25 Killer Tools to Work Remotely
As people are increasingly becoming more and more connected through technology, to work remotely is a trend that’s expected to steadily rise in the coming months and years.
In fact, according to a Yahoo Finance article, PricewaterhouseCoopers forecasts that “as many as half of all [US] workers will be in [the freelancers, self-employed, entrepreneurs or project-based employees] category as soon as 2020.”
While working from home or remotely is particularly attractive because of the flexibility it brings, it isn’t all rosy.
Focus and productivity problems can crop up, and even communicating with colleagues from across the globe can prove challenging if you’re not equipped with the right set of tools.
That said, here are 25 business apps to consider if you work remotely:
1) Canva
Canva is a graphic design platform that’s completely free to use. It comes with an extensive library of free photos, backgrounds, shapes, illustrations, and other elements that you can use to spice up your design projects.
The platform is complete with customizable free templates so you don’t have to start every project from scratch. Plus, they offer free design tutorials via the Canva Design School.
Paid elements are available, and Canva for Work is a premium subscription for teams that need more design features.
2) CloudApp
File sharing is a staple among teams, whether dispersed or collocated. For those working remotely, a cloud-based file sharing application like CloudApp allows you access to your personal and team files wherever you are, 24/7.
CloudApp isn’t just another document manager, though. It lets users take screenshots, record their screens, or create webcam videos they can easily share with other team members.
A basic plan with limited features is available for free forever, and team plans start at $8.25 per user per month.
3) Dropbox
The beauty of working remotely is you can choose to work wherever you please – your home, at a coffee shop, in a co-working space, at a park bench, anywhere as long as you can freely connect to the Internet.
Dropbox is a file storage and sharing system that ensures your work files are readily available wherever you are, on whatever device. This means a document or spreadsheet you saved to Dropbox using your home desktop will be available to you on your laptop, tablet, and even your smartphone.
Big files, such as videos and high-resolution images, can be shared using a simple download link, and even those without Dropbox accounts can download the images, provided they have the link.
A free Dropbox account offers up to 2 GB of storage space. Dropbox Pro, which offers up to 1 TB of space, is priced at $9.99 per month.
4) Evernote
Never lose track of that idea or quote again with Evernote.
This cloud-based app simplifies the painstaking process of collecting and organizing almost everything – from your daily journal to simple to-do lists, to complicated work projects.
Evernote’s versatility allows you to jot down short lists and write lengthy research notes. The app has browser extensions that let users save an entire webpage in one click. Plus, it recognizes handwriting, such as notes on a piece of paper, and converts them into searchable notes.
And because it’s cloud-based, what you collect and create, you can share with anyone in your team anytime, using any device, allowing for better collaboration and productivity.
The basic Evernote account with 60 MB of storage space is free. For more features and storage, Evernote Plus is priced at $2.99 per month while Evernote Premium is pegged at a monthly $5.99.
5) Google Drive
Google Drive is a document manager that allows you to access your files anywhere, anytime, from any device. It lets you create a folder, upload a file, and invite others to view and collaborate on it. Other users can share files and folders with you, too.
When downloaded to your computer, Google Drive allows you to add files from your desktop via drag-and-drop and automatically syncs them with your other devices. You can also download the Google Drive mobile app on your tablet or smartphone to access your files on the go. Offline access can be turned on or off for all your devices.
You can start with 15 GB of free storage to share across Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail. If you need more space, upgrade your storage plan starting at $1.99 per month.
Google Hangouts is a fairly new app but is becoming a game-changer in the field of VoIP. Instead of one-on-one face-to-face chats, this app focuses more on group conversations, up to 15 people at a time.
This is especially useful for remote groups, where gathering staff together for a meeting, impromptu or otherwise, is a difficult task.
With specialized apps built for Google Hangouts, the flexibility it presents is expensive, among which is sharing multimedia messages. Screenshare and Hangouts on Air are just two of its stand-out features.
Screenshare is great when helping someone in your group with tech problems, and Hangouts on Air lets you broadcast a live conversation that can then be accessed by anyone with a computer via a web browser.
Google Hangouts is available on desktop and mobile devices, and is free. For voice calling, rates apply to calls outside the US and Canada.
7) Hackpad
Collaboration in real time is Hackpad’s sweet spot.
Combining ease of use and simplicity, this web-based app carries powerful co-editing capabilities that are useful not just for collaborative content development but for brainstorming sessions as well.
A “pad,” which is a content page that can be edited, is created by a user and shared with others, and then edited and annotated in real time. The app automatically marks contributions with the author’s name, so all edits and annotations are properly acknowledged.
Acquired by Dropbox in 2014, Hackpad for personal use is free. Private workspaces cost $2 per user.
8) Harvest
Whether you work remotely or not, accurately tracking billable hours is of paramount importance, and many companies find themselves in a knot when it comes to ensuring their employees don’t trick their way into billing more hours than they’re supposed to.
Harvest solves this problem and more. The app works on any device, including iPhones and Androids, so there’s no reason not to track time. And with its Favorites feature for phones, quick time entry becomes possible even between multiple clients and projects.
Harvest is free to try for 30 days. Plans start at $12 per month. All plans support unlimited projects, unlimited clients, and unlimited invoicing. A basic subscription is free forever for one user, two projects, and four clients.
9) Hootsuite
Social media is a powerful tool in online marketing. And with the rising number of social media platforms available, a social media management tool is proving to be a necessity.
Hootsuite lets you manage multiple social media accounts in one dashboard, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Instagram.
The app allows you to schedule hundreds of targeted messages, work with other team members by delegating replies or tweets, and measure the performance of your social media campaigns via its built-in analytics engine, among other things.
Hootsuite offers free and paid plans. Paid packages start at $8.99 per month.
10) iDoneThis
Managing a scattered workforce is probably one of the hardest parts of working remotely. The absence of in-person interaction sometimes creates bumps in the workflow and makes it difficult to track the amount of work done.
iDoneThis keeps you updated on your team’s projects and each member’s accomplishments, even the length of time spent on a specific activity.
Create a team by registering your email, and then invite others to join by entering their email addresses. Towards the end of each day, the app sends out an email to all members to keep track of their progress by asking the question “What’d you get done today?” Individual responses are compiled into a digest that’s sent out to the whole team the following morning.
iDoneThis offers free trials for a limited time, and plans start at $9 per user per month.
11) LastPass
Selecting and remembering passwords for multiple online accounts often leave us stumped, especially since password best practices dictate that passwords contain a unique combination of letters, numbers, and special characters to keep them safe from unwanted entities.
This is where LastPass comes in.
LastPass securely keeps all your login information in one place. You only have to remember one master password to access the system, be it from a computer or a mobile device. LastPass lets you save new notes, sites, and profiles, and autofill passwords for the websites you visit.
LastPass offers both free and paid plans. Premium is priced at $12 per year.
12) Noisli
While it has its perks, working remotely is not exactly stress-free. Focus is essential to productivity, and working from home involves distractions that can greatly impede overall efficiency.
Noisli helps you get into the zone quickly. It combines nature sounds to give you a relaxed state of mind. You can pick and mix different ambient sound clips, like seaside and summer night, et cetera, and the app generates different colors to create the most fitting environment. Choose between productivity and relaxation, depending on your mood.
Noisli can be loaded free on any browser. You can also download the mobile app to your Apple device for $1.99.
13) Pivotal Tracker
Built specifically for software development teams, Pivotal Tracker presents a streamlined, collaborative approach to project management.
The app allows users to break down projects into manageable chunks or bite-sized stories. It possesses a user interface that makes it easy for everyone in the team to know what has been completed, what will be completed soon, and what’s moving behind schedule.
Pivotal Tracker is equipped with various features to keep teams focused, such as visualization tools like charts, drag-and-drop technology for when priorities change, email and in-app notifications for status updates, @ mentions to call the attention of certain people, document sharing, and many more.
Pivotal Tracker is free for up to three collaborators, 2 GB of file storage, and two private projects. Paid plans range anywhere from $15 to $300. Enterprise plans are likewise available, pricing for which can be requested from the sales team.
14) Pocket
True to its name, you can put almost any online content in Pocket.
This content curation app lets you save articles, photos, videos, and other content types for later viewing. It’s integrated into over 1,500 apps including Twitter, Pulse, Feedly, Flipboard, Poki, Byliner, and Zite.
Saved content can be accessed anytime via your web browser, iPhone and iPad, Android, Windows Mobile, or Blackberry device, and your Kobo e-reader. Offline reading is available via the Pocket Chrome app.
The free version also allows you to share interesting content to another user’s Pocket or via Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, and email. For more features such as smart suggested tags, personal backup, advanced sorting options, an upgrade to Premium costs $4.99 a month.
15) Podio
Podio is a versatile workplace collaboration tool that combines project management, chat, email, file sharing, workflow automation, meeting scheduling, calendaring, and task management in one place.
Extremely flexible, this cloud-based platform offers hundreds of apps in the Podio App Market, and seamlessly integrates with third-party business tools. Podio’s activity stream where real-time comments and feedback are given is a handy component of the app that ensures each team member, remotely located or otherwise, is always in the know.
The app offers tiered subscription plans that start at $9 per month.
16) ProdPad
The time-critical demands of working remotely sometimes make capturing ideas daunting. You may find yourself overflowing with concepts for a product today but could catch yourself mentally blank the next.
Capturing and putting those ideas into action are what ProdPad does best. Developed for product development teams, this web-based app follows three simple steps – capture, build, and integrate – to reduce backlogs, and prioritize requests and product ideas.
ProdPad allows team members to submit ideas whenever and wherever they are. It filters those ideas according to their usefulness and viability, generates reports so teams can devise product roadmaps, and integrates product development into your existing workflows via its native integrations with tools like JIRA and Pivotal Tracker.
Subscriptions, if billed annually, are priced at $39 per month for Basic, $59 for Plus, $299 for Premium, and $2,499 for Unlimited.
17) RescueTime
RescueTime is a time management app that helps users be productive and stay productive by being mindful of how they spend their time.
While running securely in the background, the app keeps track of the time you spend on an activity, e.g., composing an email, browsing news sites, doing research, or drafting an article, and then generates reports that provide a summary of your day, giving you an overall productivity score that coincides with prebuilt or user-defined task categories.
You can even set RescueTime to block websites that could distract you while working.
RescueTime Lite is free for life. For more features, RescueTime Premium costs $9 per month. A mobile app is available for Android users.
18) SaneBox
Sorting through your email can be a frustrating exercise. The amount of time you spend to delete spam or unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t even remember signing up for is time better spent on more important tasks.
Dubbed as the “best solution to email overload,” SaneBox helps you clean up your inbox within minutes. The app has a one-click unsubscribe feature where you simply drag an email to the SaneBlackHole folder to never hear from a spammer again.
Once installed, the app learns which emails are important to you by analyzing your inbox and other folders. All emails it deems not so important, it puts in a folder named “SaneLater” that you can check anytime. SaneBox works with any email client, including mobile email, so you can use it on the go.
A SaneBox subscription starts at $7 per month. Free trials are available.
19) Slack
Slack is basically a set of private chat rooms called “channels,” which can be accessed via your desktop or mobile app. It allows you to create a specific channel for a particular project or topic, where you can invite others to join in. File sharing is supported, and files can be annotated or starred for future reference.
Slack integrates with other services and apps, which, when enabled, lets you receive notifications from your various tools in Slack – from support requests to error logs, to sales leads.
The free version allows you to connect with other collaborative and file-sharing services like Google Drive and Dropbox, or a scheduling app for setting up virtual meetings. The paid versions, which start at $6.67 per user per month, if billed annually, allow email integration, custom retention rules, and guest access, among others.
20) Sqwiggle
Sqwiggle is a video chat app that makes online interactions among teams more personal, no matter where they are in the world. Specially designed for remote teams, this online collaboration tool lets you have one-on-one or group conversations with the people you work with.
Its Presence feature helps teams be connected throughout the day. Each team member is assigned a workroom where a snapshot of their faces is visible. These snapshots then form a grid of heads on your screen that gets updated every few seconds.
To start a conversation, just click on your teammates’ faces, or collaborate through chat streams with drag-and-drop file sharing features.
Sqwiggle can be used on desktop or mobile devices and has built-in integrations with tools like GitHub and Zapier. It’s free to use for unlimited one-on-one video chat, up to five chat streams, and a total storage size of 5 GB.
Paid subscriptions that start at $9 per user per month are likewise available for unlimited group chat sessions of up to 10 people.
21) Trello
Trello uses the power of visual information to seamlessly track tasks and team projects from start to completion. The app’s user interface is simple enough to see everything you need to know about a project in a single glance.
With Trello, think digital whiteboard. But instead of post-it notes, you drag and drop cards from one board to another to showcase their actual progress.
Team members can post comments and gather feedback in real time. They can also upload files from file-sharing apps like Box, Google Drive, and Dropbox, or even from their own computer.
A basic Trello subscription is free, with features such as unlimited boards, cards, lists, checklists, members, and file attachments of up to 10 MB, plus basic integrations with Google Drive, Box, and Dropbox. Premium plans start at $8.33 per user per month for more app integrations, better security features, and file attachments of up to 250 MB.
22) Worksnaps
Worksnaps provides verifiable time tracking in real time. It randomly captures and saves screenshots of the contractor’s computer screen at different intervals. These, together with the actual time spent on each task, are automatically sent out to a business manager as proof of work.
The app integrates with third-party tools like Freshbooks, Basecamp, Harvest, and Asana for a more seamless data flow between apps.
A 30-day free trial is available for all Worksnaps plans. Fees apply thereafter, ranging from $29 per month for the Starter plan that can accommodate up to four users, to $90 per month for Business with 30 users. All plans support an unlimited number of projects and observers.
23) World Time Buddy
The ability to tap diverse talent from all over the globe is one of the things that make remote work lucrative and attractive, but managing a team whose members work in different time zones isn’t easy.
World Time Buddy makes time conversion convenient through its simple and easy-to-use design, allowing you to compare different time zones at a glance. This core feature is also what makes it an effective online meeting scheduler.
Location selections are customizable, and weekends are highlighted for countries that don’t use Saturdays and Sundays for weekends. Plus, DST warnings are given a week in advance.
World Time Buddy offers an ad-supported free subscription with one tab and four locations. Two months’ worth of free subscription is awarded to users who sign up for annual plans: Silver at $29.90 per year and Gold at $59.90 per year. Both are ad-free.
24) Xero
Xero is an accounting and bookkeeping software for small businesses. It’s compatible with both desktop and mobile devices, so it gets the job done even while you’re on the go.
With ready-made integrations with 450+ third-party business applications, Xero can be used in a variety of ways – creating and issuing invoices, tracking inventory, scheduling payments, and reconciling multiple currencies, which is a must for companies who employ remote workers around the globe.
The app has a time-tracking feature to help small business owners manage their employees’ timesheets and calculate actual billable hours. With the Xero Me app, contractors and clients alike can manage time-off requests and view payslips on the go.
Xero offers a free 30-day trial, no credit card required. Corresponding monthly fees apply thereafter: Starter at $20 per month, Standard at $30, and Premium at $40.
25) Zapier
Zapier is an app that lets you connect two Zapier-supported apps together so you can automate tasks and make the most use of the data at your fingertips.
Using the if/then principle, Zapier learns and remembers the tasks you want done based on the “zaps” or automatons you build. With zaps, once a trigger goes off, a corresponding action is performed. For example, email attachments sent to you in Gmail are automatically downloaded to Dropbox. Zaps are then updated at different intervals, depending on your subscription plan.
It’s quite similar to IFTTT but with more robust integration capability. Zaps can be created from Zapier’s library of 500+ apps. If you don’t see the app you need from the library, send Zapier a request and they’ll work out a way to make it available. If you’re a developer, feel free to add an app to the library yourself.
A plan with a total of five zaps, with each zap running every 15 minutes, is forever free. Paid subscriptions that start at $20 per month for 20 zaps are also offered.
Final word
While working remotely sounds like an ideal setup for a lot of employees, the struggle is real when it comes to focus and productivity, not to mention their managers having trouble keeping tabs on them.
With so many distractions at home, finding work-life balance in a virtual office environment can be challenging. Having the right attitude definitely counts, but having the right tools in your arsenal keeps your focus at its peak and your tasks always on point.
What’s in your toolbox?
The post 25 Killer Tools to Work Remotely | How to Be More Effective appeared first on Cloudswave Blog.