10 Internal Communication Tools You Need to Try Right Now

Good team communication is critical to the success of any modern workplace. But keeping everyone on the same page without overwhelming them with notifications can be a challenge, especially for remote or hybrid teams.

The answer lies in picking the right internal communication tools to boost collaboration and engagement while reducing inbox clutter. To help you choose yours, we asked the Livestorm internal communications team to tell us:

• How to select effective internal communication software
• Their recommendations for the 10 best internal communication tools

Let’s dive in.

How to select effective internal communication tools?

Selecting the right business communication tools will depend on your team and business model, but it helps to use the following criteria when evaluating them: user-friendliness, the impact they’ll have on productivity and collaboration, scalability, and value for money.

User-friendliness

Workplace communication tools live and die by their ease of use. There’s no point investing in a tool unless all your employees, regardless of technical skill, can get set up, use its features correctly, and perform basic troubleshooting.

Use free trials to check out the user interface (UI) and features, and ask about onboarding, training, and support materials. A good employee communication app should also integrate with your existing tech stack, and include features to boost adoption and engagement.

Impact on productivity and collaboration

Your internal communication systems should increase productivity and efficiency by making it easy to share information and collaborate.

Look for office communication tools with time-saving features like instant messaging and search filters. They should also be flexible and customizable enough to adapt to your working methods, not the other way around.

Scalability

Scalability is particularly important for growing companies: There’s nothing worse than having to retrain teams to use a new internal team communications tool because the one you signed up for wasn’t flexible enough to grow with you.

Think about whether all your teams can use a new tool, including roles you may not yet have in the company. And check that pricing will still make sense if you have to go up a tier later on.

Value for money

Price is a consideration, but it’s not the most important factor. If a tool meets all the above criteria, it’s well worth the investment.

Instead, focus on value for money and look for communication apps with pricing that’s transparent and easy to understand.

10 best internal communication tools in an organization

Let’s take a look at the 10 best internal communication tools that meet those criteria.

1. Best virtual meeting platform: Livestorm

Using video for internal communications makes it easier to manage remote employees and run productive, engaging virtual town hall meetings, all-hands meetings, and team meetings. You can also automate employee onboarding with HR webinars, walkthroughs, or seminars.

Livestorm is an intuitive, browser-based video engagement platform that integrates with common employee communication software like Slack, Calendly, and Typeform. It’s packed with features to boost collaboration and keep participants engaged, like interactive digital whiteboards, live chat, polls, surveys, and reaction emojis.

Virtual huddle rooms also boost collaboration by allowing small groups to network, discuss, or solve problems during or after the meeting without the distractions of the office, home, or coworking.

The sound and video quality are high, with no lag, and the automated recording featuremakes it easy to share the recording with team members who couldn’t attend. Post-event engagement analytics also tell who attended and how long they stayed, so you can make the next meeting even better.

2. Best instant messaging tool: Slack

With instant messaging and a range of integrations and engagement features, Slack is a firm fixture of many companies’ internal communications stack and has become a sort of virtual office for remote teams. This brings the benefits of close collaboration and reducing feelings of isolation, but it also brings with it the potential for a lot of watercooler talk that can distract your if you’re not careful to turn off notifications during deep focus periods.

Create channels and groups to share relevant information with the right people and cut down on redundant messaging. Features like push notifications, tagging, group chat, and search filters get teams communicating and collaborating faster and more efficiently.

Calls and huddles mean you’re not restricted to text. Plus, emojis and GIF plugins bring a little personality to the workplace. And, of course, because it’s so widely used, you can also use it for external communication by looping in clients or contractors.

3. Best email tool: Gmail

For all its plus points, it’s easy for Slack messages to get missed when employees aren’t online. That means there’s still a place in your tech stack for email, and cloud-based Gmail is our pick of the crop.

With billions of users worldwide, there’s a high chance most employees are familiar with the UI and features, so onboarding is a breeze. For the uninitiated, it’s still pretty intuitive and easy to pick up. There’s also a huge self-serve support library and helpful forums for troubleshooting.

Best of all, you can get started for free—perfect for startups—and sign up for Google Workspace as you grow. Gmail is at its most powerful when combined with Google Docs, and Sheets. And thanks to Google’s domination of the tech space, most workplace apps are designed to integrate with it.

4. Best knowledge base: Notion

Notion is an all-in-one workspace that facilitates collaboration on projects, documents, and notes. It’s like an intranet, but more user-friendly and less reliant on IT teams for support and maintenance. By centralizing information, Notion helps eliminate departmental silos, saves time, and makes teams more productive.

It’s also highly customizable, so it adapts to your team’s needs: just choose a template and drag and drop to create dashboards, wikis, documents, and systems like roadmaps, product updates, or people directories.

5. Best collaboration tool - Miro

Miro is an interactive digital whiteboard that facilitates distributed team collaboration with easy-to-use canvases, pre-built UX, and wireframing templates. It integrates with Livestorm, so you can use it during virtual meetings for brainstorming, sprint planning, and problem-solving.

Miro is inclusive and easy to use—anyone can join in and start creating—and comes with a wide range of shapes, stickers, and fonts for aesthetically pleasing creations. You can also include images, texts, videos, and links.

Miro works on mobile, tablet, desktop, and interactive displays, and integrates with popular tools like InVision, Marvel, Sketch, and Adobe.

6. Best team bonding tool - Donut

This “virtual watercooler” integrates with Slack to replicate the lighter moments and sense of connection that remote teams often lack. It comes with a range of customizable templates employees can use to get to know each other through discussion prompts and shadowing opportunities.

Just create a Slack channel, invite teammates, and let Donut grow your mini-community by adding more members. You can also up interactivity with conversation starters, favorite things, conversation-starter topics, and celebrate birthdays and anniversaries.

Who needs a physical office!

7. Best project management tool: monday

monday is a cloud-based project management platform that keeps hybrid teams on track with features like customizable workflows, timeline views, due date notifications, and instant messaging. Use it to create and assign projects and get visibility over the whole production process.

Unlike some project management tools, monday is relatively light on email notifications, so it’s a good option to also loop in freelancers and clients.

8. Best digital signing tool: DocuSign

DocuSign is a cloud-based digital signature tool that makes it easy to securely upload, share, and finalize employee agreements from a range of devices without resorting to scans or snail mail. Features like automatic reminders also save you a ton of time chasing people, while encryption and audit trails ensure accountability and security.

As well as the e-signature tool, additional products include DocuSign CLM to streamline negotiations and document creation, review, and approval. Also, DocuSign Insight uses AI for document analysis, comparison, and opportunity identification.

9. Best intranet: Workvivo

Billed as the smart alternative to legacy intranets, Workvivo aims to boost inclusivity and engagement while keeping employees informed via a social media-like experience.

Employees can post content, get updates, connect, share, and interact in real-time via livestream, multimedia, and personal activity feeds. They can also nominate each other for awards, and give shout-outs. The aim is to keep everyone in the loop without clogging up people’s inboxes or overwhelming them with messages.

Workvivo also has useful features for managers, like polls and surveys to collect valuable employee feedback and keep tabs on morale.

10. Best internal newsletter: Mailchimp

Yes, it’s a marketing tool, but you can also use Mailchimp for internal communications: It’s often easier for busy teams to catch up on company news and important announcements with a regular newsletter in their inbox than instant messaging.

Mailchimp’s intuitive UI and range of customizable drag-and-drop templates make it easy to create elegant, branded newsletters with eye-catching visuals. You can also segment your lists, and track opens and engagement to see what gets your teams’ attention.

Logging off

Effective internal communications is key to managing in-house, remote, or hybrid teams, so it’s essential to select the right tools. The best internal communication platforms are easy to use, scalable, and slot seamlessly into your tech stack and workflows. Most importantly, they offer features to keep employees engaged, motivated, and collaborating.

Get off to a good start by investing in a video engagement platform like Livestorm, which ticks all the boxes for engaging your teams through virtual meetings.

Frequently asked questions about communication tools

What is internal communication software?

Internal communication software is a centralized channel for one-to-one or one-to-many virtual internal communications. These platforms are designed for employees to come together, share and access information online to facilitate communication and collaboration between remote, in-house, or hybrid teams.

What are the most popular internal communication tools in the workplace?

Some of the most popular internal communication tools in the workplace include:

• Video engagement platforms like Livestorm
• Instant messaging like Slack
• Document collaboration tools like Notion
• Intranets like Workvivo
• Team building apps like Donut