If you’re still using emails to exchange work messages,   who better than you can understand the problem of endless email chains, annoying CC’s, and accidental Reply All’s?   While emails have a certain charm,   they’re not the best tool for internal communication.   If you use email for work chat, reviewing all the conversations about a single project requires sifting through multiple email chains.   However, in a dedicated team chat app, you’ll save time by seeing all the conversations and documents about a project in one place — a thread or a channel. What is Team chat Software As the name implies, Team Chat Software enables virtual or remote communication and collaboration between team members. It’s not always possible for employees or employers to be physically present and have face-to-face interaction all the time. These tools let you communicate, share ideas, messages, make video calls, and transfer files from remote places Here’s what Benjamin Sternsmith, Area Vice President of Sales, Lyft Business says about using Email for office messaging: “You can’t have a good conversation over email – it’s not quick enough. Coming together in a team chat app, channels or threads allows us to easily discuss day-to-day management topics. That’s invaluable.”   Team Chat Software's: Benefits & features   1. What Are The Benefits Of Team Chat Software? 2. What Makes a Great Team Chat App?   The choice is simple. You could get buried in endless email threads.   Or you could get work done in team chat apps (in real-time). While team chat software allows teams to enable seamless communication, the right tool and its smart use can really help them zoom past the competition.   Part of this is about higher efficiency and better productivity. With a centralized workspace, conversation and collaboration happen faster —Got a query while you’re at work? Type a short text, get an equally short response, and get back to work.   Team chat apps also assure that all team members can participate in, or at least, review relevant conversations, while also ignoring files or text that aren’t relevant to them.   Hence, more and more businesses today are looking for digital solutions for team communication and collaboration. Take a look at these numbers:  According to a Statista 2016 worldwide Survey, 53 percent of businesses, globally, had onboarded their employees on a common team collaboration tool. Since then, this number only increased A Gartner study predicted that the team chats app market will reach $4.9 billion by 2021 and by 2022, 70% of teams will rely on work chat apps to get their work done every day — and thanks to COVID-19, businesses have already moved to the technology frontier. According to Cisco’s cognitive collaboration study, “9 out of 10 workplaces are willing to adopt a cognitive collaboration solution “as soon as possible!”   Team Chat Software's: 2020 Tools   1. Troop Messenger 2. slack 3. Microsoft Teams 4. Mattermost 5. Samepage 6. Rocket Chat 7. Google-Chat 8. Ryver 9. Discord 10. Podium 11. Teamwork Chat 12. HeySpace   All in all, team messaging apps are no longer limited to organizing team conversations and searching topics but have become a way of life too. And I know you’ve learned that too, or why else would you still be here? Dozens of internal messaging applications are available, and they can cut down the overwhelm of email and also eliminate a lot of the headache. But with so many apps out there, it can be hard to know which one you should use. In this article, we’ll help you cut through the clutter and walk you through our picks for the best team chat software currently on the market. We reviewed and tested over twenty-eight team chat apps, and these eleven are the ones we'd recommend.   Team Chat Software's: How To Pick   1. How To Pick The Best Business Chat App For Your Team? 2. How Do You Use Team Chat Applications 3. Can Admin see The Team or WorkChat 4. Putting it All Together   But before we jump to the tools section, let’s answer some of the FAQs about office chat programs, their usage, features, and more. Q1. What Are The Benefits Of Team Chat Software? Well, we already know remote collaboration tools are crucial for businesses to operate remotely. But there’s more to business chat tools than meets the eyes. Below are some of the proven benefits of using chat room software for your business:   Improved Communication Between Team Members:  No points for explaining, the team chat software is designed to improve communication. With features such as instant messaging, calling, voice recording, file sharing, and screen sharing, communication between team members is never compromised. Internal messaging that combines different modes of communication and information exchange into one thread or channel, can that can easily be integrated with other office tools, is important for reducing the distraction of app-switch or task-switching. With these tools at hand, access to shared updates, information, and project links becomes faster as well. An ideal work chat app will be available across multiple OS and devices so that whether your teammates love Android or apple, they won’t be left out. Better Employee Management: Needless to say, best group chat apps are the ones that allow teams to monitor and track employee’s progress with visuals, graphs, and analytics. In this way, these tools increase employee engagement, and hence, boost an individual’s productivity too. Features such as effective internal communication, actionable feedback, and user generated solutions through idea boards and forums, and real-time access to information builds a more engaged, informed, and connected workforce — all the things a team needs to bridge the disconnect between remote employees and managers.   Streamlined Workflow: The whole point of using these tools is easing the work and organizing it. With workplace chat apps, team members can schedule meetings, discuss current tasks, ask for feedback, and plan ahead. In short, streamline it all. The ability to share files, add tasks, and integrate other apps also streamlines workflow by making everything accessible within one application. It also helps teams to share and redistribute workloads more effectively. Take, file sharing feature, for example that allows you to use file hosting, sharing, and storage services of your choice without leaving the app. The best team chat apps include dynamic filter and search functions and let teams refer to files, texts, and multimedia easily. Effective Project Management: Proper communication is directly proportional to effective project management. When teams communicate effectively, they not only reduce the chances of errors or confusion but also pave the way for timely project delivery. Quality team communication software has the best features to increase efficiency of project management. At any given time, you and your team can communicate with coworkers and create to-do lists for projects and request information on the status. With a good team communication software, your teams can make collaboration easier and streamline business processes. It cuts the need for constant meetings since users can ask questions and access the right information anytime, with a few clicks. Increase Accountability: When an admin has in-place a set of instructions and regulations for employees to review tasks, update managers on their progress, get reminders of the ETD, it all increases accountability and increases team member’s sense of responsibility. Q2. What Makes a Great Team Chat App? While instant messaging and calling are the selling points of most office chat apps, these features alone don’t make such tools great. The best team chat apps are the ones that have these following functionalities:   1. One-Stop Unified Communication Via Organised Channels: Keeping track of correspondence, third-party vendors, and company data is overwhelming when team communication is spread out across different platforms or modes — emails, phone calls, and text messages. An ideal team chat app centralizes all of the internal communication into one unified space for better employee experience. The best team chat apps unifies and organizes conversations in a way that enables easy access to information by the right people at the right time. Some messages or documents need to be seen by everyone in the team, and others need to happen at an individual or group level. A team chat app takes care of this — through features that allow admins to add or remove team members only in the threads, groups, or channels relevant to them. 2. Option to Collaborate with Vendors, Suppliers, & Freelancers: Besides the internal messaging features, a great team chat app allows you to securely connect with vendors, suppliers, clients, and freelancers without posing your company a threat of security breach and information misuse. Through this feature, you can limit the vendor/client’s access to specific contacts, features, and information. Take, for Example, Troop Messenger, it has an ‘Orange Member’ feature using which admins can invite anyone outside of their internal team. These orange members can be prospective clients, vendors, suppliers, or freelancers. Admins also have the privilege to set conditions for an orange member and decide the features, contacts, and information accessible to them.   3. Advanced Search with Filtering Features When it comes to managing communication and collaboration on team chat apps, I don’t think there’s anything that could be more frustrating than finding a particular text, document, or link that was shared months ago. When you have a team of, let’s say, 200 members, can you scan through all the conversations to find a document that was shared one month ago? Without appropriate filters, you’ll only end up overwhelmed with the amount of information that’s exchanged in the workplace chat app. With universal search or advanced filtering features, your team can quickly find past conversations for relevant information. Take, for example, Slack and Troop Messenger — both these interoffice messaging apps have advanced filters that make searching super easy. Where Slack allows you to use search modifiers for making searching easy, Troop Messenger has different types of filters to serve the same purpose — Filter by Image, Video, File, Link, Contact, Location, Read Receipt, Respond Later, and Flag.   4. Easy to Control and Navigate This is perhaps the basic one. But would you ever consider onboarding your team or employees on a work instant messenger that has a clunky interface or too steep a learning curve? I bet not. An office messenger that lacks good navigation is counterproductive and will probably result in frustration. Your members need to be able to navigate through the dashboard, conversations, integrations, and files easily. For this, the user interface must be neat, clean, and without unnecessary clutter. 5. Rich API directory or Integrations  Now this one is as important as others mentioned above, or perhaps more, if your team requires access to multiple apps to accomplish the projects. For example, you may need access to Google Drive or Dropbox where all your files are stored. Now, normally, if you’d be using a basic chat app, you’ll have to switch to Google Drive or Dropbox to access those files. But with an office messaging app, you can access, edit, or share the files from many more apps without switching between apps. 6. High Security & Privacy Chat With the constant data theft, system hacks, and security breaches that data-sensitive companies get subjected to, it’s important for employers to implement a highly-secure, E2E Encrypted team chat application. Most of the popular remote collaboration tools now offer a highly secure medium for teams to communicate and collaborate while meeting the ever-changing security and compliance needs. For example, Mattermost uses TLS encryption for both in-transit and at-rest data transmission. Another security feature that’s grabbing headlines is Troop Messenger’s Privacy Chat feature where two individuals can chat in an incognito window that expires after a stipulated time, and the data isn’t stored anywhere. These 11 team chat software, in our opinion, are the only tools in the market that offer the best balance of all these great features. 11 Team Chat Software for a Chat-Powered Workplace  Troop Messenger  - Feature Rich Team Chat App Supported Platform: Windows, Web, Android, Linux, Mac OS, and iOS. Highlights: Some of the features that make Troop Messenger a robust team chat app is custom administrative control, option to add guests (orange members), privacy chat in a confidential window, and Self-hosting options. Summary: With Troop Messenger, teams collaborate on a single interface through features such as — one-on-one conversations, group conversations, audio messaging, voice-video calls, screen sharing, forkout, and integrations. It is one of the strongest team chat apps in terms of features. You get access to all the chat app functionalities and also an option to compartmentalize collaboration through ‘forkout’ and ‘orange member’ features. Through Forkout, you can send messages to select groups or people, at once, by filtering out people who the text is not relevant for. And via, Orange member feature, you can add third party members/vendors/freelancers by allowing them restricted access to the app. Troop Messenger allows you to integrate with Google Drive, JIRA, GitHub, LDAP, Dropbox and if you want more, you can build automations with the APIs. Robust security, fingerprint access, End-to-End encryption add up to its list of features. The tool has a ‘privacy chat’ (Burnout) feature that allows users to chat confidentially in an incognito window where chat history gets deleted after the stipulated time. Also, Troop Messenger has a generous pricing plan for both the self-hosting and SaaS delivery models — starting as low as $1 per user/month. So Troop Messenger could be a great deal for budget-conscious organizations.    Slack - Powered Workplace Chat App Supported Platform: iOS, macOS, Linux, Android, Windows, and Web Highlights: Slack, popularly known as team messaging free app, covers your instant messaging basics while supporting seamless integrations, file sharing, and video calling. Summary: Launched in 2013, Slack is ahead in the team chat apps space. It has been praised for having over 2000 integration, a very powerful search capability, and intuitive UX. On Slack, each team has a general channel where they interact for group/mass communication. But, usually, the day-to-day conversations happen in specific channels created according to the project or task. Team members can dedicate any of the channels they want to be in and receive notifications from. Furthermore, Slack makes searching very convenient with the multiple search modifiers that team members can use to filter through the conversations and find what they need. Useful features like drag-and drop file sharing, clever design, one-click audio or video call, and emoji reactions make Slack a favourite team chat app. However, some users call their interaction with this chat app a love-hate relationship. It’s mainly because notifications aren’t as easy to handle. Bulks of channels mean bulk of notification, and that can both overwhelm and confuse the users. Furthermore, Slack’s biggest downside is its pricing — most competitors and users highlight that it doesn’t come as a part of a broader software bundle and yet, Slack charges more than a standalone app should. Take a look at the pricing:  Microsoft Teams - Popular Team Chat App Supported Platform: iOS, macOS, Linux, Android, Windows, and Web Highlights: Some of the best features of MS teams include online meeting and video calling, real-time collaboration with Office 365 apps, background blur, and screen sharing. Summary: MS Teams brings together all your team members in a shared workspace where they can chat, call, and collaborate on documents and apps. In MS teams, every team is divided into different channels. Discussions or conversations in these channels are further forced into threads — breaking chats down yet another level. In short, there’s hierarchy that helps maintain a tidy interface. Key features of Microsoft Teams are audio and video calls. Users can schedule meetings ahead and also hop on to spontaneous conferences or calls — and the best part, all these features are available in the freemium version. There’s also an option to record the meeting, however, this feature is only available for paid users. And needless to day, the key emphasis is tight integration with MS Office 365 Suit, using which all teams can collaborate on documents, appointments, notes, calendars, and more. At the same time, Microsoft Teams has a it’s own downfall. It’s tricky to set up. You’d need to hire a dedicated IT staff to implement it for your workplace chat, but considering the size of companies MS Teams is built for, that shouldn’t be much of a barrier. Mattermost -  Self-Hosted Team Chat Supported Platform: iOS, macOS, Linux, Android, Windows Highlights: What sets Mattermost apart from other competitors is multi-factor authentication, Enterprise grade security, custom branding, and threaded messaging. Summary: If you’re too conscious about your team’s conversations and can’t risk others spying on your chats by hosting them on a third-party server, I think you’d love mattermost. It’s an open source app, which means, team can install it on their own company’s servers. It’s one of the most feature-rich self-hosted team chat apps we came across. Mattermost’s basic features include One-to-one and group messaging, unlimited search history, and file sharing. In mattermost, conversations are segmented into different channels and threads break them further. Search feature, with multiple filters, is complete and useful. The interface looks somewhat like Slack — even the keyboard shortcuts, modifiers, and emoji reactions are essentially the same.  Samepage - Threaded Team Chat App Supported Platform: Windows, Android, iOS, and macOS   Highlights: Built for remote teams, Samepage allows co-workers to write, chat, call, collaborate, and manage projects via one centralised space. Summary: Samepage, as one of the most promising team communication apps, facilitates collaboration, chat, project management, running meetings, video conferencing, and real-time document collaboration. Businesses are using Samepage to participate in real time brainstorming sessions and collaborate via spreadsheets, diagrams, videos, images, text, task board. Samepage chat directly integrates with it’s collaborative canvas that keeps conversations and canvas together, prevents teams from losing track of discussions and work in real-time to produce better results. Apart from the team communication features, Samepage offers calendars and tasks to keep projects moving forward through kanban boards, sheets, mind maps, pages, and agendas. Tasks can be assigned to co-workers according to priority level, recurrences reminders, and with due dates.   Rocket Chat: Omnichannel Team Chat App Supported Platform: iOS, Linux, Android, Windows, and macOS Highlights: RocketChat highlights include automatic real-time message translation, admin transparent, and asynchronous team chat. Summary: RocketChat is one of the most popular open-source and free interoffice messaging apps in the market. It allows team members to collaborate via real-time file sharing, chatting, and audio or video conferencing. The app segments chats into public channels, private channels, and direct messages. It has standard instant messaging features like emoji, @mentions, file uploads or sharing, and GIFs. But the main factor that differentiates RocketChat from other team chat software like Slack or MS Teams is it is completely open source — which means if your team has software development skills, they can change the app and customize it however you prefer. Another exciting feature of RocketChat is it includes an impressive multilingual support and also lets you integrate the Google Translation API to facilitate real-time translation of texts. These translations are obviously not 100% correct but they still help a great deal for companies dealing with global clients.    Google Chat - For G-Suite Team Supported Platform: Android, iOS, macOS, and Web Highlights: Some highlights of Google Chat includes screen sharing, HD group conferencing calls, and custom administrative controls. Summary: Earlier named ‘Hangouts Chat,’ this collaboration app by Google is a free group chat app for business owners and entrepreneurs who want basic workplace chat features like texting, audio, and video calling, and file sharing. It’s offered to G Suite customers at no additional cost. In Google chat, conversations are broken into threads, that creates a clutter-free chat space. Teams are allowed to add as many rooms as they wish, and users can join or leave them whenever they wish. Where Google Chat really shines is the option to organize a meeting via Google Meet and scheduling it through Google Calendar. Search is also strong — there are a wide range of filters and results appear in real-time as you type. Google Chat’s only drawback as a team chat app is the interface. It could work more on design. Some simple tasks like reviewing lists of public rooms are buried behind multiple clicks. But it’s a solid choice if your team already has G-Suite.    Ryver - The project-focused Team Chat App Supported Platform: iOS, Windows, Mac, and Android   Highlights: Some of the highlights include screen-sharing, clear audio, and video, automated daily process, and the option to add details in tasks through tags, checklists, and assignments.   Summary: Ryver is an easy-to-use, intuitive team chat app that brings all your workplace communications in one place. It’s USP is the proprietary ART that eliminates slow, error-prone human response with AI-powered automated response. In Ryver, chats are organised into Teams, People Forums, which are indirectly Channels, direct messages, and group messages. Within each Ryver group, there are segments such as Chats, Tasks, and Topics — Chats, as we know is instant messaging, Topics means threads for different types of discussions, and tasks are kanban-style boards where teams can organize, create, and complete different tasks. In Ryver, you’ll find other essential features of a team chat app, but this app, mainly, is an attempt to integrate project management features within the team chat programme.  Discord: For Team Chat for Communities  Supported Platform: iOS, Windows, Mac, and Android Highlights: Discord, now also known as a team discussion app, is mainly developed for gamers. But with it’s outstanding screen sharing and video calling capabilities, it’s being used for different businesses for remote collaboration. Summary: Discord now has a lot of communication or collaboration specific features but it works as a team chat app for one solid reason: excellent audio and video quality. The app has text channels the same as app team chat apps but there’s no option to segment the conversations within channels. Discord USP is the voice channel or audio chats where users can go for on-phone calls and switch back to texting whenever needed. Discord’s audio quality makes it a great pick for teams that need to speak frequently over the phone call. The app also offers an option to opt-out of sound sharing during a video call or screen sharing. You can opt-in or opt-out of sound sharing by toggling the sound icon between Off and On. Furthermore, the screen sharing features with multiple participants make it even more suited for remote businesses. There’s an option to swap from screen share to video. At any time during the conversation, you can swap between the two. When swapping your computer screen, you can opt for which monitor screen to share. You can also opt for sharing only a specific application window.  Podium: Messaging Tool for Local Business Supported Platform: Windows, Android, Linux, and macOS Highlights: Podium is a convenient team chat and collaboration tool that facilities employee interaction and communication with features such as DMs, Group messaging, and file sharing. Summary: To keep the conversations organised, the podium uses threads. What sets it apart from other apps is that it lets you keep all your messages from Google, SMS, Facebook messenger into one central space — which means you can respond and manage each message from a single platform. While sending messages, users have an option to choose from ready-to-send options or choose their own templates. There’s also an option to send automated messages, assign conversations, and set permissions to give right people access to the right conversation or files. The video conferencing feature in Podium is implemented via a third-party service. The app has no freemium version, and there’s no pricing plan as such. You’ve to get in touch with them and share your teams’ requirements to get a pricing quote. Pricing: Custom plans as per business’s communication needs  Teamwork - Teamwork Chat App Supported Platform: Android, Windows, MacOS, iOS   Highlights: With Teamwork Chat, you can bring all your team members to one centralised space where they can collaborate through better group communication, discuss feedback and solve problems. Summary:  Teamwork chat lets you turn messages into tasks and turn communication into workflows across the organization. With one centralised space for team members to share ideas and receive feedback, teams on Teamwork can reach a consensus faster, and also make better decisions. The app has an intuitive layout and features for a team communication app. Speaking of pricing, Teamwork chat offers an affordable package, especially compared to other team chat apps available in the market. Teamwork Chat pays attention to user privacy and data security as well. Furthermore, you can also integrate Teamwork chat with other apps you love. What I love about Teamwork Chat is its DND feature — it allows users to remove all distractions by muting all the push, desktop notifications, and email so you won’t be interrupted Teamwork chat also has features such as dedicated project channels where teams can share ideas, resolve issues, and make informed decisions to keep the project moving forward. You can also star the channels to bookmark conversations for easy access.   HeySpace - All-in-One Chat App Supported Platform: Windows, macOS, Ubuntu, Android, iOS   Highlights: Collaboration tool for communication and project management for teams of all sizes.   Summary:  HeySpace combines two functions - communication and task management, which allows you to save time and better manage your team. The communication feature is very extensive, because it offers direct communication, in groups, in Spaces (i.e. in projects), and in the chat module of each task. Thanks to this, there is order, and only people interested in the topic participate in the conversations.   The application allows you to set private and public Spaces, and to mention the person with the @ sign. In addition, you can vote with emotes, send gifs, add files and quickly convert messages to a task when one of your colleagues comes up with a great idea.   HeySpace, as mentioned above, offers task management based on the Kanban methodology. Each project is a separate Space with chat, board, list, calendar, and timeline views. The form of tasks was adopted by cards in which you can include all important information, such as a description, checklist, files, start, and end dates, and assign people.   HeySpace is a straightforward and quick tool to learn. It allows you to improve communication and strengthen relationships in the team.   Some More FAQs about Team Chat Software How To Pick The Best Business Chat App For Your Team? Well, there’s no button-solution for this one. At the end of the day, choosing the best team chat app depends on your team’s requirements and collaboration needs. Let’s say, Team A needs to integrate multiple apps to accomplish its projects. So, in this scenario, they’d need a tool that allows seamless integration with third party apps — hence, Slack should be their go-to tool. Similarly, if Team B requires to collaborate frequently with vendors or suppliers, but cannot risk making them a part of the internal team, then they’d need an app that allows the feature to add guest members — hence, Troop Messenger should be the choice. Now, if Team C requires basic instant messaging and file sharing features but cannot afford monthly or yearly cost, then they can opt for a free group chat app — Google Chat can be a safe option. All in all, the selection of the best business chat app depends on your needs. So, if you want to choose one that fits the bill, you follow the five-step approach: Make a list of essential features your team needs  Read about the features, pros, and cons of the best team chat app  Compare who’s offering what, and ask the service provider for a trial  Onboard your team on the selected app for a month, and seek feedback about the ease of use from everyone If all members find the app helpful and convenient, purchase the monthly/yearly subscription   How Do You Use Team Chat Applications Well, using a team chat app or onboarding teammates is pretty easy in most of the remote collaboration tools. Thankfully, all the eleven tools mentioned above have dedicated videos, guides, and tutorials that make onboarding easy and ‘learning how to use the app’ even easier. Just add the phrase ‘How to Use’ before your favorite team chat app, and browse Google, you’ll find guides and videos right away. For example, Troop Messenger has a rich directory of all the How-tos, FAQs, and Videos on using the app effectively. Similarly, if you want to learn about using Slack or Mattermost, you can find heaps of useful guides and videos online. Can Admin see The Team or WorkChat It depends from app to app. Where some team chats software allows admins to access all DMs exchanged between team members, others won’t. For example, in Slack, team owners can request access to the whole Slack message history, including the direct messages and private channels. Similarly, in Troop Messengers, admins can track and monitor message exchanges between employees by enabling TM Monitor for a specific time period.   Putting it All Together Some of the team communication apps out there are foundational -- things like instant messaging, audio or video conferencing, file sharing, and CRM. However, other group communication apps are more specialized, with features such as confidential chat windows, project management tools, vendor collaboration, time tracker, and more. I hope this article helped you differentiate between such apps and learn what’s good, better, or the best. The ultimate choice, obviously, depends on your company’s communication & collaboration requirements, your team's strength, and the budget.  

Studies show that 70% of people around the world work remotely at least once per week. To accommodate that, most businesses started using enterprise collaboration software to improve remote communications. There’s no reason government agencies shouldn’t follow the private sector’s model, especially since it would offer taxpayers a more efficient public sector. Not to mention it would also be a great way to handle the new wave of remote working in the public sector brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s no exact data telling us how many public sector employees work remotely now, but it’s already happening in places like Canada, Australia, the US, and beyond. If you’re not 100% sure you need collaboration software in your agency, keep reading. We’ll go over the perks and show you how two tools (Huddle and Troop Messenger) can help.   How Collaboration Tools Benefit Government Agencies Here are the main benefits of using collaboration software while working remotely:   Increased Efficiency: Collaboration software lets your teams communicate in seconds, even though they’re not in the same building (or even the same country). It saves a lot of time by streamlining communications, project management, and task delegation. Basically, it cuts down on what taxpayers hate the most: bureaucracy. For example, you don’t need to go through endless email threads to monitor multiple projects simultaneously. You can just track their progress on a platform with a user-friendly interface. Similarly, you can offer feedback instantly, and everyone working on said projects can see it. No need to go through different people or channels to get a simple idea across.   At the same time, no more time will be wasted on keeping track of important documents and edits. Instead of going through countless emails until you find the file you need, you can just use advanced search functions to locate it quickly.   Furthermore, collaboration software lets you work together with your team on a document at the same time. Instead of waiting an hour or two until you get the document to review it, you can just co-edit it to save time.   Cost Savings: By increasing efficiency, you automatically end up saving money too. Government agencies and internal teams/departments will have a much easier time focusing on the right projects (the ones that benefit the public the most), and making sure they are successful.   Your entire agency will be able to come up with and validate ideas on the spot. Communication and feedback are instant, and all the decisions are based on real-time interactions. Plus, people in leadership positions and subordinates can plan job duties together while they’re miles apart. We’re talking about: Coming up with workflow strategies. Performing QA (Quality Assurance) and QC (Quality Control). Handing off assignments and submitting results. Reviewing best practices. And they can do that while being miles apart. No more money wasted on travel expenses (gas, food, drinks, accommodations, etc.).   Huddle & Troop Messenger – Two Excellent Options With so many services on the market, picking the right collaboration software can be tough – especially if you’re new to this. To make things simple for you, we narrowed it down to two very decent solutions: Huddle and Troop Messenger.   How Huddle Platform helps Government  Huddle is a nice tool that offer secure and efficient document collaboration (among other things). It’s a very decent solution for any government agency looking to improve team collaboration and document management. In a nutshell, here’s how you can use it to boost productivity and security: Huddle lets you share files securely thanks to its strong encryption and access controls. It’s much easier than sharing them through USB sticks and safer than sharing them through consumer-grade file sharing apps. The solution is cloud-based, so it enables multi-agency collaborations. Everyone can use it, and nobody has to default to unsafe file sharing methods.Document management is extremely straightforward. Employees can easily submit and fulfill document requests, track document activity, and collaborate on the documents remotely. Huddle’s secure infrastructure lets you safely collaborate with external partners, such as suppliers from the private sector. Huddle offers automatic version control, meaning everyone in your agency always has access to the latest version of a document. Employees can easily co-edit a document and see who viewed it thanks to Huddle’s time-stamped activity logs. Huddle is an all-in-one solution for document management, file sharing, and storage, meaning there are no hidden maintenance fees or expensive integrations. In fact, Huddle could even be the app to help you save money. How Troop Messenger Software helps Government  Troop Messenger is an instant messaging platform which can be your Government app that’s chock-full of features yet is very simple to use. At a glance, here’s how it can improve internal and external communications for your agency: The service offers strong data protection – encryption and three-level security (user credentials, passcode, and fingerprint). Overall, you can fully secure cross-department communications. Troop Messenger a slack alternative lets you add external contacts to your communication channels. When you do that, you can assign specific permissions and restrictions to make sure they don’t compromise valuable data and your employee’s privacy. The Forkout feature lets you instantly message individual users simultaneously. Much more efficient than creating a new chat group with specific employees just to notify them about a document or to send them an announcement. Troop Messenger offers live chat APIs which you can use to better communicate with the people in your state/province.Thanks to its advanced search filters, you can instantly find the file or message you are looking for. You can look them up by keywords, time filters, links, images, videos, file, and location. You can even Self-host Troop Messenger on your own cloud or physical servers to get an extra layer of security. If you want things further personalized, you can request Troop Messenger developers to design a custom app that meets all your advertising agency needs and saves you money since, since you’ll shave off the cost of all the features you won’t be using.. And best of all – Troop Messenger offers 100% scalability. If your agency grows or departments merge, the platform doesn’t require any redesigns to adapt. If you’d like to see Troop Messenger in action, and read a comprehensive review of the service, follow this link.   Conclusion: The public sector can’t afford to ignore team collaboration software anymore – especially during this pandemic. It needs to catch up to the private sector and start using these tools to improve efficiency (and save money at the same time). One easy way to do that is to start using Huddle and Troop Messenger in your organization. They significantly streamline project management, file sharing, and communication.

Do you need confusion about selecting the appropriate Microsoft Teams pricing plan suitable for business and adhering to its requirements? This blog evaluates its pricing plans, which will help make an informed decision. Table of Contents What is Microsoft Teams? Is Microsoft Teams free? Is Microsoft Teams really free for Business? Quick Comparison of Pricing Plans: India vs the United States MS Teams Growth During COVID-19 Q1: How many members are allowed with its free plan? Q2: Is Microsoft Teams offering unlimited file Storage? Q3: What is Microsoft Team's free meeting time limit? Q4: What is Microsoft Teams Meeting Recording Limitations? Summing Up What is Microsoft Teams? Microsoft Teams is undoubtedly one of the best team chat applications available today. As the self-explanatory brand name suggests, Microsoft developed it, and it is currently one of the top team chat apps available. During the pandemic, there was a surge in the number of users transited from other instant messaging services from educational institutions and sales businesses. Zoom only allowed for 40 minutes, whereas Microsoft Teams' free download model allowed for up to 100 individuals with a 60-minute time limit. Like any team chat app, it is available for multiple platforms like iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS, including Microsoft Teams download for pc. Is Microsoft Teams free? That’s what Microsoft Teams has been saying since they announced their remote collaboration app as a ‘Free’ tool. Microsoft Teams pricing has become quite a buzz. By consistently claiming to offer all the core features of Microsoft Teams' free plan, Troop Messenger aims to answer the common question of hundreds of prospective users: Is Teams free? The aforementioned details provide a response to this query. Is Microsoft Teams really free for Business? Is Microsoft Teams free to use? Evey, a general user, is hugely contemplating this question. If you want to know how Microsoft Teams' free plan can facilitate schools, then you are in the right place. Microsoft certification training maximizes productivity with Microsoft Teams. You don't need Office 365 to use the MS Team app, and you don't need a license to use Microsoft Teams.  I won’t say that Microsoft Teams is misleading its users with the tagline, but it's safe to say the statement is vague. With the foregoing in mind, you may feel that MS Teams is free. To answer your query, you can open a free Teams account. With that said, the Team Free account has some limitations compared to other Microsoft Teams subscription plans. Below are some of the cons pertaining to the Microsoft Teams free version. Which answer would be, is Teams free for personal use? If so, to what extent:   The storage limit in the free plan is 5 GB per user. This space fills so quickly that you’d have to upgrade eventually. Free plans have poor downtime. No guarantee of 99.9% Uptime, unlike the paid plans. With the free plan, you cannot record meetings. There’s a limit to the number of people that can be added. And there’s more.   I’ll go through how much a Microsoft Teams subscription costs later in this blog. But let’s take a look at how COVID-19 has impacted Microsoft Teams’ usage and growth. Quick Comparison of Pricing Plans: India vs the United States Here, is the comparison between Microsoft Teams plans for both India and the United States - I hope it will answer your query ' Do you have to pay for Microsoft Teams?    India Microsoft Teams (free) Microsoft 365 Business Basic(formerly Office 365 Business Essentials) Microsoft 365 Business Standard(formerly Office 365 Business Premium) Office 365 E3 Free Rs. 125.00 user/month Rs. 660.00 user/month Rs. 1, 320.00 user/month    United States Microsoft Teams (free) Microsoft 365 Business Basic(formerly Office 365 Business Essentials) Microsoft 365 Business Standard(formerly Office 365 Business Premium) Office 365 E3 Free $5.00 user/month $12.50 user/month $20.00 user/month   MS Teams Growth During COVID-19   Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the sudden shift toward the work-from-home model, MS Teams passed 75 million daily active users in April 2020 with its Microsoft Teams free account. According to the data economy, Microsoft recorded 12 Million new users since remote workers increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s what Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, said about the influx of customers:   “It is very clear that enabling remote work is more important than ever and that it will continue to have lasting value beyond the COVID-19 outbreak. 20 customers have more than 100,000 employees actively using Teams, including Ernst & Young, SAP, Pfizer, and Continental AG, as well as Accenture, which has 440,000 employees actively using Teams.” Considering the high demand and to show support during these unprecedented times, Microsoft decided to update some of their Microsoft teams' plans, especially the free plan. But the question is: "Do Microsoft Teams cost money?" I am sure this question may have appeared silly, but the preceding question is worth referring to. Is Microsoft Teams' free plan worth it? What features can you use in the free version? What are the limitations of the new updated free plan? I’ll answer all that and more in this article. Let’s begin with key features and how they are different for both free and paid customers: Q1: How many members are allowed with its free plan? Maximum Members The maximum member limit is probably the first thing that comes to an admin’s mind before deciding which remote collaboration app to use. Let’s take a look at Teams, which are free and paid. Microsoft Teams Paid If you have a large organization, MS Teams’ paid plan works fine. As per MS Teams pricing plans, there’s no limit to the number of users that can be added. All in all, its maximum users are potentially unlimited with the enterprise plan. Microsoft Teams Free The maximum member limit for free teams was previously 300, but Microsoft recently increased it to 500,000 users per organization. This update addresses the question of whether Teams is free.   “Microsoft revealed that Teams now support an increase to 5,000 members per team. The new maximum will help large organizations like Accenture (the largest user of Teams).” Q2: Is Microsoft Teams offering unlimited file Storage? File Storage At Microsoft Teams, files shared in a channel are stored in the team's SharePoint folder. These files can then be found in the files tab of each channel. Files shared in the group chat or private chat are stored in the OneDrive folder. This can be found in the files tab on a conversation. Microsoft Teams Paid To its paid users, MS Teams provides storage of 1 TB per user.   Microsoft Teams Free When it comes to Microsoft Teams' cost, free users are provided with a storage space of 2 GB per user, along with an additional 10 GB of shared space. However, this allocation may not be sufficient, leading to requests for upgrading to access more storage. Q3: What is Microsoft Team's free meeting time limit? Video Conferencing With Microsoft Teams, you can elevate your meetings to the next level by utilizing web, audio, and video conferencing capabilities across various devices of your preference.   By leveraging Microsoft Teams, you can enhance the effectiveness of your meetings through the seamless sharing of context and content, along with the option to utilize AI for assistance. Furthermore, you can enjoy the same level of compliance and security provided by Microsoft 365. Don't overlook this category, as it will familiarize you with Teams' free meeting limit.   Microsoft Teams Paid Apart from hosting video, audio, and web conferences, paid users get more features like note-taking, screen sharing, instant messaging, and meeting scheduling. As per Microsoft Teams pricing plans, they can hold large meetings, presentations, and company-wide events with up to 10,000 attendees.   The video conferencing function, which is the most common use, has a time limit of 8 hrs. Microsoft Teams Free When it comes to video conferencing, there are a few limitations for Microsoft Teams' free users. For example, the free plan lacks core features such as meeting recording and phone calls. And for the live events, only 250 attendees are allowed if you’re hosting the meeting via a free account. Q4: What is Microsoft Teams Meeting Recording Limitations? Meeting Recording With MS teams, you can record the meetings by capturing them through screen sharing activity and audio and video features. The recorded videos are stored in the cloud and saved into Microsoft Stream. Microsoft Teams Paid Recording the meetings is simple in Microsoft Team. You simply have to host or join a meeting. Once the meeting starts, you can go to:   Meeting controls > More options > Start recording   MS teams allow users to record group calls and meetings. However, the one-on-one calls cannot be recorded yet. Another limitation of the Microsoft team recording feature is that the shared notes and whiteboards cannot be captured in the recordings. Microsoft Teams Free Unlike other core features, the meeting recording feature is only available for Microsoft Teams paid users. Free users cannot record the meetings. Microsoft team's free meeting duration is 0 minutes. SLA Uptime Run by Microsoft, Microsoft Teams claims that it provides customers with a Service Level Agreement. But it’s not the same for all users. Microsoft Teams Paid To its paid users, Microsoft Teams offers a service credit SLA against a 99.9 Uptime per month SLA. It is the same with the majority of Office 365 services that also offer a 99.9% SLA. Microsoft Teams Free The free MS Team users are not assured of the 99.9% SLA. There’s no mention of uptime for free users, but it’s apparent and obvious that paid users get an uptime priority. Take a look at the down detector’s report of MS Teams' most reported problems — serve connection stands at 45%.   User Setting Configuration As a paid Microsoft Teams user, you can leverage the team policy feature to exercise control over user capabilities in channels within your organization. Microsoft Teams excels in offering the capacity to manage and restrict access, empowering you with control over user privileges within Teams. Microsoft Teams Paid Considering MS Teams pricing plans, the user setting configuration feature is available only for Microsoft Teams paid users. For example, an admin can choose whether a user is allowed to discover private teams or contacts in search results. Similarly, they can control content views in the team gallery and restrict a member’s ability to create private channels. Team Policies can be managed through MS Teams admin centre> Teams policies in Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams Free Like other important features, the user setting configuration feature is also unavailable in the free plan. You’d need to upgrade to the paid plan to gain the ability to show this level of control. Usage Reporting Teams usage report features are available in the MS Teams admin center, which gives admins an overview of the user and user activity in Teams. The reports include a list of active channels, active users, guests, messages, and more.   It gives admin an option to quickly see how many users across their organization are using the app to collaborate and communicate and collaborate. Microsoft Teams Paid Admins with a paid subscription can run different reports and get insights into how their employees are using Teams. An organization can use these reports and information to get a better understanding of usage patterns, inform the training efforts, improve communication gaps, and help make business decisions. You can get the usage report through:    MS Teams Admin Centre > Analytics & Reports > Usage Reports > Teams Usage   Microsoft Teams Free The usage reporting feature is not available for free users. Summing Up Here’s a summary of all the differences between Microsoft Teams Free and Paid plans:   Features MS Teams Free MS Teams Paid  Maximum members 500,000 per org Potentially unlimited with an enterprise license File storage 5 GB/user and 10 GB of shared storage 1 TB/user Guest access     Video calls Up to 250 participants Up to 10,000 participants  Channel meetings     Screen sharing     Scheduled meetings     Meeting recording X Available with Microsoft Stream Administration     Admin tools for managing users and apps X   Usage reporting for Microsoft 365 services X   99.9% financially-backed SLA uptime X   Configurable user settings and policies X   All things considered, Microsoft Teams' Free plan is a solid option. While the price is not a concern, it does come with restrictions on important features necessary for remote collaboration. Here’s a table taken from Microsoft Teams' official site with all the maximum limits for MS Teams:(Note: Microsoft Teams time limit for the free plan is not disclosed)    Feature Maximum limit Number of teams a user can create Subject to a 250 object limit¹ Number of teams a user can be a member of 1,000 Number of members in a team 10,000 Number of owners per team 100 Number of org-wide teams allowed in a tenant 5 Number of members in an org-wide team 5,000 Number of teams a global admin can create 500,000 Number of teams a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization can have 500,000² Number of channels per team 200 (includes deleted channels)³   When it comes to Microsoft Teams' cost, there are various options available to obtain these great features at a lower price. Exploring discounted plans, bundled subscriptions, or opting for specific feature-focused packages can help you achieve cost-effective access to the desired capabilities. Troop Messenger as an Alternative to Microsoft Teams   Troop Messenger offers a comprehensive set of essential remote collaboration features, including instant messaging, unlimited members and groups, video conferencing, screen sharing, orange members, and integrations. It provides tough competition to Microsoft Teams with its neck-to-neck feature lineup. How is Troop Messenger Different From Microsoft Teams?   Privacy Chat: It allows team members to chat privately within a stipulated time period. The conversation gets deleted automatically once the timer expires. Advanced Search: Filter history by image, video, file, link, contact, URL, and location to trim down the search quickly and easily. Secure: Passcode Security Pin and FingerPrint access. Live Location Tracking: This allows you to share your real-time location with the participants of an individual chat for a specific amount of time Orange Member: This feature encourages a provision to add other company employees, vendors, or customers to be a part of the application or organization with their respective business or public domain mail IDs Pricing: Troop gives you all Microsoft Teams' paid features at the most competitive price in the market. Starting at $1 per user per month, it's the cheapest remote collaboration tool you’ll come across. Storage: Unlike MS Teams' free plan, which provides 2GB of storage, TM offers 1 TB of storage to the enterprise account and 150 GB to the premium account.   All in all, I hope you learned that Teams is free for personal use. Nevertheless, Microsoft Teams makes for a great collaboration app but if you cannot afford to buy a paid subscription since Microsoft Team's license cost is high compared to other tools and still want to avail core features, you should consider giving Troop Messenger a try.   FAQs     1. What is Microsoft Teams?   Microsoft Teams is a collaboration tool by Microsoft that supports messaging, video calls, file sharing, and integration with Office 365 apps.     2. How much does Microsoft Teams cost?   Microsoft Teams pricing starts with a free plan and goes up to $22 per user/month for the premium plans.     3. What features are included in the free version of Microsoft Teams?   The free version offers chat, file sharing, video calls, and limited storage space.     4.What is the difference between Microsoft Teams' free and paid plans?   Paid plans include advanced features like increased storage, meeting recordings, and Office 365 integration.     5. Are there discounts available for Microsoft Teams?   Microsoft Teams may offer discounts for educational institutions and nonprofits.     6. Does Microsoft Teams charge extra for video conferencing?   Video conferencing is included in both free and paid plans, but paid plans offer advanced features like recording.     7. Is Microsoft Teams included in Office 365?   Yes, Microsoft Teams is part of Office 365 and comes bundled with Office apps in specific plans.     8.Can small businesses afford Microsoft Teams?   Yes, Microsoft Teams offers affordable plans suitable for small businesses starting at $4 per user/month.     9. Is Microsoft Teams pricing scalable for large enterprises?   Yes, enterprise plans offer scalability with advanced management and security features.     10.What industries benefit most from Microsoft Teams?   Industries like education, healthcare, BFSI, and government often benefit from Microsoft Teams’ features.   11. Does Microsoft Teams support on-premise hosting?   No, Microsoft Teams operates as a cloud-based platform only.   12. Are there better alternatives to Microsoft Teams?   Troop Messenger is a robust alternative, offering both SaaS and on-premise options for enhanced security and customization.   13.Can I integrate Microsoft Teams with other tools?   Yes, Microsoft Teams supports integrations with tools like Trello, Salesforce, and Asana.   14. What storage limits apply in Microsoft Teams plans?   Storage ranges from 5GB in the free plan to 1TB per user in paid plans.   15.Does Microsoft Teams offer a free trial for paid plans?   Yes, Microsoft offers a free trial for some paid plans to explore premium features.   16.Are video meeting limits different in Microsoft Teams plans?   Yes, the free plan allows 60-minute meetings, while paid plans support meetings up to 30 hours.   17.Does Microsoft Teams pricing vary by region?   Yes, pricing may vary based on regional taxes and currency differences.   18. Is Microsoft Teams suitable for remote work?   Yes, it is designed to support seamless communication and collaboration for remote teams.   19.What is the main disadvantage of Microsoft Teams' pricing model?   Its pricing can become expensive for small businesses needing advanced features.   20.Why consider Troop Messenger over Microsoft Teams?   Troop Messenger offers more flexibility, secure on-premise options, and tailored solutions for diverse industries.

If you were to ask someone to name the best note-taking apps, Evernote and Microsoft OneNote would be two powerhouses among the best note-taking apps.   It’s no surprise, why?   Microsoft OneNote is the best note-taking app that really popularized the concept, and Microsoft and Evernote are two of the biggest players around. If you’re thinking about signing up for note-taking apps, you might wonder who wins in a battle between OneNote vs Evernote vs Notion on features, pricing, and more.   Notion claims to bring the best of both worlds by offering a new block-based layout that is usable as a note-taking app, Kanban tool, and to-do list.   At Tvisha, all our team members are now working remotely. Needless to say, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we worked.   Now, our project management, team management, and customer relationship efforts all depend on the intuitive software that enables us to work from home.   Fortunately, we’ve our own Internal Team Communication - Troop Messenger that has saved us from the hard part of managing remote collaboration. With Troop Messenger, we are literally doing everything we were doing from our workplaces. Our team collaboration and internal communications are as strong as it was before the nationwide lockdown.   The only area we were having a problem with was ‘Note-Taking and Idea Management.’ Some of our employees felt that they don’t have a centralized tool to easily and conveniently store a great many ideas and information they come across on a daily basis.   And that’s when we decided to onboard our employees on a common note-taking app. In fact, we decided to use different note-taking apps for a week, and then ask each employee to vote for their best note-taking app.   Table of the Content 1. Overview 2. Interface 3. Note-Taking Form 4. Free NoteTaking Templates 5. Supporting Platform 6. Storage 7. Integration 8. Pricing   We also asked around with some friends to nudge them to share their advice. As a result, we shortlisted three note-taking apps.  OneNote  EverNote  Notion Our internal team used each of these tools to find what worked for us. But we didn’t stop there and eventually decided to share our experience here in the form of a comparison article. Now, let’s take a look at each of the important features of the best note-taking app. Below, we are sharing an unbiased comparison of different factors you need to consider before making the final decision between Evernote vs Onenote, Notion vs Onenote, or Notion vs Evernote. And before you get started on the features, let’s do a quick overview of each tool. We’ll hopefully help you decide for yourself in this comparison of three of the best-known best note-taking apps available.    Microsoft OneNote vs Evernote vs Notion: Overview   Microsoft OneNote Overview Known as a digital note-taking app, MS OneNote allows users to organize their thoughts, ideas, discoveries, and plans in a notebook form. It’s a multi-user collaboration tool that gives away a lot for free. It can do the 3Rs of Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.   Microsoft OneNote is most often used by companies with 1000-5000 employees and >1000M dollars in revenue. In the Office Productivity category, Microsoft OneNote has a market share of about 0.2%.   72% of Microsoft OneNote customers are in the United States, 6% are in the United Kingdom and 6% are in Canada. Evernote Overview   Evernote lets you capture and prioritize ideas, projects, and to-do lists, so you focus on what matters the most and get quick access to that information anytime, from anywhere — since it works pretty much everywhere. Whilst Evernote remains the most used note-taking app, with a whopping 225M active users globally, and arguably, the world’s most well-known personal productivity software, it is losing many loyal users. Notion Overview Notion is a collaborative note-taking app that lets you take notes - write, plan, organize, and collaborate. With 30+ types of content to add, you get the freedom to create notes within different templates.   As of now, considering the comparison between Onenote vs Notion and Evernote — Notion has a market value of $2 billion — a huge sum for a company that only recently reached annualized revenue of $30 million.    Microsoft OneNote vs Evernote vs Notion: Interface   Microsoft OneNote Interface   OneNote’s Interface feels downright scrapbook. It’s jaunty. The color used to create a brand identity is the same shade of purple. The menu has large and colorful icons. Panels show your notebooks, pages, and a section that gives the feel of a school binder. OneNote allows users to have more freedom than Evernote. Users can have text boxes next to tables, audio clippings, and images. You can combine all the different elements on the page to create the document. In simpler terms, OneNote is more than a word-processing document. Evernote Interface   Both Evernote and OneNote have distinctive styles. Based on its UI and UX, Evernote clearly looks more polished. It looks and feels like business productivity software. Moreover, the staid color scheme of Evernote creates a non-nonsense feel. Evernote has rich formatting tools that appear as minuscule icons along the top menu bar - much like a near row of stars in the sky. Apart from this, Evernote can be customized according to a user’s preferences. You can change previews of notes according to your requirements. Simply put, when it comes to look and feel, Evernote has everything in place.   Notion Interface   Notion has a neat UI/UX where note-taking and other elements are easily accessible. It takes a different approach to note-making where instead of notebooks and sections, there are pages that are used to create blocks. Notion users can access the pages from the sidebar. They can further drill down to different sections and hop between pages to notes without too many clicks to go back and forth. In short, pages within pages offer incredible flexibility. You can have a ridiculous amount of information within one note.   Onenote vs Evernote vs Notion: Note-Taking Form OneNote   Microsoft OneNote, as one of the highly intuitive and versatile note-taking apps, allows users to take notes via text, images, and audio. One of the most powerful features of OneNote is that it allows users to handwrite notes if they’re using a touchscreen device. You can also scan the physical documents and store them in the notes folder. These notes rest in sections that are further stored inside the notebooks. EverNote   Evernote, as a cloud-based note-taking app, allows users to create, organize, and store different media files. On Evernote, you can take notes in the form of images, audio, video, web pages, and text documents. Apart from that, you can scan documents or physical papers and store them in the cloud notes. Since Evernote stores all your notes in the cloud, your notes are synced across all your devices. Notion   Notion uses the block form for note-taking. Hence, if a user wants to create notes, they begin by creating a new block. In this block, they have the option to take notes in the form of text, audio, gallery, video, wikis, table, Kanban-style, code, and more.   Through the sidebar, users can also drill down into the pages with no limits, which is different from note-taking in Evernote and OneNote.  Onenote vs Evernote vs Notion: Free NoteTaking Templates Since Note-Taking Templates are such an integral part of note-taking apps, it’s important to consider a number of templates before making the purchase: OneNote: Templates OneNote has a collection of 20+ pre-ready templates for users to use during meetings, project management, class, events, and more. You can download these templates from the OneNote Gem Website where you get access to the commonly used templates like Pre-Travel Checklist, Daily Work Schedule Template, Cornell Stone, Time Management Quadrants, and more. Evernote: Templates    As for Evernote, it offers an exclusive range of templates for users to choose from. Generally, the note-taking templates are categorized into the to-do list, meeting notes, writing, management resources, home and garden, party planning, travel, school, and more. Users also download, personalize, and manage these templates according to their use. Notion: Templates    Notion has a wide range of templates to allow users to take notes for different purposes. There are many free, editable, and highly useful templates. For example, you can use Weekly Agenda Template to plan the entire week’s workload and the Reading List Template for planning which books/tasks to read/accomplish next. More templates like these are helpful in organizing assignments or projects.    Onenote vs Evernote vs Notion: Supporting Platform In terms of the supporting platforms, all three apps like Notion, Evernote, and OneNote are compatible with web browsers, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android, you can take notes anywhere, at any time.   Supporting Platform  Evernote  OneNote  Notion  Web Browser ✓ ✓ ✓ iOS  ✓ ✓ ✓ Android  ✓ ✓ ✓ macOS  ✓ ✓ ✓ Windows ✓ ✓ ✓   It's worth noting that OneNote, Evernote, and Notion have stand-alone desktop apps for macOS and Windows which allows users to make offline edits as well.    Onenote vs Evernote vs Notion: Storage Onenote, Evernote, and Notion — all handle the storage and storage limits in a distinct manner.   OneNote Storage OneNote, by default, uses OneDrive storage, so your usage limits are based on your OneDrive account. This means that, if you have a Microsoft Office subscription, you can use OneNote without any additional purchase. Simply, Sharepoint users also have their OneNote Storage capacity tied to their Sharepoint accounts. OneNote offers free storage of a 5GB limit for personal use. And users can pay more for more storage. The largest file size that can be uploaded to OneNote and synced to OneDrive is 2 GB. More on OneNote Storage   OneNote’s storage limits are connected directly to a user’s Microsoft OneDrive account; there are no restrictions on how many individual notes in OneNote the user can save. Restrictions of 25MB in the basic freemium plan. File size uploads of up to 200MB per file for both premium and business subscribers. The Freemium version restricts users to 500 synced notes and then prompts them to upgrade. The maximum file size that can be uploaded to OneDrive is 15GB, but for OneNote, this limit is only 2 GB. Evernote Storage Unlike OneNote, EverNote stores user data on its server, so you don’t have to use secondary storage. In short, Evernote claims that it offers unlimited storage to all its users. But, it’s not so.   Evernote users get an allotment of per month storage according to the plan they’ve purchased:   Freemium accounts have an option of 100,000 notes and a file-size restriction of 25MB per note. Premium subscribers can capture notes or upload files up to 100MB in size. Maximum of 250 notebooks that are synced across a user’s account. Maximum of 10,000 tags. Users can store up to 100 searches. Limit of 60MB of uploaded data per month in the freemium plan, premium users have a limit of 10GB, and business users to 20 GB. Notion Storage Notion uses blocks for setting the limit on how freemium users use it. The freemium plan does have a storage cap of one thousand blocks. This limit is sufficient for most people since there’s an option to delete the blocks that aren’t needed to free up storage.   5 MB upload limit 1000 blocks in the free plan Unlimited pages & blocks 5 MB upload limit Share with 5 guests 50+ starter templates Wikis, docs, & notes Databases with rich property types Table, list, calendar, kanban board, & gallery views To gain access to more blocks, Notion users can opt for paid plans by earning credit.      Onenote vs Evernote vs Notion: Integration  When it comes to integrations, Onenote, Evernote, and Notion measure up nearly equally. OneNote Integrations Apart from Onenote Trello integration, it also connects with apps like Salesforce, Wufoo, Basecamp, and Twitter via Zapier.   OneNote allows integrations with plenty of apps and services that allow users to save images, notes, and other apps listed below in the table.   Evernote Integrations Evernote offers a few unique integration options that allow users more flexibility. The best integration feature, however, is its ability to search both Google and your notes simultaneously. Evernote integrates with your favorite apps listed below in the table:   Notion Integrations Notion, as an all-in-one workspace app, can be integrated with 100+ Apps to create tasks and manage projects — all in one place. A few popular Notion integrations apps are listed below in the table:   A few popular apps integrations are listed below in the table:  OneNote  EverNote  Notion Chegg CloudHQ Docs.com NeatConnect Office Lens OneNote Web Clipper Google Drive Microsoft Teams Outlook Salesforce Slack Slack Trello, ToDoist, Asana Google Calendar, TimeSheet Gmail      Onenote vs Evernote vs Notion: Pricing OneNote Pricing   Since OneNote is a part of MS Office, you get free note-taking if you’re an MS Office paid user. But, you’d need to purchase the storage space since your storage is tied to the MS OneDrive account   You get 100 GB of storage space at $1.99 per month making the paid version quite affordable.   Evernote Pricing      EverNote  Notion Basic Plan Free 60 MB Upload limit 25 MB maximum note size Premium ($7.99 per user, per month) 10 GB Upload limit200 MB maximum note size Business ($14.99 per user, per month) 10 GB Upload limit 200 MB maximum note size Unlimited number of collaboration space     Basic Free Unlimited members, 1000 block storage, and 5 MB upload limit  Personal Plan $4 per month Unlimited block storage, No file upload limit Business  $8 per user, per month Priority Support, Version Support Unlimited members and block    OneNote pricing is better than Evernote pricing so as with Notion pricing. Final Thoughts Although all three apps — One Note, Evernote, and Notion are the best note-taking apps, each of them serves different purposes and they have different emphases. If you’re looking for a note-taking app that allows you to easily integrate with multiple apps, and enhance both your productivity and work management, you’ll need Evernote. If you want to create notes from scratch and then have them properly organized, you’d need OneNote. And if you need an all-around app that serves purposes other than note-taking, Notion is the one.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that team messaging platforms are widely popular among employees. Data shows that 71% of employees in the tech industry and 62% of the workforce in international companies rely on these tools.   They’re simply more efficient than email; you get instant responses, have an easier time staying productive, and can better foster relationships (the foundation of great collaboration). And with the recent shift to remote working due to the COVID-19 pandemic, instant messaging is more important than ever for proper business communications. However, picking a good team messaging solution can be tough – especially if you didn’t use one in-house until now and only relied on email. In fact, deciding is hard even if you are just looking to switch to a different platform. Why? Because there are so many options on the market right now. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, give up, and just stick with email instead because it feels like less hassle. Falling into that trap is annoying, time-consuming, and lowers productivity. Plus, you’ll only end up realizing you need instant messaging later, anyway. So, we came up with this list of must-have features for any instant messaging solution. It should save you a considerable amount of time and effort when reviewing services. Table of Contents 6 Things to Look for 1. Cross-Platform Compatibility 2. Support for Outside Contacts (Vendor-Client collaboration) 3. Simultaneous Messages 4. Advanced Search Functions 5. Self-Hosting Options 6. Custom App Option Troop Messenger – A Solution That Checks All These Requirements The Bottom Line 6 Things to Look for Here are the features we believe any instant messaging platform should offer to provide businesses with a full and streamlined experience: 1. Cross-Platform Compatibility The average digital consumer owns three connected devices. Sure, your employees should do most of their work and collaboration on a dedicated device (like their home computer or company-issued laptop), but let’s face it – that’s not always the case. Employees might switch from chatting on their laptops to doing it on their phones in an instant. If they’re at work, it can happen when they go to the coffee shop next door for their lunch break. If they’re working remotely, they might start suddenly using a mobile device because they need to do some emergency shopping or run some urgent errands. Any number of things can happen, so it’s best to be prepared. The instant messaging solution should offer native, easy-to-use clients on the most popular platforms (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android). Otherwise, you’ll just waste money on a service not everyone in the company can use. 2. Support for Outside Contacts (Vendor-Client collaboration) By “outside contacts,” we mean people like vendors, clients, or freelancers who don’t have a contract with your company. Here’s what we mean by “support” for those kinds of contacts: The platform should offer a way to add those outside contacts to your business’ communication channel without compromising company data or your employees’ privacy. As an example, let’s say you just hired a freelance writer to work on some blog posts. It’s much more productive for them to talk with your content manager on the company’s messaging platform than through email or phone. However, since they’re from outside the company, they won’t need access to the same channels internal employees use (like a channel discussing sales, recurring orders, or an upcoming birthday party). The same goes for vendors or customers. They only need to talk with the right person (like someone from sales, shipping, or distribution). They don’t need access to the inner workings of the company. So, the messaging platform should have an easy way of adding outside contacts and assigning restrictions and permissions to them. 3. Simultaneous Messages Sometimes you just need to message many people at the same time. The first instinct would be to send the message on a large channel where everybody can see it. But hold on – maybe not all the people there need to know the contents. If you’re planning a surprise party for an employee or more, you wouldn’t want them to find out. Similarly, maybe you only need to let your team know about the details of a project, not everyone else on the same department channel. True, you could just create a new channel or group where you can add all the people you need to message, and just talk with them there. But what if you only need to send a simple message and nothing more? Like letting employees know what time a video conference will be held, for instance. Setting up a dedicated channel/group just for that seems completely unnecessary. Ideally, the messaging platform should have a feature that lets you send simultaneous messages to individual users. If you can message separate groups too, it’s even better. 4. Advanced Search Functions For all messaging platforms have to offer, their search functions are usually lacking. And you will need to use them eventually; whether it’s finding an old document you forgot to back up or an important video presentation you got weeks ago. Unfortunately, most solutions only let you search by keyword. That’s sometimes enough, but most of the time, it just ends up being an annoying and time-consuming task. Some services offer some modifiers to make things easier for you, but the whole process still ends up feeling like a chore. To avoid wasting unnecessary time, you need a messaging platform with advanced search functions. Basically, you should be able to search for something by date range, images, videos, files, and even links. 5. Self-Hosting Options Messaging platforms usually offer decent security, but sometimes you just need to take matters into your own hands. Maybe you want to host the messaging service on your own physical servers to make sure no third parties access it. Or maybe you’re worried the service could suffer data loss or a breach and want to enjoy some peace of mind. We could go on and on with examples. The idea is the same: if the messaging platform lets you self-host, you get better privacy, security, and DLP (Data Loss Prevention). This is perfect for government agencies, large nonprofit organizations, Fortune 500 companies, and defense agencies. 6. Custom App Option A messaging platform might meet all your requirements, but what if it has extra features you don’t need? You might not feel right about the price because you end up paying for features you won’t be using at all. In a situation like that, it helps if the app developers are willing to accommodate your needs. Basically, if they’re open to creating a fully customized messaging app for you, that’s based on their e2e testing framework but only has the features you require. Bonus points if mobile developers can integrate the custom app with other services, allow you to run it on your servers, and store everything in your databases. Troop Messenger – A Solution That Checks All These Requirements You could spend a few hours looking up instant messaging platforms and checking which one has all those features. Or you could do the easier thing and give Troop Messenger a try. It already has all those must-have features: Cross-Platform Support – It has working clients on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and even Linux. All applications are very easy to set up, and the onboarding experience is excellent. Orange Contacts – These are outside contacts you can add to your channel. To protect team member privacy and privileges, you can assign conditions to them (like not being able to see user info or be added to groups). Forkout – A very easy-to-use feature that lets you send simultaneous messages to multiple groups and individual users. Picked the wrong people? No problem just hit the refresh button and you can quickly start the selection again. Advanced Search Filters – Looking up old files and messages is extremely simple and versatile. You can search by image, link, video, file, contact, favorite contacts, date range, and location. Self-Hosting – The setup process is very straightforward, and Troop Messenger lets you self-host on physical servers, AWS, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean, and Azure. Custom App Development – Have very specific needs? No worries. The guys behind Troop Messenger can design a fully customized messaging app just for you. They can even make it white-label so that it fully represents your brand. And those are just the highlights we mentioned here. Troop Messenger has a ton of other great features that will make in-house communications go very smoothly. If you’d like to learn more about Troop Messenger (including a quick in-depth look at how it works), check out our review at ProPrivacy. The Bottom Line Instant messaging is the future of business communications (if it isn’t already). If you want to increase productivity and efficiency, you need to use it to streamline collaboration with your teams, clients, and vendors. Just make sure you pick a good service – preferably one with self-hosting, advanced search filters, and simultaneous messages to individual users. If you know other must-have features, feel free to let us know in the comments.

Since the nationwide lockdowns in wake of COVID-19, there haven't been too many stocks that have been spared from the share market massacre. Since February, the broader markets have lost more than a quarter of their value. But for virtual collaboration tools like Zoom and Slack, the scenario is completely opposite. Zoom’s download has skyrocketed. Just take a look at the Zoom stock chart and see how COVID-19 changed the game for Zoom video Stock:   Zoom video stock has a strong RS line now. But considering the last few days, there has been a significant loss in momentum: So, what happened? Why did Zoom lose momentum? Why did Zoom Stock fall? For the answer, we turn to the pages of today's The Washington Post, which reports "some school districts around the country have started to ban the use of Zoom for online learning from home." These bans come in response to an FBI warning about the phenomenon of "Zoom-bombing" -- malefactors hijacking Zoom teleconferences and inserting themselves into the meetings. Now, this doesn’t mean Zoom is out of the game. Zoom Video stock is trading at a staggering 1,300 times trailing earnings -which suggests that the shares were priced for perfection and are forecast to generate a higher Return on Assets (6.98%). Much like Zoom, Slack also benefited from coronavirus lockdowns. Investors started to realize its full potential as a revolutionary product and this happened:   But, unfortunately, it is not all sunshine and rainbows at Slack either. There is a massive elephant in the room - Microsoft Teams. Apart from the competition with Microsoft, Slack’s lack of growth still remains a principal concern among investors. And, eventually, Slack too lost the momentum:   Now, if these ups and downs in the Slack stock chart and Zoom stock chart confuse you, and you can’t decide between either of these, this article can help. Slack vs Zoom 1. Slack and Zoom: Key Background 2. How COVID-19 has Impacted Zoom & Slack’s Growth 3. Slack Gained Momentum amid COVID-19 4. Zoom’s growth amid COVID-19 5. Who is Growing Faster 6. Who’s Losing the Momentum 7. Want to Buy Slack Stock or Zoom Stock 8. Verdict   In this article, I’ll share everything you need to know about buying zoom stock or slack stock - starting from the key differences between these tools, current market changes in wake of COVID-19, the overall growth and profitability, and much more. By the end of the article, you’ll be able to make a more informed decision about slack and zoom stock. Let’s start with an overview of both these tools: Slack and Zoom: Key Background   Slack as a business communication and collaboration tool Slack as a pioneer communication platform connects teams with communication and collaboration features. Founded in 2013, Slack became one of the fastest-growing SaaS startups in just five short years. The Slack free plan offers basic features and paid plan offers more perks like unlimited app integration, guest accounts, unlimited message archive, and a dedicated customer support team. Slack paid plan starts: at $6.67 per user per month when billed annually. For larger companies, Slack offers an enterprise plan that costs $12.5 per user per month. Zoom as a Video and Web Conferencing Tool Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars. Zoom has evolved from an already-successful IPO to a stock market juggernaut worth more than Uber and Lyft combined. Its mobile app has skyrocketed by 728% since March 2, 2020. Zoom is designed for larger group meetings. Its free tier allows users to host meetings for 40-minutes. The participant limit in the free plan is 100 people. Zoom’s paid plan costs: $14.99 to $19.99 per host per month. Paid users gain access to more cloud storage and larger group meetings and many more interesting features like auto-transcription and virtual backgrounds. How COVID-19 has Impacted Zoom & Slack’s Growth With the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide lockdowns, millions of workers have no option but to work from home. And Suddenly, it’s time for remote collaboration tools like Zoom ZM, +2.51%, and Slack WORK, -1.16% to shine. Amidst the bloodbath in the stock market, business collaboration and communication tools are on a roll — Both Slack stock and Zoom video communications stock have actually been rising. There’s a sudden increase in Google searches for Slack stock and Zoom Stock. Take a look: Since the pandemic lockdowns, the query for slack stock forecast has been on a consistent rise:       And the results are even more fascinating for Zoom. Take a look at Google Trend result for Zoom Video Communications Stock:       In all, both Slack Technologies and Zoom Video Communications are weathering the COVID-19 pandemic better than any other business in the market. Since 2020, Slack's stock has increased by roughly 25% And for Zoom, the numbers are jaw-dropping. Zoom Stock has surged more than 120%. Simply put, Slack and Zoom are gaining significant benefits because of the worldwide stay-at-home guidelines issued by the government. All employers and workers now rely on virtual collaboration tools - which explains why these tools are gaining momentum with mainstream and enterprise users. Let's review Let’s take a look at both Slack’s and Zoom’s growth: Slack Gained Momentum amid COVID-19 Slack’s growth rate, as shared in its quarterly report, looks solid. Here’s what Slack’s Chief financial officer said after its post-earnings plunge:   “We finished the year with 110,000 paid customers and 893 customers spending more than $100,000 annually with Slack,” said Allen Shim, Chief Financial Officer at Slack. While we invest in innovation and delivering more value to our customers, we also are showing significant leverage and remain on track to hit our growth phase target of free cash flow positive.”Slack quarterly reports.   Slack’s Fourth Quarter & Fiscal Year 2020 Highlights:   Total revenue was $181.9 million, an increase of 49% year-over-year. Calculated Billings were $254.7 million, an increase of 47% year-over-year. Total revenue was $630.4 million, an increase of 57% year-over-year. Calculated Billings were $765.3 million, an increase of 48% year-over-year. Over 110,000 Paid Customers, up 25% year-over-year. Over 32,000 Paid Customers using shared channels, up from over 26,000 at the end of last quarter. Slack’s CEO Steward Butterfield shared his delight about the sudden increase in Slack’s usage. He shared these pictures on Twitter. We could see in these charts the newly created Slack teams. The first chart is from March 12th, the second is from March 16th, and the third IS from March 23rd. Take a look,         Overall, Slack is winning not just against the status quo but also against its competitors.   Zoom’s growth amid COVID-19 Slack sure has witnessed a spike in sales and usage. But Zoom generated more traffic, downloads, and sales than Slack in the last few months. Unlike Slack, Zoom didn’t disclose its exact number of paid users last quarter. But Zoom announced that its total number of users rose to 86% with over $100,000 in annual revenue. Zoom also stated that the number of customers grew 61% to 81,900. According to Apptopic, Zoom saw about 600,000 new downloads last Sunday - which is the highest ever download in a single day.   “Zoom sits atop Apple’s rankings of the most popular free apps in dozens of countries, according to data from analytics company App Annie. Investors love it, at least for the moment. The Zoom Technologies stock sells for 58 times revenue, compared to a price-to-sales ratio of 8 for Microsoft, and it’s gained 26% since Feb. 19, while the S&P 500 has plunged 32% over that stretch.”Jordan Nover, CNBC     Zoom Usage Highlights:   During the Covid-19 pandemic, Zoom witnessed an increase of 67% between Jan and mid-March 2020 (Apptopia) During the Covid-19 outbreak, Zoom was used by 90,000 schools in 20 countries to teach remotely (Zoom) March 30, 2020, saw 4.84 daily mobile US users (a 151% increase year-on-year) (Apptopia via Reuters) Over the 2020 financial year (2019), 641 Zoom business customers were worth $100,000 or more, up to 86% (Apptopia) Zoom expects a revenue rise of 63% to 65% in the next quarter, which clearly beats their expectations for 53% growth. Who is Growing Faster: Zoom Stock vs Slack Stock It’s clear both Zoom and Slack are having a gala time. But as the trends show, Zoom is way ahead when compared with Slack’s growth. Take a look: Revenue Growth of Zoom and Slack:   Revenue Growth (YOY) Q1 2020 Q2 2020 Q3 2020 Q4 2020 Slack Technologies  47% 52% 47% 49% Zoom Video  103% 96% 85% 78% Source: Slack and Zoom Quarterly Reports It’s clear. Zoom is leading - leaving behind many of its competitors. Let’s have a few more statistical insights into Zoom’s growth over the last few months.   Which one is more profitable: Zoom Stock vs. Slack Stock? As the table depicts, Zoom is trading like a cult stock. So If you’re weighing options between Zoom technologies stock and slack stock, you’ve to see these statistics: Zoom daily downloads: January 2020 56,000 February 2020 1.7 million March 2020 2.13 million (Source: Apptopia via The Guardian and The Economic Times)   Zoom Revenue as of FY 2019: Q1 2019 $121.5 million Q2 2019 $60.1 million Q3 2019 $74.5 million Q4 2019 $90.1 million FY 2019 $105.8 million (Sources: Zoom and AlphaStreet) Zoom Revenue Forecast Q1 2020 $122 million Q2 2020 $145.8 million Q3 2020 $166.6 million Q4 2020 $188.3 million FY 2020 $622 million (Sources: Zoom and AlphaStreet)     Zoom Market Cap and Valuation: 1 July 2019 $23.6 billion 1 October 2019 $20.7 billion 3 January 2020 $16.1 billion 30 March 2020 $40.5 billion (Source: Macrotrends)   Zoom Technologies Stock Price: 1 July 2019 $86.86 1 October 2019 $75.81 3 January 2020 $68.72 30 March 2020 $146.12 (Source: Macrotrends and TechCrunch) Keeping these numbers in mind, one can see how Zoom’s net profit and usage have surged over the months. On a non-GAAP basis, Zoom’s net revenue increased more than six times to $101.3 million. Zoom is also expecting its non-GAAP EPS to rise 20%-29% in 2021 and it trades at 42 times its revenue forecast. Who’s Losing the Momentum? Slack Stock or Zoom Stock When you look at Slack in context to Zoom’s growth, Slack definitely seems to be losing its grip. If you’re considering buying slack’s stock, you have to know it’s not as profitable. We are saying that considering the cost of hosting, expanding, and promoting its servers continually offset its revenue from the paid customers. As you can see from its quarterly report, its net loss increased from $140.7 million in 2019 to $571.1 million in 2020. On the non-GAAP basis that excludes its one-time expenses and the stock-based compensation, Slack’s total loss narrowed very slightly from $115.8 million to $113.4 million. In simple terms, Slack expects to remain an unprofitable business despite the COVID-19 pandemic. When you compare Slack stock price with Zoom stock price, you can see Slack trades at 16 times the total revenue estimate for 2021. On the contrary, Zoom is trading at 42 times the revenue forecast. Slack’s Stock Forecast Slack is subject to the forces wreaking havoc across the economy. Slack’s Stock has tumbled 20% in extended trading. In the current quarter, revenue will be $185 million to $188 million. The Analysts projected $188.4 million. Excluding some items, the loss will be 6 cents to 7 cents a share. Analysts, on average, estimated 8 cents, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Want to Buy Slack Stock or Zoom Stock: Consider These Points First Sure, both Slack and Zoom’s growth has surged amid the Coronavirus pandemic. Even before the lockdowns, these tools were taking the market by storm.   But there’s another side of the coin that you’ve to consider before buying zoom or slack stock.   So far you know who’s growing by what margin and which stock may be profitable. Now, let’s have a quick overview of why you should think twice before buying any of these stocks: Things to Consider when buying Slack’s Stock:   Slack is fending competition with bigger rivals like Microsoft Teams -which witnessed even her surge in usage rates throughout the COVID-10 Pandemic. Slack’s net loss widened from $140.7 million in 2019 to $571.1 million in 2020. Slack's net loss only narrowed slightly from $115.8 million to $113.4 million. Analysts projected a loss of 6 cents to 7 cents a share, and Slack reported an adjusted loss of 4 cents a share Things to Consider when buying Zoom’s Stock:   A series of Zoom security blunders in the last two months sparked questions about its ability to help the security-conscious organization - which caused several customers to ban the app and go against its rivals. A report claimed that over 500,000 Zoom accounts have been hacked and are being sold on the dark web. In short, Zoom is still vulnerable to hacking attempts. Verdict: Wait for a Deeper Pullback Before Buying Zoom Stocks There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 crisis has lit a fire under team collaboration and communication tools like Zoom and Slack, but Slack still is far away from narrowing its losses. It’s also trying to fend off the competition with Microsoft and other Slack alternatives in the market. On the other hand, Zoom is trading like a cult stock. If you’re considering making an investment in either of these tools, Zoom may sound like a safe choice but Zoom’s vulnerability to hacking attempts has become a growing pain. It has caused so many businesses to ban the platform. Zoom needs to resolve its security issues before the hackers permanently trash its accountability and reputation. If Zoom can address such issues, it is definitely a better buy than Slack. But If you were to make a decision now, the best would be to wait for a deeper pullback before getting any shares.