Tired of too many chats, missed updates, and switching apps all day?
Tools like Slack and Campfire are designed to fix that, helping teams talk, share, and work together more smoothly.
While both aim to simplify internal communication, they work differently and suit different kinds of teams. In this blog, we’ll break down what Slack and Campfire offer and their subscription plans.
Plus, we’ll introduce you to a bonus tool that streamlines collaboration for your whole team, providing a workspace where you don’t need to juggle!
Campfire vs Slack: Which Team Chat Tool is Better?
Summarize this article for me pleaseCampfire vs. Slack at a Glance
Want a quick preview? Here’s Slack vs. Campfire at a glance:
| Feature | Slack | Campfire (via Basecamp) | 🌼 Bonus: ClickUp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collaboration | Channels, DMs, huddles, clips, Slack Connect, real-time updates, file sharing | 2,000+ integrations, including Google Drive, Salesforce, and AI features | Integrated chat with tasks, comments, docs, chat, whiteboards, real-time updates, file sharing, and collaborative doc editing |
| Project management | Custom workflows, task tracking with lists, templates, canvases, and automations | Basic file and message sharing within Basecamp projects | 2,000+ integrations, including Google Drive, Salesforce, and AI features |
| Integrations | 1,000+ integrations, including Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, and built-in AI features | 1,000+ integrations, including Google Drive, Slack, GitHub, and built-in AI features | Teams of any size needing all-in-one project management, collaboration, AI, and automation |
| Search & history | Enterprise-grade search across chats, files, and connected tools | Searchable chat history with threaded messages | Powerful AI-powered search across tasks, docs, chats, attachments, and comments |
| Ease of use | Full-featured but may require onboarding | Simple interface, easy setup for small teams | Intuitive interface with customizable views, suitable for all team sizes |
| Best for | Mid-to-large teams needing robust tools and deep integrations | Small teams using Basecamp or looking for minimal, chat-focused communication | Teams of any size needing all-in-one project management, collaboration, AI and automation |
How we review software at ClickUp
Our editorial team follows a transparent, research-backed, and vendor-neutral process, so you can trust that our recommendations are based on real product value.
Here’s a detailed rundown of how we review software at ClickUp.
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is Slack?
A cloud-based messaging platform for project management, Slack streamlines communication for teams of all sizes.
If your team thrives on quick threaded conversations and sharing files back and forth, you are in luck. The platform comes with dedicated spaces where team members can quickly access information to understand the context of projects right from the beginning.
With additional features such as channels, direct messaging, file sharing, and app integrations, Slack keeps conversations organized and the workflow smooth and running.
The goal? Replace endless email threads with fast, flexible team discussions!
Slack features
Slack offers a freemium model, perfect for teams of different sizes and needs.
The platform is packed with powerful tools to make teamwork smoother and faster. Here are some of its key features:
Feature #1: Collaboration
With Slack, chats are not buried in endless emails. Teams can communicate via topic-based channels that keep files, conversations, and updates organized and transparent. You can install it on both mobile and desktop for seamless communication.
Slack Connect extends that same ease to clients or partners outside your company. You can chat by text, host quick morning Huddles for voice or video calls, share screen, or create Clips, short recordings to keep everyone in the loop across different schedules.
Feature #2: Project management
Slack offers powerful project management features that streamline the entire project lifecycle, from planning to execution, all within a single platform. You can kick-start projects with templates that provide pre-configured channels, lists, canvases, and workflows, all ready for you to customize.
Canvases act as a central hub for your project, allowing you to embed essential content, collaborate with your team through comments, and even add automations to simplify routine tasks. For managing project work, Lists provide a collaborative space for teams to track tasks and stay organized.
Together, these features create a cohesive and intuitive environment that makes it easy to plan, organize, and execute work directly in Slack.
Feature #3: Integrations
With Workflow Builder, Slack lets you automate everyday tasks easily, from simple to complex processes. Slack integrates with popular tools like Google Drive and Salesforce, so you get to build automated workflows that work directly within Slack.
You can even bring AI into your workflows and automate actions, summarize channels, and connect CRM data for smarter decisions.
💡 Pro Tip: Finding it challenging to find and sort chats, integrate apps, and customize your workspace? Check these Slack hacks to improve workplace communication. ✅
Feature #4: Searchable information
Slack’s enterprise search goes beyond simple keyword matching. It creates a unified, searchable hub by connecting to all your key third-party apps and data sources, such as Google Drive, Salesforce, and more.
Powered by AI, the search can understand natural language questions and provide comprehensive, summarized answers, rather than just a list of links. It also respects user permissions, ensuring that you only see the information you have access to.
Agentforce takes this a step further by introducing autonomous AI agents that act as a digital workforce.
For example, an agent can be configured to respond to IT support requests, summarize a customer’s account history from Salesforce, and even automate Slack actions like creating a new channel for a project or updating a project canvas with key details.
Slack pricing
- Free Forever
- Pro: $8.75/month per user
- Business+: $18/month per user
- Enterprise Grid: Custom pricing
➡️ Read More: Best Slack Competitors
📮ClickUp Insight: The average professional spends 30+ minutes a day searching for work-related information—that’s over 120 hours a year lost to digging through emails, Slack threads, and scattered files.
An intelligent AI assistant embedded in your workspace can change that. Enter ClickUp Brain. It delivers instant insights and answers by surfacing the right documents, conversations, and task details in seconds—so you can stop searching and start working.
💫 Real Results: Teams like QubicaAMF reclaimed 5+ hours weekly using ClickUp—that’s over 250 hours annually per person—by eliminating outdated knowledge management processes. Imagine what your team could create with an extra week of productivity every quarter!
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is Campfire?
Campfire is Basecamp’s built-in real-time group chat tool designed to streamline communication within teams. Instead of relying on traditional emails or scattered messages, Campfire creates a centralized virtual room where team members exchange text, files, code snippets, and ideas in real time.
As part of the Basecamp stack, it integrates seamlessly into project workflows, making real-time collaboration smoother and more efficient. Its features are especially useful for quick updates, brainstorming sessions, and informal team chats.
Campfire features
Campfire offers a simple and organized space for smaller teams to collaborate.
Teams can access private chats—or Pings—and enjoy unlimited chat history to ensure all important information is saved for the future. Here’s all that Campfire offers:
Feature #1: Collaboration
Campfire enables instant messaging between team members within a Basecamp project. Your team gets to share updates, ask quick questions, and have informal discussions, perfect for collaboration without switching tools.
This feature is crucial for maintaining an agile workflow and ensuring everyone stays on the same page. You can manage the flow of information by using custom notifications and mentions (@) to specifically alert team members when their input is needed. This prevents important messages from getting lost in the conversation and ensures timely responses.
Feature #2: Project management
Sharing files within Campfire is seamless and intuitive. Whether it’s a document, an image, or a code snippet, you can easily upload and view files directly in the chat.
This eliminates the need for cumbersome email attachments or external links, keeping all project communication and resources neatly organized and in a single place.
Integrations like Enchant can also trigger automated updates with all the information in the Basecamp Campfire Room.
Feature #3: Integrations
Campfire integrates with 30+ tools, allowing your team to manage conversations without jumping between platforms.
Since Campfire is built into Basecamp, you can also link several third-party platforms for time tracking, contracts, proposals, and more.
Feature #4: Searchable information
All conversations in Campfire are automatically saved and fully searchable. This creates a comprehensive historical record that can be revisited at any time, which is invaluable for new and existing team members getting up to speed or for referencing past decisions.
To keep busy chats organized and focused, Campfire uses threads, allowing you to branch off from a main conversation to discuss specific points. This makes it easy to follow multiple discussions simultaneously and find the information you need when you need it.
Campfire pricing
Campfire has been merged into Basecamp and is available for integration. Here are the Basecamp pricing details:
- Free Forever
- Plus: $15/user per month
- Pro Unlimited: $299/month (billed annually)
💟 Bonus: If you want to truly integrate AI into your workflows, there’s Brain MAX! This powerful desktop app unifies AI, search, and automation across all your work apps. Say goodbye to the chaos of disconnected AI tools—this is the new era of Contextual AI.
With Brain MAX, you eliminate AI sprawl and boost productivity with voice-first commands, unified search across every app, and instant custom report creation. It eases your cognitive load and surfaces risks and reports without delay, so you can work smarter and faster than ever before.
Summarize this article for me pleaseCampfire vs. Slack: Features Compared
Both Slack and Campfire are tools designed to streamline team communication and collaboration, but they cater to different organizational needs. Slack is a strong, feature-rich collaboration platform ideal for larger teams and complex workflows.
Campfire, merged with Basecamp, on the other hand, focuses on simplicity and real-time communication for project management.
Let’s compare these two platforms based on key features to see how they compare with each other.
Feature #1: Collaboration
Slack offers a wide range of features that go beyond basic messaging. With channels, direct messaging, file sharing, and powerful search capabilities, teams can communicate in an organized and efficient way.
Campfire focuses on real-time chat and file sharing right alongside projects, offering a simpler and more focused approach. This keeps information flowing at all times, allowing you to close projects faster.
🏆 Winner: Campfire wins this round. Campfire’s integrated approach allows for better context and informed communication about projects, which is ideal for keeping things quick across different departments.
➡️ Read More: Top Asynchronous Communication Tools
Feature #2: Project management
Slack, while not a project management tool, integrates seamlessly with project management tools, allowing you to receive updates and manage tasks within your channels.
Campfire is a real-time chat feature built directly into Basecamp, a comprehensive project management platform. Because it’s an integral part of Basecamp, which includes tools for to-do lists, scheduling, and document sharing, you get native integration by default, eliminating the need to use a separate tool for task tracking or workflow management.
🏆 Winner: Campfire takes the crown on this one. Slack’s functionality focuses more on seamless collaboration, while Campfire also helps manage project timelines.
Feature #3: Integrations
One of Slack’s strongest points is its integration capabilities, which allow users to connect to over 2,000 third-party apps. This level of integration ensures that Slack fits seamlessly into existing workflows, providing users with the flexibility to use the tools they are already familiar with.
While Campfire itself (the chat feature) offers some basic integrations, the broader Basecamp platform has a growing number of integrations, though not on the same scale as Slack. Basecamp’s integrations are often designed to enhance its native project management capabilities, with a focus on tools for time tracking, invoicing, and reporting.
You can use services like Zapier to connect Basecamp to other platforms.
🏆 Winner: Slack gets brownie points here. Its rich functionality and versatility make it simple to ensure a seamless workflow.
Feature #4: Searchable information
When it comes to finding information, Slack’s enterprise search is in a league of its own. Think of it as a single search bar for your entire company’s knowledge.
Basecamp’s Campfire, on the other hand, helps you keep conversations from getting messy.
While Campfire is for real-time, informal chats, Basecamp also has a separate Message Board for more formal discussions. This is where you can organize conversations into neat, easy-to-read threads. This setup ensures that important project decisions and key information are easy to find and reference later, preventing them from getting lost in the day-to-day chatter.
🏆 Winner: It’s a tie. Slack has an edge on scale, while Campfire takes the lead for those interested in a simple and clear space.
Summarize this article for me pleaseSlack vs. Campfire on Reddit
We turned to Reddit to find out which tool corporates prefer. When you search for Slack vs. Campfire, many users agree that Slack has a comprehensive set of features.
While Campfire is ideal for team communication, Slack offers advanced features that help ensure a smooth workflow.
But some users appreciate its simplicity. One user on Reddit said,
Some users expressed concerns about the chat history being deleted in the Slack server, and they recommended using Campfire for chat backup.
Summarize this article for me pleaseMeet ClickUp—The Best Alternative to Slack and Campfire
ClickUp, the everything app for work, replaces scattered chats, missed threads, and disconnected tools.
The best part? Conversations, tasks, docs, and collaboration are now all in one seamless workspace. It’s everything your team needs, without ever leaving the app.
Let’s explore its features together to see how you can make collaboration easier!
ClickUp’s one-up #1: ClickUp Chat
Broken chats, unorganized tasks, and missed threads will no longer be an issue.
With ClickUp Chat, you can start conversations in public Channels to keep everyone on your team informed about what’s happening.
Here’s how you can use it:
- Never lose track of action items: Instantly assign comments to the right person or convert them into tasks, so nothing slips through the cracks
- Turn conversations into results: With one click, transform chat discussions into actionable tasks—no more forgotten follow-ups
- Keep context at your fingertips: Automatically link tasks, docs, and chats, so your team always has the full picture
- Work faster with AI: Get smart suggestions to auto-create tasks, summarize threads, and more—saving you time and effort
- Share important updates: Create Posts for announcements, updates, and discussions to keep everyone aligned
- Meet and recap with ease: Start calls with a single click and receive automatic summaries highlighting all key points
- Collaborate in real time: Use Syncups for audio or video calls directly within ClickUp—no extra tools required
ClickUp One Up #2: ClickUp Tasks
Looking for a feature that keeps your tasks organized for reduced back-and-forth? ClickUp Tasks automates work, enhances collaboration, and connects all your productivity tools, such as Docs, Chat, and Whiteboards, with built-in AI.
Here’s how it makes team collaboration easy for every task:
- Tailor tasks to your workflow: Use Custom Fields, categories, and task types that fit your team’s unique processes
- Automate the busywork: Save time with automated task assignments, notifications, and status updates—focus on what matters most
- Centralize and streamline: Add tasks to multiple project lists and keep all discussions in one place to eliminate duplicates
- Stay on top of progress: Monitor project status and performance insights at a glance for better decision-making
- Turn input into action: Convert form submissions into tasks automatically with AI-powered suggestions
- Prioritize with precision: Set custom statuses and priority levels to keep your team focused on what’s most important
- Visualize connections: Link related tasks with dependencies to see project impact and manage timelines effectively
- All-in-one management: Handle tasks, calendars, reminders, and to-dos from a single, unified platform
ClickUp’s One Up #3: ClickUp Brain
ClickUp Brain is your intelligent workspace assistant, designed to keep your team moving forward without missing a beat. With it, you never have to wonder about anything!
Just ask, and the AI will automatically pull context from your chats and tasks. ClickUp Brain ensures that everyone stays aligned, informed, and focused on what matters most.
Here’s how ClickUp Brain delivers value and keeps your work running smoothly:
- Instant context, always at hand: Never lose track of important details—ClickUp Brain surfaces relevant information from your conversations and tasks right when you need it
- Effortless collaboration: By connecting insights from chat threads and task updates, ClickUp Brain helps your team collaborate more effectively and make faster decisions
- Proactive assistance: Get timely reminders, suggestions, and summaries based on ongoing discussions and project activity, so nothing falls through the cracks
- Multiple AI models for smarter results: ClickUp Brain lets you access multiple large language models (LLMs) to provide the most accurate, relevant, and nuanced responses for your unique needs
- Image generation and creative support: Instantly generate images and visual assets directly within your workflow, helping you bring ideas to life without leaving ClickUp
- Web search and real-time answers: Access up-to-date information from the web via Brain, so you always have the latest insights and data to inform your decisions
- Streamlined workflows: It reduces manual searching and context-switching, letting you focus on high-impact work instead of hunting for information
ClickUp’s One Up #4: ClickUp Comments and ClickUp Docs
What if you want to edit in real-time with your team members? We have got you covered there, too! ClickUp Docs helps you keep all your information organized. Here’s how it helps:
- Turn ideas into action: Link docs directly to your tasks and projects, ensuring every idea moves forward
- Create docs your way: Use nested pages, rich styling options, and ready-made templates to build the perfect document for any need
- Engage your team: Organize information with nested bookmarks, tables, and more—ideal for roadmaps, wikis, and knowledge bases
- Collaborate in real time: Brainstorm, edit, and resolve issues together with instant, live editing
- Keep knowledge front and center: Mark important docs as wikis so your team can easily revisit and reference them whenever needed
Missed comments? Lost tasks? Lags in meeting deadlines? Sounds too much to manage and control? But not with ClickUp Comments. It lets you assign comments that require action, so the relevant team member knows what needs to be done.
Once you finish your tasks, you can easily resolve these comments to avoid any confusion!
Here’s what Marianela Fernandez, Water Treatment Consultant, at Eco Supplier Panamá, thinks about using ClickUp:
💡 Pro Tip: Efficient communication requires a comprehensive plan that everyone in the team understands and follows. Check these project communication plan templates to get a structured approach to creating a plan.🧮
Summarize this article for me pleaseMake Team Communication Effortless With ClickUp!
Choosing the right communication platform can make or break team coordination efforts and directly influence the smoothness of the workflow.
Slack offers advanced features with integrations, advanced search, and multi-channel communication. The platform is perfect if you are looking for an app that combines project management and communication.
On the other hand, Campfire keeps things simple, with clear conversations, minimal distractions, and a sharp focus on collaboration.
But if you’re looking for an all-in-one platform to collaborate, discuss, and manage projects, consider ClickUp. With ClickUp Chats, Comments, Tasks, and Docs, you can transform your conversations into action, keeping communication fluid and your work organized. It’s more than just a chat tool; it’s a complete workspace where nothing slips through the cracks.
Explore ClickUp now and transform team communication—sign up for a free account!
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
