The recent surge in home-based workers due to the coronavirus has made it a necessity to use tools that allow workers to collaborate from afar. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to facilitate remote work without feeling isolated.
Here is a list of collaboration tools for remote workers. There are tools for project management, real-time communication, cloud storage, collaborative work and design, team productivity, and even hiring additional employees. Nearly all the tools have free plans for small teams.
Collaboration Tools
Zoom is a video and audio communication platform for your team, whether you’re running one-on-one calls or company-wide (100 video participants standard). Even in low-bandwidth environments, Zoom delivers high-definition video and audio. Price: Free plan for up to 100 video participants and 40-minute group meetings. Paid plans start at $14.99 per month.
Zoom
Slack is a collaboration hub that joins communication and productivity tools. Create channels for every project, topic, or team. With access to the same information, everyone in the channel can work in lockstep, and new members have full context when they join. As you work in channels, your conversations and files become a searchable archive that gets more useful with time. Over 2,000 integrations, including Google Drive and Office 365. Price: Free for up 10,000 messages and 10 integrations. Premium plans start at $6.67 per month.
Asana is a work management tool for teams to stay focused on goals, projects, and daily tasks, whether the team members are together or working remotely. Use Boards to organize your team’s work visually, and use Timeline to create a team’s plan and track the work as things change. Share details and assign tasks. Comment on tasks to clarify instructions or ask questions. Use conversations to share announcements with your team and ask questions in a project. Get inbox notifications about the projects, tasks, and discussions you’re following. Use automation for routine tasks. Price: Free basic plan for up to 15 users. Paid plans start at $10.99 per month.
Trello is a collaborative app to organize and prioritize projects through note cards, lists, and boards. Add comments, attachments, due dates, and more directly to Trello cards to get projects done with your team. Integrate with other platforms and turn Trello boards into live applications. Price: Free for up to 10 team boards. Premium plans start at $9.99 per month.
Doodle is an online scheduling tool for coordinating meetings — in-person or remote. Give a clear visual snapshot of your availability and quickly schedule the meeting. A first-come, first-served open block for appointments lets guests see and respond to your changing availability. Integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zapier, and more. Price: Plans start at $4.49 per month.
Doodle
Todoist is a to-do list app for tasks and projects. For remote teams, Todoist is a simple solution for team task management. Plan projects and assign responsibility. Share files and discuss the details. Track progress and time. Price: Free for up to five people per project. Paid plans start at $3 per month.
ProofHub is a project management tool for team collaboration. Assign tasks to multiple team members. Use Gantt charts and Kanban boards to plan and visualize the pieces and progress of your project. Start one-on-one or group chats. Place all your team and client discussions in one place. Receive notifications for missed deadlines and overdue tasks. Stay on the top of your schedule with recurring tasks, automatic reminders, and multiple calendar views. Price: Plans start at $45 per month for 40 projects, 50 users, and 15 GB of storage.
Google Drive is Google’s file hosting service. Find, open, share, and even edit files from the web, mobile, or desktop via Drive File Stream. Drive comes with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for shared real-time collaboration. Drive is compatible with over 100 file types, including Microsoft Office, so you can store, share, and work together on any document. Invite others to view, download, and collaborate — no email attachment needed. Price: Free for 15 GB of storage. Business plan pricing starts at $6 per month.
Conceptboard is a collaborative whiteboard to brainstorm, create content, and discuss ideas. Draw, add shapes and sticky notes, and mark up text. Add images, documents, and screenshots to illustrate your point. Follow actions on boards, screen shares, and video chat right from Conceptboard. Price: Free plan gives read-only access to guests. Paid plans start at $6 per month.
Conceptboard
Evernote is an app to store everything from personal moments to business projects. Type notes, add attachments, clip web pages, or record memos — all in one place. Manage projects, take meeting notes, set reminders, and edit documents. Use notebooks, tags, or site-search to find everything you need quickly. Invite anyone to collaborate. Price: Basic account is free. Premium plans start at $7.99 per month.
Toggl is a time-tracking app to help you get things done. Start a new time entry or continue tracking a previous task with one click. Compare project progress to estimated time with the Project Dashboard. See how much time each member is tracking and if they’re taking on too much or too little work. Assign billable rates to your tasks, and make sure you’re paid fairly for all your work. The Toggl button and Toggl desktop apps remind you when you’re not tracking. Toggl detects idle time and lets you decide what to do with it. Price: Basic plan is free. Paid plans start at $9 per month.
Workable is an online platform for finding job hires. From artificial-intelligence-powered search and advertising to one-click job posting and 200-plus job sites, Workable helps you meet enough qualified people to choose the best person for the job. Apply assessment tests, interview kits, and scorecards to help hire teams. Workable features interview self-scheduling, calendar integration, automated approval processes, and auto-generated reports. Price: $99 per job per month. For hiring at scale, contact for pricing.
InVision is a platform to collaborate on product design — connecting product design workflow. Explore your team’s best ideas on a digital whiteboard. Collect and present designs, and communicate and gather feedback. Jump right into the screen design process with InVision Studio’s intuitive vector-based drawing capabilities, with flexible layers and “infinite” canvas. Use the Design System Manager to manage and sync assets and documentation, including all your brand and user-experience components. Price: Free for one prototype. Paid plans start at $15 per month for three prototypes.
InVision
Monday.com is a virtual work hub with customizable project boards for managing projects, workflows, and daily tasks. Use templates and drag-and-drop building blocks to visualize projects, teams, and processes. Track time and progress. See in real-time who can take on more work. Add code-free automation to your boards. Price: Plans start at $39 per month.
Microsoft Teams helps remote teams collaborate and produce. Chat privately or in groups, and communicate with the entire team via dedicated channels. Search your chats and team conversations to find what you need quickly. Instantly go from group chat to video conference. Microsoft Teams is part of Office 365, so you can access, share, and edit Word docs, PowerPoint, and Excel files in real-time. Manage your team’s projects with file editing and sharing. Price: Office 365 plans start at $8.25 per user per month.
Basecamp is an original cloud-based project management and collaboration platform, having launched in 2004. Break up your work into separate projects. Every project includes the tools all teams need to work together — message boards, to-dos, schedules, docs, file storage, real-time group chat, and automatic check-in questions. Rename tools and turn off the ones you don’t need. Integrates with many third-party platforms. Price: Business plan is $99 per month for unlimited projects and users. Free 30-day trial.
Dashlane is a password manager to simplify your online security. Dashlane fills all your passwords, payments, and personal details wherever you need them, across the web, on any device. Store an unlimited number of passwords and access them anywhere. Price: Free up to 50 passwords. Premium account is $4.99 per month.
Dashlane
