Top 20 Free Cloud-based Team Collaboration Tools
The foundation of any business relies on the streamlined collaboration between the employees that leads to productivity. Constructive teamwork ensures that less time is wasted getting your message across and more time is spent getting results for the organizations. Therefore, team collaboration tools and services can play a defining role in increasing the efficiency of your work by supplementing effective and frictionless communications.
Below is a list of cloud-based collaboration tools and services that can help a company achieve its primary goals by accelerating productive interactions:
1. Slack
Slack is a powerful collaboration tool, which provides an incredible, clutter-free, and mobile-friendly platform for sending direct messages (DMs) and files to a single employee or a group of people. With this app, you can organize conversations, video call from within the app, and share files with your colleagues.
2. Wrike
With Wrike, an online project management software, you can reduce the time taken to develop a product or deliver a project. It offers hassle-free sharing, automated form requests, and interactive activity feed from where you can track all the ongoing actions pertinent to the project.
3. ProofHub
ProofHub is an advanced online collaboration software that enables you to manage your projects, interact with your team, and ensure timely completion of your tasks. You can also communicate with your clients within the app, assign tasks, and plan your project activities easily and quickly.
4. Redbooth
Redbooth is another famous online project management software for high performing teams. It allows users to create visual project timelines, turn emails into action items, integrate with your favourite apps such as Slack, Dropbox, Outlook, etc. and many other features.
5. Skype
Skype is a well-known communication tool that offers instant messaging, and audio and video calling. You can have conference calls to communicate with the entire team at the same time as well as give presentations through screen sharing and hold meetings. What’s more, you can make free or extremely cheap calls locally and internationally to connect with remote team member.
6. Dropbox
Dropbox is a simple and trusted file sharing tool that provides high sharing limits and sizeable storage space to keep your taskforce in-sync. It is a secure storage platform for your confidential information and business plans.
7. Google Docs
Google Docs is a popular tool that provides a simple way to collaborate with your team, since you can easily share, edit, and publish documents as well as make presentations and spreadsheets. The tool is free of cost and can function in the offline mode.
8. Hiver
Hiver is a shared inbox app designed for sales and support teams, and it can synchronize with your Gmail accounts to gain valuable insights from the correspondence. You can oversee all your multiple shared inboxes simultaneously on a single dashboard as well as assign emails to other users. In addition, you can track your team’s productivity and performance with the app.
9. Hightail
Hightail serves as a collaborative tool as well as an online file sharing service. It enables the teams to manage projects by expediting sharing of large files, PDFs, images and so on with your colleagues. You can also keep the clients in the loop so they can impart their valuable feedback instantaneously and keep track of the progress of the project.
10. Evernote
Evernote allows you and your team to keep your best idea forward by sharing it on this intuitive collaborative tool. You can create, capture, and share notes, as well as keep them all organized on a single platform.
11. MindMeister
MindMeister allows the users to manage projects, schedule meetings and establish future business plans. It also provides a platform for brainstorming, where you can discuss ideas and create concepts. In addition, you can also create and share your mind maps with others in real time or even make it public.
12. Trello
Trello is a project management service with a user-friendly app that allows you to organize tasks on virtual boards. You can create to-do lists and delegate tasks to your employees, and the tool also has the option to leave comments on the cards.
13. Asana
Introduced in 2008, Asana is a popular tool used by mega-companies like Uber, Intel, and Pinterest as their core communication model. With this app, you can track the performance of your employees, facilitate conversations, and set reminders for deadlines of the ongoing projects. In short, you can stay super-organized and keep on top of your projects to ensure their timely progression.
14. Podio
Podio boasts of being a customizable and easy-to-use tool that leads to structured workflows. Used by brands such as SONY and Volvo, Podio is one of the best-rated systems with the ability to scale according to the size of the business. It ensures synchronization between the team members through file-sharing, status updates of ongoing projects, and promoting feedbacks.
15. Flock
Flock offers comprehensive communication tools, including audio and video calls, for one-on-one interactions as well as group conversations. With the search option, users can find messages, links, and files stored within the system. You can screen-share, set reminders, and assign tasks to other members of the team.
16. Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects is an online project management service that offers an interactive interface, excellent features and advanced integration alongside other business tools. It provides a seamless communication environment and document management modules all on a user-friendly app.
17. InVision
InVision, created specifically for designers, is comprehensive prototyping software where you can design user interface for mobile apps and digital interactive products. Moreover, you can collaborate with your team, upload your wireframes and designs, and receive feedback from the clients in the real-time, all on a single dashboard, for seamless navigation.
18. Yammer
Yammer is a simple yet effective collaborative system that promotes seamless interactions and encourages brainstorming. It is a private space for on-point conversations, group discussions, and storing all the previous data. Using the tool, you can also create detailed emails as well as share and receive feedback.
19. Concept Inbox
As the name suggest, Concept inbox provides with a dashboard where you can share your ideas through images, get immediate feedback from your clients, and interact with your team to enhance the prototype.
20. Samepage
As the name suggests, Samepage combines interactive messaging with sharing of the project details and progress to keep the entire team in-sync. You can manage your tasks, schedule meetings on the calendar, track your budget, and share videos, using its multitude of project management features.
21. Flowdock
Flowdock is a group and private work platform that brings all the team conversations, work items and tools into one place. It allows you to prioritize work, solve problems, search and organize across teams, locations and timezones.
Tags: cloud computing, team collaboration, web app