70 of the Best Productivity Tools For Remote Teams in 2024

Are you looking for the best productivity tools? You’re not alone. Right now, we could all use a little help getting through our to-do lists.

That’s why we put together this ultimate list of productivity tools for every situation. Whether you’re crushing it with remote work or just trying to catch up on your household chores, there’s something here for you.

The 70 best productivity tools

Have you ever spent all day doing work but still got nothing done? Yeah, me too.

There’s a big difference between being productive and being busy. Productivity means that your time and effort are well spent, and you get high-quality work done without too much waste.

Sometimes, we need a little help to achieve that. With the right productivity tools, you can use your time better and get more done with less effort.

The “right” tool for the job depends on what you need to do.

Do you or your team members need help to stay focused while working from home? Check out the time management and productivity measurement section to find a solution.

Do you bounce from task to task and always need more time to finish something? The section on notes, memos, and to-dos has precisely what you need.

Time management and productivity measurement

There’s a common saying: what gets measured gets managed.

If you want to improve productivity for yourself or your team, adding time tracking software is a great first step. You’ll see where your time goes so that you can make intelligent choices and optimize your working hours.

The productivity apps in this section help you stay focused on the right things.

These tools are even more powerful for managers because they reduce the time it takes to stay in the loop and effectively lead, especially for remote teams.

1. Hubstaff

Key features

Hubstaff helps teams stay productive. It creates more visibility into the work that’s getting done and streamlines time-consuming tasks like filling out timesheets and processing international payments.

Time tracking alone can help increase productivity by helping build awareness around where work hours go.

There’s a lot more to Hubstaff than basic time tracking, though. With our premium options, you also get these productivity-boosting extras.

• Proof of work features like optional screenshots and app/URL usage
• Keyboard/mouse activity tracking and activity scores for each team member
• GPS and geofencing features from Hubstaff that can clock crews in and out automatically when they arrive at or leave a Job site
• Team scheduling features in Hubstaff, including attendance reporting and shift planning
• Automated timesheets and expense reporting that save hours and effort every week
• Project budgeting and reporting to help you stay profitable

With over 30 integrations, Hubstaff is a powerful project management, customer support, and payroll tool. Think of it as a platform that helps you manage every part of your remote business. We make it easy for you to achieve the benefits of remote and hybrid work, such as reduced interruptions and increased productivity.

Benefits

Track time to specific tasks and switch tasks seamlessly when you’re ready to work on something else. That time tracking software data shows you where you’re spending too many of your hours on non-productive tasks.

The easy-to-use, lightweight desktop and mobile apps help you manage teams around the globe.

Hubstaff’s customizable dashboard allows managers and teams to track productivity and earnings in real-time.

Price

Hubstaff offers several options to give you precisely what you need. You can get a free 14-day trial on any of our tiers, with access to the complete set of features. See full pricing details here.

Our current plans are:

• Free plan
• Starter: $4.99 per seat/month
• Grow: $7.50 per seat/month
• Team: $10 per seat/month
• Enterprise: $25 per seat/month

Need more advanced features? Hubstaff also offers extra add-ons that boost its primary team management features:

• Tasks: $3 per set/month
• Insights: $2 per seat/month
• More screenshots: $3 per seat/month
• Corporate app: $3 per seat/month

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2. Toggl

Key features

Toggl is a suite of productivity tools for remote and freelance teams. Currently, they offer three solutions:

• Toggl Track is a simple stop-and-start time tracking tool.
• Toggl Hire connects remote teams to freelance talent.
• Toggl Plan is a project management tool that helps teams stay on task.

Benefits

Toggl helps remote teams outsource, train, and manage talent. Clean reports and customizable alerts help managers stay focused and assess workloads. Users also love the user-friendly drag-and-drop interface on Toggl Track.

Toggl prides itself on simplicity. However, it offers over 100 integrations with tools like Trello, Slack, and Basecamp.

Price

Toggl Track offers a 30-day free trial. It has a free plan and three paid plans.

• Free Plan: Free for up to 5 users
• Starter Plan: $10 per user/month
• Premium Plan: $20 per user/month
• Enterprise Plan: Contact sales

With this tool, you’ll gain access to unlimited team timelines and plan boards and a full Toggl Track integration. The workspace guest feature allows you to loop in freelance talent for one-off projects.

Other remote work time and productivity software

3. Time Doctor – Employee monitoring for remote and hybrid teams

4. Harvest – Web-based time tracking and invoicing for client work

5. QuickBooks Time – Formerly TSheets, time tracking and team management for large remote teams

6. DeskTime – Employee computer usage monitoring for remote employees and freelancers

7. Workpuls – Basic productivity monitoring for remote teams

Communication

Staying productive and connected can take time and effort. You need to communicate effectively, but the more people interrupt to talk to you, the less productive work you get done.

The communication tools in this section include innovative productivity features that help you strike the right balance.

8. Slack

Key features

Slack is a business communication tool that provides teams with their own personal workspace.

You can create custom channels for conversation, sharing files, and connecting people.
Now, you can also collaborate with audio and video calls or Slack Connect, which is a feature that allows you to link your workspace with other companies.

Benefits

Slack is not just an instant messaging app.

The Workflow Builder allows you to automate tasks like PTO requests and onboarding. Strengthen those workflows by pairing them with over 2,000 integrations.

One of the leading productivity benefits you get from using Slack is that you can control interruptions. When you’re available, your co-workers can reach you immediately. Turn off notifications and use status updates to let your teammates know that it’s not a good time to chat.

For frequent users, Slack is packed with productivity hacks like message scheduling, advanced organization tools, and integrations.

Price

The Pro version of Slack starts at just $7.25 per user/month. This gives you access to unlimited messaging, apps, video calls, and the Slack Connect feature. The Business Plus option gives you more features around data and security for an organization at scale.
Slack also offers an Enterprise Grid plan with data loss prevention, HIPAA compliance, and other security features.

9. Flock

Key features

Flock is a messaging and collaboration tool with a focus on collaboration.

Like other messaging apps, Flock provides video conferencing, messaging, and file-sharing capabilities.

The most significant difference between Flock and familiar tools like Slack is that Flock includes built-in productivity features like shared to-dos.

Benefits

We’ve all had situations where important assignments never make it beyond an instant message.

Flock’s built-in to-do list and search features are a great way to ensure that assignments don’t slip through the cracks. You can build to-do checklists for every channel and even set reminders for subtasks.

Price

Flock has a free plan that offers unlimited messaging, 10 public channels, and 1-1 video calls.

For $4.50 per user per month, you get access to group video calls, screen sharing, and unlimited channels.

Other communication tools

10. Microsoft Teams – Video conferencing software that works well with other Microsoft products

11. Chanty – Team instant messaging with unlimited message history

12. Discord – Chat, voice, and text with a focus on building communities

13. RocketChat – Centralized communication that brings together team chats, customer messages, and communication with business partners

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Video conferencing

Video meetings are more personal — and often more productive — than a phone call. They are huge time savers when they replace on-site meetings that require a commute.

The video conferencing software in this section helps you stay connected no matter where you are. Use these tools to have more productive meetings at work, get everyone together to plan the family vacation, or even catch up with friends when you’re too busy to meet them for dinner.

14. Zoom

Key features

Zoom is a cloud-based video conferencing service that can connect over 500 participants simultaneously. You probably don’t need to talk to 499 other people, but just in case you do, Zoom can handle it.

In 2020, their customer base increased 470.33%. But Zoom has seen significant competition and growth since then, too.

But not all of these new additions were simply hosting weekly meetings.

Zoom is also a powerful webinar and virtual event hosting platform. With Zoom webinars, teams can give safe and secure presentations for up to 50,000 people.

Whether you’re looking for a more efficient way to host your macramé meetup or you’re planning an epic virtual retreat for your company, Zoom is a solid choice.

Benefits

When it comes to productivity, Zoom wins because it’s so easy to use. It takes very little technical skill to set up a meeting, and the people you invite don’t need to know much about computers to join a meeting.

Zoom strikes a great balance between offering a lot of valuable features and still being so simple that anyone can use it.

With over 800 integrations, you can share files, establish sales leads, and improve your team’s scheduling.

Instead of planning a complex in-person event, move some of those to Zoom to save time, money, and energy.

For business meetings, Zoom offers an extra productivity benefit — recorded meetings. Automatically record meetings and store the replay where it’s easy to find and watch.

If anyone misses a meeting or you need to revisit something you discussed, the recording is a lot more efficient than digging through emails and chat logs to find the same information.

Price

Zoom’s free version allows you to host up to 100 participants. You can host an unlimited number of meetings, but they’re capped at 40 minutes apiece.

There’s a $15.99/month Pro plan and a $21.99/month Business plan that are better for small to mid-sized teams. These plans offer more features, longer meeting times, and more people on the call so that you can do more.

Large companies can get in on the action for $26.99 per user with extra features like translated captions. If you need up to 1,000 people per meeting, you’ll need to contact Zoom for pricing on its Enterprise plan.

15. GoToMeeting

Key features

Like Zoom, GoToMeeting offers high-quality video and conference calling capabilities for desktop and mobile. Recording and transcription features help teams stay productive long after meetings are over.

GoToMeeting offers recording and storage capabilities so you can easily save meeting replays.

If you’re planning an important seminar or conference, GoToMeeting’s video display options give you a lot more control over video quality and settings than other platforms like Zoom. This can be important if you’re protecting your brand image.

Benefits

GoToMeeting is designed to boost meeting productivity.

The Smart Meeting Assistant automatically transcribes your meetings with a shareable link that can be sent to attendees. From there, they can search the interactive recording by keywords to find data for future reporting.

Businesses also appreciate the generous storage capacity for meeting recordings. You won’t lose important information because you run out of space for automatic recordings.

Price

The free version of GoToMeeting offers unlimited HD video and screen sharing for small teams. The company recently introduced a Professional plan for $14 per organizer per month that lets you have meetings for up to 150 people.

The $19 per month Business plan offers Smart Assistant, keyboard and mouse sharing, transcription, and more. There are also Enterprise options if you need a volume discount.

Other video tools

16. Google Hangouts Meet – Replaces Google Hangouts as a free and convenient video conferencing option for Google users

17. Cisco Jabber – Instant messaging, voice messaging, and video conferencing for larger companies

18. BlueJeans – Easy screen sharing and video meetings that work on a wide range of devices

19. Join.me – Screen sharing, whiteboarding, and video chats on an easy-to-use platform

20. Skype – Microsoft’s longstanding video chat tool

E-commerce

E-commerce merchants work in a fast-paced industry with lots of savvy competitors. Success or failure can come down to how productively you use your time.

The e-commerce productivity tools in this section are designed to help you run your shop more efficiently.

For a more detailed look at some of the best tools to help e-commerce merchants boost productivity, check out this article.

21. Shopify

Key features

Shopify has dubbed itself “The platform commerce is built on.” With more than a million brands using their e-commerce platform, it’s hard to argue with that.

Merchants can design their own e-commerce website with simple drag and drop tools or work with popular industry leaders like Amazon and eBay. Shopify Checkout makes customer satisfaction easy. With one-click checkouts, finalizing a purchase is painless — even for first-time users.

Benefits

Shopify helps e-commerce teams bring their online stores into the 21st century — and since it’s a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform, most of the tools you need are already built-in.

SaaS e-commerce is a significant productivity booster for small merchants. Instead of building and maintaining your own website and inventory systems, Shopify does the technical stuff for you.

You can focus on growing your shop instead of using those hours to keep your website operational.

Shopify marketing insights help you assess both e-commerce and point-of-sale metrics in real time. A built-in blog, email templates, and social media ad syncing help Shopify users keep their entire workflow in one location, which is excellent for productivity.

Price

Shopify offers multiple plans depending on the size of your operations and how you sell. Monthly rates for plans start at $39 per month for localization in three markets and its highest credit card processing costs. As you move to more advanced plans, from $105 per month to $2,300 per month, processing fees and shipping costs decline while you get more support and improved checkout options.

22. Drift

Key features

Drift helps you serve your customers better without spending all day in your inbox. It’s an AI-powered chatbot that can help you make more sales and respond to common questions faster.

Use Drift to handle some of your emails, help customers find what they want on your website, and even send marketing messages.

If the AI chatbot can’t help, Drift will connect the customer with your support team. Your shoppers get the attention they need and your support staff can focus their efforts on the right things.

Benefits

One of the most time-consuming parts of e-commerce is customer service. How many times have you answered the same questions again and again?

Drift strikes the balance between automation and the necessary human touch. You still provide personalized service to customers who need it, and you also give faster answers to the most common questions.

In other words, Drift is good for you and great for your website visitors.

Price

Drift’s pricing isn’t very transparent on its website. The company still offers a free plan with limited features and seats to try, but you’ll need to contact its support team to create a free account. Its first paid version is the Premium option at $2,500 per month, while its Advanced and Enterprise accounts require custom pricing.

Other productivity tools for e-commerce

23. CommentSold – Sell products directly from social media comments

24. AIHello – Automate your Amazon PPC ads with artificial intelligence

25. Reviewbox – Monitor product and business reviews across multiple platforms

26. ShipBob – Create a shipping and distribution network by sharing service with other merchants

27. Kibo Commerce – Cloud software to handle all things e-commerce from inventory management to mobile sales

Task Management

One of the best ways to tame your to-do list is with a task management tool. This type of software helps you set and manage priorities, delegate work effectively, and set realistic goals.

If you need help staying focused on the right things at the right times, the tools in this section will help. Many of these share traits with project management tools and will integrate with those platforms, as well as things like time tracking software. Look for options that also integrate with workforce management platforms to make the most of your teams’ time.

28. Hubstaff Tasks

Key features

Hubstaff Tasks is an Agile project management solution for remote teams. With Tasks, teams can finish jobs faster, prevent mistakes, and encourage collaboration from afar.

Clean sprint planning, automated Kanban boards, and roadmaps help you see exactly what your team is working on. You can drag and drop tasks to build your own personal Sprints.

Though it’s designed to help remote teams get more done, Hubstaff Tasks is also an effective tool for personal productivity.

It’s easy to set up and simple to use. Whether you want to manage a personal to-do list or create a central hub for your global team, this is one tool that will make your life easier.

Benefits

If you’ve never used project management software before, you’ll find Hubstaff Tasks intuitive and easy. Start with templates and discover more useful features as you dive in.

The Sprint view is one of the most valuable features if you’re looking for tools to increase productivity. Instead of staring at your endless list of to-dos or sifting through boards and emails to decide what to work on next, Sprints organize your work based on what you should work on now and what’s coming up next.

When you open a task to work on it, you’ll see more valuable tools like a built-in time tracker, checklists, attachments, and comments.

At Hubstaff, we use Hubstaff Tasks to keep work communication organized.

Anyone can join a project in the middle and see what has been done, what needs to happen next, and who else is working on this task. That’s one of our top productivity secrets — the right people can always access the information they need, no matter when or where they work.

Price

Tasks is free for five seats on up to 10 projects. Free users have access to:

• Sprint planning
• Kanban boards
• Project templates
• Comments
• Roles & permissions
• And more

For $5 per seat/month, the Premium plan offers unlimited seats, projects, Timelines, Roadmaps, Stand-ups, and 5 GB of cloud storage space.

If you’re already using Hubstaff, Tasks comes included with our Grow plans and up, or you can add it to the baseline Starter plan at just $3 per seat/month.

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29. Asana

Key features

Asana is a collaboration and project management tool designed to help teams organize, schedule, and track their work.

For personal task management, Asana is probably a little too complex. But for businesses that don’t mind a little learning curve, this can be an excellent productivity tool.

Benefits

For teams that need a detailed way to manage complex projects, Asana offers flexible, powerful project management tools that help keep everyone on track.

This is an especially useful tool for project managers who need a more efficient way to keep track of multiple projects. You can view projects in lots of different ways and make decisions based on detailed reports.

Automations are another productivity booster. With a bit of technical know-how, you can set up rules that automatically take action when your team completes routine work.

Price

Asana has a free version that includes unlimited projects, tasks, and messages for up to 10 users.

The Start plan is $10.99 per user/month and adds more views, Asana’s bright fields and editors, custom templates, and more. The $24.99 per user/month Advanced option removes many limits and adds features designed to help large companies work across departments.

Other task management tools

30. ProofHub – All-in-one project management and collaboration platform for professional teams

31. Monday.com – Open source task management platform that allows you to create your own add-ons

32. Jira – An enterprise-level task management software with a focus on bug tracking for development teams

33. Wrike – A feature-heavy project management tool with a focus on flexibility

34. Trello – Simple, free-to-use Kanban board to manage team projects

Notes, memos, and to-do lists

If project management software looks a little too involved for your needs, these following productivity tools might be a better fit.

The apps in this section help you organize your task list, keep track of ideas, and stay organized.

35. Todoist

Key features

Todoist is exactly what its name suggests — a to-do list-style note-taking app for business and personal use. Use it to create tasks, add recurring dates, and break projects into subtasks.

If you use a paper to-do list now, you’ll love how much more productive you can be with a tool like Todoist.

Benefits

Todoist is highly robust to a to-do list app.

You can organize your lists into Kanban boards, view productivity visuals, and even share tasks with others.

Whether you’re planning an ad campaign or your next home improvement project, Todoist has you covered.

Price

Todoist’s Beginner plan allows up to five active projects with five collaborators on each, all for free. It’s a smart way to test out the platform.

For $4 to $6 per user/month, Todoist’s paid plans give you access to a team inbox, custom admin roles, and team billing features. They also dramatically raise limits on team members, guests, projects, and more.

36. Bear App

Key features

The aptly named Bear is an online note-taking app that gives users the bare necessities.

Bear is designed to help copywriters, bloggers, and authors to jumpstart the content creation process, even on the go.

With a clean, concise UI, users can write from an iPhone, iPad, or Mac whenever (and wherever) inspiration strikes. If you’re a creative type and you need a better way to organize your ideas, this is a good app for that.

Benefits

Bear users can string together notes with hashtags and links or even include todos for incomplete thoughts.

A focus mode hides notes and other options to streamline productivity. Face/Touch ID helps writers hide and protect their most sensitive notes.

If you use the Get Things Done (GTD) or the Zen to Done productivity system, the Bear app is an intelligent addition to your routine. It helps you get ideas out of your head and into the app, then gives you the tools you need to organize and schedule those tasks.

Price

Bear offers a free version that includes notes, tags, attachments, and exports to a few file extensions.

Bear Pro syncs all of your devices, provides helpful templates, expands export capabilities, adds themes and app icons, and more for $2.99 per month.

Other tools for productive notes and to-do lists

37. Apple Notes – The basic notes app for Apple devices

38. Google Keep – Similar to Apple notes, but for Google devices and compatible with Google Drive

39. Notion – Notes, Kanban boards, wikis, calendars, and more to help keep you organized

40. Dropbox Paper – Real time collaboration on shared documents with to-dos, task assignments, and more

41. Atom – Free, open-source desktop app for customizable text editing

Google productivity tools

The Google ecosystem of apps is popular for both personal and business use. If you have a Gmail account, you already have access to the productivity apps in this section. They integrate with other valuable services like Google Calendar, making them a robust option for many companies.

42. Google Docs

Key features

Chances are you’re probably already using Google’s word processor — but it’s a lot more powerful than most are aware of.

Like most word processors, Google Docs lets you add links, choose from hundreds of fonts, and add images. Intelligent editing and styling tools help you format text.

But if this is all you’re using Google Docs for, you’ve barely scratched the surface.

Benefits

What really sets Docs apart from other word processors is the collaboration features.

Teams can comment, create folders, and view an extensive log of revision history. You can also mark up documents with suggested edits. Did you know there’s even a built-in chat?

Where other shared documents struggle with version control, Google Docs handles this elegantly by being web-based. If multiple people are working on the same file, you’re all editing it together instead of working on different versions on your own machine.

Price

Google Docs is a completely free tool, and so are many of its add-ons. Tools like HelloSign and DocHub are useful for document signing. Speakd is a helpful accessibility tool that reads text aloud.

The only times companies or people generally pay for Google’s services is when they need to upgrade to a Google Workspace, offering domains, increased storage, AI tools, and other features across a large number of tools.

43. Google Drive

Key features

Google Drive is a cloud-based storage system and collaboration tool for teams of all sizes. It works seamlessly with Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other Google tools for secure, real-time collaboration.

Benefits

It’s not enough to just store files — you also need to find them.

Google Drive’s AI and search technology helps teams find files up to 50% faster. Plus, you can easily access files you’ve recently worked on. For Chrome users, those files will show up in the URL autocomplete suggestions.

One of the most efficient things about Google Drive is that you can log in and access your files on any device. Need to get a bunch of pictures off of your phone and onto your computer? Just upload them to Drive. It’s simple, easy, and almost instantaneous. And the links they share are easily understood by the company’s other tools, like your Google Calendar.

Price

Google Drive is free for up to 15 GB of space. This is plenty for most people who use it for their personal productivity.

If your team is on the larger side, you can purchase more storage space. Google One might be a better value, though. With Google One, plans start at $1.99 per user/month 100 GB of storage space.

Microsoft productivity tools

You’ve probably used Microsoft products before, either at home, at work, or both.

If you’re a Microsoft user, don’t overlook these great productivity tools.

44. Microsoft OneDrive

Key features

Microsoft OneDrive is a secure cloud storage platform that allows teams to access their files anywhere from any device. Much like Google Drive, this is a great way to efficiently share files between your phone, computer, tablet, or other devices.

Teams can collaborate in real time using other Microsoft apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Benefits

OneDrive has a few lesser-known features that make a big difference in productivity.

Personal Vault lets users store important files with increased security. You can also scan passports, IDs, business cards, and other documents from your mobile device.

Price

Microsoft OneDrive is free and offers up to 5 GB of space. Larger teams can add more storage for a monthly rate:

• 1 TB of storage for $5 user/month
• Unlimited storage for $10 per user/month 

If you need to add any features to your account, from identity controls and access management to support for Microsoft Outlook and Excel, you can get increased storage for OneDrive when you sign up for one of the company’s Microsoft 365 packages.

45. Microsoft OneNote

Key features

Microsoft OneNote is a note-taking collaboration app that allows you to write, sketch, and even record video and audio notes. Users can also annotate and tag notes for their to-do lists.

Benefits

OneNote is planning to implement Fluid components for hybrid remote teams. With Fluid, teams can create meeting agendas, sketches, and other widgets that can be placed in different apps.

Even as a personal productivity tool, OneNote has its advantages. Use it to keep track of your to-dos and you can access your list from anywhere.

Price

OneNote is free across multiple platforms like MacOS, Windows, iOS, and Android.

Like OneDrive, you can add 1 TB of space to the 5 GB free storage space by starting a Microsoft Office 365 subscription.

Social media

Managing social media accounts takes up a lot of time and focus.

Whether you’re growing your personal following, building a social media brand, or managing social media as part of your job, the tools in this section will help you get more done in less time.

46. Hootsuite

Key features

Hootsuite is a social media management tool that helps you consolidate, schedule, and monitor your social presence across an array of social networking sites.

Whether you’re growing a following or managing a massive follower base, Hootsuite helps teams stay productive.

Benefits

You can customize your dashboard with scheduled posts, mentions, and news feeds from each social media channel you choose to connect.

Hootsuite cuts down on the time it takes to post to different social networks. Plus, the calendar view helps you see your entire strategy in one piece, even if you’re engaging with your followers across multiple networks.

As you keep track of mentions, tags, and relevant news, Hootsuite can help save time. View your feed all in one place and set up alerts to call out things you want to see.

You can also learn new social media skills with Hootsuite Academy.

Price

Hootsuite’s Professional plan starts at $99 per month and allows one user to connect up to 10 social accounts.

The Team plan, which costs $249 per month, allows you to configure user permissions, add 20 social accounts, and assign work to other users. Hootsuite also offers custom quotes for Enterprise teams looking to manage 50+ social accounts and maximize ad spend.

47. Sprout Social

Key features

Sprout Social is an all-in-one approach to social media planning.

Like Hootsuite, you can link your social accounts, schedule posts, and view social data for informed decision-making. However, where Hootsuite is a popular tool for freelancers, public speakers, and others building a personal brand, Sprout Social is better suited to business use.

Benefits

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) sets Sprout Social apart from other tools on the market. You won’t have to worry that you’re spending too much time crafting replies for prospective leads or disgruntled customers.

Shared contact view allows teams to see client conversation history and pick up where their colleagues left off. Sprout Social also offers integrations with your favorite customer support tools like Zendesk.

Price

Sprout Social offers a free 30-day trial and four pricing models.

The Standard plan starts at $199 per user/month and offers scheduling of posts, an all-in-one inbox, and CRM tools. More advanced plans include features like trend analysis, help desk integrations, link tracking, AI tools, and advanced support.

Other social media productivity tools

48. Zoho Social – A Hootsuite alternative targeting agencies and small businesses

49. Social Pilot – Social media scheduling for brand awareness and website traffic

50. CoSchedule – Agile-focused marketing tools with a focus on impactful copy and social media

51. TweetDeck – A Twitter-focused tool to help people and businesses grow and manage their following

52. Sendible – Scalable social media management for growing companies

Document management

Have you ever lost a file? You know how frustrating it is to try to remember old file names or recover important documents from old devices.

Sharing files with co-workers, friends, or family can be frustrating, too.

Stop wasting time managing documents. Check out some of our favorite productivity tools to organize and share your files more easily.

53. Evernote

Key features

Evernote is an advanced storage and note-taking tool that allows you to house notes, ideas, receipts, and sketches in one central location.

Helpful templates, a web clipper, and document scanning features help teams share their work.

Benefits

Some of the best ideas come to us when we least expect them. That’s why Evernote allows you to upload your own handwritten notes — and it reads them for you, too.

Once you’ve photographed your writing, you can archive your photo as a PDF. When you search your notes by keyword later on, Evernote will highlight the words in your photos.

This system works great for people who think better when they write things by hand. If you like to work on paper, you probably appreciate the creative benefits but hate the time and effort it takes to file those notes.

With Evernote, you get the best of both worlds.

Price

Evernote Basic allows you to clip web pages and format your notes for free. If you’re limited by the 60 MB per month upload limit, there are paid plans to choose from as well.

Personal gives you syncing across unlimited devices and a total of 10 GB per month, with the ability to connect to your calendar and add due dates. Premium ($17.99/month) and Teams ($24.99 per user/month) increase storage even further, add more file support, and make it easy to share and work with others.

54. Dropbox

Key features

Dropbox is a cloud-based storage app and collaborative workspace for remote managers and their teams.

You can store files, brainstorm in DropBox Paper, and sync files directly to your desktop. You can also increase DropBox’s abilities with over 300,000 integrations.

Benefits

Dropbox is more than a storage device.

The admin console gives managers access to an insights dashboard. From there, you can view their team’s activity, see what devices are being used, and view document-sharing activity to ensure company data is protected.

Use these tools to fight inefficiencies at work and get more done.

For personal use, Dropbox is a smart way to keep your digital life organized. It’s easy to find things, even if you aren’t on your usual computer.

Price

You can use Dropbox for free, but you’re limited to 2 GB of space. Paid plans start at $19.99 per month with 3 TB of space. If you have a team, you can get a Business or Business Plus plan with substantially more storage, admin tools, compliance tracking, and the ability to restore deleted files (and your account as a whole) within 180 to 365 days.

Other document management tools

55. Box – User-friendly cloud storage and file sharing

56. Sync – Secure cloud storage with automatic backups

57. pCloud – Cloud storage with offline access, encryption, and an available lifetime plan

58. Redbooth – Collaboration and communication, connected to Smartsheet for project management

59. Quip – Storage for data and process documents within the Salesforce ecosystem

Paperwork and contracts

In a digital world, contracts and agreements are often signed without the parties needing to meet physically.

You have two options when it comes to signing digital documents.

1. You can print it out, sign it with a pen, scan it, and save it as a new file or
2. Just use a tool designed for digital signatures.

The second option saves a lot of time and effort, especially if agreements and contracts are a regular part of your job. Here are some tools to consider.

60. PandaDoc

Key features

PandaDoc is a SaaS solution that provides document creation and e-signature capabilities.

You can craft your own custom forms, contracts, proposals, and other documents and share them with colleagues and clients.

Benefits

If you’re not feeling creative, you can choose from one of 750+ templates. This is a huge time saver, especially when you’re drafting a form that you’re not as familiar with.

PandaDoc has custom templates for construction, education, health care, and a slew of other industries.

Price

The free PandaDoc app offers unlimited document uploads and e-signatures on desktop and mobile. The $19 per user/month Essentials plan offers pricing tables and document analytic features. The Business ($49 per user/month) version allows you to send invoices and self-service forms to clients in bulk, plus create a content library and custom branding.

Other alternatives

61. DocuSign – A widely-used digital signature tool

62. HelloSign – Digital signatures with the option to whitelabel the software for your own business use

Scheduling

Meetings are time-consuming enough. Don’t waste any time trying to get your calendar in order.

The scheduling tools in this section make it faster and easier to manage your calendar. Plus, we included some tools to help you make your meetings more efficient.

63. Calendly

Key features

Calendly is designed to expedite the meeting scheduling process. You can set rules to ensure you only meet on your time. Customize follow-up frequency and other settings as well.

For consultants, business owners, and other people who need to schedule a lot of meetings for work, Calendly saves hours every week.

Benefits

If you have ever exchanged more than three emails trying to agree on a meeting time, you already know how much more productive you can be with a good scheduling tool.

Integrations with various apps make Calendly even more of a productivity booster.

For instance, the integration with Zoom auto-generates meeting details and reminders. Sales teams can benefit from tracking meeting data in Google Analytics.

Price

The free version of Calendly allows you to book unlimited 1:1 meetings and allows integrations with your favorite calendar apps.

To schedule meetings with multiple people, you’ll have to upgrade to the $10 per month Standard plan. At $16 per user/month, the Team plan allows for increased customization and integrations, as well as SSL tools. There are Enterprise options for large organizations, but this package starts at $15,000 per year for the entire company.

64. Doodle

Key features

Doodle is a Swiss time management tool that takes a unique approach to meeting planning.

Instead of trying to sync multiple calendars, Doodle’s polling feature allows you to gauge the opinion of all of your participants — no matter the size of the group.

You can also control how long people can book for meetings, how many meetings you can have in a day, and what times you are available.

Benefits

Doodle sends automatic reminders to meeting attendees so people show up on time.

This is a great tool for scheduling with groups because it helps you find the best time for everyone without the back-and-forth.

Like most scheduling tools, Doodle integrates with various calendar and video conferencing tools. With the Zapier integration, you can trigger zaps in your favorite apps based on polling results.

Price

Doodle offers a Free plan with unlimited group polls, a booking page, and meeting support. Doodle’s Pro plan allows you to integrate with tools like Zapier and Zoom for $6.95 per user/month. It also gets rid of all ads and allows you to include custom branding.

Unless you upgrade to a Team plan for $8.95 per user/month, you’re limited to just one user. Enterprise teams can find a quote for custom billing, legal teams, and support/onboarding features.

Other alternatives

65. Appointly – Straightforward web-based appointment scheduling

66. Chili Piper – Meeting scheduling with a focus on inbound sales

67. Setmore – Free meeting scheduling tool that works across multiple devices

Even more productivity tools

Even with all of the tools we already reviewed, there are still plenty of great apps and programs that can help you get more done.

Here are even more productivity tools to power your day.

68. Text Blaze

Key features

Responding to emails and messages is a typical part of your day. It can also be a huge waste of time, especially when you say the same things again and again.

With the Text Blaze extension for Chrome, you can speed this process up by creating your own text snippets.

Just create a sentence, assign a shortcut (i.e. /ty for a thank you sentence), and plug them in as needed.

Benefits

Text Blaze integrates with other websites so that your snippets are accessible anywhere your work takes you. A sharing feature and dynamic templates help you share with teammates, too.

This system is a lot more efficient than template emails and canned responses because you get the best of both worlds. Automation saves you time, but you still write a personalized message every time. There’s no need to go back and edit the generic message to make it fit the situation.

Shortcuts are easy to set up and use. You don’t need any technical know-how to create your own custom library of responses.

Price

Text Blaze offers a free Chrome extension that allows you to create up to 20 2,500-character snippets. For $2.99 per user/month, you can make 1,000 snippets with 25,000 characters each. You’ll also gain increased sharing options and the ability to embed images. At the $6.99 per user/month tier, you can create up to 4,000 snippets with a 50,000-character limit, add images, monitor history, and more.

69. Setapp

Key features

If your app obsession extends far beyond our list, Setapp can help.

Curated apps help you eliminate research time and stay task-oriented. With over 220 Mac apps and counting, you’ll find something new almost daily.

Benefits

With Setapp, you’re not just accessing curated apps. You’ll join a community of techies to compare notes, read reviews, and share apps with.

Why not get your whole team involved? The more the merrier!

This is an excellent system for techies who love trying new things but spend too much time doing them.

It’s also a smart way to save money. You get unlimited access to all the curated apps in the Setapp system for a single monthly fee.

Price

You can get Setapp for $9.99 monthly or save a dollar a month by paying annually. You can spend more each month to add support for iOS devices and increase the number of Macs and mobiles supported for each account.

The $19.99 per month Family plan offers four seats and is great for family, friends, or co-workers. Each person can install it on one Mac device and one iOS device.

70. LastPass

Key features

LastPass is a password manager created by LogMeIn — the team behind GoToMeeting.

The idea is simple: one secure and central location for all your passwords. When you save a password to LastPass, it’ll be filled in automatically whenever prompted.

Install the LastPass Chrome extension, and never waste time trying to recover passwords again. It’s a better way to manage passwords because you can choose secure, hard-to-remember passwords for every website, and you just need to remember your login information to your password vault.

Benefits

Do you hate resetting passwords? Yeah, me too.

At the same time, using the same password for everything is unsafe. The most secure passwords are long strings of random numbers, letters, and symbols.

LastPass generates those secure passwords for you and remembers them every time you log in.

While it’s known for passwords, LastPass also speeds up the online purchasing process. Whenever you’re online shopping, LastPass can autofill your billing and shipping information with the click of a button.

Price

In addition to a free version, LastPass offers multiple paid plans for single users, families, and businesses. Premium ($3/month) for a single account gives you access on every device and increases file storage. Families ($4/month) gives you six premium licenses and allows group sharing.

Teams ($4 per user/month) and Business ($7 per user/month) expand security by giving everyone a private vault, multiple logins and authentications, and security dashboards.

Conclusion

Productivity starts with the tools you use, but there’s a lot more to it than that. You can expand by reducing repetitive tasks, controlling budgets with project management apps, earmarking resources with a bookmarking app, and capturing ideas across a broad set of tools and services.

Here are a few more resources for helping your team produce results:

• The 8 Top Project Management Trends You Need to Know in 2024
• ​​How to Increase Employee Productivity: The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need
• How to Make Productivity Metrics Work for Your Business Goals
• 18 Slack Hacks to Boost Your Productivity in 2024

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