A tool to communicate with a client that's better than e-mail

Question

I'm working on a project for my client. I need to communicate daily with them on many different aspects of the application. At the beginning, e-mail was enough, but after a month there are few hundreds e-mails exchanged, all of them tackling few different topics, which is starting to cause a lot of confiusion.

Can you recomend a tool designed for such an occasion? An on-line developer-client communication system with ability to discuss different topics, disable already finished ones, easy file upload, some scheduling, maybe integrated chat and so on.

Answer 1

I'd totally recommend Slack.

The different topics you talk about can be divided into channels, it allows for any type of file upload, integrated (group and private) chat, 3rd party application integration, and so on. Plus, they have iOS and Android apps if you have the need to go mobile.

Oh, and it's free. You can pay for the premium version which allows as many integrated services as you like and stores all your history forever.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Slack, nor am I on any form of commission, but it's really awesome and am pitching this to my current client as I've found it better than email! I also use it for my sideline project which keeps me and my two dev's communicating daily.

Answer 2

I built a timekeeping/workflow system for my consulting work. Each client has one or many projects; each project one or many tasks. I record time and enter notes at the task level.

I give my customer access to this system so they 1) can track my progress and 2) enter user-acceptance testing notes as needed. Naturally, I have to keep my notes "PG", and the customer does not have permissions to edit my notes or time entries.

The system generates an invoice with all these hours/notes, organized by one project per tab.