Collaboration Tools

Collaboration Tools Overview

Online collaboration software makes working together on professional projects easier and faster. It reduces bottlenecks in feedback and approval processes and allows for real-time communication. The three core areas of functionality for collaboration tools are:

  • Communication
  • Project & task management
  • File sharing & management

Some products stress one feature set over another. These take a best-of-breed approach, and work well if they offer integrations. For example, Slack is an online team collaboration app focused on messaging and file sharing. It also includes audio and video conferencing capabilities. For everything else, it integrates with other software tools.

Because they each have slightly different specialties, many of the tools above are not perfectly comparable. Depending on your business needs, you may want to invest in a few different types of collaboration tools. For example, many teams use a messaging application like Slack for casual communication and also use web conferencing software to host online meetings.

Online collaboration tools are closely related to a number of other types of software, including:

All of these platforms include collaboration features, though most are limited to a specific channel or type of interaction.

Sometimes collaboration tools can replace these more traditional solutions, but it is more common to integrate collaboration tools with existing communication and workflow structure. Often collaboration tools bring interactions that would otherwise be handled by separate platforms into a convenient central location.

Top Rated Collaboration Products

TrustRadius Top Rated for 2021

These products won a Top Rated award for having excellent customer satisfaction ratings. The list is based purely on reviews; there is no paid placement, and analyst opinions do not influence the rankings. Read more about the Top Rated criteria.

Collaboration Tools TrustMap

TrustMaps are two-dimensional charts that compare products based on trScore and research frequency by prospective buyers. Products must have 10 or more ratings to appear on this TrustMap.

Collaboration Products

(1-25 of 379) Sorted by Most Reviews

The list of products below is based purely on reviews (sorted from most to least). There is no paid placement and analyst opinions do not influence their rankings. Here is our Promise to Buyers to ensure information on our site is reliable, useful, and worthy of your trust.

Miro

Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard for cross-functional teams, boasting over 20 million product managers, project managers, Agile coaches, developers, and other team members around the world as users of Miro to collaborate, brainstorm, and visualize ideas.

monday.com

monday.com Work OS is an open platform designed so that anyone can create the tools they need to run all aspects of their work. It includes ready-made templates or the ability to customize any work solution ranging from sales pipelines to marketing campaigns, CRMs, and project tracking.…

Key Features

  • Task Management (1211)
    92%
    9.2
  • Team Collaboration (1195)
    92%
    9.2
  • Resource Management (1047)
    82%
    8.2
Webex Meetings

Webex Meetings

Customer Verified
Top Rated
TRUE

Webex Meetings is a video conferencing platform with built-in AI and machine learning capabilities to eliminate tasks from users’ plates. It supports team meetings, webinars, online training, real-time technical support, and conference calling.

Key Features

  • Desktop sharing (641)
    89%
    8.9
  • High quality audio (648)
    88%
    8.8
  • Meeting initiation (642)
    86%
    8.6
Webex App

Webex App

Customer Verified
Top Rated
TRUE

Webex App brings together Calling, Meeting and Messaging modes of collaboration in order to create a seamless, engaging, inclusive and intelligent experience.Seamless collaboration across devices, locations and organizations· Use any computer, tablet, phone, browser or Cisco…

Key Features

  • Chat (318)
    89%
    8.9
  • Discussions (298)
    87%
    8.7
  • Notifications (312)
    86%
    8.6
Lucidspark

Lucidspark

Customer Verified
Top Rated
TRUE

Lucidspark is a virtual whiteboard where teams can bring their best ideas to light. Users can collaborate in real-time, no matter where they are. Lucidspark helps people organize notes and scribbles and turn them into presentation-ready concepts. When it’s time for next steps, teams…

Genesys Cloud CX (formerly Genesys Cloud)

Genesys Cloud CX (formerly PureCloud, Genesys Cloud) is a contact center application optimized for automatic call distribution, interactive voice response, email, social media, chat, and text/SMS. It is also a VoIP interconnect service provider.

Key Features

  • Agent dashboard (237)
    90%
    9.0
  • Warm transfer (231)
    90%
    9.0
  • Call tracking (231)
    84%
    8.4
Slack

Slack

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Slack is a group messaging or team collaboration app that aims to simplify communication for businesses. Features include open discussions, private groups, and direct messaging, as well as deep contextual search and message archiving, and file sharing. Slack integrates with a number…

Key Features

  • Chat (252)
    97%
    9.7
  • Discussions (244)
    92%
    9.2
  • Notifications (249)
    91%
    9.1
Wrike

Wrike

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Wrike is a project management and collaboration software. This solution connects tasks, discussions, and emails to the user’s project plan. Wrike is optimized for agile workflows and aims to help resolve data silos, poor visibility into work status, and missed deadlines and project…

Key Features

  • Task Management (203)
    89%
    8.9
  • Team Collaboration (201)
    86%
    8.6
  • Scheduling (189)
    79%
    7.9
Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams combines video conferencing software with team collaboration tools. The communications platform allows MS Office users to conduct conference calls and share files via SharePoint, and join or initiate a group chat.

Key Features

  • Chat (149)
    92%
    9.2
  • Discussions (138)
    89%
    8.9
  • Notifications (148)
    85%
    8.5
Airtable

Airtable

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Airtable is a project management and collaboration platform designed to enable content pipelines, product management, events planning, user research, and more. It combines spreadsheet,database, calendar, and kanban functionality within one platform.

Key Features

  • Team Collaboration (204)
    89%
    8.9
  • Task Management (186)
    85%
    8.5
  • Resource Management (182)
    83%
    8.3
Skype for Business (formerly Lync), now part of Microsoft Teams

Skype for Business was an online messaging and conferencing tool, now superseded by Microsoft Teams.

Key Features

  • Desktop sharing (194)
    82%
    8.2
  • High quality audio (193)
    80%
    8.0
  • High quality video (188)
    78%
    7.8
Trello

Trello

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Trello from Atlassian is a project management tool based on a Kanban framework. Trello is ideal for task-management in a to-do list format. It supports sharing boards and cards across users or teams. The product offers a free version, and paid versions add greater automation,…

Key Features

  • Task Management (192)
    94%
    9.4
  • Team Collaboration (188)
    91%
    9.1
  • Mobile Access (170)
    88%
    8.8
Microsoft SharePoint

SharePoint

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Microsoft's SharePoint is an Intranet solution that enables users to share and manage content, knowledge, and applications to empower teamwork, quickly find information, and collaborate across the organization.

Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud file storage, synchronization, and collaboration platform and service, that features Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for document editing and presentation.

Key Features

  • Document collaboration (186)
    93%
    9.3
  • Access control (183)
    87%
    8.7
  • File search (187)
    84%
    8.4
Asana

Asana

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Asana is a web and mobile project management app. With tasks, projects, conversations, and dashboards, Asana lets an entire team know who's doing what by when, enabling workload balancing. Users can also add integrations for GANTT charts, time tracking and more.

Key Features

  • Task Management (153)
    88%
    8.8
  • Team Collaboration (152)
    85%
    8.5
  • Scheduling (139)
    79%
    7.9
Planview Projectplace

Projectplace is a collaborative work management solution. The vendor says the product is built with teams of all sizes and complexity in mind, from virtual teams of five to entire global enterprises with tens of thousands of active users. It is also designed to incorporate waterfall…

Key Features

  • Team Collaboration (174)
    89%
    8.9
  • Task Management (173)
    87%
    8.7
  • Document Management (167)
    82%
    8.2
Bloomfire

Bloomfire

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Bloomfire provides knowledge engagement, aiming to deliver an experience that connects teams and individuals with the information they need to excel at their jobs. Their cloud-based knowledge engagement platform aims to give people one centralized, searchable place to engage with…

Box

Box

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Box is an online cloud content management solution that caters to individual users as well as businesses.

Key Features

  • File sync, storage & archiving (31)
    94%
    9.4
  • Security, risk management & information governance (31)
    92%
    9.2
  • Mobile support (31)
    92%
    9.2
Cisco Jabber

Cisco Jabber

Customer Verified
Top Rated
TRUE

Cisco Jabber is a communication platform that is available as a browser-based and mobile app solution. It allows users to collaborate across channels such as instant messaging, voice, VoIP, and video telephony. Features include voice and video calling, call recording, and broadcast…

Key Features

  • Chat (144)
    85%
    8.5
  • Notifications (144)
    83%
    8.3
  • Discussions (122)
    76%
    7.6
Basecamp

Basecamp

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Basecamp is a web-based project-management tool. Basecamp offers features standard to project management platforms, as well as mobile accessibility, unlimited users, and 3rd party integrations. Basecamp is priced by space requirements and concurrent projects.

Key Features

  • Team Collaboration (112)
    86%
    8.6
  • Task Management (112)
    82%
    8.2
  • Document Management (106)
    78%
    7.8
HipChat (discontinued)

Hipchat was discontinued by Atlassian. Users are being migrated to Slack.

Key Features

  • Notifications (132)
    77%
    7.7
  • Chat (134)
    77%
    7.7
  • Discussions (112)
    65%
    6.5
Dropbox Business

Dropbox Business expands on the company's cloud storage service by providing additional features, such as lost file recovery for an extended period, integration with popular office suites (e.g. Office 365), the Dropbox Paper collaboration extension, two-factor authentication (2FA)…

Key Features

  • Reliability (131)
    93%
    9.3
  • Performance (131)
    92%
    9.2
  • File search (131)
    84%
    8.4
Atlassian Confluence

Confluence

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Confluence is a collaboration and content sharing platform used primarily by customers who are already using Atlassian's Jira project tracking product. The product appeals particularly to IT users.

Key Features

  • Notifications (102)
    86%
    8.6
  • Document collaboration (99)
    85%
    8.5
  • Search (102)
    78%
    7.8
Fuze

Fuze

Customer Verified
Top Rated
TRUE

Fuze is a cloud-based unified communications platform that includes IP PBX voice service, video conferencing, and collaboration tools such as content sharing and instant messaging capabilities. It also integrates with a wide range of popular CTI, CRM, and click-to-call solutions.

Key Features

  • Mobile app for iOS (93)
    82%
    8.2
  • Directory of employee names (106)
    80%
    8.0
  • Answering rules (98)
    74%
    7.4
Evernote

Evernote is a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving. A "note" can be a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten "ink" note. Notes can also have file attachments. Notes can be sorted into…

Key Features

  • Device sync (72)
    87%
    8.7
  • File search (72)
    86%
    8.6
  • File organization (72)
    77%
    7.7

Learn More About Collaboration Tools

What are Collaboration Tools?

Online collaboration software makes working together on professional projects easier and faster. It reduces bottlenecks in feedback and approval processes and allows for real-time communication. The three core areas of functionality for collaboration tools are:

  • Communication
  • Project & task management
  • File sharing & management

Some products stress one feature set over another. These take a best-of-breed approach, and work well if they offer integrations. For example, Slack is an online team collaboration app focused on messaging and file sharing. It also includes audio and video conferencing capabilities. For everything else, it integrates with other software tools.

Because they each have slightly different specialties, many of the tools above are not perfectly comparable. Depending on your business needs, you may want to invest in a few different types of collaboration tools. For example, many teams use a messaging application like Slack for casual communication and also use web conferencing software to host online meetings.

Online collaboration tools are closely related to a number of other types of software, including:

All of these platforms include collaboration features, though most are limited to a specific channel or type of interaction.

Sometimes collaboration tools can replace these more traditional solutions, but it is more common to integrate collaboration tools with existing communication and workflow structure. Often collaboration tools bring interactions that would otherwise be handled by separate platforms into a convenient central location.

Collaboration Tools Features & Capabilities

Communication

Some collaboration tools have communication capabilities at their core. Examples of online communication tools that specialize in this are include:

Other collaboration features are available but may have a limited scope. Communication features across collaboration tools include:

  • Options for integrated messaging. Live chat, comments within a file and private/group messages are all common
  • Privacy and access settings
  • Conference calling
  • Video chats with screen sharing
  • Project-based conversations

Project & Task Management

Another class of online collaboration tools have underlying project and task management capabilities at their core. These tools may not be as advanced as traditional project management platforms. However, they can be incredibly useful for online team collaboration and communication.

Examples of collaboration tools noted for significant project & task management features include:

Some products walk the line of collaboration and project management. For example, Wrike has many robust project management features, but it’s designed like a social network to make engaging with team members easy.

Access to advanced project management capabilities is usually more important for larger or interdepartmental teams. Collaboration features related to project & task management can include:

  • Workflow automation
  • Tracking location and changes to a file
  • Brainstorming tools/pinboards
  • Task lists and assignments. These are complete with due dates, sub-tasks and file attachment
  • Scheduling, calendar integration, reminders and alerts
  • Gantt charts

File Sharing & Management

Other online collaboration tools focus on document storage, sharing, and management. Examples of these products include:

They also offer significant opportunities for collaboration. Collaboration features central to file sharing include:

  • Security
  • Support for different file types
  • Comments and notes attached to files
  • Track changes and versioning
  • Editing permissions and access control
  • Shared folders

Online Collaboration Tools

Locally hosted collaboration solutions (like Redbooth Private Cloud) are less common than online SaaS collaboration tools. Online solutions are more abundant and often more convenient for end-users. They work particularly well for remote teams and employees who need to collaborate on common tasks.

They come in many forms, from mobile apps to browser extensions.

Some tools are industry and use case-specific. For example, Mural.ly and ConceptBoard are tools for graphic designers. On the other hand, Microsoft Yammer is more like a social network for corporate enterprises, regardless of department or industry. Other use cases for collaboration software include:

  • Creating an internal knowledge base for employees with a product like Confluence
  • Creating flow charts or mapping out ideas visually with a product like MindMeister
  • Creating group to-do lists with a product like Trello

Adoption

Adoption is key to success with collaboration software. It is only effective if everyone on the team is on board with the software.

It is important to choose a collaboration tool that is easy to use. The tool should also fit your team’s culture and goals. There are dozens of collaboration products on the market -- and it’s ever-growing!

To help you find a good fit, consider these questions:

  • What types of projects will you collaborate on?
  • What are the steps of a typical project?
  • How does your team handle communication and workflow?
  • Where do you store project files?
  • How many people will be collaborating? How many departments?
  • Will project managers or team members be collaborating? Both?
  • What other platforms and apps does your team use? How does the tool handle integration?
  • How formal or informal will collaboration be? Will all discussions be related to work on specific projects, or will some be social?
  • Will all conversations be archived?

Collaboration Tools Comparison

To help you more easily compare different types of collaboration tools, consider these 3 key factors:

  1. What’s the main purpose this tool will serve? For example, are you looking for an easy to use team instant messaging app? Or do you need a web conferencing tool that will be easy for employees and clients to use? Or maybe you’re looking for a new company intranet, or file and document sharing solution. Figuring out what business need(s) the tool will serve will help you identify which set of collaboration tools to evaluate.
  2. Ease of use, which helps determine how widely adopted the software will be, is highly important. If you invest in a collaboration tool that has a steep learning curve, it’s less likely to be adopted by the rest of your team. Look for tools that have high ‘usability’ ratings on the product scorecard tab on TrustRadius to help narrow down the list of products you’re considering.
  3. What does your budget for collaboration and communication software look like? This will likely depend on whether you are self-employed, a contract worker, an SMB, or an enterprise business. Many collaboration tools in this category have either free versions or free trials for your team to test out. However, if your business needs a very budget-friendly solution, look for tools that have a ‘forever free’ option.

Start a comparison between collaboration tools.

Pricing Information

Collaboration software is usually priced by user on a monthly subscription.

Most vendors offer a free tier for up to a certain number of users. The free tiers usually have a more limited set of features and capabilities. There are many basic free online collaboration options, including GoVisually, Trello, Podio and Google Drive for example.

For paid plans, pure collaboration tools focused on notes, tasks, and chat start around $8/mo. per user. For collaboration tools that include cloud storage, pricing starts at around $10/mo. per user, and goes up from there based on storage size.

Collaboration Tools Best Of Awards

The following Collaboration Tools offer award-winning customer relationships, feature sets, and value for price. Learn more about our Best Of Awards methodology here.

Best Collaboration Tools

Related Categories

Frequently Asked Questions

What are collaboration tools?

Collaboration tools help teams communicate, manage projects and tasks, and share and store files more efficiently. Not all online collaboration tools have the same set of capabilities, specific tools may specialize in one of the three areas above. Common use cases for collaboration software include:

  • Online meetings
  • Team messaging
  • Project & task management
  • File storage
  • Collaborative content creation

What are some free online collaboration tools?

Many collaboration software products have a free version available, though typically with more limited space or functionality. Popular free tools for small teams or SMBs include:


How much does collaboration software cost?

Along with free versions of the software, many collaboration tools range from $5 - $40 per user per month. Enterprise tier plans may cost more, depending on how many user licenses your business needs. Collaboration tools that provide cloud storage space may also increase based on the amount of space required.