17 Internal Communication Tools to Boost Productivity
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In an age of near-constant communication, it can be easy to lose track of what is most important. This is a real challenge in our real lives and perhaps even more so for internal business communications. How can we break through all the static and reach our employees? How can we ensure that our messages are received?
Employee communication platforms are essential for ensuring that the right information gets to the right people at the right time.
If you are looking for an internal communication system, app or platform, you will have many options to choose from. There are corporate networking apps, instant messaging software and many other internal communication systems, each offering unique benefits.
Whether you are looking for a corporate social network to build teamwork or an interactive onboarding program to effectively train new hires, there is an internal communication app right for your organization.
Here are some of the best internal communication tools for your business:
Visual communication tools
Venngage
Who’s it for: Venngage is an infographic design solution that lets you create infographics, reports, business proposals, presentation decks, posters, signage, and a wide range of other graphics assets—no design skills required.
Features: Extensive graphics library, thousands of fully customizable templates, real-time team collaboration features, branding kit, drag-and-drop editor, and seamless sharing within teams or publicly on Venngage’s community page.
Businesses choosing Venngage can enjoy seamless team collaboration and communication features like:
Real-time collaboration:
Commenting:
Venngage also offers thousands of fully customizable templates that can be used for any internal business communications needs:
Pricing: Venngage offers a free plan for users that gives them unfettered access to over 1,400 templates and 3 million stock photos.
To create more infographics and have more storage available for graphics, you can upgrade to the Premium plan, which is $19/month or $16/month if you sign up for a yearly subscription. For businesses, Venngage also has a comprehensive Business plan for $49/month or $39/month if you sign up for a yearly subscription.
Intranets and forums
Jostle
Who’s it for: For organizations as small as 15 employees to those with over 10,000 employees, Jostle is a comprehensive intranet tool designed to facilitate the flow of work.
Features: Collaboration tools, document repository, blogs, knowledge base, social media integrations, and real-time chat.
Integrations: G Suite, Office 365, Slack, Tableau, ADP Workforce Now, UltiPro, Okta, DocuSign, Dropbox, Evernote, Basecamp 3, Asana, HubSpot, Monday, Salesforce Pardot, QuickBooks, and many more.
Pricing: After their free trial period, you can choose a plan based on any number of users.
For a small team of 15, a Simple Intranet plan would cost $7 per user/month. For an advanced Intranet plan, you would pay $10 per user/month.
To support an organization of 1,500 people, a Simple Intranet plan would cost $2.35 per user/month. For an advanced Intranet plan, you would pay $3.35 per user/month.
Company chat and instant messaging tools
Slack
Who’s it for: Small-to-enterprise level businesses
Features: Instant messaging, voice and video calls, workflow builder, channels, inter-organizational collaboration, file sharing, and project archives.
Integrations: Dropbox, Zoom, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Suite, Salesforce, Zendesk, Jira Cloud, Asana, Zapier, Trello, and more.
Pricing: Slack offers three plans for users. The Standard plan offers basic functionality and 10 GB of storage per member for $6.67 per user/month. The Plus plan offers 20 GB of storage and supports the use of SSO for $12.50 per user/month. Enterprise plans are also available.
Connecteam
Who’s it for: Sole proprietors to enterprise organizations can benefit from Connecteam’s company chat and messaging tools, designed to keep stakeholders in touch and provide the means to share documents and other assets to facilitate collaboration.
Features: Mobile employee communication tools, task management, digital forms, employee scheduling and time clocks and training course development and delivery.
Integrations: QuickBooks and NextBee.
Pricing: Connecteam offers three plans for up to 50 users and an Enterprise plan.
Their Free plan offers their most basic tools. For $39/month, you can upgrade to a Basic plan, adding team chat and directory features. Their Advanced plan offers even more features, such as live polling and chat channels, for $79/month. Their Expert plan offers the full suite of features for $159/month. Teams larger than 50 users can contact Connecteam for an Enterprise plan quote.
When I Work
Who’s it for: When I Work is a collaboration tool for small to large teams.
Features: Time tracking, internal communications, work scheduling, project tracking, 1:1 and group chats, time-off requests, clock-in/clock-out, onboarding, labor forecasting, auto-scheduling, payroll integration, labor reporting, cost tracking, and more.
Integrations: ADP, Gigwage, Onpay, Gusto, QuickBooks, Paychex, Square, Crew, Zapier, and more.
Pricing: When I Work offers pricing that scales to meet your business needs. For organizations up to 100 employees, When I Work costs $2.00 per user. Enterprise plans for larger organizations are also available.
Collaboration tools
Basecamp
Who’s it for: Remote teams of all sizes can benefit from Basecamp’s comprehensive collaboration toolset.
Features: Document repository, group chat feature, calendar integrations, automatic check-ins, to-do lists, message boards, Gantt charts, project tracking, and more.
Integrations: Zapier, Field Trip, Slack, Google Hangouts, MangoBoard, Google Calendar, Trello, Jira, HubSpot, Asana, Microsoft Outlook, Evernote, OneNote, Tableau, and much more.
Pricing: Basecamp offers a free Personal plan and a paid Business plan.
The Personal plan gives you 1GB of storage space to support up to 20 users for 3 projects. The Business plan offers unlimited users and projects, as well as 500GB of storage space for a $99/month flat fee.
Help Scout
Who’s it for: Help Scout is a team collaboration tool with plans for small to large businesses.
Features: Real-time reporting, live chat, knowledge base for employees and customers, shared inboxes, and customer management tools.
Integrations: HubSpot, Jira, Slack, Mailchimp, Shopify, Salesforce, Constant Contact, Asana, ActiveCampaign, Facebook, Databox, Gmail, MySQL, SurveyMonkey, Trello, WordPress, and many more.
Pricing: Help Scout offers a Standard plan for $20 per user/month that gives you 3 mailboxes, automated workflows, and live chat collaboration tools. The Plus plan, for $35 per user/month, gives you up to 10 mailboxes and an add-on for Single Sign-On capability. The Company plan is a personalized product for large teams.
Employee social networks
LumApps
Who’s it for: LumApps is a full-featured employee social network tool for small and large businesses who want to help their employees stay in contact.
Features: Supports employee communication with multiple languages, news creation, translation assist, social media features such as likes and comments, web search function, analytics and reporting.
Integrations: Microsoft Office 365, Google Workspace, Slack, Zapier, Box, Microsoft Teams, Zendesk, AwesomeTable, and more.
Pricing: Contact LumApps to receive a personalized quote for your organization.
ThoughtFarmer
Who’s it for: With plans for 50+ employees, ThoughtFarmer is an employee social networking tool that is designed to facilitate communication among the employees of your organization.
Features: Employee communication tools such as a mobile app, social media and RSS feeds, newsletters and native web search, as well as content management tools such as content publishing, blogging, document editors with drag-and-drop templates, and much more.
Integrations: G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint and Single Sign-on with Okta, Azure AD, OneLogin and others. ThoughtFarmer also offers custom APIs.
Pricing: ThoughtFarmer’s pricing model is designed to be adaptable to your needs. For 50-99 users, you will pay $10 per user/month. The price per user goes down as you add more seats, from $8 for 100-199 to $5 for 500-999. Enterprise accounts can contact ThoughtFarmer for a custom quote.
Internal newsletter tools
ContactMonkey
Who’s it for: ContactMonkey is an employee newsletter and email tool for small to large businesses.
Features: Platform for creating, distributing, and measuring employee newsletters and internal emails. Offers email templates, pulse surveys, eNPS, responsive HTML emails and real-time data analytics.
Integrations: Outlook, Gmail and Salesforce
Pricing: ContactMonkey offers three plans: Essential, Plus, and Enterprise. The price is available upon request.
Cerkl Broadcast Suite
Who’s it for: Teams of any size that need a single platform to manage their employee newsletters and email communications.
Features: Newsletter creation, email blasts, mobile app, content hub, audience manager, analytics and insights.
Integrations: Microsoft Teams, Microsoft SharePoint, G-Suite, Confluence, Slack, WorkDay and more.
Pricing: Cerkl Broadcast offers three plans. The Essentials plan starts at $500/month for their drag-and-drop email builder, template library and audience management tools. The Premier and Ultimate plans build on those tools with Single Sign-on and mobile apps. To get a price quote on these upper-tier plans, contact Cerkl Broadcast directly.
Employee survey tools
Typeform
Who’s it for: Typeform is a digital form builder to facilitate better communication in large and small organizations.
Features: Intuitive form builder, built-in photo and video libraries, customizable templates, conditional logic jumps, website embeds, shareable reports and real-time data analytics.
Integrations: HubSpot, Google Drive, Microsoft Excel, Airtable, Slack, ActiveCampaign, Salesforce, Keap, Asana, Zapier, OneDrive, Automate.io, and others.
Pricing: Typeform offers an Essentials plan for $35/month that gives you up to 1,000 responses per month and 3 Logic Jumps per Typeform.
If you sign up for the yearly Professionals plan, you get up to 5,000 responses per month for the same cost. The Premium plan is $70/per month and offers unlimited Logic Jumps and up to 100,000 responses per month.
Qualtrics XM
Who’s it for: Qualtrics XM is an employee onboarding tool for HR departments seeking to better understand and improve their employee onboarding programs.
Features: Feedback program automation, real-time feedback, intuitive dashboards, pre-built surveys, and impact measurement across the employee onboarding cycle.
Integrations: Facebook Messenger, Tableau, SAP Customer Experience, Quantum Metric and others.
Pricing: Contact Qualtrics to arrange for a demo.
Video conferencing and chat tools
Zoom
Who’s it for: Zoom is used by everyone from individuals to schools to enterprise clients.
Features: HD video and audio, multi-screenshare, reaction polls, instant messaging, customizable backgrounds and filters, and desktop and mobile apps.
Integrations: Google Workspaces, Panopto, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zendesk, Monday.com, Asana, LinkedIn, Flock, Zoho CRM, Zapier, Atlassian Jira and many more.
Pricing: Zoom offers a free Basic plan that lets you meet with up to 100 participants for up to 40 minutes at a time. Their Pro plan is $149.90 per license/year for up to 1,000 participants and group meetings up to 30 hours. The Business plan is $199.900 per license/year with additional benefits such as Single Sign-on and company branding.
Skype
Who’s it for: Skype is a video and instant messaging tool that works for individuals to enterprise clients.
Features: Audio and HD video calling, call recording, subtitles, smart messaging, screensharing and more.
Integrations: Microsoft Teams, AnswerConnect, Avaya, Cisco, Dialogflow, Outlook and more.
Pricing: Skype offers a Free version that allows for instant messaging and video calls, as well as subscription-based services to use Skype as a phone.
Onboarding tools
Typelane
Who’s it for: Small teams to enterprise clients can benefit from Typelane’s comprehensive onboarding tools.
Features: Smart workflows to manage job postings, candidate assessments, interviews, hiring and onboarding. Customizable templates, clean user interface and seamless branding.
Integrations: Zapier, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, Okta, Dropbox, Docusign, Asana, Saleforce, Trello and many more…over 2,000 in all.
Pricing: Typelane offers a free trial period, as well as three plans for service. Contact Typelane directly for a quote.
Freshteam
Who’s it for: Freshteam by Freshworks offers end-to-end candidate management, onboarding and hiring workflows for small to large businesses and enterprise clients.
Features: Applicant tracking, hiring workflows, integrated email and offers, onboarding, employee database, time-off management, organizational charts and more.
Integrations: G Suite, Google Hangouts, Skype, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Indeed, Microsoft Office, Google Calendar, HackerRank, Codility, ClassMarker and more.
Pricing: FreshTeam offers several plans.
Their Sprout plan is free for up to 50 employees. The Blossom plan is $50 per month for every 50 users, offering up to 10 job postings per month. The Garden plan is $100 per month for every 50 users but offers unlimited job postings and custom features. An Estate plan is also available for enterprise clients.
Internal communication tools FAQs
What tools are typically used in corporate communications?
- Bulletin boards
- Newsletters
- Guides and manuals
- Presentations
What are the modern tools of communication?
- Social networks
- Video conferencing
- Chat/Text/Messaging
- SMS polling
- Digital newsletters
- Mobile apps
In summary: Businesses need these company internal communication tools for seamless collaboration and improved productivity
Having effective communication tools in the workplace is vital because you can’t expect people to work together effectively unless they all have the same fundamental understanding of the task at hand.
Visual aids created with Venngage can help you create clear communications for your organization, facilitating a shared understanding and making collaboration easy and seamless.
The best part about working with Venngage to create business communication assets is that you don’t have to have any previous design experience.
Our library of thousands of easy-to-edit templates and our drag-and-drop editor allow you to quickly and easily create business materials and other content with ease.
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