“Slack — Best for everyday file sharing”
“Best for conversational file sharing”
“Uploads up to 1 GB per file.”
“Files are searchable and can be shared across conversations.”
“Images and many document types appear directly in messages.”
“Integrates with Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and OneDrive.”
“Excellent conversational experience, searchable attachments and broad third-party integrations.”
“The main drawback is the free plan's retention policy: users can only access the most recent 90 days of messages and files, with content older than one year permanently deleted.”
“Microsoft Teams — Best overall for business documents”
“Best for document collaboration”
“SharePoint and OneDrive support files up to 250 GB.”
“Office documents can be opened and collaboratively edited.”
“Teams has a particularly strong approach to file management because attachments are connected to Microsoft's document management ecosystem.”
“Strong document previews, Office integration, collaborative editing and enterprise storage management.”
“Private chat attachments have a 100 MB limit.”
“Google Chat — Best for Google-centric organizations”
“Google Chat is particularly convenient when teams already use Google Workspace.”
“Convenient Drive sharing and collaborative document workflows.”
“Spaces provide a central list of shared files.”
“The main storage constraint is the organization's Google Drive quota, which depends on its Workspace subscription and administration settings.”
“Mattermost — Best for storage control”
“Best for infrastructure control”
“Administrators can configure the maximum.”
“Supports self-hosted and S3-compatible file storage.”
“Flexible deployment, configurable upload limits and control over file infrastructure.”
“Its main limitation is that Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents do not have the same built-in preview experience as Microsoft Teams.”
“Discord — Best for visual communication”
“Best for visual and informal communities”
“Excellent image and video presentation; limited document previews”
“Discord is excellent for sharing screenshots, images and videos quickly.”
“non-image attachments such as PDFs and Word documents generally appear as file embeds rather than full document previews.”
“This makes it less suitable for businesses that exchange large numbers of reports and office documents.”