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5 best daily stand-up meeting tools to boost teamwork and productivity
Discover the best daily standup meeting tools for real time or async standups. Do more outside of meetings to boost team productivity and engagement.
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Leading a team is a balancing act, especially when it comes to keeping everyone on track without derailing the flow of their day. Standup meetings are valuable to keep teams aligned, but all too often they run long, get in the way of work, or require team members to sit through discussions that are irrelevant to them.
Standups may be necessary, but that shouldn’t mean everyone always has to put down what they’re doing to attend. That’s why you need to look for daily standup meeting tools that let you do more outside of meetings, so you can make standups shorter and more productive—or even cancel the meeting altogether.
In this post, you’ll get a list of five daily stand-up meeting tools that let you run more effective daily standup meetings in real time or async, as well as what to look for when choosing.
Make your standup meetings more productive.
Switchboard’s persistent rooms let you do more in and between meetings—so you can stay aligned without being at the mercy of your calendar.
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5 best daily standup tools
We’ve put together a list of five daily standup tools that’ll help make your standups more efficient and productive—in real time or async. Let’s take a look.
1. Switchboard: Best for meetings and async standups
Switchboard is a collaboration platform that helps you move faster with fewer meetings. It organizes all the apps and tools your team uses into persistent project rooms that save your work. It’s designed to enable asynchronous work best practices by letting you do more outside of team meetings. This means you can cancel inefficient ones and make the meetings you do have more productive.
In Switchboard, you can open a Google Doc or any project management tool for people to leave updates as part of an async standup meeting. Everyone on the team can then hop into the room on their own schedule to catch up, using chat or comment threads if they want to discuss something with a specific coworker. Because everything stays right where you left it, you never need to repopulate the room again, so it’s always ready for the next standup.
Switchboard also offers virtual meeting tools so you can also run face-to-face standups–or hop into a call on the fly–using video, audio, chat, and polls. With all your apps and files already in the room, it’s easier to have efficient, in-context conversations. Because everything’s multiplayer, you can also explore any item in the room side by side—without having to share screens.
Key features
- Shared online platform and persistent rooms for real time or async meetings and project work
- Large, web-based canvas to add multiple secure, fast multiplayer browser-based apps, websites, PDFs, and images side by side
- Open up to 10 browser windows and work together on any web-based app–Google, Jira, Notion, GitHub, etc.—with no integrations
- Audio and video conferencing to communicate in real time via video and audio
- Screen sharing for local files—including multiple screen shares inside a room
- Presentation mode to get people to focus on your view
- Comment threads on any image, video, or sticky note in a room to share ideas, ask for help, and make decisions—with context
- Room recording with shareable videos that automatically save to the room
- In-app chat
- Sticky notes and notepad
- Voting app to add a poll to the room
- Meeting timer to keep teams on track
- Switchboard AI to answer questions and summarize room activity
- Google Calendar integration
Pricing
- Free: Includes limited features, rooms, and members for small teams or individuals.
- Pro: $15 member/month for up to 200 rooms and 500 members plus Switchboard AI and additional storage.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing.
You get trial access to all Pro features when you sign up for free. After that, you can choose to keep your plan or downgrade to a free plan with limited features, rooms, and members.
Best for
Switchboard is ideal for highly collaborative teams–whether in-person, remote, or hybrid–that want to work together more efficiently with fewer meetings. Use it to create an awesome virtual meeting culture by doing more outside of your real time daily standups—or even eliminate them altogether by switching to async updates. Either way, you’ll be able to run more effective standup meetings.
2. DailyBot: Best for sharing updates across different chat platforms
DailyBot is an AI-powered chat assistant that facilitates async communication via chat platforms. It lets you share updates in Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and GChat, which is more than some other tools do. Automated, easy-to-digest reports keep everyone on the same page and ensure nothing slips through the cracks. It also analyzes responses to daily standup questions, so you can track progress, get insights into morale, and provide timely support or feedback.
Key features
- Customizable questions and forms for real-time surveys and in-chat data collection
- Create question templates and share with your organization
- Option to make answers anonymous (Advanced plans and up)
- Unlimited check-ins and responses (Essentials and above)
- Searchable, exportable history of previous check-in responses and activity
- Approval flows to simplify decision making using in-chat forms
- Give kudos to individuals or teams or use the leaderboard to motivate them
- Filter metrics from reports
- Daily and weekly email digests
- AI assistant and AI workflow builder (Advanced and up)
- Add-ons for water cooler convos, random coffees, birthday reminders, etc.
- API and integrations with third-party tools
Pricing
- Free version with limited users and features
- Essentials: $2.10 per month/user
- Advanced: $3.60 per month/user
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Best for
Distributed teams that use a variety of chat platforms to communicate and get work done.
3. Jell: Best for OKR tracking
Jell is a daily standup meeting tool designed to run async standups in Slack or MS Teams, as well as track objectives and key results (OKRs). Use it to get an overview of team progress, identify blockers, and stay closely aligned on goals. Up-to-date metrics, comments, and linked tasks also let you track and share progress, keeping everyone aligned, motivated, and focused on what’s important.
Key features
- Customizable reminders and questions in text, list, multiple choice, or number format
- Completed-task tracking
- Schedule survey frequency according to project or team needs
- Real-time and historic views
- Check-ins to get detailed metrics or updates from specific team members
- OKR tracking
- Integrations with Slack, MS Teams, GitHub, Trello, and more
Pricing
- Essentials: $4 per month/user
- Advanced: $8 per month/user
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Best for
Distributed teams that value transparency and accountability and need to stay closely aligned on goals and progress.
4. Standuply: Best for multimedia updates
Standuply allows you to run daily scrum meetings async in Slack and MS Teams using automated surveys. Just create your questions and schedule them to share with the appropriate team members. Unlike some other daily standup meeting tools, Standuply lets you answer using video and voice as well as text. This means it’s good for catering to different learning and communication styles, or for when you need to explain something complex.
Key features
- Customizable survey templates
- Option to make surveys anonymous
- Text, voice, and video responses, including canned responses for when you’re short of time
- Thread-specific notifications
- Create, schedule, and share agendas and follow up reports
- Pull data from third-party tools to share information
- Option to create and schedule real-time video calls with the Standuply Collaboration virtual meeting platform
- Searchable, downloadable standup history
- Integrates with project management tools like Trello, Jira, and Asana for task management
Pricing
- Starter: Free for up to three users
- Team: $1.5 per month/user
- Business: $3 per month/user
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Best for
Scrum teams and project or product managers dealing with complex topics and looking to automate Agile processes like daily standups.
4. Geekbot: Best for async standups in Slack
Geekbot is an AI-powered, no-code chatbot that allows you to automate asynchronous standups in Slack or MS Teams. It sends a notification on a pre-set schedule to relevant team members with three daily standup questions. People can respond when it suits them and check the dedicated Slack channel to see other team members’ updates. To discuss something in more detail, they can start a Slack thread, which avoids other team members having to listen to discussions that don’t concern them.
Key features
- Customizable templates, questions, prompts, notifications, and reminders to suit any workflow
- Search filters and downloadable history
- Email summaries
- AI-driven conversation analytics of team member’s responses for real time insights into engagement and morale
- Data-based graphics to reveal common topics, trends, blockers, etc.
- Integrations with Google Calendar, Google Docs, WordPress, and other tools via Zapier
Pricing
- Start-up: Free for up to 10 participants
- Scale-up: $2.50 per month/user
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Non-profits or educational organizations are eligible for a 50% discount.
Best for
Geekbot is ideal for distributed teams that primarily communicate via Slack and struggle to get everyone in the virtual room at the same time. Be aware, though, that Slack tends to create a sense of urgency, so you need to be really disciplined to keep standups async and avoid getting distracted by notifications.
What to look for when choosing daily standup software
Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing a daily standup meeting tool:
- Lets you take meetings async or do more outside of them: This gives you back more time for focus work and makes the meetings you do have more productive.
- Facilitates real time and async meetings: Sometimes, you can resolve things faster by talking. Therefore, a platform that lets you hop into a call on the fly can save hours going back and forth in async comment threads.
- Fits your team’s needs: Make sure the tool has the features and integrations you need. For example, if you work primarily in GitHub, you’ll need a standup tool that integrates with it so you can easily pull and share information. Similarly, if your standup meetings tend to run long, you’ll want a timer to keep people on track.
- Customizable: Every team is different, so look for software that allows you to customize the format, questions, scheduling, etc.
- Lets you keep people engaged and contributing: Features like interactive elements or the ability to share screens and information make for a more engaging, productive standup.
- Ease of use: Tools should be easy to use and intuitive, so your teams can onboard without extensive (and expensive) training. Check user reviews and go for tools with a shallow learning curve.
- Flexible enough to grow with you: Any new tool involves an investment of time and money, so the longer you stick with it, the more it pays off. Check participant limits for different tiers to be sure you’ll be able to afford it as your team grows.
- Security and privacy: Your tool needs robust security measures to protect sensitive information shared during standups.
- Customer support and resources: Lower-tier plans are often self-serve, so be sure to check what customer support and resources are available to you during onboarding and troubleshooting.
- Trial or demo availability: Take advantage of these to test out functionality and fit for your team before committing.
Daily standup meeting tools: Get more done in meetings—and in between them
Great teamwork relies on achieving good communication and alignment, and daily standup meetings are key to that. However, when you let them run long or become irrelevant, it can harm engagement and productivity.
Daily standups are important, but you don’t necessarily need to get everyone in the room at the same time to achieve their objectives. That’s why we’ve put together this list of five daily standup meeting tools: Switchboard, DailyBot, Jell, Standuply, and Geekbot. All of them let you do more outside of meetings—or even cancel them altogether by taking them async.
When choosing, look for tools that fit your team’s size, needs, and working and communication style, as well as your budget. Go for ones that are easy to learn and use and flexible enough to grow as your team does.
When you opt for Switchboard, you don’t have to choose between real time or async standups. Its always-open, persistent rooms save your work, so you can hop into a call or add updates on your schedule.
Make your standup meetings more productive.
Switchboard’s persistent rooms let you do more in–and in between meetings–so you can stay aligned without being at the mercy of your calendar.
Sign up free
Frequently asked questions about daily stand-up meeting tools
How do you facilitate a daily standup?
You can facilitate a daily standup meeting by setting a regular time and location that works for the entire team. Meet where work happens so you can communicate in context. For example, with your project management app open so you can “walk” through your Kanban board and check task statuses. Finally, assign a meeting facilitator, timekeeper, and notetaker to keep people on track and share action items after the meeting. Remember, you don’t have to do standup meetings in real time: If you’re using Switchboard, you can set up a persistent room for people to add updates async.
How can I make my daily standup interesting?
You can make your daily standup more interesting by rotating roles like facilitator or timekeeper. Other things you can try include changing the location, using a short icebreaker at the start, or using features like polls, surveys, or reaction emojis to engage people. Also, try focusing on wins, giving kudos, or making space for team members to acknowledge and appreciate each other.
How do I manage my daily standup?
Set a time limit for updates and the overall meeting and stick to it (15 minutes is standard). It helps to follow a specific format that allows everyone to contribute equally and makes for a short meeting. For example, by sticking to the standard three daily standup questions: What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? What’s blocking you? Finally, know when to table side conversations and discussions and be sure to follow up with action items after the meeting.
