Microsoft Teams Vs Clariti: Which one should you choose?

Due the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and the necessary practices of social distancing and working from home, all SaaS-based communication and collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack, Clariti have been seeing a dramatic increase in their userbase. While most of these tools look similar from outset, they differ widely in terms of their functionalities.

Teams’ spectacular growth
The main reason behind the sudden rise of Teams is it is being offered at no added cost to Office 365 users. This strategy paid for Teams as it was able to increase its market share and overtake its potential rival Slack in no time. Though Microsoft is not earning any revenue (they may actually be losing money in selling Teams), they are able to sustain due to their deep pockets. Many industry experts feel Teams is riding on ‘bundled offer’ and not on the product’s core strength.

Best Microsoft Team's alternative | Clariti is free!

What Teams lacks
Though Teams brings all communications like group chat, audio and video calling in one place, the related communications are not connected. Which means your conversations will remain disconnected though you will be technically using a single app. If you want to search for a presentation or a message from your colleague, you will have to search multiple channels to get the information. According to an American Management Association survey, 83% of executives think their companies have information silos and it has an adverse impact on their business.

For example, if you receive an email in Teams and chat about it with your colleagues using group chat after a few months if you want to refer to some information from that chat, you will have to use your memory to recall pertinent information and search across multiple information silos to find the information. This is extremely inefficient and stressful. So, the big question is: Can Teams help you to see the big picture buried in communication silos? Is Teams equipped to organize them neatly based on topics or context?

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Where Clariti scores
While Teams focuses on just communication, Clariti is a productivity tool that not only brings all your emails, chats, online meetings, shared files, social feeds, and tasks in a single app but also links related conversations into topic-based threads.

Clariti allows you to create a Thread using any item such as email, conference chat, social feeds, and To-Do. All the subsequent related conversations are automatically stored in that Thread. Few months down the line, when you want to go back and refer to a prior conversation or file, all you must do is remember the context and look inside the relevant Thread. In Clariti, no matter what was discussed and when it was discussed, you will be able to see the big picture in one view. This is not possible in Teams.

Also Read: All about Clariti’s AI-powered Threads

So how does a Thread work in Clariti?
Imagine you receive an email that you want to discuss with your colleague. In Clariti you can start chatting from the email with another Clariti user. The recipient can see the context that you are referring to – without you having to forward the email! Later, both the email and chat get neatly arranged inside a Thread which you can name.

Also Read: Still Forwarding Emails? There is a better way!

Beyond group communication
If you are looking to just exchange messages about a project, then you can go for Teams. But if you want to combine different pieces of communication to see the big picture, then you need Clariti. Clariti can do much more than Teams. You can even chat with your external stakeholders like suppliers and partners using OrbitChat; use machine learning algorithms to automatically arrange all related conversations in Thread; use “Instant Share” so share any email, chat, social feeds with multiple participants with a single click; add or remove participants in a group chat as needed; integrate social feeds (Twitter); view engineering CAD files from the browser and the list are endless.

Final verdict
You can use Teams if you want to just chat, share files, make audio, video calls or schedule meetings. But you cannot expect the number of emails to reduce or save time from searching for information, as all your conversations will still remain disconnected and you will still miss the big picture.

On the other hand, Clariti is more of a unified communication system that focuses more on productivity. It helps you organize all your communication like email, chat, cloud storage, social feeds in one place so that you can quickly find any information you want in just a few seconds, concentrate on your core job by reducing unnecessary emails, multi-task like a pro and never miss the big picture.