GSuite

A plus to using GSuite is that you and your team can communicate with Gmail and have most, if not all, of your content in one place. GSuite offers a few different options for pricing plans:

Basic: At $6 a month this is the cheapest plan. It offers a variety of included applications, which includes:

Gmail (business e-mail)
Calendar (shared calendars)
Drive (30GB cloud storage)
Hangouts Chat & Meet for team messaging, video and voice conferencing
Docs, Sheets, and Slides
Site Builder
For security and management, Basic offers 24/7 support by phone, e-mail and online, mobile management, and security and admin controls.
Business: $12 a month and the most popular choice. This includes the same choices as above, but with unlimited cloud storage for Drive, App Maker to create custom apps, and Cloud Search. Business offers more admin controls for security and management, and vault which is great for data retention and protection.
Enterprise: $25 a month. It offers the same included applications as business. Enterprise has even more security and admin controls, as well as vault protections.

What’s good about GSuite: Well, it’s Google. That means you know you’re getting a solid product, built by some of the best software engineers in the world. Many of its programs, like Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets are great for people who are familiar with Microsoft Office. The calendar, along with other GSuite products, are great for the ability for many different people to access and collaborate on. The convenience of having most of the apps you’ll need, and the drive for storage, in one place is significant.

The downside: Again, it’s Google. A massive corporation. While, yes, they’re clearly in the lead in so many ways they also might not be able to give you the same detail and care a (comparatively) smaller company might. Google wants businesses to succeed, in order for them to continue to grow and succeed, and they’ll keep that in mind when making changes. However, ultimately, any changes will be what is best for them and that might leave you and your team with products that don’t work for you anymore.

Kanban Boards

Kanban is a Japanese methodology of tracking projects that works to manage and improve performance by minimizing waste. It is a visual method of keeping track of work and teams, which may appeal to those of you who thrive using visual tools. With kanban boards, there is no one person in charge of running the show. Everyone collaborates and is responsible for making sure each task is completed. The goal is to create a continuous flow of work being done.

There is no official, singular kanban software, but rather many software programs that have adapted the kanban style. The aim is to provide a simplified overview of work that allows better communication, improved productivity, ways to identify issues early on, and efficient collaboration. For most kanban software, any updates will be made in real-time and will reflect accordingly for everyone on your team and clients if needed. This is a great feature when multiple people are involved in a project; constant communication updated instantly prevents a lag in communication that will hold up or confuse others involved.

Some Kanban software we think are worth looking into:

KanbanFlow – They allow a lot of customization and flexibility, all with the goal of helping you and your team achieve an optimized workflow. Content across other platforms is easily synced. Their free version has no time limit and no user limit, though of course you’ll be limited in features. The premium version is only $5 a month per user, and for such a reasonable price you’re getting an incredible software.
Kanban tool – Kanban Tool operates like other great kanban software and works to improve the efficiency of communication and output among teams and clients. They offer essential analytics and metrics so that you and your team are constantly improving. They offer a free version, but you only get 2 boards a month and 2 users a month. At $5 a month per user, you can get unlimited boards and unlimited file attachments. For $9 a month per user, you can get the above plus time tracking and reporting process automation.
Monday – Monday is a fantastic software for content organization. They aren’t exclusively kanban, but they offer a kanban view. It offers a nice overview of everything you and your team are working on it, while making it easy to create new items, restructure as needed, and update in real-time. They offer a few plans (Basic at $25 a month, Standard at $39 a month, Pro at $59 a month, and Enterprise which you will need to contact Monday for a quote). The most popular is Standard, which allows you 4 guests billed as one user. Pro and Enterprise allow unlimited.

With any of the above boards, the more you spend the more you will unlock. They all offer free trials so you can work on exploring each software and deciding what works best for you. It’s worth it to reach out and talk to each company as well to make sure your needs will be met before making any decisions. KanbanFlow and Kanban Tool bill monthly and Monday bills annually. As your team and business grows, you may find you need to upgrade your plan, which is easy with any of the above software.

Meistertask

Meistertask is a task management software that allows teams to easily collaborate and update, regardless of their department. You can easily integrate with MindMeister, which is a unique visual tool to see each task and how they relate to projects. Each board is easy to customize and add projects within the client board. For every project, it is easy to customize each step you need for projects, for example taking a task from: Ideation → In Progress → Needs Review → Done. It’s easy for teams to communicate on each task, leaving comments, attaching files, creating a checklist for each task, and moving each task to the appropriate next step. Once a task or project is complete, it’s simple to then archive the task so that it doesn’t stay on the board, but you can always access later on if needed.

Like other content organization software business, Meistertask offers tiered levels of subscription. Basic is free and good for simple task management. It only allows limited integration for other apps. That may be best if you’re just starting out or only need collaboration for a small group of people. Pro is $8.25 per user per month, allowing for multiple team members, unlimited integration (Slack, GitHub, ZenDesk, Google, etc.), and priority support among other features. Business is $20.75 per month and Enterprise is custom-tailored to your business needs, which you will need to contact Meistertask for a consultation and quote. Signing up for basic initially may be a good way for you to test it out and see if has features you’ll be able to use, but contacting them will also help give you a better understanding of how it will work with your business needs.

How do you choose?

Obviously there are many other software options beyond the few we’ve just covered. The best thing you and your team can do is research as a number of options, test them out, and contact each company to have a discussion about everything you need.

You should also consider:

Where is my company and what are our my team’s needs currently?
What kind of growth are we looking at?
Will this software be able to accommodate that growth for the foreseeable future or will we potentially need to change software soon? Changing software after a while might not be the biggest deal, but it’s probably not something you want to be doing frequently if you can help it.

Finding the best software for content organization might take some time, but you want to be sure you’re choosing wisely. Do your research, ask questions, and try free trials where you can. While changing often isn’t ideal, if you do have to change you should at least have a better idea of what you need and what to talk about with whoever you choose next.