If you are looking for productive outcomes then relying on just personal chat applications available at the workplace is not enough. Instead, use the best collaboration software to collaborate and monitor all the work updates.
Below we have listed the best collaboration software to meet the internal communication needs of different businesses.
Table of Contents
1. Mattermost Chat
Mattermost is one of the most reliable and trusted messaging platforms for enterprises. This open-source platform is self-hosted and helps in extending an exceptionally secure communication across different industries irrespective of their type and size. Mattermost can be deployed on private cloud within local server’s premises.
When it comes to instant internal communication within the organizations that require high privacy, Mattermost Chat serves as their most flexible partner. It’s popular in GitHub and offers extensive documentation for installation of docker.
Key Features:
- Custom workflow building
- Enables workflows of DevOps
- It supports migration
- Enterprise-grade security and scalability
2. Rocket.Chat
Popular for its open-source communication amongst the team, Rocket.Chat allows anyone to host their own chat communication service.
Other than the chat functionality, it offers some other great features like video or audio conferencing to ease out the team collaboration. Rocket.Chat also offers automatic translation in real-time in over 50 languages including end-to-end encryption and voice messages. The self-managed version of Rocket Chat allows the users to download the images on docker and install
Key Features:
- It offers an unlimited free plan
- Data importers are easy-to-implement
- Endless customization is supported by Rocket Chat that includes themes, integrations, powerful API, and plugins.
- Ability to scale as per the increasing needs
3. Etherpad
This real-time, web-based collaborative editor allows the authors to edit a text document while also seeing the other participants editing simultaneously in real-time. It displays the text of different authors in their own selected colors. It also allows meta-communication through chat. This open-source and free to use can be used for text-based project planning, research, education, keeping records of any event, or other forms of data.
Key Features:
- Easy to set up and requires no login.
- A new document for collaboration known as ‘pad’ can be created by anyone.
- It offers a chat facility to chat with different people using the same document and interact with others in real-time.
- It allows downloading the text of the pad document in HTML, plain text, PDF format, MS Word, or Open Document.
4. Wiki.js
Wiki.js is a powerful, modern, and open-source wiki app that is based on Git, Node.js, and Markdown. It is available as both a self-hosted platform and using ‘on-click’ install on AWS and DigitalOcean. It uses .md (Markdown) files to save the content directly there and sync continuously with a remote Git repository. Wiki.js offers integrated access control and allows login using Microsoft, Google, or Facebook social login or local authentication.
Key Features:
- Access can be allowed to all or some specific sections of the wiki. It also supports guest views.
- All the content is indexed automatically and can be accessed from any page using the search bar.
- Git-backed storage
- Any type of media content such as documents, images, videos, or any other type of files is possible to insert in the content.
5. Jitsi Meet
Jitsi Meet is an open-source, free video conferencing and instant messaging tool for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and web platforms. It helps the user to connect with team members or clients and share their desktop and presentation with them via a link for inviting new members. This app can be used directly in a browser or can be downloaded also. The developers or users across the world can use it also they can use its tools to build their own apps.
Key Features:
- It’s an open-source community.
- Jitsi allows chat, call, file transfer, conferencing, and more
- Jitsi Meet offers live streaming and recording feature
- It encodes or decodes the video or audio flows
6. EtherCalc
It is a web-based spreadsheet collaborating software that doesn’t require any signup to use. You can host EtherCalc in your own server and customize it according to your needs if you have the technical know-how. Using this software, you can work on the same sheet in real-time with different people. Also, it’s simple to share – just copy the URL and send it to the team members.
Key Features:
- Various formatting options available like adding borders and padding, align text, change fonts, number format, etc.
- Every spreadsheet has a unique link to share with collaborators
- Add functions facility allows you to make calculations, add data, and manipulate the data.
- Comment tab to ask questions and add additional information or follow up notes.
7. Nextcloud
Nextcloud is a self-hosted tool for team collaboration, built to protect the user data through various security layers. It offers a variety of products like Nextcloud Talk, Nextcloud Files, industry solutions, Nextcloud at home, and Nextcloud Groupware. Nextcloud offers control of data by implementing the authentication techniques of LDAP, Kerberos, and SAML. The code of this open-source application is available for developers on GitHub.
Key Features:
- Enterprise support
- It adheres to GDPR and HIPPA compliances
- It provides two variants – Nextcloud at Enterprises and Nextcloud at home.
- The feature to directly access the core engineering of Nextcloud.
8. Reveal.js
Reveal.js is an easy-to-use, open-source HTML framework for creating web presentations. You can use reveal.js either by using the HTML framework or by using the online editor. It allows you to create beautiful and fully-featured presentations for free. Open web technologies are used to make presentations with reveal.js. It means that the things you can do on the web can be also done in your presentation. With reveal.js, you can use CSS to change the style, use an iframe to add an external web page, and use their JavaScript API to add custom behavior.
Key Features:
- Speaker notes and external markdowns
- Facility to share your notes with others and export your presentation to PDF
- It comes with a wide range of features including Auto-Animate, nested slides, syntax-highlighted code, and LaTex support.
9. SOGo Groupware
It is an open-source collaboration software to share your address books, emails, and calendars in your community. It has a fast and professional looking AJAX-based web interface that focuses on scalability and simplicity. SOGo can be accessed through desktop or mobile devices and its web interface.
Key Features:
- Facility to assign specific rights to a group of persons or individuals
- Supports more than a dozen languages with the facility to submit your translation if it’s not available.
- Access to your mail account can be delegated to other people
- Supports groupware capabilities like CardDAV, CaIDV, WebDAV ACLs, WebDAV Sync, CaIDV auto-scheduling, and iCalendar.
10. Taiga project management
Taiga is an intuitive, easy, and powerful project management software for agile project managers, developers, and designers. This cloud-based tool is useful specifically for multi-functional teams to work together easily and effectively irrespective of what they use like Scrum, Scrumban, Kanban or just to track issues.
Key Features:
- Pre-configured integration with Slack, GitHub, Hipchat, Mattermost, and Gitlab
- Complete feature set that includes backlog management, sprint planning, issue tracking, Epics, wiki, burn down chart, and Kanban board.
- Extensive customization option
- Kanban tools for task management, road mapping, project planning, KPI monitoring, dependency tracking, collaborating, milestone tracking, and prioritization.
If you are one of our Linux VPS Hosting customers, we can install any of the collaboration software for you. Just ask one of our system administrators via ticket or live chat. We are available 24/7/365.