I always kind of scratch my head when people get mad about Teams; the complaints seem to fall into a few categories:

* Things that were fixed years ago

* Things that Teams does poorly, but Slack doesn't do at all (like file management)

* Missing functionality that, as even a heavy Slack user, I didn't even know was there at all

Not that Teams is perfect by any means. Not even close. There are things Teams does better than Slack, there are things Slack does better than Teams. But Slack is not so much better than Teams that I would spend anywhere near what Slack costs to use it over Teams. I would spend $2-$5 per month for Slack over Teams. I think you really hit the nail on the head when you call out that Teams is effectively free.

And I suspect the same thing will be true for Loop vs. Notion or Coda.

That said, Microsoft is really great at not making people aware of the stuff they have. I can't tell you how many times I have worked at a company, they spent big bucks on a pieces of COTS or SaaS and I said, "ya know, I think Office Suite has this already?" and they weren't even aware of it. Not that the Microsoft solution is best (it's often nowhere clear close), but "free, and already licensed, but mediocre" is sometimes really all you need. Same reason you see a ton of companies doing just fine sticking stuff into Excel when someone sells a very well-crafted solution built with love and care.

J.Ja