Synchronize
How Synchronize moved from Slack to Pachca after almost 10 years and kept every process intact
About the company
Hi! I'm Adelina Fedina, internal communications manager at Synchronize. Synchronize is an education project for people learning as a hobby. Our main product is courses on art, culture and science. 211,000 people have taken them so far, and we're glad that number keeps growing.
Life before Pachca
We'd used Slack for work communication ever since we were founded in 2015. But last year we took another look at our costs and saw that the app had become too expensive. For a company with 90 employees, staying there just didn't make financial sense.
We were also worried Slack might get blocked in Russia, so we were backing up our data every month. That's why we were looking specifically for a Russian solution. We sat in on demos of different team chat apps and compared their features across several criteria. We chose Pachca because it covered everything we needed.
Then we started testing Pachca with a small group: the head of IT projects, a senior IT projects manager, our former HR Lead and me. After that, we rolled it out to the whole team.
The moment we knew Pachca was the one
The deciding factors were the wide range of integrations and a pleasant interface. We were really happy with the clear guide to importing from Slack. Thanks to it, the move was fast and seamless. A few more things we love about Pachca: 1) notification sounds. My colleagues were thrilled with the "whoop," the "ting" and the rest; 2) every employee can contact support, not just administrators; 3) regular updates and improvements. Almost everything we've reached out about has already been fixed or is on the roadmap.
How Pachca changed the way we communicate
Pachca is very similar to Slack, so the quality of our communication stayed at the same level. On the plus side, everyone was able to organize their own workspace the way they like. We also started using integrations more. For example, we built a bot that posts the previous day's revenue.
I use Favorites a lot. It helps me keep track of the information I need: instructions, links and other details.
Tips for making the switch
Most importantly, write down in advance which features are critical for your company. We made a comparison table, and it helped us quickly pick the best-fit team chat app.
Put together a basic guide for employees: how to sign up, which chats exist, how to join them and so on. You can also invite colleagues to share screenshots or tips on how they organize their workspace.
