I ruled out any that didn't meet the above criteria, then set up test accounts for the services that did.

I reviewed and tested 35 communication apps before selecting the ones on this list.

And there should be integrations with other apps, to make getting work done easier. Sharing a file should be as easy as clicking-and-dragging. You're here to work, and the ideal team communication app should make this easy with collaboration-specific features. There should be keyboard shortcuts on the desktop, gestures on mobile, and other ways to quickly move from channel to channel within the team messaging app.Įnable collaboration. User interfaces need to be clear, without unnecessary clutter. Members need to be able to navigate the various conversations quickly. The best team chat apps offer voice and video communication, and also offer some way for users to share their screen for collaboration.Īre easy to navigate and control. Some conversations are smoother out loud. Filtering features make this a lot easier. When it comes to work chat, your team should be able to quickly find past conversations for relevant information. There is nothing more frustrating than having the same conversation multiple times, which is why search is essential. Offer universal search with filtering features. The ability to tag people and to pull them into conversations they otherwise might miss is also a must. Ideally conversations can be broken down even further than that, using threads or similar features to keep people from talking over each other. This means channels that team members can join, or not join, depending on what's relevant to them. The best work chat app organizes conversations in a way that enables this, allowing users to decide what they do and don't see. Some messages need to be seen by your entire company, others need to happen at the team level, and not every team conversation needs to involve your entire team. I think a few features are universally necessary, however, and kept them in mind while I was reviewing apps. I've been reviewing and writing about software since 2009, working remotely the entire time, so I'm extremely familiar with the ins and outs of team communication software.Ĭommunication is tied to culture, and every company is different-this is why there are so many work chat apps on the market. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site-we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software.

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