Online collaboration tools have been present on the market even before the COVID-19 hit. Yet, they became irreplaceable during the lockdown period and during the evolution of a new working environment.
Even though as of this moment, many companies returned to their physical offices or switched to a hybrid model of work – online collaboration tools are here to stay.
Many of them have very decent free plans, though with certain limitations naturally. The limitations are mostly related to history search, data storage, conversation, and search history.
Having in mind that collaboration software is oftentimes divided into categories – the option of integration between the tools became necessary. And that is definitely one of the features you will have to take into consideration when making the decision of which one to use in the near future.
Apart from that, the most prominent collaboration platforms are user-friendly and simplify the process of working together no matter the physical location or type of project.
Here is the list of tools we have the opportunity to try out and stick with most of them.
All of these tools can be valuable when resolving communication obstacles when working remotely.
Slack
Category: Instant Messaging / Communications Software
Features include: File Sharing, Notifications, Search, Mobile Application, Web Application, Integrations
Initial Release: 14 August 2013
Number of active users worldwide: 12 million daily active users (as reported in 2019)
Free version available: yes
Slack gained great popularity within the tech community from its early days. Even in some communities it became the synonym for team messaging tool. It is available on both mobile and desktop devices, on all current operating systems.
You can organize different channels for your teams, have quick access to several teams and so on. Relatively recently, it started supporting video calls as well.
Although it is not intended for cloud storage, it can easily be integrated with Google Drive and Dropbox too. And in the meantime, you can share files with your team members – although for a limited number of megabytes in a free version
Microsoft Teams
Category: Communications Software
Features include: Cloud collaboration – Office Suites, File type support – Office Suites, Basic applications – Office Suites, Collaborative editing
Initial Release: 14 March 2017
Number of active users worldwide: 145 million daily (as reported in April 2021)
Free version available: yes
Microsoft Teams a communication workspace within Microsoft 365. According to the reports, it is mostly used in the following industries:
- Information Technology and Services,
- Computer Software, and
- Education Management.
Some of the most liked features of Microsoft Teams is its clean interface, as well as super simple way to make an audio or video call. Of course, there have been reports on several “bugs” as well. We will not make a list of them here – as you can easily find them on the Internet. However, what we noticed while using this software for team collaboration is that It may have some issues and delays when trying to access it from Linux-based operating systems.
Zoom
Category: Video Conferencing Software
Features include: Screen Sharing, Presentations, Desktop Application
Initial release: 10 September 2012
Number of active users worldwide: 300 million daily meeting participants
Free version available: yes
Zoom became one of the most popular video-conferencing tools in 2020. It quickly became the go-to solution for webinars and workshops all over the world. One of the reasons may be easily customized backgrounds that offered the opportunity for personalization in the world where we mostly communicated through our screens.
And not only for personalization. It became handy when people were forced to have online job interviews from rooms that were not always presentable. (And to be honest, whose is all the time. 🙂)
Another reason may be that Zoom allowed the participation of up to 100 people in one video call even in the free plan. Not to mention the possibility for separate rooms and other options in the paid plans.
Google Meet
Category: Video conferencing
Features: Unlimited number of meetings, Live captioning during meetings, Compatible across devices, Screen sharing, Messaging with participants
Initial release: 9 March 2017
Number of active users worldwide: about 100 million users every day
Free version available: yes
Although Google Meet is practically the default platform for scheduling video calls both on mobile and desktop environments, we cannot skip it here. All you need to start a conference call is an existing Google Account. An online meeting can host up to 100 participants and that single call can last up to 60 minutes per meeting.
Asana
Category: Project Collaboration
Features: Task Management – Project Collaboration, Connectivity – Project Collaboration, Visibility – Project Collaboration
Initial Release: 2008
Number of active users worldwide: 1.3 million paid users for fiscal 2020
Free version available: yes, for teams of up to 15 people
Such as similar project management tools, it offers an array of project management and collaboration options. There is an option to store different files, communicate within the platform as well, and of course, manage projects.
You can track the timelines of your project and assign the tasks to the team members.
Jira
Category: Product Management
Features: Wiki Documentation, Work Capacity, Custom Workflows, Task Ranking, Time Tracking, Progress Monitoring, User Reports & Feedback, Bug History
Initial Release: 2002
Number of active users worldwide: over 180, 000 customers in 190 countries
Free version available: yes, for up to 10 users
Jira is also one of the widely used platforms for product owners in the IT and Computer Software industries. It has a reputation for simple collaboration within the team members and has everything to manage and build products. However, another part of the reputation is that it has a learning curve for working with the tool efficiently.
monday.com
Category: Project Management Tool
Features: Creation and Assignment, Due Dates, Task Prioritization
Initial Release: February 2012
Number of active users worldwide: over 127,000 customers across over 200 business verticals
Free version available: only up to 2 seats
With its color coding and assigning different tasks to different contributors makes monday.com one of the tools used not only for project management, but also for a more general task management especially in Marketing and IT Services teams.
Add up the good integration with platforms like Slack, Dropbox and similar and you get a group collaboration software which is a go-to choice of many business verticals.
ClickUp
Category: Project Management
Features: Creation and Assignment, Due Dates, To-Do Lists
Initial Release: 2017
Number of active users worldwide: over 100,000 paid customers (as reported in 2020)
Free version available: yes
One app to replace them all. That is ClickUp’s tagline. And it is not there for marketing purposes. A user will find the fully customizable app and the need for additional platforms is minimal. The team that stands behind ClickUp tries to implement new features and bug fixes weekly. Speaking of bugs, you will find them, but the support will help you along the way and will take into consideration emails you send them.
If still in doubt about working with a team of developers that are not in your main office, spend a couple of minutes reading about how to avoid risks of collaborating with an outsourced R&D team.
