20+ Online Collaboration Tools for Managing Remote Teams

Switching to remote work is a trend that dominates but still remote workers were able to maintain intact communication, thanks to online collaboration tools. The latest reports indicate a doubling in the number of remote workers in the past 10 years. And despite the famous Yahoo ban in 2015 that forced the employees to return to the offices, the trend for remote job opportunities keeps on expanding globally.

Among the driving forces facilitating this growth, are new managerial practices and innovative tech solutions that enable top companies to increase hiring remote teams.

Lack of effective tools, however, might hinder the productivity of your team so making the right choice in terms of online collaboration software that would empower team collaboration, will save you from facing numerous challenges.

Below there is a list of online best collaboration apps you will find useful when working with a remote team.

1.  Troop Messenger 

When searching for more interactive team collaboration, Troop Messenger comes as a leader. It is one of the few online team collaboration tools, that will satisfy any team’s needs due to the simplicity of its implementation in an entrepreneurial environment.   

Working as a fully-fledged business communication platform, Troop Messenger gives you instant access to unlocking a great number of functions: 

• Instant messaging
• Making video calls
• Conducting video conferences
• Sharing files
• Desktop sharing
• Creating complex schedules.

Arranging the work schedule within Troop Messenger will let you keep project info fully organized and, thus, secure all the project performance data.

2.  Document360

Document360 is a SaaS-based knowledge management software designed to help your team create, collaborate, and publish a self-service knowledge base for your software with ease. It’s one of the most popular tools in the knowledge management industry. It comes with an AI-based real-time search so users can access the document in a fraction of a second and keep track of all your team interactions using team analytics.

Document360 allows internal collaboration and helps to create a productive environment and it is easy to maintain a synchronous workflow especially when the employees work remotely. Some of the key features are,

• With a click of a button, you can convert your knowledge base into a complete private knowledge base making it secure.
• It allows employees to comment on internal articles so that authors can clarify any doubts. 
• You can create a separate portal for Readers
• Advanced security access at category levels 
• The team analytics features give some important metrics at the individual employee level.
• Search analytics is another important metric to maintain a healthy internal knowledge base
• An easy-to-use interface that supports a markdown editor for efficient and structured writing.
• It supports international languages and a wide range of third-party Integrations.

3.  GoToMeeting 

It is optimal in case you need a tool for arranging online meetings. This workplace collaboration software works both ways, with customers and team members. The tool provides a high-quality connection and ranges as the most reliable software. With support assisting you 24/7 and instant availability of joining or hosting the meeting options, you can start a meetup, webinar, or a regular call hassle-free.

GoToMeeting is the ultimate communication choice for remote collaboration teams. A click on the link across any device will be a signal for activating various options: 

• Sharing the screen
• Making notes over the images
• Recording the conversations
• Settings for adjusting the visibility of participants’ faces

4. ProProfs

ProProfs Project is not an over-the-top project management software but has made its name in the market for its easy-to-use UI and simple features.

From startups to enterprises, anyone can use this robust project management tool to streamline workflow, boost team communication, and improve team productivity.

ProProfs Project helps you to:

• Create & track projects on one dashboard
• Track time spent on tasks by each team member
• Collaborate with your teams anytime, anywhere
• Create insightful reports in seconds
• Bill your clients automatically

5. Paymo

Paymo is a full-fledged project management tool offering free invoicing, best suited for small businesses and freelancers.

Paymo helps creative teams and freelancers automate payments and spend less time managing their paperwork. In a nutshell, with Paymo, users can:

• Generate unlimited invoices, estimates, expenses
• Send recurring invoices based on outstanding tasks, time, and retainer periods
• Customize their invoices thanks to its WYSIWYG editor and user-friendly interface
• Offers a native online payment gateway, PM Payments
• Keep track of project profitability margins and accounts receivable
• Integrates with accounting software la Zero and QuickBooks Online

For an in-depth analysis of invoicing tools, check out this list of free invoicing software.

6. TMetric

When you have to arrange the effective collaboration of your remote team, the first issue you need to address is the means of providing accuracy of time calculations. 

TMetric is an effective time tracking tool as it not only enables recording data on your work time in a single click from any gadget but also has additional functions coming in handy for remote work mode:

• Creating an invoice
• Generating various reports (including the ones that will summarize your team's performance on the project)
• Setting various pay rates for billable hours
• Offline time tracking
• Tagging projects for facilitating the workflow
• Available on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android, and iOS
• Integrating with 100+ apps remote teams use in their work.

This Timesheet software help allocate tasks to employees, track time spent, keep track of billable time to charge customers, calculate payroll, create invoices, and keep track of expenses. Here's a quick list of 10 different timesheet software solutions and how they can help you manage your team better. 

7. BlogIn 

BlogIn is a beautifully simple internal blog and knowledge-sharing platform for teams of all sizes. The internal blog acts as a central information hub or a ‘virtual bulletin board’ for the company, allowing all employees to stay in the loop with what’s going on in and around the office.

At the same time, the blog opens a new, transparent, two-way communication channel inside an organization, where everyone can ask a question and get the information they need to make faster and smarter decisions.

The internal blog is intuitive and easy to use, so everyone can quickly get on board, which is one of the reasons why it works so well as an internal communication tool.

• Share internal news and knowledge
• Improve internal communication
• Share files
• Boost company culture
• Enables transparent, two-way communication

8. Usernap 

"Show, don't tell" - use screenshots and illustrations to communicate issues accurately and quickly. Usersnap's widget can be easily installed on your staging website or use the browser extension to capture anything you see and want to share.

Microsoft, Facebook, and many web companies employ Usersnap for issue reporting, QA, user acceptance testing, and customer feedback. Visual bug reports and feedback saves you time and makes remote working so easy.

• Browser screen capture and annotations
• Tickets include metadata (screen size, browser version, URL, and console logs)
• Assign, label, track, and close tickets easily
• Integrates with 30+ tools such as Jira and Asana
• Live commenting
• Unlimited guest access

9. JotForm

JotForm is an extremely versatile online form builder which is suited for a team of any size. It doesn’t require any development skills as it’s essentially a drag-and-drop form builder. So, your entire team can benefit from it. It has a surprising amount of use cases that you can apply to your business or use to manage your team.

You can use it to clock in the work hours of your employees, collect feedback, assign tasks, open bug reports and the list goes on, it’s all up to how creative you can get with it.

The best part is that you have a wide variety of customization options for the forms you create. You can prevent things from getting boring for your team and have a sustainable remote team. As there are way too many templates and customization options you can check a form design guide they have prepared.

• Easy to use and implement
• Makes collaboration seamless
• Loads of customization options
• Wide range of use cases

10. SmartTask

SmartTask is a simple yet powerful task and project management tool, which will help your team be more effective and efficient than ever before.

It brings the organization's tasks to one place thus everyone in a team has a clear overview of the team's progress, who's responsible, and has clarity on the deadlines.

The tool enables you with the following features:

• Tasks, Projects, and CRM in one tool
• Custom Fields to customize your tasks
• Multiple Projects in one single view with a Portfolio feature
• Real-time communication and notifications available on Desktop, Android, and IOS

11. Fyle

Fyle is a powerful expense management software for businesses with seamless expense tracking features, credit card reconciliation, approval workflows, and robust integrations with accounting software like Sage Intacct, NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, and Xero.

With direct integrations with Visa and Mastercard, Fyle is the first expense management software to launch real-time reconciliations on credit cards you already have. Coupled with easy expense reporting and approval features, Fyle is a complete expense management package for SMBs.

Here's what Fyle can offer:

• Track expenses from Fyle's robust mobile app or everyday apps like Gmail, Slack, Outlook, and Teams
• Reconcile credit card expenses in real time via SMS
• Approve team expense reports on the go via the mobile app, Gmail, Slack, and Teams
• Two-way integrations with accounting software like Sage Intacct, NetSuite, QuickBooks Online, and Xero
• Pre-submission policy checks and constant compliance

12. Ozonetel CX Platform

Ozonetel's cloud call center solution provides an ideal solution for businesses seeking efficient and personalized communication across channels. With a customer base of 2500 and growing, Ozonetel's unified CX platform empowers over 100,000 agents globally to handle more than 2 billion calls annually, consolidating its position as a leader in the CX space. The platform's interoperability is highlighted through its Open API, effortlessly integrating with CRM platforms.

Ozonetel CX Platform helps you to:

• Ozonetel's personalized support, regulatory compliance, and AI-powered features like agent-assist and automated quality audits-—ensure optimal customer engagement and satisfaction.
• With flexible pricing plans
• The platform enables businesses to adjust headcount based on season, making Ozonetel a cost-effective and indispensable asset for businesses aiming to provide superior customer experiences.
• Ozonetel has achieved the 'Global Leader' Badge in multiple CX categories, earning accolades from G2 and high ratings on well-regarded software sites like Capterra.

13. Tameday 

Tameday is the all-in-one workspace for teams and small businesses that are struggling to manage their projects and workloads with various separate tools and email- Bringing everything into one place

Tameday helps you to:

• Get rid of using email for internal communication by using Tameday's built-in chat feature.
• Keep your work and to-dos in one place within Projects,
• Communicate and share files with your team who are working remotely.
• Keep in contact with your clients by allowing them to see how projects are progressing,
• Keep you on track with to-dos, discussions, project due dates, and your own personal calendar.

14. Wrike

Wrike is a perfectly illustrative example of how to integrate a favorite task management tool with time-tracking software so that it could enhance your remote team's productivity.

Wrike helps prioritize projects easily due to its intuitive design. It keeps all the info on tasks you perform. Additionally, when applying integrations in Wrike, you can:

• Estimate the project resources with precision,
• Adjust timelines for specific tasks,
• Reassign tasks to accommodate urgent requests
• Tailor your tasks to project goals.

15. ClickUp 

It is a productivity platform that helps you create tasks and plan your projects. While implementing ClickUp, you have the unique opportunity to organize the scattered tasks into an unbroken workflow. 

With ClickUp, you get an abundance of options pertaining to:

• commenting on tasks,
• advanced task storing,
• agenda creating
• keeping your data as secure as you choose by regulating privacy settings.

16. Parabol

Parabol is software not bloated with extra functions as its primary goal is to provide your team with ‘free online retrospectives’. This part of project management practice is crucial for further planning and better estimation of the coming projects. This tool provides transparency of team priorities and accountability for task performance.

It is a perfect tool for remote work enabling cross-functional cooperation within a team by synching tasks in a dashboard on a daily basis. With Parabol, you can: 

• plan the day/week,
• mark the milestones upon task completion (for monitoring the team's progress),
• edit org charts
• send retrospectives (‘summary of a meeting’) email to your team

17. I Done This 

It is a tool suitable for remote teams of any size. It is of particular interest to managers who can monitor top team accomplishments in real-time, and, hence, save tons of time on holding meetings. 

Applying this software, your team gets access inside the app to:

• commenting on their tasks,
• generating word clouds marking the most frequent task components,
• notifications of a reminder email (‘What have you done today?’) for sharing the daily accomplishments
• "visuals," which break accomplished tasks with color coding

18. Monday 

No one can deny the importance of project management and Monday is one of the best collaboration tools for this. Suitable for any team size, it is a tool that will let you plan your tasks on a timeline so that nothing will fall between slots, and point assignees and, thus, enhance accountability and collaborate instantly for increased business productivity.

The featured Monday options that you will surely like include the opportunity:

• to update the status of the task,
• to choose a customizable template for your sprints from the impressively big selection,
• Email notifications – get notified by email

19. Clarizen 

It is a team management solution designed to facilitate remote team collaboration platform. The software provides instrumental features to unite resources for more productive planning.

Implementing this tool means that your team can apply:

• reporting templates,
• creating their own dashboards,
• tracking tasks of various kinds in real-time
• adjusting the time and resource allocation to current business goals in terms of project profitability

20. Quip 

It is a productivity suite that unites spreadsheets and documents into shared folders.

It is perfect in terms of goal setting for your remote collaboration tool. It facilitates collaboration by sending reminders and instant sharing documents from one place. Your team will not have to dig deep to retrieve the documents.

Quip is accessible across any device so that you and your team can work from any place. Applying Quip, you can create:

• Project plans
• Territory plans
• Checklists
• Meeting notes
• Documentation

You can work over multiple projects: the sidebar is available from any screen in Quip so you can easily access your teamwork and collaboration, your favorites, and your teammates.

21. Teamwork

Teamwork Projects is an intuitive, feature-rich project management tool that lets your team reduce the complexity of collaboration.

It allows you to work together with context, transparency, and accountability — and with increased visibility and improved communication, you can keep collaboration at the core of everything you do.

Most Exciting Features:

• Collaborative workspace
• Flexible and feature-rich
• Instant messaging with Embedded Chat
• Portfolio feature to help you oversee multiple projects
• Resource management

22. LeadGen 

LeadGen App is a lead capture form-builder tool for digital marketers. It helps marketers build custom lead forms and test them for the best conversion rates. LeadGen App works via form embed code that works on all major landing pages and website editor platforms and via direct link sharing as well. This collaboration works across diverse platforms, enhancing engagement and conversion.

LeadGen App also provides an analytics dashboard to check and improve the performance of the forms. Run AB tests to compare conversion rates of different form variations on a single landing page. Maximize your lead generation potential by testing & iterating your forms.

23. Helpjuice 

No matter where employees are working, they need to be able to access the information required to do their jobs. Furthermore, simple tasks like keeping on top of the latest company updates or working on a document collaboratively can be difficult for employees working remotely.

This is where Helpjuice’s knowledge base software can help as it allows you to capture, store, and share company knowledge with ease regardless of where your employees are located. Your knowledge base can include HR procedures, training courses, team forums, webinars, and more – all of which ensure your remote team is able to effectively do their jobs.

In terms of document collaboration, Helpjuice offers a clean and simple interface that lets employees quickly create documents and co-edit them while keeping track of previous versions and authors. Additionally, Helpjuice’s commenting feature helps facilitate additional collaboration as it allows authors to select any text within a document and leave a note with any questions or thoughts.

Highlights:

• Create an easy-to-use internal knowledge base with best practices, tips, and onboarding documents
• Allow multiple authors to work on a single article and have each revision recorded.
• Commenting features that include the ability to comment on any text within an article and have those comments emailed to all author collaborators.
• Advanced analytics provides article insights as well as the performance of users/groups to help you better understand what employees are looking for and the most common questions.
• Google-like search helps employees find information quickly
• SaaS-based software so that employees can access information regardless of location or device

24. Soapbox

Imagine if every team meeting had a shared goal, agenda, notes, and follow-up. Soapbox's shared one-on-one and team meeting agenda software makes it easy to have productive and collaborative meetings. Some key features include:

• Collaborate on shared online agendas
• Meetings notes are integrated with your agenda
• Real-time commenting
• Suggested meeting questions
• Assign and track the next-steps
• Post-meeting surveys to rate and track meeting effectiveness
• Integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google, mobile, Asana, Todoist, and more!

25. GanttPRO

GanttPRO is a project management tool based on Gantt charts for teams of all sizes and from any industry. The software provides a visually appealing timeline where all tasks, dates, and assignees can be tracked easily.

GanttPRO offers a highly intuitive interface with a short learning curve, so even new project management team members will be able to start working on their tasks right away without additional time-wasting training.

With GanttPRO, you get a plethora of robust features:

• team collaboration (comments, attachments, notifications),
• resource management and workload management,
• time tracking
• portfolio management.

26. nTask 

nTask is a project management tool that helps remote teams to collaborate on tasks & projects to get work done. From project planning to execution and celebrating project success, nTask offers all the necessary features to bring teams into one place.

It enables individuals and teams to collaborate on tasks, assign to-do list items to team members and track the progress with the help of Gantt charts.

nTask helps you to:

• Collaborate on tasks with comments
• Assign work to team members
• Time tracking and timesheets
• Project management and Gantt charts
• Meeting management
• Integration with Zoom and Slack

27. ScreenRec

Seeking an advanced best collaboration software that helps ease the process of managing remote teams? Don't panic, all you need is a robust productivity tool like ScreenRec! Yes, ScreenRec doesn't just save time and ease communication, it makes every operation related to managing a remote team just like a walk in the park.

Unlike other team collaboration software you find online, ScreenRec supports instant private video messages and screenshots with high HD quality. Plus, this lightweight collaboration tool is loaded with avant-garde features that enable you to analyze, share, and manage content. And it also gives you full control over who can access content shared amongst your team, and anywhere in the world.

All-in-all, ScreenRec has high compatibility and can be used with desktop systems that run Windows or Linux, with a Mac version coming very soon. Plus, it has a clean interface that makes it easy to navigate through for users at all levels. This tool can be employed in almost every sector of a business and does one of the most important things for a business — save time.

• A highly intuitive user interface makes it easy for employees and employers to navigate around the app without hassles.
• Lightweight software that supports screen capturing without lagging.
• Send video emails in seconds without uploading videos.
• Send annotated screenshots instantly.
• Advanced encryption protects your sensitive information.

28. 123FormBuilder

123FormBuilder is a secure and easy-to-use online form builder that you and your team can use for a wide variety of use cases, including those that help you collaborate better when working remotely.

No coding is needed to create forms and you have 2,000+ form templates to start from.

Built with security in mind, all forms are GDPR compliant and integrate with the tools you already use.

Some of the more common use cases include:

• Collecting leads and sending them by email to the right sales representative.
• Collaborating on the data collection process with specific user access settings.
• Tracking employee time.
• Collecting signatures and generating automated PDF documents.
• Surveying employee satisfaction.
• Creating workflows for your projects.
• Collect information for tasks and assign them.
• Open bug reports.

29. MyOperator

Sales and after-sales services are the bedrock for the success of any-sized business. Even today, over 80% of sales and customer service-related communication gets resolved over phone calls. An organized call management system is still a major challenge for many remote-working companies. This is where cloud-calling tools like MyOperator comes into play.

MyOperator is a simple-to-use SaaS platform equipped with a suite of Business collaboration platform designed to manage both incoming and outgoing business calling initiatives.

Here are the key benefits of the remote-first MyOperator call management solution:

• Greet your customers 24x7 like a virtual receptionist with a toll-free number.
• Streamline outbound calling with MyOperator Dialer App.
• Capture lost or missed business calls even when you or your team are away.
• Track call performance with live call recordings.
• Automatically route incoming calls to respective departments for faster resolutions.
• Use call reports for team training and development purposes.
• Sync MyOperator with a CRM of your choice for seamless lead and call management.
• MyOperator provides customized plans for businesses of any size, need, and budget. With a client base of 7000+, MyOperator caters to brands like Lenskart, Decathlon, Caratlane, Dominos, Apollo, etc.

Wrapping it up

A trend for global cooperation and delivering your service internationally are motivating factors for many companies to increase remote hiring. With the tech project planning tools presented in our list, remote team collaboration is unlimited due to enabling uninterrupted workflow, effective communication, and full accountability of the work result metrics.