14 Employee Communication Apps that are Pivotal to your Company Success

Effective employee communication has always been the hallmark of any successful company.

It is even more critical to ensure that employee communication is transparent, focused, and engaging in today’s digital age.

And the apps you use to facilitate such communication have a vital role to play. But every employee communication app offers a unique user experience, features, and integration capabilities. That’s why choosing the app that works for your specific team and company is not an easy task. 

In this article, we’ve compiled a list of employee communication apps that withstood the test of time and proved to ensure efficient employee communication in various circumstances.

Let’s go through the best employee communication apps one by one. 

1. Slack

Slack is a go-to employee communication app for many teams, and for good reason. A combination of an addictive casual interface with useful and well-designed features quickly turned Slack into a company that once dominated the market of team messengers. 

Although since then Slack’s growth slowed down due to fierce ongoing competition, it still has a lot to offer.

Employees can communicate in Slack using both text messages and calls. Slack easily integrates with other communication apps such as Zoom and Google Meet so you can launch meetings there with a click. 

Fundamental Slack features such as channels, threads, and direct messages cover all the basic communication needs of teams while countless integrations extend Slack’s functionality to a required level.

Hundreds of integrations and bots can be found in the Slack Integrations directory to amp up team productivity, optimize project management, or simply have fun with teammates.

Integrations with Google Calendar, for example, let you announce all the upcoming team events in Slack, and integrations with project management tools such as Asana or Trello let you manage plenty of your projects without leaving your team messenger.

Slack’s built-in search lets you quickly search and filter through past team conversations to find specific messages or attachments. Slack channels can be public and private, and you can create as many channels as you need to group and organize your communication. 

Prominent Slack features:

• Integrations with hundreds of tools on the internet
• Text messages, voice calls, and video calls with up to 15 participants
• Recorded voice messages, video messages, and screen grabs
• Easily add new channels
• Mobile app

2. Microsoft Teams

Following unprecedented growth over the last 3 years, MS Teams surpassed 270 million users in 2022 and became the most popular employee communication app.  

Although its rapid growth could be partially attributed to MS Teams’ tight connection to Microsoft’s established enterprise ecosystem, MS Teams possesses a few merits of its own that make it a practical and convenient messenger for employee communication.

In a nutshell, there’s nothing you can do in Slack that you can’t do in Teams: this employee communication app supports group channels, direct messages, and video and audio calls. It’s worth mentioning that MS Teams supports video calls with up to 250 users. 

You can access your team space either using a desktop app, a mobile app, or a web version. 

Just like Slack, Microsoft Teams integrates with a variety of 3rd party tools and services so that you can manage your workflows without ever leaving the app and automating parts of your operations. So far Microsoft Teams has over 600 available integrations, still catching up with Slack’s impressive list of 2000+ integrations out of the box.

The difference between Slack and Microsoft Teams mostly comes down to different user interfaces and pricing models. Overall, MS Teams’ free plan puts fewer limits and its paid version is cheaper in general. 

Prominent Microsoft Teams features include:

• Integrations with 3rd party tools
• Integration with the Microsoft Office suite
• Mobile and desktop apps
• Free plan with unlimited message history
• Audio and video calls with up to 300 participants per meeting

3. Geekbot

If your team is remote and you’re using either Slack or Microsoft Teams for employee communication, Geekbot is an invaluable app to make your meetings significantly more focused and productive. 

Everyone knows how exhausting meetings can be: they always pop up in the middle of the day, the conversations are often off-topic, and sometimes the loudest voice is not always the most rational one.

And with conflicting schedules and different time zones, you’re sure to get meetings that not everyone will enjoy.

With Geekbot, you can replace time-demanding and unproductive real-time meetings with asynchronous meetings directly in Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Here’s how it works.

The app simply sends meeting questions to team members in Slack and Teams in their time zone. For example, standard stand-up questions would include “What did you do yesterday? and “What will you do today?”. However, with a vast library of templates and total customization Geekbot can be tailored to conduct any type of meeting. 

Then Geekbot gathers all responses in the designated channel where you can analyze responses or follow up.

By using Geekbot, team members do not have to wait for each other to respond and do not have to attend the same meeting at the same time.

Additionally to daily standups, Geekbot allows teams to conduct retrospectives, polls, and anonymous surveys directly in Slack and Teams.

Here are some standout Geekbot features:

• Conduct productive asynchronous meetings directly in Slack and Microsoft Teams to improve team focus, collaboration, and morale
• Apply NLP analysis to team responses and examine automated happiness graphs to analyze team well-being
  
• Launch team-building quizzes, polls, and feedback surveys quickly with built-in templates
• Use the built-in 1-on-1 meeting template to reinvent your 1-on-1 meetings with employees
• Have a complete history of meetings made for you automatically for future analysis and retrospection
• Enjoy a free forever version for teams with up to 10 members!

4. Staffbase

Staffbase is an internal communications software that acts as both an intranet and an employee communication platform. Using Staffbase you can distribute content among employees and groups of employees while workers can interact through a real-time chat, comment on company posts, and get instant notifications of new entries through a mobile app.

Staffbase offers full customization to the point of building a uniquely branded app for your company that your employees can install through AppStore and Android markets. 

Staffbase supports integrations with popular apps such as Slack, Microsoft 365, Google Suite, Salesforce, and more. For example, employees are able to use Microsoft tools in the Staffbase platform or receive Google Calendars updates there.

Staffbase users can add videos, hashtags, and links, and also use pre-designed content blocks to quickly create and post new company content. 

Using the auto-translate feature, employees can automatically translate messages from their colleagues into a preferred language, which is especially valuable in global international companies. 

Employees can see all the relevant updates, recent conversations, and company news live feed in the employee dashboard. Staffbase provides user management functionality to control employee access, while roles and rights help you build content hubs for specific user groups, departments, and locations. 

Staffbase offers enterprise-grade security with ISO certification and GDPR compliance. 

Prominent Staffbase features: 

• Branded app customization
• Automated communication through Staffbase Journeys
• Auto translate messages
• Integrations with popular office tools
• Employee directory

5. Workvivo

Workvivo is a social intranet with employee communication features. 

The app acts as a hub for everything that’s happening within a company and with employees. Using Workvivo, employees can post company news, shoutouts, posts, videos, and podcasts that other employees can comment on and interact with. 

Employees can communicate with each other through either comments on relevant news or by integrating Workvivo with Slack and MS Teams to connect with employees directly. 

Workvivo also acts as an employee directory app where colleagues can find information about each other, recent posts, and contact details. 

At the center of Workvivo is a personalized employee live feed dashboard that shows all the latest posts from colleagues you’re following, company updates, and more. 

Another useful feature of Workvivo is Spaces that act as data hubs of information around common interests or projects. 

Workvivo offers a built-in survey and polling system to conduct employee surveys and measure, for example, team morale or level of engagement. 

Prominent Workvivo features:

• Personalized employee live feed of company events
• Company live streams and podcasts
• Employee directory
• Integration with Slack and Microsoft Teams
• Built-in polls and surveys

6. Guru

Guru is a knowledge management system that builds on top of your existing employee communication infrastructure. Whether you are communicating over Slack, MS Teams, Gmail, or Salesforce, you can use Guru to pull up necessary data or context for any conversation.

For example, using the Guru browser extension, you can capture an article or a part of it as a card that can be later shared during a Slack conversation. You can edit cards, add new data to them and assign so-called “verifiers”, i.e. experts on your team who are responsible for updating and verifying the contents of cards.

Every card can be assigned a verifier who is a subject knowledge expert on your team, making sure that only the most trusted and accurate information will be spread and accessed by all team members.

Guru integrates with many modern communication apps, making sure it can be easily integrated into any existing ecosystem and be efficient for teams that rely on messengers, emails, and intranets as their points of communication. 

Prominent Guru features include:

• Automated duplicate content detection
• A.I. suggested tags
• Different ways to organize data
• Team announcements
• Ability to capture information from web, messengers, emails, and 3rd party services

7. Jostle

Jostle is a mix of intranet and an employee communication app, and offers all the standard features you’d expect from such a combination. Jostle’s main dashboard can be used to glance through the latest team updates, company news, intranet blog posts, and new team knowledge entries.

Using a menu on the left, team members can access an employee directory or use a company-wide search on the right to find people or data. An employee’s directory acts like a typical intranet section with information about a person, their contacts, and recent actions. Here you can also start a direct real-time chat with a person.

Jostle also features group channels, called discussions, that can be used for team conversations. Discussion can be set up so that new people joining a company will be automatically added to the channels relevant to their location, department, and team unit. 

Jostle integrates with Slack and MS Teams to broadcast new entries and with Google business apps to streamline file management. The app also supports tasks that can be shared with team members, commented on, and supported with attachments.

Jostle also offers knowledge management features. For example, teammates can add “How-to” videos, organize training docs, company guidelines, and so on.

Prominent Jostle features include:

• Access control – team members only see data they have access to and/or data relevant to them
• Integration with 3rd party services
• Knowledge management features
• Location-based and department-based updates

8. Chanty

If you used Slack and switched to Chanty, you wouldn’t have noticed much difference in the beginning as Chanty does everything that Slack does. You have private and public group channels, direct messages, audio and video group calls, reactions, integrations, and DnD mode. 

But there are a few features that Chanty offers out of the box that Slack doesn’t. For starters, every message can be converted into a task. Each task has a due date, assignee, priority, and status. There’s even a separate Kanban board where you can track all the team tasks in an agile manner.

Second, Chanty has a so-called Team Book. Essentially, Team Book is a useful dashboard for accessing live feeds on the latest team mentions, shared files and links, pinned messages, and conversation history. If you struggled with catching up with hundreds of Slack messages, Team Book can be a useful solution to quickly understand what happened within a team while you were gone. 

Lastly, the pricing policy of both apps is quite different. Chanty offers a free forever version for teams with less than 10 members and puts no restrictions on message history. Slack, on the other hand, allows you to view and search messages and files only from the last 90 days without putting a limit on the number of team members you can invite. Both messengers limit the number of integrations to 10 on free plans. 

Prominent Chanty features:

• Unlimited message history for 10-member teams
• Messages can be converted to tasks
• Kanban board view for tasks
• Team Book dashboard with the latest team updates

9. Axero

Axero is a powerful web-based intranet that organizes and brings together data from your communication apps, file management apps, and various 3rd party services your team is using.

Essentially, Axero lets you create highly customizable spaces that contain live-feed information relevant to your team or department. There’s a company-wide homepage that aggregates information for the entire company, but every team can create a space with a custom layout that displays content relevant to the members of that department.

As an Axero user, you can have access to several spaces or search throughout the entire intranet for specific content, spaces, and people. Axero supports advanced search operators, e.g. boolean and wild card, and lets you fine-tune search results using various filters.

Axero supports various types of content that can be added to spaces, such as articles, files, tasks, events, videos, discussions, and more. Axero also supports team calendars where you can monitor planned events from multiple spaces that you have access to.

On top of that, Azero offers such team-building features as gamification and a recognition system. Gamification can be used to gamify projects or events to boost employee motivation, while a recognition system allows you to stay on top of the latest team achievements, and receive and offer praise.

Prominent Axero features include:

• Mobile app
• Integrations with 3rd party services, including Slack, MS Teams, and many more
• Shared calendars
• Custom space layouts
• Interactive org charts
• Company notification feed

10. Chatter

Chatter is an enterprise social network built directly in Salesforce. As such, it can only be used by teams that already use Salesforce or plan to integrate it. 

As such, Chatter is an intranet solution that allows team members to communicate within a shared space filled with data from Salesforce workspaces. Team members can comments on tasks, create custom actions directly from a feed of events, post to a group of people, share files, and integrate data from 3rd party systems.

Additionally, Chatter aims to boost enterprise engagement by providing score-based incentives for employees to join conversations, personalized endorsements, and badges.

Prominent Chatter features include:

• 3rd party integrations
• Mobile app
• Actions and tasks
• Update feed
• Gamification and recognition systems

11. Asana

Although Asana is primarily a project management tool, a couple of key aspects make it a great addition to any existing employee communication system.

For starters, Asana integrates with all the most popular communication apps and messengers on the market, including Slack, MS Teams, Google Chat, Zoom, and many more. As a result, team members can easily refer to Asana tasks in Slack discussions, or turn MS Teams discussions into tasks.

Next Asana’s advantage is that it has robust communication capabilities of its own: every task or Asana project can act as a communication hub for team members to leave comments and follow up on status changes. Once again, integrations allow team members to automatically receive notifications directly in their messengers whenever their tasks were changed or completed.

Lastly, Asana’s live-feed lets you observe team activity from one place. For example, you can see whenever someone on your team leaves comments on tasks, creates new tasks or performs any actions within your projects, turning Asana into an intranet for team project activities. 

Prominent Asana features are:

• Integrations with all popular messengers
• Mobile app
• Task comments and team mentions
• Live-feed team project updates

12. Zoom

Over the last few years, Zoom has become a de-facto standard employee application for video conferencing due to its simplicity and nearly lag-free performance. It also helps that Zoom integrates with almost every relevant digital app over there, be it messengers such as Slack and Teams or projects management tools such as Asana or Jira. 

You can start Zoom meetings from everywhere by simply sharing a link that other people use to join your meetings. Throughout the years, Zoom added features such as custom backgrounds, upcoming meetings tab, and team contacts, but always put emphasis on performance above all. 

Free Zoom meetings are limited to 40 minutes, but you can always restart them back-to-back using the same link if your meeting runs longer. To drop the meeting duration limit, consider updating to one of the Zoom paid plans. Hover,  even the free Zoom plan allows you to invite up to 100 meeting participants. To invite more you’d have to switch to Zoom Business Plan, as Zoom Pro also limits participant count to 100. 

Prominent Zoom features include:

• Mobile app
• Up to 100 participants on a free plan
• Custom backgrounds
• Real-time chat
• Meeting recordings
• Screen sharing

13. GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting is a direct competitor to Zoom with all the same features as the two are the most popular video conferencing tools for employee communication.

The difference between GoToMeeting and Zoom lies in nuances: both tools have slightly different user interfaces, minor pricing differences, and, per GoToMeeting’s say, more robust security protocols.

As with Zoom, GoToMeeting allows for meeting recordings, screen sharing, and real-time chat. At the same time, you can only invite up to 26 participants to your GoToMeeting sessions. To invite more people you’d need to use different GoToVebinar software that supports up to 1000 participants.

Prominent GoToMeeting features:

• Mobile app
• Integrations with 3rd party services
• Cloud meeting recording
• Screen sharing

14. Sococo

If you miss the old days of strolling around the office, checking in on random colleagues in the corridor, or engaging in spirited and completely random conversations at the water cooler, then Sococo might be a good option for you. 

Sococo aims to replicate the office atmosphere by creating a digital representation of an office in your browser. 

Just by looking around, you can tell where your colleagues are hanging out, who is meeting with whom, and whether you might chime in. Although simplified, a virtual office contains all the visual clues you need to communicate with your team: a closed door means a private meeting that you can knock on, whereas empty rooms are off-limits and might be occupied by anyone. 

Sococo supports video and audio calls by integrating with Zoom, Google Meet, and similar communication apps. Sococo also integrates with Slack, letting you chat in Slack via a Sococo interface. At the time of writing, Sococo integration with MS teams is limited and only allows you to set up Teams meetings from the app. 

Prominent Sococo features:

• Integration with Slack, Zoom, Google Meet, and more
• Virtual water cooler

Nowadays, productive employee communication is a requirement for any digital company that wants to be successful.

We hope that this article will help you to find an employee communication app that works for both your company structure and culture.

If you already use employee communication apps but struggle with lots of unnecessary and unproductive meetings, try Geekbot.
Join the likes of Shopify and Github, and make your meetings productive, focused, and engaging. Try out the free version and see how Geekbot can boost your remote productivity within a week!