Proactive, intentional communication lies at the heart of remote success. Without the visual cues and fluidity that comes with working in the same room, team interaction needs to be highly descriptive, structured and explicit. While that may sound daunting, it can actually foster a more considerate and effective working environment.
While we’ve already covered how remote communication works, this article lays out the remote team communication tools you’ll use on a daily basis. You won’t need every tool on this list—we’ve simply grouped together the most popular ones you should know about, with a few tips on what they offer and how to use them.
Video conferencing apps
Video conferencing apps help to keep remote communication personal and human, so everyone should have a webcam and a good pair of headphones. At Memory, we use video calls for complex or nuanced conversations (like problem solving and giving feedback), emergency situations, one-to-ones, kick-offs, presentations, demos, brainstorming, all-hands meetings and socializing. As a form of synchronous communication, always try to plan video calls ahead so people can factor them into their daily schedules. Remember to record them too, so others can review them asynchronously.
Zoom
Zoom is one of the best apps out there for group discussions, meetings and presentations. Quick and simple to run and set-up, you can share your screen and invite people to calls in just a couple of clicks. And if you have a large remote team, you’ll be glad to know that you can have up to 500 team members on one video conference... and, should you need it, up to 10,000 viewers!
Whereby
Formerly known as appear.in, Whereby is another excellent video conference tool. It works seamlessly from your phone, making it popular with people who work on the go. You can instantly start or join meetings, follow screen share presentations, and swap important notes or links with team mates using the in-app chat. Another perk is security; Whereby never store or analyze your video chats, so your privacy is never compromised.
Google Chat (Formerly Hangouts)
As a free Chrome extension, Google Chat is a popular choice for voice and audio calling. Its chat functionality also lets you share files and documents around calls, and these groups supports up to 150 people at once (although we advise against noisy mass communication). While it’s not as advanced as some of the other tools featured here, it makes a good stand-in while you search for the best solution.
Tandem
Tandem helps you see and chat with colleagues in a single click. Because you can hang out in group chats or video conferences while working, it’s a great way to feel as though you’re all sitting together at the same table. You can see which apps your team is working on and then hop on and join them – and because you can share cursors too, it’s easier than ever to guide teammates through meetings, demos or kickoffs. Much like an instant messenger, you can easily see who is and isn’t available for instant feedback from their status.
Tuple
Tuple was actually designed as a screen sharing tool for pair programming, but it’s a great choice for one-to-one project collaboration where you need to demo something on your screen. The tool prides itself on its super low CPU usage (using less CPU than Chrome does in "idle" mode!) and crisp 5K resolution, proving that remote collaboration doesn’t have to be laggy and frustrating. Effectively, it makes if feel like you’re working with others from the same desk and screen.
Prezi
You might know Prezi as the go-to tool for zoomable and engaging presentations. But Prezi has become so much more than that. For example, Prezi Video, their brand new video creator, puts you right alongside your content as you live stream or record, for a seamless and personalized experience that keeps viewers hooked. It’s easy to use and works seamlessly with Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or your favorite video conferencing software, helping you keep the personal connection in remote meetings or virtual classrooms.
Instant messenger apps
Instant messengers are the main site of daily remote communication—whether exchanges take place in global threads or private chats. They are ideal for solving small blockers, sharing quick check-ins and updates, synching and socializing. While the “instant” in their name makes them sound purely synchronous, they can be a powerful asynchronous tool. By documenting all your conversations, business-wide communications stay accessible and searchable, and people can catch up on news and conversations at their own pace.
Slack
Slack is one of the most popular tools used by remote teams, and for good reason. Billed as a “virtual office”, it’s a fun and accessible way to keep in touch—whether via instant messaging, video calls or group conferences. It works just as well for team communicating as for individual synching—you can set up different channels for different projects, create global threads for select team members, and chat privately or in groups. We recommend setting up publicly visible channels for each team and project, so discussion remains visible across departments. You can also invite your clients into your company Slack to help keep conversations personable, easy and publicly visible to your team.
Fleep
Offering a layout very similar to Slack, Fleep is also an ideal site for daily project and team communication. Each conversation has a pinboard, where you can highlight discussions, plans or decisions. Moving beyond discussion, you can set up tasks to organize and coordinate any new work. It’s accessible on mobile as well as web, and you can communicate with clients and consultants using Fleep outside your company without having to sign into a separate workspace.
Twist
Another direct Slack competitor, Twist aims to minimize the effort required to keep up with all your team conversations. Instead of having hundreds of conversations happening at the same time in multiple threads, channels and chats, Twist provides teams with an organized hub for more intentional communication. You can share ideas and updates without any distractions, and build a knowledge base that you can easily refer back to whenever you want.
Flock
Offering video conferencing and Slack-like instant messaging, Flock positions itself as an all-in-one virtual office. You can chat asynchronously via private or group conversations, or synchronously with face-to-face video/audio calls. After a call you can attach files and send links to any work you mentioned, and even create to-dos and reminders to keep everything in one place.
Signal
If security is important to you – and it should be, if you’re working remotely! – check out Signal, a super secure way to communicate with people anywhere in the world. Whether from your phone or another device, you can send files, videos, documents, photos and voice notes, and rest assured that they’re fully encrypted for maximum privacy. Signal’s developers can’t see your communication, and neither can anyone else. If having a cluttered chat history annoys you, you can also set your messages to disappear after a certain time, improving your organization as well as your privacy.
Chanty
If you're looking for a Slack alternative that offers a lot for a modest price, check out Chanty. This team chat app is made with collaboration in mind and you can easily turn your messages into tasks and assign them to your team members. Other powerful features include voice messages, audio and video calls, screen sharing and native integrations with apps like Trello, Asana and Dropbox. Even in the free trial, Chanty packs a punch that will make you consider it as your new team chat app.
Troop Messenger
With clean UI and no-nonsense pricing plans, Troop Messenger brings welcome simplicity to team communication software. Aside from all the usual real-time chat functionality, its advanced search filters allow you to filter by text, videos, images and files.You can also send bulk messages and files to multiple users at once with its Forkout feature – keeping mass communication straightforward.
Asynchronous team hubs
Aside from the more immediate video and messaging tools, remote work needs centralized asynchronous communication hubs for structuring projects, policies, processes, company knowledge and HR. These effectively house global company documents and help keep your entire company’s work visible. The best allow you to create rich posts, to-do lists and comment threads, and follow any relevant changes and updates using notifications.
Basecamp
Though it’s more known as a project management tool, Basecamp works well as an asynchronous communication hub for remote teams. It can be hard to assess progress and how everyone’s getting on when your team’s remote, but Basecamp keeps all project work transparent and everyone aligned. You can use to-do lists and message boards to keep everyone on the same page with projects, and set recurring reminders to your whole team to highlight what you’ll all be working on next. It’s also a useful place to archive HR info and documents.
Slab
Slab takes the best from Dropbox and Basecamp to make it more straightforward than ever for remote teams to organize documents, spreadsheets, strategy and HR docs—using this one flexible tool, jumping from different docs and apps will be a thing of the past. Slab lends itself particularly well for company knowledge hubs, being extremely structure and easy to search. By forcing you to decide where every post lives in your information hierarchy, it stops you creating orphaned content that gets lost in the virtual ether.
Clubhouse
Clubhouse is already a popular collaborative tool for software development, but the Clubhouse Write feature also makes it easy for your team to document and develop ideas together. You can comment in real-time and create and keep strategy docs, agendas, actionable items in one handy place. You can also follow the documents that are most important to you and be notified whenever there are new comments or updates. Even better, Write syncs with Clubhouse's product management platform, saving you time by automatically keeping everyone dated.
Todoist
This dynamic task management tool is great for documenting, organizing and prioritizing all your team work. Start by creating a to-do list and tagging those involved. You can attach files, set recurring due dates, centralize monotonous admin and even color-code tasks according to their urgency. Useful to managing your personal task list too.
Specialist communication tools
Depending on your role, you’ll likely use specific cloud-based tools for direct project communication. These almost all work using in-context comments, where you directly discuss a piece of work, but one on our list uses dashboards instead, since it mainly deals with communicating team management data. We’ve highlighted the most useful for common business tasks.
Markup
If you're looking for a beautifully simple and accessible tool for gathering team design feedback, look no further than Markup. The platform lets you quickly share images, PDFs and even web pages with colleagues, who simply add their thoughts as comments. It supports multiple users at the same time for live collaboration.
Dropbox Paper
In addition to keeping all company files in one place, Dropbox’s “Paper” solution provides a secure space for remote document collaboration. You can create, share, edit and comment on files and documents in real-time with others. Being part of the regular Dropbox family, it removes the need to use a separate cloud-based tool like Google Docs – keeping remote collaboration centralized and simple.
Timely
Timely is one of the best ways to visulize remote team work and performance, as well as coordinate resources. By automatically tracking everything you work on, Timely saves team time reporting by a whopping 75% compared to traditional manual tracking. It's an indispensable tool for just staying on top of how many hours you put in each day, as well as scheduling your week ahead and appreciating everything you work on. Live dashboards and progress bars keep remote teams aligned on tasks, capacity and activity—communicating progress without needing to interrupt each other.
Codestream
Codestream lets you discuss code with your team without ever using a pull request. Just highlight a code block and type a comment for intuitive, easy issue resolution. By letting developers discuss code directly in its environment, Codestream helps regular, productive group problem solving take place – ultimately strengthening the quality of your code base in the process.
