9 Best Collaboration Apps For Teams: The Tools You Need (2022)
You’ve got a great team. What you need now is a great way to collaborate. Technology can help. Here we break down some of the most popular collaboration apps for teams.
The Best Collaboration Apps For Teams
(listed alphabetically)
1. Airtable
In Their Own Words: “Airtable is a platform that makes it easy to build powerful, custom applications. These tools can streamline just about any process, workflow, or project—and best of all, you can build them without ever learning to write a single line of code.”
Availability: Mac, Android, Windows
Plans:
- Free Pro Trial (14 days)
- Free (for individuals or teams just getting started)
- Premium ($10 per seat/month)
- Pro ($20 per seat/month)
- Enterprise (contact the sales team).
Summary: Airtable is an online collaborative app for teams that allows users to collectively store, edit, and share information with their team.
- Is a simple, east-to-use database (no Excel experts needed)
- Has a user-friendly interface
- Integrates with other applications
- Compiles data into easy-to-understand visualizations
- Ensures that all team members are on the same page
2. Asana
In Their Own Words: “Asana helps you and your team take ownership, foster accountability {and} build trust.”
Plans:
- Free Premium Trial (30 days)
- Free (for individuals or teams just getting started)
- Premium ($10.99 per seat/month)
- Pro ($24.99 per seat/month).
Availability: Mac, iOS, Android, Windows
Summary: Asana is primarily for teams looking to manage tasks and workflow, while not managing entire projects (it does not track resources, finances, etc.) While extremely user-friendly with beautiful interfaces, it is not ideal for those with heavy creative content.
- Prices slightly higher than competitors
- Has a cool feature that allows team member to record and send video messages
- Well managed inbox for communication between team members
- Goal-setting feature helps keep team on track
- Does NOT include time-tracking feature, but integrates with EverHour
3. Basecamp
In Their Own Words: “With Basecamp, you break up your work into separate projects. Each project contains everything related to the work at hand; all the people involved, every discussion, every document, file, task, important date, etc. Everything!.”
Plans:
- Free Trial (30 days)
- Free accounts for teachers & students
- Basecamp Business ($99/month flat for unlimited users)
- 15% discount for those who pay for a year upfront
- Discounts for non-profits
Availability: Mac, iOS, Android, Windows
Summary: Basecamp is designed to include all you will need for project management, so you don’t need multiple apps for integration. However, they do integrate with a variety of other applications .
- Basecamp features include messaging, realtime chat, to-do lists, schedules, file storage, documents and check-ins.
- Their all-in-one compares to bundling Slack + Asana, Dropbox & Gsuite together.
- Doesn’t offer productivity reporting, nor does it track goal progress
- Great tool for interteam communication
4. Clickup
In Their Own Words: “Built for teams of all sizes and industries, as well as students and non-profits, ClickUp’s fully customizable features make it a must-have for team members that want to keep everything from design to development in one organized place.”
Plans:
- Free Forever
- Unlimited $5 per member/month (features increase with each level)
- Business $12 per member/month
- Business Plus $19 per member/month
- Enterprise (contact their sales team)
Availability: Mac, iOS, Android, Windows, Linux
Summary: ClickUp boasts over 800,000+ teams currently using their product, including Samsung, Booking.Com, and IBM. This powerful app offers integration with over 100 other products, but replaces many. ClickUp manages Docs, Chats, Tasks, Goals, and More. This super-customizable platform is a go-to for teams from 1 to 1000.
- Contains it’s own time-tracking feature
- Users have the ability to hide projects from other users
- Great tool for personal self-management or managing multiple projects with multiple members
- Users report great customer support
5. Hive
In Their Own Words: Hive does not offer a summary of their application; however, they boast a community built platform that is based on customer feature requests.
Plans:
- Solo (up to 2 users, limited features)
- Teams ($12 per user/month)
- Enterprise (contact sales team)
Availability: Mac, iOS, Android, Windows
Summary: Hive offers a comprehensive list of features including actions to-do list, project management, various project views, automated workflows for recurring tasks, forms, collaborative notes, native messaging, mail integrated with task management, calendar, time tracking, reporting, and many more flexible add-ons.
- Extremely comprehensive with a wide variety of functions
- Clean layout and pleasing interface
- Some users report difficulty in getting set up to complexity
- No AI available
6. ProofHub
In Their Own Words: “ProofHub is an all-in-one software solution. It’s a project management software that offers a comprehensive suite of collaboration, planning, organization, monitoring, and project management functions. It serves as a single platform where you can organize projects and tasks, plan and monitor projects, discuss progress and share files with colleagues and stakeholders, review and collaborate on files, all using one tool.“
Plans:
- Free Trial (14 days)
- Standard ($45/month for 1-5 users, $90/month for 6-10 users)
- Premium ($135 for 11-50 users, $248 for 51-100 users)
- Bigger Teams (call for pricing)
Availability: Mac, iOS, Android, Windows
Summary:
- No per user pay scale
- Multiple methods for communicating including messaging, chats, discussion, and notes
- User reviews are mixed over the ease of use and set up
- There are more affordable alternatives depending on your team size
7. Teamwork
In Their Own Words: “Teamwork offers multiple time-saving, collaboration-enhancing features to make project management quicker and more efficient.”
Plans:
- Free (max 5 users, basic features)
- Deliver ($10 per user/month billed annually or $12 if monthly for min. 3 users)
- Grow ($18 per user/month billed annually or $22.50 if monthly for min. 5 users)
- Scale (contact sales team)
Availability: Mac, iOS, Android, Windows
Summary: This cloud-based product management tool is mighty, boasting clients such as Disney, Netflix, Spotify, Target, and other big hitters. Their include resource management, automations, time tracking, charts, numerous tools for collaboration, a Kanban board view, and portfolio of projects.
- Teamwork offers an incredible amount of features, so many in fact, that some reviewers felt confused and overwhelmed by all of the options.
- Billing and invoicing feature included which is great for teams that do client billing.
- Like most other options listed, Teamwork offers integration with a wide variety of other products.
8. Trello
In Their Own Words: “Trello is the flexible work management tool where teams can ideate plans, collaborate on projects, organize workflows, and track progress in a visual, productive, and rewarding way. From brainstorm to planning to execution, Trello manages the big milestones and the day-to-day tasks of working together and getting things done..”
Plans:
- Free Trial (14-day)
- Free (For entire team, less storage and command runs, less features)
- Standard ($5 per user/month billed annually, storage and features increase)
- Premium ($10 per user/month billed annually)
- Enterprise ($17.50 per user/month billed annually)
- Discounts for students and non-profits.
Availability: Mac, iOS, Android, Windows, Web
Summary: If you’re looking for something simple to use, Trello might be the choice for you. It lacks advanced functionality however, so those needing to manage complex projects may find it misses the mark. The interface is super clean with a Kanban interface and takes just minutes to get going.
- Great for teams who love the Kanban style, have smaller teams, or ones that prefer simplicity to functionality.
- Teams can save on Trello by purchasing annually vs. monthly.
- Some functions must be purchased as add-ons
- Great for collaboration, maybe not the best for true project management
9. Zoho Projects
In Their Own Words: “Zoho Projects, our cloud-based project management software, helps you plan your projects, track work efficiently, and collaborate with your team, wherever they are.”
Plans:
- Free Trail (10 days of free plan, 2 days of paid plan)
- Free (up to 3 users, 2 projects, 10MB storage)
- Premium ($5 per user/month, $3 client/month, up to 50 users, unlimited projects, 100GB storage),
- Enterprise ($10 per user/month, 3 client/month, no limit on users, 120GB storage)
- NOTE: Save $1 per user/month by paying annually
Availability: Cloud based
Summary: Zoho Projects is an affordable cloud-based application for teams that want to collaborate with one another. There are multiple ways to communicate with fellow members including chats, forums, an interactive team feed
- Customers include Stanford University and Dell
- ZP features include Gantt charts, automated tasks, time tracking, and customizable fields, layouts, and workflows
- Easy-to-Use interface that includes a dark mode
- Some users note an interface that isn’t user friendly and a lack of pre-made templates
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