Businesses looking to modernize their team communications have a lot of options, from startups like Slack to established companies like Microsoft. Many of these apps seem like they do roughly the same thing.
That is why we thought this would be a good time to review what makes RingCentral App different. Interviews with Glip (now RingCentral App) users helped inform this article.
RingCentral Glip is part of a movement toward using modern messaging that works as well on smartphones as on computers and gives coworkers an alternative to email for team communications and collaboration. This type of app goes by many names, including team messaging, team collaboration, persistent team chat, and workstream communications and collaboration. RingCentral coined the term collaborative communications to describe its approach to making pervasive communication the foundation for more effective collaboration.
Glip users often cite a desire to escape from email overload, which is common for users of team messaging. But there are other reasons people like Glip, and these distinctions matter.
Free Accounts, Unlimited Storage
Rather than luring you in with a free trial, or crippled version of the software with limits on the number of messages you can post, messages you can search, or files you can upload, Glip pricing starts at free. Your ability to explore Glip and begin using it actively in your business is virtually unlimited: add as many users as you would like, create as many team conversations as you would like, and use Glip for as long as you would like, for free.
Glip doesn’t hold back features like the ability for you to search your own data, unlike some competitors. Video chat and screen sharing are the main collaboration feature that is unlocked through the paid version. But even the free version of Glip gives you a sample allotment of video minutes.
All Glip users can add guest users for free without limitation, making it easy to collaborate with contractors, consultants, business partners, and customers.
Access to priority support and more advanced administrative features are also enabled in paid versions of Glip.
Our RingCentral Office customers always enjoy the full, unlimited version of Glip, included in their service at no additional cost. The result of using Glip as part of RingCentral Office is a complete collaborative communications experience that allows you transition effortlessly between chat, voice, video, and screen sharing.
Built-In Online Meetings
Using Glip may allow you to drop some of your subscriptions to other cloud services, such as those for conducting online meetings. RingCentral Meetings, which is bundled with both Glip and RingCentral Office, lets you conduct HD video meetings with screen sharing and recording capabilities.
The video camera icon you see at the top of every one-on-one and team conversation lets you launch a video chat right from within the context of that conversation – a great way to quickly resolve an issue with a live video and screen sharing meeting.
You can also schedule meetings and send out calendar invites by email, meaning you can include people who are not already Glip users. That’s a distinction from other team chat tools that have added video only for users of the team chat tool.
Built-In Task Management
As a Glip user, you don’t necessarily need a separate project or team management tool to keep track of work that has been assigned to you or that you have delegated to others. Task assignments appear right within the Glip message stream, allowing everyone in the conversation to see when a task has been assigned or completed and whether people are meeting their deadlines. Tasks become part of the conversation, meaning you can comment on them or attach files to them.
In addition, you can see all your tasks, or all tasks associated with a specific conversation, in one place on the Tasks tab in Glip.
You can also integrate Glip with other cloud software for task and project management, such as Trello and Jira.
Many Ways to Communicate in one Place
Why waste time switching between apps, or even toggling between user interface tabs in the same app? Glip is designed to let you perform more communication and collaboration tasks, all in one place: type a message, share a file, create a note, assign a task, or schedule an event, all from the message box in any conversation.
From Glip you can also start a video chat, take all your calls, or even start a conference call. The enterprise telephony and conference call service are available to RingCentral Office customers.
Whether you use Glip with a free account, a stand-alone subscription, or as part of RingCentral Office, I hope this makes it clear how Glip is different. And if you haven’t tried it yet, what are you waiting for?
Originally published Jan 17, 2018, updated Jan 30, 2023
