Team collaboration tools and apps are a convoluted market. If you take a look at G2Crowd’s overview on Best Team Collaboration Software in addition to the headache the chart gives, you’ll walk away even more confused about the various tools available. There simply isn’t a single domain of collaboration software to cover the various collaboration use cases.
Plus, most collaboration tools have experienced a changing of the guard with a new round of predominantly cloud-based software that is easier to use and administer than previous generations.
Best Collaboration Apps for 2019
So to make sense of this confusing and changing space, here the best collaboration Apps for 2019:
Zoom
Team collaboration tool type: Video conferencing
What it’s displacing: WebEx, GoToMeeting, Skype
Why it’s the best: Zoom has taken web conferencing user experience to an unprecedented level. This collaboration tool is easy to set up and integrates well with a myriad of solutions. Most importantly, it’s known to be highly dependable with consistent high video quality.
Box
Team collaboration tool type: Cloud content management
What it’s displacing: Internal servers
Why it’s the best: Filing sharing may not be at the top of your list when you think of team collaboration tools, but this is immensely important for workplace collaboration. What you may not see is the security and governance that is put in behind the scenes. In one of their early campaigns, they quipped: Box is “like SharePoint, but without the servers, setup cost, manuals, downtime, firewall restrictions, migraines, permission issues, three year development cycles, hardware maintenance, storage limitations, backups, VPN, certification courses, browser incompatibility, setup time, hair loss.”
Google Docs (Google Suite)
Team collaboration tool type: Document collaboration
What it’s displacing: Localized Microsoft Word documents
Why it’s the best: Cloud-based document collaboration tools have transformed how we manage knowledge in our day to day lives. It’s much easier to live in a world where we can collaborate in real-time on cloud-based documents and no longer have to worry about versions or saving files.
Trello
Team collaboration tool type: Project management
What it’s displacing: A slew of project management tools
Why it’s the best: This team collaboration app focuses on project management. Since project management is notorious for making things too complex, Trello does a great job simplifying everything. Its noteboard with cards approach is easy to learn, use, and follow. If you’re looking for a Kanban solution, Trello may be the perfect solution for you.
Slack
Team collaboration tool type: Messaging
What it’s displacing: Legacy social platforms (e.g. Yammer), chat tools, emails
Why it’s the best: Slack is like if your real-time chat app and your old social collaboration apps had a baby. Team conversations are organized into channels making it easier for many organizations to collaborate and share messages. The only downside is, like email, Slack communications can get filled with noise very quickly.
Simpplr
Team collaboration tool type: Employee intranets
What it’s displacing: SharePoint, Legacy Intranets
Why it’s the best: While the other tools above make for great day-to-day team collaboration use-cases, businesses still need separate applications to focus internal communications and top-down news, foster a cohesive company culture across distributed locations, and promote employee connections across the workplace. Simpplr has recreated the intranet space with software that is a night-and-day difference from the intranets most people envision: it comes with a slick UI, is easy to administer, and has found ways to drive intranet collaboration in the workplace.
Looking for more best collaboration tools?
Not finding the specific niche you’re looking for? Here is a longer list of the best collaboration tools to improve teamwork, but you may have to sort through a variety of use cases.
All of these collaboration apps share a few things in common: They are on the right side of history being cloud-based. They’re all easy to deploy and get running quickly. And most importantly, for the sake of collaboration, all have a critical focus on usability. If you think about it, collaboration apps can’t be difficult to use by the nature of what they are facilitating.
