7 best virtual office software for highly collaborative teams

The best virtual office software helps keep teams aligned across tools, projects, time zones, and departments. But you need the right suite of features designed to foster true collaboration. This means you don't have to default to meetings, especially for remote work. 

By contrast, traditional video conferencing tools rely on one-sided screen sharing and you lose everything shared at the end of the call, which can harm engagement, collaboration, and productivity.   

That's why leaders need to stay up to date on the best virtual office software—so you can boost productivity and teamwork no matter when or where you work. For example, tools that save your progress, act as a hub for your teams, and let people move work forward when it’s best for them.

In this post, we’ll walk you through seven of the best virtual office tools, compare their features, pricing, and advantages, and outline who each is best for. We’ll also show you how Switchboard helps you create a truly collaborative environment where team members can participate and contribute seamlessly—even if they’re moving projects forward at different times.

Looking for a virtual office that unlocks healthy and effective teamwork? 
Switchboard rooms save your work so you can make progress together and on your own time.
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Virtual office software: Overview

Want a more detailed product analysis? Keep reading!

What to look for in virtual office software

With the right virtual office software, you can create an environment where team members feel connected and on the same page. Here are some things to look out for: 

Collaboration: 

• An online workspace to bring all your web-based tools in one place for effective teamwork
• Persistent rooms that save your work so you can pick up where you left off
• Virtual whiteboards, comments, sticky notes, and in-room messaging to make communication, brainstorming, and coworking easier
• File sharing capabilities
• Multiplayer experience so everyone can access, view, and work on browser-based apps, files, and documents side by side
• Dedicated 1:1 rooms for planned meetings, spontaneous interactions, and team-building
• Fits your team’s working and communication style so everyone can do their best, whether its real time or async communication 

Meetings: 

• Real-time communication through video calls to keep everyone updated
• Presentation and screen sharing mode to show everyone in the room what you're seeing
• Meeting recordings so nobody is out of the loop, even if they couldn’t attend ‍

Security and ease of use: 

• Straightforward setup and intuitive interface and features to get everyone on board more easily ‍
• Integrations with project collaboration tools to keep track of deadlines and project statuses
• Available across a range of devices so your teams can work from anywhere ‍
• Data security and encrypted infrastructure to keep company and client information safe‍
• In-app support to resolve issues quickly

7 best virtual office software tools

Now you know what to look for, let’s explore some of the best online collaboration tools out there:

1. Switchboard

Switchboard is an online collaboration platform that you can use as a virtual office with your team. You can share ideas, give feedback, and make decisions in interactive rooms for projects, dashboards, and meetings. Each room offers an expansive canvas that lets you visually organize and share applications, files, and documents the team can access anytime. 

In these virtual rooms, individuals or teams can have video calls, transforming any meeting into an interactive session right where all the necessary work materials are ready to go. Whether you're planning projects, tracking metrics, or reviewing client work, Switchboard brings people, applications, and conversations together in one shared place.

People use Switchboard as a central hub for sharing and organizing work. For example, your product team can create a dedicated "Product Launch" room in Switchboard. You can organize the room's expansive canvas into different zones such as marketing, development, QA, and customer support. Anyone on the team can add documents like product specifications, market analysis reports, and customer personas to the shared room. Team members can move between rooms in Switchboard similar to the way you work in different conference rooms in an office. But unlike an office, you can leave all of your work hanging on the virtual “wall” when you leave. 

Key features: 

• Expansive canvas to add browser-based apps, websites, PDFs, and images
• Switchboard AI, which can answer questions and generate summaries of room activity
• Multiplayer browsers that support any website or web-based application, so you can work side-by-side on anything—without sharing screens 
• Room recording so people can catch up on meetings or leave video notes for each other 
• Sections to organize content
• Presentation mode, to get people to focus on your view
• Built-in whiteboard and whiteboarding tools including sticky notes, shapes, notepads
• Apps including timer, voting, polls, icebreaker generator, and open questions
• Comment threads on any image, video, or sticky note in a room so you can communicate in context 
• Audio and video conferencing 
• In-room chat
• In-app support
• Rooms for projects, meetings, and more
• Flexibility to add members and guests
• File storage
• App for macOS and Windows

Pricing: 

• Free: Includes limited features, rooms, and members, as well as up to 40 minutes for video calls (ideal for very 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.

When you sign up for free, you get access to all Pro features during your trial. After that, you can choose to keep your Pro plan or move to the free plan with limited features, rooms, and members. 

Best for: 

Switchboard is ideal for highly collaborative teams that want to share and discuss work in a dynamic space that supports all of their existing tools.

2. SpatialChat

‍SpatialChat is a virtual workspace tool designed to bring distributed teams together. With personalized offices and rooms, you can curate your own tailored headquarters. It also lets you connect seamlessly with various apps and coworkers, and hold meaningful conversations. 

Conduct internal meetings, such as town halls or all-hands sessions, and watch as your coworkers engage in real time with emoji responses. You can also use it to run workshops and training sessions, virtual events, and even code together. 

Key features: 

• Accommodates up to 5,000 participants at once 
• Browser-based application 
• Document and file sharing 
• Personalized offices and office decor 
• Annotations/drawing on screen
• Sticky notes
• Simultaneous screen sharing

Pricing: 

• Free plan available for up to five users
• Day pass: $3/day per user
• Core: $499/year per package 
• Enterprise: $120/year per user

Best for: 

Large organizations looking to host virtual events and training conferences across multiple departments, including educators.  

3. Gather

Gather (also known as Gather.town) is a virtual workspace platform that lets you bring your teams together in a customizable, gamified digital space. When you first log in, you create a personalized avatar that you use to walk around the space and interact with others. Imagine stepping into a ‘90s video game world with your coworkers, where your avatars can interact as you come into contact with each other.

Once you’ve done that, you can design your online office, create private rooms for 1:1 conversations, and public areas for water cooler chats or co-working. You can also use Gather to host virtual events, training, and team-building games. 

However, as of right now, the option to record meetings is only available in Remote Office Spaces with an active monthly subscription. This means you might lose important information if you're working from their free plan, free trial, or virtual conference spaces. 

Key features:

• Public and private rooms
• Quick-start templates 
• Customizable office maps, desks, and personal avatars 
• Unlimited audio and video meetings
• Hand raising and emoji reactions in video chats and calls
• Screen and file sharing
• Link and document sharing
• Private and public in-meeting chat
• Interactive objects like whiteboards, timers, game stations, and even office pets
• Link and document sharing

Pricing:

• Free for up to 10 users 
• Premium: $7/month per user 

Best for: 

• Small teams of under 10 people who like working in a gamified, interactive office 
• Large conferences and workshops of up to 500 people 
• Organizing occasional team-building events

4. Kumospace

Kumospace is a virtual office space designed for events and teamwork. It helps reduce the need for lots of meetings by using simple nudges and live chat as you pass each other in the space. You can also see where your teammates are at any time, just like you would in a traditional office. For example, if someone’s hanging out by the water cooler, you can take a break and join them for a virtual coffee chat.

The platform uses spatial audio to give you a more intimate working experience. This means you can have multiple conversations with people in the same space. Anyone who “walks” by can hear what you’re talking about and join in—unless you’re in a private space.  

Key features: 

• Live chat 
• Customizable space 
• Video and audio conferencing 
• Private and public rooms
• Built-in whiteboard 
• Screen sharing 
• Spatial audio for more spontaneous conversations 
• Virtual games for team building 

Pricing: 

• Free
• Business: $16/month per user 
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Best for: 

• Large teams that need a place to hold comprehensive virtual-office-based events. 

5. Teemyco

Teemyco is a digital office that improves teamwork by bringing your virtual workspace and tools together. It lets you and your people see where your colleagues are in the work environment and what they’re working on, which brings greater visibility to who’s doing what. For example, you can tell who’s planning a project, giving a sales demo, or taking a break. 

Like with Kumospace and Gather, you can customize your virtual office floor plan on Teemyco and create as many public and private spaces as you need. Choose layouts for meeting rooms, project management spaces, and lounge areas according to what helps boost team productivity. 

Finally, you can engage with teammates with kudos hats, emojis, and status updates so you can get work done while building a close-knit, sociable team. 

Key features: 

• Unlimited video calls 
• In-meeting chat
• Customized office floor plans
• Document sharing 
• Flying emoji reactions and status updates 
• Guest links and external conferencing 
• Simultaneous screen sharing 
• Personalized offices 
• Slack and calendar integrations

Pricing: 

• Free trial 
• Monthly plan: $8/month per user
• Annual plan: $6/month per user

Best for:  

Product design or software engineer teams looking for simultaneous screen-sharing for collaborative coding and cross-checks.

6. Happeo

Happeo is a company intranet tool that helps you manage information by uniting all your apps, tools, and teams in one place—making it especially useful for asynchronous collaboration. 

With this platform, you can create a detailed employee directory, an in-depth analytics dashboard, news feed, and even internal blog posts. This way, you can build your company culture as you grow.  

Happeo also lets you post targeted announcements to quickly get messages across to your team. You can also see who’s read it and resend it to the people who missed it, so nobody’s out of the loop. 

Key features: 

• Personalized company homepage
• Employee directory 
• Employee channels to enhance engagement
• News feed
• Newsletter
• Multi-channel sharing 
• Complete integration with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 
• Live chat 
• Analytics dashboard 
• AI search functionality  

Pricing: 

• Free trial 
• Custom pricing on request

Best for: 

Medium- to large-sized and scaling distributed companies needing a collaborative, unified online office that combines employee onboarding, HR, and internal content creation functions. 

7. TimeCamp Planner

‍The app formerly known as HeySpace, TimeCamp Planner is a collaboration software and project management tool for distributed teams. It makes it easy to plan resources, gauge workloads, and get quick replies to urgent messages, projects, or questions. With TimeCamp Planner, you can tag coworkers to get their attention, send files and attachments, and make impromptu video calls from one place. 

You can also integrate it with TimeCamp’s other services for more features like time tracking, billing, reporting, and productivity tracking.

Key features: 

• In-app chat and private channels 
• Ability to turn messages directly into tasks
• Project and task management 
• Boards, lists, and checklists 
• Video calls, mentions, and quick reply 
• Filter tasks by completion status, assignees, and tags
• Task timelines for project overviews 
• Calendar, Kanban, and Gantt views

Pricing: 

• Free
• Pro: $3.99/month per user

Best for: 

Product-led startups and SMBs that want streamlined and centralized workflows for efficient project management.

How Switchboard brings collaborative teams together

Switchboard changes the way teams work together—no matter where or how they work. It’s designed to foster team connection, collaboration, and productivity through intuitive, persistent rooms. These save your work and remember your progress so nothing gets lost: Just jump in whenever and work together in real time or on your own time. 

You can use Switchboard for:

• Project spaces. Meet, work together or async, leave all your materials in the room, and come back to it whenever you want. These rooms give you a bird’s eye view of the project and keep every related file, link, or app in the same place. That way, you don’t have to dig through different tools, documents, or conversations to find what you need. 

• Sprint planning. Organize sprint planning tools and documents in one place to facilitate easy access and reduce the time spent prepping. View roadmaps, address bugs, and monitor performance dashboards, all within a single space. The platform supports real-time updating during meetings, so you can make adjustments to tasks or tickets as the discussion progresses. ​ 

• Group brainstorming. Add your favorite tools and applications, like virtual whiteboards, Figma prototypes, or Google Slides presentations, and enable teams to come up with ideas together and on their own time.  

• Incident response. Quickly gather team members in your dedicated room and access relevant tools and information to come up with rapid and coordinated responses to incidents. Teams can use the platform to monitor real-time updates and maintain a central repository of information related to the incident.

• Client management. Switchboard rooms can serve as a centralized hub for all client-related information, communications, and documents. This can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of client interactions and ensure that all team members have access to the latest information and updates.

See the video below to see how your project room looks like on Switchboard or check out more use cases to understand how it helps you get more done as a team–or alone–no matter where you are.

Fast forward collaboration with the best virtual office software 

To cultivate healthy teamwork, you need virtual office software that records and saves your work so you can always return to it. In this piece, we looked at seven of these, including Switchboard, Spatial Chat, Gather, Kumospace, Teemyco, Happeo, and TimeCamp Planner. All of these give your people a centralized hub so they can find each other and get work done async and in real time. This way, you can make progress when it suits you, rather than restructuring your day to fit someone else’s schedule.  

Switchboard goes one step beyond, by easily integrating into your workflow to bring your teams, tools, and processes together in an intuitive, easy-to-use digital workspace. It lets you create “always open” rooms that enable your team to engage with content on their own time. Create as many rooms as you need–brainstorming hubs, break spaces, and sprint planning rooms–to let people enjoy the benefits of moving work forward in context. 

Looking for a virtual office that unlocks healthy and effective teamwork?
‍Switchboard rooms save your work so you can make progress together and on your own time. 
‍Sign up for free