So, your search for the best tool to build your team’s culture has come down to Slack and Candor, but you’re unsure how you can use either — or both — to bring your team closer together.
While we’re the team behind Candor and would love for you to use our tool, we want you to build your culture using the best fit for your team. So we objectively broke down how you can use Slack or Candor across all the different ways you might want to create a stronger culture — plus what’s possible by combining both tools.
Here’s the bottom line:
Although both tools were designed for remote or hybrid teams in mind, they’re built for entirely different use cases — which means different features!
Let’s break down how you can use the key features in each product ⤵️
Shoutouts are what they sound like: an intentional way of celebrating your teammates. Recognizing each other’s wins boosts morale, reinforces positive behavior, and helps build a supportive team culture.
Slack channels are dedicated spaces where you can bring together people from your company to discuss or collaborate on a common goal or project. You can create a channel for a project, topic, or team, and can set their access to be public (anyone from your company can join) or private (invite-only).
Candor encourages teammates to share shoutouts based on your team’s values. These shoutouts can acknowledge each other’s strengths or wins and map them back to your team values. This way, you’re celebrating behavior that truly represents your culture.
Use Slack for spontaneous kudos and Candor for more intentional, values-driven shoutouts. Candor’s integration with Slack allows for seamless recognition across both platforms.
Continuous feedback helps improve performance, encourages growth, and strengthens relationships within the team.
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In addition to channels, Slack lets you message teammates privately, too. This is super useful when you don’t want to clog up a channel with information that’s only relevant to a specific subset of people, or if you want to praise people in private.
Candor allows you to create bi-directional feedback rituals with teammates. You’re able to select the teammate you’ll pair with, choose from a few starter prompts, and answer them. Responses are only visible to both people in the feedback ritual. .
Use Slack for immediate, informal feedback and Candor for structured, detailed feedback sessions. This creates a balance of instant communication and thoughtful, documented feedback.
One of the hardest things about working in a remote team is remembering to check in — both with others, and with yourself.
With Slack, you can check-in with your teammates in a group channel or direct message.
Candor creates a fun and easy way for you to keep a pulse on your team’s goals, progress, wins, and overall feelings at work. Every week, the team is sent a reminder when it’s time for their check-ins.
💼 For professional check-ins, this could be upcoming goals or recent accomplishments.
🧘 For personal check-ins, this could be what you’re reading or watching.
From there, everyone on the team completes the required prompts. After everyone’s check-ins are complete, you can review your team’s responses to stay aligned and see who your team is outside of work to build genuine connections.
Use Slack for quick, daily check-ins and Candor for everything else — more in-depth check ins that help teammates get to know who they are at work and outside of it.
1-on-1 meetings are key for a successful ongoing feedback model. They give managers and their teams uninterrupted time to discuss projects, review performance, remove blockers, and more.
Text isn’t the only way to communicate on Slack. With huddles, you can instantly connect with channels or individuals over audio or video and share your screen.Think of it like a quick, ad-hoc meeting — just like the name suggests.
Candor enables regular 1-on-1s with teammates, allowing you to set an agenda, meeting cadence, and recurring time. Teammates will get a reminder two days before each meeting to review the shared agenda and prep for the call.
Use Slack for quick, spontaneous huddles and Candor for structured, regular 1-on-1s. This combination creates room for quick problem-solving and ongoing, deep-dive discussions.
Sometimes it can be overwhelming for a new hire to join the team and get up to speed on who everyone is. Facilitating a smooth onboarding includes finding easy ways for your team to introduce themselves to anyone that joins, and vice versa, to build strong bonds from the beginning.
Members in Slack can add a bio to their profiles to make working together easier. They can share helpful details, like their time zone or job title, that others can see at a glance.
Candor profiles are a way for individual teammates to share their work preferences, styles, and quirks.
Use Slack to logistic details around people’s roles. Use Candor to find out who your team is as people.
If you’ve ever needed input from everyone on your team, you’re probably familiar with the concept of polls. They’re a quick, easy way for people to vote on things async.
You can create polls in Slack channels through apps like like Simple Poll and Polly. You can set up the poll, customize questions, and collect responses from team members efficiently.
Candor’s polls are a simple, fun way to get your teammates to weigh in on things—whether it’s admin like choosing a location for your next offsite, or a fun icebreaker to bring everyone closer. You can choose from Candor’s pre-set list of polls or create your own, send reminders to your team to vote before the poll ends, and see the final results in real-time.
Use Candor for structured, intentional polling, and send the results to Slack with Candor’s Slack integration.
One of Slack’s strongest superpowers are its integrations. Users can choose from a library of over 2,600 apps to bring all their tools together in Slack.
Candor integrates with Slack so you can bring shoutouts, feedbacks, and check-ins directly to the place your team is working in. Candor also integrates with Okta.
Slack has 3 pricing tiers:
Candor has a simple pricing system:
Plus, Candor Profiles are 100% free to make, always.
Candor complements Slack beautifully. It’s a space where employees can connect on a personal level, share their stories, and build lasting relationships. While Slack handles the “what” and “how” of work, Candor tackles the “who” and “why.” This is made possible by Candor’s integration with Slack.
In practice, this looks like using Slack for day-to-day operations and Candor for everything that builds and sustains your company culture. Imagine starting your day with a quick sync on Slack, diving into project updates, and then switching to Candor for a virtual coffee break where you share weekend stories or celebrate a team member’s success. It’s the best of both worlds—productivity without losing the human touch.
In conclusion, Slack and Candor are made for different things:
What’s the difference? A common mistake is equating communication with culture. Sure, communication is a part of culture, but it’s not the whole picture. When companies try to build culture solely through how they discuss work, employees end up feeling disconnected. Real culture involves recognition, genuine conversations, and relationship-building — which can’t be fully captured in Slack.
At Candor, we think culture demands intentionality. It needs dedicated spaces where people can share who they are, not just what they do. This is where Slack falls short. The platform is excellent for project discussions and quick updates but lacks the depth needed for true human connection. A Slack thread might tell you what happened, but it won’t tell you how someone feels or what they value.
But, when it comes to Slack vs. Candor, it’s not about choosing one over the other. Each brings addresses different needs of a remote team; Slack is your go-to for seamless communication, keeping everyone connected and informed. Candor, on the other hand, is your culture cultivator, ensuring that the human aspect of your team thrives.
Slack and Candor aren’t competitors — they're collaborators.
Ready to get started? Start building your team’s culture with Candor.
Candor makes it easy to connect and have fun with your teammates, even while you’re remote. Use Candor to do feedback, shoutouts, check-ins, and more, all in one place.
Feel free to share questions or feedback with our team. We will be in touch within 1 business day.
