The best team collaboration software for a small business is a short stack, not a long list: one place for email and chat, one for meetings, one for projects, and one for files. For most small teams that means a collaborative email client like Missive or a chat app like Slack, Zoom or Microsoft Teams for calls, Asana or monday.com for projects, and Google Drive for files. Below are the 14 tools I recommend by use case, with current pricing and the trade-offs for each.

As a small business owner myself, I still wear a lot of hats and feel like there are always a million and one things left to do.

Keeping things running smoothly depends on clear communication and collaboration throughout the business. Some tools help, but there are so many that it’s hard to know which to pick without wasting time or money.

Chances are you searched online at one point and saw a list of 40 of the best software you could use. But trying 40 tools to see if they’re right for you is a full-time job in itself.

So I did it for you instead.

I’ve personally used most of the apps I recommend below, plus dozens of their alternatives, and I’ve helped several other small businesses find the right set of tools.

When deciding which tools are right for you, think about which areas of your business consume more time than they should. Are you spending too much time going back and forth with others, finding files, delegating tasks, building contracts, or marketing yourself online? Wherever you need to reclaim your time (or your team’s), that’s where you should invest first.

The best team collaboration software at a glance

Prices below are the lowest paid tier per user per month on annual billing unless noted. Monthly billing usually costs more; spot-check current tiers before buying.

How I picked these tools

I judged every tool on the same four things:

• Usefulness: does it remove a real bottleneck, or does it add one more place to check?
• Ease of use: can a new hire figure it out in a day without training?
• Price for a small team: seat minimums, seat bundles, and the cost of the plan you’ll actually need, not just the entry tier.
• How well it connects: whether it works with the rest of your stack, so you aren’t copying information between apps.

Best communication tools for team collaboration

Internal and external communication matter in any business. A study by Fierce found that 86% of employees and executives blame a lack of collaboration or poor communication for workplace failures. With more teams working remotely, being able to stay up to date through asynchronous communication is critical.

These are the most valuable tools we’ve found for it.

1. Missive

Best for: small teams that run the business out of email and want internal chat, delegation, and client channels in one app.

Missive is a collaborative email client and team chat app that small businesses use to manage internal and external communication in one place, without adding customers as guests in a chat tool.

Fewer things to keep up with

Have you ever wished all of your customers would send their questions through a single channel?

Me too.

But we both know that’s never going to happen. With Missive, a customer can send you an email, text message, WhatsApp message, or Facebook or Instagram message, and it lands in the same inbox. You can also add a live chat widget to your website.

That removes the need to switch between apps to read, reply, and delegate to other people in your company or support team. It’s all right there.

Missive handles internal communication too. Every conversation has an internal chat that customers never see, and you can create chat rooms for your whole organization, for each team, or for private 1:1 conversations, much like channels and direct messages in Slack.

Conversations around email using internal chat

One of the most useful features of Missive is the ability to add notes and have conversations around an email with a coworker without forwarding anything.

This is something we do all the time. When a member of our team needs help with a customer, they @mention a coworker and ask. The coworker sees the email in their own inbox, and both can chat right below the email thread without sending back-and-forth emails or pasting links into Slack.

As the head of my company, I’m bombarded with emails all day long. Some can go straight to the trash and some justify a reply immediately. Between those two extremes, there’s a ton I can delegate to others.

Instead of forwarding the email, adding it as a task in Asana, or sharing it in Slack, I tag the person I want to delegate it to and it’s immediately shared with them. I can add details so they can reply as themselves or draft a reply together with me before it goes out.

This single feature gives me back several hours per week that I can spend working on the business instead of always in it.

For outside collaborators like an accountant, contractor, or client, Guest Access lets you invite them into specific conversations to chat alongside the email, without paying for another seat.

Price

Missive gives every new team a 30-day free trial, no credit card required. Paid plans are $14 (Starter, up to 5 users), $24 (Productive, up to 50 users), and $36 (Business) per user per month on annual billing, or $18, $30, and $45 billed monthly. See the pricing page for the full comparison.

We’ve been on the Productive plan for a few years now because of the time we save with rules and integrations. Rules, integrations, and the AI assistant start on Productive, so that’s the plan most growing teams should budget for.

Beyond its core features (which work great on mobile, by the way), Missive supports integrations with tools like Trello, Asana, ClickUp, Pipedrive, HubSpot, and Zapier. It acts as our email client, customer support inbox, task system, calendar, and internal communication app, and saves us hours each month.

Trade-off: Missive doesn’t have built-in video calls, so you’ll still want Zoom or Teams for meetings. Live chat runs on your own Twilio account, which is an extra setup step.

2. Slack

Best for: fast internal chat between teammates.

Slack is one of the most common apps businesses of all sizes use to talk in real time or asynchronously. You can message, share files, hop on huddles, and get updates from third-party tools like Google Drive and Gmail.

Slack has channels you can use to separate different types of conversations. For example, you might have a channel only for operations and another only for talking with your CPA.

Price

Slack’s free plan keeps 90 days of message history. Pro is $7.25 per user per month on annual billing ($8.75 monthly), and Business+ is $15 per user per month on annual billing.

If you’re a service business with customers who work with you on long-term projects, you can bring them into shared channels with Slack Connect on paid plans. But if you have a high volume of customers, it’s a logistical nightmare to add them all to Slack, so you’ll still rely on email, live chat, phone, and text. That means more subscriptions and more apps to keep up with so things don’t slip through the cracks.

Trade-off: Slack works best for internal chat. Customer conversations stay in your inbox, which is why many small teams pair Slack with a shared inbox or replace both with a tool that combines email and chat.

3. Microsoft Teams

Best for: businesses already on Microsoft 365 and Outlook.

Microsoft Teams combines chat, video meetings, and file sharing, and it plugs into Outlook, OneDrive, and the rest of Microsoft 365. If your company already pays for Microsoft 365, you may have Teams already.

Price

Teams Essentials is $4 per user per month on annual billing and includes unlimited meetings with up to 300 participants and 10 GB of cloud storage per user. Microsoft 365 Business Basic, which adds business email and 1 TB of storage, is $7 per user per month on annual billing.

Trade-off: Teams is heavier than Slack and feels most at home inside a Microsoft setup. Teams on Google Workspace usually prefer Slack or Google Chat.

4. Zoom

Best for: video meetings with people inside and outside your company.

A few years ago it wouldn’t have been strange to talk to small business owners who hadn’t heard of Zoom. I doubt that’s the case anymore. Zoom hosts video and audio calls, meetings, webinars, and team chat.

Price

The free Basic plan lets you host meetings with up to 100 participants, capped at 40 minutes. You can work around this by having more efficient meetings (something we all need) or scheduling back-to-back meetings. Zoom Workplace Pro removes the limit (up to 30 hours per meeting) and starts at $14.16 per user per month on annual billing, or $15.99 monthly.

Slack supports calls too, but with Zoom you can meet with people who aren’t in your Slack workspace without any setup on their side.

Trade-off: another standalone app to manage, and the free plan’s 40-minute cap gets old fast for client meetings.

5. Loom

Best for: async video, walkthroughs, and training.

Text-based communication is great, but sometimes you need to send a video or screen recording so people don’t misinterpret you. That’s where Loom comes in.

Loom is one of the easiest asynchronous communication tools we’ve tried and outclassed alternatives like Vimeo and Vidyard. Once you finish recording, Loom gives you a link to share so people can watch instead of skimming your email, missing the context, and starting another needless back-and-forth thread.

Price

The free Starter plan includes up to 25 videos per person, 5 minutes each, for up to 50 workspace members. Business removes those limits and costs $15 per user per month on annual billing ($18 monthly).

Trade-off: the 5-minute cap on the free plan is tight for training videos.

6. RingCentral RingEX

Best for: small teams that want business phone, SMS, and video meetings from one provider.

Some small businesses still manage their communication like it’s 2012: one app for calls, another for messaging, another for video meetings, and somehow fax still sneaks into the mix.

RingCentral’s RingEX brings business calling, team messaging, video meetings, SMS, and fax into a single platform, so your team can communicate without constantly switching tabs. It gives you one business number that works on desktop and mobile, which helps a small team come across as more professional.

Price

RingEX starts at $20 per user per month on annual billing (Core) and goes up to $35 per user per month (Ultra). There’s a 14-day free trial.

Unlike chat-only tools like Slack, RingEX was built with voice reliability in mind (RingCentral’s strong suit), and it includes AI features like call summaries and notes. If your team is hybrid or spread across locations, it makes communication a lot less chaotic.

Trade-off: it’s priced like a phone system. If you don’t need business calling, a chat app plus Zoom is cheaper.

Best project management tools for collaboration

I can confidently say I’ve used every popular project management app out there and have yet to find a single one I’d call the best for everyone.

Every company is a little different. What works for a law firm won’t always work for a logistics company, a marketing agency, or a budding Shopify store. You have to figure out which one will work best for your business, your customers, and your team.

I highly recommend reviewing a tool’s public product feedback board before you even sign up for a free trial. You can usually find it by searching for:

• [name of the tool] + feedback
• [name of the tool] + canny board

See which feature requests have been around the longest with a ton of votes, and ask yourself whether you want to invest in a tool that hasn’t delivered what its customers keep asking for.

That being said, here are a few we’ve used and seen other teams succeed with.

7. Asana

Best for: teams that need structured projects, timelines, and recurring workflows.

Asana is one of the most popular task management systems available. It has a free plan, but we quickly realized we needed a paid plan to manage operations and get access to timelines (like a Gantt chart), dashboards, custom fields, rules, and task templates.

Asana doesn’t have native time tracking on its core plans, so if that matters, you’ll need an Asana time tracking integration like Everhour or Asana’s paid timesheets add-on.

A word of advice: if you use Asana, save yourself some frustration and go light on subtasks. Many features don’t play nice with them, and they work best as a personal checklist.

If you prefer a kanban approach, check out Trello. Asana has a board view, but it’s not nearly as flexible.

Price

Asana’s free Personal plan is meant for individuals. Starter is $10.99 per user per month on annual billing ($13.49 monthly), and Advanced is $24.99 per user per month on annual billing.

Trade-off: paid plans require at least two seats and are sold in seat tiers, so a team of six may end up paying for more seats than it uses. Keep that in mind.

8. ProofHub

Best for: growing teams that want project management without per-user pricing.

ProofHub is an all-in-one project management and team collaboration platform that keeps tasks, files, and project discussions in one place. You can create projects, assign tasks with deadlines and custom fields, and keep the conversation attached to the work instead of scattered across a chat app.

One feature worth calling out is the built-in proofing tool. If your team reviews creative assets like designs or ad mockups, reviewers can leave comments directly on the file instead of describing their feedback over email.

Price

ProofHub’s biggest differentiator is flat-rate pricing. Remember the Asana seat tiers above? None of that here: you don’t pay per user at all. The Essential plan is a flat $45 per month on annual billing for unlimited users and up to 40 projects, and Ultimate Control is $89 per month on annual billing with unlimited projects, custom roles, and priority support. There’s a 14-day free trial.

Trade-off: fewer third-party integrations than Asana or monday.com, so check that the tools you rely on are supported.

9. monday.com

Best for: visual project boards that non-technical teams pick up quickly.

You’ve probably seen their ads. We don’t use monday.com ourselves, but we tested it extensively and passed on it at the time because it didn’t support subtasks (it does now).

Price

monday.com has a free plan for up to 2 seats with 3 boards. Paid plans start at $9 per seat per month on annual billing (Basic), with Standard at $12 and Pro at $19. All paid plans have a 3-seat minimum.

Trade-off: timeline views, guest access, and meaningful automations start on Standard, so most teams outgrow Basic quickly.

Best file and document tools for collaboration

You’re probably already using one of these document collaboration suites:

• Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides
• Microsoft 365
• Zoho WorkDrive

But you still need a place to share files that don’t live in one of those editors. That’s where a file storage tool comes in.

10. Google Drive

Best for: teams already using Gmail and Google Docs.

Google has one of the best cloud storage options out there, especially for file sharing. You can store documents, pictures, videos, and just about any file type and access them from any device. If you need files offline, Google Drive supports that through its desktop and mobile apps.

Price

A free Google account includes 15 GB of storage shared across Drive, Gmail, and Photos. For business use, Google Workspace Business Starter is $7 per user per month with a one-year commitment ($8.40 on the flexible plan) and includes 30 GB of pooled storage per user plus business email. Business Standard is $14 per user per month with 2 TB per user.

I personally prefer Google Drive over all other options, but that’s because of the Google apps (Docs and Sheets) we use so much day to day.

Trade-off: Business Starter’s 30 GB per user fills up quickly if you store video or design files.

11. Dropbox

Best for: teams that aren’t tied to Google or Microsoft and work with large files.

If you’re not heavily invested in Google’s apps, check out Dropbox. It does the same core job as Google Drive, with strong file sync and large file transfers.

Price

Dropbox Basic is free with 2 GB of storage. Plus is $9.99 per month for one person with 2 TB, and Standard for teams is $15 per user per month on annual billing, starting at 3 TB for the team.

Trade-off: the free plan is much smaller than Google’s, and it gets more expensive than Google Drive as your storage needs scale.

Best marketing and social media tools for collaboration

Marketing is critical to growing your business. People can’t buy from you if they don’t know you exist. For most small businesses, social media is one of the best channels to generate demand, and it’s also the one that benefits most from back-and-forth collaboration.

12. Canva

Best for: creating social posts, flyers, and presentations without a designer.

Canva is one of those tools a company of any size can get a ton of value from. Hiring a graphic designer can be expensive, but with a few YouTube tutorials and 15 minutes, any small business can create professional-looking designs to promote on social media and attract more customers.

Price

Canva Free includes a large library of templates and lets you share designs for feedback. Canva Pro is $144 per year for one person and adds premium templates, AI tools, brand kits, and social scheduling. For teams, Canva Business is $250 per person per year (or $20 per person per month) and adds shared team workspaces, brand controls, and approvals.

The most common reason I’ve seen people upgrade is to schedule posts to social media directly from Canva without paying for another tool like Hootsuite or Sprout Social.

Trade-off: Canva Pro is for one person only, so a team of two or more needs Canva Business.

Best sales and contract tools for collaboration

Most small businesses have fewer than 20 employees, so you might be able to skip this section. If you’re a founder filling the roles of CEO, head of marketing, head of sales, and head of everything else, you don’t need tools to help you collaborate with yourself.

But if you have more than one salesperson, or your salesperson struggles to hand off deals to the people who handle operations, these tools can help.

13. PandaDoc

Best for: proposals, quotes, and contracts that need internal approval and e-signatures.

PandaDoc is useful when you need team collaboration on customizable contracts and sales documents with customers who don’t want to send physical files back and forth like it’s the 20th century.

Real-time editing and approvals

Two people sometimes work on a contract at the same time, especially for a complex agreement with a long-term customer. Once a contract is drafted, I review and approve it before it goes to the customer for legally binding e-signatures.

If the customer requests revisions, they can do it in PandaDoc and chat with us there. That’s far more efficient than redlining a Word document and emailing it back and forth.

Price

PandaDoc’s free eSign plan lets you send 5 documents per month. Starter is $19 per seat per month on annual billing ($35 monthly), and Business, which adds custom quotes, pricing tables, and CRM integrations, is $49 per seat per month on annual billing ($65 monthly).

Trade-off: the CRM and quoting features most sales teams want start on Business.

14. Gong

Best for: sales-heavy companies with several reps running a lot of calls.

Unless your sales process involves more than one rep per opportunity, I can’t think of many CRMs where the collaboration features are worth paying extra for.

The one truly collaborative tool we use in the sales process is Gong. It’s probably the single most impactful piece of technology we’ve invested in to boost revenue. Gong records and transcribes sales calls and uses AI to surface what’s working and what isn’t, so sales leaders can coach reps and improve close rates.

Price

Gong doesn’t publish pricing. It depends on the number of users and the license type, so you’ll need to contact their sales team.

Trade-off: Gong is built for teams with real call volume. A two-person sales team won’t get its money’s worth.

Bonus: the best tool for collaborating with your accountant

I’ve talked to a lot of small business owners and had quite a laugh when I learned we all deal with the same problem with our accountants:

What was this transaction for $43.52 on February 9th?

Nine times out of ten, I have no idea and have to dig through my email, filter by date, and search for the amount. Doing it once is tedious enough, but it never fails that I spend too long each week helping my accountant classify transactions because some companies don’t use clear statement descriptors.

QuickBooks and other accounting software let you add your accountant as a user, but they aren’t built for collaboration.

Collaborating with your accountant in Missive

This is where I have to recommend Missive once again. You can invite your CPA into specific conversations with Guest Access, which is included in every Missive plan, or set up rules on the Productive plan to automatically share and assign finance-related emails as they arrive.

It’s been months since I’ve had to help my CPA classify transactions. Does it save me a ton of time each month? Probably not. But when you’re already buried under a never-ending to-do list, every little win matters. If you run an accounting firm yourself, here’s how firms set up client work in Missive.

How to choose the right collaboration software for your business

Collaboration tools exist to cut the time your team spends chasing information. They aren’t one-size-fits-all, so start with the problem, not the feature list. Answer these questions before you sign up for anything:

• Where does work get stuck today? Email handoffs, unanswered customer messages, lost files, or unclear task owners each point to a different category of tool.
• Who will use it? Tools for internal chat, client communication, and project tracking have very different users.
• What does it cost for your real team size? Check seat minimums, seat tiers, and the plan you’ll need in six months.
• How much training does it need? If a tool needs days of onboarding, a small team won’t stick with it.
• Does it replace something? The best addition to your stack is one that lets you cancel another subscription.

Once you have a shortlist, use the free trials or request a demo. The most important thing is to choose software your team will actually use. If a tool is too advanced or hard to learn, people will quietly go back to their old habits.

FAQ

What is team collaboration software?

Team collaboration software is any tool that helps people work together on shared tasks, conversations, or files in one place instead of scattering them across email, chat, and spreadsheets. Common categories include team chat (Slack, Microsoft Teams), collaborative email (Missive), video meetings (Zoom), project management (Asana, monday.com), and file sharing (Google Drive, Dropbox).

What is the best collaboration software for small businesses?

There isn’t one tool that covers everything. Most small businesses do best with a collaborative email and chat app for communication (like Missive), a video tool for meetings (Zoom or Teams), a project tool (Asana or monday.com), and shared file storage (Google Drive). If your team lives in email and works with customers, start with communication, since that’s where most handoffs break.

Does Microsoft have a collaboration tool?

Yes. Microsoft Teams is Microsoft’s collaboration tool for chat, meetings, and file sharing. You can buy it as Teams Essentials ($4 per user per month on annual billing) or get it as part of Microsoft 365 business plans, which start at $7 per user per month on annual billing.

What is the best free collaboration software?

Slack, Zoom, Asana, monday.com, Loom, Canva, Google Drive, and Dropbox all have free plans that work for very small teams. Each free plan has a catch, such as Slack’s 90-day message history, Zoom’s 40-minute meetings, and monday.com’s 2-seat limit, so expect to upgrade as your team grows.

How many collaboration tools does a small business need?

Usually three or four: one for communication, one for meetings, one for projects, and one for files. Every extra tool is another place to check, so favor tools that combine jobs, like a shared inbox with internal chat instead of separate email and chat apps.

What are the benefits of collaboration software for a business?

Collaboration software centralizes information so everyone who needs it can find it, reduces duplicated work and errors, and makes it clear who owns what. For small teams, the biggest benefit is fewer dropped balls between people, especially on customer conversations.

Missive brings your team’s email, internal chat, and client channels into one app, so delegating a message takes one @mention instead of a forward. Try Missive free for 30 days, no credit card required.