Most people who hear the phrase “collaboration tools” immediately think of tools that they can use to connect with clients or with multiple team members. This is not only true, but collaboration tools often provide other useful features that help manage your business better.
Client collaboration software is one of the most popular collaboration apps that are widely being accepted by companies to build lasting business relationships with their clients or vendors. Coordinating within the organization to set up this software is not difficult because it has a user-friendly interface so you can concentrate on your work while handling your meetings, appointments, and tasks.
ClickUp
ClickUp is the world’s leading project management tool and is used by highly productive teams worldwide.
From team document collaboration to remote project management, this project management software can handle anything and everything!
The best part?
This team collaboration software is free!
ClickUp key features
Here’s why ClickUp is the best document collaboration software available in the market:
Docs
ClickUp’s Docs is a built-in document collaboration solution for your team.
Use it to create and store important company and project-related documents that your team can easily edit and access.
Here’s a closer look at what you get with ClickUp Docs:
- Real-Time Editing to edit a document alongside other team members to maximize collaboration
- Collaboration Detection to see when a team member views, comments, or edits a document
- Real-Time Syncing ensures that recent changes are reflected on every team members’ device
- Nesting allows you to organize pages within a document for added categorization
- Rich Text Formatting to give you all the functionality you need to create detailed, beautiful documents
- Keep your Docs public or private with the Permissions Feature. Send links for file sharing and you can customize what the recipient can do with the file
- Import Feature for importing documents from external sources to Clickup Docs. For example, you can import work from Evernote, Google Docs, and even from a Microsoft Word Document
- The ability to get your Docs indexed by Google to appear in search results
Talk about the perfect tool for knowledge management!
Notepad
ClickUp’s Notepad feature offers team members a personal space to jot down important ideas. No one else can access your notepad and you can convert your ideas to tasks when needed and then share them with your team.
You can also use the notepad to create simple to-do lists for yourself, like a list of ingredients for a new recipe you want to try out! 🧀 #FoodiesUnite
Comments
Stop, collaborate, and listen with ClickUp’s Comments feature. It lets teams communicate by sharing images, links, and videos within the task and also lets you tag team members.
Worried your team might scroll past these comments or forget to address them?
Don’t worry.
ClickUp’s powerful collaborative system has got you covered!
With the Assigned Comments feature, you can convert comments into action items for specific members. This way, the comment always stays on their radar.
Mind Maps
ClickUp’s Mind Maps tool is the Dr. Watson to your Sherlock. 🎩
We all need someone or something to bring a logical approach to our fantastic ideas, right?
For maximum flexibility, there are two modes you can use:
- Task Mode helps you visualize your existing task structure by rearranging them into logical paths. You can also edit, create, and delete tasks right from your view.
- Blank Mode lets you create a mindmap from scratch. The nodes you create can be converted to tasks with a click of a button.
5. Annotations & Proofing
ClickUp’s Annotate & Proofing feature lets you easily add feedback to PNG, GIF, PEG, WEBP, and PDF files. Highlight important points, leave comments and notes for the reader… the file is your oyster!
ClickUp pros
- Powerful free version with unlimited users
- Access to video conferencing and screen sharing with ClickUp’s Zoom Integration
- Set Task Priorities to tackle urgent tasks first
- Supports Apple, Windows, iOS, Android, and Linux platforms
- Easy-to-use user interface with online and offline mode
- Excellent customer support
- Multiple Views to adapt to Agile, Scrum, Kanban, or any project style
- Customized Task Statuses for your project needs
- 50+ Task Automations to streamline workflows
- Task Dependencies helps teams complete tasks in the right order
- Intuitive Gantt Chart feature to visualize project progress
- Access your team’s activity reports with Pulse
- Integrates with several third-party software like Evernote, Time Doctor, Salesforce, and more
- Hotkeys and Keyboard Shortcuts to improve user experience
- Drag and Drop task reordering functionality
ClickUp cons
- No white-labeling support
- Can’t export dashboards
Check out ClickUp’s roadmap here to see how we’re fixing these minor drawbacks. Also, see all the exciting features that this free document collaboration tool has in store for you!
ClickUp pricing
ClickUp has a feature-rich free plan with paid plans starting from $5/user per month.
ClickUp user ratings
- G2: 4.7/5 (1400+ reviews)
- Capterra: 5.7/5 (2000+ reviews)
Google Docs
No list of document collaboration tools would be complete without Google Docs. After Google Docs first came out in 2006, it quickly transformed the way we collaborate and share documents. People were eager to leave the cluttered and confusing interface of Microsoft Word behind and embraced the intuitiveness of Google Docs.
Today, it remains the most popular collaborative word processor, with millions of users worldwide. It’s free, flexible, and user-friendly, making it a great option for smaller teams with limited budgets.
What users say about Google Docs:
“Google Docs is the most powerful online word processor available at the moment. It is also completely free and syncs with all other G Suite applications such as Slides and Sheets, and can all be found seamlessly on Google Drive. The main selling point of Google Docs for me is its collaboration capability that is unparalleled in simplicity. All you have to do is press ‘Share’ and send a quick email with an invitation to edit a document.”
Zoho Docs
Zoho Docs is a part of Zoho Office Suite and is quite similar to Google Docs.
It stands out thanks to its highly advanced editor and a wide variety of formatting options. It comes with a bit of a learning curve, but if you are looking to design documents with entirely custom layouts, it’s worth the trade-off.
In addition to being able to collaborate on any document in real time, Zoho also offers a built-in chat where you can discuss your progress.
What users say about Zoho Docs:
“Zoho Docs is an excellent, free document management system. I get delighted just opening the software. My favorite parts about Zoho Docs are the interface, the features, and the ease of use. The free storage is also amazing.”
Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft created one of the gold standards of document editing tools in the form of Word, and it continues to dominate the market. For many years, online collaboration has not been one of its strengths, however, that changed with the launch of the cloud-based Office 365, which includes the online versions of all Microsoft apps, including Word. Today, it firmly positioned itself as an enterprise-grade competitor to tools like Google Docs.
Microsoft has also made an effort to simplify the notoriously complex interface of the Office 365 apps. The web-based version of Word features a more minimal set of toolbars that make it easier to navigate and find the settings you need. It’s still significantly more complex than something like Google Docs or Nuclino, but it’s also more powerful, and for some teams, it might be the better trade-off.
All in all, Microsoft remains one of the most popular business productivity platforms, and not without reason. If your organization is already powered by other products in the Microsoft suite, then choosing Word as a document collaboration tool could be a natural choice.
What users say about Office 365:
“Overall, I’m 100% pleased with Office 365. As a lawyer, I usually draft, review, and collaborate on a lot of documents. Now, during a global pandemic that lead to a full-time home office setup, easy and reliable collaboration features have been a life-saver for me and my team. A classic is a classic for a reason, and I don’t see competitors getting the widespread use that Office gets.”
OnlyOffice Docs
Like Office 365, OnlyOffice offers a full suite of business productivity apps, including a collaborative document editor OnlyOffice Docs.
OnlyOffice Docs stands out among other popular document collaboration tools because it’s completely free and open-source. Unlike most other tools on this list, OnlyOffice Docs offers a self-hosted, on-premises version that gives you full control over your content. A free cloud-based version is also available, leaving the choice up to you.
The editing experience offered by OnlyOffice is powerful but complex, comparable to Microsoft Word. If you want to get the most out of this tool, be prepared to invest some time in learning it.
What users say about OnlyOffice:
“OnlyOffice is an alternative to Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365. It supports all popular formats of documents, has all formatting options, and offers a collaboration mode where all my co-workers can see and edit the documents at the same time.”
Nuclino
Nuclino is a collaborative documentation and knowledge sharing platform for teams. It has everything you would expect from a document collaboration tool – real-time collaborative editing, auto-save of changes, version history, comments, and more.
The visual editor of Nuclino is exceptionally easy to use even for non-technical people. It offers only the essential formatting options, enabling an easy and fast editing experience and making your documents look clean and consistent.
What makes Nuclino stand out among many other document collaboration tools is its unique approach to organizing documents. Instead of relying on the traditional folder system, where important documents can easily get lost, Nuclino allows you to link related documents together. It works like your own internal Wikipedia, making it easy to browse and explore.
But Nuclino is more than a simple document collaboration tool. In addition to being able to organize your content in a nested list, you can visualize your documents in a Kanban board, or a mindmap-style graph. This makes Nuclino a great solution for a wide range of use cases beyond simple documentation, including knowledge sharing, employee handbooks, employee onboarding and offboarding, sprint planning, process documentation, and many more.
Nuclino is also tightly integrated with 40+ other apps, allowing you to embed slides, spreadsheets, diagrams, videos, and more directly into your documents.
What users say about Nuclino:
“Anyone trying to organize a series of documents/notes in an organization should check out Nuclino because it fits the bill. The design of the product is so good that it’s actually fun writing new notes/docs in the app. Live multi-user collaboration rounds out the feature set.”
Conclusion
Are companies and enterprises sharing and collaborating actively? The question may be rhetorical but we know the answer: No. And research supports this conclusion: Saba, a leading business software company, did a study that revealed that only 15% of organizations collaborate or share with customers and vendors.