Best Document Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams [Notion + 10 Alternatives]

A sudden shift towards the work from home culture has made online docs for team collaboration a new normal. Online team collaborations have made it possible to work on a team project without the need for physical proximity.

Teamwork is the key to execute large projects effectively, but earlier, it required team members to be physically present at the workplace for efficient collaboration. A sudden increase in employees working from home has compelled the industry to mend its ways and look at alternatives like online docs for team collaboration.

Imagine working on a team project, and your team is working hard to meet the deadline. One of the team members is unable to come to work because of a personal problem. The project is most likely to get delayed unless your team uses document collaboration software. You can invite the absent team member to a document collaboration software, and the project continues at its usual pace.

Let’s look at some of the best online docs for team collaboration and their benefits.

monday.com

Adjectives like monotonous, boring, dull, or tedious pop up when people think of monday.com, but monday.com aims to change the entire notion. monday.com is tailor-made to suit the needs of employees working on a team project. Teams can create personalized workflows, and Monday intelligently adapts itself to best suit the team’s needs.

monday.com is perfect for businesses of all sizes and comes in with a plethora of features.

• Gives you the flexibility to assign tasks to the team members and track the progress of each member. This feature eliminates the lack of workload clarity while working on an online project.
• Their user interface is clean and lets you visualize the bigger picture through its intuitive and user-friendly layout.
• Tag team members using @, which significantly eases communication. Team members no longer need to communicate through lengthy emails for the slightest needs.
• Integrate all the applications under one roof to make it a one-stop destination for team projects. You can bring in files from Google Drive, Dropbox, and more using monday.com.
• Not limited to a single platform; instead, the platform makes sure you have access to your project on all major platforms. Currently, monday.com is available on the Web, Android, iPhones, and iPads.

ClickUp

ClickUp is an all-in-one application that aims to ease team collaboration projects with its specialized feature set.  Its fully customizable and unique features make it a must-have for businesses of all sizes. You can easily manage group tasks, documents, reminders, goals, calendars, and more using ClickUp.

You also get messaging functionality where you can send individual or group messages on the same platform.

Some perks of using this platform include:

• You get eight different view options to manage team collaboration projects.
• There are times when a team member is working on multiple projects simultaneously. ClickUp allows you to create custom editable statuses for every individual project.
• It is a perfect tool for admins as they can assign tasks to multiple members simultaneously. Admins can track every assigned task using the table view and multitask functionality.
• ClickUp uses SCRUM methodology to provide informative yet straightforward insight into different parameters across the platform.
• The third-party integrations are seamless, and the platform lets you bring in files from all popular applications.

Try ClickUp to see how it helps.

Document360

Document360 is a platform where teams can capture and save vital information in one place. It delivers everything you need from a document collaboration tool: easy sharing, workflow, version history, commenting, tagging, review reminders, etc.

It offers a hassle-free user interface that makes it simple to generate and distribute content for review. It has built-in searchability, so your user can quickly discover the information they’re looking for in the documentation.

Create and manage your articles with powerful out-of-the-box documentation features such as:

• Create how-to guides, standard operating procedures, employee handbook, reference docs, system docs, and release notes.
• Document360 has rich text editors such as WYSIWYG and Markdown editors. Additionally, multiple versioning and article commenting are supported to internally collaborate with your team members.
• The Category manager assists you in creating categories, and subcategories, grouping comparable files together and establishing a well-structured hierarchy of all your information.
• It automatically stores content, and you may always recover the prior version of the content you erased.
• Document360 allows you to provide numerous roles to your users, allowing you to govern who has access to what content.
• Allow your employees or clients to easily access your documentation with seamless login.

Document360 connects with a variety of different software applications, including Microsoft Teams, Slack, Chrome, Zapier, and Integrately to provide seamless team collaboration.

Coda

A new kind of document called Coda combines the adaptability of a spreadsheet with the strength of a database. Coda is designed for working together on any project.

Coda documents begin as blank sheets and expand as sections, tables, and databases. For you and your team, no matter where you are, all your changes show up instantly.

More than 25,000 companies, including the New York Times, Square, Robinhood, TED, and BuzzFeed, have adopted Coda.

Instead of offering standard workflow tools, its versatility allows you to build the tools your team needs.

Coda looks like a document visually, but it functions more like an app, allowing you to connect with your team, collaborate effectively, carry out multiple tasks at once, and make quick decisions.

The platform is highly secure and scalable to meet the expanding team and business demands. Its automation feature helps carry out particular tasks in response to predefined triggers, reducing repetitive tasks.

The likelihood that a business can do away with numerous documents, spreadsheets, apps, etc., after deploying Coda is very high because all of these features are readily available on its platform.

Top Features

• Real-time data update to the dashboard
• Seamless integration with third-party tools like Slack, Google Calendar, Asana, Salesforce, and many more
• Easier-to-write formulas to achieve goals faster
• Prebuild templates to kick-start project activities in no time
• Granular privileges to maintain workspaces
• SAML-based Single Sign-on (SSO) and SOC compliance

With a set of building blocks that anyone can use to create a document as powerful as an app, Coda is an intelligent platform that gets around the limitations of standard document frameworks.

The platform has four variants: Free, Pro, Team, and Enterprise. The ideal option is to use its free version and then scale up to a higher edition as needed.

Zoho Writer

Zoho is yet another feature-packed cloud-based word processing tool that syncs your documents in real-time. Zoho makes sure your MS Word documents get imported to the platform without any formatting errors. Also, Zoho lets you collaborate on team projects using their real-time sharing features. As you share your documents with other team members, you can see their cursor movement and the edits they make.

Some perks of using Zoho Writer include:

• The cloud-based nature of Zoho makes team collaborations efficient and swift.
• The documents you create on Zoho don’t occupy local system storage and instead get stored on Cloud.
• The real-time sync feature makes sure your documents never get tampered with in case of a calamity.
• Zoho features a fresh UI with easy navigation to all the vital word processing options.
• Administrators can control the access rights of every member in a team project and grant permissions to specific functions as well.

Dropbox Paper

Dropbox Paper is an online doc for team collaboration from the tech giant Dropbox itself. It is a no-brainer that Dropbox Paper comes with a lot more perks if your team largely depends on Dropbox to store files. Teams can easily organize documents, assign tasks, create systematic workflows, and collaborate on projects.

Moreover, the task management tools in Dropbox Paper greatly ease functions that would otherwise become complicated in an online scenario. The platform lets you mention other group members, assign tasks to others, and efficiently manage your to-dos. Some exciting features of this platform include:

• You can exchange a wide variety of multimedia on Dropbox Paper, like YouTube links, GIFs, Pinterest boards, Locations on Google Maps, audio from SoundCloud, and many more.
• Paper supports embedded previews of Inversion and Sketch files. Also, you can convert your documents into PPTs without using a third-party application.
• You can choose a template for your project from the vast template library on Dropbox Paper. There are numerous templates for brainstorming, product launches, product specifications, bug tracking projects, and more.
• Dropbox Paper comes with the option to connect your calendar to the platform. Your entire work schedule gets synced onto the platform. Paper then adapts itself, providing access to agendas, background documents, task assignments, and meeting events directly through the application.
• The mobile application gives you the feature to capture images using the camera and give feedback.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a word processing software from Google which uses a different approach to word processing. Most word processors like Word and Open Office remained offline tools that were local programs stored in a PC. On the other hand, Google Docs is a cloud-based word processor that needs online connectivity to run.

Opting for the online route opens a new world of innovations for a word-processor like team collaborations. Docs allow you to share a document with other members, making it a go-to platform for basic team collaboration. Please note that Docs is majorly a word processor, and you won’t get tailored functions like other listings in the article. That said, Docs is still a great option for team collaborations, mainly if you use it as your primary word processor.

Some perks of using Google Docs:

• Google Docs sends a notification as an email when a document gets shared with you.
• Members don’t need to sign up, especially for Docs; having a Google account is enough to use the platform.
• You can view recent revisions to a document and the members who made the tweaks.
• You can seamlessly import all significant formats of word documents on Docs.
• The real-time sync feature makes sure you never lose any data during a network interruption.

If you end up using Google Workspace for your business, you may want to check this software to turn Email into a powerful helpdesk.

Bit

Bit is not an ordinary word processor; instead, it caters predominantly to team collaboration projects. You can create quick dynamic notes, documents, wikis, knowledge bases, projects, client deliverables, technical docs, and more using powerful management tools on Bit. Moreover, you get to create separate workspaces for all your projects.

Collaborating on Bit is efficient and helps you maintain transparency between different team members.

Some benefits of using Bit:

• The Workspace feature on Bit lets you organize your projects, clients, and teams. You can also move documents between different workspaces, eliminating the hassle of uploading the same file multiple times.
• The mention feature using “@” is a great efficiency booster while working in team collaborations.
• Bit comes with a minimalistic yet innovative editor that lets you effortlessly create documents. The efficiency gets further boosted by coupling the editor and real-time collaboration features.
• You can add visual web links, rich media, videos, graphics, designs, embeds, social media posts, surveys, and a lot more right into the editor.
• Bit also gives you the feature to track the engagement of the documents you shared. These insights are a great way to improve your documents and gain more traction.
• You can save all your essential files on Bit to enhance the cross-platform usability of the solution.

Confluence

Confluence is a shared workspace that lets teams collaborate, organize, and publish efficiently. It is open and collaborative, helping your team to bring out their best work together. It often gets hard to track edits, comments, or feedbacks made by other team members, but this platform addresses the problem. You get a universal search option that lets you search the entire workspace and find matching information.

Some perks of using this platform include:

• Confluence lets you integrate applications from the Atlassian Marketplace. The Atlassian Marketplace is home to more than 3,000 applications that you can add to the platform.
• The platform is available on multiple platforms like Android, iOS, and the Web.
• It offers first-class Jira integration straight into the platform.
• You get fantastic organizational features, and the universal search option is a major dealbreaker.
• There are loads of beautiful templates for Marketing, Product, HR, and more in the template library.
• You get seamless integration with popular platforms such as Trello, Slack, Microsoft Office, Invision, Dropbox, Google Drive, and more.
• Confluence sites follow privacy controls and industry-verified standards of data encryption.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word has been a synonym for word processing software for a pretty long time. Word has always been the industry leader in providing a simplified yet powerful word processing solution. Still, Microsoft has taken the software to an upper notch by introducing team collaboration features. The latest version of Word brings in a plenty of features like:

• You get the feature to transform documents into web pages without using any third-party application.
• You can easily share a document with team members using the real-time sharing feature in Word.
• Word comes with an in-built translator that is especially helpful while working with members from different cultural backgrounds.
• You can add 3D models directly to your documents using Word.
• The real-time sync feature makes sure you never lose your documents.
• Word is now available on Android, iOS, Web, and Windows, easing cross-platform workflows.

Notion

You expected this, don’t you?

Notion is the most feature-packed and easy-to-use platform for team collaboration on this list. The platform lets businesses streamline their operations to set goals, track the workflow status, lead management, and more through one centralized tool. It comes with a drag-and-drop interface to help you organize, rearrange, and develop new ideas or plans.

Notion comes with significant benefits for team collaboration such as:

• Notion lets businesses create and maintain a knowledge base for numerous tasks like project guidelines, coding instructions, HR workflows, and more.
• The platform comes with a built-in calendar and Kanban boards that team members can use to create quick notes and track their progress.
• Team members can add comments on tasks and projects for better communication and transparency.
• You can use Notion’s API to integrate their systems with various third-party applications such as Slack, Figma, and Invision.
• Creating to-do lists, preparing meeting notes, and setting up weekly agendas become excessively easy using the unified platform.

You can also use Notion on your custom domain. However, if you are not happy for whatever reason, you can try the above-listed online docs software for collaboration as a Notion alternative.

Final Note 👩‍💻

Online team collaborations efficiently create projects while avoiding the downsides of conventional development like office traveling times and fixed work hours. Using an online doc is necessary to organize your workflow, setting agendas, and a lot more.

Platforms like Notion, Monday, and Paper specially cater to team-related projects with their specialized feature set. These platforms are perfect for businesses of all kinds and individuals as well.

Google Docs, Word, and Zoho are word processing software that allows real-time collaborations. That said, these applications don’t come with organizational features like other tools on this list.

Next, explore some of the best online spreadsheets for your business.