It’s the year 2020 and the world is cursed or blessed, depending on how you look at it, with very powerful devices that let us transmit information all over the world.
Just a few years back, the most effective form of communication apart from the traditional phone call was SMS, but that era has since passed and nowadays we have smartphones that are running some very powerful applications on them.
These applications are capable of transmitting information all over the world in minimum time and without any hardship whatsoever, and they are only getting better day-by-day.
On top of this, you now have a million different options of applications to fulfill your personal needs to your work needs effortlessly. In this article, we will discuss the team chat apps that are being used in workplaces all over the world.
These applications not only help connect the in-house team you have at the office but also helps connect all the remote teams stationed all around the globe. Let’s start from the beginning.
What is a Team Chat application?
If you weren’t living under a rock for the last decade then you know what an application on a smartphone is. Apps for team communication are just the equivalent of WhatsApp for the business world.
These applications used to be pretty restrained in their functionality and approach but that’s not the story nowadays.
These applications are capable of transmitting information at a much grander scale than ever before. This is why they are fast becoming a permanent way of life rather than just team conversations happening on a screen.
What are the benefits of using a Team Chat application?
If we look at the numbers, we see that over 53 percent of organizations around the world have adopted communication tools by 2016 and these numbers are increasing year by year. There must be a reason for this level of increase in the use of collaboration tools. Let’s take a look at the benefits these apps provide.
Streamlined Workflow
There are numerous organizations around the world that are using remote teams to handle their projects. These teams need proper communication channels so that they can stay in constant contact with the rest of the team and work seamlessly.
Team communication tools are the way to do it. These tools help streamline all of the tasks the organization wants to accomplish by connecting the required teams together which results in increased engagement and productivity.
Enhanced Project Management
Perfect Project Management is a tough task to accomplish but with the right tools and resources, it’s quite achievable. Effective coordination is a sure-fire way to enhanced Project Management. These coordination tools and techniques make sure that project activities happening right now are on track or not.
Helps Save Time
The biggest benefit of collaboration tools is that they help save time by a large margin. Work and deadlines always go hand in hand in the organizational culture and if the team is in constant communication with each other, they can easily get work done without wasting time.
Other Benefits include:
- Improved Communication
- Better Employee Engagement
- Increased Accountability
- Strengthen Team Relationships
Now let us take a look at the best team apps on the market that you can use right now.
Best Team Apps to Use in 2020
1. nTask
nTask is a top-ranked team chat and collaboration software available for FREE. It brings the team together, eliminating the geographical distances, and making organizational communication smoother. nTask team chat and collaboration app enable you to upload attachments, mention team members, assign members and many more features.
Key Features
- Collaboration on tasks with the help of comments.
- File and image attachment.
- Integration with Slack
Pricing
- Free: Unlimited Team Members, unlimited tasks, meetings, issues and timesheets.
- Premium: Starts at $1 per user per month. Unlock Gantt Charts, custom filters and projects.
- Business: Starting at $7.99/month. Unlock risk assessment and risk matrix.
2. ProofHub
One of the best team collaboration software on the market nowadays is ProofHub. This application helps in bringing the team together through its communication features. This is the perfect place for any and every communication that could possibly happen within an office or organizational paradigm.
Key Features
- Group chats to keep all of the team connected that will make collaboration easier and increase productivity
- Create different discussions to brainstorm and discuss different topics with in-house and remote members
- Simple one-on-one chat features to have critical private conversations with anyone in the workspace
Pricing
- Essential: $45/ Month/ Billed annually
- Ultimate: $89/ Month/ Billed annually
3. Chanty
Chanty is an incredibly easy-to-use team collaboration software that lets you and your team communicate more quickly and effectively. It is an AI-based chat app that brings all aspects of communication together like audio, video, screen sharing, and chat, in one place.
Apart from communication, this application is also useful as it enables you to do some project management by turning the messages you send to your team into tasks. You can also integrate different software like Trello, Dropbox, GitHub and many others with Chanty.
Key Features
- You can use Thread Messaging
- There is no limit to messages history in the free plan of the software
- You can communicate through chat, video, and audio
Pricing
- Free plan up to 10 members in a team
- Business: $3 per month
4. Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger is another example of collaboration tools that help you and your team achieve the ultimate level of collaboration all within a single interface.
You can use features like voice and video calls, audio messaging, screen sharing and group conversations among many others to make your team more collaborative and productive.
Key Features
- Using this application, users can be suggested to the administrator by the team members
- You can read all of the conversations that you missed by applying a simple filter
- There are a lot of custom administrative controls that you can use
- The admin dashboard can have your work cut out for you every day when you fire up the application
- Self-hosting and API delivery options
Pricing
- Free Plan is available
- Premium: $1/ per user/ per month
- Enterprise: $3/ per user/ per month
5. Connecteam
Connecteam is an incredible communication tool that is also an employee management solution for both teams and businesses alike. In a single interface, you have access to a private or group chat, timely updates, social posts, and employee directory among many others.
Key Features
- Analytics and activity
- Helpful surveys to gain the required feedback on a fairly regular basis
- Employee directory
- HR suggestion box
Pricing
- Basic: $29/ month
- Advanced: $59/ month
- Expert: $119/ month
6. Rocket.Chat
Rocket.Chat is an incredible open-source collaboration tool that was released way back in 2015. This software allows you to collaborate with your team by sharing all of the files associated with the project, real-time chat in addition to audio/ video conferencing.
It also allows you to add more and more functionalities to it as per your needs and requirements.
Key Features
- Discuss files, projects, and ideas with your team through a real-time asynchronous chat
- Automatic real-time translator
- User-name restriction and admin transparency
Pricing
- Free plan is available
- Pro: 44/ user/ monthly
- Enterprise: Price is provided from the company on request
7. Hangouts Chat
As a part of Google’s family of applications, Hangouts chat is an amazing communication app that allows its users to engage in various communication channels effortlessly. With its multiple screen sharing options and HD quality conferencing, Hangouts is one of the most amazing collaboration tools in the world right now.
Key Features
- Screen sharing options
- Custom administrative control options
- Support for multiple computing devices
- HD group conferencing and voice calls
Pricing
- Basic: $5/ user/ month
- Business: $10/ user/ month
- Enterprise: $25/ user/ month
8. Workplace by Facebook
Workplace by Facebook is one of the most amazing collaboration tools in the market right now. When Facebook started the group’s feature and embedded the chat feature in the messenger app, it expanded the whole communication feature paradigm.
With Workplace by Facebook, you can create groups with your team regardless of their friendship status with you on Facebook and chat with them in the group convo tab. You can even arrange live chats with the whole team when necessary.
What really makes it different from the others is that you can collaborate with people from other companies too. As this group creation feature is not limited to any company domain, if you are doing business with any other company, you can communicate with them too.
Key Features
- Live video streaming
- Workplace and Work Chat apps
- Voice and video calls
- Unlimited file, photo and video storage
- Productivity features
- Integration with file storage providers
- Unlimited team and project groups
- Secure collaboration between companies
- Desktop Notifier for Windows
- Enterprise features
- Directory of pre-built integrations
- Monitoring tools for IT teams
- Administrative controls to manage your community
- Integrations with e-discovery and compliance providers
- APIs for custom integrations and bots
- Single sign-on, Active Directory support
- Integration with G Suite, Okta, Windows Azure AD
Pricing
- Free to $3 per user
9. Slack
Slack is the name that comes to mind when someone mentions the words workplace communication. It is simply the most powerful and popular team collaboration tool you will find in the market right now that can help your team improve productivity and efficiency.
With amazing features like Search Functionalities, immeasurable third party integrations and an amazing interface, Slack is truly one of the most amazing collaboration tools ever made.
Key Features
- Workflow Management
- Collaboration Tools
- Drag & Drop Interface
- SSL Security
- Third-Party Integration with over 1,500 applications
- API
- Activity Tracking
- Collaborative Workspace
- Commenting
- Automatic Notifications
- Chat
- Search Functionality
Pricing
- Free package is available
- Standard: $6.67/ month/ user
- Plus: $12.5/ month/ user
Conclusion:
The aforementioned team chat apps are just something we handpicked. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. If you have a favorite application that wasn’t mentioned in this write-up, feel free to share your thoughts about it through the comments section below. Alternatively, you can also send us an email at fwilson@ntaskmanager.com, and we’ll make sure that your recommended app is mentioned in the next update.
Originally published at https://www.ntaskmanager.com on February 25, 2020.
