There are plenty of collaboration tools looking to become your next productivity superpower, but with so many cloud based tools, how do you know which one is right for you?
We hope you find this site useful and informative. This site is a free resource offering advice on how to use collaboration tools in the workplace. We do not sell any of the tools mentioned on this site nor do we develop or market collaborative software. Any questions about how to use existing collaboration tools should be directed to the vendors of the respective tools rather than to this site. At Collaboration Tools Central, we realize that there are many disparate groups who want to collaborate better by using different tools – web sites, intranets, extranets, portals, databases, office suites, CRM applications, project management applications, etc
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.
Microsoft 365
Share and edit documents, now with messaging
TODAY’S BEST DEALSVISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Familiar software+Collaborative editing+Teams provides UC+Cost-effective bundling
Microsoft Office may not be the first platform you think of when it comes to collaboration, but this now runs at the heart of the Microsoft 365 cloud-based office suite.
This is important because Microsoft Office remains the most used and therefore important office suite out there, and while there are competitors such as OpenOffice and Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) they still haven’t caught up to the same level of functionality and ease of use.
Therefore as Microsoft Office is likely to be at the heart of many businesses, the move to Microsoft 365 offers a number of advantages, not least the ability for teams to collaborate directly on the same set of documents. This could be anything from work shifts in an Excel spreadsheet, to a presentation in PowerPoint, to client reports written in Word.
Added to this is that Microsoft Teams now comes bundled with a number of Microsoft 365 packages, allowing for Unified Communications integrated with the traditional office software.
What makes Microsoft 365 more attractive is that as a cloud-hosted platform it can be used not just with Windows, but also Mac, Android, and iOS.
Pricing depends on whether you are buying for personal or business use, with fees starting from $6.99 or $8.25 a month per use, with business use requiring pre-paid annual plans.
However, one little advertised alternative option is Microsoft 365 Business Basics, which offers most of the same software packages and options as above, but only comes in at $5 per month per user when paid annually. This makes the entire package extremely cost-effective, especially when compared to standalone UC and collaboration software prices.
Overall, Microsoft 365 doesn’t simply offer a great office suite, but one that is also firmly designed for collaboration and sharing with teams.
Asana
Organisation to the max
TODAY’S BEST DEALSVISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Project tracking+Handy integrations
REASONS TO AVOID
-Other apps have better comms features
Asana has been around since 2008, making it a veteran in the collaboration arena, and companies such as Intel, Uber, Pinterest and TED all use it as their core method of communication.
It’s been designed as an easy way for companies to track the work of employees and to get the best possible results. Using the platform, you can create to-do lists for ongoing projects, set reminders for upcoming deadlines and send requests to colleagues. Team members can also assign comments to posts within the app.
You can organize all your projects in a list or board format, and there’s a search function so you can locate past work quickly. In short, Asana is a very effective way to stay super-organized and facilitate conversations when it comes to updates on how work is progressing.
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.
Conclusion
The Best Discussion Tool is an online collaboration software that allows teams to discuss their projects, ideas and goals. It is a tool that allows users to text chat or voice chat with each other via a microphone or a webcam. Users can also share files, drawings, links and more. It also enables users to create groups where they can discuss their projects easily and collaborate with their colleagues.