hackpad – Complete Document Collaboration for Teams

Professional teams rely on open collaboration tools to work together in an online environment. However, it’s not uncommon for some collaboration platforms to be a little too open—leaving the door cracked for people to take a peek at what their competitors are working on. Hackpad is a collaboration application that keeps privacy and permissions front and center.

Register for a Hackpad account to start making your own “pads.” Pads are essentially word documents that you can work on in the cloud. Invite colleagues to participate in your pads and collaborate on documents in real-time. Hackpad offers a number of important features, like syntax highlighting for HTML and JavaScript, along with many other markup syntaxes, and multiple embed options. Paste the URL of rich media content from YouTube, Twitter, Slideshare, among other popular apps, into your pad. You can even create a new pad while you’re working on an existing one by typing the @-symbol.

Privacy is taken incredibly seriously by Hackpad. Individual pads can be marked as private, or they can be made accessible to anyone with a link. Pad creators also have the option to make their projects completely open and public. Hackpad always gives users the option to change the permissions on their pads, or revoke access to previously open pads, at any time.

Practical Uses:

• Collaborate on a business document with your colleagues
• Create a company wiki
• Share documentation with clients by creating multiple pads
• Make a to-do list that you can reference from any device

Insider Tips:

• Add an [] symbol to create a checklist
• Follow specific pads created by your colleagues
• Download all of your pads at once as a ZIP file
• Hackpad integrates with Dropbox for users who need to work offline

What we liked:

• Users see a complete history of all the changes that have happened to their pads
• Users can un-invite people from their pads
• New pads can be created from existing pads, selected text, email, or a user’s browser bar
• Hackpad supports rich media from a number of popular apps

What we didn’t like:

• The default setting for all new pads is public

Alternatives:

• Google Drive – https://drive.google.com
• ProofHub – http://www.proofhub.com
• Sync.in – http://sync.in

Company Info:

• Launched: 2011
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California
• Founded by: Alex Graveley and Igor Kofman
• Web site: https://hackpad.com

Costs:

• Private Sites are free for teams of up to five
• $2 per member, per month