Pulling together a collaborative and productive team with all the right skills to grow your business could be the hard part. This challenge happens far more often than you would think.
But the good news is that you can overcome your team’s productivity issues with the right tools.
There is a sea of tools out there for every facet of team productivity. In this article, we will narrow down the choice and take a look at the top tools that every member of your team can use to boost their effectiveness.
From your business analyst to your account executive, here are the top 20 tools for maximizing the productivity of all your team members.
Communication Tools
1. Chanty
Chanty is an AI-powered business messenger and a single notification center focused on refining business processes for small and medium teams. It helps businesses become more productive by featuring instant messages with an unlimited searchable history, plenty of storage space, robust file sharing and uniting notifications from multiple software services in a single place.
Pricing: Free (the product is at beta stage).
2. Slack
Slack is a well-known team communication tool from Silicon Valley. This feature-rich messaging
app operates in private and public channels and also has voice and video calling. In addition to advanced chatting features, Slack has many shortcuts, hacks and integrations with third-party platforms that help to increase team productivity.
Pricing: Free basics, Standard plan: $6.67 per user per month, Plus plan: $15 per user per month.
3. Fleep
Fleep is a team messenger attempting to link up project collaboration and team communication. Here you can schedule lightweight tasks chatting with team members and invited business partners. A bonus is that Fleep features an unlimited message history as well as unlimited integrations in its free package.
Pricing: Free; Premium plan starts from €5 per user per month (advanced file-sharing and premium support).
If you decide to build a communication hub around already used Office 365, the simplest choice is Microsoft Teams — a chat that combines conversations and teamwork tools with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, OneNote, and much more.
Pricing: Starting at $5 per user per month.
5. HipChat
HipChat is a conservative-looking instant messenger with fast one-to-one and group video calls and handy screen sharing feature. It should be mentioned that HipChat offers self-hosting which makes IT departments happy.
Pricing: Free; Plus plan starts from $2 per user per month.
Video Conferencing Tools
6. Zoom
To be honest, Zoom is pretty cool with its HD video conferencing, screen sharing from desktop or mobile and recording features. Following this, Zoom allows you to create the collaborative whiteboard and send group texts, images and audio files during meetings.
Pricing: Free; Pro plan starts from $14.99 per month per host (the person who schedules, starts and controls the settings in a meeting).
7. GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting is a popular choice due to its HD-quality video, screen sharing, personalized meeting URLs, a whiteboard feature, and the ability to connect to meetings via desktop or mobile. Additional bonus: options to translate control settings — perfect for global teams.
Pricing: from $19 per month.
Google Hangouts is both fun and easy to use and looks great. You can choose which groups of people you want to invite to your Google Hangouts session, making it easy to start a video conference in seconds.
Pricing: Free, Business Plan starts at €4 per user per month.
And then, of course, there is the old faithful Skype which has been around forever. It is a proven solution for instant messaging, voice, and video calls. Skype for Business has all the primary features of the other tools here except toll-free numbers, which GoToMeeting has.
Pricing: Starting from $2 per user per month.
10. appear.in
Similar to Skype, appear.in lets you create online meeting rooms for video calls. It is a great tool for teams that already use a chat, but also need a tool for online video calls. Top features include:
-Claiming your own personal video room,
-Setting a custom background image of the room,
-Locking the room for private conversations,
-Sending messages and links in text chat during meetings,
-Sharing your screen.
Pricing: Free up to 8 people, Premium coming soon.
Document Collaboration Tools (File Storage and File Sharing)
11. Dropbox
In short, Dropbox is a cloud-based platform that allows users to store and share files. It is scaleable so Dropbox is good for both teams and individuals. Files synchronize seamlessly across all devices. Account owners can grant others access to storage folders as well as single files. Distributed workers can have shared access to digital assets (files, spreadsheets, documents, photos) regardless of their physical location.
Pricing: Free, Business Plans start from $8.25 per user per month.
12. Google Drive
Google Drive is a handy hub for creating, sharing, collaborating, and storing documents and presentations. For distributed workers, pulling together a presentation from three different content creators is simple and fast thanks to user access controls and link sharing.
Pricing: The first 15GB of storage is free; the price for additional storage starts from $1.99 per user per month.
Evernote is the tried-and-true titan in note taking and note sharing. The business plan allows you to take and manage notes and then share them with your team. Its primary and most powerful features are the Notebook Stacks and the tagging system that let you find anything in seconds. It also features a Web Clipper browser extension for capturing ideas while surfing the net, and mobile apps for taking down notes, even voice ones, from wherever you are.
Pricing: Evernote Business is priced at $10 per person per month.
Project Management Tools
14. Wrike
Wrike combines simple design with efficient project management tools. It is a powerful tool for managing and collaborating on projects. You can manage and customize the entire flow of work — from incoming requests, to delegating tasks, reviewing initial drafts, providing feedback and approving revisions. Plus: custom workflows and statuses, Gantt charts, customizable reports, time tracking, board view.
Pricing: Free up to five users; Professional plan with five users: $49/month, ten users: $99 per month, 15 users: $149 per month.
15. Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects is a part of the Zoho software bundle. Features include task lists with multiple tasks and milestones, document and file management, time tracking and timesheets, team intranet and shared calendar.
Pricing: Express plan (up to 20 projects) $25/month, Premium plan (up to 50 projects) $50/month, Enterprise plan (unlimited projects) $99/month. CRM and other additional features come with an extra price tag.
16. Trello
Trello is a multifunctional kanban-style dashboard for organizing teammates ideas and keeping track of project progress. It is a good project management tool for small teams with simple projects. Trello lets you create multiple task boards, organize task lists by dates or priority, comment and collaborate, attach pictures and files.
Pricing: Free with extra cost of $5 per month for Trello Gold.
17. Basecamp
Basecamp is used by thousands of teams all around the world. Basecamp makes it easy to manage the project clients for quick feedback on small changes and updates. It takes only 10 minutes to set up this easy-to-use tool. It provides the minimal amount of features needed for efficient project management.
Pricing: $29 per month for unlimited users.
18. Asana
One of the most well-known project management tools, Asana allows users to assign tasks to other members, add followers to projects, manage tasks and monitor deadlines. It can be very useful also as a to-do list or calendar for strategic planning.
Pricing: Free plan for up to 15 team members; Paid plan starts from $9.99 per user per month.
Time Tracking Tools
19. Toggl
Toggl is a hassle-free time tracking software that integrates with tens of different project management tools. It is perfect for companies with many different departments. Additional features: offline time tracking and mobile functionalities.
Pricing: $10 per user per month; Paid plans start at $20 per user per month.
20. TimeBoy
TimeBoy helps you manage as many workers, projects and workspaces as you need in order to run your business seamlessly. It enables you to have a complete overview of your team productivity, generate and export reports, and get insights on how the work hours are actually spent. The company also offers in-depth integrations with project management software.
Pricing: Free (the product is at beta stage).
Summary
The 20 productivity tools listed above just scratch the surface when it comes to applications that you can use to boost effectiveness among your teammates and throughout your business. Are there any other products that deserve a place here? Leave a comment mentioning the productivity tool you can’t live without.