26.06.2020

Communication is the backbone of each stage between the development and launching of every start-up. There are so many tasks, files, and information moving around your team. Thus you will require a team chat app that doubles as a remote modern office. These chat apps provide a wide range of collaborative features for quick and easy team communication.

However, picking the best team chat app from the several apps out there can be tedious and time-consuming. So, in this article, we will consider the benefits, the essential features to look out for, and some affordable and easy-to-use chat tools for your start-up.

What is a Chat App?

Chat apps are dynamic tools that enable work teams to interact and collaborate. It allows them to share ideas, deal with company issues that may arise, and strategically plan for your business’s future. These chat apps come with features such as task management features, file sharing, chat, voice or video calling options, and several other communication and productivity management tools.

Compared to email,chat apps come with more benefits because they are more efficient in helping workers collaborate and communicate all at once in real-time while building more substantial teams, which can translate to an increase in productivity.

Features to Consider When Choosing the Best Group Chat App

To communicate effectively via chat apps, the app you pick should have features that help teams solve challenges such as:

  • Task and time management issues
  • Track work progress
  • Technical support for messaging security, large group calls, audio and video services, large file sharing, etc.

Some of the Best Group Chat App to Consider for a Start-Up:

These chat apps are compatible with desktops, iOS, and Android mobile devices. 

Slack

The slack chat tool offers robust and comprehensive communication features for small businesses. According to company statistics, 10 million people use the Slack corporate messenger daily. Besides its one-on-one and group chat, slack is built with individual and team text, audio, or video call options. With an easy to use interface, users can organize several projects, teams, and likewise items using hashtags. Slack also lets you share files by simply dragging and dropping them into the platform or via Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. These files can be easily referenced since you can sync them with your chats. It also has a service that lets team members edit on each other screens.

There are three plans for the user to choose from, the paid, free, and advanced versions. The free version has restrictions such as file download-size (5 gigabytes) and a limit of five services connected to the application. The other versions have more capacity and additional features. It will cost you about 7$ a month for the paid version.

Pinngle Safe Messenger

Pinngle is a free and secure messaging app that supports chats, high-quality audio, and video calls. This chat tool’s primary focus is on the privacy and security of information exchange for every user. With its end-to-end encryption and serverless core, third parties do not have access to users’ calls, messages, and files.

Pinngle Messenger’s mission is to provide quality calls, reliable connections, total privacy, and security to every user. These are excellent features for your start-up communication and workflow. Additionally, this chat tool is compact and light on your data and battery. You can share files of any format or size and create group chats of up to 50,000 people.

Google Hangouts

Previously known as a consumer-friendly chat space, Google revamped Hangouts into a business powerhouse. It features deep integration with its G Suite apps such as Google Docs, Drive, Calendar, Sheets, Slides, Meet, etc. With hangouts, you get confidential and threaded messages.

Documents can be assigned permissions by the team that created the hangout session. For the video calls, users can access Google Meet and accommodate up to people. For start-ups that use a lot of If G Suite apps, hangouts will be the perfect chat tool. Especially writing service reviews services such as Best Writers Online and Online Writers Rating that have tons of papers and essays saved in multiple G suite files.

There is also an enterprise package for hangouts known as Hangouts Meet. The subscription plans start from $5 per month. 

Zoom 

Presently, Zoom is your go-to video communications tool industry. The app lets you track unified communications using its cloud platform for video, audio conferencing, collaboration, chat, and webinars via all endpoints. Zoom’s simple interface provides users with the ability to get it up and running with little to no training or technical support

There is a free version that includes 4o minutes limiting meetings that can host up to 100 participants, online support, and video and web conferencing group collaboration via screen and slide sharing and security. There are also the pro and business versions that come with more advanced features. These include more room to increase the number of participants, length of meetings, and the ability to record meetings, among others. Lastly, integration is a primary part of the zoom app and as well for its UCaaS space. Zoom has over 100 integrations, including Office 365, Slack, Drive, etc.

Flock

Flock is a forum-based chat app. It works by letting users directly respond to chats by quoting the previous message. This app is excellent for businesses that are keen on effective communication and transparency with workers. The flock app lets teams share notes and files, make video calls, manage tasks, and have centralized access to several other business tools and services.

The simple interface also helps to bring people together and provides an easy and secure place for your remote team to get work done.

Telegram

Telegram is a cloud-based collaboration tool. Thus, it means that your messages are encrypted and kept on the server. So with a single account whenever you log in to any device, your messages are kept intact. It allows users to customize the app interface. There are different themes and app icons that make the app fun. Telegram lets you edit a sent message by pressing hold on the word and then clicking on the “edit” icon to edit the text.

The app default number to set up a group is at 200 participants. But the exciting part about this is that once the default number exceeds, the group transforms into a super-group and that allows up to 5000 users. Another powerful feature on Telegram is that it gives its users a large file sharing limit at 1.5GB per file.

Conclusion

Though the list is not exhaustive, these collaboration chat apps go a long way to help your start-up maintain great teams by providing smooth interaction irrespective of geographic boundaries and time zones. It helps to drastically reduce communication costs and lengthy project timelines while enhancing productivity among workers.

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