Top 15 Best Apps for Team Communication in 2023

Updated on Apr 9th, 2023
 

The ability to communicate effectively is not only essential in a business setting but also serves as the cornerstone of any successful enterprise. Mastering this critical skill is vital for everyone involved, as effective communication can significantly impact productivity and efficiency within an organization. This holds true for both internal interactions among colleagues and external liaisons with stakeholders.
 

The modern workplace has evolved beyond the confines of traditional in-person meetings, written communication, and email exchanges. It now embraces a plethora of digital communication methods, such as video conferencing, voice calls, and instant messaging. These new-age communication channels have transformed the way businesses operate, making them more dynamic and interconnected.
 

At the heart of this contemporary office landscape lies the team communication app. This powerful tool consolidates various forms of communication into one user-friendly platform, allowing team members to collaborate seamlessly, share ideas, and streamline workflows. With the right communication app, businesses can break down silos, foster a connected work environment, and promote employee engagement.
 

The modern office is no longer defined by physical walls; instead, it is built upon the solid foundation of a versatile team communication app that facilitates seamless interaction and collaboration, irrespective of geographic location or time zone. By leveraging the potential of these apps, organizations can significantly enhance their internal and external communication, paving the way for success in today’s fast-paced business world.

The Digital Office for Remote and Hybrid Teams: Team Chat Apps

For remote work and hybrid teams, team chat apps have become the modern office—replacing everything from meeting rooms to water coolers. By providing remote and hybrid teams with a central team app that can be accessed anywhere, a team commucation app helps improve collaboration, accelerate communication between dispersed colleagues, surface relevant conversations more readily to members of the group—and let everyone know when someone has mentioned them in an ongoing conversation.
 

But not all digital communication is created equal. In the past year, we’ve learned that some tools are better at accomplishing tasks than other programs—and it’s not just about convenience! In this blog, we’ll highlight the five best team chat apps that increase productivity and collaboration so your business can run smoothly.

Essential Features of a Great Team Chat App

Every company is unique, and as such, its culture dictates what communication tools team members use. That’s why there are so many group messaging apps on the market—each with its own set of features. Yet despite their differences in design and purpose, many essential elements exist across all great group chat applications.
Here are the must-haves:
 

Organized Messaging

One of the primary reasons to use a team chat app is to keep track of your conversations. The best team chat apps let you organize and maintain your business communication in a flexible way, allowing members to join relevant groups/channels while avoiding irrelevant ones. The app’s most useful feature is its ability to send alerts and notifications directly to specific members.

An Easy Search Tool

A top-notch team app should offer a search function that allows users to quickly find what they need. Quick access to attachments—such as documents, links and video files—can save time and improve productivity.
 

Video Meetings and Audio Calls

Text conversations are essential, but for deeper collaboration, video meetings, and audio calls are crucial. The best team chat apps offer the ability to seamlessly blend text, audio, and video capabilities so that teams can easily shift between modes. Bonus points if they allow users to share screens with one another and send audio messages.
 

Simple to Use

A great team chat app should be straightforward and intuitive, feeling like a natural extension of an email inbox. As users become more comfortable with the interface, keyboard shortcuts can take productivity to the next level—no mouse required!
 

Empower Collaboration

Collaboration should be at the forefront of any modern digital office. A great team chat app should be able to provide a collaboration platform within the team app itself, allowing teams to raise productivity by minimizing context switching and keeping everyone on the same page. It should serve as the plumbing for a great project management app.
 

Instant Team Communication

Instant communication is a key component for improving teamwork in the workplace and team collaboartion. The ability to quickly and efficiently “gather the troops” through instant chat communication is essential in moments of inspiration or crisis. The best team chat apps use real-time communication technology to let teams communicate instantly.

So What Are the Top Rated Communication Apps?

Based on everything we’ve previously mentioned above we’ve compiled a list of the top rated team communication apps and their breakdown.

Spike

The first of our communication apps is, of course, Spike.

Spike is available on

• Windows
• Mac
• iOS
• Android
• Web

Letting your team chat whenever, wherever.

Price

• Free for personal use
• $8 per account / monthly For teams

Email continues to be the most prominent form of business communication, and Spike harnesses the benefits of email with a 21st-century twist—namely using Conversational Email. This Feature turns your email into a chat with a stunning interface and cuts out your inbox clutter. No more headers and signatures, a new sleek and organized way to view your inbox, letting your team focus on what’s important…the conversation!

Think of it as a balance of synchronous and asynchronous messaging, where team members can talk about what’s essential without sifting through thousands of threads. To add to this Spike’s unique Priority Inbox, filters out all of the non-important (junk) emails using an advanced algorithm. The algorithm sorts this mail into a different folder leaving your Inbox cleaner and more manageable than ever before. So you can focus on what’s important.

This chat-like conversation is made especially powerful when used with Spike Groups, which is the easiest way to communicate as a team. You can instantly create a Spike Group for any team or project, add members and share messages, images, videos, files, and more. Additionally, including a non-Spike user is as simple as adding an email address, with no signup needed, making Spike an ideal digital communication app for clients.

Do you ever find yourself unable to adequately express what you mean in writing? Spike also offers Voice Messages and video meetings integrated directly within a single team communication application.

Spike is more than just a team communication app, Spike houses all the productivity tools your business will need in a single platform.

Some other useful features include:

Free team communication apps can often be limited in their features, but Spike offers all the core functions without any payment – just get started with your standard email address.

Collaboration process – Use case:

“Spike Groups improved workflow between our teams and across our clients, since they now had a collaborative workspace that didn’t require logins. All that project history, and all needed files in one place.”
Read more about Max Shcherbakov, co-founder and CEO of Hooligans, that uses Spike as a unified collaboration tool.

Flowdock

Flowdock is a web-based team app that simplifies communication and collaboration within teams. Here are some of the ways in which Flowdock can benefit team collaboration:
Real-time Chat: Flowdock offers real-time chat, which can help teams stay on top of important projects and exchange information. This ensures that everyone is on the same page—and will no longer have to worry about inbox overload!
File Sharing: Flowdock allows teams to share files and collaborate on documents in real-time. This can help them save time, streamline their work processes—and avoid headaches like version control disasters!
Integration with Other Apps: By connecting to various other applications, such as Google Drive and Dropbox, Flowdock allows teams to easily share documents and discuss relevant information in one central location.
Clean and Intuitive Interface: There’s no need to waste time trying to figure out how Flowdock works, as its intuitive design ensures that it’s simple enough for anyone to use.
Suitable for Small to Medium-sized Organizations: Flowdock is a messaging app for teamwork that’s ideal for small- and medium-sized businesses. It has the tools necessary to keep everyone in your organization connected, whether you’re a startup or an established enterprise.
Price

• $3/month per use

Ryver

When you’re trying to communicate and collaborate with colleagues, using multiple apps for different tasks can be confusing. Managing multiple tools may lead to miscommunication or slow productivity—two things no one wants in the workplace! Ryver is a team collaboration platform that makes it easy to manage your team’s efforts.
One of the standout features of Ryver is its proprietary Active Response Technology™. This technology eliminates the error-prone and slow human response time and replaces it with a powerful, automated event response collaboration system. This helps to ensure that everyone knows what’s going on and is working toward the same goals.
With Ryver, you have access to a range of features to streamline your team’s work. Group messaging allows your team to communicate in real time, eliminating the need for email chains. Searching for and sharing files can help you find important information, while the task management system lets you easily specify details with checklists, tags & assignments.
The platform offers clear audio and video capabilities, including screen-sharing. You can have virtual meetings and presentations with ease—and if you want to automate daily processes, Ryver has a range of options that will streamline your workflow and improve efficiency.
Price

• $69/month for up to 12 users
• $129/month for up to 30 users

Twist

Twist is a team communication platform designed for remote workers. It helps remote workers stay organized, connected, and productive, regardless of where they are located. As the demand for remote work increases, more companies are looking for ways to communicate with and collaborate across teams. Twist offers an organized hub where you can discuss projects, share updates—and access information about your team’s previous efforts years from now when a client calls in need of that obscure file no one remembers creating!
One of the key benefits of Twist is its focus on organization. The platform harnesses the power of threads to keep discussions organized and accessible, making it easy for people like you (who are busy) to find what they need—without wasting time.
Twist allows you to disconnect from work and focus on what matters by giving you control over notifications. When its time for a remote catch-up, Twist gives quick accesses to the latest discussions and updates.
In addition to its organizational features, Twist also offers a range of functionalities for collaboration. YYou can make video calls, automate reports, and get updates from apps like GitHub and Todoist—all within the app. This means you don’t have to juggle multiple tools when working on projects away from your office computer.
In terms of pricing, Twist offers a free version and an unlimited version for $5 per user per month. The free version includes one month of comments and messages, up to five integrations, 5 GB file storage, and unlimited guests. The unlimited version gives you access to the full history of comments and messages, unlimited integrations, unlimited file storage, unlimited guests, and priority support. Twist is available on Android, iOS, and Windows, making it a versatile and accessible solution for remote teams.
Price

• $5/month per user

Slack

Coming in as the second best team communication app is Slack.

Slack is available on

• Windows
• Mac
• Linux
• iOS
• Android
• Web

Price

• $12.5 per account / monthly for businesses

Slack is a popular team communication app that allows you to create channels for topics, projects, or teams. However, Slack is purely for team communication, so it lacks broader productivity features that you might find in a more robust platform. On the other hand, this makes for effortless chat functionality and usability.

Slack offers a free version with limited features and a full version for $6.67 per user per month for small businesses. For larger firms, this jumps to $12.50 per person per month.

Discover More:

• Spike Groups – the only Slack alternative
• Best Instant Messaging Apps for Business

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft team available on

• Windows
• Mac
• Android
• iOS
• Web

Price

• $12.50 per account / monthly for the Business standard package

Microsoft’s team communication application is part of the wider Office 365 suite of tools. As such, you often need to jump between the different 365 apps to get all the functionality you might expect from a more streamlined communication app. That said, Microsoft Teams is good at what it does, but is heavily focussed, offering:

Microsoft’s team communication application is part of the wider Office 365 suite of tools. As such, you often need to jump between the different 365 apps to get all the functionality you might expect from a more streamlined communication app. That said, Microsoft Teams is good at what it does, but is heavily focussed, offering:

Microsoft Teams has a free option with limited features, otherwise, it comes as part of their broader packages, such as the Microsoft 365 Business Basic for $5.00 per user per month and Microsoft 365 Business Standard at $12.50 per user per month. Since it is included, this could be a good digital communication app for those heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Check out this article if you are looking for Microsoft Teams alternatives .

Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts is available on

• Windows
• Mac
• iOS
• Android
• Web

Price

• Individual $7.99 per month
• For Teams, Undisclosed

Hangouts are Google’s old team communication app, which is slowly being split into two separate platforms: Google Meet and Google Chat. Google Meet offers video-communication services, while Google Chat has direct messages and team chat rooms. This means a minimum of two apps. It was originally part of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) but is now being rolled out for consumer Gmail accounts.

Google Chat, which is more akin to the other communication apps listed, became free as an “Early Access” service for Gmail users, making it a potentially good option for them.

Flock

Flock is available on

• Windows
• macOS
• Android
• iOS
• Web

Price

• $4.50 per account / monthly

Flock is a communications app that has a broader range of features than some of the other apps here, with:

The chat channels act like Slack, aimed to pull in conversations and information for a specific team or project. Meanwhile, the other features make it more robust than “just” another team communication app.

Flock offers a free version for between 1 and 20 members, a pro version for 20 to 100 members at $4.50 per user per month, and an enterprise version for larger businesses.

Popoulo

Popoulo is a team communication app that offers instant messaging, video conferencing, and task management features that help teams collaborate effectively. It allows team members to communicate in real-time, work together on projects, and track progress of projects using analytics. Its Harmony platform offers companies a single space from which to communicate with employees, partners, and customers, with a broad range of integrations with other popular apps ensuring an easy fit with existing company infrastructure.
 

Populo is available on:

Chanty

Chanty is a team comms app designed to streamline communication and collaboration. With Chanty, teams can share files, make voice, and video calls, as well as organize conversations in channels. Chanty offers a searchable history of all messages, making it easy to find and reference previous discussions. In addition, Chanty offers task management and team collaboration features, such as shared to-do lists and the ability to assign tasks to team members. Chanty integrates with other popular apps such as Google Drive, Trello, and Zapier to ensure your company can easily add chanty to existing tools.
 
Chanty is available on:

RocketChat

RocketChat is an open-source team communication app that offers a range of features for team collaboration. With RocketChat, teams can communicate via text, voice, and video, and organize conversations into customizable channels. RocketChat also provides screen sharing, file sharing, and team collaboration features such as shared to-do lists and the ability to assign tasks to team members. The app provides a broad range of integrations with other apps, however, perhaps the standout feature of RocketChat is its self-hosted option, the ideal choice for companies that prioritize data security and privacy.
 
RocketChat is an open-source app available on:

FirstUp

FirstUp is a mobile-first communication platform designed for frontline teams, with real-time sharing and collaboration features that enable simple team communication. In addition, tools for task management and workflow automation are included to boost productivity and streamline collaboration. The app has features such as group messaging, surveys, polls, and analytics to help managers track engagement and team performance, meaning FirstUp is ideal for companies with many frontline workers who need quick access to information and guidance.
 

FirstUp offers enterprise solutions for:
 

Troop Messenger

Troop Messenger is a team communication app that offers a range of features for team collaboration, including text, voice, and video messaging with easy organization of conversations using channels. Troop Messenger also offers screen sharing, file sharing, and team collaboration features such as shared to-do lists and the ability to assign tasks to team members. In addition, Troop Messenger provides encryption for all messages and data, ensuring the security of sensitive information.
 

Troop Messenger is available on:

Smarp

Smarp takes a different approach to team communication, providing an employee advocacy platform that enables companies to share relevant and valuable content with their employees. Smarp helps employees to stay informed about company news, events, and updates and encourages them to share this information on their social media networks in real time. It is also available on both mobile devices and desktop platforms, with comprehensive analytics to help companies track engagement and ROI, giving managers top-level insights into how teams work together to reach company goals.
 

Smarp is available on:

Convo

Convo offers a range of features designed for team collaboration, with text, voice, and video forming the backbone of the app. Convo also offers file sharing, task management, and collaboration features such as shared to-do lists and the ability to organize conversations into channels. In addition, Convo offers integrations with other popular apps such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and Trello.
 

Convo is available on:

What you Should Keep in Mind

Of course every business has different needs. For example, if you’re in the Google ecosystem and don’t mind switching to a new app every time you send a message, Hangouts (aka. Google Chat ) might work for you. Similarly, if your company already bases most of its work in Microsoft 365, then Teams might be a preferable option.

But if you’re looking for the best overall team communication app, with a variety of productivity features such as Tasks, To-Do Lists, Online Notes, an integrated calendar, and modern chat-like email, then Spike is the way to go.

For breakdowns of more productivity apps and software, subscribe to the Spike blog or Tweet us @SpikeNowHQ on how you communicate with your team.