10 Best Marketing Collaboration Software Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 23 tools reviewed.
With so many different marketing collaboration software solutions available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want software that centralizes resources, allowing team members to easily share information, track progress, and coordinate tasks—but now need to figure out which tool is best. I've got you! In this post, I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different marketing collaboration tools with companies of all sizes, with my picks of the best marketing collaboration software overall.
What is Marketing Collaboration Software?
Marketing collaboration software is a digital tool designed to facilitate teamwork in marketing endeavors. The purpose is to provide a unified platform for sharing information, managing tasks, and tracking project progress. This software streamlines communication among team members, ensuring everyone is aligned with the marketing strategy and objectives.
Overviews Of The 10 Best Marketing Collaboration Software
Here’s a brief description of each marketing collaboration software that showcases each vendor’s best use case, their noteworthy features, and some pros and cons.
Slack is a team messaging platform that helps business teams plan, schedule, and manage multiple projects.
Why I picked Slack: The platform is a team messaging tool that provides simple communication and collaboration capabilities on any scale. Slack provides centralized and organized communication features that allow your teams to speak with each other and share crucial updates, information, files, and more essential project data. If team members are offline, too busy to respond, in a meeting, or you’re offline, Slack allows users to create workspace environments with notifications, status updates, and rich profiles - now, you don’t have to chase down anyone for an answer.
Slack is for organizations and marketing teams of any size that need a tool for letting anyone speak in an online space. Other than organizing chat messages, Slack helps users share files, use audio and video chat, and enable document management. The platform offers an open API that allows you to create custom integrations with the tool and develop nearly endless possibilities.
Slack Standout Features and Integrations
Features include collaboration channels, file sharing, enterprise-grade security, workflow automation, public and private channels, direct messaging, document management, an employee directory, project management, and video conferencing.
Integrations include Basecamp, Box, ClickUp, DocuSign, Freshbooks, Freshdesk, Google Calendar, Lucidchart, monday.com, Outlook, Pipedrive, ServiceNow, Webex Meetings, Wrike, Zoho Assist, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- An extensive integration library
- Allows for simple team communications
- It’s easy to navigate
Cons:
- There’s a lack of privacy controls
- The file preview options need improvement
Wrike is a project management and collaboration tool that provides teams with a platform to manage tasks, track work progress, and share documents.
Why I picked Wrike: Wrike is a work management platform designed to assist teams in collaborating and managing projects efficiently. The platform enables users to create tasks, assign them to team members, track progress, and communicate within the team. Wrike also offers a variety of resources such as a resource hub, blog, educational guides, webinars, and a community for user engagement and learning.
The software also includes dynamic request forms that allow for the submission and management of work requests, streamlining the intake process. It also facilitates proofing and approvals, which enable teams to review and sign off on creative assets efficiently. Wrike additionally provides dashboards for monitoring project progress and performance, as well as reporting tools for analyzing marketing performance.
Wrike Standout Features and Integrations
Features include Gantt charts, marketing calendars, tailored workflows, time tracking, resource management tools, workflow automation tools, and collaboration features like live editing, document sharing, and real-time comments.
Integrations include Slack, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Adobe Creative Cloud, Google Sheets, Miro, Tableau, Zoom, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Helps keep teams on the same page
- Allows users to create custom workflows
- User-friendly interface
Cons:
- Notifications system needs improvement
- Limited reporting capabilities
Canva helps marketing teams collaborate and effectively plan, design, create, share, and publish various marketing collateral.
Why I picked Canva: Your marketing teams can use Canva to create different types of collateral, including social media posts, logos, documents, prints, graphs and charts, and other graphic designs. The platform makes it easy to invite team members to edit and review collateral via email, shareable links, or Canva folders. The tool also ensures your team has what they need to stay on brand with its Brand Kit feature, where everyone can establish and save templates, colors, fonts, logos, and all other graphic collateral.
Canva works well for any sized business and marketing team that needs a graphic design tool that doesn’t require experience. The tool includes a real-time comments and reactions feature that enables your teams to leave design feedback. Canva’s insight function can also help you track progress and monitor how designs are performing.
Canva Standout Features and Integrations
Features include design templates, image editor, print management, content management, visual discovery, filtered views, user tagging, electronic signatures, multiple file formats, edit and change tracking, comments and annotations, and cloud storage.
Integrations include 360Learning LMS, Brandfolder, ContentPresso, Hootsuite, HubSpot CMS Hub, Oktopost, OptiSigns, PageProof, Pexels, Post Planner, Social Champ, Vista Social, Wattpad, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Simple to implement
- It provides many vibrant templates
- Easy to use
Cons:
- It can slow down when making videos
- High-quality downloads are only available in paid plans
Airtable helps businesses connect work at all levels to enhance efforts by centralizing data, requests, and plans.
Why I picked Airtable: The platform is part database, part spreadsheet, that’s entirely flexible to meet your needs. Airtable helps marketing teams by combining spreadsheet formats with database tools that your teams can use to manage campaigns and track performance. The tool lets your team members collaborate and manage data about anything they need, such as editorial calendars, collections, and inventories.
Airtable is an excellent choice for any sized business that needs a tool to help provide data transparency that will keep up as they scale. Airtable can make work more efficient by allowing teams to get a customized view of the information they need to complete their tasks. You can use the platform to sync goals to actions and simplify work to understand how your team’s work impacts performance.
Airtable Standout Features and Integrations
Features include document storage, audience segmentation, email marketing, calendar and reminder system, task management, brainstorming tool, content management, version control, real-time editing, video conferencing, and project management.
Integrations include Asana, Basecamp, Box, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Evernote, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Jotform, Pocket, Salesforce, Slack, Stripe, Trello, Typeform, Zendesk, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- The user interface is excellent
- Excellent drag-and-drop tool
- Easy to use and sort data
Cons:
- Email automation is complex
- Customer support needs work
Trello is a collaboration tool that allows managers to distribute tasks to team members and organize team workflows.
Why I picked Trello: With Trello, you can create a marketing team and add new members to projects whenever you need to. Trello helps simplify entire marketing projects with a clear overview of what’s been done and what teams need to do next. The platform uses a visual Kanban board with boards, lists, and cards to help you organize and prioritize your team’s work.
Trello is suitable for smaller teams that work with in-house teams, contractors, freelancers, and other non-in-house employees. Your teams can communicate and tag each other on project cards, attach and share files, and move cards to different lists to track work and archive assignments when they’re done. Trello also allows teams to put up creative ideas to implement at a later time when approved and discuss editorial calendars.
Trello Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a Kanban board, task management, project management, progress tracking, workflow creation and management, calendars, dashboards, automation rules, and workflow templates.
Integrations include Beeminder, Flow XO, Freshdesk, Front, OneLogin, Pabbly Connect, Pomello, SnipHero, Sunsama, TimeDoctor, WireframePro, Zapier, Zoho Desk, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Excellent interface configuration options
- Regular updates
- Optimized for desktop and mobile
Cons:
- The calendar view makes it difficult to view projects
- It can’t create multiple views on the same board
Flock helps businesses with remote marketing teams stay connected and work collaboratively.
Why I picked Flock: With Flock, your remote marketing teams can keep all messages organized from a centralized area. They can use the platform to share files, chat, and host video meetings. When working together within the Flock system, your teams can use an in-chat poll feature that allows everyone to vote on specific items and be more decisive regarding projects and stay on track. If anyone needs to record information immediately, Flock’s private or shared Team Notes features allow you to collect information fast and attach relevant files to the notes.
Flock works with businesses and teams of all sizes that need a system to simplify communications with in-house and remote teams, freelancers, or contractors. The platform’s channel features give your teams a space to share marketing campaign ideas and get other people to pitch in. You can use the screen-sharing capabilities to better explain graphs or reference images when discussing marketing collateral.
Flock Standout Features and Integrations
Features include video conferencing, channel messaging, voice notes, integrated search, file sharing, to-do lists, polls, reminders, admin controls, authentication tools, data retention, user permissions, calendar management, real-time editing, and project management.
Integrations include Asana, Box, Chanty, Checkr, Dropbox, Freshdesk, Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Rambox, Todoist, Trainual, Trello, Zapier, Zendesk, Zoho CRM, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- The group call feature makes collaboration easy
- Simple user interface
- Users can easily create multiple groups
Cons:
- The mobile app doesn’t send notifications on time
- There are some latency issues
CoSchedule helps marketing teams effectively collaborate by providing an actionable marketing calendar everyone can see, schedule, and share work.
Why I picked CoSchedule: Instead of using multiple tools, such as emails, spreadsheets, and calendars, to coordinate marketing projects, CoSchedule provides a marketing calendar that allows your team to monitor, schedule, and collaborate on all aspects of their campaigns. Your teams can share their calendar in a read-only format to allow all stakeholders to stay updated on campaigns, and your team doesn’t have to worry about anyone accidentally altering them. CoSchedule allows marketing teams to share their calendars with other teams to keep everyone on the same page about project plans and progress.
CoSchedule is an excellent option for marketing teams that need a platform to help enhance and simplify campaign management. Your marketing teams can use CoSchedule to manage every part of every project from start to finish in one central location. Also, the vendor uses feedback from current users to build features that can solve real-world issues.
CoSchedule Standout Features and Integrations
Features include multi-campaign management, editorial calendars, multi-channel publishing, content grouping and categorization, social media management, an asset library, version control, workflow management, document search, and brand control.
Integrations include ActiveCampaign, Asana, Basecamp, Buffer, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, Evernote, Google Analytics, Google Drive, Honeybook, HubSpot CMS Hub, Mailchimp, Trello, Wrike, Zapier, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- It can handle multiple brands from one screen
- Multiple departments can view marketing projects
- The color coordination keeps everyone updated
Cons:
- There’s a learning curve
- It can be overwhelming at first
Buffer helps teams collaborate and drive engagement and results on social media.
Why I picked Buffer: If you need a tool that will help your marketing teams collaborate and work together to handle your social media needs, Buffer can help them by providing a dedicated space to create new ideas. Buffer allows you to assign different roles to each team member depending on what’s appropriate for them. After developing new content ideas, you can use the permission levels to let you choose who can post to your social media channels to help your teams move fast.
Buffer is suitable for any sized business that needs a tool that will provide visual marketing features, audience engagement capabilities, and detailed analytics for their social media channels. It allows you to review posts for quality and ensure everything matches your brand before publishing. Buffer also helps you stay on top of content performance thanks to its automated reporting capabilities.
Buffer Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customizable reports, engagement tracking, automated content publishing, brand tracking, content management, customer engagement, multi-network management, social media monitoring, post-scheduling, and conversion tracking.
Integrations include Audiense, Evernote, Google Drive, Klipfolio, Mailchimp, ProjectManager, PromoRepublic, Rambox, Rebrandly, Slack, Trello, Typeform, WordPress, Zapier, Zoho Flow, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- It provides top-notch analytics
- The scheduling feature is straightforward to use
- Allows post customization for each channel
Cons:
- No notifications when something goes wrong
- The interface can become complex
Asana helps make collaboration easier for marketing teams by providing spaces to manage tasks.
Why I picked Asana: Your teams can use Asana to organize and manage marketing tasks by using the tool’s boards and project functions. Asana’s features include the ability to customize workspaces and share them with various business departments. The platform allows you to automate tasks, and everyone involved can see how their work fits the project, no matter which department they’re in. Asana also helps your teams meet deadlines by allowing you to customize and share project lists and timelines with detailed steps and stages.
Asana helps marketing teams of all sizes operating in various industries that need a tool to track initiatives and get an accurate view of how everyone is progressing toward their goals. Your teams can use the tool no matter where they are, either remotely or in person. Asana also allows you to assign tasks and subtasks to multiple team members to keep everyone on schedule throughout the entire project.
Asana Standout Features and Integrations
Features include project boards, to-do lists, project timelines, a calendar, Kanban boards, task management, project milestones, task assignees, custom fields, time tracking, due dates and times, and file view.
Integrations include Canva, Figma, Freshdesk, Google Drive, InVision, Mailchimp, Microsoft Teams, Okta, OneLogin, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Slack, Splunk, Tableau, Trello, Zapier, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Breaks down larger projects into subtasks
- Allows users to search for information
- Simplifies project management
Cons:
- There’s a slight learning curve
- The significant number of features is overwhelming
ProofHub is a robust tool that will help marketing teams collaborate on projects and campaigns.
Why I picked ProofHub: The platform is a project management tool that will help your marketing teams plan, organize, and deliver any sized project on time. You can use the software to track tasks and projects during every stage as you prioritize work to suit your team. ProofHub helps bring team members together and communicate in one space to eliminate long email threads and ensure they stay on topic.
ProofHub is ideal for anyone, from freelancers to large-scale enterprises, from any industry, who needs a system to get a better handle on projects. The different available project views, either Gantt, Table, or Kanban charts, will help you get a better understanding of scheduled workflows. ProofHub also helps you save time from segregating and collating data by providing access to instant reports to analyze KPIs.
ProofHub Standout Features and Integrations
Features include calendar management, version control, document management, chat and messaging, task management, due date tracking, content management, role-based permissions, markup tools, client portals, and agile methodologies.
Integrations include Box, Dropbox, Freshbooks, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Quickbooks, Slack, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- It handles all aspects of project management
- The workflows are customizable
- It makes it easy to plan and manage work
Cons:
- The mobile app could be more responsive
- It doesn’t create invoices without integrations
The Best Marketing Collaboration Software Summary
| Tools | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Slack | From $8.75/user/month | Website |
| Wrike | From $9.80/user/month | Website |
| Canva | From $14.99/user/month | Website |
| Airtable | From $10/user/month (billed annually). | Website |
| Trello | From $6/user/month | Website |
| Flock | From $6/user/month | Website |
| CoSchedule | From $39/user/month when paid monthly or $29/user/month when billed annually | Website |
| Buffer | From $5/user/month | Website |
| Asana | From $13.49/user/month | Website |
| ProofHub | From $45/month (flat rate for unlimited users) | Website |
Compare Software Specs Side by Side
Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.
Compare SoftwareOther Options
Here are a few more worthwhile options that didn’t make the best marketing collaboration solution list:
- Hootsuite
Best for social media management collaboration
- Marketo
Best for collaborating with sales teams
- Hubspot Marketing Hub
Best for marketing automation
- Microsoft Teams
Best chat-based workspace in Microsoft Office 365
- Loomly
Best for social media content creation
- Smartsheet
Best for project visibility
- ClickUp
Best for enhancing work efficiency
- Basecamp
Best for planning projects without meetings
- monday.com
Best for custom workflows
- Hive
Best for connecting all project aspects
- Google Workspace
Best for productivity and collaboration tools
- Stack Overflow
Best for team knowledge sharing
- Notion
Best unified workspace for teams
Other Types of Marketing Software
Here are different types of marketing software to consider using in your organization.
How I Selected the Best Marketing Collaboration Software
Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best marketing collaboration software for this list? To build this top 12 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of marketing collaboration software with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of marketing operations experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best marketing collaboration software for this article:
Core Functionality:
Each software on this list will have its own “take” on marketing collaboration but I’ve made sure they can all handle the basics.
- Ability to handle marketing tasks and projects from planning to execution
- Ability to collaborate between team members will messaging, commenting, tagging, or other forms of built-in communication
Key Features
Some tools will focus on one specific feature, but more robust systems will include multiple capabilities. Here are some of the key features to look for in a marketing collaboration platform:
- Marketing Intelligence: When all marketing data and documents are available in the same environment, it’s easier for teams to leverage marketing intelligence software and get a better understanding of whether their efforts are producing positive results.
- Marketing Automation: Many marketing tasks can be repetitive but valuable, and the marketing collaboration tool you use should handle these tasks and allow your teams to focus on more valuable work.
- Messaging and Chat: These are essential parts of a collaboration tool because features such as direct and group messaging can ensure everyone can speak to each other when necessary.
- File Sharing: Collaboration tools with file-sharing capabilities allow your teams to easily access files from anywhere and reduce the risk of losing crucial documents.
- Project Management: This feature enables your teams to stay organized and track tasks, set deadlines, and monitor progress to ensure everything is done on time.
- Marketing Planning: The planning stage is where teams need to collaborate most, and the marketing collaboration tool you’re considering should help everyone create ideas quickly, prioritize the best ideas, and dedicate budgets to campaigns and strategies that will get the best results.
Ease of Use:
The main goal of implementing any type of marketing software is to make life easier, not more difficult. Any time you bring on new software, there’s always going to be a learning curve—so keep that in mind. There are some tools available that are more complex than others, depending on your requirements and skill level. I look for collaboration tools that allow teams to be fairly proficient after the first few weeks of using the software so it doesn’t add any complexity to processes and enhances performance and productivity.
Software Integrations:
It’s easier to use marketing collaboration software if your teams can manage and access everything from a single screen. The collaboration software you’re considering should quickly integrate with other tools your organization uses. I look for platforms that provide a wide range of integrations with tools such as content management, customer relationship management, email software, cloud storage systems, and other vital marketing software.
Pricing:
Marketing collaboration software may charge on a fixed monthly basis or a per-user monthly basis. Costs range anywhere from $6-50/month. The more you need out of it, the higher the cost. As long as the software is fairly priced for what it offers, then I consider it a good value for price. I highlighted pricing, free trials, and additional fees for each software so that you can make the best choice for your needs and budget.
People Also Ask
When searching for new marketing automation software to use in their organization, many people ask some of the following questions.
Why is marketing collaboration software important?
There are many reasons why marketing collaboration software is important for an organization. First, it can help with efficiency and productivity. It can also help your company’s bottom line by reducing costs from errors and duplicated tasks. These platforms can also centralize information and make it accessible to everyone that needs it. When using collaboration software, you never have to worry about transparency issues when handling the marketing production process. You can ensure to share all necessary information with the right stakeholders at all times and avoid the issue of publishing content without the required approvals.
How much does marketing collaboration software cost?
The cost of marketing collaboration software will vary depending on the depth and breadth of features included, whether you pay monthly or annually, and how many users you need on the platform. The last consideration is particularly important for marketing collaboration software because you can’t skimp on the number of users when you are looking to enable communication across the whole team and maybe even between departments. That being said, you can expect to pay around $5 to $99 per month.
What marketing collaboration software is easiest to use?
There are several marketing collaboration software options available, and the ease of use can vary depending on individual preferences and requirements. However, I can provide you with a list of popular marketing collaboration tools known for their user-friendly interfaces and intuitive features:
- Asana: Asana offers a straightforward and visually appealing interface. It allows teams to create and manage tasks, track progress, and collaborate effectively on marketing projects.
- Trello: Trello is known for its simplicity and ease of use. It uses a card-based system to organize tasks, making it easy to create, assign, and track marketing activities.
- Wrike: Wrike offers a user-friendly interface with drag-and-drop functionality. It provides task management, document collaboration, and project tracking features, making it suitable for marketing teams.
- monday.com: monday.com offers a visually appealing and intuitive interface. It provides customizable workflows, task management, and collaboration features that can be tailored to fit marketing needs.
- Slack: While primarily a team communication tool, Slack also supports collaboration through channels, direct messaging, file sharing, and integration with other marketing tools, making it useful for marketing teams.
Remember, the “easiest to use” software ultimately depends on your specific requirements and preferences. It’s recommended to try out a few options to see which one aligns best with your team’s needs and workflows.
Other Marketing Software Reviews
Marketing software comes in all shapes and sizes, from social media platform management to website and product reporting. You'll probably need several tools to cover the whole gambit of needs. Here are some other software review lists that I recommend checking out:
- Best Marketing Software
- Marketing Management Software
- Marketing Calendar Software
- Marketing Workflow Software
- Marketing Planning Tools
- Marketing CRM Software
- MLM Software
The Takeaway
71% of employees from around the world report that staying connected with colleagues boosts productivity, and using marketing collaboration tools will help you manage marketing projects and the creative process and approve marketing content.
Whether you need suggestions regarding the latest tools to help enhance your marketing processes or you’re looking for the latest advice from top marketing experts, try signing up for The CMO newsletter. After subscribing, you’ll receive the latest marketing tips and tool lists that will help you reach your goals.