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The best remote team management tools allow companies to engage employees, collaborate, and grow their business. Remote work has been growing in popularity — even before social distancing/the COVID-19 crisis forced many companies to operate remotely. According to GlobalWorkplaceAnalytics.com, remote work in the U.S. has grown 173% since 2005, a trend that will only continue to increase. As such, software programs and remote team management tools have become increasingly necessary. After all, they help companies maximize productivity, collaboration, and culture — all of which are critical for organizational success.
But as you probably already know, there are seemingly endless options. Some help companies better manage their remote teams, while others help remote workers be more productive. In this guide, we’re going to help you figure out which solutions are right for your organization with a list of top tools, what they cover, and why you might need them; common mistakes and how to fix them; implementation guidelines; and more.
We spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. However we may earn a fee if you click on vendor links on this page. Learn more
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Hours Researched
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Experts Consulted
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29
Vendors Reviewed
Our criteria: How we chose the best vendors
We take our research seriously and want to make sure we are presenting our readers with the very best solutions in a given software category. Here's how we select vendors to be in our buyer guides:
- Product: We want to have a deep understanding of a vendor's product before recommending it. This usually means getting a demo by a senior executive (their CEO, head of product, etc), and/or using the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best in class offering.
- User feedback: We do our best to understand what users say when they experience this product. User input allows us to accomplish a more thorough due diligence of products, put new vendors on our radar, and generally make sure we are presenting the right products to our readers.
- Financial metrics: We are very much finance nerds and so use a product's retention rates, growth, profitability, and scale to understand whether or not it is truly best in class.
- Best for a use case: Sometimes the best solution is the cheapest, the best tool for international companies, or the best for startups. We try to include a diversity of solutions so that our readers can find the tool that is best for what they need.
Here's more detail if you want to read further on how we research vendors.
In this guide you'll find
Featured in
Top Remote Team Management Tools
Here are the best remote work tools for companies looking to engage employees, collaborate, and grow. We'll be adding to this list frequently as we discover more awesome tools to include.
Why we love it
:
ChartHop is an organizational management platform. They're rapidly evolving into one of the more interesting HR Tech companies in the space.
ChartHop
Review:
ChartHop originally started out as an org chart software vendor. Now, they see their offering as a new category called organizational management. It is for that reason that they've added various new tools to their platform, such as people analytics and headcount planning. These tools can serve you very well when managing a remote team. For example, you can use this tool to facilitate collaboration and communication by getting everyone aligned under the same data. You can also measure the effectiveness of programs like DEI hiring, reduce attrition by identifying risks, and more.
ChartHop
Customers:
better.com, Postman, mongoDB, Remy Cointreu
ChartHop
Stats:
- Saved customers a total of $2.5M in lost productivity
- Raised $14M in Series A funding
ChartHop
Pricing:
ChartHop operates on a per employee per month basis. Their base plan, called ChartHop Build, is $3.50 per employee per month. The next two plans, Grow and Scale, are $7 and $10 per employee per month respectively. They also offer an enterprise level solution with custom pricing.
For an additional $2 per employee per month, customers can get access to ChartHop’s compensation planning system as well.
Best For:
Remote teams looking for a data-centric solution for team management.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Papaya combines global workforce and payroll management into a single global platform that's capable of connecting you to a wide network of verified local vendors.
PapayaGlobal
Review:
Remote work means employees all over the world. It probably also means contractors who work for you part time. Whether you are paying construction workers in South Africa or part time software engineers in Australia, PapayaGlobal is a payroll provider who can handle your needs. They'll also serve as the employer of record for your employees so that you can take advantage of group buying power on benefits.
PapayaGlobal
Customers:
Toyota, GDIT, Microsoft, Wix, Teradata, Ncino
PapayaGlobal
Stats:
Papaya works in 160+ countries.
PapayaGlobal
Pricing:
Papaya has 3 plans:
- Payroll: In this plan, Papaya runs and manages your entire payroll process for one, all-inclusive fee ranging from $20 - $100 per employee per month.
- Global EOR: In this plan, Papaya’s in-country partners will serve as employers of record and assume responsibility for payroll, workforce management, benefits, compliance, and more. The pricing of this plan ranges from $770- $1000 per employee per month.
- Contractor Management & IC Compliance: With this plan, you can outsource particular services to a domestic or foreign contractor. The pricing of this plan starts from $25 per employee per month.
Best For
Medium to large-sized companies looking for a method to pay employees and independent contractors in different countries.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
From the small stuff to the big picture, Asana organizes project and tasks so your team knows what to do, why it matters, and how to get it done.
Asana
Review:
Asana allows remote teams to stay organized across many different and complex team-based projects. Whether you are running a content calendar or building a new piece of software, their project management suite will allow you to manage, assign, and track work.
Asana
Customers:
Vodafone, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Slack, Deloitte, Google, Uber, Spotify, Sky, Avon, PayPal, The New Yorker
Asana
Stats:
- Asana is used by more than a million teams in 190 countries.
- Asana integrates with over 100 different 3rd party tools.
Asana
Pricing:
Asana has 4 plans:
- Basic: Suitable for individuals or teams just getting started with project management. This plan is completely free of charge.
- Premium: Suitable for teams that need to create project plans with confidence. This plan costs $10.99 per user per month when billed annually.
- Business: Suitable for teams and companies that need to manage work across initiatives. This plan costs $24.99 per user per month when billed annually.
- Enterprise: Suitable for organizations that need additional security, control, and support. The pricing of this plan varies according to the size and scope of your operation. Contact Asana’s sales team to learn more.
Best For
Companies of all sizes looking to manage projects and collaborate more efficiently.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Slack is undeniably every productive team’s go-to communication and collaboration solution. It facilitates private and group messaging, audio and video calls, file sharing, and more.
Slack
Review:
Slack's messaging platform has spread virally throughout the corporate world and is now a mainstay of corporate communications. Asynchronous standups, 1:1 messaging, or employee resource groups and so much more can be hosted on this platform. In addition, they have a large and growing ecosystem of apps that are native to Slack from employee recognition to notifications related to marketing, sales, engineering, or recruiting.
Slack
Customers:
Uber, Target, Fox, Ameritrade, Intuit, Time, One Medical, Oracle
Slack
Stats:
- Over 750,000 companies use Slack to get work done
- Slack integrates with over 2,200 apps using prebuilt modules
Slack
Pricing:
Slack has a free plan with limitations on message history access. Free plan customers can only view the last 10,000 of their team’s messages and the rest is archived unless an upgrade is made to any of the following paid plans:
- Standard: Suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. This plan costs $6.67 per person per month when billed annually.
- Plus: Suitable for larger businesses or those seeking advanced administration tools. This plan costs $12.50 per person per month when billed annually.
- Enterprise Grid: Suitable for very large businesses or those in highly regulated industries. The pricing of this plan varies according to the size and scope of your operation. Contact Slack’s sales team to learn more.
Best For
Companies of all sizes looking for a robust team communication tool.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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Featuring a modern and intuitive interface, Lessonly is versatile training and coaching software that’s loved by nearly 4 million teammates.
Lessonly
Review:
From small companies to the Fortune 500, employee learning and development is incredibly important. Remote work means new challenges for onboarding and upskilling workforces. Lessonly's simple to use learning management system allows you to quickly build and deploy training materials. They also have a host of content around remote work specifically.
Lessonly
Customers:
HelloFresh, Trunk Club, McAfee, Salesloft, Jostens, Lending Home
Lessonly
Stats:
Lessonly has helped over 3 million learners from Fortune 100 enterprises to local businesses.
Lessonly
Pricing:
Lessonly has two plans:
- Pro: This plan includes Lessonly’s training software, intuitive lesson builder, interactive quizzes & surveys, automation & triggers, training event tracking, and integrations. Pro plan customers also get assigned a personal Customer Experience Manager
- Pro+Coaching: This plan includes everything from Lessonly’s Pro package, plus Lessonly Practice, Coaching, Conversations, and Certifications.
The pricing of the above plans isn’t disclosed on Lessonly’s website. Contact their sales team for a price quote accordingly to the size and scope of your operation.
Best For
Companies of all sizes wanting to streamline the way to provide training to their employees.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Not only is Peakon a great employee engagement solution, it has a ton of analytical functionality that makes it great for people planning too.
Peakon
Review:
In a remote environment, employee engagement software is an essential tool to measure your culture, and ensure your employee population stays connected to their work. Peakon allows companies to get feedback and act to built a better work environment. This is especially powerful for fast changing companies who need to stay on top of how their employees are feeling with new work norms.
Peakon
Customers:
EasyJet, Verizon, Nando's, Pret, Capgemini
Peakon
Stats:
- Peakon is trusted by 1000+ of the world's best workplaces
- 157,209,657 employee survey responses
- 28,933,431 employee comments
- 160 countries represented
Peakon
Pricing:
Peakon has a three-tiered pricing structure:
- Essential: This plan offers baseline engagement features, a mobile app, and 24-hour online support.
- Business: This plan provides everything from the Essential plan, but adds personalized benchmarking, custom insights, action plans, and HRIS integrations. You'd also have a dedicated Customer Success consultant.
- Premier: With this plan, you'll receive everything previously mentioned, plus micro-learning sessions, attrition prediction, hierarchy mapping, business impact metrics, and unlimited custom dashboards. You all have extended Customer Success support and change management training.
The pricing of the above plans isn’t disclosed on Peakon’s website. Contact their sales team for a price quote according to the size and scope of your operation.
Best For
Large and enterprise-sized organizations who can put all of Peakon's features to good use.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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Zoom a robust video conferencing solution that's used by millions of people worldwide. Anyone can access it for free on a browser, or via its desktop and mobile apps.
Zoom
Review:
Zoom has become the go-to video conferencing solution. It started with sales, and now is ubiquitous for 1:1 meetings, small groups, and even large scale webinars. While not perfect, their video conferencing is still the best on the market and a key for remote teams that want to organize happy hours, coffee chats, or meetings from disparate locations.
Zoom
Customers:
Uber, Zendesk, Logitech, Veeva, Rakuten, Atlassian, Nasdaq, Western Union
Zoom
Stats:
- Zoom has sold more than 1 million Zoom Phone seats around the world.
- Zoom was named a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions and a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, Worldwide.
Zoom
Pricing:
Zoom has 5 plans:
- Basic: This plan is suited for personal meetings. Anyone can get this plan for free.
- Pro: This plan is suited for small teams and is priced at $149.90 per year per license.
- Business: This plan suits small & mid-sized businesses and is priced at $199.90 per year per license.
- Zoom United Business: This plan is for large businesses and is priced at $350 per year per license.
- Enterprise: As the name entails, this plan is designed for enterprises. The price of this plan varies according to the size and needs of the business.
Best For
Companies of all sizes looking to conduct online meetings - be it individual 1:1s or group sessions - as well as online events more efficiently.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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Mistro easily provides benefits and perks in over 200 countries, from gym memberships to healthcare to equipment.
Mistro
Review:
Mistro was created specifically for the newly hybrid workplace. Therefore, rolling out benefits and perks to your remote workforce is easier. Mistro allows for detailed customization based on region, team members, and tenure, so you don't have to worry about forcing a rigid structure on your global team.
Mistro
Customers:
Mistro
Stats:
- Featured on Buffer's and AngelList's 2020 State of Remote Work
- Featured on Remote-How's Rising Stars
- Can be used in 200+ countries
Best For
Mistro is best for large remote teams that wants to offer a wide range of perks and benefits.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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Trainual goes beyond the typical LMS functionality; it offers tools for employee onboarding, process documentation, company Wiki, and standard operating procedure (SOP) creation.
Trainual
Review:
Trainual helps companies keep track of all the how-to's in their company which means faster onboarding of new employees and less time searching for the best way to do XYZ once they are on the job. This is a great way to document your company's playbooks for everything from customer facings roles to engineering. And, this sort of knowledge documentation becomes all that more important for remote companies.
Trainual
Customers:
IronMan, UPS, Stanford University, Design Pickle, Harmon Brothers.
Trainual
Stats:
Trainual
Pricing:
Trainual has two plans with fixed pricing:
- Pro: This plan allows up to 25 users to create unlimited documentation and gives them access to templates for training, tests, etc. This plan costs $99 a month when billed annually
- Premium: Users on this plan (up to 25) get everything from the Pro plan plus phone support/coaching, stock image library access, and more. This plan costs $149 a month when billed annually
A custom plan can also be created for larger companies upon request.
Best For
Medium to large-sized companies looking to streamline the way they train their new hires.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
Caroo is a versatile employee gifting service. Companies can use it to reward their top-performing employees or to simply cheer all employees with company-wide gifting.
Caroo
Review:
Caroo is a software-enabled employee gifting service. Companies of all sizes can use it to recognize certain employees for their performance or to simply cheer all employees with company-wide gifting. Caroo has different gift boxes to choose from; depending on the box chosen, these boxes can include anything from healthy snacks, premium gifts, and team-building activity items, delivered directly to your employees’ homes.
Caroo
Customers:
Google, Apple, GoodPx, Nike, Hulu, Peloton.
Caroo
Stats:
- Over 500,000 employees are happy with the service they’ve received from Caroo.
Caroo
Pricing:
Caroo has 3 packages that are priced as follows:
- Nourish: The pricing of the Nourish box starts at $26.95 and is shipped for free. This box can pack up to 30 delicious snacks from innovative brands.
- Inspire + Connect: This box packs premium-themed gifts and team-building activities. The pricing of this box starts at $53.95 plus free shipping.
- Concierge: Eligible for teams of 50 or more, the Concierge box is fully customizable and can include anything from premium snacks, wine, electronics, productivity supplies and more. The pricing of this box varies according to its contents.
Caroo also has seasonal boxes that pack season-appropriate snacks. The pricing of seasonal boxes starts at $33.95 plus free shipping.
Best For
Companies of all sizes looking to reward or simply delight their employees regardless of the occasion.
Worth Checking Out:
Caroo donates meals to families in need for every box delivered. 17,643,237 meals have been donated so far.
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Next Steps
As we said earlier, remote work is on the rise. Currently, 43% of U.S. employees work remotely to some degree. And it’s becoming a key value proposition for employees and candidates. In fact, some employees will only take a job if it is remote. The global coronavirus pandemic is likely testing your company’s ability to operate remotely, so you’re already learning a lot about what’s working and what isn’t. Listen to the feedback you’re getting and use it to create a more formal strategy to foster and better manage remote workers.
And remember, at the end of the day, remote work success really comes down to two core functions: communicating and sharing. How you do these effectively depends on the tools you choose to invest in. So think about the struggles you’ve been facing now, identify a few tools that could help, and schedule your demos.
Best Remote Work Software
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