31 Remote work tools for happy and productive employees

Remote Work Tools for Productivity

Introduction

Remote work tools have revolutionized the modern workplace, with 12.7% of full-time employees having traded office desks for cozy home setups, showing us that working from home is no longer the exception but the norm. Also, 28.2% are rocking a hybrid work model, blending the best of both worlds.

From breaking down office walls to giving us the freedom to craft our workday, these tools are turning remote work into a flexible and efficient game-changer. In this article, we will share some must-have tools remote work tools that will keep you and your remote team in sync and super connected!

Top 31 remote work tools for remote teams

Best project management tool

Some teams might try to handle everything via email which is particularly dangerous. Project management system solve the problem of virtual teams to help organize documents and tasks, to make it easier for the teams.

1. ProofHub

ProofHub dashboard

ProofHub stands as your comprehensive remote work tool, seamlessly blending project management and team collaboration into a powerful platform. It simplifies task management with an intuitive interface, enabling efficient assignment, setting due dates, and monitoring progress. The Board view simplifies tracking tasks from “To-Do” to “Done,” offering a dynamic visual representation of your project’s journey.

The platform’s adaptability shines through with the ability to customize workflows, ensuring they align seamlessly with your team’s unique needs. Task prioritization becomes a breeze with drag-and-drop simplicity, while Gantt charts offer a comprehensive visual overview of project schedules, promoting transparency and coordination.

ProofHub ensures everyone is on the same page with its shared calendar, making scheduling meetings and setting reminders a breeze. Communication is centralized with discussions, chats, and announcements, creating a synchronized environment with instant messaging. Also, it facilitates seamless collaboration with file sharing, proofing, and feedback features, eliminating the chaos of disjointed communication.

ProofHub’s user-friendly interface and mobile accessibility add versatility, ensuring productivity even on the go. It’s more than a tool; it’s a unified hub that empowers your team to manage tasks, communicate, and collaborate with ease in the remote work landscape.

2. Nuclino

Nuclino as remote work tool for collaboration

Nuclino was inspired by the idea of a collective brain. It’s a unified workspace where remote teams can bring all their knowledge, docs, and projects together in one place, replacing multiple other remote work tools.

You can use Nuclino to build your company wiki, manage projects and tasks, share and work on documents in real-time, onboard new remote employees, and more – all without the chaos of files and folders, context switching, or silos. The List, Board, and Graph views help you organize your docs and projects in a way that best fits your workflow.

Nuclino stands out thanks to its uncluttered, clean interface, user-friendly design, and speed. It has everything you need to get things done, without clunky menus or rarely-used features to distract you. This makes Nuclino a great choice for those who value ease of use and speed over feature count.

Nuclino has virtually no learning curve and makes it easy for new users to get started.

3. Hubspot

HubSpot - Help Desk Software

HubSpot’s free help desk and ticketing software is heaven for remote customer and sales teams alike. With its intuitive interface and robust features, it empowers teams to efficiently manage customer inquiries and tickets from anywhere in the world.

The software offers a centralized platform where teams can easily organize, prioritize, and respond to customer/client inquiries promptly. Through streamlined ticketing workflows, agents can assign, track, and resolve tickets seamlessly, ensuring no customer falls through the cracks.

One of the standout features of HubSpot’s help desk is its automation capabilities. By automating repetitive tasks such as ticket routing and follow-up emails, teams can focus their energy on delivering exceptional customer experiences rather than getting bogged down by manual processes.

Essentially, HubSpot’s free help desk and ticketing software equips remote customer and sales teams with the tools they need to deliver top-notch support and drive customer satisfaction, no matter where they are.

4. Basecamp

Basecamp - Best tools for remote teams

Basecamp is another best remote work tool for managers, teams, freelancers, and agencies for its simple functionality, clean design, and elegant usability. It’s a project management and team collaboration software solution that helps you manage projects and communicate with clients in a meaningful way.

It offers a range of features and tools for sharing ideas, organizing conversations, and keeping everyone on the same page throughout the project. 

At the same time, you get to experience limitations like no time tracking, no ability to archive topics, no subtasks, no professional team hierarchy, only outside integrations, etc. These limitations are the very reason why organizations and teams (especially growing teams) are looking for the best alternatives to Basecamp

Well, no tool is perfect. At the end of the day, it is your specific needs that will decide whether or not a tool is ideal for your business. So, if Basecamp seems like a fair choice to you, give it a try.

5. Instagantt

Instagantt as remote work tool

Instagantt is a powerful tool for remote work that helps you visually plan, control, and schedule your projects. It’s a lot more than just a Gantt chart creator. When giving it a try, you’ll quickly notice you’re working with super intuitive and beautifully built software that allows you to develop an accurate illustration of your projects.

Communication is also a huge part of Instagantt. This software allows you to streamline your entire workflow and collaborate with your team members with instant messaging, making it a perfect fit for remote working, too.

Instagantt also comes with plenty of useful features such as the ability to create tasks and subtasks, templates for different types of projects, guidelines, milestones, notifications, baselines, critical path, and automatic project scheduling, all of which promote the feeling of being 100% sure of what’s going on with your projects at all times.

It’s also perfect for managing different types of projects, clients, and teams, or even for being able to keep track of how each person is managing their workload. It’s a good idea to give Instagantt a try.

Email marketing tools with analytics

6. EmailAnalytics

EmailAnalytics as remote work tool

EmailAnalytics is a productivity tool for remote workers that visualizes your team’s email activity. You can see each member of your team’s average email response time, as well as how many emails each member of your team sends and receives every day.

To make things super convenient for team managers, you can get daily, weekly, and monthly email reports with benchmark data to compare your team against other teams, and watch your team’s improvement over time.

If your remote team uses email (and who doesn’t?) then your team needs EmailAnalytics. There’s no software to install, setup is done in just a few clicks, and you can instantly add team members and start tracking their email activity. It’s a must-have tool for any remote team.

Best team collaboration tool

With the rise in distributed companies, working with teams across borders is becoming a norm. Communication issues are bound to occur when the teams are not together in a room.

7. Troop Messenger

Troop Messenger as remote work collaboration tool

Troop Messenger is a compact remote work collaboration tool for small, medium, and large enterprises. This high-functionality, low-complexity tool addresses various domain specificities. Team members can interact via instant messaging, audio and video calling, location and file sharing, and by creating unlimited groups on the go.

This Slack alternative allows admins to add vendors, suppliers, and freelancers as orange members who get restricted access to the workspace.

Troop Messenger can be integrated with essential apps like Dropbox and Google Drive. With this collaboration tool, your team can migrate their files, and documents, and do a lot more than text. It is the best work-from-home communication tool your team needs to ensure business continuity.

8. Bit.ai

Bit.ai as remote work tool

Bit.ai, the next-gen document management and collaboration platform is one of the most effective ways to collaborate across teams. Bit’s smart documents help you weave together digitally rich content into collaborative documents.

Enhance your communication and knowledge sharing across your team by attaching files, adding code blocks, and displaying rich media like Google Sheets, Typeform surveys, Airtable databases, Figma designs, and much more across 100+ applications into your documents.

The best part is that you can do all of this and more while collaborating in real-time. Bit.ai is one of the smartest ways for your team to collaborate on internal communication, project documentation, technical docs, processes, training manuals, internal knowledge bases, client-facing content, a company blog, and much more.

Read on: Importance of Collaboration In The Workplace

9. Slack

Slack - Remote working tools

Slack is a messaging remote work tool that everybody loves. A digital space that helps in communication among teammates, allows them to share ideas, share comments in real time so everything moves swiftly. You can have all your team communication in one place wherever you go with a remote collaboration tool.

When the teams are remote, they can use Slack channels for instant messaging and collaboration. It will bring all your team communication in one place making managing remote employees a lot easier. This collaboration tool offers fully native apps for iOS and Android to give you complete functionality.

10. Hypercontext

Hypercontext - remote work tool

Hypercontext is a shared agenda app for remote teams that empowers managers and their teams to be high-performing by combining quarterly priorities, weekly meetings, and engagement measures, all in one place.

With Hypercontext, teams can collaborate on meeting agendas for 1:1s, team meetings, and cross-functional meetings. After each meeting, you’re kept accountable with clear next steps. Plus, managers get conversation analytics to better understand communication blindspots, and real-time employee feedback to track meeting effectiveness over time.

Hypercontext provides integrations with Google Suite, Chrome, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and more! So you can easily streamline objectives, meetings, and morale, all in one workflow.

Best cloud storage service

Cloud storage is a perfect sharing tool, especially for remote Cloud Storage & Collaboration, documents, and multimedia files are too large to send by email.

11. Google Drive

Keep all your files in one secure and centralized location with Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud storage platform for remote teams to keep all files in one secure and centralized location. The remote workers can store and share documents, spreadsheets, and slide presentations. It can be used for reporting on weekly metrics. Additionally, Google Drive files can be synced across devices, so individuals can view and update them from anywhere.

As one of the essential remote work tools, it facilitates real-time collaboration and ensures that all team members are on the same page. Its strong security features also ensure that sensitive information is protected while being easily accessible to authorized users.

12. Dropbox

Dropbox for sync, share, and collaborate on documents

It doesn’t work so well to share large files over email, therefore, Dropbox is a modern workspace that offers various features for managing remote employees. Remote work tools like Dropbox facilitate seamless collaboration by allowing remote workers to easily sync, share, and collaborate on documents. This cloud storage system has an API that makes it useful for remote collaborators. It allows for sharing big files – PowerPoint, photoshop, sketch with anyone.

Additionally, Dropbox’s integration with other productivity tools makes it an essential remote work tool. With features like automated backup and detailed access permissions, Dropbox ensures that remote teams can work efficiently and securely, no matter where they are.

Best productivity tool

Remote productivity is a crucial part of remote workers. Managing remote team workers greatly means making sure everyone is as productive as they can be.

13. Krisp

Krisp Remote work productivity app

Krisp is a noise-canceling app that helps remote professionals and teams be more productive. It removes background noise on both sides of the call, so you and your call participants can take important calls from anywhere. As one of the essential remote work tools, Krisp ensures that distractions are minimized and communication remains clear and effective.

You can use it with any communication app (Zoom, Skype, Slack, and many others) and enjoy more productive remote meetings. By eliminating unwanted noise, Krisp enhances focus and ensures that every participant can contribute without interruptions.

14. Todoist

Todoist as task organizer tool for remote teams

Todoist is for you if you are looking to geek out on the organization of tasks for your remote teams. It gives all the core features that include tasks, and subtasks, lets you create projects, add notes and upload files, set reminders, flags, and a productivity chart. Todoist enhances collaboration and efficiency by offering seamless integration with various platforms and real-time syncing across devices.

Its intuitive interface and advanced organizational features, such as task prioritization and project tracking, ensure that remote teams can stay on top of their responsibilities and deadlines. Additionally, the ability to assign tasks, track progress, and manage team workflows makes it an invaluable asset for managing remote projects and maintaining productivity.

15. Blink

Blink as remote work tool

Blink is a comprehensive app that empowers communication and enhances productivity for remote teams. It is designed to transform employee experience as a mobile responsive and unified communication platform.

Blink offers a range of features like calendar management, discussion boards, employee directories, news feeds, etc. – all to create a work-friendly digital environment that facilitates productivity and team cohesion above all else.

Blink is the ultimate employee app for organizations that want to support their mobile teams and keep them informed even when they are on the move.

Best VoIP service

16. CallHippo

CallHippo as advanced call center management software for remote team

CallHippo is a cloud-based virtual phone system designed to help teams stay in touch with each other and their customers from anywhere. It offers a simple user interface with features like Power Dialer, a mobile app, and detailed call reporting. CallHippo empowers sales and service teams, enabling them to communicate with customers, adding to their satisfaction.

This advanced call center management software helps teams connect via phones and desktops and provides features such as contact management, auto dialing, and predictive dialing to simplify your calling needs. It also offers seamless integration, advanced analytics, and 24*7 support that help boost growth.

Best call center software

17. Dialpad

Dialpad as unified communications platform for remote workers

Dialpad is a unified communications platform that provides an AI-powered contact center, calling, video, and web conferencing. With built-in Voice Intelligence, your team can now make smarter calls from any device, with features like call transcription, and automated note-taking, plus integrations with G Suite, Salesforce, Zendesk, and more.

Dialpad Contact Center allows you to build an efficient call center to intelligently route calls and reduce customer wait times. Since everything is on the cloud, calls can be taken by your remote team from anywhere, instead of being tied to a traditional desk phone.

Features like real-time sentiment analysis alert managers when negative sentiment is detected so they can immediately provide in-call guidance to improve your customer experience. With Dialpad, you can quickly set up your inbound or outbound call center within minutes.

Best business phone software

18. CloudTalk

CloudTalk: cloud-based call center software for remote team

CloudTalk is one of the most popular cloud-based call center software, which allows your people to work from anywhere in the world. It offers more than 50 features to simplify the job for customer support and sales teams.

Some of the most useful features are advanced IVR (Interactive Voice Response), predictive dialer, call forwarding, skills-based routing, and international numbers.

All of those advantages help your team to provide the best service for your clients whilst improving employees’ performance at the same time.

Apart from the mentioned features, CloudTalk offers integration with many popular tools and CRMs, making it easier for companies to deliver first-class customer experiences and to achieve growth in overall business profitably.

Best time management tool

When it comes to time management working with teams particularly becomes a challenge. Remote time management tools bring a better way to remote team management.

19. Kickidler

Kickidler: remote employee monitoring software

Kickidler is the employee monitoring software of the next generation. It has a powerful set of tools that help increase the dedication of your team members.

Kickidler features include time tracking, employee productivity analysis, and efficiency dynamics as well as an unlimited number of real-time screens and the option to record the history of actions on the computers.

In 2020, the software developers released an update called Autokick that helps make staff monitoring more democratic. The update includes automatic notifications and a self-monitoring interface. Now the program will automatically notify workers that, for example, they’ve been reading the news for too long. It will also allow them to see their productivity statistics.

20. Teamwork

Teamwork as project management and collaboration tool for remote teams

Track every hour to boost your team’s productivity. Teamwork lets you invoice all tracked time and expenses. You can create custom time reports of time logged on the project. Export your report and time log entries as Excel, CSV, or PDF.

Teamwork’s seamless integration with other remote work tools helps centralize your project management and time tracking in one place. Its user-friendly interface ensures that all team members can easily log their hours, while real-time tracking and reporting capabilities allow for quick adjustments and informed decision-making.

21. Hubstaff

Hubstaff: remote employee time tracking software

Hubstaff will make you more productive and will make your time work for you. You can keep track of where employees are spending their time and what tasks they are working on at a given time.

Its eye-catching features include online timesheets, employee scheduling, screen recording, employee monitoring, payroll software, GPS tracking, online invoicing, project budgeting, and many more. These functionalities not only help in managing and tracking work but also enhance transparency and accountability among remote team members. With Hubstaff, you can streamline operations, ensure the timely completion of tasks, and optimize your remote work processes.

22. Time Doctor

Time Doctor best time-tracking application for remote teams

Time Doctor is a team time-tracking application. It helps to keep track of how each person is keeping track of their time and hence makes them accountable for their working hours. It includes desktop software, a mobile version, and even a Chrome app.

Time Doctor offers features like alerting to minimize distractions and enhance productivity. With its detailed reporting and analytics, managers can gain valuable insights into team performance and time usage.

Best video calls and screen-sharing tool

When you’re not in the same room (working remotely) you need a tool to discuss visually with the teams.

23. Nextiva

Nextiva as best cloud phone system for remote work

Nextiva is a cloud phone system that empowers teams to communicate with customers and colleagues regardless of their location. The platform offers a host of features such as a mobile app, call forwarding, call groups, web conferencing, website live chat, and more – designed to give your team the ability to connect with people on the go, from their office phone, smartphone, laptop, or tablet.

See why Nextiva was just rated the best overall business phone service by the U.S. News and World Report. Get a free trial for your business.

24. Whereby

Whereby : video collaboration tool for remote workers

Whereby, formerly Appear.in, lets remote teams stay productive with easy video collaboration. Teams just have to create a room link, share the link by email or chat, and that’s it. You are on the go to have a video discussion with your team. Whereby streamlines virtual meetings by eliminating the need for downloads or complex setups.

With its user-friendly interface, Whereby supports high-quality video calls and screen sharing, making it an ideal choice for productive remote work. It also offers features like custom room URLs and meeting rooms that never expire, ensuring seamless and consistent collaboration for remote teams.

25. Zoom

Zoom: remote tool for team communication

Zoom is a group calling app with amazing quality of the video. It is easy to use, most affordable, and has straightforward pricing. During remote Meetings, web conferencing, and Video Chat, you can record any call with a full-length video. You can share your screen with teams for combined discussions.

Other Zoom solutions include video webinars, meetings, Zoom rooms, business IM, and voice sharing.

Best work-life balance tool

The key to keeping the remote team productive is the work-life balance. Keeping a balance in both is important for personal health, relations, and improving work performance.

26. Timezone.io

Timezone as best remote team tracking tool

Timezone.io is an invaluable tool for teams working across various time zones. Many global remote employees are spread across different time zones, and this tool helps them manage their work and personal lives.

Timezone.io offers features like real-time time zone tracking and customizable time zone maps, making it easier to plan cross-time zone collaborations and avoid scheduling conflicts. Its user-friendly interface ensures that remote teams can seamlessly integrate it into their daily routines, ultimately enhancing productivity and communication.

27. Sign In Scheduling

Sign In Scheduling: best scheduling software for remote teams

Sign In Scheduling formerly 10to8 is scheduling software for remote teams that want to make appointments happen. 10to8 enables teams to arrange virtual staff meetings and online appointments with clients.

What’s more, the native Zoom integration allows you to jump on video calls straight from your calendar. 10to8 can handle teams spread across multiple time zones and the 2-way calendar sync with most calendar apps ensures that double-bookings don’t happen.

The automated reminders will help your team keep track of meetings and show up on time and so eliminate wasted time and confusion.

Best note-taking app

To make sure you get quality work done, note-taking makes it a beautiful experience to take inspiration.

28. Evernote

Evernote best note taking tool for remote workers

Evernote is a great note-taking solution for teammates working remotely. You can keep all your notes organized, and sync them automatically across all your devices.

Evernote is an application that serves as a notetaker, PDA, to-do list, and pocket notebook. Its robust search functionality ensures that you can quickly locate specific notes or information, further enhancing productivity. Evernote’s integration with other popular tools also supports a seamless workflow, making it a must-have for effective remote work.

Best accountability and reporting tool

Remote workers will feel part of the team when they are held accountable for their responsibilities. Having the right tools in place to keep teams accountable.

29. iDoneThis

iDoneThis : Best remote tool

iDoneThis is a place where managers can keep an eye on the big picture to know what is being done daily. The team members will have to just check in daily, in their browser, or via email. They can add their robust reports and get along with the project effectively. With remote workers across the world, this tool compensates for the need for daily check-in meetings.

iDoneThis simplifies remote collaboration by providing a straightforward platform for status updates and project tracking. It ensures that all team members are aligned and aware of each other’s progress without the need for constant meetings.

Best help desk tool

30. LiveAgent

Liveagent a remote work helpdesk tool for remote team

LiveAgent is a powerful multichannel help desk software that’s also rated as the #1 live chat software for SMBs in 2020. It helps every business exceed customer expectations through personalized customer support.

The software is packed with over 180 help desk features, including a ticketing system with a universal inbox, live chat, a built-in call center, integrations with social media, customer portals, and knowledge bases.

Besides these features, it also allows you to use gamification features, spam & fraud protection, detailed analytics, various filters, SLAs, and the option to use LiveAgent in 39 different languages.

Using this help desk software will improve your productivity.

Best time converter tool

Working with remote teams requires freedom of time and place to boost productivity. You need to find an easy way to communicate and collaborate while working across different time zones.

31. World Time Buddy

World Time Buddy is a remote work software with a time converter for distributed teams. It is a convenient world clock and an online meeting scheduler. Its design lets people compare multiple time zones, and plan conference calls, and web meetings for business.

World Time Buddy is a remote work software with a time converter for distributed teams. It is a convenient world clock and an online meeting scheduler. Its design lets people compare multiple time zones, and plan conference calls, and web meetings for business.

World Time Buddy enhances collaboration by helping teams coordinate across different regions. Its features streamline scheduling by displaying overlapping working hours and providing real-time availability, making it an essential tool for optimizing global team interactions.

How to manage remote teams?

Managing remote teams is becoming the need of the hour and it requires clear communications, trust, clear expectations, timely feedback, etc. As a project manager, it becomes your responsibility to set up the path for your team’s success.

The growing trend in remote working

Here are the main reasons why remote working is growing in trend.

  • Setting your working schedule
  • The comfort of being at home
  • Chance to travel more
  • Less stress
  • Better time management for personal life
  • More Satisfying

There are many advantages of getting your business into remote working but you will have to explore the best practices for remote team management.

Conclusion

In conclusion, remote work tools are not just about navigating the challenges of the present; they are the compass guiding us toward a future where flexibility, collaboration, and productivity coexist harmoniously.

Whether your team is already thriving remotely or you’re contemplating a shift to a remote work model, these tools are more than worth considering – they are the key to unlocking a world of efficiency, collaboration, and seamless communication.

As you navigate the digital terrain of remote work, let these tools be your trusted companions, empowering your team to not only adapt but thrive in the ever-evolving future of work.

So, gear up, explore, and embrace the transformative potential of these tools for a fruitful and successful remote work experience.

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