“Teamwork makes the dream work!” truly said, someone! Collaboration is a critical component of success for any startup, whether online or in person.
It’s true. Bootstrapping a startup isn’t an easy job. There’s a lot to be done, a lot to be streamlined. But the first thing to figure out will always be communication.
In other words, what will be the mode of communication for your new business? Is it going to be remote or entirely in-person? What about a hybrid setup?
Since remote working has been the go-to preference for most companies after Covid, big or small, chances are that you might have teammates not working under the same roof. Some might be working from home, and some might be in a different time zone.
While these are some of the essential considerations that concern most startups, the good news is there are plenty of versatile and affordable collaboration tools to make your life easier. With the plethora of customization and features they offer, you do not need to worry about team communications anymore. They are suitable for all work modes. And the budget? Yes, most are free and offer paid plans to fit your budget comfortably.
Choosing among these tools can be a hard nut to crack, so don’t worry; we’ve got you. Here are the 8 useful and robust collaboration tools for startups that will make every entrepreneur’s life easier.
They are the following:
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Slack
Let’s get this straight! If you are looking for a versatile collaboration tool for your startup and haven’t yet tried your hands on Slack, you are missing out on a lot!
Founded in 2013, Slack is ideal for startups working entirely remote, aimed at improving teamwork throughout a business. Described as “One platform for your team and your work,” it’s versatility and user-friendly interface have contributed to the success of millions of teams globally, making it a top choice for startups looking to improve their communication and collaboration efforts.
In fact, with 32.3 million daily active users as of 2023, Slack is expected to generate more than $4.22 billion by the end of 2025.
The best thing about Slack is its ability to replace the hassles of emailing altogether, besides its text messaging and instant messaging features.
Pro tip: This excellent well-designed mobile and desktop collaboration tool is the next go-to for startups that are working remotely.
Best For: Team Communication. It’s free for small teams!
How Is It Suitable For Businesses: With its admirable customization tools, including color themes, emojis, screen formatting, mode types, sidebar edits, and different status-changing options, Slack’s a must. Besides, it is super beneficial for productivity when you don’t want notifications barging in.
Further, this channel-based collaboration tool has 800+ integrations supporting Google Drive, Trello, and Zoom, making it a versatile solution for startups of all sizes. With Slack, you can create channels for different projects, teams, or departments, start threads, and direct messages making it easy to organize conversations and find information quickly.
With Slack Pro (the lowest-priced tier), you get the following:
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10 GB storage per member
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Screen sharing
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App integrations
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File sharing
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Group Huddle options
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Channel customizations
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Access to message history
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Two-factor authentication settings
Pricing: Priced at $7.25 per person/month when billed yearly, Slack Pro works best for small businesses. The Business plan, however, is most suited for large firms working on an international scale.
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Asana
Are you thinking about streamlining workflows and on-time delivery of projects for your startup? The answer is simple: Asana.
This popular project management tool is the best if you are big on real-time collaborations, proper tracking, and delegating team projects. Founded in November 2011, Asana helps create tasks, assign them to team members, set due dates, and track progress all in one place. With almost 75,000 organizations using it and 50,000 paying customers, Asana offers features like lists, boards, calendars, and Gantt charts to consolidate your workflow.
Compatible with desktop and mobile, it is ideal for creating subtasks within projects and tracking individual tasks, portfolios, and goals. To keep your work on track, you can set your deadlines and collaborate with a team member by mentioning them in the task.
Pro Tip: Ideal for project management for startups for larger teams of 15+, use it to map out your significant and most complex projects.
Best For: Team-task management and collaboration
How Is It Suitable For Businesses: What’s better than Asana to manage and streamline your workflow? To iron out the issues and check task coordination, it has various features like automated notifications, note sharing, uploading attachments, searching, change management, and prioritizing completion.
Further, it allows third-party integrations, including Slack, Google Drive, and Dropbox, other than
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Cloud-based file sharing
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Status update features
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Inbox mentions
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Unlimited storage (100MB per file)
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Task follow-up features
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Unlimited assignees
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Automations
Pricing: Asana is an absolute deal stealer for small businesses regarding its affordability. Priced at US$10.99 per user per month billed annually for its Premium Plan and US$24.99 per user per month billed annually for its Bussiness Plan, it’s a bit of a splurge when compared to other tools. But its benefits are worth the cost, which is why SMEs should try its Basic Plan before committing to the Premium one.
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Trello
If you want something minimalist and cost-effective for your startup, Trello can help you with that. As the proverb goes, “ Sometimes less is more” Trello, similar to Asana, is a minimalistic web-based project management tool that uses a visual, card-based system to help teams organize their tasks and collaborate more effectively.
Founded in 2011, with Trello, you can create boards for different projects and add cards for individual tasks or assignments. You can assign tasks to team members, set due dates, and attach files or comments to cards, making it easy to keep everyone on the same page. What makes Trello more lucrative is that the core product is free, regardless of location or industry.
With almost 90 million registered users, it is ideal for startups that envision flexibility and versatility, allowing teams to structure their work in ways that make sense for them. 80% of Fortune 500 companies leverage Trello to organize everything from their team’s daily work to their company’s future growth strategy.
Pro Tip: Get hold of this collaboration tool as and when you can, as it is an excellent choice for small startups with less than 10 employees and new to team-working technology.
Best For: Ease of use during teamwork
How Is It Suitable For Businesses: Easily integrated into various other tools, including Slack, Google Drive, and Dropbox, Trello makes it easy for startups to connect all of their workflows easily. This simple Kanban-based tool lays out your team tasks as a pinboard where you can add customized columns, dragging each as you progress.
For example, depending on the status of a particular project, you can add cards like “planned,” “in progress,” “up for review,” and “done” and update the same. Easy right? Besides, you also get:
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Cloud-based file sharing
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Unlimited storage (10MB/file)
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Integrations with 200+ apps
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Customizable cards
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Public board management
Pricing: Trello is the best when it comes to pricing! Having 4 pricing packages, the free version is the best for up to ten team boards. Startups having more team members than that can go for the Standard or Premium Plan only for $5 per user/month if billed annually and $10 per user/month if billed annually, respectively.
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Statusbrew
Popularly known to be among the one of the best Hootsuite alternatives, Statusbrew is a social media management platform that also serves as a collaboration tool for startups. Social media management being a critical aspect of modern-day marketing; Statusbrew helps startups manage their social media accounts more efficiently.
It allows team members to work together on social media campaigns, assign tasks, and track progress streamlining the workflows to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Founded in 2011 and trusted by over 16 million users worldwide, Statusbrew is designed to help businesses of all sizes to boost their social presence, streamline their content management workflows, and precisely measure their campaign results.
Pro Tip: If you are a startup big on content scheduling, monitoring brand mentions, and comparing analytics, then Statusbrew is for you.
Best For: Social media management and analytics
How Is It Suitable For Businesses: With cutting-edge features and an intuitive interface, Statusbrew is the ultimate choice for startups aiming to improve their social media marketing strategy. Its actionable insights allow you to identify patterns in your brand’s performance and let you gauge your team’s lapses, if any.
It not only ensures that your socials are always active and engaging but also offers analytics tools that allow startups to track their social media performance and gather insights on their audience. Statusbrew also seamlessly integrates with Slack, Hubspot, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive to ensure more productivity.
Besides this, we cannot miss out on its social listening, sentiment analysis, and customer engagement tools that help startups stay on top of their customers’ needs and promptly respond to their queries and complaints. This tool also comes in handy if you’re looking for Google review management for multiple locations.
Additionally, you get the following:
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Activity Dashboard
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Publishing
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Reporting & Statistics
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Data Import/Export
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Alerts/Notifications
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Engagement Tracking
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Activity Tracking
Pricing: Statusbrew offers a range of pricing plans to fit different business needs and budgets. It has a Standard Plan of $129 per month, a Premium Plan of $229 per month, and an Enterprise Plan of Custom pricing. Go for the Standard or the Premium Plan as per your budget, or you can try it free for 7 days. For a detailed insight into this collaboration tool, you can book a demo to explore the robust features its offers.
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Wrike
Founded in 2006, Wrike is a project management tool that cannot be missed while discussing collaboration tools for startups. With 20,000 organizations using Wrike has become one of the most trusted collaboration software platforms for startups.
It allows teams to work together to manage their projects and efficiently manage their tasks and deadlines. Wrike scores high due to its easy-to-use interface providing stakeholders with visuals that help them glance at the information and have an idea of the task status and milestones achieved.
Pro Tip: If you talk about its shortcomings, there’s only one to ponder! That is its automation builder, which is neither easy to access nor use if you want to save your time and resources. So, if you are specifically looking for any social media automation tool, get Statusbrew, as mentioned above. It’s the best for automating your workflow.
Best For: Tracking project progress
How Is It Suitable For Businesses: Wrike offers startups excellent collaboration features like leading project boards, document sharing options, and editing. Like Asana, the platform allows you to schedule, monitor, prioritize, and track project progress–all in real-time, all with just a few clicks. Additionally, its robust security features are absolutely the best if you want to access or protect critical project information.
Besides, with Wrike’s lowest-tiered payment plans, you get the following:
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Collaborative dashboard
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Cloud storage integration features
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Kanban boards
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Spreadsheets
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Preset widgets
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Gantt charts
Pricing: Among the 5 payment plans that Wrike offers, the free tier is great for teams getting started for centralized task management. Startups of any size can work collaboratively for absolutely zero charges. However, it’s best to capitalize on its Team Plan for effective team management pricing at $9.80 per user/ month.
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Proofhub
If you are a startup mainly working around document sharing and proofreading, then ProofHub is your pick!
Founded in 2011, Proofhub is mostly used by 29% of startups with less than 50 employees and is one of the most simple and safe-to-use project management collaboration tools available in the market.
Its helpful features, like visual document sharing, tracking project changes with file versioning, and sharing ideas in threads or direct messages leveraging the group chat feature, make it best suited for start-ups that need to collaborate on single or multiple complex projects at the same time.
Pro Tip: Get Proofhub if your goal is to save time and money, as you don’t have to pay separately for apps like Slack, Trello, Evernote, or Google Docs. It simplifies your workflow in a single place.
Best For: Document versioning and sharing
How Is It Suitable For Businesses: If you think about its usability, the main focal point is its document sharing. It is best for startups working around a lot of documentation like accounting or coding and needs a lot of checks and revisions. The tool’s highlighting point is its “discussion” feature, which you can leverage to exchange and share information with your teammates. You get third-party integrations like Google Drive and Dropbox as well.
Additionally, its extra features of daily organizers and formats for reports, timesheets, and other data-intensive files are an absolute game changer.
However, the core features include:
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Proofing and file sharing
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Task tracking
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Calendar
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Announcement feature
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Multilingual translation
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Gantt charts
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Group chat
Pricing: When it comes to pricing, Proofhub offers a flat rate with unlimited users. Startups can opt for the Ultimate Control plan priced at $89/month, billed annually. It can be the most economical deal if you work with remote teams and clients and need custom access roles.
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Google Suite
The utility of Google Suite recently rebranded as Google Workspace, is absolutely a no-brainer. It’s the holy grail for businesses of all sizes and is one of the most accessible and widely used collaboration platforms. Established in 2006, it is used by 90% of Fortune 500 companies, with the average business having a 35% increase in productivity level.
Google Suite doesn’t even need a formal introduction. You get free and super-useful tools like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Sheets, Meet, Calendar, and Photos. Anything, just name it! It has pretty much everything that everyone globally knows how to use. And integration of a teleprompter makes Meet really convenient for businesses.
Its options are just out-of-the-world! All you need is just a stable internet connection. In fact, over 85% of businesses with more than 50 employees use Google Workspace for project management.
Pro tip: Get your hands on Google Suite now if you haven’t! Its features are to die for, and its flexible pricing options make it an absolute necessity for startups with a budget.
Best For: Collaboration, communication, and productivity
How Is It Suitable For Businesses: Google Suite is indispensable for startups for boosting the productivity of remote team members working on projects across multiple locations. This means that team members can collaborate on projects, edit documents simultaneously, and share files and information quickly, regardless of location.
Its highly customizable tools will help you use Google Drive to store and share files, Google Docs to collaborate on documents, and Google Sheets to track and analyze data. You can choose who can view the document and has edit access to it for security purposes.
Besides, you can customize the calendar and share it with your team members so they can get notified via email for meetings and events. While all these features are great, we cannot miss out on its cloud sync option, where everything gets stored in the cloud, so you won’t have to worry about losing important work documents or projects.
Pricing: Google Suite has 4 basic pricing plans, among which the Business Standard is the most economical for startups. Priced at ₹736 INR per user/month, a one-year commitment, it offers custom and secure business email, 150-participant video meetings + recording, 2 TB storage per user, etc. You can also try the free version of Google Workspace called Google Workspace Essentials, which provides basic video conferencing and collaboration tools.
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Monday.com
Designed for collaboration and targeted at managing project teams, Monday.com is a popular communication app for startups. Founded in 2012, 38% of Fortune 500 companies use Monday.com as their project management software platform, targeted to track tasks, workflows, and customizable dashboards.
Leading in various industries like tech, marketing, and finance, Monday.com offers value-for-money features like collaboration, time tracking, automation, and data visualization. It can streamline contributions and sync all project information in a single location, helping you make better decisions and improve team performance.
Pro Tip: Not strictly a collaboration tool, but with a sleek interface, Monday.com is your go-to if your startup niche is client-facing industries like design or marketing.
Best For: Designing and creativity
How Is It Suitable For Businesses: The intuitive nature of Monday.com makes it ideal for creative startups with unique client needs. Besides, the tool’s simplicity skips the hassles of user training and is excellent for customization so that teammates can easily collaborate on team tasks. Its Kanban boards and Gantt charts are a bull’s eye for brainstorming sessions.
Here’s what more you get:
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Time tracking
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Built-in reporting
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Third-party integrations
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Notification automations
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Top-notch security
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200+ dashboard templates
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Cloud-based file sharing
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Unlimited users
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Project scheduling
Pricing: Monday.com has a very distinctive pricing plan that is based on the number of seats taken. Unlike its competitor, ClickUp, its pay structure can be a pain point for startups with fluctuating team members. For those who want to take it for a spin first, go for the free trial or try its Standard or Pro plan, priced at $10 seat/month and $16 seat/month, respectively.
Wrapping It Up
If you want to make your startup’s job easier, smoother, and coordinated, these tools are your best friends. From user-friendliness to affordability to low maintenance, they provide it all!
By leveraging the right collaboration tools, startups can stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business world and bring their ideas to life more efficiently. In fact, up to 80% of businesses use social collaboration tools to enhance business processes.
You just need to take one step ahead, integrate these collaboration tools into your business processes, and make them talk to one another. Focus on their features and identify the best one ideal for your startup. Whether it’s Slack for real-time messaging, Trello for project management, or Statusbrew for automation, there’s a collaboration tool out there to fit every startup’s needs.
By adopting these best collaboration tools for startups, you can create a collaborative culture that promotes innovation, teamwork, and success. So, if you haven’t yet, explore these collaboration tools today and take your startup to the next level!
Authors Bio: Ahana Basu is a skilled and experienced content writer passionate about storytelling. With a creative mind and a natural talent for writing, she has been able to captivate audiences with her compelling content.
