Compare / Slack huddles
Olatti vs Slack huddles.
A lot of teams already pay for Slack, so a quick huddle feels like the obvious way to call. It works well for a chat between colleagues already in the workspace. Olatti solves the job Slack was never built for: a real business phone, reaching customers and suppliers on UK landlines and mobiles too.
Team chat with a huddle attached, or a business phone.
Slack wins on reach inside the team: channels and DMs are genuinely good, huddles are a single click away, and most people already have the app open all day. But a huddle only connects people who are already in Slack. There's no dialling a customer's mobile, no UK business number, and no saved audio or video recording. Paid plans can create AI notes for eligible huddles once someone turns them on.
Olatti is for the calls that actually leave the building. A UK number is included, recording is available, and plans with transcription let you search by what was said, including eligible calls to UK landlines and mobiles rather than only the people already sharing your workspace.
How they actually differ.
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| Olatti | Slack huddles | |
|---|---|---|
| What it's built for | A focused business communications service for UK teams, with calling and messaging in one product. | Team chat built around channels and direct messages, with huddles for quick internal audio or video conversations and a large app ecosystem. |
| Calling someone outside the team | Call UK landlines and mobiles: customers, suppliers and colleagues. One UK number is included, or bring an eligible existing number across for free. | Huddles connect people already in your workspace, or a shared Slack Connect channel where both sides use Slack. There's no dialling an ordinary landline or mobile number without adding a separate telephony app. |
| Getting a UK business number | Included from the start, or port your existing number in for free. | Slack doesn't supply a phone number or PSTN calling. Reaching a landline or mobile means connecting a third-party telephony integration first. |
| Setting it up | One service covers the number, calling and messaging, without a separate telephony provider to configure. | Create a workspace, invite the team and start a huddle from any channel or DM. Calling an outside number needs a separate telephony app configured first. |
| Reaching someone | Double-tap a hotkey, type a name, press enter to call. | Open the channel or DM and start a huddle. Free workspaces are limited to two people per huddle; paid plans allow up to 50, with video for the first 25. |
| Call recording | Call recording is available, with retention depending on the plan. | Slack doesn't save an audio or video recording of a huddle. On paid plans, members can turn on AI notes to create a summary and transcript, but not in huddles with external people or guest accounts. |
| Finding what was said | Plans with transcription let you search calls by what was said and jump to the matching moment. | AI huddle notes save a summary and embedded transcript to a canvas. Slack says the transcript itself won't appear in search results, so finding an exact spoken phrase means opening the canvas rather than searching across transcripts. |
| Messaging | Direct messages and channels sit alongside calling. | Channels and DMs are the core of the product, backed by a large marketplace of integrations. |
| Where your data goes | Processed on Olatti's own UK infrastructure, not handed to a third-party AI vendor. | Slack says customer data is not used to train large language models, and its native AI keeps model processing inside Slack-controlled infrastructure. Data is stored in the US by default; Business+ and Enterprise customers can choose London residency for certain data at rest. |
| How it's priced | A per-user service with calling and messaging together. Call allowances, recording retention and transcription depend on the plan. | Free includes two-person huddles. Paid plans allow larger huddles, and AI huddle notes are included on every paid plan. Pricing varies by billing choice and region. |
Slack details were checked against Slack's own huddles help article, AI huddle notes help article, AI plan guide, third-party calling guidance, privacy principles, data-residency guide and pricing page, current as of August 2026. Features and prices can vary by plan and region.
Where Slack genuinely wins.
If the team already lives in Slack, a huddle is a single click away, no separate app to open. Channels and DMs are a mature, well-liked way to work asynchronously, the free plan is genuinely usable for small internal chat, and Slack's app directory connects to far more tools than a focused calling product ever will. For a quick word with a colleague who's already online, that's hard to beat.
For the calls that leave the workspace.
Double-tap a hotkey, type a name, call. It works the same whether that name is a colleague or a customer on a UK landline or mobile number. Recording is available, and plans with transcription add search by what was said, kept on Olatti's own UK infrastructure.
Teams that stopped settling.
We'd basically given up on having a business phone - everything ran through WhatsApp and our mobiles. Olatti gave us a proper number back without the clunk. Now every client conversation sits in one place and nothing slips.
My hands never leave the keyboard. Double-tap, type a name, and I'm on the call before I'd even have found the number in our old setup. It's the first phone tool that keeps up with how we actually work.
It feels like it was made by people who care, which I can't say about anything else we've used. And we've stopped losing callbacks - Olatti flags the missed call and we ring back the same day.
Questions, answered plainly.
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