use Slack chat all the time, but RingCentral seems a bit better for screen sharing.
Whatever compression algorithm Slack is using is probably fine for a webcam, but when screen sharing, compression artifacts make the text completely illegible for seconds at a time after scrolling, and even after it has caught up, it’s not as clear as RingCentral. We end up using Slack calls a lot because it’s well integrated into the chat features, but the compression is a major pain.
On the other hand, I find RingCentral’s screen annotation tools kind of awkward to use. They have a variety of options, but you can’t select them quickly enough, and opening the palette hides the mute button! And you have to click another button to clear it. Slack only lets you draw on the screen, but you don’t have to select a tool and it fades away on its own, which I found a lot easier to use.
I can’t really recommend either one, but RingCentral is less bad for screen sharing.
Update (April 2):
Slack video calls seem to have a limit of 15 people. RingCentral can do a lot more.
My employer is becoming concerned about potential security issues in RingCentral and Slack and is looking for alternatives. Candidates include Amazon Chime, Jami, Jitsi, Mattermost, Riot.im, Tox, and Zulip (with Jitsi), but we haven’t tried them yet.
Thanks! Curious if you’ve compared RingCentral to Zoom?
I have not tried Zoom yet.
I learned that RingCentral is a kind of rebranding of Zoom. Having not tried Zoom, I’m not exactly sure how similar the clients are, but some of my review of RingCentral may apply to Zoom as well.
Having tried both now, I can say they’re basically the same thing.