15 Best Online Collaboration Tools For Teams In 2023

monday.com is a collaboration and task management software that's well-known for its simplistic design and user-friendly features.

Why I picked monday.com: There are many collaboration tools in this platform to help you work on your projects and tasks as a team. But the main reason it made my list is because of its goal-setting capabilities. You can develop your strategic goals, and then connect them to projects and tasks. This helps keep everyone aligned and on track in their work, and contributes to better teamwork.

As for project management, it's highly customizable. You can select from an array of views to keep track of progress. Shared documents allow users to co-create meeting minutes, brainstorm, and engage with others in the team. Everything related to your project can live in one place.

monday.com Standout Features & Integrations

One standout feature is the platform's a whiteboard product, called Workcanvas. You and your team can easily create mind maps, presentations, and workflows, and engage in real-time multiplayer activities using the whiteboard. Another cool feature is the built-in communication tools, like mentions and comments, that help keep project discussions contextual and centralized.

Integrations include Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Zoom, and Typeform. Many more are accessible via a paid Zapier account.

Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-based project management software that helps you manage projects, automate processes, and scale up to enterprise-level programs and portfolios.

Why I picked Smartsheet: This software is designed with enterprise businesses in mind and as such, has a very high level of security. I picked it for teams who are looking to collaborate virtually, but keep their data well-governed. Granular access controls help you ensure only approved collaborators have access to specific information. Request forms and approval workflows ensure an effective transfer of data and information, with the right people getting the data they need at the right time.

Smartsheet Standout Features & Integrations

Standout features include the no-code, automated workflow builder and the system's document management capabilities. You can set up automated workflows to streamline your processes and reduce manual tasks. As for file management, proofing and approvals are included as well as version control to ensure no important information is lost.

Integrations include Google Workspace, Microsoft Office 365, Box, DocuSign, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, Gmail, Outlook, and many other apps. Some integrations require Business or Enterprise plans.

Wrike is a workflow management software that's highly configurable and easy to use, making it suitable for teams of all sizes.

Why I picked Wrike: This platform made my list because of its versatility. It has a large suite of project management features, from resource management to approval flows to request forms and more. As for collaboration, team members can share files and chat in real-time with threaded messages and @-mentions to stay in the loop and work together more effectively. You can easily jump around from your home screen to timesheets, dashboards, calendars, and an activity stream to keep up with project progress, roadblocks, and updates.

Wrike Standout Features & Integrations

One standout feature is the customizability of the platform. If categories like 'task' and 'project' don't quite fit your team's workflow, you can update it to a custom work type. Another great feature is the depth of detail with which you can outline projects and tasks. Task lists, subtasks, in-task discussions, and more ensure no detail goes undocumented.

Integrations include Microsoft Suite, Google Workspace, Asana, Basecamp, Dropbox, Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, Slack, Shopify, and hundreds more.

GatherContent is a content collaboration and management platform that helps teams plan, organize, and produce content for their projects.

Why I picked GatherContent: This is a good collaboration platform for teams working specifically on content projects, such as marketing teams, publishers, or companies in the media industry. I added it to my list because it's not just a generic project management tool that you have to adapt to your needs; it's built with content creators in mind.

The built-in content editor allows multiple team members to contribute and review content at once. You can set content guidelines and field rules, leave inline comments, and keep a revision history on every document. You can also build out a template library for future content production, and embed your style guide in the system to ensure every piece meets your standards.

GatherContent Standout Features & Integrations

One of the software's standout features is its workflow management capabilities. You can manage design various workflows to represent how content is created and the various stages of development. Then, you can track all your pieces through execution. You can also have the software auto-assign tasks to specific team members and create a publication calendar for an overview of what's coming up.

Integrations include Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, Wordpress, Slack, Drupal, Kentico, Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, Sitefinity, Craft CMS, Gatsby, and Episerver, among others.

Ziflow is a team collaboration platform for multimedia projects and creative assets. It's well-suited to the needs of design, content, marketing, and other creative teams.

Why I picked Ziflow: I added this platform to my list because of its unique capabilities for collaborating on creative assets. It has a focus on feedback, with tools like commenting, approvals, and review workflows to ensure your creative processes are followed. You can even add comments on specific frames within a video. The workflow tool also has automation capabilities, so you can speed up your processes and alleviate some of your team's manual workload.

Ziflow Standout Features & Integrations

Standout features include the built-in markup tools and number of file types. Your team can use shapes and arrows to provide feedback on assets, alongside comment threads and tagging. The software supports over 1,200 types of files, making it a seriously robust solution for all kinds of creative work.

Integrations include Slack, Clarizen, monday.com, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Dropbox, Trello, Google Drive, and Asana.

Height is a cloud-based project management platform that's particularly helpful for collaboration between teams and departments.

Why I picked Height: When it comes to project management features, this platform has everything you need. The reason I chose it for my list is because of how easily team members from different departments or functions can work together on projects and tasks. You can assign multiple people to a single task, and add as many attributes as needed to outline that task.

What's more, you can collaborate with third parties using the software. You can create customized views for freelancers, clients, or other external collaborators. This includes project plans, tasks, and progress boards.

Height Standout Features & Integrations

Some of the standout features of this product are its customizability. You can set granular access permissions to ensure users have visibility into only the things they need to see. Meanwhile, the entire platform is highly flexible to meet your preferences. Kanban boards, Gantt charts, calendar, and spreadsheet views are all available. You can add multiple checklists and custom attributes to your tasks, too.

Integrations include Figma, Notion, Sentry, Zendesk, Slack, Discord, Fivetran, GitHub and GitLab.

Lucidspark is a virtual whiteboard for real-time collaboration, with tools to facilitate brainstorming, ideation, and other creative tasks.

Why I picked Lucidspark: I added this online whiteboard to my list because of its flexibility and user-friendliness. It's intuitive for your team to map out ideas using the sticky notes, freehand drawing, text boxes, and other multimedia elements in the board. It's also easy to keep track of each person's ideas, because each team member will have their own color-coded cursors, shapes, and lines.

Lucidspark Standout Features & Integrations

Standout features include advanced collaboration tools like voting, breakout boards, and in-app chat. The platform also has a template library with pre-built structures for meetings, workshops, sprint planning, and other specific use cases. Another really cool feature is the built-in AI, which can help you generate ideas as well as sort and summarize your brainstorming outputs.

Integrations include Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Smartsheet, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Jira, Azure DevOps, Giphy, Loom, and Webex.

Workmates is a staff communication and employee engagement software that facilitates company announcements, recognition and rewards, and provides an intranet solution.

Why I picked Workkmates: If you're looking for a tool that focuses on communication and information exchange, this platform is a good option. I included it in my list because it's well-suited to the needs of field teams and teams working in warehouses. You can easily set up a complete intranet with procedures, policies, and important employee information that anyone can access through the mobile-friendly platform.

In addition to providing an information hub, you can also send out timely company-wide communications through the software. Specific channels can also be set up for more streamlined communications, and individual chats facilitate one-on-one discussions. An employee directory and org chart is also included, so people know who to go to for what.

Workmates Standout Features & Integrations

Standout features include the system's recognition and rewards module. Team members can send peer-to-peer recognition through the platform, boosting morale and highlighting great work. You can also set up company challenges and gamified goals, encouraging everyone to perform at their best. Another great feature is the surveys and polls, which help you measure employee sentiments and engagement levels.

Integrations include ADP, Slack, QuickBooks, Workday, SAP, Google Workspace, Lever, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, among others. You can also connect a Zapier account for additional integrations.

Miro is a collaborative online whiteboard built to facilitate brainstorming, ideation, team meetings, project planning, and other team activities.

Why I picked Miro: I decided to include this platform because of how versatile and flexible it is. Your team can start with a blank canvas or choose from the 1,000+ pre-built templates included. It's a visual, interactive space for real-time teamwork. The elements you can use in your whiteboard include sticky notes, shapes, lines, arrows, graphs, GIFs, and even videos. Team members can then use emoji reacts and comments to collaborate on ideas.

Miro Standout Features & Integrations

Some of the standout features of Miro include its robust resources for continuous learning. Miro Academy, online events, and a community forum help you uncover new uses and features of the product and improve your teamwork skills. Some other nice features are timers, music, and voting, which are useful for meetings and brainstorming sessions. 

Integrations include Zoom, Figma, Asana, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Slack, Google Drive, Box, Airtable, Notion, Azure, and Webex. Some integrations are limited to paid plans only.

Troop Messenger is a team communication platform that helps remote and hybrid teams keep in touch and stay aligned on their work.

Why I picked Troop Messenger: This platform's main features include instant messaging, voice and video calling, video conferencing, file sharing, and screen sharing and remote screen control. The main reason it made it onto my list is because of its extensive capabilities for connecting team members working together, but apart. It keeps all of your communications in a single platform, making it easier to find information and keep conversations centralized. It's worth noting that although it’s a SaaS tool, self-hosting, API, and custom application options are available, too.

Troop Messenger Standout Features & Integrations

Standout features I find especially useful in this tool are its more advanced capabilities. It has a 'respond later' option and a 'burnout' option that 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. Finally, 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.

Integrations include Google Drive, Dropbox, and LDAP. You can also connect it to a paid Zapier account for additional integrations. The app is available across Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, and iOS.

Forecast is a project and resource management software that's well-suited to the needs of professional services teams and agencies.

Why I picked Forecast: Teams can manage their projects and tasks easily with the software's Kanban boards, task cards with subtasks and dependencies, and velocity tracking tools. Team members can collaborate by commenting, sharing files, and logging hours in task cards. But what stood out most to me about this tool is its client-facing capabilities. You can set up access permissions for your projects and tasks so that external collaborators can stay up to date and contribute to the work.

Forecast Standout Features & Integrations

Some standout features this product offers are its AI capabilities and financial management tools. The software's AI can provide timesheet suggestions, calculate time estimates for tasks, and assign resources to specific projects or tasks. You can also run your billing and invoicing through the software, keeping it in the same place you're sharing project information with clients.

Integrations include Slack, Microsoft Teams, iCloud Calendar, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Outlook, Harvest, Trello, Asana, GitLab, Github, and dozens more using a paid plan through Zapier. Higher-tier subscriptions include native integrations with Timelog, Xero, QuickBooks Online, JIRA, Azure DevOps, Salesforce, Okta, OneLogin, and Azure Active Directory.

MeisterTask is an online task management tool with intuitive dashboards and individual agendas for each team member.

Why I picked MeisterTask: This software made it onto my list because of its task-specific communication tools. It has Kanban-style project boards that you can customize to fit your team's workflow and track the progress of tasks. Within each task card, you can store relevant files and links, and carry out discussions to keep everyone on the same page.

MeisterTask Standout Features & Integrations

Standout features include the software's individual agendas. Each team member can set up and customize their own personal board view, showing the tasks they need to accomplish across multiple projects. You can create an unlimited number of sections on your board and pin specific tasks that are high-priority or particularly important.

Integrations include Google Workspace, Slack, and GitHub. You can also set up more integrations with a paid Zapier account.

Blink is an online communication tool designed to fit the needs of a deskless workforce.

Why I picked Blink: Workplace communication is at the heart of this software, which offers direct messaging, group chats, and top-down communications via a company news feed. I decided to include it in my list because of how friendly it is to non-office workers. The mobile app is available for both iOS and Android devices, so your team members can have access from their personal or company-provided mobile devices.

In addition to the communication features, the platform also offers an employee recognition tool and engagement tracking tools. You can facilitate peer-to-peer recognition messages and automated messages for things like anniversaries and birthdays. Employee surveys are also included to help you keep a pulse on morale and engagement levels.

Blink Standout Features & Integrations

Some standout features include the platform's analytics capabilities for admins features. You can track post-by-post analytics, and track hub analytics to measure interactions and adoption. You can also track metrics at a company and team level to dig deeper. Another cool feature is the mandatory reads option, which can be added to communications to ensure employees read through important announcements.

Integrations include Jira, Trello, ADP, Workday, Typeform, Dropbox, GitHub, Box, Office 365, and Google Workplace, among others. You can also build new integrations with the software's public APIs.

Approval Studio is a design approval software that allows for design feedback and annotation through the creation process.

Why I picked Approval Studio: This software made it onto my list because of how useful it is for creative teams, especially creative agencies. You can manage your creative projects and set up approval flows to ensure feedback and proofing rounds are done in an efficient and consistent way. There are 4 different annotation types, which allows for more granular version control and supports collaborative iteration on creative assets. You can also have real-time review sessions using the software's live updates.

Approval Studio Standout Featuress & Integrations

Standout features include the free online demo and training sessions available from the company. These are super helpful for getting your team up to speed on all the features and functionalities of the platform. They can also help you discover new ways of using the product to better suit your workflows.

Integrations include Shopify and Slack. You can also set up tons of other integrations with a paid Zapier account.

Evernote is a note-taking app where teams can store records and documents, plan projects, and communicate.

Why I picked Evernote: I picked this platform because it's a great way to keep track of multimedia notes and information in one place. You can collect web clippings, meeting notes, images, to-do lists and more, and share them with other team members as needed. The dashboard is super customizable with lots of widgets to choose from, so you can set it up however you like. There's also a virtual bulletin board, which makes it easy to share info and announcements with your whole team.

Evernote Standout Features & Integrations

Some of the software's standout features include the ability to search through handwritten notes, and digitize paper documents. You can also create your own custom templates, speeding up your future note-taking and records-keeping activities. Another cool feature is the ability to annotate PDFs.

Integrations include Google Drive, Outlook, Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.