Free Online Collaboration Tools

Free online collaboration tools are web-based solutions that provide communication, document management, workflow management, project management, task management solutions or file-sharing capabilities to users via the Internet. These tools are designed for use by multiple team members working together on various projects.

There are three main categories of free online collaboration tools for writers. Features-based products are the most common among writers, but benefit-based products are more persuasive. The third category is a mix of both benefits and features.

 monday.com

monday-com_in_action

What would it mean for your productivity if you never had to check email, Slack, Salesforce, and Excel just to track down information about one project?

Whether you’re working in the office, from home, or from across the globe, monday.com helps your entire team stay in sync. This work operating system (Work OS) keeps all of your work clearly organized on one visual platform everyone can access.

Without any coding skills, you can customize monday.com so that it works best for your team. Automate data entry, workflows, and other repetitive tasks, so you can focus on more meaningful work. Then assign tasks so nothing falls through the cracks.

Plus, we surveyed 1,273 executives that use collaboration tools on a regular basis. And they voted monday.com as their favorite platform.

Pros

  • Sign up for a free trial without entering your payment details
  • Download pre-designed templates perfectly suited to your workflows
  • Get the “bird’s eye view” of multiple projects in one convenient location
  • Check your progress at any time from the mobile app
  • View your projects in a calendar mode so you never miss any deadlines
  • Assign new tasks to available team members so no one is overloaded
  • Automate your workflows without coding
  • Integrate all of your other apps on one unified platform

Cons

  • Mobile app can be cumbersome, but they are working on it constantly
  • More content on advanced concepts

 Bonusly

Make visibility a priority this year with Bonusly. This online collaboration platform gives managers, executives, and employees the ability to see and celebrate great work through an easy-to-use interface. Helping to create a culture where recognition is part of your day, Bonusly encourages employees to recognize their colleagues and promotes workplace collaboration.

Using this team collaboration software is a breeze, as it integrates seamlessly into the other online communication tools at your business. You can use it on a daily basis without feeling like you’re doing any extra work!

Bonusly’s 360-degree recognition also makes teamwork visible to everyone and empowers employees at all levels of your company. You can show appreciation for each other and build stronger working relationships while incentivizing a culture of online collaboration.

Pros

  • Analytics point out team members’ strengths
  • Make it easy for managers and leaders to gather, understand, and act on employee feedback with fun, lightweight surveys of all types.
  • Easy onboarding meaning employees can start using it on their first day
  • Best suited for teams/companies of 100+
  • Automated custom rewards for employee milestones and completed projects

Cons

  • No free plan, but they do offer a free trial here
  • Expanding list of rewards

 Teamwork

Teamwork was built so you can manage ALL your client work in one platform. From invoicing, to time tracking, to unlimited client access, everything you need to run your client services is in Teamwork.

Teamwork gives you the tools and reports you need to maximize resources and never miss a billable minute again. Get a bird’s eye view of every project, from milestones to capacity planning, budgeting and time tracking and more.

Break work and projects into tasks and layers of subtasks – so nothing slips through the cracks and everyone knows what to do and when it’s done.

Pros

  • Signup for a free 30-day trial of Teamwork with no commitments
  • Teamwork has the growth-focused features like time tracking, custom client permissions, assigning tasks to multiple people and more
  • A user-friendly learning curve and the essential features (like reports and resource management)
  • Teamwork has the collaboration, client features and robust flexibility necessary for managing multiple complex projects
  • Solid functionality so your team can manage large, complex projects without the learning curve and limitations
  • Collaborate in real-time with your team and clients to get your questions answered and projects delivered on time & on budget.

Cons

  • UX can be a bit cumbersome, but they are currently working on an overhaul

 Otter.ai

Otter automatically transcribes your audio into text. Text notes full of timesaving ways to search, find, and share with your team no matter where they are. Otter has several integrations with apps like Zoom that make collaboration and remote work faster and more efficient.

Price: Starts at $9.99, billed every month. Learn more on Otter.ai Plan’s pricing page.

Free Plan: Yes, with limited usage and features. Get started.

Here are just a few of the things we love about Otter and the one minus we could think of.

Pros

  • Otter integrated with Zoom making it quick and easy to add live comments, delegate tasks, and action items in real-time
  • Allow Zoom participants to add photos, audio, and highlights in real-time to create collaborative meeting notes
  • Get a text summary of your meetings instantly, no waiting for notes to be cleaned up. No delays, no loss in productivity
  • Search within and across all your transcribed conversations

Cons 

  • Love that Otter is available on desktop and mobile we wish more of Otter Premiums were available in the free version

 Slack

If you’ve heard of team chat, you’ve probably heard of them. IM, channels, video calls, integrations and bots for hundreds of third-party tools; Slack has it all. But the free plan limits you to 10 service integrations, so choose wisely.

Mac-Slack-client-for-media-kit.en-GB 2xImage: Slack

Slack’s free plan

  • Unlimited users, messages, and channels
  • Unlimited one-to-one voice and video calls 
  • 5GB storage for file sharing and 10K message history
  • Up to 10 apps or service integrations

For video conferencing (up to 15 participants) and guest accounts, you’ll need to upgrade to a Standard plan that costs $6.67 per user per month. There’s also a Plus plan that adds more features at $12.50 a user per month. 

Twist

Made by the folks behind Todoist, Twist makes it easy to organize and keep track of discussions with threads. Their message board-like interface is easy to use, though using threads and the inbox (they work more like email threads, not Slack threads) takes some getting used to. The upside? Fewer notifications! 

Twist’s free plan

  • Unlimited users, guests, messages, channels, and threads
  • Access to 1 month of conversations
  • 5GB storage for file sharing
  • 5 service integrations

Twist doesn’t bother with audio/video conferencing or screen sharing features, they have a Wherein integration instead. For $5 a user per month, Twist Unlimited offers unlimited conversation history, file storage, service integrations, and priority support.

Zoho Cliq

Zoho Cliq lets you view multiple conversations—each in its own column—so you don’t have to shuffle back and forth between a channel discussion and a private chat with a colleague. Also, host video conferences with up to 100 participants on the free plan. 

Unsurprisingly, Cliq integrates smoothly with other Zoho apps, but there are also integrations for third-party services such as Asana, Wrike, and Zapier.

team-communication-cliqImage: Zoho

Cliq’s free plan

  • Unlimited users, messages, and channels (up to 100 members in each)
  • Video conferencing with up to 100 participants + screen sharing
  • 100GB storage for file sharing and 10K message history
  • 10 third-party app integrations

For $3 a user per month, Cliq Unlimited offers unlimited message search, ups file storage, and lets you connect up to 100 third-party integrations. It also unlocks the PrimeTime Assembly feature, so you can stream live video to as many as 10,000 participants.

WrikeWrike tool

Wrike is a scalable desktop and iOS/Android mobile team collaboration platform designed to streamline interdepartmental communication, improve employee productivity, and clarify team member tasks and responsibilities.

Its free plan for up to 5 users includes basic task creation, real-time progress updates and activity streams, board and spreadsheet views, and customizable open-source templates/dashboards.

Users can drag boards to reorder specific tasks according to timelines or priority, and the activity streams are designed to mimic social media feeds for ease of use. Users can create specific activity stream filters to avoid having to comb through irrelevant information to find notes/updates on projects they have been assigned.

While Wrike integrates with Google Hangouts, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, as of this writing, it does not have a native video calling feature or chat messenger tool (though users can leave comments and tag co-workers on Wrike boards.) In order to make a video call, share screens with others, or use chat messenger features, users will need to connect their preferred tool to Wrike.

Wrike also offers several paid add-on features like Wrike Integrate and Wrike Resource.

The free version of Wrike also includes:

  • Organize activity into tasks, folders, or projects
  • Task, folder, and project commenting/user tagging
  • File sharing and up to 2GB of file storage
  • Real-time Live Editor
  • Mass Actions for tasks (bulk tasks status updates)
  • Task filters according to status, assignee, deadline
  • Table (spreadsheet) view
  • Cloud storage integrations
  • User inbox for notifications
  • Google Drive, Outlook, Office 365, Dropbox integrations

Best For: Wrike is best for startups/micro-businesses that have a large amount of smaller daily tasks that don’t generally require a high amount of collaboration, but that are dependent on the task status of other team members’ projects. Popular use cases include product development, event planning, marketing departments, and IT teams.

Conclusion

Free collaboration tools are available virtually anywhere you want to work. From Google Docs, to your desktop, even your phone, you can effectively collaborate with others using free online tools. Collaboration tools allow you the freedom to create presentations, documents, spreadsheets and more. You don’t have to be tied to any one tool or computer because many of these services are accessible via any web-enabled device you own. With Google Docs alone, users can choose from a plethora of options including text documents, spreadsheets and presentation documents. The online version of these tools work the same as their downloadable counterparts which means you can still

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