Working in a design team means that you need to work in sync with your teammates to create stunning designs and it sure sounds like a fun and easy job, right?
Well, designing is fun for the most part but coordinating effectively with the team members can be challenging.
Why?
Because you need to keep communicating with others to avoid replication of work and ensure that every step of the design process is in accordance with the overall workflow.
Thankfully, there are several design collaboration tools available online that can be of great help when you need to create designs as a group.
But while searching for a design collaboration tool, you definitely don’t want to try-out all of them to find out the best ones. To save you from all the hassle of finding a good design collaboration tool for your team, we have compiled our list of 10 best design collaboration tools.
So, all you need to do is to check out the features of the tools listed here and choose one that suits both your requirements and your budget.
Why Do You Need A Design Collaboration Tool?
No team can afford to waste too much time just to make sure that team members stay in sync with one another. A modern-day design collaboration tool makes it much easier for your team to work in a dynamic environment where speed and accuracy are of utmost importance.
When you need to make communication and coordination a natural part of your design team, you simply need to use design collaboration tools.
These tools come integrated with features that allow you and your teammates to share designs, provide feedback & suggestions, and communicate in real-time.
Now, it’s time for you to take a look at the best design collaboration tools that will help your design team to become more productive by giving life to team synergy.
10 Best Design Collaboration Tools for Your Creative Design Team
ProofHub
ProofHub is a popular project management and team collaboration software trusted by hundreds of businesses all over the world. It packs a vast array of collaboration tools such as real-time chat interface, online proofing tool, etc. that come handy for any design team. The most notable thing about this software is that it is suitable for all types of teams working in an organization.
Key Highlights:
- Create tasks and select multiple assignees for each task
- Define the workflow of your design project and see tasks moving through different stages using Kanban boards
- Proof design files using online and markup tools to highlight and add feedback to a particular section of the design
- Upload multiple versions of a design file to compare the changes at your convenience
- Communicate with your team members over chat messages either one-to-one or in a group
- Create discussion topics to address issues and discuss with multiple team members
Best Pricing Plan:
Ultimate Control Plan
$89 per month (billed annually) (unlimited users)
Artwork Flow
Artwork Flow is an AI-powered label management software trusted by fast-growing brands across the globe. It offers several cutting-edge design collaboration features including comments, annotations, and other rich proofing tools, real-time chats, workflow automation for project management, and so much more. Artwork Flow helps bring different teams and reviewers together on the same page to make creative collaboration much easier.
Highlights:
- Rich proofing: Proof assets across 160+ file formats including video proofing.
- Real-time collaboration: Get your entire team under one virtual roof and accelerate multi-stage reviews.
- Automate for faster reviews: Spot missing information, incorrect branding, and more in seconds with an AI-powered label compliance assistant.
- Version control: Compare versions of a design using different comparison modes (side-by-side, flicker, difference) and easily identify changes.
Best pricing plan:
The Professional plan priced at $39 per user per month is best for creative agencies and growing brands looking to collaborate better on design projects.
Basecamp
Basecamp is yet another renowned project management software suitable for design teams to manage their work easily. Every project in Basecamp has its own dedicated chat space where all the assignees of the project can interact and share ideas with each other. You can upload your design files, attach them with tasks, and share the design files directly in a chat room with other members of your team.
Key Highlights:
- Start a one-on-one or group conversation with your colleagues by sending direct messages
- To-do lists allow you to create and assign tasks
- Bookmark important messages, tasks, etc.
- Get real-time notifications for everything happening within a project or a task
Best Pricing Plan:
Basecamp Business
$99 per month (unlimited users)
GoVisually
GoVisually is a design collaboration and online proofing software that boosts creativity among design teams. It incorporates many features that are perfect for reviewing and approving design as well as content files. You simply need to share your designs with all the concerned people and get feedback from them at a single place. Additionally, GoVisually lets you organize all the design revisions using labels and categories.
Key Highlights:
- Supports all major file types, such as PNG, JPG, and PSD
- Attach files with comments
- Annotate designs to make the feedback more actionable
- Integrate Slack app to enable instant messaging with team members
Best Pricing Plan:
Team
$10 per user per month (billed annually) (minimum 5 users)
Mockplus
Mockplus is a web-based platform for product teams to prototype, collaborate and handoff designs in one place. It has everything your product teams need from ideation to execution. Mockplus’ seamless workflow integrates the whole process of product demand, prototype, and development, helping to transform the way your team collaborates.
Key Highlights:
- create lifelike prototypes with a huge set of components, icons and templates
- share designs from Sketch, Adobe XD, PhotoShop and Figma across teams
- automatically generate design specs, assets and code snippets
- inspect, copy and download design specs, assets, code snippets with one click
Best Pricing Plan?
Pro
$5.95 per user per month (billed annually)
$7.95 per user per month (billed monthly)
Teamwork
A project management tool that gives you the tools and reports you need to maximize resources and never miss a billable minute again. See everything in one place so you can effortlessly manage your team, projects, clients, and freelancers. Collaborate in real-time with your team and clients to get your questions answered and projects delivered on time and on budget.
Key Highlights:
• Manage your team’s resources effectively
• Get a Gantt-style view of your project, giving you full visibility of your tasks
• Use boards to automate your workflow and provide your team with an easy way to visualise their project tasks
• Create tasks and sub-tasks to break down your workload
• Specify which users have visibility and access across projects with advanced privacy settings
• Quickly and easily create invoices using your team’s billable time logs
Best Pricing Plan: €18 per user per month (billed annually) (minimum 5 users)
Filestage
Filestage is a content review and proofing tool that can make it easy for your design team to collaborate and produce insightful designs. The tool has become one of the most popular collaboration tools all thanks to its clean user interface, which is quite easy to use. With Filestage, you can ensure complete transparency in the review process and eliminate delays that affect the delivery of designs.
Key Highlights:
- Integrated markup tools to annotate files and designs
- Invite an unlimited number of people to review a file
- File versioning supported
- Proof files, designs, and videos
Best Pricing Plan:
Pro
$219 per month (10 users)
Also Read: If you are enjoying reading this article, you will sure like to read this awesome piece from Visme’s blog – 15 Best Presentation Software for 2021 (Full Comparison Guide)
InVision
If you want to create inspiring designs together with your team while ensuring timely delivery, InVision is the tool that you need by your side. The tool allows your design team to work on designs while ensuring that everything is going according to the workflow. You can create prototypes for various product designs and stay in touch with your team for getting constructive feedback from time to time.
Key Highlights:
- Comes with an in-built powerful screen design tool
- Freehand whiteboard makes it easy for team members to work collectively
- Supports integration with third-party apps
Best Pricing Plan
Pro
$7.95 per user per month (billed annually)
$9.95 per user per month (billed monthly)
Piktochart
Piktochart is a web-based visual design software that can create a variety of visuals, from infographics to social media stories. But an area in which Piktochart shines is in crafting presentations.
Key Highlights:
- Users can choose from a wide range of professionally designed slide templates.
- These include monthly marketing reports to employee onboarding templates.
- This broad selection is especially useful for those who don’t have much design experience or know-how but need to create a visually stunning presentation in a pinch.
- Piktochart is one of the best presentation software for teams and collaborators.
Best Pricing Plan
Pro
$ 24.17 per month (Charging $290 per year)
Conceptboard
Conceptboard gives you and your team the power to collaborate on your design projects effectively. Your team can make use of the whiteboard to share ideas and create designs together in a virtual environment. The tool also allows you to see the cursor movements of your teammates in real-time. Conceptboard makes it easy for the team to get approvals and feedback for the designs and helps to do more in less time.
Key highlights:
- Allows you to share your screen and make video calls to your colleagues
- Sketches, sticky notes, shapes, and arrows make it easy to share ideas
- Start managing your projects in minutes using the ready-made templates customizable templates
Best Pricing Plan
Business
$9.50 per user per month (billed annually)
$12.00 per user per month (billed monthly)
Notism
Get everything that you need to work alongside your design team with Notism. It comes preloaded with a wide range of features that will make it easier for your team to share and review creative content effectively. The most interesting feature of Notism is video collaboration. You can add notes, sketches, etc. as feedback or suggestions on all your motion design work. Check out this article from Kapwing to know how real-time video collaboration and collaborative cloud-based workspaces will help creative teams store data and organize video & multimedia content.
Key Highlights:
- Supports mobile app prototyping for both Android and iOS
- Highlight specific portions of the design to which the feedback points to
- Add and manage all the design tasks using to-do lists
- Set activity status for different tasks within the project – in progress, for review, and approved
Best Pricing Plan
Enterprise
$84.15 per month (up to 100 collaborators)
RelayThat
There are many graphic tools out there that all promise to make social media and blog graphics a breeze. However, not all tools fulfill these expectations or come close to giving you ‘easy’ alternatives for producing beautiful, professional-looking graphics for your web, business, or social media content.
While there are a lot of options out there, there are not many unique options. Enter RelayThat, a tool that has made a name amongst content creators who do not necessarily have a solid design background.
Well, there are enough good reasons to make RelayThat the tool of choice for many content creators. For starters, RelayThat can batch create graphics for all of the social media platforms in a single click. Of course, such an ability is a compelling feature for every overworked solo entrepreneur with enough things on their plate.
Whereas other options and similar tools leave you to design your project from scratch, RelayThat uses stunning templates to help you produce graphic design images faster and on the go.
That’s not all; RelayThat allows you to change font and image sizes and make plenty of other adjustments while at it. While the core layouts of their templates are more or less fixed, they are not a constraint to your projects. On the contrary, they help you produce quality graphics super fast.
With just a few clicks, this awesome tool lets you generate hundreds of variations from your initial design. That means if you want Pinterest, Instagram images, Facebook, or blog sized banners, simply choose the specified social media image size and create stunning results that will get you clicks.
The most popular features of RelayThat include;
#1. A huge catalogue of images to choose from, (we are talking millions)
#2. Ability to upload custom fonts (something you can’t do with many graphic design tools)
#3. Awesome font pairing. They do the hard work for you.
#4. Pre-configured ad image templates for all the major social media channels and much much more.
Featured heavily within AppSumo and other websites that continue to connect content creators with daily deals for digitally distributed goods and online services, RelayThat is quite simply a vital, if not a compulsory tool to have in your design arsenal.
Cage
Cage is a dedicated media collaboration tool that is built specifically keeping in mind the design teams. With this app, your team will be able to upload and manage all your design files from a single place. Sharing your feedback on a design is quite easy as you have the flexibility to use the sketch tool to annotate files.
Key Highlights
- Project messages make team interaction easy and effective
- Invite reviewers to evaluate design files
- The design approval process is straightforward
- View and manage all the project tasks from a single interface
Best Pricing Plan
Professional
$14 per user per month
Bit.ai
Bit is yet another document collaboration platform that design teams can use to create and organize all their work. By using this tool you can keep all your team members on the same page and boost their overall productivity. To make collaboration successful for your team, Bit allows co-editing and adding comments to files in real-time.
Key Highlights
- Intuitive interface make it easy to use
- Upload and edit documents
- Secure all your files by setting custom passwords
Best Pricing Plan
Business Plan
$15 per user per month
To Wrap it up
To win all your design projects, you need to make sure that you and your team members collaborate in a productive way. A design collaboration tool not only facilitates team coordination but also streamlines the workflow of projects. So, there’s no better time than now to start using a design collaboration tool for your team. But if you’re running a design agency then you must use these business tools to maximize your effectiveness by saving time, making you more money and increasing productivity.
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