Sometimes a picture's worth a thousand words. Cisco Webex Teams is a team chat app designed for creative teams that would rather discuss things in pictures. It keeps chat simple, with straightforward messaging that lets you make a new room in one click.
Everything else is off to the side, with an app pane that lets you start a voice or video call or share files with your team. Or, tap the Whiteboard for a blank space where you can sketch your ideas on a virtual whiteboard for a quick way to show your team what you're discussing.
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And when you need to talk instead of chat, Webex Teams includes Cisco-powered voice and video chat that works with Cisco's VoIP devices. Want a team chat app that's deeply customizable and can run on your company's servers? Mattermost is the tool to use. It's a self-hosted team chat app with the core chat tools your team expects—along with options to customize almost everything about how your team works together.
The core chat experience feels much like Slack, with a unique take on message replies that shows all of the replies together in-line with the rest of the chat conversations. You can keep things a bit more orderly by making as many teams as you want, each with their members and channels. Then, with it hosted on your servers, you can tweak everything: You can even make custom builds of its mobile apps. If your team has strict policies on communications, it's the chat app that can work the way you need to. Work with people outside your company often, perhaps juggling relationships with suppliers or contracting with multiple teams at once?
ChatWork is a social network for business chat. You'll add a full profile to your account, complete with contact info and a Chatwork ID that anyone can use to add you to their chats. You can then join in group chats at your company, message anyone else with a Chatwork ID, or start new public or private group chats. Chatwork keeps all of those together in your left sidebar so you can quickly jump between conversations and teams without missing anything.
It even consolidates mentions from every team you're in—and includes a to-do list to manage every actionable item from each conversation—to help cut through the noise. Sometimes you post a quick idea to chat, only to add a half-dozen more ideas in subsequent messages. Ryver helps you organize those with its Posts tool. Select as many messages as you need—from you or others—then add a subject and a formatted long-form message that expands on your thoughts.
Ryver will merge your message and the chat posts, adding them to the Posts tab in your chat. You can then follow up on those posts and other tasks with its built-in kanban board. Then, if you're worried you'll forget to follow up on a message, there's a Set Reminder button on each chat and long-form post so Ryver will notify you about that message again. That combined with the Notifications page helps you keep from missing important conversations.
And if you need to bring someone from outside your team into your conversation, anyone can invite a guest member—though note, they'll be able to see the entire forum history Ryver's name for chat groups. Zoho Cliq differs from other team chat apps in its look and style. Instead of having one conversation in view at a time, Cliq lets you open up multiple chat and private messages with each in its own column. Rather than flip among your most frequently used conversations, you can keep them all open at once.
Another distinguishing feature, called Prime Time, lets you use Cliq as a broadcasting service, streaming video in real time to anyone on the team who tunes in. Cliq integrates smoothly with other Zoho apps, making it an ideal choice for those already in the Zoho ecosystem.
It's also priced competitively, with the per-person-per-month cost decreasing the more team members you have. Chat's handy for most discussions—but sometimes it's easier to pick up the phone. Glip , the chat app from voice over internet provider RingCentral, is designed for both. Like many team chat apps, it includes a built-in call tool for a quick video or audio call.
Only this time, it's powered by RingCentral so you can call others with RingCentral-powered phones, too, even if they're not using Glip.
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It also helps you keep track of the things you discuss. Chat's great since there's a written record of everything, where with phone calls you need to keep records of things to do next. You can do that quickly in Glip with its dedicated pages for tasks, calendar, and notes for one place to track everything your team does and discusses. Still looking for something different? Here are some other great apps to try out, each with a unique take on team chat:.
Another option is to use a team chat tool built into another app you use, perhaps a project management or documents app. Instead of something dedicated to chat, you could use something simpler that comes as part of another tool you need. These team chat tools often include less features but also give your team one less app they'll need to install. From all-in-one apps that include tools for everything to more focused to-do apps that also have chat, here are some great apps with team chat tools:.
Whether your team needs a dedicated chat app or a project tool that happens to include chat as well, there are more ways to talk to your team than ever before.
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The simplest tools let you organize chats into conversations and talk in real-time; the most advanced let you automate things with bots and jump on a video call when text isn't cutting it. Now that you've found the best team chat app for your team, it's time to get the most out of it. Here are some Zapier tutorials to help:. Header photo via Startup Stock Photos via Pexels. Article originally published April 29, ; re-written June 23, to remove dead apps including Hall, Grove, Kato.
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Now Zapier handles it seamlessly. Matthew Guay is a senior editor and writer on the Zapier team in Bangkok. When he's not writing, he's likely reading a new book or exploring random streets in a new city. Follow Matthew at maguay. Comments powered by Disqus. Zapier is the easiest way to automate powerful workflows with more than 1, apps.
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By signing up, you agree to Zapier's Terms of Service. The 12 Best Team Chat Apps Slack for a chat powered workplace Twist for threaded conversation-centric chat Microsoft Teams for discussions about documents and meetings Google Hangouts Chat for following up on conversations Flock for making decisions in chat Discord for always-on voice chat Cisco Webex Teams for mocking up ideas in chat Mattermost for self-hosted team chat ChatWork for chatting across different teams Ryver for adding more details to important messages Zoho Cliq for chatting in multiple discussions at once RingCentral Glip for call focused team chat Slack Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, Web Best for a chat powered workplace.
App Description Free for: Fleep Need a chat app that's more focused on direct messages—and one that still works with email? Fleep's the tool for you. You can make group or one-off chats, jumping into the most recent conversation easily from the sidebar. And if you want to add someone to a conversation, just enter their email address—they can sign in to chat or just read and reply via email.
Yammer, now part of Microsoft Office , lets you update your team on what's happening, with like buttons and comments just like you'd expect in Facebook. And it includes Messenger-style chat for real-time conversations. Convo also is built around a social network feed of updates, but it has more than a like button. You can also add annotations to images and files your team shares for direct feedback. And, you can have your email, real social media updates, and more come into your feed for one app with all your conversations.
Flowdock simplifies things with an Inbox for notifications so you can get updates from your team and apps in separate places.