What about Basecamp? That seems to do well for distributed teams, but I don't know if it can be effective if all you use it for is for daily updates. I've never used any of these async tools outside the Jiras and Gits of the world so my experience is limited.

My previous company used Basecamp, could definitely work in this setting. I just really hate the UI...

We've recently hired several remote team members and have been experimenting with standups over Slack using chat bots such as Geekbot but Nuclino looks interesting too.