Spike has introduced email and team chat as part of its ‘Spike for Teams’ solution, which promises to revolutionise unified communications and collaboration experiences for small to medium-sized businesses.
The fully hosted email and team chat service can be utilised by internal teams and external, non-Spike users, such as partners, clients, and vendors.
Founded in 2018, Spike is a start-up enterprise based in Israel with the backing of leading investors, including Zoom, WIX, Capital, NFX, and more, which have funded around $30 million for the email software application.
Dvir Ben-Aroya, CEO of Spike, said: “Spike has been recognized as the world’s leading conversational email app on the market with more than 1 million active users globally.
“Now, we’re taking our vision of modern and unified communication and collaboration to the next level by launching an integrated email and messaging service for businesses.”
A Problem-Solving Solution
Recent research by Grammarly has shown that fragmented communications platforms can result in increased confusion and silos, and lower productivity, with an average cost to businesses of $12,506.
A report by the software company Qatalog has revealed that employees lose as much as five hours per week searching for information within their various apps.
Two further research reports uncovered that, even though employees have multiple communications services available to them, email remains the most popular option, in spite of some of the negative sentiment that has grown up around it.
Spike for Teams seeks to provide a resolution to these issues by combining conversational email, messaging, video conferencing, AI-assisted services, project management, and collaborative document management into a unified platform.
Ben-Aroya continuted: “Spike for Teams enables support teams to deliver rapid, precise responses using customizable message templates.
“It allows agencies to deliver top-tier service to their clients through various channels—email, chat, voice, and video.
“Startups can keep everyone on the same page using private groups and public channels.
“As the only communication and collaboration platform built on the technology that powers email, Spike for Teams has a unique edge over platforms that often require everyone to be on the same platform for effective communication.”
By bringing these disparate entities together, businesses will benefit from a streamlined user experience, as well as simplified, and even reduced, billing.
In fact, Ben-Aroya told UC Today that Zoom-related costs will be reduced with similar cost-savings soon to be added for other applications which will all be housed under Spike’s one roof.
Spike also provides users with the ability to use their own email domain or purchase their own custom domain via Spike for enhanced email and messaging functionality.
Teams can improve collaboration experiences by managing their communications across web-based clients, and mobile and desktop apps.
Spike for Teams enables users to switch between communications applications. For example, you can start a video from an email or change from a chat message to an audio call.
You can also collaborate on projects for increased teamwork, efficiency, and speed of business.
Key features
The key features of Spike for Teams include a custom domain, conversational email, AI-powered messaging, a priority inbox, video meetings, collaborative documents, platform-wide search functionality, channels, and groups.
Spike is available on iOS, Android, Mac, PC, and web browsers with both free and paid plans. Plan costs are based on the number of employees using Spike within a business.
Ben-Aroya discussed the launch with UC Today’s Rob Scott. He explained one of the company’s key differentiators: “What makes Spike different is that we have essentially combined Google Workspace and Slack together.
“We are the only ones in the world who are unifying internal communication, with channels and groups separated from emails for your team to communicate and to be aligned on, plus external communication.”
