15 Best Online Collaboration Tools For Teams In 2022

monday.com is a collaboration and task management software that won the 2019 Webby Award for productivity platform. Its simplistic design and user-friendly features make collaborating within, and between, teams easy.

monday.com’s features include task management boards for resource planning, timeline views to manage deadlines and projects, and updates and comments to give feedback or define next-steps in order to keep everyone aligned. Teams can use monday.com to share and organize files, centralize communication, plan out resources, and easily @mention any person or team to keep them in the loop. Because it’s so flexible, any team can customize monday.com to fit their unique needs.

monday.com’s integrations include apps like Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Zoom, Typeform, and many more, accessible via Zapier.

monday.com costs from $6/user/month and comes with a free 14-day trial. They offer a free plan for up to 2 users.

Wrike is an award-winning, easy-to-use collaborative work management software trusted by 20,000+ organizations worldwide. It's suitable for teams of anywhere from five to an unlimited number. The tool is highly configurable and allows users to customize workflows, dashboards, reports, request forms, and more.

Wrike’s simple interface enables users to chat in real-time, and offers threaded messages and @ mentions for ease of communication. Wrike also features task lists, subtasks, calendars, shared workflows, and file sharing. Within Wrike, teams can share and assign tasks, have in-task discussions, and share and proof digital files together.

Wrike has an easy-to-use, intuitive interface and navigation with distinct spaces, folders, and tasks. Toggle quickly between the home screen and timesheets, dashboards, calendars, reports, and an activity stream. The tool also offers a variety of specific solutions depending on the type of team or organization — including marketing teams and professional service teams.

Wrike offers 400+ pre-built native integrations, including integrations with the most popular file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, along with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.

Wrike pricing starts at $9.80 per user per month. There are four different price points, including a free version and plans which offer the ability to invite free external collaborators to a paid account.

Ziflow is the leading creative collaboration platform for content review and approval. It supports rich comment threads for clear feedback, workflows for fast approval, integrations with your favorite apps and tools, and does this for all your creative assets in one platform.

With it, your team can collaborate on all your content (video, digital, web, print, packaging and much more) in one creative collaboration platform.

You can automate your entire creative content review process for shorter feedback cycles and faster approval times—all with less manual work. Ziflow is currently used by creative project management teams from Showtime, Splash Worldwide, AWS, Hilton, Weber Grills, WeatherTech, Olly, and Everyday Health.

Ziflow boasts over 1,200 file types supported, SOC2 compliance and capabilities like automated workflow, rich comment threads, auto compare, version management, and integrations with leading project management solutions. They have mark-up tools like real-time discussions threads, shapes/arrows, @-mentions, and change management for audits.

Ziflow integrates with Slack, Clarizen, monday.com, Microsoft Teams, JIRA, Dropbox, Trello, Google Drive, and Asana.

Regular Ziflow users report it being a versatile and easy-to-use creative project management solution. It will excel for teams with numerous feedback cycles or rigorous asset/content approval processes. Graphic design teams, editorial teams, creative agency teams, and marketing departments are just a few examples of groups that will benefit from what Ziflow has to offer.

Ziflow costs from $9/user/month (paid annually) and comes with a 14-day free trial.

Filestage is a review and approval platform used by agencies and in-house creative teams around the world. From sharing files to collecting feedback, it speeds up every step of your creative review process.

Feedback management is where Filestage really shines. You can invite reviewers to add comments and discuss ideas right alongside your content and create review steps to group feedback from different types of stakeholders, like Creative, Account management, and Client. Add in automated timecodes, version comparisons, annotations, and attachments, and Filestage is a great feedback platform.

Additionally, you can see every review step, file format, version, and reviewer in your project, with status indicators to show who’s approved what in a centralized dashboard. So at any stage in your creative review process, you can see exactly where things are at a glance.

Filestage features native integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Asana – plus thousands more apps through their integration partners, like Pabbly.

Pricing starts at $24/user/month with a 7-day free trial. You can also invite an unlimited number of reviewers and external uploaders to your account for free.

Smartsheet has collaboration features that make it a fit for almost any team, but especially a creative, content, design, or marketing team that needs to collaborate on content.

For instance, you can use the “Forms” feature which offers the ability to create and customize forms to collect essentially any data from anyone in a structured format—you could use it for collecting information, including images and files, from clients in order to make briefs, for example.

Team collaboration features are great—members get notified of critical changes in real-time, and the tool provides shared views, detail history, activity logs, automated alerts, reminder, and status reports to keep everyone aligned and informed. There are content collaboration features like pinned feedback, approvals, and annotations that make it easier to collaborate on creative work. It doesn’t have a real-time activity stream on the kanban board, but it does display real-time project data in dashboards to keep your teams in sync.

For teams searching for lots of different files, Smartsheet offers searchable databases, multiple viewing options to see tasks, cards, files (etc). You’ll find version control, and proofing and approval workflows to help your team move work through the pipeline.

The tool is also easy to share, even with outside users. It has permission-based access which allows you to set permission levels to Owner, Admin, Editor, and Viewer. Similarly, you can create portals that give you customized views of your projects depending on what you want to track for each one.

Smartsheet integrations include Microsoft and Google apps, as well as development essentials like Jira, and useful business apps like Salesforce, servicenow, Slack, Box, and Tableau. The platform is extensible through a REST API and webhooks.

Smartsheet costs from $7/user/month, with a minimum of 3 users and a maximum of 25 users. They also offer a 30-day free trial.

ClickUp is a collaboration tool with powerful features for communication and collaboration. These include assigned comments, a chat function, an inbox, notifications, threaded comments, and more, which extend to both team members and other collaborators.

ClickUp also includes features for creating, sharing, and collaborative editing for Wikis and documents. Users can comment on documents and tasks, assign comments, and chat with other team members for increased communication and collaboration.

Task management features include task checklists, subtasks, reminders, priorities, and task templates, as well as the ability to filter, sort, search for, easily reorder, and view tasks in the manner most convenient for the team. Users can also create Gantt charts, calendars, and timelines to visualize tasks. ClickUp includes time tracking as well, both through integrations and natively.

ClickUp features color-coding for further organization and clarity, as well as multiple task views such as lists, calendars, Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and more.

Reporting features include the ability to create custom dashboards, as well as six built-in report types for team reporting.

ClickUp offers native integrations with Slack, G Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier.

ClickUp's free plan is robust and includes all primary features. The unlimited plan starts at $5 a month per user and offers additional functionality.

Nifty is a team collaboration workspace that includes features for managing tasks, tracking project milestones, communicating with teammates, and creating collaborative documents. The tool also includes direct messaging, which is great for facilitating team-wide communication from planning to delivery, as well as individual discussion threads that can be made project-specific. Another great feature of Nifty is its ability to automatically update project milestones as tasks are completed.

Nifty allows you to import data from Asana, Basecamp, ClickUp, and Trello so you can quickly establish your workflow. Nifty has a built-in integration with Zoom for audio and video conferencing within project discussions and direct messages and also integrates with Zapier to connect to over 1000 additional apps.

Pricing starts at $39/month.

Forecast is a project management and collaboration tool that allows users to manage projects, resources, and finances, and includes capabilities for managing entire portfolios and single project milestones or tasks.

Forecast includes a task list feature that displays priorities for each team member. Users can also create task cards where team members can comment, share files, and register time. Task cards also include accessible information on dependencies and subtasks.

Forecast’s AI capabilities include timesheet suggestions based on historical data, as well automatic estimates for task durations, resource assignments, and more. Workflow automations are also available.

Forecast integrates with mainstream project management tools, as well as with Jira, QuickBooks, Xero, and more.

Pricing starts at £25/user/month, and a 14-day free trial is available.

This workspace messaging tool allows people of in-house/remote to have transparent office communication through quite an advanced feature stack.

Overall this tool does a standout job with its feature offering and hits all of the criteria I look for in a collaboration tool, plus more. The main features include instant messaging, voice-video calling, video conferencing, file sharing, and desktop sharing.

But something I find especially useful in this tool are its more advanced features that really enhance the day-to-day user experience. I like both the 'respond later' option as well as the 'burnout' option which lets you set a message to send at a later time. The self-messaging feature is also unique—a simple but useful feature that lets you send reminders and notes to yourself. The 'forkout' feature lets you send bulk text messages and files to multiple users at once, and when viewing files you see a preview so you don't have to download to see them.

Troop Messenger supports many native and third-party integration such as employee monitoring and tracking apps, attendance management systems, Google Drive, Dropbox, and LDAP. It's available across Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, and iOS.

Troop Messenger costs from $1 per user per month. It's worth noting that although it’s a SaaS model, it offers the delivery models of self-hosting, API, and custom application.

MeisterTask is an intuitive online task management tool that uses smart integrations and automation. The tool has Kanban-style project boards that you can customize to fit your team's workflow or any agile workflow, including classic project and task management workflows, as well as software sprints.

Other features include: Gantt chart style timelines, automation, comments and mentions, statistics and reports, and an agenda feature that lets users create their own personal dashboards to which tasks from any project can be pinned and organized.

MeisterTask comes natively integrated with widely-used apps and platforms such as G Suite, Slack, and GitHub, as well as more than 2000 other productivity, cloud storage, and data management applications via Zapier. With its free mobile app for iOS, you can stay on top of your to-dos wherever you are.

MeisterTask costs $8.25/user/month.

Kintone is a customizable collaboration tool used by teams at Volvo Trucks North America, Japan Airlines, Shiseido, and over 23,000 organizations worldwide. Their unique platform allows you to build a wide variety of customizable “apps” either from scratch, using templates or from your existing spreadsheets, for data management, business processes, and workflows. Kintone apps are not only customizable but they allow you to communicate where the data lives so your team is always on the same page.

Kintone lets you build no-code project tracking apps by dragging and dropping elements that you want to see onto the page: rich text fields, date fields, drop-down menus, number fields with built-in calculations, spaces for attachments, user or group selection menus, related data from other apps, tables, and more.

Once you’ve built the app you want, you can use it to more easily manage whatever data and tasks you and your team need to track. And with custom notifications and reminders as well as detailed permissions settings, your collaboration tool can look and work however you want it to.

Kintone’s built-in communication features also allow teams to discuss projects directly in the app and in topic or project-based threads. Dedicated “spaces” organize everything your team needs for your project, including task-tracking apps and searchable conversation threads.

There are so many ways to customize Kintone it can be hard to know where to start. Read the starter blog “What Can You Build with Kintone?” or watch Creating an App from Scratch for a quick look at how the drag-and-drop builder works.

Kintone lets you expand its capabilities with both free native plugins built by the Kintone team as well as integrations with other tools like Slack, Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Tableau, Dropbox, Salesforce, HubSpot, Eventbrite, WordPress, QuickBooks, MailChimp, and many more through a paid plan with Zapier or via API integrations.

Kintone costs $24/user/month with a minimum requirement of 5 users. They offer a 30-day free trial (no credit card required) and discounted prices for nonprofits and educators. Kintone’s team also offers a free custom app build as part of the free trial process.

Evernote provides a place to store everything from personal moments to business projects. This notes and tasks app has a dedicated collaboration tool called “Spaces” that acts as a central source of information, a data-sharing hub, and a messaging/communication space.

Evernote auto-syncs across all your devices, including desktop, smartphone, and tablet. Your ideas, photos, and clipped pages are always available, no matter where your team is located physically. Every member of a space has access to everything kept there, so information is accessible for all.

Their virtual bulletin board is another cool feature, allowing users to make announcements across the whole team. You can also create your own custom templates, save emails to Evernote, link Google Drive files, annotate PDFs, and scan and digitize business cards.

Evernote for Mac and Windows supports up to 5 different accounts of any type (at least one must be Premium or Business); Evernote for iOS and Android supports one personal account and one business account.

The tool integrates with Google Drive, Outlook, Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Evernote's basic plan is free and allows 60 MB of new uploads/month and syncing across 2 devices. Their premium plan starts at $9.99/month and they offer a discount for students on annual subscriptions.

Backlog's feature set is unique in that it offers project management, bug tracking, and version control management in a single app. If you're looking for a tool to help manage development projects or working closely with a team of developers, this is the app for you.

Because this app offers more features than most project management apps, it's visually more complex than some of the other apps on this list. Backlog provides a hands-on tool your developers can use to take projects from start to release to maintenance while ensuring transparency and accountability across teams.

Backlog works for a range of team sizes, and they offer a self-hosted Enterprise option for larger companies. Collaboration features include task management (including subtasks, checklists, and custom fields), milestones, file management, wikis, and more. For collaborating on code, you get SVN and Git repositories, a differences viewer and inline comments, plus pull requests, merge requests, and branches. Visually, the app provides burndown charts, Git graphs, Kanban boards, and Gantt charts, so users can quickly assess projects at a glance.

They also provide a mobile app on both iOS and Android for collaborating on-the-go. It integrates with Nulab's other apps and provides both Redmine and Jira importers.

Backlog is free for up to 10 users with some feature limitations or $35/month for up to 30 users. For $100/month, your team gets unlimited users, i.e. their Standard Plan.

Summary of Backlog:

1. Project discussions: Pass
2. File upload and sharing: Pass
3. To-do list and assigning tasks: Pass
4. Events/project milestones: Pass
5. Integration (with other types of tools): Pass

Blink is a communication tool for the unique needs of deskless workers, who, until now, didn’t have the same quality technology as their colleagues in HQ. It's an app that includes workplace messaging, a social media style company Feed for top-down communications, directory, cloud storage, workplace analytics, polls, and a few other useful features to keep your organization members on the same page.

Blink is built around the concept of workplace messaging as the central functionality, so peer-to-peer direct messaging, group chats, and top-down communications via the company Feed all play an important role. Moderators and admins who post in the company Feed also have the option of turning on and off push notification for each post depending on importance. Blink also features polls, powerful integrations, and digital forms for reporting.

Analytics for admins features prominently through the app: post by post analytics, Org-wide, and Team analytics within the Admin Portal, and Hub analytics that measures interactions and adoption within the document storage and reporting section of the app.

Blink is a straight-out-of-the box SaaS communication software; no technical knowledge is necessary to get started and to invite colleagues to the platform. Its user-friendly, brandable interface is designed with familiar social media style features (think emojis and like buttons) that encourage engagement from employees—even less tech-savvy ones.

You can use existing integrations with 3rd party systems such as Jira, Trello, Office 365, and G-Suite or build new integrations to your existing systems using Blink’s public APIs. Blink supports Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac, and you can access Blink via your browser.

Blink costs from $3.40 user/month. They offer a free 14-day trial and you can book a demo through the homepage.

Among collaboration tools, Todoist offers ones of the cleanest, most clutter-free interfaces for managing tasks. The UI feels truly effortless (and dare we say, refreshing?) and offers basic planning functions for task management, file sharing, and tracking projects. It’s a good choice for individuals and small- to mid-sized teams who simply need all of their tasks, updates, and files in one place.

Todoist is a bit of a minimalist among collaboration tools, but don’t let that scare you away. It’s user experience is excellent, and the visualizations are better than many of the other collaboration tools out there. Todoist’s visualizations have a special focus on personal productivity: individual users can set their own productivity goals and visualize their progress in multiple easy-to-read graphs. All over, we see thoughtful features that are truly useful for the modern user: it works on mobile devices, works offline, and syncs across devices. It also offers a very practical email feature for quickly turning emails from your inbox into tasks.

Although it lacks video conferencing and synchronous editing, Todoist does offer out-of-the-box integrations with 10+ useful apps and plugins, including IFTTT (providing simple automation) and Zapier (for connecting with hundreds of other apps). Todoist also has a mobile app for iOS and Android.

Todoist costs from $29/year per user ($2.40/user/month).

Summary of Todoist:

1. Project discussions: Pass
2. File upload and sharing: Pass
3. To-do list and assigning tasks: Pass
4. Events/project milestones: Pass
5. Integration (with other types of tools): Pass