5 interactive meeting tools to boost collaboration on remote teams

It’s 1985 and office manager John begins another day battling the office fax machine. All of a sudden, a paper jam halts his urgent fax transmission, causing him to panic. John fixes the jam, but the machine is still having connection errors, which means delays and an exasperated client.

Fast forward to today and professionals of all kinds can process paperwork, sign contracts, and close deals all from their email, much more efficiently than poor John with his fax machine. 

However, not all tools can be used interchangeably. Some just aren’t a good fit for the way we work together online today. In fact, they can actually hamper productivity and interactions if you try to use them in ways they weren’t designed for.   

You see, you always need the best tool for the job, especially if your people can’t interact in person. If you’re still trying to collaborate using traditional meeting tools based on one-sided screen sharing, that's not it. You need proper interactive meeting tools or your tech will actually be a barrier to collaboration—just like a jammed-up fax machine was in the ‘80s.

That’s why team leaders need to make meetings more engaging by investing in an interactive virtual meeting tool that lets everyone contribute and work together. This way, you don’t have to deal with a paper jam of ideas or wait on the dial tone when it comes to team participation. 

In this piece, we’ll help you find the right solution by walking you through the features and pricing of the top five interactive meeting tools. We’ll also show you how Switchboard helps connect your team to each other and their work. By the end of this article, you’ll know which is the best platform to get people participating in your online meetings.

Want to make your online meetings more interactive?  
Switchboard makes it easy to collaborate, no matter where you are. 
‍Sign up for free.

Interactive meeting tools: overview

Before we dive into our product analysis, here’s a quick visual representation of how the virtual meeting platforms stack up against each other—and what they have to offer. 

Let’s investigate!

What to look for when choosing an interactive meeting tool

Let's take a look at the features you’ll need to help your remote and hybrid teams thrive. 

For example, some tools are better designed to solve remote team challenges like team collaboration. That’s why it’s important to find one that fits your team’s working style and needs. For instance, the ability to work together async and in real time and use the tool with ease.

To choose the best option for your company, look out for these features:

• A virtual office for teams to easily find and interact with each other 
• Persistent rooms that save your work so you can pick up where you left off 
• Virtual whiteboards, comments, sticky notes, and in-room chat to make real-time communication during brainstorming sessions easier 
• File-sharing so everyone can easily access key documents before, during, and after the meeting
• Screen sharing and presenting capabilities including the ability to share multiple screens in one room, to keep everyone on the same page
• Meeting recordings so you don’t lose important information like next steps and action items
• Works with web-based apps to ensure your solution connects to your existing tech stack 
• Secure video conferencing platform to keep company and client information safe
• In-app support to resolve issues quickly  

5 interactive meeting tools to connect your team 

Use the features above to guide you as we explore the tools more in depth. So, instead of wasting time pushing proverbial buttons, like John, you can find the right tool for the job. 

Let’s begin!

1. Switchboard

Switchboard is an interactive digital workspace that lets you and your team work together on files, documents, and browser-based apps—all from one virtual meeting room. You can also share your screen alongside other participants if you want to. It's designed to foster spontaneous interaction, remote collaboration, and virtual brainstorming through intuitive meeting rooms. 

Switchboard enables real-time communication through video, audio, and chat features. It also enables collaborative work in async and in real time, where your people can work together by scrolling, typing, and browsing the same document. 

You can host spontaneous meetings with your team, create cloud-based virtual rooms for brainstorming, and connect with clients in an interactive space. For example, let’s say you’re running a small remote SaaS business. You can set up a project room dedicated to product prioritization, and fill it with product roadmaps, backlogs, and customer feedback surveys. This way, you can start your meetings with everything you need to get your team interacting and energized. 

During the meeting, you also have the freedom to browse through any file in the room, moving around and viewing content without interrupting others. The best part is, Switchboard automatically saves all your work after every meeting, so you don’t need to download anything or set up the room from scratch next time. 

Key features:

• Shared online workspace and rooms for recurring meetings
• Web-based canvas to add multiple apps, websites, PDFs, and images side by side
• Persistent rooms that save your work
• In-meeting video, audio, and chat
• Secure, fast multiplayer browsers for instant collaboration
• Screen sharing for native apps—including multiple screen shares inside a room
• Built-in whiteboard 
• Presentation mode
• In-app support
• Google Calendar integration
• Unlimited rooms for 1:1s, meetings, and projects
• Meeting recording
• No integration required for web-based apps—they all work
• Room permissions for members and guests
• Sections to organize documents and apps
• Host not required for members to enter a room
• Up to 50 participants 
• Desktop app for Mac 

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.

Best for: 

• Highly collaborative small remote or hybrid companies looking for a comprehensive and team-oriented solution to traditional video conferencing tools. It’s designed for teams that need a better way of collaborating no matter where they are—sitting side-by-side in an office, spread across time zones, or hybrid. It's a great option for teams that need a dedicated, interactive space for projects and meetings

Pro tip: Switchboard is the only interactive meeting tool that truly offers a multiplayer experience. You get the autonomy to do work async and in real-time with your team, upload files and documents and work on them side-by-side, and share more than just your screen. 

2. Gather 

Gather (also known as Gather.town) is a virtual workspace software that lets you build a digital office environment that simulates real-life office spaces and interactions. Although its primary purpose is to provide an immersive virtual office experience, Gather can also be used to host online meetings, virtual events, and training sessions.

For example, let’s say you’re a medium-sized hybrid marketing agency. You can use Gather as a hub to host daily check-ins and foster a sense of togetherness regardless of where you’re working. Using your avatars, you can move around your digital office space, engage in casual conversations with colleagues, and start your workday from a unified place. 

In Gather, users can create their own customized avatar, which lets them navigate through the virtual office space and engage in conversations with others as they cross paths. This fosters a sense of proximity and closeness among team members, even when they’re physically located in different places.

Key features: 

• Virtual backgrounds
• Public and private rooms
• Customizable office maps 
• Unlimited audio and video meetings
• Hand raising and emoji reactions in video calls
• Timers, game stations, and even office pets
• Screen and file sharing
• Virtual interactive whiteboard
• Link and document sharing
• Private and public in-meeting chat

Pricing:

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

Best for: 

Gather is great for small teams that want an interactive, gamified online workspace. It lets you create public and private areas for collaboration, meetings, or simply catching up with your team. You can also play in-app games and decorate your spaces with digital furniture. With Gather, you can also hold events of up to 500 people, like you’re all in one big conference room.

3. Kumospace 

Kumospace is a virtual office and online events platform that lets you talk to your team as you pass through virtual hallways, co-work at a virtual table, and take virtual coffee breaks together.

Kumospace uses spatial audio (aka 3D sound effects) so multiple people can have separate conversations in the same virtual space when they are “seated” away from each other. 

For example, when you’re on a break, you can walk over to the water cooler and have a spontaneous chat with your team members who are also hanging out there. Anyone nearby can listen to conversations and join in, just like they would in real life.

Kumospace also lets you hold conversations in private spaces, design and decorate your digital rooms, and create interactive rooms. You can also design avatars and play games and virtual activities. However, Gather and Kumospace were both created to mimic real-life offices and interactions, so they only support synchronous collaboration and communication. 

You can invite other team members to your Kumospace office with a custom link and move around by double-clicking on the screen. But you might struggle to leave the office because you can’t notify your coworkers when you’re away.

Key features: 

• Video chat
• Multiple meeting hosts
• Virtual whiteboard and annotation tools
• Picture-in-picture mode so you can open the call in another window and collaborate outside the platform
• Quick links to make shared documents easily accessible
• Sales gong 
• Spatial audio
• Watercooler moments
• In-app video games
• Office decor and custom office plans

Pricing: 

• Free for up to 5 registered users
• Professional: $8/month per user
• Business:  $16/month per user
• Enterprise: custom priced

Best for: 

Kumospace is similar to Gather.town as you can create virtual offices and gamify the remote work experience. That makes it best for medium-large companies that want a visual representation of their workplace to help keep remote and hybrid teams cohesive and connected—and value real-time communication over interactive collaboration. 

4. Spot

Spot is a browser-based virtual workspace tool that helps teams create a digital office where they can gather and hold “in-person” meetings with avatars. It lets people see what their team is doing and where they are. For example, taking a water cooler break, jumping on a call, coworking, or entering a meeting in the conference room. This way, your team can speak to each other spontaneously through instant meetings and live chat. 

Like Kumospace, it also offers spatial audio. This 360-degree sound experience lets users pick and choose who they want to speak to and overhear conversations. Just like they would in a physical office. You can also decorate and personalize your office space with team-specific or branded objects, like a virtual coffee mug with your logo on it. 

Key Features:

• Video and audio conferencing 
• Guest links and external conferencing
• Live chat
• In-app instant messaging
• File and image-sharing
• Screen-sharing 
• Virtual backgrounds
• Topic-centered channels, spaces, and rooms
• Virtual events like webinars, networking events, and holiday parties
• Customized virtual office 

Pricing:

• Free: for an unlimited number of users
• Growth: $10/month per user 
• Enterprise: custom priced 

Best for:

• Small to medium-sized remote teams looking for a comprehensive virtual office space to hold productive meetings and virtual-office-based events. 

5. Remotion

Remotion is a virtual meeting tool built to help engineers collaborate online and solve technical problems. For example, instead of meeting face-to-face to fix bugs and review code, developers can simply share their screens and participants can copy, draw, scroll, and interact with content just like it’s on their own screens.

The live code editor function also helps make collaboration more interactive and productive by letting engineers copy code from multiple screen shares and edit together in real time.

If you’re looking for a straightforward, free video conferencing tool that gives you transparency and autonomy over technical problems faced by your team, Remotion is a good choice. One thing to note though: it only works on Mac.

Key features:

• Audio and video conferences 
• Interactive, side-by-side screen sharing 
• Live code editor 
• Meeting room for up to 40 participants
• Currently only available for MacOS 

Pricing:

• Free while in beta

Best for:

• Small, remote teams of up to 40 people looking for an engaging meeting tool designed specifically for software developers and engineers. 

How Switchboard makes online meetings more interactive 

We’ve given you a rundown of the best interactive meeting tools out there, so now let’s take a look at how Switchboard can help you go beyond single-player interactions and make teamwork the best part of work. 

Find everything quickly, without playing detective 

There’s an old office joke John used to tell about his experience sending faxes: “Why did the fax machine become a detective? Because it loved solving the case of the missing documents.” 

In Switchboard, you never have to play detective to find what you’re looking for. Persistent meeting rooms make sure everything stays organized and in one place—so you never have to dig around for “dusty” documents, tabs, and tools. 

For example, let’s say you run a small PR company. You can create a Switchboard incident response room and keep important standard operating procedures, key contacts, press releases, and flagged emails all within your room. That way, your team can always access the room even after the meeting, and act fast to come up with a solution or emergency branding strategy when things go sideways. 

Create your own design lab

In Switchboard, you can create a project room dedicated to creative and design reviews so everyone can work side-by-side on visual assets. 

Your design team can open their video editing software or web-based design apps like Figma, and see what everyone’s working on without switching between sharing screens or embedding multiple links into the chat. 

Client-management, but collaborative

Switchboard makes it easy to keep clients in the loop with persistent client-facing project rooms. The platform lets you populate your room with important client calendars, your project management tool, key points of contact, deliverables, and timelines. This way, meeting participants know what to expect and can come prepared, instead of playing catchup and trying to work around new tools or access gated content.

Interactive meeting tools: the key to better teamwork

1980s office manager John would probably be blown away by the possibility of email and the Internet—and how they make internal and external communications and teamwork a breeze. And with new tech coming out all the time, you need to keep an eye out for tools that will enable your team to communicate and work together better—now and in the future.

Just like the fax machine, some virtual collaboration tools are no longer a fit for how we work today. In fact, they can actually hinder productivity, team building, and interactions. That’s why team leaders need to look beyond traditional video conferencing tools, where collaboration starts and ends with one-way screen sharing. 

In this article, we compared popular interactive meeting tools like Gather, Kumospace, Spot, and Remotion. We also explored how they’re all great options for remote teams that prioritize talking and real-time communication over working side-by-side.

However, with Switchboard, you can host interactive meetings organized by project, not tool or team. With features like permanent meeting rooms that let you share files and multiple screens, and work together on browser-based apps, documents, and files you can get people excited about what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. And get them working together better and solving problems alongside their teammates. 

Want to make your online meetings more interactive?  
Switchboard makes it easy to collaborate, no matter where you are. 
Sign up for free.