“Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” – John Maxwell
For any team, success is very much dependent on the collaboration among its members. When all the people within a team are on the same page, their combined efforts can bring extraordinary results. And, that’s what the true meaning of collaboration is
One of the basic things required for effective team collaboration is good internal communication. And there are specialized tools and software available for promoting team collaboration and teamwork.
Microsoft Teams is one such popular collaboration tool that several teams throughout the world use to strengthen their communication.
However, many times people realize that Microsoft Teams is not the best software for team collaboration and as a result, they start looking for its alternatives.
If you are also on the hunt for apps that are capable of replacing Microsoft Teams and offer better ways for team collaboration, you have landed at the right place.
In this article, I have rounded up the best Microsoft Teams alternatives that you can start using today. But before that let us give a small overview of Microsoft Teams, just in case you have not heard about it.
What is Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams is a dedicated team chat and collaboration tool that helps teams to stay connected and share information right away.
You can send instant messages, start a group video conferencing, and make audio calls to your team members. Moreover, you can even share and access files within the tool’s interface.
Features
- Create multiple chat channels
- Invite people to conversation using @
- Connect with your teammates in real-time
- Easily find messages and files that you have sent in the past using search
- Record audios, videos, and screen sharing presented during the meeting and view them later
- Supports integration with many third-party apps
Why Look for Microsoft Teams Alternatives?
Microsoft Teams has gained wide popularity over the past few years, but like any other software, it too has some limitations. The shortcomings of Microsoft Teams prompts users to look for its substitutes that offer more value for their money.
Let us take a look at some of the major limitations of Microsoft Teams:
- It’s a bit challenging to organize the files shared in conversations
- Permissions settings are not flexible enough and it is not possible to invite guest users to channels
- Not all functions are easily accessible and it will take some time to get well-versed with the functionality of the software
- It’s quite possible to create multiple teams with a similar name as the software does not notify you when you choose a team name that is already taken, which can be quite confusing
- Number of channels offered is not adequate for large organizations
5 Powerful Microsoft Teams Alternatives
Here are the 5 most dependable substitute apps of Microsoft Teams to get that extra edge when it comes to team collaboration:
1. Google Meet
The tech giant has always impressed us with their innovative products and Google Meet is just one among them. Basically, Google Meet offers enterprise-grade video conferencing to teams who want to stay connected and make the most out of team collaboration.
When you want to share some important information with hundreds of your colleagues or employees the live streaming feature is going to save the day for you. At most, 100,000 viewers can join the live stream and you would be able to put across your message in a better way.
Pros:
- Supports both video and voice calling
- You can share your computer screen with other participants at the meeting
- Send text messages, files, and links to participants during the meeting
- Integration with Google and Microsoft apps
Cons:
- A Gmail account is mandatory to start and join meetings
- Often confused with Google Hangouts
Pricing:
G Suite Essentials – $10 per user per month
G Suite Enterprise Essentials – $20 per user per month
Rating on Capterra/G2:
Capterra – (4.5 / 5) Stars
G2 – (4.2/5) Stars
Customer Reviews:
“Hangouts Meet is already available from within Gmail. It’s simple to add to a meeting invitation from Gcal or to launch for impromptu meetings from the G-Suite launchpad.” – Capterra
2. Zoho Connect
Zoho Connect is a popular team collaboration software that brings the members of a team to a single place. Let the people in your team share their ideas and opinions in a group. You can also choose the access level of a group among three options, namely open, closed, public, and private.
The software allows you to get a detailed view of all the conversations relevant to you using feeds. Moreover, can create posts and share them either on your personal wall or group walls. Add attachments with your posts, like and share posts of others to nurture an interactive work environment.
Pros:
- You can start video conferencing directly within a group
- Pin important chats to access them easily and mute channels that are not important to you
- Upload files and create documents, presentations, etc. within the software and them with multiple team members to collaborate in real-time
Cons:
- Complex user interface
- The overall design is not appealing
Pricing:
Standard – $1 per user per month
Rating on capterra/G2:
Capterra – (4.5 / 5) Stars
G2 – (4.5 / 5) Stars
Customer Reviews:
“Zoho Connect is one of the best ways through which people can collaborate with their colleagues. It’s additional fascinating features that made it famous include like, comment, share ideas, discussions etc. It is an awesome help desk that works fantastically and really easy to use with no Hindrance. People can quickly submit their I.T based issues with the help of Zoho Connect to the I.T department instead of sending hundreds of emails. So, in this way it saves time of the users.” – Capterra
Also Read:Zoho Alternatives – 13 Tools Your Team Will Love
3. Workplace from Facebook
Workplace from Facebook is yet another software that makes a good Microsoft Teams alternative. It is more like a communication tool, which ensures that all the people within your organization or teams stay connected. And the best thing about the Workplace app is that its UI is very much inspired by the Facebook app itself.
You can create Workplace Rooms and connect with colleagues as well as clients, shareholders, etc. You can view and publish posts, add and reply to comments, and use emojis to submit your reaction for a post.
Pros
- Workplace chat allows you to send text messages, audio messages, and files
- You can make voice and HD video calls to your colleagues
- Multi-company groups make it possible to collaborate with teams and people outside your organization
- Polls and surveys are useful for getting inputs of team members on particular matters
Cons
- Limited integrations
- Notifications can be a huge pain as customizing options are quite limited
Pricing
Advanced – $4 per user per month
Enterprise – $8 per user per month
Rating on capterra/G2
Capterra – (4.3 / 5) Stars
G2 – (4.0 / 5) Stars
Customer Review/ Tweet/Testimonials
“The interface looks as familiar as facebook. Hence, the ease of use.” – G2
4. Slack
Slack is a business communication platform that you and your team can use to exchange information in real-time. Unlike any email inbox, the conversations in slack are well-organized and take place within specialized spaces known as channels.
The shared channels in Slack allow you to collaborate with teams at other companies and clients. Bring all the people associated with a particular project at a single place and discuss everything that is in favor of the project.
Pros:
- Audio and Video Conferencing
- Share your ideas in a better way by using screen sharing function during a video conference
- You can organize all the conversations to avoid clutter
Cons:
- Overwhelming and a bit confusing
- No way to know if a message is seen by the recipient or not
Pricing:
Standard – $2.67 per user per month
Plus – $5 per user per month
Rating on Capterra/G2:
Capterra – (4.6 / 5) Stars
G2 – (4.5 / 5) Stars
Customer Reviews:
“Slack is used by everyone in the business daily, it allows us to work efficiently and makes working remotely a breeze.” – Capterra
Also Read:28 Best Slack Alternatives for Team Communication (You Cannot Live Without)
5. Chanty
Chanty is an efficient and simple team collaboration tool that promises to increase your productivity by 55%. With it’s public, private, and one-on-one conversations that are all neatly organized, it also provides users with an endless searchable message history, video and audio call feature, and a unified user experience.
The built-in task organizer is a delight to use and allows you to turn any message into a task for more efficiency. Moreover, if you’re tired of switching between different apps, Chanty helps you with 1500+ apps, turning your team chat into a single notification center.
Pros
- Efficient search functions to find the required information
- Video and audio calling chats
- Strong focus on task management
- Chat and messaging features focus on assigning and completing tasks
- Inexpensive price point for the subscription version
Cons
- Free membership does not have some features available to it.
- Lack of custom emojis and advanced customization
Pricing
- Free up to 10 members
- Business version for $3 per user per month
Rating on capterra/G2
4.9/5.0
Customer Review/ Tweet/Testimonials
“Must-have chat tool to make a team cooperate fluently in a virtual workplace” – Capterra
Project Management and Team Collaboration Go Hand in Hand?
It is quite obvious that teams need to collaborate because they have to complete projects on time.
Team collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams and its substitutes are good enough to keep all the members of a team together. But what about the projects?
Being a CMO and leader of multiple teams, I know that team collaboration is of little use if the project work itself is not streamlined properly.
There’s no point in staying connected with your teammates when you are unclear about the targets that you want to achieve as a team. This is why project management becomes so important, and you would need a project management tool to manage all your projects and tasks effectively.
Now, you must be thinking about the added costs and the struggle that have to go through by using project management software alongside a team collaboration tool.
Thankfully, there’s ProofHub. it can save you from all the hassle of managing projects and teams using two distinct tools.
Being an all-in-one project management and team collaboration software, ProofHub comes with all the essential tools that you need to manage your projects, tasks, and team from a single interface. Loved by more than 85000+ teams and businesses all over the world, it is among the highly sought-after tools among managers, teams, and clients who need to plan, collaborate, organize and finish projects on time.
What makes ProofHub a Great Tool to Merge Project Management with Team Collaboration?
ProofHub is much more than just a regular team collaboration tool like Microsoft Teams. With ProofHub you get the power to stay on top of all your project work while balancing internal as well as external communication.
Moreover, ProofHub is quite affordable when compared with costs incurred by subscribing to two separate tools for project management and team collaboration.
One more noticeable thing about ProofHub is its simple and easy-to-understand user interface, which makes the team onboarding a completely trouble-free task.
Features:
With ProofHub’s online proofing tools, you can preview files, proof them, give suggestions and feedback, and approve them in real-time without the need to send or receive files multiple times. The markup tools even made it easier to pinpoint the regions of a file or a design that needed modifications. You can even upload multiple versions of a single file as the software supports file versioning. All the proofing work can be done within ProofHub and there’s no need to switch to any other software.
- Interactive Chat Interface
To keep yourself in touch with your team all the time, ProofHub comes integrated with a chat tool. Send text messages to initiate a conversation with either a single individual or several members of your team simultaneously. You can also share documents, images, videos, presentations, etc. using the chat interface and use @ to mention a specific individual in a group.
- Team/Client Discussions
ProofHub lets you create discussion topics that are dedicated spaces to exchange views on particular matters and share ideas with your team members, clients, and other concerned individuals. Add comments and send files that support and add weight to your ideas and thoughts.
Break a project into tasks and subtasks to make it easy to assign work to your team members. Add labels to prioritize, identify, and organize tasks easily. You also have flexibility to set deadlines and create recurring tasks. You can use the Kanban boards to define all the stages of your project workflow and keep a track of tasks moving through different stages.
- Timeline View with Gantt Charts
The Gantt Chart feature allows you to get a timeline view of all the tasks and activities of a project. There is so much you can do using ProofHub’s Gantt chart such as defining task dependencies, associate milestones with tasks, track project progress, and highlight critical paths for the project. The drag and drop interface makes it quite easy to modify task schedules as work changes and deadlines shift.
- Cloud Storage for Files & Documents
Just to make sure that all your files related to a project are at a single place that is completely secure, ProofHub offers cloud storage space to users. You can upload, store, and organize all your files within ProofHub and share them directly with your team members.
- Notes to Jot Down Anything and Everything Important
Often, when you are discussing with your teammates or doing research, you need to note down all the important points that can be critical to a project’s success. ProofHub offers you digital notes in which you can store all your important findings and key takeaways. Assign color codes to each note and put similar notes together in notebooks for keeping all your notes organized.
Pros
- Suitable for teams of any size, any department, and from any business vertical
- Eliminate the need to use multiple tools to manage projects, teams, and clients
- Real-time desktop, email, and mobile notifications for everything that happens within ProofHub.
- Supports over half a dozen languages: makes it ideal for collaborating with international clients
Cons
- Limited third-party app integrations
Pricing
A free trial is available for new users. For information on our pricing plans, kindly visit our pricing page.
Rating on Capterra/G2:
Capterra – (4.3 / 5) Stars
G2 – (4.4 / 5) Stars
Customer Reviews:
“ProofHub made everything easier, smarter, and faster, without breaking the bank. Thanks to ProofHub, 1. We’ve better control of our projects, tasks, and communications. 2. We work together better. 3. We’ve been saving tons of time. 4. We’ve eliminated all the fuzziness from our work process. 5. We’ve been identifying and knocking problems out faster. 6. We achieve better work satisfaction. 7. We’ve been able to bring down our project delivery time. And… we’re 10x more productive.” – Capterra
“The proofing tool works like magic. It has solved our collaboration challenges to a great extent. We no longer need to switch between different tools for sharing files and reviewing them. Task management has been simplified. We can now set a start and end date to every task. This makes sure that tasks don’t get dragged. Kanban boards have helped us in becoming more productive, as we can visualize the entire workflow. Communication has become quick and easy thanks to the chat tool in the app.” – Capterra
“ProofHub is all in all a reliable tool for our team. It has proven to be robust and it’s safe to say my team will be using it for the years to come. I like that the interface is very easy to get used to. It is also a preferred platform because it allows you to communicate in multiple ways with chat features and team discussion portals and all.” – G2
Conclusion
While Microsoft Teams is a good tool for team collaboration, there are a handful of tools that are of better value. The Microsoft Teams alternatives that I’ve compiled above are among the best that you can get at the moment. Also, if you are looking for a tool that offers more than just team collaboration, you know you can always switch to ProofHub.
