Building a strong company culture is crucial to any successful business, especially for remote teams.

Slack is the most popular communication method among teams. However, Slack is limited in most aspects of the true employee experience, so integrating with Slack apps like Donut can help make your team feel more connected.

Let’s look at Donut for Slack and explore the top 5 alternative Slack apps to build strong team engagement and collaboration.

What is Donut for Slack?

Donut is a popular Slack integration that helps team members meet new people. HR teams can set it up so that new employees can connect with their team members virtually, automatically.

The app has a free limited version where users can meet in a private channel and chat over Zoom or Google Meet.

Pros and Cons of Donut Slack App

Pros:

• Smooth integration into Slack
• Randomly pairs team members for coffee chats
• Makes workplace connections less intimidating for colleagues

Cons:

• Expensive: Starts $99/mo for the Pro Plan (Billed annually) or $119/mo billed monthly
• Matches are made somewhat randomly. There's no good way to specify parameters around who should be matched up with who.

All in all, Donut isn’t a great tool if you’re looking for a more holistic Slack app to keep employees engaged.

Good thing Donut’s not the only tool on the market! Let’s dive into the top 5 alternatives to Donut for Slack for better team building:

5 Donut Slack App Alternatives at a Glance:

• CultureBot
• Around
• Doozy
• HeyTaco
• Shuffl

1. CultureBot - Best Donut alternative for building company culture

Our top pick for Slack collaboration is CultureBot. It combines workplace collaboration, employee wellness, self-starter training, and more, all in one convenient app. So, if you want to revive dead channels, start conversation prompts, or cultivate team bonding, CultureBot has everything you need:

• Virtual watercooler feature that helps get your team chatting
• Birthday and Work Anniversary celebrations to show that you care
• Shoutouts to celebrate employees for their well-done work
• Employee wellness tips sent each week to keep your team healthy and happy
• Ability to automate reminders without feeling like a micromanager

For remote teams that value daily interaction with each other and want to create a more wholesome work environment, CultureBot is a perfect alternative for the Donut Slack app.

It has a 4.7 rating on G2 from 31 users and companies like Hellofresh and Metadata.io are already using it.

2. Doozy - Best Donut alternative for employee engagement

If making your employees feel special is your top priority, Doozy is the way to go. It focuses on generating fun, spontaneous conversations with quizzes, milestone celebrations and auto-scheduling calls between team members.

To get the most out of Doozy:

• Automate 1:1 call scheduling for new hires to meet all of their team members
• Set up a celebration announcement for birthdays and work anniversaries. You can pre-emptively ping managers so they know about upcoming events.
• Create custom quizzes using GIFs, images, and multiple-choice questions to add a fun spin to a boring Friday

Doozy has a 4.4 rating on G2 from 12 users.

3. Around - Best Donut alternative for hybrid work

Zoom calls are great for remote team collaboration, but too many back-to-back calls can lead to “Zoom fatigue” and, oftentimes, burnout. After all, you can only spend so much time staring directly at your screen without any breaks. Around has solved this by making video meetings more fun & inclusive:

• All the call participants show up as floating circles so you can continue to work while being on a call with your team rather than have to switch back and forth between video call and work
• Their innovative sound technology removes all background noise so that your team can on be in the same room and still get no echo
• Create dedicated collaboration spaces to allow remote employees to tap into workplace culture
• Use their Slack integration to jump into an “Around” call right from your workspace

Around has a 4.5 rating on G2 from 18 users.

4. HeyTaco - Best Donut alternative for team morale

If you want to build team morale and give your team a reason to smile, HeyTaco is the perfect tool. This platform allows team members to send each other virtual tacos for recognition and appreciation. I was surprised to see how well these small gestures work to bring that sense of camaraderie and mutual respect to our team.

• Each team member can give others shoutouts in the form of “tacos”
• There are weekly leaderboards to celebrate the folks that gave out the most tacos and the ones that received the most tacos
• You can set up meaningful rewards: T-shirts, cups, and pins with your company branding that your team can redeem with their hard-earned tacos.
• Send surveys through HeyTaco and learn how your team is feeling this quarter

HeyTaco has a 4.8 rating on G2 from 450 users.

5. Shuffl - Best Donut alternative for team networking

Are all your teams working in silos? A lot of remote teams suffer from this since there's no real room for spontaneous connection. Shuffl's Slack app is built to solve this problem. It focuses on creating a better work environment by using AI to connect one group with another.

• Each team member can write their own (much longer) bio that others can read before getting on a call
• New hires get automatically paired up with the right team member to get properly onboarded
• Leaders can set up group meetings with team to boost morale

Since Shuffl is relatively new, there are not many reviews on G2.

So, What Tool Takes the Cake?

When choosing a Slack app for workplace collaboration, the options abound. While Donut paved the way in randomized coffee chats, today's teams require more robust, customizable solutions. Tools like CultureBot, Around, Doozy, HeyTaco, Shuffl's take Donut's precepts for bringing teams together across distances to the next level.

Rather than cobbling together disjointed apps that only isolate facets of remote collaboration, adopt a unified toolkit like CultureBot for connectivity. Give your distributed teams the purpose-built home for engagement they deserve while realizing smoother coordination across the organization.

Want to learn more? Get in touch or start a free trial with CultureBot today to bring the power of Slack apps like Donut into one intuitive destination, boosting CultureBot company-wide.