The vendor states Freedcamp helps tens of thousands of teams around the world manage their work. Their free plan contains tasks(in list and kanban view), milestones, discussions, calendar,
time-tracking and password management. On their premium plans, they also offer Gantt charts, Wikis, Issue Tracking, CRM and Invoices+.
$2.49
per month
Google Chat
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Google Chat, formerly Hangouts Chat, is a collaboration tool competing with Slack, designed to make it easy for teams to be able to get their work done in one place. From direct messages to group conversations, Chat helps teams collaborate, and with dedicated, virtual rooms to house projects over time — plus threaded conversations — Chat helps users track progress and follow up tasks. Chat currently supports 28 languages and each room can support up to 8,000 members.
I have used a number of different Project Management Tools and this is the one I always make the team come back to, it's easy to use, has great support, and can be used by people of various levels of technical ability. When planning a complicated network, that needs to be sold to a customer, all people within the company have needs that have to be addressed, from the obvious technical, but also legal, regulatory, finance, and ordering of equipment and all these have different milestones, that interconnect, this is where Freedcamp shines, it allows all of the company to work together to achieve the technical sale.
Well suited for businesses of all sizes. HOWEVER, I would say keep the chat groups limited at the departmental level, ensure that your moderator or the individual responsible for the group keeps it on topic, and have your IT team monitor it from time to time. Google Chat gets used so much in our organization that we have rules and regs in our Employee Handbook regarding its proper use (and when used PROPERLY, it can be very effective).
The updates, support, general reviews on Google Chat are great everywhere. The development of the features is ongoing and this adds a great value to Google as a big company in the market. Other applications are limiting communication while Google Chat is allowing communication to grow. It is very easy to use it and teach others how to use Google Chat.
I have people who struggle to use PC's using Freedcamp, so it's that easy to understand in the basic form. I've also had high-level CTOs using Freedcamp, so it covers all areas.
It's not perfect. There are occasional glitches, drop-outs, and it takes a bit to get everything loaded and working. But it is significantly better than Zoom or GoToMeeting when you're in instructional settings. I know my teacher friends here like it and the administrators and parents seem to be satisfied too.
Especially a few years ago when Freedcamp was first starting, I needed support, sometimes, I'd find a bug as a heavy user, Igor and Angel are great people who are quick to reply and help you as well as the other great staff. Freedcamp's support is the best of any software product I use.
I have not needed to contact the support folks for Google Hangouts Chat, so I can't speak to this with any accuracy. The online instructions are fairly clearly written, so it is fairly intuitive to start with. I did not feel the need to use the support people anyway.
Prior to Google Hangouts, our company used Spark. Spark was not integrated into our email, therefore it couldn't be easily accessed in the same browser. With Spark we also couldn't search our emails for keywords in a conversation, searching had to be done manually. The one feature I enjoyed about Spark was a request to get a user's attention: If I had an urgent question and I wanted to ensure the recipient saw my message/question, I would request their attention and the message screen would pop up on their screen.
It's quite low cost for a business so that's a no brainer.
I also use it for a Non-Profit organization and we get a free version there, which is great.
I remember that the people running company planning especially loved how this made complex activity open for viewing by all within the company (as required) so that there was no "mystery" within projects, we all had an advance understanding of what resources and activities would be needed.