Sign up before Nov 15 and get one year free (100$ worth)
Please correct the error(s) above!
Thank You!
We received your information and will get back to you!
We're sorry!
Something went wrong. Please try again later.
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.
May 9, 2020
AirSend Survey Edition: What do People Look for in a Team Chat App?
Category: Communication
One of our goals with AirSend is to deliver the ideal team chat tool. A tool that can be used to communicate with team members as well as outside clients. That being said, we know we still have plenty of work left to do. To further develop an excellent product, it requires feedback. Our solution: a team chats app survey. What better way to develop a product than by the voice of the people?
We thought that by creating a survey on team chat apps, we would hear the most honest feedback of what people look for in a team chat app. We received some very fascinating feedback, and we want to share them with you. Please note that this survey does not pertain to AirSend or the company in any manner. Additionally, we think it will be more exciting if we release the results to each question every week. Without further ado, let’s dive in with a bang and show the most impressive results.
Question Two: What do you look for in a Team Chat App?
Capture from Survey
As you can see from the results having a team chat app that is easy-to-use with a 58.33% vote takes the lead. After that comes,
Collaboration/All the Above: 54.17%
Organization: 41.67%
Security: 37.50%
Design: 33.33%
Customization: 29.17%
Community: 20.83%
Hypothesis
Based on the results listed above, it can easily be concluded that the vast majority look for an easy-to-use team chat. From the graph above, we can speculate that most people look for a team chat app that is clutter-free, with the right amount of UI. Having this outlook will help users get work done faster. In essence, team chats that people love to use should also be easy-to-use.
As I’m sure you are already aware, we preach that AirSend is a simple and easy-to-use communication platform. So, seeing these results made us thrilled. As previously mentioned in other blog posts, we want to create a versatile uncomplicated team chat tool. A tool that doesn’t require over 500+ integrations, multiple accounts, and confusing UI’s and UX.
We believe that with AirSend’s clean and simplistic UI design, the usability of the product will be effortless. We offer all the built-in tools required to help get work done faster, such as task management, a shared workspace (a.k.a.the wiki), and premium file storage.
Did you know that we are offering AirSend Pro free for one year if you sign up before May 15?
Finally, we want to conclude that we use AirSend for our marketing teams. Even though AirSend is our product, we sincerely believe that AirSend can help your organization, 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.
Welcome back to our blog! In today’s blog post, we are going to do something a little different. We are going to list the top seven best team chat apps for Android. The ability to work from any device and any location is the new trendsetter in the work industry. This leads to efficiency and increased productivity. With that being said it is essential to have a team chat app that can work across computers, smartphones, tablets, and any other smart device out there. Here are our top seven team chat apps for Android:
AirSend
Flock
Slack
WhatsApp
Hangouts
Telegram
Teamwork Chat
Without further ado let’s dive into the seven best team chat apps for Android.
It is our blog post after all. And it would be weird if we didn’t believe AirSend was the ideal team chat app for all platforms. AirSend is an all-in-one do-it-all team chat platform that carries built-in file integration, built-in task management, and a built-in “about” section. AirSend also carries a clean and sleek UI design to enable easier usability.
Further, unlike most other team chats, we have all your channels located in one place! No more signing in and singing out of extra accounts. Now you can easily switch between conversations with just a click of a button. Finally, at the top of a channel is your built-in tools bar for easy access and visibility to take care of all your business needs. Assign and complete tasks, copy and move files, edit your wiki, and manage your close-knit groups! The downside to AirSend is that we currently lack audio and video calls.
Summation: AirSend is an easy, simple-to-use app that lets you have a seamless conversation with minimum context switching. With built-in tools and minimized integrations, users can now get work done all with a click of a button.
Created back in 2014, Flock is designed to make communication and collaboration effortless. Flock’s android app carries
In-app video conferencing
Google integration
Notes
Mailing list to all flock channels and team members
Bots- which are created as separate channels
Flock Assistant
And many more. We would be here all day if we listed all the features Flock has to offer. Flock’s users ID’s are also tied to a unique URL made for each user. A downside to the app is that unlike with AirSend, Flock doesn’t have a place for task descriptions. This can be a bit difficult if team members have multiple tasks and no context to go off of. Further, all features listed above are located on the top right corner of the screen, and from there takes you to another area of the app. As a new user, I found it a little confusing to maneuver through, as I wasn’t sure where each feature was taking me, and how to exactly get back to the channel I had made.
There is also the choice to make a private and/or public channel, however, there are no given directions on which channel is public and which channel is private. Additionally, while looking at your tasks for one channel, you also have the option to look at tasks for your other channels, which as a design choice, can seem overwhelming. Finally, Flock allows you to create multiple teams with either the same email account you signed up with or a new account.
Summation: Flock is a neat team chat tool that carries a bunch of features. However, with poor UI/UX design the app is hard to work with. Having a difficult app also makes it hard to communicate with others. Especially when communicating through different teams.
In Slack’s android app, the maneuverability is not that complex compared to the website. On the left side-bar panel, you have your threads, channels, and direct messages. However, as the same on their website, the app requires one sign-in per workspace. Each time you try to create or join a workspace from the app, Slack sends an email verification. This can be a bit frustrating when trying to talk with other clients and/or teams.
Further, more often than not the signal-to-noise communication is extremely low. What this means is that your channel is continuously blowing up with what is most likely not important information. Finally, with the Slack app for android, there are no read receipts.
Summation: Slack is a great team chat tool if you only have one team. They offer channel organization and integrations which makes the app a little difficult to get through, but it is much easier compared to the website.
Mainly used for casual conversation, this end-to-end encryption app is known to be a solution for team communication. Similar to Telegram, the premise is to have conversations. However, unlike Telegram, WhatsApp has more to offer. The app offers
Backup from Google drive
Can make phone calls
Can take pictures and record audio from the app
End-to-end encryption
Can do audio and video calls
Can set wallpapers
Export chat
Manage notifications
24-hour stories
One of the major downsides to WhatsApp is that all media and pictures shared in the channels are automatically downloaded to the native galleries. As a personal user, it is difficult to try and stop this feature, and it becomes increasingly annoying. Finally, there is no task-management, which can be increasingly hard when you have multiple tasks.
Summation: You should use WhatsApp if you do not mind seeing other people’s pictures and media in your galleries, like having conversations, video, and audio calls in a minimal design, and are able to keep track of tasks through another medium.
Since Hangouts is a google app, it requires google sign-in. The neat thing about the Hangouts app is that you can seamlessly switch between email accounts. Similar when accessing your Gmail through your android. There are also features of a video call and status updates. However, the UI is lacking, and there doesn’t appear to be any direct access to GSuite from the app. This can most likely throw a wrench in someone’s productivity.
Summation: Hangouts chat is a great app if you carry the majority of your business through GSuite and Gmail. However, there is no direct access from the app to GSuite, so getting work done via google docs, sheets, etc, will require another device.
Telegram is the same premise as WhatsApp, but with fewer features that help get work done. The app also allows you to have private and public chats. In public chats, you can have up to 200,000 members and assign admins with different rights. They also have a similar UI design to WhatsApp. Finally, with all the features they mention on their website, it didn’t seem apparent through the app. However, compared to WhatsApp, the app seems to run smoother when hosting large groups.
Summation: Telegram is a useful tool if you have a medium-size company. The app is also a good choice if you are looking for an alternative to WhatsApp. The app does not carry a built-in task manager or a smooth way to share files.
Aside from AirSend, Teamwork Chat is the next best app for UI design. The app features SSO and Gmail Sign in. However, you first need to make an account online before even signing into the app. Teamwork Chat is more of a project-management website. That being said, on the website, team communication is not as important as project management. Though the UI is impressive on their website, the mobile UI, thankfully, is not as overwhelming. The app features:
Chat channels
Direct conversation
File sharing
Integrations with Teamwork Projects
Through first time usage, it seems that the app is mainly for chats and nothing else. If there are project management tools built into the app, it wasn’t apparent. That being said being able to work from Teamwork Chat, may not be a viable option
Summation: You should use the app if you already have an account with them and carry the majority of your work online. The app is also useful if you just need an app to chat with your team.
Results
There are many team chat apps out there for Android. However, we feel that AirSend is the best option. Three reasons why:
Built-in task management- makes work getting done easier
Move, copy, and share files with built-in file storage- no more downloading files to your phone
Built-in Wiki- have everyone in your team stay up-to-date with upcoming projects, meetings, and more.
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.
Discord or AirSend? Which platform do you choose to make or join the ideal community? We are here to tell you. In this blog post, we are gonna give you a break down of what we think communities need, and which platform is best suited for these needs. Our breakdown method is going to cover five essentials that make a community great.
Connectivity
Community Size
UI Design
UX
Capabilities/Features
Before we dive in, we do want to say, we love Discord. Aside from it being free, Discord offers quite a bit for team chats and community building. We also believe AirSend has the potential to one day reach the repertoire of Discord. To see how Discord fares as a team chat, click here. With all that being said, both platforms are going to be judged and analyzed solely on these five essentials and nothing more. Without further ado, let’s dive into the community battlefield: Discord vs. AirSend.
Deep Connection
The attribute of a strong community is to have deeper connections among conversations. When it comes to Discord and AirSend, one needs to ask which platform would be best for building connections with members? Which platform can you gain and receive the most connections with?
Discord is known for its already preexisting groups. Due to the high amount of existing groups on Discord, some users may not find the platform a viable choice for creating communities. Especially, if there is already a community out there. Most of Discord’s communities also have well over 500 members. Due to the high volume of members, some who are looking to connect with others may find Discord a bit difficult to use.
Alternatively, AirSend’s latest feature of public channels allows for deep connections to be made. Discord is a great product for joining communities. However, by choosing Discord, you may also have to sacrifice some attributes, such as building genuine connections with others.
Finally, in terms of deep connections, we feel that we must also mention invite links. The question is, which platform is easiest to invite members?? The answer is both! Both Discord and AirSend communities have instant invite links. Next on our agenda is community size.
Community
As previously mentioned, Discord is known for having large communities. Part of the reason Discord has large communities is because the platform is originally marketed towards gamers. There are a ton of gamers out there, so it would make sense that Discord’s communities are naturally large. We will mention later why building small communities with Discord is a bit hard. For now, let’s continue talking about community size.
AirSend is a great platform for small and medium-sized communities. However, whenever it comes to community size, you have to ask yourself how genuine do you want your connections to be? Both platforms offer the ideal connection and community size. But remember, the larger the community, the harder it will be to maintain a real connection. This is often because of the signal-to-noise ratio which decreases as the community size increases. What this means is that users will often feel like they are being spammed with messages.
UI Design
Ask yourself this question, what platform do you envision your fellow members using the most? Which platform will be the most aesthetically pleasing? The comparison is simple. With Discord, you have a similar design to Slack. The view looks busy with a bunch of colors, messages, channels, gifs, memes; Basically, everything you could imagine in a text chat, all visually appear on the screen at the same time.
AirSend’s UI
Lastly, the way Discord is laid out, each room requires a channel made. For instance, you make a server, and in that server is a channel for announcements, a channel for rules, a channel for what the community interest is, a channel for sources, etc. This is nice if you really like well-organized channels, but this also takes time away connecting with others because you will be continuously switching from channel-to-channel.
Discord’s UI
Alternatively, AirSend has a clean UI design which makes the usability extremely easy to use. Both platforms are visually appealing in their own way. It is all a matter of choosing which design suits your community more.
UX- Usability
Now, even though both platforms have their respective aesthetic look, when it comes to choosing the right tool to host your community, usability needs to be accounted for. Discord is one of those platforms where if you aren’t tech-savvy, you won’t be using the platform to its maximum potential.
Further, Discord is one of those tools that require time spent to learn the product, such as integrating bots, using mark-up and markdown language, HTML, permissions for members and moderators, and many more. There is an overwhelming amount of features to Discord that can appear intimidating. Especially if users aren’t tech-savvy.
AirSend’s usability is much easier in comparison. Though we do not currently have all the customization that Discord has, we do like to think we have easier usability. With clear instructions to guide you in making your private and/or public channel, you do not have to spend time researching and learning how to use the product.
Further, unlike discord, we offer built-in file storage, task management, and a built-in “about-section” all in one area. This eliminates the use of extra channels and makes communication flow easier. With task-management you and your members can remind each other of meetings, assign tasks to complete (like finishing a book for a book club), and best of all, with our task management, everyone stays in the loop.
Capabilities/Features
We have finally reached the end of our blog post. So far, we have covered the four essentials of running a community. Those are,
Connectivity
Community
UI Design
UX
Our last topic of discussion is the capabilities and features of the tools. Boiled down each tool offers extensive features and capabilities. Arguably, Discord may have more to offer in terms of features, such as integrations, bots, custom emojis, moderators, and many more.
However, with AirSend, we believe that while having a lot of features is great for a community, connecting should be the priority. With the poor signal-to-noise ratio happening in Discord, users will have a hard time building discussion, relationships, and interests.
Last but not least, when it really comes down to choosing the platform for your community, make sure it is a platform you and your members enjoy using and can build memories upon.
AirSend is a versatile digital workspace that helps communities to share files, send messages, and complete tasks. See how AirSend can help you.
Recently, there has been an emphasis on alternatives to Microsoft Teams for team communication. The reason is that team chats, like Microsoft Teams, often forget that simplicity is the key to productivity.
Microsoft Teams major selling point is that it works with Office 365. It only makes sense that if you rely on most of your work through Office 365, that you would also use Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams UI design is similar to Slack, so those transitioning will find it easy-to-use. Though Microsoft Teams carries the team’s chats, meetings, files, and other apps in one place, some users find it difficult to use. Finally, Microsoft Teams daunting prices are questionable to the product’s worth. Does having to pay more money than what you are receiving worth it? You might not realize this, but there are many great Microsoft Teams competitors you could be using right now.
We realized that Microsoft Teams is not for everyone. We realized that there is a market for team chats that are more affordable, simple, easy-to-use, and versatile. That is why we made AirSend and why we think it’s a great Microsoft Teams alternative.
AirSend is a perfect team chat app that not only allows you to have seamless conversations, but also to share/organize files, track your tasks, and keep notes.
Though we like to think we are the best, we also take the time to acknowledge our competitors who also deliver. Here is a list of our seven best alternatives to Microsoft Teams
AirSend
Discord
Slack
Riot.im
Hangouts
Wire
MatterMost
In this blog post, we will discuss specific features and functions, pricing tiers, and the pros and cons of each platform. Without further ado, let’s dive into the seven best alternatives to Microsoft
It would be weird if we didn’t believe our product was the number one alternative to Microsoft Teams. AirSend is the prime product dedicated to seamless conversation and collaboration. AirSend features ideal collaboration tools, such as task-management, premium built-in file storage, video/audio 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 before May 15th, you can get AirSend Pro free for one year! In the picture below are the features that come with AirSend Pro.
To see what each plan’s specific features and functions are, click here to view our pricing page.
Pros to AirSend
As said before, AirSend’s biggest positives are seamless conversation and built-in collaboration tools. But, AirSend doesn’t stop there. The biggest alternative to Microsoft Teams, aside from our clean and simplistic design, is that we offer Office 365 integration. This means, that you can still rely on Office 365 to get your work done, but now with easier and faster communication. This makes AirSend a fabulous Microsoft Teams alternative. To learn more about this, read our blog post.
Finally, we offer more storage and sufficiently better pricing.
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.
Discord is a great alternative to Microsoft Teams. While the product is originally meant for gamers, they offer a lot of features for a free communication tool, such as an all-in-one voice and audio chat. They also offer channel organization, only placed in a more complex UI design.
Pricing
Another benefit is that the product 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.
Pros to Discord
Unlike Microsoft Teams, Discord has amazing channel organization. Additionally, like AirSend, Discord offers a built-in community. While having seamless communication, you can also be a part of the community you love.
Cons to Discord
As said before, the product is originally meant for gamers. That being said, the product lacks task management. They also do not have a clean and simple design. Because of this, some users can find Discord a bit overwhelming to use.
Slack is known as the king of integrations. That being said, Slack’s main functionality is to get work done through third-party integrations.
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.
Pros to Slack
Slack is originally known as a communication tool. The product also offers channel organization, threads, private and public channels, and built-in voice and audio calls. Slack is also a communication tool many people have heard of and use, which makes Slack one of the top Microsoft Teams competitors.
Cons to Slack
The biggest con to Slack is its overwhelming UI design and multiple tabs. Slack also requires you to create an account for each team you join. This can become troublesome when trying to manage your day-to-day tasks.
Finally, in order to get work done, Slack users mostly rely on third-party integrations, which also requires separate accounts. If you are looking for a team chat tool that has built-in features to help with workflow productivity and minimizes account sign-ups, Slack may not be ideal.
The selling point for Riot.im is that they are an open-source, interoperable collaboration app. Don’t panic! There is nothing complicated about this. As a matter of fact, this just means that Riot.im has the capability to build bridges with users who use other team chat apps. They are currently running on Web, iOS, and Android.
Pricing
Riot.im is currently free, with future plans to have paid, hosted accounts.
Pros to Riot.im
The major pro is that Riot.im can connect to other chat teams, such as Slack, Gitter.im, IRC, Twitter, and SMS. The other positive is that Riot.im gives you the option to host your own open-source servers.
Cons to Riot.im
Riot.im lacks other tools needed to make a successful team chat software. While the feature of building bridges to other team chat software is certainly a game-changer, Riot.im lacks the ability to have integrated task management and built-in notes. Though it is much easier to use compared to Microsoft Teams, Teams offers more features to get work done.
Hangouts Chat is the same concept as Microsoft Teams, except it is owned by Google. The perk and perhaps the biggest selling point is the G Suite integrations.
Pricing
Because Hangouts Chat and Meet are integrated with GSuite, you have to pay for the GSuite Plans.
The basic plan is $6 monthly, per user, with the main limitation of 30 GB to your Google Drive.
The next plan is Business, which is $12 monthly, per user and an unlimited Google Drive Space.
Finally, there is the Enterprise plan, which is $25 monthly, per user.
Pros to Hangouts Chat
Hangouts Chat is a good alternative to Microsoft Teams in that they offer better pricing. Essentially if you want a team chat app that is integrated with the tools you work with, like G Suite, and for a significantly better price, Hangouts Chat is the choice.
Cons to Hangouts Chat
One of the common issues seen with Hangouts Chat is that several users fear that Google will shut down integrations that are often used.
Finally, Hangouts Chat does not support built-in audio and video calls. Rather, you must have a separate app, Hangouts Meet. If you are looking for a team chat tool that carries built-in audio and video call, Microsoft Teams would be the better choice.
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.
MatterMost is a wonderful communication tool to have that is specifically designed for having a private cloud and an opened-sourced channel. And it’s a great option if you’re looking for an open source alternative to Microsoft Teams.
Like Microsoft Teams, MatterMost targets large enterprises. However, unlike Microsoft Teams, MatterMost implements 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. They also offer over 600 integrations
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
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.
Result
As said before Microsoft Teams is good to use if you rely on Office 365 for your daily needs. But, there are other team chat apps that offer 365 integration, without the Teams. Still get work done relying on Office 365, but get work done efficiently with a better-designed communication app.
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.
Often times, Accountants need a reliable communication platform. They also need a platform in which they can effectively get work done, such as task management, notes, and most of all, top-notch file organization. It can be pretty difficult to have various platforms to manage all your work. That is why we made AirSend.
AirSend is designed to help get the work done all from one place. We offer seamless conversation through a clean and clear easy-to-follow design. Further, we offer built-in task management, built-in file storage, and a ready-made note section. One of our latest features, which is extremely helpful to those who have clients, is our Microsoft integration.
With our latest integration, you can now manage all your tax statements, bookkeeping records, forms, and more all with a click of a button. Having this integration eases the extra time of downloading and uploading the same files- only edited.
Another neat feature to have when creating your client portals are channel templates. Essentially, copy the channel template, which carries all your standardized forms for new clients, into your newly created channel. No more digging through files to finding the right forms.
We also carry a powerful search system in which you can find everything with ease. A huge stress reliever. Finally, the coolest feature of them all is our new feature, public channels. For more information on how to make a communication client portal with AirSend, we have attached a video.
The best part of all, we aren’t stopping with what we currently have. We are continuously unleashing new updates to help with maximum productivity.
AirSend helps accountants and professionals create a versatile digital workspace to share files, send messages, and complete tasks. See how AirSend can help you.
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.
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/.
Capture of AirSend Public Channel
So let’s say you and your friend want to venture out and connect with a small group of people who carry the same interests as you. How do you take the first step in building your own community?
One of the more popular answers is online communities. Having online communities through real-time chat programs are an effective way to form online connections with other people.
Sometimes, we don’t always have the tools needed to build a community. That is why we made AirSend. With AirSend’s new feature of public channels, the possibilities are endless with your community
The latest and greatest feature to AirSend allows anyone to build their favorite communities.
AirSend’s public channels add all the features needed to help seamlessly run your community. Features, such as built-in actions, premium file organization, built-in wiki, and office integrations.
AirSend also offers a clean UI design, which makes the usability is incredibly easy.
The question is then, “How do I best set up my AirSend community?” In this blog post, we are going to show you how to make an AirSend public channel in five easy steps. Let’s dive in.
Create your Snazzy Channel
Before we can dive into the exciting part, we first need to get through the basics. This is the first and probably most important step before doing anything else.
This is a vital step because not only is it the gateway to creating your community, but this is also where you show your fellow members what your community is about.
As you can see from our lovely gif, creating a public channel is as easy as that! Here is also a mini-step guide for creating your public channel.
Click on the large box that says, “Create a Channel”
Make your Community name and description
Checkmark the “make channel public.”
Now let’s get to the exciting parts.
Customize your Community!
Customize your community however you want! Build your own wiki, change the background, and even change the logo. This is a great feature because when users set up their community with AirSend, they do not have overwhelming options for customizations.
Communities lie in connections being made. Having aesthetic features are extra steps to help you get there.
Capture of Customized AirSend Public Channel
Copy Channel URL
That’s it! All you have to do is copy the public link (invite URL) found in your channel settings. Your channel settings is located at the top of the screen. After you have copied your link, send it to everyone you know. Anyone who has your public link can send it to other people as well.
The cool thing with AirSend public channels is that users will be able to see their community grow. Start connecting with people over AirSend. Take control of who you want in your community, and most importantly have fun with it. This next step will be for new members joining an AirSend community.
Explore your Future Community
For potential members, users will receive a public link address. Clicking on the public link address gives you a read-only view and the ability to download files. After exploring the contents, all you have to do is create an AirSend account and join your public channel.
Interact
Great! Now you have a complete step-by-step guide on how to make a community with AirSend. Get inspired and build connections.
For a full tutorial video look below!
Our goal with AirSend is to do less with more. Our mission is to be the #1 team chat tool for communities, professionals, and innovators. AirSend is a versatile digital workspace to share files, send messages, and complete tasks. See how AirSend can help you.
To see the latest updates to AirSend, read our blog post.
Image of Workchats
Recently, there has been an emphasis on Slack alternatives for team communication. The reason is that team chats, like Slack, forget that “less is more.”
Slack is known for its top-notch functionality and versatility, however, with a continuous path of innovation, Slack can seem a bit overwhelming. Aside from the neverending features of Slack, the monthly cost to have an account also builds up. For Slack Standard, it is $6.67 monthly, and for the Plus version, it is $12.50 monthly. Further, Slack only offers third party file storage and task management. With AirSend, we have a built-in file-storage and task management. To see how AirSend is an alternative to Slack, read our blog post.
We realized that Slack is not for everyone. And because of this, we realized that there is a market for team chats that are more affordable, simple, easy-to-use, and versatile. That is why we made AirSend.
AirSend is a perfect team chat app that not only allows you to have seamless conversations, but also to share/organize files, track your to-do’s, and keep notes.
Capture of AirSend
Though we like to think we are the best, we also take the time to acknowledge our competitors who also deliver. Here is a list of our seven best alternatives to Slack:
AirSend
Discord
Microsoft Teams
Mattermost
Zulip
Riot.im
Rocket.Chat
In this blog post, we will discuss specific features and functions, pricing tiers, and the pros and cons of each platform. Without further ado, let’s dive into the seven best alternatives to Slack.
Of course, AirSend is at the top of the list. It would be weird if we didn’t believe that our product was the best alternative to Slack.
One of the selling points to AirSend is its seamless communication. This feature is designed to make your life easier. We do that by allowing you to switch from channel to channel without ever having to leave your current tab.
Having seamless conversations also allows you and your clients to continuously stay in the loop. Whereas with Slack, you need to have an account for each team you are in, AirSend is an open network. In other words, AirSend requires only one sign-up. You can now also sign up with your Google account.
Pros to AirSend
As said before, AirSend allows for easy seamless communication. Compared to Slack which only allows 10,000 of your team’s most recent messages, AirSend’s message history is unlimited.
AirSend combines the attributes of our competitors with a clean and simple UI design. We replace Slack, Microsoft Teams, GDrive, Todoist, and Trello all together. Best of all, if you sign up now, you can get AirSend Pro free for one year!
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.
Discord is a great platform that enables all-in-one voice and text chat. Slack and Discord carry almost the same UI design, so if you are looking for a “busy” design, Discord may be a good option for you. Further, the selling point to Discord is that they give you full control over your server.
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.
Pricing aside, the great thing with Discord is that it does not carry the overwhelming functionalities of Slack.
Capture 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.
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. The UI is very similar to Slack and they even offer the same functions and capabilities.
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.
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.
Lastly, if you are wanting to look for a team chat platform with integrations, Slack would be the choice. But if integrations do not matter, and you use Office 365 daily, Microsoft Teams is the go-to choice.
Mattermost is a wonderful communication tool to have that is specifically designed for having a private cloud and an opened-sourced channel.
Like Slack, Mattermost targets large enterprises. However, unlike Slack, Mattermost implements 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 more expensive than Slack, 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 a great alternative to Slack if your organization is large enough to have or require self-hosted team messaging.
Cons to Mattermost
Now, with all the positives said, I am sure you are wondering why Mattermost is not above Microsoft Teams. Well, for the specific cons we are about to mention, Microsoft Teams has.
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.
With team chat software there should be an emphasis on various mediums of communications. These mediums should offer text, audio, and video, or a greater alternative should one of these mediums be absent.
The selling point: Hangouts Chat offers virtual rooms that can hold up to 8,000 people. Further, like Slack, users can create threaded conversations, and bots that can integrate with G Suite and other third-party platforms.
Hangouts Chat is much like Microsoft Teams in that Hangouts Chat is deeply integrated with the G Suite Package. The perks to this are being able to view files directly from Drive and Docs directly in conversations.
Pricing
Because Hangouts Chat and Meet are integrated with GSuite, you have to pay for the GSuite Plans.
The basic plan is $6 monthly, per user, with the main limitation of 30 GB to your Google Drive.
The next plan is Business, which is $12 monthly, per user and an unlimited Google Drive Space.
Finally, there is the Enterprise plan, which is $25 monthly, per user.
Pros to Hangouts Chat and Meet
Like Slack, Hangouts Chat offers dedicated space for group conversations. Unlike Slack, each room in Hangouts Chat is private by default. This means that you have control over who you can invite to your room.
There is also the smart reply feature like that of what you see in your Gmail. The biggest pro, however, is that Hangouts Chat is deeply integrated with GSuite.
There is also an app called Hangouts Meet. This app is made for video calls. The Hangout Meet offers a bot that integrates directly with your Google Calendar to schedule meetings for you.
Cons to Hangouts Chat and Meet
Though Hangouts Chat supports integrations, they do not support the same amount of integrations that Slack has. Several users fear that Google will shut down apps that are often used. Due to this fear, users lack the assurance or trust in Google.
Furthermore, there are no notification settings specific to rooms. Though Hangouts Chat and Meet do not offer all the integrations that Slack has to offer, Hangouts Chat is easier to use. Lastly, Hangouts Chat and Meet are two separate apps, so when trying to find an all-in-one workspace, Hangouts Chat and Meet may not be suitable.
If you have GSuite, Hangouts Chat and Meet are perfect to use.
The selling point for Riot.im is that they are an open-source, interoperable collaboration app. Don’t panic! There is nothing complicated about this. Matter of fact, this just means that Riot.im has the capability to build bridges with users who use other team chat apps. They are currently running on Web, iOS, and Android.
Pricing
IT’S FREE! Riot.im is currently free, with future plans to have paid, hosted accounts.
Pros to Riot.im
The major pro is that Riot.im can connect to other chat teams, such as Slack, Gitter, IRC, Twitter, and SMS. The other positive is that Riot.im gives you the option to host your own open-source servers
Cons to Riot.im
Riot.im lacks other tools needed to make a successful team chat software. While the feature of building bridges to other team chat software is certainly a game-changer, Riot.im lacks the ability to have integrated task management and built-in notes.
In terms of integrations and features, Slack has more to offer.
However, if you are looking for something simple and clean, then Riot.im is worth a shot.
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.
But there is no need to worry! If Rocket.Chat is not a good tool for you, there is six other alternative team chat software that would certainly able to adhere to your needs.
Results
Our goal with AirSend is to do less with more. Our mission is to be the #1 team chat tool.
We want to deliver a team chat platform that allows you to take care of all your business needs in one place. A platform that delivers maximum productivity.
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.
Have conversations, share files, complete tasks, and get work done in one space.
