Best 31 Collaboration Tools and Software to Use (Free and Paid)

With the advent of digital technology, collaborative work is now at the heart of business strategies. Collaboration tools are software applications that enable individuals and teams to work together on projects and tasks in a shared digital environment. These tools can include features such as document sharing, real-time editing, task management, and communication tools.

Best Practices for Implementing Collaboration Tools

Implementing collaboration tools is not just about choosing the right software; it’s about seamlessly integrating the tools into your organization’s workflow. Below are key best practices to ensure a successful implementation:

Define Clear Objectives

Before implementing any collaboration tool, identify clear objectives and goals. What do you want to achieve with the tool? Is it to enhance team communication, streamline project management, or boost remote work efficiency? Defining objectives helps measure success and guide the implementation process.

Involve Stakeholders

The adoption of a collaboration tool should involve key stakeholders, including employees who will use the tool regularly. Collect their input, listen to their needs, and address any concerns. Engaging employees from the start increases buy-in and reduces resistance to change.

Conduct Training and Onboarding

Provide comprehensive training and onboarding sessions to ensure all users understand how to use the collaboration tool effectively. Offer ongoing support, including tutorials, documentation, and helpdesk resources, to assist users as they become familiar with the tool.

Customize and Configure

Tailor the collaboration tool to align with your organization’s needs and workflows. Customize features, settings, and permissions to match your business processes. Ensure seamless integrations with existing software and systems.

Communicate Clearly

Effective communication is key during implementation. Communicate the purpose of the collaboration tool, its benefits, and the adoption timeline. Keep stakeholders informed of any changes or updates and address any concerns promptly.

Monitor and Measure

Implementing collaboration tools should be an iterative process. Continuously monitor usage and gather feedback to identify areas for improvement. Measure key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the tool’s impact on your organization’s productivity, efficiency, and collaboration.

List of Best 31 Collaboration Tools to Use

This collaborative work is facilitated by high-performance tools that ensure the smooth running of tasks. Each of these Collaboration tools is also intended to facilitate remote work. Discover them.

monday.com

monday.com is a Collaboration Work OS platform to manage all your work, whatever it is. Fully customizable, monday.com adapts to everyone’s needs and allows employees to be more independent in their work. Automating processes eliminates many tedious manual tasks, resulting in significant time savings.

Getting started is quick because monday.com integrates with the tools teams already use, so they can keep using them to increase productivity. All projects, files, updates, and communication flows are accessible through the platform for more transparency. Finally, monday.com offers a 360° view of all the work in progress. Check this similar Monday alternative collaboration tool.

Jotform Apps

Jotform Apps is a no-code app builder that teams can use as a portal to store documents and create online forms to securely collect data. You can create e-sign contracts, request forms for workplace items, and collect feedback using their many form templates.

Customize your app to fit your branding, and share it with your team via a link or a free QR code generator so everyone can view and edit documents. Create automated workflows and get notified whenever a change is made directly in the app. Integrate with your most-used productivity apps to boost your workflow and get everything in one place.

Also Read: Best Lead Nurturing Platforms

Interactico

Interactico is an audience-engagement tool designed to improve collaboration during online meetings, classes, and workshops. It integrates directly with Google Meet and allows users to run polls, quizzes, ratings, and open questions without switching tabs or installing extra software. Participants click a shared link to join your activity, making engagement quick and effortless for everyone involved. This tool helps teams, educators, and event hosts gather real-time feedback while keeping their audience engaged throughout the session.

In addition to seamless participation, Interactico offers an intuitive interface for creating interactive elements in seconds. You can craft polls, quizzes, Q&A sessions, or word clouds and share them instantly with your audience. Real-time analytics help you monitor engagement levels and analyze responses as they come in.

Interactico is especially useful for classrooms, workshops, remote team meetings, and webinars where interaction plays a major role in communication and decision-making. By integrating smoothly into Google Meet, it ensures a focused, uninterrupted collaboration experience for both presenters and participants.

Trello

The Trello tool includes cards, boards, and lists to prioritize and organize projects. Whatever the job and tasks, Trello helps teams get better organized. Trello cards let you add comments, due dates, and attachments to tasks. Trello’s automation process saves time. Synchronization allows teams to collaborate anywhere.

TimeDoctor

TimeDoctor is a time-tracking and productivity management tool that tracks work hours and monitors website and app use. It provides managers and teams with real-time data. The dashboard shows simple reports, charts, and screenshots that help analyze work patterns. TimeDoctor provides clear insights into employee performance and supports accountability.

You can easily integrate TimeDoctor with popular project management and payroll software, allowing managers to spot trends and reduce distractions. The tool also supports both remote and office work. Its secure, easy-to-use interface provides clear views of time usage. Use TimeDoctor to improve time management and boost team productivity.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams ensures remote collaboration in the best conditions. It lets you invite your collaborators to a discussion, meeting, group call, or similar event. You can participate in the discussions and give your opinion wherever you are.

Likewise, the Microsoft team offers the option to attend meetings virtually via video conferencing. In addition, there is no limit on the number of participants in the videoconference. The tool also lets you access your files wherever you are, share them, and make modifications.

MirrorFly

MirrorFly is a powerful communication solution that provides custom APIs and SDKs for integrating real-time chat, voice, and video into any existing web or mobile app. The solution comes with 1000s of features that can be customized without limits to align with any operational workflow. Business owners also have full control over infrastructure and security, with the freedom to deploy on their own company servers if preferred.

On the other hand, organizations that need secure cloud hosting can choose MirrorFly’s multi-tenant servers with end-to-end support from the team.

Overall, if a business is looking to implement collaboration features, MirrorFly’s white-label solution can help add an extensive range of features with custom branding, workflow, and security.

Slack

Slack is an instant messaging application that facilitates collaboration. Its conversation channels allow the entire team to share project objectives and progress, and its intelligent feature helps categorize conversations by topic.

Slack lets you follow conversations in real time and easily find the information you need. It is possible to prioritize conversations on Slack and highlight the most critical discussions. The tool also offers video calls and audio calls.

Skype

Skype is an instant messaging app that lets users chat and stay in touch with employees in real time. It includes advanced collaboration features, such as meeting organization, PowerPoint presentation annotation, and screen sharing. Screen Sharing allows audio and video call recording and screen presentation sharing. For the latter, drag a file to the chat window so all participants can access it. The split display allows you to classify conversations.

Zoom

Zoom is a videoconferencing solution that also includes content sharing and messaging. Its features allow you to start, join, or collaborate in meetings. Meetings are organized on Zoom, and the synchronized calendar system makes video conferencing much more effortless.

Zoom offers built-in HD video and audio for meetings with up to 1,000 participants. Meetings are fully secure with end-to-end encryption, and you can make transcriptions and recordings.

Google Drive

Google Drive is a collaboration tool from Google that allows users to store and share files across devices. Several file types can be shared there: text, slideshows, videos, images, etc. It is possible to create documents at the Google Drive interface level.

This tool is accompanied by Google Sheets, Google Slides, and Google Docs, and its operation can be done with Microsoft Office. Files stored on Google Drive can be accessed from any device (computer, tablet, or smartphone). Other people may be invited to access or download the files.

Brosix

Brosix is a secure instant messaging platform enabling flawless remote team collaboration and communication. It takes only 60 seconds to set up, while communication is encrypted. This comprehensive tool offers text chat, audio calls, chatrooms, broadcast messages, and video calls and is available on mobile and desktop devices.

For collaboration, teams can transfer files, share screens, take screenshots, collaborate on a Whiteboard, co-browse, view chat history, send offline text messages, get user status visibility, and engage in tabbed chats, all this with spell-check tools and emojis included. Brosix offers both a free trial and affordable pricing plans for teams of all sizes.

Time Card Calculator

Time Card Calculator: Keeping accurate records of work hours is crucial for remote teams. If you want a simple, convenient way to calculate employee working hours and streamline payroll management, you can use the free online time card calculator. It automates time tracking to help ensure accurate payroll and compliance with labor laws.

Kanban Zone

Kanban Zone is an online collaboration platform that leverages the power of Kanban to help improve personal and organizational productivity through process visualization, workflow optimization, and performance tracking and tuning. It has a flexible board designer to support organizations’ ever-changing needs for managing tasks efficiently and following their process flow. With Kanban Zone’s board designer, teams can design boards any way they want to suit their needs.

Designed to make remote team collaborations much smoother, Kanban Zone features a responsive design that works on any device, so team members can maintain visibility of their workflow and workload, no matter what device they use. This software offers a streamlined approach to optimizing processes across any industry, meticulously reducing waste and boosting returns.

Also Read: Must-Have Small Business Marketing Tools

ProofHub

ProofHub is an all-in-one project management and team collaboration software that helps teams of all sizes manage their projects, tasks, and documents from one place, enabling them to get work done faster. The tool makes it easy to collaborate in real time through built-in chat, discussions, and task @comments, so everybody can work together seamlessly and ensure the project is moving in the right direction.

The platform offers online proofing, facilitating instant feedback and collaboration on tasks. Its dynamic Gantt chart and Kanban boards help provide a bird’s-eye view, making it easier for managers to ensure remote teams stay on track and meet deadlines. Furthermore, ProofHub’s time-tracking and reporting functionalities enable managers to monitor team members’ progress and productivity effectively, irrespective of their time zones.

Teamly

Teamly is a comprehensive Remote Working tool designed to streamline your team’s workflow. It’s a one-stop solution for managing remote teams, offering real-time chat, task management, screen capture recording, and precise time tracking.

Teamly is incredibly user-friendly and requires no initial training, making it an ideal choice even for those who have never worked with team software. It eliminates the need for endless onboarding sessions and keeps your team up to speed. One of Teamly’s distinguishing features is its Employee Time Tracking and Monitoring system, which ensures accurate time recording. It also offers custom workflows that allow teams to streamline work, eliminate redundancies, and improve efficiency.

Moreover, Teamly.com is not just about managing tasks; it’s about fostering collaboration. The platform’s real-time chat feature improves collaboration and fuels productivity. It also offers screen capture recording, an efficient way to explain projects, problems, and assignments.

In summary, Teamly.com is a robust, versatile tool that offers an all-in-one remote team management solution. It’s easy to use, feature-rich, and offers many benefits, making it a game-changer in today’s remote work landscape.

Dropbox

Dropbox is an intelligent workspace that is very effective for Collaborative work. It allows you to focus on the essentials and better organize with teams. It also lets you store and share various file types with collaborators. All files, namely Cloud files, classic files, Dropbox Paper files, and web shortcuts, can be gathered on the same interface. Customization suggestions let you classify files by project. Teamwork is efficiently coordinated through Dropbox.

Teamleader

Teamleader is a complete collaboration tool for service providers, entrepreneurs, VSEs, and SMEs. It offers many essential features to boost your team’s productivity and optimize internal workflows. To meet your specific needs, Teamleader offers two innovative solutions, namely Teamleader Focus and Teamleader Orbit, depending on your company’s size.

The software that improves sales, invoicing, and the general organization of work. It also helps to plan projects, efficiently manage the budget, and generate detailed reports. Thus, it is your ideal ally to work intelligently and securely, thanks to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosting solution.

Miro

Miro comes as a Collaboration whiteboard that several people can join simultaneously. It has tools for drawing, displaying sticky notes with text, uploading files and images, embedding videos, and adding other content to the board.

Miro offers video calls, allowing you to chat with your colleagues while brainstorming and working on visual projects. Mural deliberately only offers audio calls, keeping visual attention on the board. This tool provides a library of template objects for creating charts, diagrams, and other visual aids that you can reuse in other business documents, such as presentations.

Jalios

Jalios is an essential intranet and extranet solution supporting companies’ digital transformation. Using a Collaboration platform is very advantageous for managing and updating data and for organizing activities. Equipped with a Collaboration EDM solution that facilitates communication, Jalios optimizes communication between all employees of the same company.

The solution can host different Collaboration spaces for project coordination, strategic monitoring, and many more. Jalios offers several flexible features, adapted to consumer communication and data exchange technologies, to support your collaboration. It also embeds essential tools for better organization: a calendar, a task manager, an event planner, and a directory.

Acollab

Acollab is a Collaboration platform with multiple features. It can meet the needs of those who wish to conduct a team project more efficiently, quickly, and safely. With Acollab, a team has complete collaboration tools gathered in one place. The platform combines potentially beneficial functions. Project management, file sharing, GED, agenda, chat, messaging, publication, time tracking for small business, rights management… Everything can be managed through Acollab.

Easy to use, it can be quickly deployed within a team to foster closer collaboration while boosting each participant’s involvement and accountability. The servers are located in France. No installation is required to launch Acollab. For confidentiality, the platform has implemented the SSL protocol. The subscription can be monthly or annual.

Also Read: Online Workflow Management Tools

ClickUp

ClickUp is a collaboration tool with many sophisticated features. Team members and collaborators can access assigned comments, a chat function, an inbox, alerts, threaded comments, and other functions. ClickUp also has tools for creating, sharing, and collaboratively editing wikis and documents. Users can comment on documents and tasks, add notes, and communicate with other team members to improve collaboration.

Task management features include checklists, subtasks, reminders, priorities, task templates, and the ability to filter, sort, search, rearrange, and view tasks efficiently for the team. Users can build Gantt charts, calendars, and timelines to visualize tasks.

Trivia

Engage in personalized Trivia questions, a virtual team-building experience combining fun and social games to foster camaraderie, collaboration, and connections among your teammates – conveniently in one place.

Acknowledging that all work and no play can be counterproductive, we offer a quick 5-minute respite right within your workspace, whether Slack or MS Teams. After the game, bond over post-game banter, discover shared interests, and get to know each other better, creating a stronger, more connected team. This helps improve your teamwork.

Teamwork

The Teamwork tool enables a new approach to work management. It enables faster project delivery with all the necessary features for better collaboration. Thanks to Teamwork, all teams can work together with the utmost transparency.

Each participant will have a view of the projects in progress, and everyone will be able to communicate effectively to plan the following actions. Project Workflows are automated so teams can save time and focus on what matters most.

MeisterTask

MeisterTask is an easy-to-use online task management tool with intelligent automation and connectors. With this tool, you can adapt Kanban-style project boards to suit your team’s workflow, as well as other agile workflows, including traditional project and task management and software sprints.

Other features include:

Gantt chart calendars.
Automation.
Comments and mentions.
Statistics and reports.
A calendar feature that allows users to build their dashboards.

Staff on which the work of any project can be pinned and organized.

Beekast

Beekast is a collaboration tool designed to meet the needs of businesses and individuals. Easy to learn and use, it helps you create, organize, animate, and follow up on your meetings. Thanks to its many features, you can optimize your workshops’ organization to make them more engaging and effective. To improve interaction and collaboration within your teams.

Beekast integrates with your everyday tool ecosystem, including Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, LiveStorm, Prezi, and more. So, whether for workshops, training, professional events, or virtual classes, Beekast is undoubtedly the collaboration tool you need. It also works on all types of devices and requires no installation.

Wimi

The Wimi tool offers several features to organize teams and projects better. The Wimi Drive version allows for sharing and exchanging documents. It ensures teamwork synchronization and allows each person to work on the latest file version.

The Wimi Teamwork version is the flagship version equipped with the necessary functionalities for efficient project collaboration. The Wimi Armored version stands out for its high security and privacy. It is used for sensitive projects.

Klaxoon

Klaxoon is a comprehensive collaboration platform designed to meet the daily needs of companies and organizations. It offers various innovative tools, including Board, Session, Memo, Mission, Survey, Adventure, and Network, as well as a library of ready-to-use templates to help you launch your workshop. Thanks to this platform, sharing information and exchanging between your company’s stakeholders has never been easier or faster.

This creates more commitment, participation, and impact vis-à-vis all your employees. It is different from other Collaboration solutions on the market because it is accessible even offline via the Klaxoon Box, its plug-and-play device. In addition, MeetingBoard lets you schedule a meeting immediately.

PhotoADKing

PhotoADKing is a user-friendly online graphic design tool that allows individuals and businesses to create stunning visuals effortlessly. Its library has millions of templates, including posters, flyers, brochures, banners, and more.

For example, if you want to create a professional-looking brochure for your business, you can use PhotoADKing’s brochure templates. These templates are pre-designed to save you time and can be easily customized to suit your business needs.

Canva

Canva is a simple graphic design tool that helps create visual content that looks decent. It allows you to create unique designs and share them with your team in minutes. Collaborating with teams is much easier with Canva. Designers can share their creations with anyone, and other team members can leave comments. You can also choose from thousands of layouts for your designs and create your custom template.

TrueConf

TrueConf is a powerful video conferencing software that facilitates seamless communication and collaboration for businesses, educational institutions, and government organizations. It provides high-definition video and audio calls, screen sharing, and meeting recording, ensuring smooth, efficient meetings.

TrueConf supports flexible access across multiple platforms, including desktop, mobile devices, and dedicated hardware, making it convenient for remote teams. The platform prioritizes security, offering end-to-end encryption to protect sensitive information and ensure secure communication during calls, messages, and file sharing. Additionally, TrueConf can be deployed as a self-hosted solution, giving organizations full control over their infrastructure and ensuring sensitive data remains on their premises.

In addition to its video conferencing capabilities, TrueConf also acts as a secure corporate messenger, allowing users to send encrypted messages and share files in a safe environment. The platform’s user-friendly interface, combined with its customizable features, enables businesses to tailor their communication tools to their specific needs.

How to Choose the Right Collaboration Software?

Collaboration tools enable users to work on a project or task, whether in the same room or across the globe. Collaboration software or tools can share files and documents, chat online, manage tasks and calendars, and more.

With so many collaboration tools on the market, choosing the right one for your business can take time. Here are some tips to help you choose the right collaboration tools for your business:

Decide What You Need

Before looking for collaboration tools, take some time to think about the tasks and projects you want to collaborate on. This will help you shortlist the required features and find tools that match your criteria.

Check the Features

Once you know what you need, review the features offered by the collaboration tools on the market. Make sure they offer everything you need to collaborate effectively on your projects and tasks.

Consider Compatibility

When selecting collaboration tools, ensure they are compatible with the other tools and software you use. You want your new collaboration tool to avoid problems with other tools you already use.

Consider Scalability

If your business is growing, think ahead and choose collaboration tools that can grow with your business. You want to keep tools the same every time your business grows or changes.

Remember the Support

When selecting collaboration tools, make sure they offer adequate support. You want to avoid ending up with a tool that doesn’t work and cannot be made to work properly.

Following these tips, you can choose the most appropriate Collaboration tools for your business. Be sure to compare the different options before making your final choice. This way, you are sure to find tools that will meet all your needs and help you collaborate effectively on your projects.