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In this Guide
- Best Team Collaboration Software
- Intro and Our Criteria
- Our Reviews of the Top Vendors
- Benefits of Team Collaboration Software
- Mistakes to Avoid When Buying Team Collaboration Software
- Pricing Models of Team Collaboration Software
- Key Features of Team Collaboration Software
- Questions to Ask During Your Team Collaboration Software Demos
- Implementing Team Collaboration Software
- Team Collaboration Software FAQs
- Final Advice on Buying Team Collaboration Software
Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!
Team collaboration tools have gained tremendous popularity in recent years. According to Gartner, nearly 80% of workers are using collaboration tools for work in 2021, up from just over half of workers in 2019.
The demand for powerful, best-in-class solutions in this space will continue to increase, especially as more companies embrace remote work. By facilitating task management, progress tracking, file sharing, communication, and more, collaboration tools promote transparency, increase productivity and ultimately improve your team’s output, no matter where they are located.
If you’re interested in acquiring a team collaboration solution but not sure where to start, you’ve come to the right place! We’ve put together this guide to break down everything you need to know about team collaboration software, including the best vendors, key features, pricing details, and more to help you make an informed decision.
Our criteria: How we chose the best vendors
We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business.
Here’s how we chose who makes the cut:
Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering.
User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.
Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line.
Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.
Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!
Best Team Collaboration Software
It can be challenging for a buyer to find the right team collaboration software as the market is saturated with hundreds of them. To simplify the process, we’ve listed the best team collaboration software solutions for businesses of various sizes and industries according to our research and expert council as of 2021.
Why we love it
:
Slack is undeniably the go-to communication and collaboration solution for most teams. It facilitates private and group messaging, audio and video calls, file sharing, and more.
Slack
Review:
Slack's messaging platform has spread virally throughout the corporate world and is now a mainstay of corporate communications. Asynchronous standups, 1:1 messaging, employee resource groups, and so much more can be hosted on this platform. In addition, they have a large and growing ecosystem of apps that are native to Slack from employee recognition to notifications related to marketing, sales, engineering, or recruiting.
Slack
Customers:
- Uber
- Target
- Fox
- Ameritrade
- Intuit
- Time
- One Medical
- Oracle
Slack
Stats:
- Over 750,000 companies use Slack to get work done
- Slack integrates with over 2,200 apps using prebuilt modules
Slack
Pricing:
Slack has a free plan with limitations on message history access. Free plan customers can only view the last 10,000 of their team’s messages and the rest is archived unless an upgrade is made to any of the following paid plans:
- Standard: Suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. This plan costs $6.67 per person per month when billed annually.
- Plus: Suitable for larger businesses or those seeking advanced administration tools. This plan costs $12.50 per person per month when billed annually.
- Enterprise Grid: Suitable for very large businesses or those in highly regulated industries. The pricing of this plan varies according to the size and scope of your operation. Contact Slack’s sales team to learn more.
Best For:
Companies of all sizes looking for a robust team communication tool.
Why we love it
:
Redbooth packs AI and machine learning capabilities that power predictive task assignment and task scheduling, enabling users to maximize project resources with maximum efficiency.
Redbooth
Review:
Redbooth is an online collaboration tool that helps teams manage tasks and communicate better so projects are completed in a timely and efficient manner. In addition to tasks and project management, Redbooth facilitates Gantt charts and Kanban boards’ creation, time tracking, and video chatting. Their platform also leverages 39 million historical tasks and a billion data points to offer predictive task assignment and scheduling capabilities.
Redbooth
Customers:
- Leidar London
- Indiana University
- 4Site Studios
- Updater
- El Tiempo
Redbooth
Stats:
- 620K team
- 1.9M projects
- 39M tasks
Redbooth
Pricing:
Redbooth has four plans. When billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Free: This plan is free of charge and is limited to 2 users, 2 workspaces, and 2GB of storage.
- Pro: For $9 per user per month, Pro plan users can create unlimited workspaces and use Redbooth’s time tracking and HD video meetings features.
- Business: For $15 per user per month, Business plan users can have access to all features on the Pro plan, along with resource management, advanced subtasks, and Redbooth Predict (AI-powered project management assistance).
- Enterprise: As Redbooth’s most premium offering, the Enterprise plan encompasses everything Redbooth has to offer along with priority support and dedicated customer success management. Contact Redbooth’s Sales team for a price quote.
Best For:
Teams of different sizes can find value in Redbooth’s offerings.
Why we love it
:
Asana offers cross-team collaboration tools for tasks, projects, and conversations. Using it, you can get a clear view of who’s doing what and by when, which helps when you all have to work on the same tasks, projects, or goals.
Asana
Review:
Project management software like Asana is a great pick when you need strong team collaboration tools. The timeline view shows what each person on every team is working on, along with dependencies (if there are any), which helps employees, managers, and stakeholders.
The messaging and commenting features keep all conversations relevant to each task or project, so you can collaborate easily (and without having to sift through email chains or call a meeting). Use the form builder to communicate between teams and find out what’s needed — the completed form can be easily turned into a project.
Asana
Customers:
Amazon, Google, The New Yorker, AT&T, PayPal, Slack, Spotify all use Asana.
Asana
Stats:
- More than 100,000 companies use Asana.
- Asana is trusted by 80% of Fortune 100 companies.
Asana
Pricing:
Asana has four plans:
- Basic: This is a forever-free plan. There are no limits to tasks, projects, messages, or file storage (100MB per file limit). Collaboration is limited to 15 members, so it’s a good choice for new small businesses and solopreneurs.
- Premium: For $10.99 per user, per month (billed annually) you can get everything in the free plan plus timeline view, a workflow builder, forms, automated rules, and milestones. You can also invite an unlimited number of guests (good for client approval on projects).
- Business: This plan costs $24.99 per user, per month (billed annually) and includes everything from the two lower-tier plans. There are more advanced features at this level, such as goals, custom rules builder, and integrations with programs like Salesforce and Tableau, making it a great pick for larger businesses and agencies.
- Enterprise: The Enterprise plan requires a custom quote from Asana. You get all the same features as the Business plan, but you also unlock custom branding, data export, and 24/7 support. It’s best for large companies that want to add their brand to the Asana platform for a more professional look and require access to customer support at all hours of the day and night.
Best For:
Whether you’re running a solo operation or a corporation, Asana offers a plan to fit all business sizes. Most industries can use Asana, including content creators, software developers, and product development.
Why we love it
:
Wrike was named a Forrester leader for a reason; their solution is robust and comprehensive enough to be used by large enterprises, and their pricing is reasonable enough for small and medium-sized businesses to use and derive value.
- Can manage both projects and ongoing work.
- Option to view projects and tasks through different views like Kanban.
- A very efficient tool for team communication and work management.
- Doesn’t offer integrated live chat.
- Time tracking cannot be used for invoicing.
- The free plan offers very limited features.
Wrike
Review:
Wrike is a powerful project management and collaboration platform suitable for businesses of all sizes. With interactive Gantt charts, shared Kanban boards, intelligent risk prediction, customizable dashboards, workflows, forms, and much more, Wrike has everything you need to execute projects efficiently while maximizing productivity and collaboration both within and across different departments in your company.
Wrike
Customers:
- Dell
- Ogilvy
- Okta
- Airbnb
- Siemens
Wrike
Stats:
- Founded in 2006
- Offices in 8 cities and 6 countries
- 20,000+ customers in over 140 countries
Wrike
Pricing:
Wrike has four plans that are priced as follows:
- Free: Though limitations on the number of active tasks apply, this plan is free of charge and is ideal for small teams looking to get started with a project management tool.
- Professional: The Professional plan packs full project planning and collaboration features and costs $9.80 per user per month.
- Business: The Business plan costs $24.80 per user per month and includes everything in the Free and Professional plans, along with customization and exec reporting features.
- Enterprise: Through this plan, Wrike offers enterprises a comprehensive project management solution with advanced security and controls. Contact Wrike’s sales team to get a price quote for the Enterprise plan.
Note: The prices shown above are billed on an annual basis. User licenses are sold in groups of 5.
Best For:
Wrike has plans for companies of all sizes.
Why we love it
:
Airtable is highly customizable; you can create and tweak everything from workflows, interfaces, and apps to suit your team's unique needs.
Airtable
Review:
Airtable is a low-code platform that helps teams create custom solutions. With pre-made templates, drag-and-drop editing mechanism, low-code scripting tools, pre-built extensions, and easy-to-use APIs, teams can build and customize workflows, interfaces, and apps for different use cases, including marketing, sales, HR, finance, product, and operations management.
Airtable
Customers:
- Time
- Netflix
- Expedia
- Medium
- Shopify
- Autodesk
Airtable
Stats:
- Founded in 2012
- Trusted by over 200,000 organizations
Airtable
Pricing:
Airtable has four plans that are priced as follows:
- Free: This plan is free of charge and is ideal for individuals or teams just getting started with Airtable.
- Plus: Designed for growing teams that need more space and advanced features, the Plus plan costs $10 per seat per month, billed annually.
- Pro: Designed for teams and companies that need to collaborate on complex workflows, the Pro plan is Airtable’s most popular offering and is priced at $20 per seat per month, billed annually.
- Enterprise: The Enterprise plan is Airtable’s most premium plan, packing all of the features in the previous plans, along with advanced security, control, and support. Contact Airtable’s Sales team for pricing.
Best For:
Airtable can be used by any team size.
Why we love it
:
Podio offers a virtual space for teams of all sizes to collaborate on, build apps for and achieve all sorts of projects, regardless of their scope.
Podio
Review:
Citrix Podio is a cloud-based collaboration platform that enables teams to communicate, build low-code solutions and automate workflows. Within the platform, users can build apps for projects, campaigns, leads, deliverables, content calendars, and much more. Creating and editing apps is simple as Podio features a drag and drop mechanism, requiring little to no code.
Podio
Customers:
- Deloitte
- Volvo
- Sony
- NFL
- Time Warner Cable
Podio
Stats:
- 500,000 companies
- 99.99% uptime
Podio
Pricing:
Podio has four plans. When billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Free: This plan is free of charge for up to five employees.
- Basic: The Basic plan costs $7.20 per employee per month and is ideal for companies that are just starting with team collaboration software.
- Plus: For $12.20 per employee per month, the Plus plan comes with everything in Basic, along with automated workflows and customizable permissions.
- Premium: For $19.20 per employee per month, the Premium plan provides access to everything Podio has to offer.
Best For:
Podio’s features and pricing modules makes it appealing to different size companies.
Why we love it
:
Though Jira is primarily designed for software development teams, its Kanban-based approach makes it flexible enough for other teams to plan and track different kinds of projects.
Jira
Review:
Owned by Atlassian, a giant in the productivity software space, Jira is a robust project tracking tool used by thousands of tech teams to plan, track, and release great software. Product managers use Jira to plan and communicate their software roadmaps with key stakeholders, and software engineers use it to align with the product roadmap, keep track of pending tasks, and collaborate efficiently.
Jira
Customers:
- Domino’s
- Square
- Puppet
- Airbnb
- Sotheby’s
- The Telegraph
Jira
Stats:
- Used by over 65,000 customers worldwide
- Over 3,000 integrations
Jira
Pricing:
- Free: This plan is ideal for small teams to plan and track work more efficiently. It is free for up to 10 users.
- Standard: This plan costs an average of $7 per user per month and is ideal for growing teams.
- Premium: This plan costs an average of $14 per user per month and is ideal for organizations that need to scale how they collaborate and track work.
- Enterprise: This plan is ideal for enterprises with global scale, security, and governance needs. Contact Jira’s sales team for pricing.
Best For:
Tech teams of all sizes looking for an IT issue and project tracking tool.
Why we love it
:
Not many project management apps offer functionality for so many types of businesses, ease of use, and affordability like monday.com does. It also offers gamification for users, such as visual celebrations for completing a task, which makes it fun and motivating for everyone in your department or company to use.
- Free plan available, and affordable, scalable plans for small to midsize businesses
- Easy to learn and use
- Customizable dashboard
- Collaborative document creation with the ability to turn content in docs into tasks in projects with a few clicks
- Gamified progress tracking with visual celebrations for users
- Workflow automation for repetitive tasks
- Built-in communication tools reduce reliance on email
- Customized forms for in-house or client use that can be easily turned into projects
- 3+ users are required to get on any of the paid plans
- Limited storage on the Basic plan
- Could be too complex for simple project management needs
- No phone customer support
- Tracking different conversations can be difficult because of all the clutter
Monday.com
Review:
Monday.com is an easy-to-use cloud-based project management system. The gamified progress tracking (colorful celebrations with each task you check off) makes work fun, and the collaborative and dynamic documents feature makes it easy to create projects from lists.
Depending on the plan you subscribe to, you have more than 10 different views of projects. Monday.com also lets you customize your dashboard, so you can see the data or projects most important to you. The drag-and-drop interface is intuitive and you can add or remove specific widgets for your needs.
Monday.com
Customers:
More than 110,000 companies use monday.com, including Hulu, Uber, and Coca-Cola. :
Monday.com
Stats:
- Digital communications agency M Booth used monday.com to decrease time spent assigning tasks by 80% and increased deliverables by 49%.
- Thoughtworks, a global software consultancy, improved its collaboration across its company by 73%. There was also a 41% decrease in conference calls.
- At REIWA, employees used to send about 250 emails per day to stay on top of who was working on what, and now with monday.com, they’ve eliminated the need for emails altogether.
Monday.com
Pricing:
Pricing for monday.com ranges from free to $22 per user, per month, billed annually, with a three-user minimum.
- Individual: $0 (up to 2 users). Users on this plan get a maximum of three boards, no limitations on document creation, and more than 200 templates to use.
- Basic: $10 per user, per month (billed annually; 3-user min.). This plan lets you share boards with an unlimited number of viewers, ups your storage limit from 500 MB to 5 GB, and removes limitations on board creation.
- Standard: $13 per user, per month (billed annually; 3-user min.). The Standard plan is monday.com’s most popular because it gives you everything in the Basic plan plus more storage (20 GB) and unlocks workflow automations and integrations, though these are limited to 250 actions per month each.
- Pro: $22 per user, per month (billed annually; 3-user min.). At this level, your storage increases to 100 GB and you get up to 25,000 actions per month each for workflow automations and integrations. You also get built-in time tracking, chart views, and workload views, which is helpful for team leads.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing. This plan ups your storage to 1 TB and your actions increase to 250,000 per month for automations and integrations. Features only found on the Enterprise plan include a dedicated account manager and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. You’ll also get single sign-on (SSO) for your whole company, IP restrictions, and HIPAA compliance level security.
Best For:
We think monday.com is suitable for almost any type of business that needs to track projects or collaborate on work. It's a highly scalable solution, making it an ideal solution for all sizes of businesses.
Why we love it
:
Zoho Projects is a robust, intuitive, and budget-friendly team collaboration and project management tool. They have a free version for smaller teams with basic needs, and the paid plans with more features can be used by big enterprises as well.
- Depending on the plan you choose, Zoho Projects can bring in all kinds of features for project management.
- Budget-friendly tool with flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing.
- Depending on the plan you choose, Zoho Projects can bring in all kinds of features for project management.
- Budget-friendly tool with flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing.
- So many features might make it too cognitive-heavy for certain teams, like those wanting a much simpler and intuitive tool.
- As such a robust platform, some users have noted that it can take long to load if your internet connection isn’t top notch.
- So many features might make it too cognitive-heavy for certain teams, like those wanting a much simpler and intuitive tool.
- As such a robust platform, some users have noted that it can take long to load if your internet connection isn’t top notch.
Zoho Projects
Review:
Zoho Projects is a cloud-based project management software that helps you plan your projects, track work efficiently, and collaborate with your team in real-time, no matter where they are. It’s easy to use, comprehensive, and affordable. It is also available in an impressive 17 languages, including French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Russian, and Chinese.
Zoho Projects
Customers:
Stanford University, Dell, Vodafone, Edinburgh College, Tata Chemicals Limited
Zoho Projects
Stats:
- Launched in 2006
- Used by 200,000+ businesses worldwide
Zoho Projects
Pricing:
Zoho Projects has 3 pricing plans:
- Free: This plan is free of charge for up to 3 users.
- Premium: This plan is ideal for teams with up to 50 users and costs $5 per user per month.
- Enterprise: This plan is ideal for companies with more than 50 employees and costs $10 per user per month.
Best For:
Zoho Projects can be used by companies of all sizes.
Why we love it
:
Miro is very easy to use and quick to set up; you can create an account in just 90 seconds and start building collaborative whiteboards as well as brainstorming ideas with your team.
Miro
Review:
Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform that helps distributed teams work efficiently together. With customizable boards, video chatting, presentations, file sharing, and many other features, Miro equips teams with everything they need to stay organized and focus on delivering the right products and/or services for their target consumers.
Miro
Customers:
- Pivotal
- Cisco
- Dell
- TransUnion
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Miro
Stats:
- 20M+ users
- 95% of the Fortune 100 use Miro
Miro
Pricing:
Miro has four plans. When billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Free: This plan is free of charge and is ideal for teams to get started.
- Team: Designed for small businesses looking to boost their collaboration and workflow, this plan costs $8 per member per month.
- Business: The Business plan is a full-featured version of Miro and costs $16 per member per month.
- Enterprise: The Enterprise plan has custom pricing and is designed for companies seeking enterprise-grade workflows, controls, integrations, and support. Contact Miro’s Sales team for a quote.
Best For:
Companies of all sizes can find value in Miro’s offerings.
Why we love it
:
Flock provides teams with a single shared space for all of their work. Team members can communicate, video chat, share files, create polls, to-do lists, and more—all on the same platform.
Flock
Review:
Flock is a messaging and collaboration tool that teams can use for different use-cases. With a web-based version as well as downloadable apps for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices, Flock connects teams no matter where they are so they can work together and achieve deliverables efficiently.
Flock
Customers:
- Namecheap
- Ituran
- Mcdonald’s
- Sodexo
- Drivezy
Flock
Stats:
- Founded in 2014
- 30,000+ companies
Flock
Pricing:
Flock has three plans. When billed annually, they cost as follows:
- Starter: This plan is free of charge for up to 20 users.
- Pro: The Pro plan is ideal for teams with 20-100 members and costs $4.50 per user per month.
- Enterprise: The Enterprise plan has custom pricing and is designed for organizations with 100+ members. Contact Flock’s Sales team for a quote.
Best For:
Flock can be used by companies of all sizes.
Why we love it
:
ProofHub has fixed pricing that stays the same no matter how many users you add. Their platform is also available in several languages, including English, French, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and German.
- This product allows you to store and manage files within the platform. It has a capacity of up to 100GB of storage.
- In-app messaging capabilities
- White labeling personalization and customization
- Multi-lingual (available in 11 languages)
- No employee monitoring features
- This product has limited integration options. You can only integrate with about five tools which do not include the likes of Jira, Notion, and Zapier.
- No project tracking and budgeting capabilities
ProofHub
Review:
ProofHub is an all-in-one project management and team collaboration platform designed to maximize productivity and efficiency. Their software allows teams to create Gantt charts and Kanban boards, as well as collaborate with shared calendars, files, discussion threads, and more. Teams can also track how much time they are spending on each task with ProofHub’s built-in time tracking tool.
ProofHub
Customers:
- Netflix
- Nike
- TripAdvisor
- Nasam
ProofHub
Stats:
- Launched in 2011
- Used by 85,000+ businesses worldwide
ProofHub
Pricing:
ProofHub has two pricing plans:
- Essential: For $45 a month (billed annually), this plan comes with 40 projects, unlimited users, and 15 GB of storage.
- Ultimate Control: For $89 a month (billed annually), this plan comes with an unlimited number of projects, users, and 100 GB of storage.
Best For:
ProofHub can be used by companies of all sizes.
Why we love it
:
The Teamwork devs seem to understand that client-based businesses require tools to make team collaboration easier. All plans get collaborative document management, built-in team chat, and shared dashboards.
- Free plan with more than standard project management features, such as team chat, time tracking, and unlimited client views
- Proofing tools are included for all paid plans, so you can review files before handing off to clients
- Create custom tags for projects and tasks
- Built-in time tracking and invoicing means you save money because there’s less dependency on integrations
- Intuitive interface makes it easy for anyone to learn how to use, so there’s less downtime for your team
- Switching between project views is simple
- Subtasks nest under main tasks in list and table views for clear bird’s-eye view of projects
- Affordable, scalable plans make this a viable project management solution for any size of business
- Built-in chat makes it easy to communicate with colleagues without needing to integrate another app.
- Storage is limited on every plan, from 100 MB on free plan up to 250 GB on Grow plan
- Two-factor authentication (2FA) only on high-tier plans
- User minimums required on all paid plans
- Interface is a bit cluttered with small fonts, which makes it hard to read all the info you see
- No markup tools for attachments
Teamwork
Review:
Teamwork is project management software that many teams rely on for collaboration, especially for client-oriented projects. Tools to help with collaboration include built-in direct messaging, collaborative document storage, and commenting on projects.
It’s an ideal pick for small agencies that have remote teams working together on client-based projects because of advanced tools. For example, you get built-in time tracking and unlimited client views on your projects, plus invoicing.
Teamwork
Customers:
Teamwork serves several types of businesses, including ValPak, Cox Media Group, Salted Stone, Northwestern Mutual, and Infosys.
Teamwork
Stats:
Teamwork
Pricing:
Teamwork has 4 pricing plans:
- Free Forever: This plan is free of charge for up to 5 users and is ideal for individuals and small teams getting started with project management.
- Deliver: This plan is ideal for teams that want to manage multiple projects and costs $10 per user per month, billed annually.
- Grow: This plan is ideal for larger teams that need to work more efficiently. When billed annually, this plan costs $18 per user per month.
- Enterprise: This plan is designed for enterprises that require advanced security and extra speed. Contact a Teamwork sales representative for a price quote.
Best For:
Teamwork’s client-minded features, like built-in time tracking and invoicing, it’s best for agencies and freelancers with clients. Although it’s scalable, it’s better for smaller teams, but cross-team collaboration tools could change that.
Why we love it
:
Trello makes it easy for you to collaborate with team members on tasks and projects. Its drag-and-drop interface is intuitive and you can leave comments on each card for full visibility on boards.
- Offers a feature-packed free plan and paid plans are affordable
- Scalable for small teams to large enterprises
- Easy-to-use visual boards (Kanban)
- Multiple views allowed at higher price points
- Excellent for personal projects
- No-code automation included on all plans (including the free plan)
- Two-factor authentication (2FA) on every plan for top-notch security
- Mobile app available for iOS and Android
- Limited customization options (custom fields only; available for paid users)
- Difficult to see subtasks (checklists) at a glance
- Power-Ups (integrations) often include added cost to use
- No visual dependency option to connect one card to another
- Cannot assign subtasks (checklists) to different users on free plan
- Only five to six lists are viewable without having to scroll your board
Trello
Review:
Teams that use Trello for project management can get a bird’s-eye view of each project by glancing at each board available to them. You can click on cards, which are tasks, to see a description, who’s working on it, a checklist of subtasks, and attachments. You can also leave comments on each card to keep conversations relevant to each task.
Paid plan users can assign subtasks and tasks to any member on a board, which makes it easy to collaborate on projects.
Trello
Customers:
Trello is used by millions and trusted by companies such as, Google, Coinbase, John Deere, Zoom, Visa, and Grand Hyatt.
Trello
Stats:
- Trello started in 2011 and in 2014, the company raised $10.3 million in a Series A round of funding.
- In 2017, Atlassian (parent company of Jira and Confluence) acquired Trello.
- Today there are more than 2 million teams using Trello globally.
Trello
Pricing:
Trello offers four plans:
- Free: This plan is a forever-free plan and allows you to create unlimited cards, but only up to 10 boards. It’s a good solution for individuals who need to track personal projects or for freelancers who want to track client projects.
- Standard: The Standard plan from Trello costs $5 per month, per user (billed annually) and removes limitations on boards and you can upload files up to 250 MB per file. It’s at this level you can invite guests to your board, so it’s a good pick for small teams that need client approval.
- Premium: Trello offers a Premium plan for $10 per month, per user (billed annually) and it turns Trello into more of a traditional project management program with more views, including calendar, dashboard, timeline, and map. You also get access to priority support, an important offer for businesses with multiple users that may need more help than what they can find in the knowledge base.
- Enterprise: For larger companies, Trello has an Enterprise plan that starts for $17.50 per user, per month (billed annually) with a minimum of 50 users required. You get everything that Trello offers at this level, including more security and permissions for better organization of data and users
Best For:
Trello is simple project management software meant for anyone. From individuals managing personal projects to PM managers organizing work for a small team or multiple teams, Trello can be helpful.
Benefits of Team Collaboration Software
Using team collaboration software allows companies to:
- Increase speed and efficiency: Collaboration software acts as a shared virtual space where team members can instantly access information, share feedback, find and store different types of files, and much more. It particularly comes in handy for cross-functional and remote team collaboration where the members involved are scattered across different offices, if not different countries.
- Improve internal communication: Collaboration tools provide teams with a channel to instantly and informally communicate. Team members can privately message one another, comment on shared content as well as chat 1:1 or in groups over audio/video calls. Depending on the platform you use, you may get to permanently store the communication history and search it as needed.
- Manage projects better: Though they don’t completely replace project management software, collaboration software features like boards, to-do lists, shared calendars, etc can facilitate basic project management. Managers can assign responsibilities, request status updates, and check on their team to ensure they have everything they need and aren’t facing blockers.
- Improve employee satisfaction: When your employees are limited to outdated and formal communication and collaboration channels, it is easy for them to get frustrated and dissatisfied with your company which in turn, will have a negative impact on your projects’ development. Investing in a good collaboration software streamlines how your employees work together and complete tasks, which will not only boost their satisfaction but in the long run, foster a work culture where everyone is encouraged to reach out, share knowledge and help one another.
Mistakes to Avoid When Buying Team Collaboration Software
With so many products on the market, meticulous research and evaluation are required to make sure you don’t buy the wrong one. Here are some of the most common mistakes businesses make:
- Getting into a long-term commitment with a vendor before thoroughly testing their product: Most software vendors will offer you a discount if you sign an annual contract. Some will even try to tempt you to get into a 2-year commitment. While such deals are cost-effective in the long run, you should only commit to a vendor after thoroughly testing their product and verifying that it works for you. This is to save you from the hassle of going back and forth with the vendor regarding their refund policy and incurring cancellation fees.
- Buying advanced team collaboration features when all you need is a whiteboard-like software: Team collaboration solutions can pack advanced and flashy features such as scrum boards, change management, and risk management. Those features are fantastic for teams that use them, such as software development teams. If your team doesn’t have a use for those features, don’t buy them.
- Choosing a team collaboration system that isn’t scalable: Your company may grow rapidly in a matter of months. It may also experience financial struggles, requiring you to shrink your team. No matter what the future holds, you’ll definitely need your team collaboration software to grow or shrink accordingly, without needing to switch to different providers every time you scale.
Pricing Models of Team Collaboration Software
As with many software products, the pricing of team collaboration software is usually broken into tiers, often between 2 to 5. The pricing of those tiers can either be a flat subscription fee ranging between $45 and $100 a month for an unlimited number of employees or follow a per-employee-per-month model, which could cost anywhere between $4.50 and $40 per employee per month.
Do note that in all cases, additional fees may still apply for on-demand services such as product implementation, training, customization, dedicated account management, and cancellation. Consult your chosen team collaboration software vendor on the exact breakdown of all their fees, both recurring and non-recurring.
One more thing to look out for is whether or not the vendor has a minimum price commitment policy. Vendors with such policy won’t let you subscribe to certain plans (often their best-value plans) unless your total monthly or annual bill exceeds a predefined amount.
For more information and to learn about our software pricing best practices, check out our ebook on getting the best pricing in HR tech.
Key Features of Team Collaboration Software
- Task management: Team collaboration solutions allow you to create and assign tasks. They should also allow you to order tasks in terms of importance, and—if someone on your team is away for any reason—reassign their tasks to other individuals with the capacity to take them on.
- Boards and Lists: Another common feature of team collaboration products is the ability to create boards and lists to stay organized, have important tasks/elements in one place, and easily visualize all pending/completed items.
- Customizable workflows: One size never fits all in team collaboration, which is why most software tools in this space allow you to customize workflows and continuously finetune them to boost your team’s productivity and achieve the best outcomes.
- Reminders and notifications: Team collaboration software ensures you never miss important updates through in-app, email, and mobile push notifications. You can also customize what you get notified for and set reminders for when certain deadlines are approaching or when certain milestones are completed.
- Docs and file management: A good team collaboration solution should allow you to share documents and other types of files easily and quickly with a large number of people. It should also offer extensible cloud storage so you can save all of those documents and files long term.
- User administration: Projects often bring together collaborators at different levels. These include but aren’t limited to managers, employees, freelancers, third-party vendors, and clients. As the person in charge, you may want to give all of those people access to your project but customize that access to keep certain information on a need-to-know basis. With the help of team collaboration software, you can create user groups with different access levels. When done, all that’s left to do is just add people to the correct user group, and they’ll automatically receive the access level that comes with it.
- Third-party integrations: The majority of team collaboration tools offer integration options with your existing business tools, such as those for recruiting, payroll, enterprise resource planning (ERP), team communication, and more, to extend the functionality of your software, have your data synchronize automatically, and eliminate duplicated effort.
- Mobile access: Mobile accessibility is essential to collaboration tech. Nobody wants to limit themselves to laptops or desktops, which is why most collaboration solutions offer iOS and Android apps that teams can use to send/receive updates instantly, view progress, keep track of deadlines, and more on the go.
- Additional features: In addition to the above, some team collaboration software solutions may also carry features for time tracking, invoicing, expense tracking, asset management, issue tracking, and risk management.
Questions to Ask During Your Team Collaboration Software Demos
As you’re vetting different team collaboration software products, we always recommend that you schedule demo sessions with the top vendors on your list to make sure their solution is right for you. Here are a few questions you can ask team collaboration software vendors:
- Can you show me what employees see through their accounts?
- Does your software leverage any artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning for process automation?
- Can team members video chat with one another through your platform?
- Is your software easy to implement, and would I be able to set it up myself?
- What business apps does your product integrate with?
- What metrics have you used to prove the effectiveness of your software?
- What data protection laws is your software compliant with?
- How much does your product cost for my team size and needs?
- How will the current pricing change as our team grows or shrinks?
- Do you assign businesses a dedicated account manager?
- What are your service level agreements (SLAs)?
- Do you have a knowledge base with articles/guides for self-service?
Implementing Team Collaboration Software
The majority of products in this space are cloud-based, delivered through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) infrastructure. Getting started with cloud-based software is fairly easy. Once you’ve selected a vendor that meets your needs and purchased a subscription, you can create an account and start configuring it right away (e.g. import your employee data, invite your employees to sign up, start communicating, sharing files, and more).
Though not many, there are some team collaboration software solutions that are self-hosted (on-premise). Self-hosted solutions generally take longer to set up compared to their cloud-based counterparts. If you choose to go with a self-hosted product, make sure you consult the vendor regarding their product’s compatibility with your current company hardware. You may even be able to have them install the product on your behalf, which is always recommended as they know best and can get you up and running in no time.
Note: Most of the software vendors we’ve listed in this guide provide step-by-step video tutorials and help docs that assist customers in implementing the product. For more information, you can reach out to your assigned account manager or a customer support representative.
Team Collaboration Software FAQs
What is team collaboration?
Team collaboration is when team members work together to achieve shared business objectives. It involves equal participation, planning, strategic task assignment, and a lot of communication to ensure everyone is on the same page.
How to improve team collaboration?
Collaboration improves when teams are constantly aligned to a shared set of objectives and are provided with good tools to communicate and work more efficiently.
What is cross-team collaboration?
Cross-functional team collaboration is when employees from different departments (e.g. sales, marketing, IT, etc.) join forces to work on a common project.
What is team collaboration software?
Collaboration software acts as a shared virtual space where team members can instantly access information, communicate with another, share feedback, files, and much more. It is particularly useful for cross-functional and remote team collaboration where the members involved are scattered across different offices if not different countries.
What are the features of team collaboration software?
Team collaboration software commonly offers features for:
- Messaging and video conferencing
- File sharing and management
- Editable boards, cards, or lists
- Reminders and notifications
- User administration
- Analytics and reporting
What are the benefits of team collaboration software?
Collaboration software enables teams to communicate better and work more efficiently.
What should I look for in team collaboration software?
Besides ensuring a team collaboration solution covers the features you need, make sure it is also easy to use, scalable, can integrate with the rest of your tech stack, and has a mobile app for on-the-go access.
What is the best free team collaboration software?
The best free team collaboration software solutions are:
- Podio: Has a plan that is free of charge for up to five employees
- Flock: Has a plan that is free of charge for up to 20 users
- Miro: Has a plan that is free of charge without limitation on the number of users
- Slack: Has a free plan with limitations on message history access
- Wrike: Has a free version with limitations on the number of active tasks
- Trello: Has a free version with an unlimited number of users, cards, and up to 10 Trello boards
- Asana: Has a free version that’s great for teams getting started with team collaboration
- Zoho Projects: Has a plan that’s free of charge for up to 3 users
- Teamwork: Has a plan that’s free of charge for up to 5 users
- Jira: Has a free plan that’s limited to 10 users
- Monday.com: Has a free plan that’s limited to 2 users
- Redtooth: Has a free plan for up to 2 users, 2 workspaces, and 2GB of storage
- Airtable: Has a free plan with unlimited bases (1200 records and 2GB attachments limit per base)
Final Advice on Buying Team Collaboration Software
All companies, including yours, can benefit from the right team collaboration software to boost productivity, promote teamwork and improve output. Before choosing a product, make sure you:
- Align with your managers and key stakeholders regarding their needs and expectations before selecting a product.
- Carefully consider those needs, as well as your budget, and choose a product that meets them.
- Request a trial account to test the platform’s features first hand.
- Schedule demo sessions with different vendors in this space to get all of your questions answered.
Thanks for reading our guide on team collaboration software. If you’re interested in similar software solutions that boost team productivity and drive up engagement, check out our guides on Project Management Software, and Objectives and Key Results Software.
Best Team Collaboration Software
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