It’s no secret that a software development team works best when everyone pursues a common goal, takes ownership, and supports each other. However, achieving this harmony can be difficult, especially for large enterprises or distributed teams—a typical case in the tech industry. Fortunately, there are many software development collaboration tools that can help improve teamwork efficiency.
This article outlines the best collaboration tools available today. We’ll highlight their key features, pros and cons, pricing, and ideal use cases to help you select the most suitable options for your software development team.
7 Top collaboration tools for software development
With so many corporate applications in the market, choosing the best one can be a tough challenge. To simplify this task, Neontri experts compiled a list of the most popular collaboration tools that help improve development processes and team performance. These are:
- Jira
- Confluence
- GitHub
- GitLab
- Slack
- Google Workspace
- Trello
These team collaboration tools can be broadly categorized into industry-agnostic software that can be used in any business environment and development-specific solutions designed to meet the unique needs of tech professionals. Companies usually use a combination of both types to address collaboration challenges like communication silos, coordination misalignment, accountability gaps, version control problems, and low team productivity.
Jira
Launched in 2002 by Atlassian, Jira started as a bug-tracking and release-scheduling tool. Over time it has evolved into a robust suite of products catering to diverse business needs. Development teams often rely on Jira Software, an Agile project management tool, and Jira Service Management, a tool for ticketing and incident resolution.
Key collaboration features:
- Roadmaps for planning and visualizing project goals and timelines
- Kanban and Scrum boards to manage projects
- Task management features to assign tasks and monitor their progress
- Commenting and tagging team members directly within tasks
- Time and task tracking for logging work hours.
Latest AI updates
Jira’s products are powered by Atlassian Intelligence, a generative AI assistant that offers smart, context-aware suggestions and automation. For example, Jira’s AI features allow users to create and update their stories and task details, get explanations for company-specific concepts, receive suggestions for breaking down large tasks, and more.
Pricing
Jira’s versatile functionality makes it an excellent software development collaboration tool for various teams. The pricing varies based on project requirements and the number of team members.
| Plan | Price | Best for |
| Free | $0 (up to 10 users) | Small teams or startups |
| Standard | $7.75/user/month | Growing teams |
| Premium | $13.53/user/month | Large teams or complex projects |
| Enterprise | Custom | Enterprise teams |
The per-user price may decrease for larger teams or increase for smaller ones. Businesses can sign up for a free trial, which is available within the Standard and Premium plans.
Pros and cons
Jira is currently used by over 300,000 organizations worldwide. These include Reddit, Glovo, and Dropbox. Here’s a quick summary of its benefits and drawbacks:
- Pros: strong focus on Agile methodologies; extensive customization options; seamless integration with other Atlassian tools.
- Cons: steep learning curve for beginners due to the wide range of features; increasing pricing as team size grows.
Confluence
Confluence is another collaboration tool for software development from the Atlassian ecosystem. It is a shared team workspace where members can create and organize project-related content, such as plans, meeting notes, ideas from brainstorming sessions, and important guidelines. This helps project managers keep everyone aligned and simplifies knowledge sharing.
Key collaboration features:
- Dynamic pages to create and edit content in real time
- Task assignment within pages to simplify team interactions
- Spaces to organize projects and documentation for teams or departments
- Comments to discuss content directly
- Version history to monitor changes and view editing history
Latest AI updates
Like Jira, Confluence incorporates Atlassian Intelligence. Its AI editor can automatically fill in gaps in content and documentation, summarize lengthy documents, suggest tasks, and link related content.
Pricing
While Confluence is used across various industries, it’s most popular for software development projects. This online collaboration tool is especially helpful for remote teams, where everyone should be on the same page, but in-person meetings aren’t an option. Similarly to Jira, Confluence offers a free plan and paid packages, with pricing depending on team size and required functionality.
| Plan | Price | Best for |
| Free | $0 (up to 10 users) | Small teams or startups |
| Standard | $5.16/user/month | Small to medium teams |
| Premium | $9.73/user/month | Medium to large teams |
| Enterprise | Custom | Enterprise teams |
The per-user price mentioned above can vary slightly based on team size. The more users the team has, the lower the per-user cost. A free trial is also available for paid plans.
Pros and cons
Confluence is trusted by 40,000 businesses, from small startups to large enterprises like NASA, Airbnb, and LinkedIn. Before deciding if this collaboration software is the right fit, consider its key advantages and drawbacks:
- Pros: intuitive interface; templates that streamline content creation; seamless integration with Jira and various collaboration tools offered by Atlassian.
- Con: limited offline functionality.
GitHub
GitHub is a leading collaboration platform for development teams built around Git, a renowned version control system. It allows programmers to store, manage, and track changes to their code. GitHub also offers a lot of resources, tutorials, and support to help users overcome coding challenges.
Key collaboration features:
- Pull requests to propose changes and discuss code before merging it into the main project
- Issue tracking to manage bugs, feature requests, and other tasks within a project
- Discussions to allow team communication outside of pull requests
- Agile project management to track progress and organize work with Kanban-style boards
- Branching to split the work into separate topics, improve team coordination, and avoid conflicts
Latest AI updates
GitHub offers Copilot, an AI-powered code assistant built in collaboration with OpenAI. It helps developers speed up coding tasks and enhance productivity by suggesting AI-generated code snippets, completions, and even entire functions based on comments or partial code. According to a Microsoft survey, 68% of users said Copilot improved the quality of their work, and 70% said it helped them become more productive.
Pricing
With GitHub, users can work on public or private projects. The platform supports both individual developers and large companies. The pricing depends on the features and tools needed.
| Plan | Price | Best for |
| Free | $0 | Individuals, hobbyists, open-source projects |
| Team | $4/user/month | Small to medium-sized development teams |
| Enterprise | Starts at $21/user/month | Large organizations that require robust security measures |
A free trial is available for the GitHub Team and Enterprise plans. Additionally, users can choose from various add-ons that expand the capabilities beyond version control and collaborative features. For example, they can enhance file storage or security.
Pros and cons
GitHub reported that over 100 million developers were using its platform in 2023, making it one of the most popular tools for development collaboration. It’s likely that your developers are already familiar with it, too. But here’s a brief summary of its pros and cons to give you a clearer picture:
- Pros: large community; familiar to developers; integrates with a wide range of third-party services; automates workflows.
- Cons: can be challenging for beginners to learn; has fewer built-in project management tools compared to platforms like Jira.
GitLab
GitLab is another software development collaboration tool focused on version control. However, it offers a more comprehensive set of DevOps features compared to GitHub. Positioned as a complete software development lifecycle platform, GitLab covers everything from project planning and code collaboration to CI/CD and security.
Key collaboration features:
- Issue tracking to monitor tasks and bugs with detailed status updates
- Merge requests feature to enable code reviews before changes are pulled into the main branch
- Real-time team collaboration to let multiple users work on the same project with the ability to comment and suggest changes
- CI/CD pipelines to help teams deliver updates more efficiently with automated testing and deployment
- Project management tools to plan sprints and track a project’s progress on Kanban boards
- Version control to let team members collaborate on code in real time.
Latest AI updates
GitLab is a DevSecOps platform that incorporates AI functionality through its GitLab Duo add-on. With this solution, users gain access to several AI-powered capabilities, including feature planning, development, unit test generation, automated merge request reviews, and more.
Pricing
GitLab provides cloud-based and self-hosted solutions, making it a perfect tool for different project needs. Teams with specific security or infrastructure requirements can opt to host GitLab on their own servers, which gives them complete control over their environment and data. The pricing, however, is based on the required functionality rather than hosting.
| Plan | Price | Best for |
| Free | $0 | Small teams or individual developers |
| Premium | $29/user/month | Growing teams with higher collaboration needs |
| Ultimate | Custom | Large teams and enterprises |
Like other collaboration tools, GitLab offers free trials for its Premium and Ultimate packages. It also provides several add-ons, such as enterprise agile planning and increased storage, which are available for an additional cost.
Pros and cons
GitLab has more than 40 million registered users, with big names like Nasdaq, Fujitsu, and Siemens on their client list. Here’s a quick look at its benefits and drawbacks:
- Pros: an all-in-one platform for managing the software development lifecycle; has built-in DevSecOps and security scanning features; provides seamless CI/CD pipeline integration.
- Cons: can be overwhelming for new users due to its range of features and setup options; integrations are more focused on GitLab’s own tools than third-party services.
Slack
Slack is a go-to communication tool in the business world, and the software development industry is no exception. It works like a regular messaging app but is tailored for company-specific interactions. With its intuitive interface, Slack lets team members stay connected and effortlessly chat online.
Key collaboration features:
- Direct messaging to communicate privately with team members
- Channels to organize chats by topic, project, or team
- File sharing to send documents, images, etc.
- Huddles to facilitate quick one-to-one and group video calls
- Ability to share audio or video clips
Latest AI updates
Slack offers Slack AI for an additional fee of $10 per user/month. It provides features like conversation summaries, daily recaps of less active channels, AI-powered search, and more.
Pricing
Slack operates based on a freemium model. It offers a free basic plan with limited functionality and several paid options to streamline communication within larger teams with more advanced needs.
| Plan | Price | Best for |
| Free | $0 | A team that wants to try Slack |
| Pro | $8.75/user/month | Small teams or startups |
| Business+ | $15/user/month | Growing teams or large teams |
| Enterprise Grid | Custom | Enterprises with advanced data protection needs |
Pros and cons
Several leading tech companies, including Revolut, IBM, Bolt, and Grammarly, rely on Slack. While recognized as one of the best team collaboration tools with many benefits, it also has its downsides.
- Pros: integrates with over 2,400 apps; including Google Drive, Asana, and Zoom; supports teams of various sizes; allows for easy team scaling.
- Cons: can become noisy and overwhelming without proper channel organization; raises privacy concerns since workspace administrators can access all private messages without user consent.
Google Workspace
By combining the full suite of apps like Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Calendar, Google Workspace can serve as a powerful collaboration tool for software development. With the capabilities it offers, people can work seamlessly together, no matter where they are, which results in the increased productivity of an entire team.
Key collaboration tools:
- Gmail: an email service with support for custom corporate domains
- Google Drive: a cloud storage that enables easy file sharing
- Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides: tools for real-time document, spreadsheet, and presentation creation and editing
- Google Meet: a video conferencing tool with screen-sharing and recording capabilities
- Google Calendar: a service for scheduling online and offline events with team integration
- Google Chat: an instant messaging app
Latest AI updates
With the support of Google AI, Google Workspace offers a range of AI capabilities. They include generating summaries in Google Docs, enhancing images and sound in Google Meet, drafting emails with smart suggestions in Gmail, and more.
Pricing
Google Workspace’s broad functionality makes it ideal for a wide range of businesses looking to enhance collaboration, communication, and daily workflows. It offers several pricing tiers to suit different needs.
| Plan | Price | Best for |
| Business Starter | $6 per user/month | Small teams and startups |
| Business Standard | $12 per user/month | Growing businesses |
| Business Plus | $18 per user/month | Medium-sized and large businesses |
| Enterprise Grid | Custom | Enterprises |
While there is no free plan, new users can opt for a 14-day trial to test out the Google Workspace features before buying a subscription.
Pros and cons
Google Workspace has over 3 billion users and counts market leaders like Salesforce, Airbus, and Korean Air among its clients. We’ve summarized its pros and cons to help you decide if it’s the right fit for your team:
- Pros: easy access from any device; large file storage with sharing and collaboration capabilities.
- Cons: not specifically tailored for software development; requires third-party integrations for advanced project management features; has limited chat features.
Trello
Trello is a visual project management tool popular among development teams. It provides team members with a clear overview of who’s working on what and the status of each task. While the platform keeps things simple, it includes all the necessary functionality for team members to collaborate efficiently and tackle issues quickly.
Key collaboration tools:
- Boards, lists, and cards to organize tasks and projects
- Drag-and-drop functionality to easily move tasks between lists
- Checklists to ensure tasks are completed in full
- Deadlines to ensure tasks are completed on time
- Comments and mentions to involve other team members in tasks and discussions
- Attachments to add files, links, and documents directly to tasks
- Labels to categorize and prioritize tasks
Latest AI updates
AI capabilities are included in the Premium and Enterprise plans. Trello uses GenAI to create, proofread, and edit card descriptions and comments. It also helps with brainstorming ideas, extracting action items from lengthy texts, and more.
Pricing
Trello is a versatile collaboration tool designed to streamline project management. With a few pricing options, companies can choose the plan that best fits their team’s needs.
| Plan | Price | Best for |
| Free | $0 | Small teams or personal use |
| Standard | $5 per user/month | Small teams |
| Premium | $10 per user/month | Medium-sized and growing teams |
| Enterprise | Custom | Large teams and enterprises |
Pros and cons
Trello has over 4.75 million users, with Visa, Zoom, and Google among its clients. Here are the advantages and disadvantages to consider before incorporating this tool into your team’s workflow:
- Pros: simplified visual collaboration with an intuitive interface; integration with other popular solutions like Google Drive, Slack, and Trello Calendar.
- Cons: limited features for more complex or non-standard projects; not tailored for software development.
Final thoughts
While the software development collaboration tools listed in this article are excellent options, they represent just a fraction of what’s available. Additionally, these products aren’t always interchangeable. In fact, using multiple tools, such as Jira for project management, GitHub or GitLab for version control, and Slack for chatting, can be the best way to create an efficient and smooth collaboration environment for your development team.
At Neontri, throughout our decade-long journey in the technology consulting we have seen firsthand how the right combination of tools, processes, and team alignment can dramatically improve productivity, reduce development cycles, and enhance product quality. We’ve partnered with numerous organizations across banking, retail, and fintech industies, helping them bring their software development to the next level.
Our specialist know how to optimize development processes and enhance collaboration for better results. Contact us for expert advice that transforms how your team works together.
FAQ
What are the key features of collaboration tools for enterprises?
Collaboration tools typically offer real-time communication channels, robust document sharing, and integration capabilities with existing business systems, all while providing enterprise-grade security and administration controls.
Are collaboration tools secure for enterprise use?
Yes. Modern collaboration tools boast advanced security features, including end-to-end encryption, role-based access controls, compliance certifications, and comprehensive audit logs, making them suitable for secure enterprise deployment.
What challenges do enterprises face when adopting collaboration tools?
Enterprises often struggle with overcoming employee resistance to change, security concerns across distributed systems, managing implementation costs, and ensuring proper training for widespread adoption.
Are collaboration tools suitable for remote software development teams?
Yes. They are ideal for remote software development teams as they provide centralized code repositories, seamless version control, integrated CI/CD pipelines, virtual standup capabilities, and real-time pair programming features that maintain productivity regardless of physical location.
What industries benefit most from software development collaboration tools?
Technology, financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing companies benefit most from these tools due to their complex development requirements, distributed teams, and need for secure, compliant collaboration environments.
