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AirSend service will reach End of Life (Dec 31, 2022) and is going open source. Please export your channel data (actions, files, wiki, and messages) from AirSend for safekeeping.
April 11, 2020
The Latest AirSend Android Update
Month: April 2020
In this blog post, we are going to be detailing the latest AirSend Android updates. This week we provided some new updates to our app:
Wiki editor
Notifications
Public Channel Support
Copy files
Wiki Editor
You can now update your wiki in the app! All you have to do is click on the channel you want to edit your wiki in, slide on over to the wiki tab, and start editing. Having the ability to edit/add notes to your wiki is efficient.
The wiki is a great place to store knowledge for later. Add notes, files, folders, and tidbit reminders that way you and everyone in your channel will remain in the loop.
Notifications
With the latest AirSend Android update, you can now view your conversations at a glance and even reply from your notification. You can also access the channel directly from the notification. Having this new feature allows for seamless and efficient communication.
Public Channel Support
You can now access and create your communities through our public channel feature via app. Build, inspire, and communicate with your community across the web and phone.
A little bonus, to see what you need to build a successful community, read our blog post.
Copy Files
Finally, in our AirSend Android update, you can copy your files from one channel to another. So any document templates you uploaded from one channel, you can now simply copy and paste it to another channel. Best of all, this all happens from the File tab, so you don’t have to exit and enter into various channels.
Here are a few ways to stay healthy while working from home.
Once considered a luxury, working from home is now a reality
for many people due to COVID-19 and the ever growing remote work trend. In
theory, working from home sounds great. You’re in your own space. The
refrigerator is in walking distance. You get to use your own bathroom instead
of braving public restrooms throughout the work day. But despite the positives,
there are some downsides to working from home.
Because you’re home, some of the things that would come more naturally in an office — like working set hours or socializing — don’t happen without extra effort on your part. And these things are important to maintaining your mental and physical health. Here are a few ways to stay healthy while working from home.
Have set work hours
Source: unDraw
One of the benefits of working from home is that gives you more flexibility on what hours you do your work. That’s great, but exercising some discipline here is essential to creating work / life balance. Make sure you schedule what hours you are going to work, when you are going to take breaks, and what time the work day is over. Creating a schedule that you stick to makes sure that you don’t over- or under-work and helps to separate your work life from your home life.
Have a separate workspace
Source: unDraw
Working from home is great because all your creature comforts are within walking distance. Working from home can be disastrous for the same reason. Never leaving your bed, being constantly distracted by pets, kids, or your significant other, experiencing back pain because you’ve slouched on the couch all day — these can all be avoided by having a separate workspace. If you’re unable to have a full home office with a door that you can close to avoid distraction, at least designate a desk or space where you work everyday.
Move around
Source: unDraw
Speaking of back pain, make sure you move around during your scheduled breaks. Take a walk, do a ten-minute exercise video, or even some jumping jacks next to your computer. If you can go outside, even better. The flip side of the convenience of working from home is that the physical movement that is usually built into your work day no longer happens unless you make it happen.
Socialize
Source: unDraw
Last but not least, don’t forget to socialize. This can be having
a virtual game night with friends, calling your family, or enjoying an at-home
happy hour with your co-workers over Skype. Regular social interactions are
essential to mental health, especially during uncertain and stressful times.
Many people are struggling right now. If you are too,
remember that all difficult times come to an end and that what we can do now is
to try our best to take care of ourselves and the people around us. Whether you’re
happy to work from home or itching to get back to the office, follow these work
from home tips and suggest them to your friends and family so that everyone can
maintain their best mental and physical conditions.
The phrase “team chat ” has become synonymous with the phrase “team collaboration.” As new communication tools are being developed, so are collaboration features. As we know it, 2020 is the year where team chats are breaking boundaries.
Many companies are developing the “do-it-all” chat software. Ideally, the “do-it-all” chat software should combine collaboration features that allow work to be done with minimal effort. In other words, have all the business essentials in one place. That way you minimize the extra tabs and workspace.
In this blog post, we are going to share our list of groundbreaking team chat tools of 2020. Each tool’s description will have the features and functions, pricing, and the pros and cons to them. Without further ado, let’s dive into the 25 best team chat tools of 2020.
It would be weird if we didn’t believe AirSend was the lead groundbreaking tool for team chat and collaboration. One of the great features with AirSend is that it carries the ideal collaboration tools needed to get work done. Tools, such as task-management, premium built-in file storage, audio/video calling, and personalized notebooks made for each channel.
Most importantly, AirSend’s productivity train is continuously chugging, which means that we are constantly delivering new updates and features. New updates and features mean new ways for efficient communication and collaboration.
Pricing
If you sign up now, you can get AirSend Pro free for one year! In the picture below are the features that come with AirSend Pro.
Image of AirSend’s Pricing
Pros to AirSend
Compared to other team chat tools in which both parties need an account, AirSend only needs one person to sign up to have a conversation. This feature is called email-to-channel. To learn more about this feature, read our blog post. Rather than switching between many communication tools, you can now keep all your conversations from one place.
Cons to AirSend
AirSend is still in its beta stages. Because AirSend is still in development, there will be consistent updates and added features to the product.
Chanty is a simple AI-powered tool with an easy-to-use interface. One of the big selling points to Chanty is that they keep a balance between features and usability, hence the simple and easy-to-use design. They also come with built-in task management and unlimited messages.
Pricing
Chanty is free! They also carry a Business plan which runs about $3 user/month. The only difference between the free and business plan is that business carries audio and video calls.
Pros to Chanty
Like AirSend, Chanty is constantly developing. As of right now, they are in the process of developing audio and video calls. Additionally, collaboration with Chanty is endless.
Cons to Chanty
While Chanty is a great team chat and collaboration tool, they are not ideal for large teams. In their free plan, there is a limit of 10 users and 10 GB of storage per team.
One of the biggest selling points to Microsoft Teams is the smooth integration of Office 365. This becomes useful if you depend on Office 365 for your daily tasks. Furthermore, Microsoft Teams is great for keeping all your team’s chats, meetings, files, and other apps together in one place.
Pricing
When it comes down to pricing, Microsoft Teams can be a little daunting. The free version of Teams allows chat and collaborations. However, under the free plan, there are partially included essentials, such as:
meetings and calls
productivity apps and services
security and compliance.
Limited storage: 2GB per user and a total of 10 GB is shared among your team.
There is also a $5 monthly plan that is not much different from the free version, except an increase in storage (1 TB per user). Finally, there is the $12.50 monthly plan. This plan includes everything.
Pros to Microsoft Teams
As said before the great thing with Teams is that it allows for smooth integration of Office 365. Users have the capability to edit, delete, and pin messages. Users can also create a new thread and share files, provided it fits with the limited storage. If you use Office 365 daily, Teams might be worth considering.
Cons to Microsoft Teams
There is plenty of room for Microsoft Teams to grow. After thorough research of use cases and reviews, there are many aspects where Microsoft Teams is still lacking. Some use cases have mentioned that setting up the app was not an easy task.
Additionally, users must set up a unique email for each user in their team. Microsoft Teams also does not support drag and drop functions.
MatterMost is a wonderful communication tool to have that is specifically designed for having a private cloud and an opened-sourced channel.
MatterMost targets large enterprises. They also implement self-hosting capabilities. With self-hosting capabilities, users can have greater control over privacy and security.
Pricing
Luckily, before fully committing to MatterMost, there is a 30-day free trial. With the E10 edition (basic) and a minimum of 10 users, the price is $39 per user. Annually making it $390.
There is also an E20 edition, which is an advanced enterprise edition that roughly charges $8.50 monthly.
Because the E20 edition is made for larger corporations, you must get a quote from MatterMost before continuing to pay. To see what each plan offers, click here.
Pros to MatterMost
Though MatterMost is priced on the higher end, MatterMost offers premium control over privacy and security.
Additionally, you can run the messaging platform behind your organization’s firewall.
The way we see it, MatterMost is great if your organization is large enough to have or require self-hosted team messaging.
Cons to MatterMost
MatterMost lacks video and audio conferencing, and users cannot share screens. With MatterMost’s almost overwhelming design, the UX becomes difficult to maneuver. After researching some alternatives MatterMost had to these cons, we believe that aside from AirSend’s built-in wiki capability, Microsoft Teams would be the better choice.
The way we see it, Slack is the king of integrations. Additionally, Slack’s goal is to replace email. That being said, they provide all the tools that you would get with email into Slack.
Pricing
Here is an image of Slack’s current pricing. Some key things to note is that with the free plan, there is a limit to integrations and search history.
Capture of Slack’s latest pricing
Pros to Slack
Slack is built as a communication tool, so it offers a variety of options when it comes to conversations. Conversations happen in public or private channels and can further be separated into threads. Slack also allows audio and video calling.
Cons to Slack
According to several use cases, Slack’s UI design can be a bit overwhelming. Slack’s noise-to-signal ratio is also really high, making it hard to be productive. Further, they carry steep prices that may not be in peoples’ interest at the moment. Finally, Slack only offers third party file storage and task management.
Flock is one of the more promising team chat software. Flock is incredibly easy to use, and with integrations from Google Suite, and a built-in shared to-do list, productivity seems promising.
They also carry other features, such as guest accounts, one-way announcement channels, and a five-column interface. They also support video and audio calls.
Pricing
With Flock, there are three pricing plans:
Free
Unlimited messaging
10,000 searchable messages
10 public channels
5GB total per team
Single team admin
1-1 Video calls
Pro Plan: $4.50 monthly
Unlimited search history and messaging
Unlimited private and public channels
10 GB per team member
Multiple team admins
Group video calls
Screen sharing
24/7 priority support
Enterprise Plan: $8 monthly
Includes everything plus 20 GB per team member
Pros to Flock
Flock offers built-in tools, such as app integration, polls, to-do lists, the ability to create public and private channels, reminders, and many more.
Cons to Flock
With recent reviews and case studies, a major con to Flock is its five-column interface. Having a busy interface can make users feel overwhelmed.
Much like Discord or Slack, having a complex UI design can leave the user experience lacking.
Furthermore, specific features designed for team collaboration is nice, but some of them feel unnecessary.
Rocket.Chat is an open-source team chat software. With a similar Slack UI design, Rocket.Chat carries seamless conversations, along with a full range of customization. They also carry the similar function of making public and private channels.
Pricing
Rocket.Chat has umbrella pricing. What we mean by this is that they carry two major plans, and underneath those plans are the subscribed plans.
The first plan we will go over is the Self-Managed plan, in which you can host your own channels.
Self-Managed Plan
Community Version is Free
Pro Plan- $30, per user, annually; $3 per user, monthly
Enterprise Plan: Quote
The next major plan is the SaaS plan, which is a cloud offering hosted by Rocket.Chat
SaaS Plan
Bronze Plan: $20 per user, annually; $2 per user, monthly
Silver Plan: $40 per user, annually; $4 per user, monthly
Gold Plan: Quote
Each plan requires a minimum of 10 users
Pros to Rocket.Chat
One of the cool things with Rocket.Chat is that you can easily migrate and export files.
There is also real-time automatic translation, end-to-end encryption, LiveChat, and endless customization.
Cons to Rocket.Chat
Though having an open server is great, the maintenance to one is not that easy. Having your own open server means you also have to manage your own backups, security, and knowing how to fix things in case of failure. And if you’re not that tech-savvy, Rocket.Chat may not be a good fit for you.
Telegram is a cloud-based mobile and desktop messaging app with a focus on security and speed. The selling point to Telegram is that it is available on many of the most widely used platforms. Telegram is also free.
Pros to Telegram
With Telegram, you can send messages, photos, and videos to people who have Telegram, and to those who are in your phone contacts. You can also create groups for up to 200,000 people or channels.
They also have cool features like bots, secret chats, self-destructing messages, and support large files. If you are looking for a free communication tool that carries a lot of features, Telegram may be worth considering.
Cons to Telegram
Though Telegram carries a lot of features, they lack the features and functions for team collaboration. Like WhatsApp, Telegram is made for casual conversation with friends and family.
Introduced in 2016. Facebook Workplace is a team chat tool that prioritizes connection through broadcast and announcements. With the same layout as your personal Facebook account, Facebook Workplace allows you to connect with employees and have everyone on the same page.
Pricing
Facebook Workplace carries three tiers of pricing. We will list the top features that come with each plan.
Free:
Up to 50 teams
Group video calls
5 GB storage per person
Auto-translate
Live-video sharing
Available on mobile apps
Advanced: $4 per user, per month
Unlimited teams
Group video calls
1 TB storage per person
Organization chart
Surveys
Safety check
Enterprise: $8 per user, per month
Everything included.
Pros to Facebook Workplace
Facebook Workplace offers integrations of G Suite, Office 365 and Dropbox. And it’s like Facebook, but adapted for work. So anyone can start using it right away. This can also be seen as a negative, and here’s why.
Cons to Facebook Workplace
Because Facebook Workplace carries the same UI design as the normal Facebook, collaboration and communication can seem a bit unusual. If you are looking for a tool that has more of a professional layout, Facebook Workplace may not be the ideal solution.
Ryver is a team collaboration tool that makes managing your team simple and hassle-free. Similar to Slack, Ryver’s goal is to solve the world’s email problem and replace the outdated way many teams collaborate.
Pricing
Ryver offers three plans:
Starter: $49/monthly
Up to 12 users
Unlimited chat
Unlimted file sharing
Task management
Voice and video calls
Unlimited: $99/monthly. As of right now, they are currently offering the plan at $79/monthly
Everything included in the starter plan
Unlimited Users
Custom invite links
Enterprise: Originally $199/monthly, but right now it is being offered for $149/monthly
Everything included from the Unlimited plan
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Premium Support
Advanced team management
Testing Sandbox
Pros to Ryver
Essentially, Ryver is a combination of Slack and Trello. The selling point is that they surround their platform around a kanban based idea. They also include forums, teams, and one-on-one interaction.
Cons to Ryver
Aside from Ryver’s steep prices, they also require third-party integrations. Their biggest client for integrations is Zapier. This means that the majority of your integrations need to come from Zapier. This would be counterproductive for companies looking for a team chat that is easy-to-use and does not require a lot of strict integrations.
Glip is a collaboration software that offers free messaging, real-time text, voice, and video, task management, screen sharing, shared calendars, and note tracking.
Pricing
Glip carries two plans: the free version and the $5 per user, per month. Between the two plans, almost everything is the same. The key differentiator is the shared minutes. In the free version, there is a limit of 500 minutes, and in the paid plan it is a limit of 1,000 minutes per user, per month.
Pros to Glip
Glip has quite a few built-in options. Users can create and assign tasks, schedule meetings, set deadlines in a shared calendar, and keep track of notes. There are also unlimited integrations.
Cons to Glip
After studying quite a few use cases, there are common themes mentioned that ultimately are cons to Glip. For starters, they have fairly working features, however, Glip doesn’t have any individual feature that excels.
Additionally, Glip forces you to download its proprietary app, RingCentral Meetings. You cannot integrate other video conferencing apps. Finally, the interface is messy, and there are problems with trying to integrate apps. If you are not tech-savvy Glip may not be ideal.
Fleep is a team communication tool that lets you chat with any other Fleep user out there. Similar to Skype, all it requires is an account and you can connect to anyone else who has an active Fleep account.
Pricing
Fleep carries three pricing plans:
Free
10 GB File Storage
Native apps
Unlimited 1:1 conversation
Business: 5 Euros, per user, per month, billed annually
100 GB File Storage
Teams
Organization Settings
Task Management
Enterprise: Must have a Quote
100 GB Storage
Includes features from the Business plan
Pros to Fleep
Fleep is an open network that allows you to connect with anyone in the app. There are also unlimited integrations.
Cons to Fleep
Like Skype, Fleep is user-based and not team-based. This makes it hard to communicate with other people specific to your team.
Jostle is a cloud-based simple intranet solution. They offer communication, company culture building, internal bulletin board, and much more.
Pricing
Jostle is priced on the number of employees your company has. To give an overview, we went with the minimum required. However, the higher the employee count is, the cheaper the prices are.
15 minimum User:
Silver Plan: $9.33 per user, billed annually
Core Intranet
Integrations
2 powerups
Gold Plan: $13.33 per user, billed annually
Core Intranet
Integrations
Single Sign-On (SSO)
5 power-ups
Platinum: $16.00 per user, billed annually
8 power-ups
Features from Gold Plan
Pros to Jostle
As said before, Jostle carries features that help with company culture, productivity, and collaboration. Features, such as bulletin boards, news articles, calendar entries, and announcements.
Cons to Jostle
While the product is amazing for building company culture, it is not the ideal solution for communication. The UI design makes it hard for users and teams to communicate effectively.
Gitter.im is a chat and networking platform that helps to manage, grow, and connect communities through messaging, content, and discovery. Though it is made community building and targeted towards developers, it also works well as a team chat app. The best part, they are free.
Pros to Gitter.im
Gitter.im allows for private and public communities. It is also incredibly easy to use, and there is unlimited integration. Finally, the UI is visually appealing.
Cons to Gitter.im
As said before, Gitter.im is originally marketed towards creating communities. So the features and functionalities are community-based. However, if this is not a problem, Gitter.im would be worth a shot. Finally, Gitter.im carries a design similar to Reddit.
Wire is a modern-day collaboration tool that meets advanced security and user experience.
Pricing
Wire carries three price plans: Wire Pro: 4 Euro, Wire Enterprise: 8 Euro, and Wire Enterprise Technology. To see their features, click here.
Pros to Wire
Wire carries all things needed for collaboration. They carry personal and group chats, conference calls, screen and file sharing, availability status, mentions, and message reactions. Best of all, Wire has a guest room feature, in which you can talk with clients or even conduct job interviews.
Cons to Wire
One of the downsides to Wire is that they do not carry built-in task management. They also lack project management tools. Having a lack of these tools may make it hard for teams to collaborate and get work done.
Jitsi is a free open source video conference software. Jitsi thrives on their new form of communication, video conferencing. In other words, all communication happens over video. The selling point to Jitsi is that they are one of the few video conferencing software that offers encryption-based calls.
Pros to Jitsi
The big pro is that Jitsi is free to use. Arguably the second biggest pro to Jitsi is that it is open-source, and you can make your own servers. Jitsi also does not require accounts. Users have the option to create accounts for the purpose of attaining transcripts and meeting history.
Cons to Jitsi
Compared to other video conferencing software, Jitsi does not support Saas, iPhone, iPad, and Android. They are also very limited in integrations and features. Further, Jitsi does not carry On-demand webcasting, record&playback ability, nor whiteboard.
Discord is known for its all-in-one voice and text chat. While Discord is originally meant for gamers, they offer a lot of features for a free communication tool. Discord also offers channel organization, only placed in a more complex UI design.
Pricing
Another benefit is that Discord is free.
There is also a Discord Nitro in which you get more customizations than you would with the free version.
Customizations can range from animated emojis, and creating a unique tag for your profile. Annually, Discord Nitro is $99.99. Monthly it is $9.99.
Finally, there is Discord Nitro Classic, which has everything the Nitro plan has, except for a Server Boost. Annually it is $49.99, and monthly it is $4.99.
Image of Discord Nitro
Pros to Discord
Like AirSend, users with Discord can seamlessly switch between private and public channels. Discord also does not offer integration with apps you might use for work.
But if your team only uses text, voice, or video conferencing, you should be fine. Lastly, Discord is the only chat in this list that offers push-to-talk features, along with an instant invite link.
Cons to Discord
Discord is great for team communication. Additionally, with a busy UI design, you feel like you are doing more with less functionality. However, it is important to remember that Discord is specifically meant for gamers. So, the UI will be more complex than what the average business chat needs.
Lastly, like Slack, the noise-to-signal ratio is extremely high with Discord. Because of this, distractions can happen and important information can get buried among the chatter.
Flowdock is a real-time team chat software that brings all of your workplace conversations, work items, and tools in one place. With Flowdock, you can prioritize work, solve problems, search and organize across teams, locations, and timezones.
Pricing
Flowdock carries three plans:
Free- up to 30 days with Standalone features
Standalone: $3 per user, per month
Unlimited flows
Endless history
Infinite integrations
Enterprise: $9 per user, per month
SSO
Integration-auto removal
Data-encryption
API
Administration
Custom Data Retention policies.
Pros to Flowdock
Some pros are having organized conversations, message tags, bots, file-sharing, integrations, custom emojis, and gifs.
Cons to Flowdock
One of the main cons to Flowdock is that the organization leaves to be desired. The main feature of Flowdock is its shared inbox, where project management tools, customer feedback, and version control systems are stored. Though the threads help with organizing conversations, there is not much else for users to custom organize their workspace.
SquidHub is a collaboration app for people who want clarity, simplicity, a bit of fun, and a great way of working together.
Pricing
There are three plans:
Basic: Free
2 groups
1000 MB Storage
Unlimited search history
Premium: $4.99 per user, per month
Unlimited:
Groups
Storage
Search
Copy groups
Organizational view
Permission control
Disable message board
Enterprise: Must have Quote
Pros to SquidHub
Aside from its fun name, SquidHub makes it easy to find files, optimize communication, share a task list, have a built-in calendar, and many more. Best of all, SquidHub’s design is like that of a kanban, leaving the organization at its finest. Finally, SquidHub’s UI design makes it easy-to-use.
Cons to SquidHUb
Like Slack, SquidHub does not offer built-in file storage, rather you have to integrate third-party file storage platforms. If file-integration is not a concern for you, then SquidHub is definitely worth a shot.
Convo is a team communication app that brings all business essentials into one place. Essentially, you can use this tool as a central place for having discussions, collaboration, and making faster decisions in real-time.
Pricing
There are three plans: Free, Pro, and Enterprise. For the Pro and Enterprise version, it is custom pricing. To see what each plan has to offer, click here.
Pros to Convo
One of the things the platform likes to preach is fewer meetings, better collaboration. Ideally, this would mean having real-time chat and file sharing. Further, you can customize your notifications. Finally, a nice touch is that they offer acknowledgment posts, that way your message is heard loud and clear.
Cons to Convo
A downside to convo is that the UI design is a bit overwhelming. They have multiple ways in which you can carry a conversation via instant chat, group chat- private and public, and email integration. They carry a lot of neat features, but the communication is being sacrificed at the hands of collaboration features and integrations.
ProofHub is a team communication software that brings all your project communications together in one place.
Pricing
They carry two plans
Essential: $45 monthly, billed annually
40 projects
Unlimited users
15 GB Storage
Core features
Ultimate: $89 monthly, billed annually
Unlimited projects and users
100 GB storage.
Core features
Advanced custom roles
Custom workflow
Pros to ProofHub
Some highlights to Proofhub is that they have 1:1 chats, group chats, and tagging. They also carry a similar Kanban design to help with visual appeal.
Cons to ProofHub
Unfortunately, the majority of Proofhub relies on third-party integration. While it is nice to have a built-in Kanban, it is hard to make up for the lack of other built-in features. For those who are opposed to integrations, or do not feel comfortable connecting personal tools to work, Proofhub may not be the ideal choice. Finally, they carry features that can appear overwhelming and not needed.
Asana lets you work anytime, anywhere. With Asana, keep remote and distributed teams, and your entire organization focused on their goals, projects, and tasks.
Pricing
Image of Asana’s current pricing
For a list of features each plan carries, click here.
Pros to Asana
Some of the many pros to Asana is its color-coded tasks, email integration, google drive integration, and time tracking through integration with EverHour.
Cons to Asana
Though Kanban-style is great, a downfall to Asana, which inhibits the use of Kanban, is that tasks can only be assigned to one member per team. Further sub-tasks are difficult to work with, and the interface can sometimes feel overwhelming with the graphics. Finally, some users have reported that Asana sends too many emails of tasks being due. This can be sometimes annoying.
Twist is a chat platform built by an internationally distributed team at Doist. Ideally, Twist makes it much easier to keep track of a conversation and refer back to it later. They also target remote teamwork, making it suitable for an organized communication hub, share updates, and keep track of messages after several years.
Pricing
There are two plans for Twist
Free
Access to 1 month of comments/messages
Up to 5 integrations
5GB file storage
Unlimited guests
Unlimited everything
$5 per user/per month
Pros to Twist
Some highlights to Twist is the organization of threads to keep discussions in order. This is helpful for companies that have a lot of employees. Unlike most other chat platforms, Twist lets you disconnect to focus on your work. It is similar to a “do not disturb” mode that you would find on your phone.
Cons to Twist
A con to Twist is that in their free package they do not offer as much compared to other team chats. Twist gets the basic job done, but if you are looking for more usage in a free tool, Twist may not be ideal.
Bonus: to see what are the latest free communication tools for remote work, read our blog post.
According to Troop Messenger, their chat software integrates multiple features and functionalities on a single interface offering ease of use and heightened user experience. Troop Messenger comes with all the basic functionalities needed for group chats: voice-video calls, screen sharing, file sharing, and filtering content.
Pricing
Troop Messenger comes with three price plans:
Premium: $1 per user/ per month
7-day free trial of enterprise
150 GB of storage
Enterprise: $5 per user/per month
1 TB storage
Self Hosting: $5+ per user/per month
To see their feature and function list, click here.
Pros to Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger allows users to send messages or attachments to multiple users. Troop Messenger also features an unread message filter, which helps for looking at missed messages. Finally, a big plus is that they carry self-hosting and API delivery options. This is beneficial for large companies.
Cons to Troop Messenger
At its core, Troop Messenger is a chat app, and its collaboration is second. Troop Messenger carries little-to-no integrations. The lack of integration compromises for the overwhelming features that come with the platform.
Zulip combines the immediacy of real-time chat with an email threading model. With Zulip, you can catch up on important conversations while ignoring irrelevant ones. Zulip is an emerging leader of business collaboration tools.
Pricing
Below is a capture of their latest image pricing
Capture of Zulip’s current pricing
Pros to Zulip
The selling point to Zulip is that they are arguably the best at handling synchronous and asynchronous communication. Zulip carries a lot of features and integrations. They also have a nice design for the messaging itself. With its amazing email threading model, Zulip allows users to catch up on important notifications/conversations while muting the irrelevant ones.
Cons to Zulip
Functions and features aside, the UI design of the whole platform is not desirable. True, the messaging is visually appealing, but the overall design leaves the feeling of a “senior-citizen” aesthetic. Personally, the brand colors remind me of my grandmother’s bathroom who had the same color scheme.
Conclusion
These are what we believe are the latest 2020 groundbreaking team chat tools, however, this list barely scratches the surface. There are many amazing team chat tools out there. We look forward to seeing our future competition and hope that each team chat tool rises to the challenge.
We use AirSend as our digital workspace for our marketing team. Even though AirSend is our product, we sincerely believe that AirSend can help your team too. Give us a try and let us know what you think!
AirSend is a versatile digital workspace to share files, send messages, and complete tasks. See how AirSend can help you.
When it comes to building a successful online community, it often takes a lot of hard work. We forget that communities are hard work because we often look towards the more well-known communities. Celebrity communities to be exact. But, celebrity communities, such as Loren Gray, Ariana Grande, and even PewDiePie, take a lot of hard work to create.
However, if you have the motivation and passion, creating a community will feel like a breeze. In this blog post, we are going to give you 10 secrets on how to build a successful community.
Following these steps will ensure that you start in the right direction for building your future community.
Learn from who you admire
Image of Loren Gray from Pinterest
Taking your admiration of influencers will inspire you to create the perfect niche community. For example, Loren Gray, who is currently the number one influencer on TikTok. Gray has built herself an online community doing what she loves best, singing.
Though singing isn’t quite a niche community, Gray also posts other videos that are unique to her. Essentially, take what you admire/inspire from and run with it.
Choosing your Niche
find your niche concept on blackboard
Taking from step one, choosing your niche is a great way to develop your community. Especially when it is something that is not quite well-known.
Some niche communities are, Goodreads, ArtFire, and Behance. Your niche must align with what you are passionate about. If it doesn’t, chances are your community will not flourish.
Choosing the Right Platform
Capture of Community tools
It is important that you choose a platform that you can see your community growing with. It also helps to choose a platform that is great for effective communication, easy to use, and visually appealing.
State your Dream
Image of Kylie Jenner
Speak from the heart. Find your own message and hone it. This essentially will be the foundation of your community. What do you want to share with your community? To give an example, think of Kylie Jenner. Being only 22-years-old, Kylie Jenner has made a name for herself in the cosmetics industry. Some would argue that it was Kylie Jenner’s dream to run her own make-up line, and here she is now. She has created a massive community that had originally begun with a dream.
Putting it all together
Putting puzzle pieces together
Once you have your idea, the right platform, and you have stated your dream, it is now time to put it all together. Ideally, this is where you want to design your community to be user and visually friendly. Make it easy and fun to use.
Also implementing channel organization and leadership roles, are great ways of designing your community.
A word of advice, it is okay for your community blueprint to not be perfect. There will be many times when you will have to go back to the drawing board to figure out what design is perfect for you.
Take your time with it. Building the ideal perfect community does not always happen overnight.
Find Early Adopters
Portrait of group of friends, one smiling at camera
The first people that join are usually the most important ones. That being said, it is ideal to look for people that will be a great fit for your community.
Looking at various communities and interviews, the common theme for finding early and dedicated people are co-workers and friends. Having those close to you join your community will help produce a consistent conversation.
Be Consistent
Image of community on Discord
Consistency is key to growing a community. Being consistent will let your members know that you are present and that you care for the community. It is also suggested to be consistent in different and creative ways.
An example is from a community called, “Philosophize this!” Host and creator, Steve, has made various channels in which all members have an outlet.
Additionally, one of Steve’s qualities is that he is always participating in his community. This makes his members feel cherished. It is also a great way to give thanks.
Give Thanks and Spread Kindness
A thank you card with the hashtag words Giving Tuesday
As said earlier, a great way to thank your members is to be consistent with participation and content. Let your members know that you value them.
Another way to give thanks is to support your members with likes, comments, retweets, shout-outs, and tags.
Spreading kindness, such as thanking your members for being a part of your community, is also a great way to value your community and its members.
Encourage Diversity and Interaction
Top view image of people standing together
It would be boring if everyone in your community thought the same. There would be no need for interaction. Encouraging diversity and interaction among your members is a good method for effective communication. After all, a community cannot thrive without enticing conversations.
Have fun
Finally, have fun with it. If you cannot have fun in building your community, what is the point of going forward? It takes an immense amount of work to build a community, but with the right drive, passion, and motivation, creating your own community will feel like a breeze.
Capture of AirSend file preview and Office icon
Introducing AirSend’s latest update: Office 365 integration. With the latest Office integration, you can now enjoy the leisure of easy access to your office tools. Take leisure in editing your documents, spreadsheets, and powerpoints all with a click of a button. Anything you edit will be saved to your original file. This means no more deleting or uploading the same file.
Video of Office 365 Integration
With our new update, you can now edit documents on-the-go. Additionally, you can now spend more time with your clients knowing that all your files and documents are up-to-date with AirSend. For more updates, check out our AirSend blog.
AirSend is a versatile digital workspace to share files, send messages, and complete tasks. See how AirSend can help you.
Private collaboration channels combine the best of chat, email, to-do lists, and file sharing
Allows remote collaboration for all types of professionals to work with their clients
Insight into remote work and file-sharing behavior led to a new product with a seamless workflow across internal and external teams
AUSTIN, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)– CodeLathe, the company behind a widely used enterprise file services platform used by millions of customers around the world, today announced AirSend, a new product that allows people-centric collaboration with customers, clients, and teams.
AirSend is free for one year to all SMBs and professional service firms to help with their remote collaboration and communication needs. AirSend’s solution puts all the information for a client or project—messaging, files, tasks—on a single screen, reducing the need to switch from one app to another.
“When we started building AirSend five months ago, we never thought remote work would become a global phenomenon,” said Venkataragavan Ramasamy, COO of CodeLathe. “We just wanted to make a good collaboration product that would work for remote teams like us.”
As a geographically distributed, remote-first company, CodeLathe has team members in 14 countries and five continents in addition to its Austin headquarters. AirSend incorporates the ideas and concepts learned from leading an international remote-working team.
Other collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams require users to integrate the software with other products like Google Drive for file management or Trello for task management. AirSend is contextual: each channel provides a dashboard view of all the necessary information within the context of a single client or project.
Today’s work environment is crippled by context switching as people move between separate apps for email, IM, documents and to-do lists. Studies by the American Psychological Association have found that the brief mental blocks created by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone’s productive time. The problem of context switching increases with a remote workforce that is subjected to even more distractions.
“We see the negative impact of context switching from our FileCloud customers because we have an inside view on how people work and share files,” said Madhan Kanagavel, CEO of CodeLathe. “Imagine if AirSend helped reclaim just 15 minutes of productivity per day for 10 million people. That would be 625 million productive hours per year or $10.6 billion of additional productivity.”
At the heart of AirSend are its individual channels, which integrate chat conversations, track the next steps and organize large files with up to 100 GB free storage. Combining those actions into a single channel eliminates the need for managing individual email folders, separate client Slack channels and separate cloud storage apps. Each channel has all of the tools needed to get work done. Customers can:
Send messages: Have seamless conversations with clients in private channels. Messages also work with email, so clients don’t need to have an AirSend account.
Organize files: Securely share and organize files using AirSend’s powerful file management system.
Track open items: Assign actions to channel members to track and complete a to-do list quickly in one place.
Find everything fast: Find channels, messages, members, files and open items in seconds.
Create a guidebook: Share key information with clients like notes and links with a built-in wiki for easy reference.
Collaborate with anyone from anywhere: AirSend is built for teams that work across organizational boundaries and offers the possibility of unlimited shared channels for both internal team members and outside clients to collaborate.
Along with the free one-year term, CodeLathe is also providing free 30-minute consultations to SMB teams on remote work.
Sign up for AirSend now at airsend.io or in the Apple or Google app store.
About AirSend
AirSend is a communication platform that brings all your conversations, files, tasks and notes into one contextual workspace to get work done faster and better. AirSend is developed by CodeLathe Inc., a remote-first company. AirSend is targeted at professional firms, teams, and SMBs to offer powerful collaboration, communication, and work-sharing between team members and clients. The company offers two products, FileCloud—an award-winning enterprise file services platform and AirSend—the world’s first-ever contextual workspace built for remote work, used by millions of customers around the world. For more information, visit http://www.airsend.io/.
Have conversations, share files, complete tasks, and get work done in one space.
