AirSend: a new and simple collaboration tool.

Recently, I had stumbled across a platform called, AirSend. AirSend is a simple and easy-to-use collaboration/community tool. Since my food blog was doing well, I figured it was high time I started a community. I had previously tried Discord, but for me, the UI was too game-oriented. Of course, it is a platform designed for gamers, so I’m not sure what I was expecting. But after trying out Discord, I realized I wanted something cleaner and simpler to use.

I have been using AirSend now for a couple of weeks, and I figured I would write a review about them.

AirSend

According to AirSend’s about page, users waste 40% of their time switching between apps throughout the day. Because there is so much context switching, work is not completed on time, people lose focus or motivation, and productivity is wasted. Wasted productivity also means wasted money.

The idea and solution behind the start-up company is built-in functionality. Minimized context switching happens by providing the essential tools in one space, thus allowing increased productivity. The native tools they provide are,

• Task management
• File share/organization/storage
• Shared Knowledge Space
• Centralized communication

Before AirSend

Before finding AirSend, I was using Discord and Trello. Discord is my central hub for communication and getting in touch with communities. Trello is my task management tool. Both tools are excellent. The UI in Trello is flawless, and the capabilities with Discord is incredible. But, I needed something more simple and easy-to-use.

My Problem With Discord

For those unfamiliar with Discord, it is a freemium communication/VoIP platform that markets towards gamers and communities. I found that with Discord, there is a lot of features that I wasn’t using or even needed, and instead, it caused more UI clutter.

The other frustrations I had with Discord was that there was no read receipt functionality and no message separator to indicate a new message. Because of this, talking with my team was somewhat tricky.

I had no idea if my team members read my text, and I also had no idea which messages were separate or one. Users need to hover over specific texts to see if it is a different message. But, by hovering over the message, it is still hard to see because the highlight blends in with Discord’s brand colors.

As you can see from the image above, it looks like one giant paragraph, but it is several separate messages. However, because it seems like one enormous paragraph, it seems somewhat overwhelming to read.

I want to preface that I still love using Discord for gaming and joining communities. However, when it comes to collaboration or chatting with team members on a project, I feel that the product doesn’t quite deliver. Aside from some UI issues, there aren’t enough tools within the product to get work done.

My Problem With Trello

Like I said before, Trello’s UI is flawless, which makes the UX incredibly seamless. The majority of my user satisfaction comes from dragging the cards into another category. Plus, the themes are beautiful.

Trello also features integrations. I’m not big on integrations myself. I want something simple that gets the job done. The problem I have with integrations is that I have to create so many new accounts. Of course, me not liking integrations is not Trello’s fault. It is a me-problem.

No, the only problem I have is that I have to scroll through one long card to read the extra notes and descriptions.

Again, this is more of a picky personal problem, but I find that scrolling through a long card is inefficient.

My Experience with AirSend

For the past couple of weeks, I have been using AirSend as an alternative to Discord and Trello. At first, I found the product slightly confusing to use, mainly because there was not a channel tour or a general tour of how to use the product. But after seeing some YouTube videos, I was able to work out the product myself.

What I like the most about AirSend is its utility. I can get everything done from one space, such as keeping track of my to-do’s, building my vision board, and upload/organize all my important files. What’s nice about the organizing of files is that I don’t need a third-party app, and there is a central place for all my project folders.

Currently, AirSend has one integration: Office 365. Having this feature is excellent for revising documents. Anything you edit in Office 365 updates to the original file uploaded in AirSend. Though I am not a big fan of tools having a ton of integrations, having a few isn’t so bad.

I’ve also found that you can host public groups with AirSend. Anyone who has a public link address can join the group. I decided to make a community with AirSend for my food blog.

So far, managing a group is pretty straightforward. There are new moderator functions to AirSend, which makes establishing roles for my community, easy.

In summation, AirSend has the potential to grow. This past week, the developers added several new features to the product. Because of this, users can expect consistent updates.

The best part is that AirSend is currently free. From what I understand, if users sign up before July 15, they can get AirSend Pro Free for one year. The one year plan includes 100GB of file storage, unlimited e-signatures (coming soon), and unlimited message history/guests. AirSend is available desktop, android, and apple.