www.mangoapps.com

Team Collaboration | Social Intranet

This blog will demonstrate the difference between Podio and MangoApps as a team collaboration

tool and which is a better option. This is part of a series of analysis blogs to see which team

collaboration portal is the best in Europe, USA, and Asia Pacific. In previous blog posts, we have

covered Slack, Jive- N, Yammer, and IBM Connections. Podio has a good reputation among its

peers in presenting itself as a complete collaboration tool. Let’s see if it outweighs MangoApps.

We have also done a comparison among the rest of the best team collaboration tools in the world.

You can have a look here: Slack, Jive- N, Yammer, IBM Connections, Podio, and Tibbr.

FEATURES Podio MangoApps

File Versioning and Co-Authoring Semi Yes

Tasks Yes Yes

Projects Yes Yes

News Feeds Yes Yes

Business Integration Yes Yes

Profile Directory Yes Yes

SSO Yes Yes

Customer Service & Support Yes Yes

Mobile App & Desktop App No Yes

Groups No Yes

Data Retention Feature No Yes

Deep File Search No Yes

Gamification Levels & Badges No Yes

Employee Recognition No Yes

Polls No Yes

Question & Answers No Yes

Ideas & Idea Compaigns No Yes

Wikis No Yes

Tracker No Yes

Analytics No Yes

Blog posts No Yes

To Do’s No Yes

Real Time Chat No Yes

Language Supported No Yes

Media Gallery No Yes

Personal Company Branding No Yes

Multiple Deployment Options No Yes

File Versioning and Co-Authoring – Podio has the file version feature where you can see the

number of times a file has been edited and a new version of the file uploaded. However, this is a

very primitive option. MangoApps sends a notification when a new file has been uploaded and if

your file has been approved or rejected by your project administrator. Podio has no option for co-

authoring, which doesn’t make it a document management tool.

Tasks – The great thing about Podio’s task feature is that you can assign a task to any member of

your team or guest from any app or workspace, but that is all that you can do with the task option.

MangoApps lets you set a duration to complete the task, priority, team lead, and select if you would

like to make a task private or public, which are really helpful functions within tasks.

Projects – Podio has a vast project section that’s customizable to your preferences. You can add an

app from their app store, which is a huge app market with 100s of apps, or you can create your own

app depending on your needs. HR can add a recruitment or policy tab. Marketing can have a latest

documents or achievements tab. MangoApps has something similar.

Business Integrations – Podio has all the essential integration with Dropbox, GoToMeeting, Excel,

Google Drive, Evernote, etc. This really helps keep all your tools and content together. MangoApps

also has integration for marketing and lead generation, online meetings, developer tools, support,

etc. This puts both team collaboration tools on par when it comes to integration.

Profile Directory – Podio’s profile directory is very basic. It showcases an employee’s title, skills,

address, etc. MangoApps lets you check what projects, files, groups, and activities a colleague is

engaged in, which gives you a better insight about the person and if they can help in any particular

task or project.

SSO – Podio gives SSO options with Active Directory / LDAP / Google / Workday etc. and 3

Single Sign-on SAML Apps. Vendors like OneLogin and Okta support with the secure web

authentication.

Customer Service & Support – Podio has a well-maintained customer support network, which is

fairly heavy on educational material. It might not be as good as Jive- N, but there is enough content

there to help a customer. There are no phone hotlines, but you can submit support tickets via the

website or through your account. Response time is okay as well. You are able to take training

sessions that cover everything from basic and advanced to team training. The only downfall is that

this is a paid feature, whereas MangoApps does this for free.

Conclusion: While Podio is a much simpler build-to-order team collaboration tool, users will still find it

challenging and complicated for everyday use. One main disadvantage is that Podio has no LHS

which makes it very difficult to navigate. A new user will need a lot of time to understand where all

the essential functions are. MangoApps has a layout and navigation that makes sense which makes

it extremely easy to use. The design makes it look way more slick, functional, and clear.

MangoApps as a team collaboration tool is an overall better product, especially for enterprises and

small to mid-sized businesses.

The in-house app store that Podio has is very impressive with almost all the features you need.

Podio when you use it at first is like a pizza base without any toppings (cheese, veggies, etc.). This

makes Podio look a little dull and on the outset it feels like there is not much to offer. After creating

project workstations, it finally starts to look like a collaboration tool, but this adds a lot of steps for

a first-time user to successfully accomplish.

Podio has extremely steep pricing. In fact, it is one of the most expensive collaboration tools in the

market, with the price starting from $9 and going up to $24 (excluding the enterprise plan which

touches $50). Essentially, in the basic plan, you have an option of two things — tasks and user

management — which will cost you $9. MangoApps offers you everything Podio has and more,

with a better designed, systematic, functionally supreme, and compact platform. This really is a no-

brainer when you see MangoApps at $7 and Podio at up to $30.

MangoApps Team Collaboration

Personalization – Unlike most collaboration software, where there is a set menu on the dashboard,

MangoApps has an algorithm that helps match your unique behavior needs and interests, which it

presents on your dashboard. You can further personalize it to reflect your membership in teams, co-

workers you follow, colleague and group suggestions, information that you have pinned, etc.

Customizable Dashboard – This is a great email alternative which helps bring the organization’s

collective intelligence out of the email inbox and on to the dashboard. With its built-in widgets and

easy-to-use UI, you don’t need a developers support. A simple drag and drop helps move content

around, and you can re-size elements in a few clicks.

News Feed – News feeds across most social platforms have a similar UX — so does Jive and

MangoApps — but the difference in features is considerable. Much like Gmail, MangoApps lets

you see what matters most first by classifying it as primary vs secondary. “Mentions,” much like

tagging on Facebook, shows you whenever you have been mentioned by one of your peers

separately. You can pin news pieces for a later read. The news feed also gives you access to files,

polls, question & answers, wikis, and more.

SSO – The Single Sign On MangoApps has is with other authentication systems or applications like

GoogleApps or LDAP/AD Microsoft, etc. This is an in-built SSO system by MangoApps, which

not only enhances the user’s security profile, but also makes it easier for the IT department/admin

to audit where and how the credentials are used. Most industries with sensitive information, like

financial/IT services, can reap the benefits of this feature.

Profile Directory – MangoApps allows you to create custom fields and designations of your

choice within a profile directory. An easily searchable profile directory can also benefit big

enterprises through increased productivity. For example, a manager or employee can

easily find help on different projects by analyzing an employee’s profile and quickly searching their

qualifications and experience. Each user’s profile page shows areas of expertise, awards received

for their expertise and good work, badges received, posts they have shared, and more, making it

easy to find specific strengths and skills within an organization.

Deep File Search – This feature enhances productivity for individuals. It allows you to not only

search for files by title keywords, but also to search by using keywords found within documents and

files. These files include all Microsoft Office and PDF documents that can be inside archives or

compressed files.

Gamification Levels & Badges – This is a one-of-a-kind feature that helps drive employee

satisfaction and engagement by awarding badges based on employee activity and contribution

within the organization. This feature creates friendly competition and highlights top influencers and

contributors.

Employee Recognition – Unlike Yammer’s “Praise” feature, this takes things to the next level. The

admin can customize and set policies for who can give awards and in which category. The admin

can create a points and bonuses system to make it unique to your company. The awards/badges are

further highlights on the employee’s profile, which builds a culture that promotes identifying and

endorsing employees.

Polls – Like Yammer, this community tool also has an option to conduct polls, but with a few

added features. You can direct polls across the company, to specific groups, or just to your set of

followers. Adjust how long your polls run by setting an expiration date to get timely responses.

Question & Answers – This is another feature that enables productivity through team

collaboration. IT helps connect a subject matter expert with an employee that needs

specific information (e.g., information on specialized topics, complicated internal processes,

projects, products, etc.). Top contributors and influencers get highlighted automatically by the

enterprise social network and win points which relate back to the employee recognition program.

Before asking the question, an employee can use the advanced search option to search for

employees with the right expertise to answer them (yet another way the customized employee

profile helps).

Ideas – This is another feature that most collaboration apps don’t have. MangoApps makes this a

unique function that offers everyone in the company the opportunity to come up with new product

ideas — ideas that are based on market trends. This stand-alone feature helps reduce R&D cost for

an enterprise by providing a type of idea life cycle management. You can evaluate benefits,

estimate potential costs, forecast future success with greater ease, and deliver results with

reliability.

Wikis – MangoApps Wikis is a perfect tool and an email alternative, which uses the WYSIWYG

editor to collaborate online. This allows you to create, share, and discuss your documents, ideas,

minutes, milestones, and projects. The rich content editor makes it easy for anyone to edit quickly

and securely.

Data Retention and Compliance – This is a great feature for law associations, banks, IT firms, or

any other company with highly sensitive information. If you would like certain information to

appear for a specific amount of time and then later be deleted or archived, you can choose auto-

archival or auto-delete in the retention settings to fit your personal or compliance requirements.

File Versioning and Co-Authoring – This feature, which is not present in Jive, really defines team

collaboration and is in fact a SharePoint alternative. This feature gives you the ability to access the

expertise of different subject matter experts from different departments across the globe. Let’s say

you are in the marketing department and need to write a document on a new product release. You

can team up with a member of your development team to give technical insights on the operation of

the product and complete the project with ease.

Projects – This is one feature that has not fully been developed to its potential compared to other

project management software in the market. However, it does have a decent set of functionalities.

You can customize the view of multiple projects, share an update, ask a question, do a poll, or

recognize a team member for any project. You can also allow customers and partners to be guest

users to give them transparency and visibility during a project.

Tasks – Tasks is one of the key features in any project management software. Unlike Yammer, this

is a built-in feature with MangoApps and does not require any third-party tool. Seeing all your tasks

across multiple projects on one screen helps keep people focused and allows them to plan their

tasks efficiently.

Mobile & Desktop Apps – Windows & Mac clients can connect to MangoApps without using

a browser. Replace email for internal private communication. Use MangoApps file synchronization

and all your files securely and automatically sync between your desktop and your online

MangoApps folder. MangoApps desktop and Mac clients receive notifications from co-workers

they follow.

Trackers – Track and coordinate anything within your team. With one centralized, always-

available project, task tracking assignments in your team enables better employee productivity.

Create trackers with columns varying from rich text, dropdown, date, price, file, etc. This is a great

feature for accounting and financial firms since you can now track countless items, audit lists, and

compliance checklists for your company.

Analytics – One of the most treasured features for MangoApps and its customers is tracking ROI

through the performance measurement of the MangoApps team community software. The analytics

feature lets you see dollars saved per month and the productivity time saved per employee. This is

calculated based on the activity of the user on the platform.

Blog Posts – This platform breaks employees out of silos and increases internal knowledge sharing

through bottom-up communication. MangoApps’ intuitive rich content editor makes it easy for

users of all levels to contribute to the blog post with rich content and to save a blog as a draft for

later.

To Do – Like Jive, MangoApps also has a Notes feature, but unlike MangoApps, Jive does not have

the added To-Do feature . The To-Do option allows you to set it by priority, due date, and status

(complete or pending). Now you don’t need to have another app for your task reminders.

Automatic Message Delete in Chat – The automatic message delete option in chat is an extremely

cool feature and very handy for companies with private information. You can set a timer to erase

any message sent to a colleague as soon as they have clicked and opened it. It’s almost like

something out of a Mission Impossible movie.

CRM – MangoApps does not have a fully-fledged CRM platform like many others in the same

space, but considering the amount of collaboration features this tool has, it is pretty impressive to

still be able to create an opportunity in the CRM, add a note, and even send an email to that

prospect.

Media Gallery – Just like your phone, this collaboration software has a gallery where anyone can

upload pictures, videos, and even audio from company-related events and office holiday parties.

You can also upload project-related pictures with clients and more.

Branding – This is an extremely unique and rare feature that is not available with Yammer. With

MangoApps, customers can choose to have their own company, department, or product name on

this community portal on the top right or as the banner, which makes it very exclusive and useful.

Multiple Organizations – This is an extremely handy feature as well specially for big companies

with multiple organizations. The organizations might represent distinct business units, geographies

or company subsidiaries. For example, a parent company might own 3 organizations with distinct

internet domain names like company.com, company.co.uk & company.co.de which can be modeled

as 3 organizations under one main domain all with similar features.

Multiple Deployment Option – Unlike any other collaboration software, MangoApps offers

shared cloud, which has six Amazon data centers across the world. This is a popular low-cost and

high-security cloud option. Private cloud gives you the best of both worlds — on cloud and high

security, which is every IT manager’s dream. On premise is more suited for banks and other

companies with highly sensitive information; you have complete control and the data is self-hosted

in your data center.

Business Integration – Much like other collaboration tools, this platform also connects with single

sign-on, file services, communication, online meetings, developer tools, customer support and

marketing, and lead generation business integration tools. This can further be customized as per the

requirement of an admin for their specific department.

Languages Supported – MangoApps has an option to translate to 150 languages. Customers can

simply choose the language they need to translate with a few clicks.

Support – MangoApps has some of the best support available for any product of this scale. Unlike

other solutions, MangoApps does not charge exorbitant fees and has the support prices built into the

contract itself. The collaboration software has standard support or priority support and it assigns the

response time depending on the case severity.