25 Best team communications tools for the modern workplace in 2022

A. The landscape of today’s modern workplace

Pandemic has made long-lasting and influential changes to every facet of our lives, including the modern workplace. In today’s new normal, remote and hybrid work environments have exploded in popularity. Businesses now rely on team communication tools to maintain day-to-day operations, uphold productivity, and create an optimized experience for employees across the globe.

These apps are customary to present-day business practices and even implement effective and precise communication. As technology advances and such tools evolve, they have even improved productivity and profitability across companies of all sizes.

B. Importance of team communication tool in hybrid workplace

There are many benefits of today’s modern hybrid workplace. It can offer organizations and team members improved flexibility, a more vital work-life balance, and higher productivity and participation.

Research has found that employers and employees alike are in favor of this working model. However, it’s essential to implement best practices to ensure the structure is successful and the business maintains a seamless flow.

• Maintain constant communication and connection
• Ensure consistency and streamlined organization
• Create an infrastructure across employees in all locations and time zones

It would not be possible to implement these best practices without the right team communication tool.

C. Why you should consider a team communication tool

Team communication tools provide essential tools that improve productivity, increase collaboration, and simplify business communications. Standard features within these tools include team chats, emails, video/audio calls, and shared cloud-based documents. But the crucial aspect is seamless and uninterrupted communication across multiple users.

Team chat apps and team communication tools are powerful and robust resources that reduce the burden of waiting for an email response or phone call. They boost productivity and create a business ecosystem where employees can seamlessly move between various methods of communication and organization. These tools provide the capabilities and solutions your business needs to work together in an effective remote and hybrid work environment.

D. How to select the best team communication tool for your needs

Now, you may be thinking — how do I choose which app? And where do I start? There are many options to choose from when considering your team communication and messaging platform. Some are newer than others. A few may lack features that are standout characteristics of the most well-known.

A lot goes into the decision process to ensure your team communication tool adds value to the company rather than creating unforeseen problems. Every platform is optimized for a different set of needs, so your team must select the features it needs to collaborate and improve efficiency properly. Quick and effective communication is critical to collaboration and success.

Here is our recommendation for team communication tools every business should consider as they make their selection in 2022. Each platform has a unique set of strengths and specific approaches to team communication and business organization. Some are new entrants, some well-established players. But as you wade through this list and make your selection, remember that you are probably best served by judging what you think will work best for your business and how your team is structured than by simply considering large brand names or how long a tool has been around. To start, here are 25 of the best team communication tools that we endorse. These tools will help you and your team’s productivity skyrocket.

E. 25 best team communication tools

1. Clariti

Clariti is a customizable web app that assembles emails, to-dos, and documents in a “TopicFolder.” TopicFolders remove the arduous task of searching for that vital piece of information by allowing you to quickly find your communications and see the big picture to make informed and intelligent decisions.

Clariti is not only a feature-rich team communication app but also incorporates essential security measures to protect your data and information. Here are some additional features that make Clariti one of the essential team communication tools for the modern workplace:

• TopicFolders keep information streamlined and simplified — With Clariti, not only can teams chat, but they can also work with all other communication forms naturally. Clariti supports email, chat, and shared documents, among others, to exchange information. Not only does Clariti bring all the information in one place, but it also connects all the related information in TopicFolder.
• Easy access from anywhere — Clariti is a web-based application that is accessible from anywhere. All you need is an internet connection. Since Clariti is cloud-based, no installation or download is required.
• Best of all, it’s free! Clariti is exceptionally convenient and easy to use. There is no training or complicated learning steps required. Learn more about the benefits and improvements that Clariti can offer you and your team.

2. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams brings together everything a team needs chat and threaded conversations, meetings & video conferencing, calling, content collaboration with the power of Microsoft 365 applications, and the ability to create and integrate apps and workflows that your business relies on. Using Microsoft Teams, you can easily move between your work and personal account to stay organized throughout the day. Whether you’re sprinting towards a deadline or helping your kids with their homework, Teams can help you achieve more. Using Microsoft Teams you can do direct chat, group chat or create dedicated channels to communicate with the entire team. You can do HD audio and video calls for scheduled face-to-face meetings from almost anywhere.

3. Missive

Missive redesigned the inbox with a business-first collaborative experience in mind. It is a team inbox and chat tool that empowers teams to truly collaborate around email, SMS, WhatsApp, Twitter, Messenger and live chat. With Missive, teams focus on growing their business.

4. Biteable

Biteable is a web platform for creating videos online. Using Biteable you can create onboarding videos, informational videos about the company’s organizational fundamentals, recruiting and hiring, employee recognition videos, compliance videos, and more. Biteable helps you streamline your internal team communication and set professional standards. The best part is you can create the videos yourself!

5. FrontApp

FrontApp powers the heart of business — the meaningful connections between teams and customers that lead to lasting relationships. Bringing email and apps together in a collaborative customer communication platform, FrontApp drives business impact by scaling the natural conversations that create customers for life.

6. Basecamp

Basecamp is the all-in-one toolkit for working remotely. Basecamp is more than just a project management tool — it’s a better way to work. Teams that switch to Basecamp are more productive and better organized. They communicate better and require fewer meetings. And they’re far more efficient than before.

7. FreeConferenceCall

FreeConferenceCall provides HD audio conferencing, screen sharing and video conferencing with up to 1,000 participants. Each account includes free online meetings packed with intuitive features: Host up to 1,000 video participants; access switch presenter, remote control and drawing tools; Record audio-visual presentations for live broadcast; chat privately or with all participants.

8. Zoom

Zoho Meeting is a virtual communication tool using which you can host online meetings, share screen and join conferences with video collaboration in browser. The Zoho Meeting Chrome extension lets you host webinars and online meetings right from your Chrome browser without any downloads.

9. Cisco Webex

Cisco Webex Teams goes beyond a conventional instant messaging and provides added voice and video calling capabilities. Cisco Webex is an app for continuous teamwork. Move work forward in secure workspaces where everyone can contribute at any time with messaging, file sharing, white-boarding, video meetings, calling and more. It works on virtually any device.

10. Fleep.io

Combining messaging with file sharing and tasks, Fleep has everything you need to coordinate your team’s work from idea to execution. Conversations are at the heart of Fleep. Set them up around projects, teams or any specific topics to stay connected and discuss ideas. Highlight any decisions or plans on the conversation’s Pinboard and create tasks to coordinate execution.

11. Freshdesk

Freshdesk packs a suite of powerful collaboration features that can help teams work efficiently to provide better support experiences for the customer. Agents can loop in teammates for discussions right inside tickets and can retain visibility into tickets even if another team is currently working on it. Teams can also split the tasks involved and work on them in parallel.

12. Hiverhq.com

Hiver is the world’s first helpdesk built for Google Workspace. Hiver helps teams deliver fast and empathetic customer service, right from the tool they are already familiar with — Gmail. This means teams can assign, track, and collaborate on customer emails, as well as run the most advanced analytics and automations from the Gmail interface, without sacrificing any time on learning new software or switching tabs.

13. Zoho Workplace

Work is evolving, so are workspaces. Zoho Workplace unifies and centralizes your team’s workspace, simplifies file storage, and streamlines team communication. Zoho Workplace provides context, ensures continuity, enables convenience and fosters collaboration.

14. Chatwork

Chatwork is a group chat app for business. Secure messaging, video chat, task management and file sharing. Chatwork makes collaboration easy. Conversations, tasks, and information will always be at the palm of your hand with Chatwork. Working collaboratively with your team can make the task fun and it creates a more functional and balanced company.

15. Slack

Slack brings team communication into one place so you can get more work done, whether you belong to a large enterprise or a small business. Tick off your to-do list and make progress on your projects by bringing the right people, conversations, tools and information you need together. Slack is available on any device, so you can find and access your team and your work whether you’re at your desk or on the go. You can use Slack to communicate with your team and organize your conversations by topic, project or anything else that matters to your work. You can message or call any person or group within your team. Share and edit documents and collaborate with the right people. Slack provides integrations with at least 1000 tools including Google Drive, Salesforce, Dropbox, Asana, Twitter, Zendesk and more

16. Google Workspace

Using Google Workspace, you can work on a single document with team members or people outside your company. See edits as others type, communicate through built-in chat and ask questions in comments. Several team members can work at the same time, and every change is saved automatically. Keep all your work in one place with secure access from your computer, phone or tablet. Quickly invite other team members to view, download and collaborate on any file — no email attachment needed. File updates are automatically saved and stored in Drive, so everyone can always have access to the latest version.

17. Spike

Spike focuses on the idea of conversational email. Repeating headers, signatures, and threads make email hard to read. Spike claims to clear the clutter and transform the email to a real time chat that’s easy to read. Spike’s intelligent priority inbox removes distractions by making important messages visible first, while low priority messages are removed to the side for later.

Shared notes and team chats keeps the team on track and informed and keeps the conversation moving. Team members can get up to speed in a glance and access all files ever shared with ease.

18. Twist

Twist focuses on providing a distraction-free space where teams can balance focused work with collaborative conversations. Twist eliminates team’s need to spread discussions across email and chat apps by keeping information organized and transparent in Twist.

Team discussions can be structured in topic-specific channels. However, where Twist is different than other channel-type chat apps is that it provides the ability to create side-bar conversations in group channels. These conversations are called Threads. While everyone in the channel can read the thread contents, only the team members invited to participate in the thread can respond. Twist claims that by maintaining these threads, invited team members can respond at leisure with thoughtful responses, instead of trying to keep up with the frenetic pace of group channel communications. This is the antidote to Slack where the information overload in channels can get overwhelming.

19. Flowdock

Like other chat tools mentioned in this blog, Flowdock provides real-time chat for teams. Flows are the heart of Flowdock, they are open spaces for teams to converse and collaborate. Since the parent of Flowdock is CA Technologies an enterprise computer software technology provider, Flowdock’s focus is on software development companies. The key differentiator in Flowdock is the integrations of third-party apps. Integrations are available for project management, software version control, customer support, and software deployment monitoring among other applications commonly used by software development companies.

20. Asana

Asana helps you plan, organize, and manage your team’s work, from start to finish. It is a good project management software that also acts as a collaboration and communication tool. You can coordinate team tasks so everyone knows who’s doing what. Share feedback, files, and status updates. Plus, get a complete view of work so teams tackle the right tasks at the right time.

Managing projects is hard work. It’s easy to lose track of all the moving pieces — and tough to stay up to date. That’s when things fall through the cracks. Asana helps you to organize projects, make communication easy, and meet deadlines. Asana helps you to keep conversations with teammates, clients, and vendors in one place, and keep everyone on the same page.

21. Trello

Trello is a visual tool for organizing your work and life. Trello has more than 35 million registered users who organize all their projects at work, at home, or anywhere in between. Whether you’re planning a website design project, vacation, or company off-site, Trello is infinitely customizable and flexible for your every need.

Similar to Asana, Trello is more focused on project management than raw communication/chatting, but it still has a great deal of flexibility built in and does allow for dynamic conversations within its tools. It’s structured around pulling different “cards” into pre-defined statuses, e.g. “in planning”, “in progress”, “done”, which leads to a sleek, simple, flexible UI.

22. Flock

Flock is one of the popular communications and collaboration apps for modern teams and businesses. Flock packs more features under chat and channels and it is relatively more affordable when compared with bigger counterparts like Slack. It supports some of the features like shared notes, reminders, to-dos, polls etc. You can also make audio and video calls and share your screen with your remote team. Flock is available in all formats like web, desktop and mobile. One of the most distinguishable features of Flock is it supports the app in 4 different languages.

23. Chanty

Chanty is a cloud-based collaboration platform that combines communication, project management, and automation to help teams work together more effectively. Chanty helps teams improve productivity and business communication. Unlimited message history, task management, file sharing and powerful notifications organize and save your day. Chanty helps you to collaborate and communicate effectively in one place.

Chanty helps you to chat with your team members; communicate using group & 1 on 1 audio/video calls and share your screen; Share instant messages, files or any other content you like; Create, assign, set deadlines and discuss tasks directly in Chanty; Integrate messaging with a variety of apps such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Trello, GitHub, Zapier, Jira, Asana and many others; Track team workflow by using Kanban Board; Watch YouTube videos, GIFs and social media content; Have quick access to all your chats, tasks and files through Teambook. Chanty has both web and mobile versions.

Chanty, like Flock, is quite Slack-like in design, but it has positioned itself as a simpler, cheaper competitor. In terms of UI, Chanty is somewhat more polished than Flock, and it provides task management features that Slack does not; in this way, it blends some of the best features of both slack and Trello. In addition, its pricing structure is great for organizations that are more budget-conscious.

24. Troop Messenger

Troop Messenger is a compact office chat application with amazing security and feature implementation facilitating safe and secured business data sharing. It offers a collaborative work forum for business needs. Troop Messenger for business is the sure shot tonic for business assisting you in reducing the time used up for manual data circulation and team work. Troop Messenger, the business chat application is one among all group chat apps which comes with unlimited group creation. It is not only instant messaging for business but also lets you share files of diverse format along with current location and contacts. With its recent version, Troop Messenger is good to go for team collaboration across corporates and will be updated with many more professional features which are on the drawing table. Troop Messenger’s main value proposition is in its ability to seamlessly connect teams across different organizations.

25. Discord

Discord is your place to talk. Create a home for your communities and friends, where you can stay close and have fun over text, voice, and video. Whether you’re part of a school club, a gaming group, a worldwide art community, or just a handful of friends that want to spend time, Discord makes it easy to talk every day and hang out more often.

Discord’s main unique user feature is its “always-on” voice chat, which leads to a user experience that is great for small, tightly-knit teams that want to really feel like they’re working in the same place and having live conversations. It might be overkill for teams that don’t need that kind of constant connection, but it’s a great way to create a “virtual office” if you do.

F. Conclusion

In this pandemic with teams work from many different locations and time zones, use of these communication tools has become essential. Using the right tool can help teams collaborate naturally, preserve the history of their discussions and maintain a better work-life balance. Since most of the tools are free or very reasonably priced there is no reason to wait. Open your browser and connect today!