Let’s get real; the days of MSN and AIM are far behind us. Corporations are moving away from instant messaging and opting for email communication or video chats. Today though, chat software is still as vital as it has been in the past. It is a great way to reach your clients or coworkers easily and see who is active and working versus who is offline.
Chat software today can now be transformed into work hubs, mixing chats, work items, and integration with the help of third-party apps. Adding chat software to your business’ way of communicating will only make your team more productive and successful.
With that being said, what chat software should you invest your time in? We’ve done all the research for you and chosen a few of the best that you and your team can start using immediately.
1. Slack
Slack has been around for a little while now, since 2003, and it is dominating the chat base world. Slack is praised for having over 1000+ integrations and a powerful search. You can look into the Slack for Team pack that has three separate plans. Each plan can cost a bit of money, but it’s worth what you pay for.
Their standard package costs $6.67 per month, while the Plus is $12.50 per month. They also offer a free version called Freemium, which gives you 5GB of storage, and only the last 10,000 messages you receive will be searchable.
2. Microsoft Teams
This tech giant also has its fingers in the chat software industry. Microsoft has initially been the mastermind behind Skype until they finally released Teams in 2016. Microsoft Teams can be integrated with your Office 365 tools, and you can share any Office or OneDrive document through it. Your team can also work on the materials together at the same time, and you don’t have to leave the app,
This chat software comes with four tiers. First, there is the free version, Business Essentials for $5 per month, Business Premium for $12.50 per month, and Enterprise, which you can contact Microsoft about. Microsoft Teams is a great chat software to use if you already use Office 365 and other Microsoft products.
3. Hangouts Chat
Google decided to try their hand at a chat app with Hangouts Chat. If you have a G Suite subscription plan this you probably already have this downloaded. Hangouts Chat has integration with G Suite tools, like Calendar and Drive. You can also host online meetings with Hangouts Meet, and the platform supports multiple languages and multinational teams.
Hangouts Chat was just released in 2018, so a lot of features are still being added to it today. They now have a snooze feature and emoji reactions, which is new to the platform. Hangouts Chat has three separate plans. The first is Basic for $5 per month, Business for $10 per month, and Enterprise for $25 per month. Each plan is excellent, you have to see which works best for your business.
4. HeySpace
HeySpace was initially designed as an innovative task management app, but now it includes chat. The app combines the benefits of both Trello and Slack that will help improve team communication and collaboration. When chatting with coworkers or clients, you can easily convert parts of your conversation into a task and adjust the detail.
5. SamePage
SamePage is excellent for companies with teams that are both large and small. It allows you to communicate and collaborate with your team and has tools and elements that work within the chat. You can team chat, video conference, share real-time documents, and file share all with this chat app. If all team members have a task, you can view it in the same place at the same time.
These were five of the best team chat software on the market today. Each one has its pros and cons and is designed to work well with numerous different businesses and clients. Check them out for yourself.
