Whether you're working remotely or in a small office, staying in touch with your small business can be a challenge. That's where videoconferencing software like PureCloud Collaborate comes in. PureCloud (whose first tier is free and whose second tier is $9.99 per user per month) is built around business chat, with videoconferencing, a dynamic directory, and shared document repository thrown in for good measure. It's a very clean, slick piece of software, but it lacks some of the power of its competitors like Editors' Choice ClickMeeting.
It's important to note that PureCloud Collaborate is relatively new, having only launched with a freemium model in March 2015. As of this writing, many features in PureCloud are still in development, including soft phone, chatting with federated chat organizations, video chat for 20 participants, and video calls in the mobile applications.. For the purposes of this review, we looked at what was available for users today and based our score on the features that were actually working.
Pricing and Plans
Finding a service that actually offers small businesses a fully free option is rare, and it's especially rare to see one that is as generous as PureCloud Collaborate. Free users get a whopping 1 TB of free storage space, instant messaging (IM), and videoconferencing and screen sharing for up to five users.
PureCloud Collaborate Pro is the next tier up and costs $9.99 per user per month. At this tier, users get access to unlimited storage for their files, more powerful search tools, and improved customer service support.
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Along with these two tiers, Interactive Intelligence also lists PureCloud Communicate and PureCloud Engage, at significantly higher price points. PureCloud representatives explained that these are completely separate products, focused on enterprise telephony and customer communication. Though they do include Collaborate as part of their price, these products won't be the focus of this review.
Features and Interface
We were pleasantly surprised to discover that PureCloud Collaborate has a distinctly Mac-like interface. Everything is big and clean, with a primarily blue color scheme that reminds us of Facebook or task management tool Asana (Visit Site at Asana) .
Though we do like the big, circular avatars and OS X-style buttons, we're less of a fan of PureCloud's panel interface. On the far left-hand side is a listing of the service's sections: Chat, Directory, and Content Management. Starting from chat and clicking directory moves chat out of the way, and focuses us on directory. But clicking around to pages and panels sometimes compacts the screen down in an effort to keep everything within view. This does mean that many of the features can be viewed simultaneously, but we found it disorienting. A button can expand a section to fill the screen, but these interactions could be made to feel less chaotic.
Chat is at the heart of PureCloud. Each avatar has a status indicator around it, indicating if a person is free to have a conversation. You can change your status by clicking your icon in the upper right, and can start a new chat from anywhere within PureCloud.
From the chat section, you can talk directly to other members of your organization, or create ad hoc chat groups with multiple users. Chats are threaded, IM-style affairs and even support a host of emoji—to our delight. PureCloud's chat also borrows from online forums, letting you quote a previous thread directly by clicking a special button. This lets you respond directly to specific comments to keep the conversation on track.
PureCloud also supports video chat and screen sharing, but we had a hard time using these features. Both are supported natively in Google Chrome, but they will require special plug-ins for Safari and Mozilla Firefox. Unfortunately, even when using Chrome we were unable to connect computers on our network into the same video chat. PureCloud recently added video chat and screen sharing with individuals outside your organization, making PureCloud Collaborate your single communication hub.
The Directory section is, true to its name, where you view other members of your organization. Each employee entry has spaces for name, a picture, contact information, a list of skills (which are like tags), and other information like education. Companies can customize the information that appears in this area from the Admin section. You can even add an employee's exact location by dropping a pin on an uploaded floorplan. Thankfully, employees who are pressed for time can simply import this information from LinkedIn. Unfortunately, we weren't able to import all of our work history or education information into PureCloud, so your mileage may vary. LinkedIn limits the amount of information third parties like PureCloud can import. PureCloud can import a user's name, photo, headline, current position, and primary email address without issue.
The directory also maps connections between employees, showing who reports to whom, and so on. These become very powerful in PureCloud when you create groups in the directory. You can add individuals to these groups by search, or create rules—like automatically adding everyone of a particular skillset or everyone who reports to a particular manager, and so on.
Tapping a button turns the group into a chat group, which muddies the distinction between directory groups and chat groups quite a bit. The developers told us that this is one area they're working to improve, and they plan to tie directory groups closer with workspaces and shared documents.
Speaking of workspaces, you'll find those in the final area called Content Management. Here you can upload all types of documents to share with your colleagues through PureCloud. Uploading is easy; simply drag and drop and ensure that your batches of files are under 2 GB (future versions will expand this limitation at the Pro user level). Once you've uploaded the files, you can add additional tags, though the text of documents will be searchable. PureCloud's developers also say that the software can read images as text using optical character recognition or OCR.
By default, files are loaded into an area called My Workspace. In PureCloud Collaborate, workspaces are a little like high-level folders. Administrators can create additional workspaces, giving employees a hub for necessary documentation. I can see how this feature would be extremely useful, but it feels too isolated right now. Other services like Google Drive give you far more control over who can see and access files, and they allow for more sharing options, too. Tying Workspaces to Groups will go a long way toward giving this feature, and PureCloud, more utility.
Apps and Integration
Though our review focuses on the web version of PureCloud Collaborate, the company also offers local desktop apps for OS X 10.8 and newer, as well as Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10.
On the mobile front, Collaborate apps are available for both iOS and Android, the latter of which we tested on our Samsung Galaxy S5 . Video for the mobile Collaborate apps is in development. We were surprised that, unlike most collaboration software, the Collaborate app has an excellent user interface (UI) and felt familiar after having used the web application. PureCloud's developers said that a second app, for handling documents from mobile devices, is available on both the Google Play Apps store and the iTunes App store.
Though it looks full-featured, the Android PureCloud Collaborate app is a pared-down offering and does not support document reading or uploading. You also cannot search documents you've already uploaded. But it does put your company directory, groups, and chat close at hand.
We spoke with the developers behind PureCloud, and was told that the service does offer an API for other developers and users who are interested in crafting their own tools on the PureCloud platform. Unfortunately, PureCloud Collaborate does not currently support Zapier—a popular web-based tool that uses IFTTT-style ($0.00 at Google Play) rules to connect software.
PureCloud's developers pride themselves on their integrations with other business software. Groups, for example, can be used to manage address books in Exchange. PureCloud also works with Active Directory, making it a snap to enroll new employees.
Recently Added and Coming Soon
Reviewing PureCloud collaborate was difficult because we were simultaneously seeing what it was and what it can become. The developers at Interactive Intelligence told us that they have used their early roll out and free tier to rapidly change their product to make it better and more capable. They described tools for building powerful chat groups and for tying Workspaces to Groups so that documents, discussions, and head counts can exist together. In the past year, PureCloud added the following neat features: chat rooms capable of supporting up to 1,000 participants, screen sharing, integrated content management a corporate directory, including search across employee profiles, and advanced presence and status capabilities, including geolocation services.
Unfortunately, there are still a bunch of features missing that you'd expect to find in any videoconferencing or collaboration suite. For example: The company has yet to introduce videoconferencing and screen sharing for more than 20 participants, and there's no way to record video, even with third-party integrations. As we previously mentioned, you can't whiteboard during videocalls and you can't integrate calendars. Because these features are in the works, PureCloud is a tool that very much feels like a work in progress. However, recent additions and added features put it in the mix with some of the best videconferencing and collaboration tools on the market.
PureCloud Collaborate aims to put your entire organization at your fingertips with tools to get organized and keep in touch, but not all features are currently available.
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