Many of today’s most successful collaboration tools are Web-based, cloud-based, and free. They offer features such as file sharing, chat rooms for discussing documents, wikis for creating team-based documentation, time management tools for staying on schedule, and the ability to connect applications with other popular Web apps.
The Free online collaboration tools are designed to help you easily share ideas, files, and stay in contact with friends and family. They provide you with an easy way to connect with the people who make the most difference in your life.
Flock
With Flock, team members can exchange messages, share files, host video conferences, manage to-dos, and set up calendar events all from one easy-to-use app. Flock integrates with popular business tools such as Google Calendar, Google Drive, Asana, MailChimp, and Twitter, making it easier for team members to stay on top of things without juggling a dozen different apps.
Flock’s free plan gives your team:
- Unlimited team members and one-to-one messages
- 10 public channels for group conversations
- Unlimited 1:1 video calls
- 5GB storage for file sharing and 10K message history for quick search
- Built-in productivity apps such as shared notes, polls, and reminders
- Unlimited integrations for third-party services, such as Asana, Jira, or Google Drive
Need more room? Flock PRO unlocks enhanced admin controls, group video conferencing, unlimited channels, guest accounts, more file storage, and access to priority support. At just $4.50 per user per month, we think it’s a steal, but our free plan is pretty generous and well, free. It’s your call.
Microsoft Teams
Initially an exclusive for businesses with Office 365 subscriptions, Microsoft Teams has since launched a free plan for small businesses. We love its innovative features such as inline translation for messages and the ability to record meetings with automatic transcriptions. Also a plus, its deep integrations with OneDrive and Office 365 services.
Image: Microsoft
Microsoft Team’s free plan
- Up to 300 users
- Unlimited messages, channels, and search
- Unlimited audio and video meetings with up to 250 participants
- 10GB of team file storage + 2GB per user
- 140+ apps and service integrations
For advanced collaboration features such as meeting recordings and automatic transcriptions, you’ll need to pony up for an Office 365 subscription. Office 365 Business Essentials costs $5 a user per month and the full-featured Office 365 Business Premium will set you back $12.50 a user per month.
Discord
Discord bills itself as an all-in-one voice and text chat for gamers, and it’s clear why. In addition to the usual private and group DMs, Discord offers a new way of collaborating in real-time: Voice channels. Think of them as always-on radio channels to talk to your team. Loved by gamers, voice channels can also be an easier, less stressful way to collaborate remotely on shared documents. More importantly, Discord offers unlimited voice, video, and text chat—all for free!
Image: Hacker Noon
Discord’s free plan
- Unlimited users, messages, text and voice channels, and file sharing (individual file size < 8MB)
- Unlimited video conferences with up to 10 participants + screen sharing
- A cool Text-to-Speech function that reads out what you type!
Discord Nitro Classic lets you upload a GIF avatar, use custom emojis everywhere, and ups that pesky file size limit to 50MB – for $4.99 per user per month.
Rocket.Chat
If on-premise software is a must, look no further than Rocket.Chat’s open-source team collaboration app. Easily deployed to on-premise or cloud servers, Rocket.Chat is free with zero restrictions on core functionality. It’s your server! Just one caveat: If there’s trouble, you’re probably on your own – the free plan doesn’t come with any web, email, or phone support, so be prepared to hunt through pages of technical documentation for any fixes.
Image: GitHub
Rocket.Chat’s free plan
- Unlimited users, messages, channels, video calls, and file sharing
- It’s open-source, customizable, and you own all your data (again, it’s your server)!
- Inline message translations
Rocket.Chat offers cloud-based deployment plans with 24/7 email support at $2 a user per month.
Wrike
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.
Samepage
Companies looking for the most complete free team collaboration tool — or those that have more communications needs than most — should strongly consider Samepage.
In addition to free audio and video calls with screen sharing features, Samepage’s native task management software features allow team leaders to schedule and track the progress of multiple projects simultaneously.
It also boasts excellent integration with tools like Salesforce, Slack, Google Drive, and even social media integration via Facebook and Twitter.
With a free plan this comprehensive, the vast majority of companies likely will not need to pay for a SamePage plan, though there are paid options available.
Samepage’s free plan includes:
- Unlimited chat and message search history
- Unlimited number of users and guests
- Screen Sharing
- File sharing and editing
- Group audio and video calls
- Group texting
- Up to 2 GB of storage
- Unlimited pages and folders
- Surveys
- Calendar
- Ability to create/assign tasks
Best For: Samepage is best for small teams that need a free team collaboration solution with such robust features that they may be able to avoid ever needing to upgrade to a free plan, and teams with a near-constant need for collaboration.
Airtable
Airtable is an online platform that lets users build, customize, and share their own databases.
It’s best known for its spreadsheet (Grid) view. Though each entry may look like a simple line on an Excel spreadsheet, these lines are incredibly interactive. Users can create tasks, use a drag-and-drop tool to reorder tasks, upload relevant data, set deadlines, outline main points of contact, share notes, and upload photos/documents to each line.
Relevant grids/tables can be collected into an Airtable Base. For example, a customer satisfaction Base could be made up of grids like existing support tickets, current issues, support agent conversation history, or individual clients.
If the Grid view isn’t preferable, easily shift between multiple views at any time, including Kanban, Gantt, Gallery, and Form views.
Airtable also offers extensive automation capabilities, lets users share and pull data from other grids, and share grids between teams.
The Airtable free plan includes unlimited bases with up to 1,200 records per base, and 2GB of storage per space.
Additional free plan features include:
- 100 automated runs/month
- 2-week run history
- Over 50 pre-built Airtable apps
- 1 manual table sync/base
- iOS and Android mobile apps
- Field types including checkboxes, dropdowns, attachments, and more
Best For: Airtable is best for teams that need highly customizable apps for data organizing, sharing, and task management. Teams with at least some coding experience or access to developers/IT departments will get the most out of Airtable.
Podio
A mobile-friendly collaboration tool
TODAY’S BEST DEALSVISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Easy-to-use interface+Quality mobile apps+Wide range of integrations
Podio describes itself as a flexible and customizable online platform for work and communication among teams. In other words, it gives you a way to organize large stacks of work and to delegate tasks between employees.
Just like many of the other business collaboration apps out there, Podio provides you with the tools to share files, view the status of ongoing projects and get feedback on the things you’re currently working on. These functionalities are combined into an easy-to-use interface.
Podio is also equipped with quality mobile apps for when you’re out and about, and need to use your smartphone or tablet, and it has an impressive amount of integration with third-party services and apps including Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote and Zendesk.
Conclusion
These collaborative tools include a specific set of features, functionality and visual design to encourage co-contribution between specific teams. In addition there are free basics – wikis, blogs and newsletter tools. The free account options provide the low barrier for getting started with a range of tools available.