The 70 Best Free Productivity Apps of 2023

In this article, Fred Wilson explores the 70 best free productivity apps of 2023. 

We spend more than one-third of our waking hours working. As human beings, we strive to achieve more and outperform ourselves with every passing day.

We are in a constant circle of brainstorming new ways, planning for better results, and trying to discover new methods and frameworks to make ourselves more efficient and our work more effective.

This continuous struggle can, if not managed well, result in negative effects on our productivity and health. In some cases, we get burned out; which leads to a loss of morale and ambition.

In order to make our lives easier personally and professionally, we make use of multiple apps day in and day out for planning projects as small as getting the daily grocery to ideating magnanimous project planning on an enterprise level.

However, at times juggling between multiple productivity apps can get overwhelming. After all, technology is supposed to make life easier.

How to search for productivity apps best suited for your organization?

We just gave you a long list of productivity tools along with their key features and pricing. That said, checking out all 70 tools on the list can be a bit of a hassle. Not only will it be time-consuming but also tiring. 

To make it easy for you to pick and choose a tool that suits your organization best and simplify your search for productivity apps, we have developed a criterion that will help you narrow down the choices:

• Friendly User Interface: Whether you are looking for a personal or a team productivity tool, it is important that it be easy to use. A tool with a friendly user interface should be your first priority so that you can easily understand its functioning and find your ay through it without any difficulty.
• Keep it Simple: Instead of looking for a tool with tons of features (that you probably won’t even use), look for a tool that caters to your needs and is simple. Simplicity is the best way to go, it will make your work simpler and easier.
• High Functionality: Simplicity does not mean a compromise on the functionality of the tool. Make sure that the tool of your choice has everything you need. 
• Communication and Collaboration: If you plan of using the tool with your team then make sure that it offers ample communication and collaboration options. Working in isolation is not it when it comes to teamwork.
• Integrations: Simplify management by choosing a tool that offers plenty of integrations. With integrations, you can bring everything together on one platform and use that to manage various aspects of your business.  

The rise of personal productivity tools

The rising levels of competency in the world have forced us to grab every opportunity and make the most of everything we have. Personal productivity tools are one such asset that can not only help with personal work management but are also indispensable tools in personal life. 

Over the past few years, productivity tools have become a must-have. The popularity of social media, remote working, and others have made it impossible to keep up with our work and personal life. 

Productivity tools for personal use, however, are the right solution for when you keep your efficiency in check or want to improve your productivity. 

Here are some reasons why these tools have taken a hike in recent years:

• They make you time efficient
• Make sure you stay motivated and passionate
• Help get rid of distractions
• Help deliver results on time
• Are great for personal growth
• Helps you accomplish goals on time

Overall, having a productivity tool can transform the way you manage your personal life, making you more efficient and productive in all fields of life.

There are dozens of free productivity apps floating the net and it can be difficult to really make a pick. So, we handpicked a list of personal productivity apps that can give you more value for your time.

If you’re looking for apps for small businesses to accept payments, improve productivity, provide customer service, or accounting software; you’re at the right place. We have you covered with the best business productivity apps available in the market.

Here is a list of the 70 best free productivity apps that can help you achieve and retain your productivity by helping you streamline your routine and keep your progress in check.

Best Productivity Apps for Task Management

1. nTask

nTask comes first on our list of free productivity apps. Primarily an online task management software, designed and developed primarily for teams, this tool gives you all the options to live life as productive as it can be.

Loaded with a comprehensive and sophisticated feature set, this free productivity app presents itself with a simplified interface, easily learned and used by homemakers to freelancers and teams to enterprises to get more productive.

nTask is a simple all-in-one task and project management app that provides its users with comprehensive seven natively built modules including tasks, projects, risks, issues, and meeting management.

This means you don’t have to juggle between multiple apps for getting things done hence making you more productive. These modules facilitate the teams to avoid paying for third-party integrations or constant switching between multiple tools for numerous projects and multiple workspaces.

You can keep notes and use them as a simple to-do list app or create an idea or chore as a task. It helps you to create projects and assign multiple tasks to them. This helps you to easily track ideas, monitor task status, and project progress through Gantt charts.

Plus, with resource planning and budget allocation, you can keep your teams productive and project implementation effective throughout the project development cycle.

According to Lucid Agency – an award-winning agency specializing in digital marketing, advertising, and user-focused web & app design, “This is a great option for small development teams that have a need for free bug-tracking or task assignment.”

This top Productivity app also helps you stay in sync with updates and keeps you and your team on track through reminders and alerts.

Key Features:

With so many features nTask has to offer, here is a glimpse of its key features:

• Two-Factor Authentication for extensive security
• A simple user interface (UI) with access to a wide range of modules.
• Team specific workspaces that can be managed and monitored simultaneously.
• Create, assign, organize, prioritize and share tasks
• Create and assign projects
• Comment on and assign tasks to projects or structure them independently
• Convert comments to tasks using Slack
• Select from multiple statuses for a task
• Extensive project management resources including project reports, Gantt charts, and project timelines to manage and monitor project progress
• A dedicated timesheets management and time tracking module with the option of creating and managing team-specific sections for employee task efforts and payroll.
• A detailed meeting management feature to help teams stay in sync. You can arrange and schedule meetings, be it one-time or recurring meetings. Plus, it lets you send invites to attendees, add meeting details, and specify follow-up procedures.
• Issue management module to facilitate the identification and listing of issues related to multiple tasks. You can list the issue along with the Issue owner and relevant details to track issue maintenance.
• Risk management helps you identify and keep track of potential risks. You can list down the risk and assign a risk owner in order to track risk management.
• Powerful search and filter tools that help you search for tasks, projects, meetings, issues, and risks. You can even save more frequently used filters.
• Alerts, notifications, and reminders to keep teams on track.
• Third-party access
• nTask is one of the best iPad Productivity Apps and Best Android Productivity Apps

Pricing Plans:

• Free and Pro (starting at $3 per month per user with annual billing) plans.

Notable mentions:

• nTask is ranked #3 on Techworld’s list of the Best Free Project Management Software.

2. Tick Tick

Among other prominent features, this productivity app comes with intelligent task creation using Siri. Trusted by leading organizations including LifeHacker, The App Times, and more, Tick Tick can be your next best friend when it comes to productivity apps. Create tasks instantly and access them from anywhere.

With data backup and synchronization, you can be sure to keep your information protected at all times. Tick Tick also helps you save time by letting you convert emails into tasks. In addition, to keep matters concise and organized, you can group relevant lists into folders.

Key Features

Tick Tick brings you the following feature set:

• Intelligent task creation using Siri
• Task management includes single and recurring tasks, assignments, scheduling on the calendar, subtasks, priority, and tagging
• Pomo timer to track task duration
• Convert emails into tasks
• Comprehensive, shareable to-do lists to use personally or professionally
• Multiple reminders for schedules including location-based alerts
• Powerful calendar view
• Smart date parsing
• Data synchronization and backup
• Customizable themes and backgrounds
• Mobile apps for iOS and Android

Pricing

• The premium plan can be availed at $27.99 annually (less than $2.4/month).

3. Any.do

The thing about Any.do is that it is a fun, easy to work with yet super-efficient tool. This free productivity app gives you a neat set of options to get you through most of your tasks swiftly. On signing up, it welcomes you into creating your first list with options to select the number of tasks you would like to achieve for the week.

The menu includes Starter (1 to 5 tasks), Pro (10 to 20 tasks), All-Star (20 – 50 tasks) and Super-Star (50+ tasks) – with fun side notes of encouragement. After the initial setting, the mainboard offers a view of All Tasks, some to do Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming or Someday (yes, that is a real option).

You can choose to create personal or work-related tasks or create customized lists. You have an option to add reminders, create subtasks and share the created tasks. In addition, you can upload or add/drop files as attachments for further clarity.

Key Features

Here are some of the key features you can use with Any.do to get anything done:

• Task management includes the creation of lists with a number of tasks and subtasks, organize and prioritize tasks with colors
• Option to switch tasks between existing lists
• View lists together or on separate cards
• Share, delegate, and discuss tasks with personalized notes
• Upload or Add/Drop files as attachments
• Option to sort tasks by time or lists
• Search for tasks and lists
• Customize recurring tasks
• Repeating reminders (including location-based reminders) for tasks
• Customize Backgrounds
• Mobile apps for iOS and Android

Pricing

• Any.do offers Free and Premium ($2.99 per month) plans.

4. Todoist

One of the best productivity apps for To-do lists and Task Management is Todoist.

It has changed the way how everyday work routines and productivity improvements for thousands of people globally.

It’s a quite simplified way of task and project management compared to other players in the industry.

Other productivity apps might have more features compared to Todoist but it has maintained its simplicity since its launch.

I personally hope they don’t overcomplicate the interface or features to keep it easy to access and use.

Todoist will help you with task management and for incoming things which might become a bit overwhelming to manage like emails to respond to, customer follow-up, etc. You might not want to respond to that particular email right away but don’t want to miss out on responding at all.

Key Features

• Templates: Todoist provides the ability to import tasks from a template.
• Hyperlinks and Text Formatting: You can even add task titles or notes italicized or bold
• Recurring Tasks: You can modify recurring tasks based on completion dates
• Integrate with Dropbox and Google Drive
• Automatic and Location Reminders
• Prioritize: Highlight the day’s most important tasks

Pricing

• Free Basic plan
• Premium: $4/month
• Business: $6/user/month

5. Trello

Trello is one of the first free productivity apps that pop in mind whenever task management is in question. An easy-to-use tool, Trello optimizes your work by breaking it down into respective categories of progress they’re currently in. The tool does so through customizable Kanban boards.

The boards are shareable and you can invite anyone to collaborate on your project progress over time. Although Trello might not be suitable for you if you’re looking for an advanced task management solution, it offers all the essentials for effectively tracking your team’s performance.

The cards within boards act as subtasks. They can be freely moved from one (customizable) category to another to visualize the workflow and take appropriate decisions on what to do next.

Key Features

• Kanban boards
• Easy drag and drop functionality
• Tags, labels, and categories
• Tasks assignment
• Checklists management
• Email notifications and reminders
• Comments and file attachments
• Public and private access to boards

Pricing

• Free,
• Business Class ($9.99 per user/month)
• Enterprise ($20.83 per user/month) plans

6. Habitica

The next one in the free productivity apps list is for the gamer inside each one of us. Habitica allows you to gamify your habits and get stuff done while having fun. Create to-do lists, daily goals, or habits and earn rewards whenever you check them off. These rewards unlock multiple in-app features and help you to level up your avatar.

The cool part of the app is that it fits every individual’s needs. Whether you need to track your work habits, your eating habits, or your fitness goals, Habitica seems to serve it all.

You can also challenge yourself by competing with your friends or fellow Habiticans to achieve your goals and holding each other accountable.

Key Features

• To-do lists management
• Checklists management
• Habit building and tracking functionality
• In-app rewards and levels
• Fully customizable task list
• Common interest groups and challenges
• Shared quests to compete with other people
• Mobile and web app

Pricing

• Free, and a Team plan of $9 per month + $3 per member/month

7. ClickUp

ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity app designed to manage everything—from your daily to-dos to complex projects, even your business’ entire workflow. Teams of any size and across industries rely on ClickUp for its powerful customization abilities and feature-rich experience to optimize processes, monitor project updates, and collaborate with the team, no matter what project style you use.

Efficiency is at the core of every ClickUp feature with hundreds of flexible tools to boost productivity, along with a user-friendly interface and a drag and drop functionality to make work management a breeze. Visualize your work with over 15 unique views in ClickUp including List, Gantt, Calendar, and its Kanban-like Board view—while Custom Fields, Task Statuses, and over 1,000 integrations help streamline your workflows even further.

Key Features

• Intuitive UI with drag and drop interface
• Organizational Hierarchy to create the perfect project structure that scales with your needs
• Over 15 functional ways to view your workload
• Break down even the most complex to-dos into tasks, subtasks, and Checklists
• Add multiple assignees and watchers to keep the team aligned, all of the time
• Track time, set estimates, add notes, and view reports of your time spent from anywhere
• Turn any thought into an action item with comments that can be edited and assigned from any task, Doc, or Whiteboard
• A collaborative built-in digital Whiteboard tool to act on your ideas instantly
• A dynamic document editor to record everything from meeting minutes to bugs, roadmaps, and wikis
• Instant real-time reporting
• Tons of tools and task automation to customize your task management
• Choose from hundreds of pre-made templates or create your own for any use case

Pricing

• Free Forever Plan
• Paid plans starting as low as $5 per user, per month

Best Productivity Apps for Note Taking

8. Evernote

Productivity begins with the very inception of a new idea, which can be at any place and at any time. It is important to not let those ideas slip by and have them noted. Evernote helps you do just that – take notes along the way.

With this third app on our list of the best free productivity apps, you can save links, pictures, screenshots, links, articles, travel documents, and even sections of a write-up. The application comes with task listing and archiving functionalities for easy accessibility.

With the option of setting reminders and email alerts, you don’t have to risk missing out on sharing important information or completing a task. You can also search for the required notes without going over tons of files. With Evernote Food, you can collect food-related ideas and information and Evernote Clearly helps you with tasks related to clearing web content.

Key Features:

Some of the core features this app provides are:

• Ability to capture and save links, files, photos, notes, web clips, itineraries, confirmations, travel documents
• Annotation and markup
• Reminders and Email notifications
• Search option
• Web and Mobile interface
• Web clipping and Web clipper browser extensions
• Audio recording
• Shapes, arrows, and quick sketches
• Edit rich text and sketches
• Sync handmade sketches with notes to any device
• Share notes and collaborate on files
• Bookmark web pages
• Geo-location
• Multiple device availability
• Single storage for online resources

Pricing Plans:

• Basic (Free), Premium ($ 7.99 per user per month), and Business ($ 14.99 per user per month) plans.

Notable mentions:

• Trackly, a productivity tracker for teams, listed Evernote #8 on its list of The Best Productivity Tools.

Related:

The 33 Best To-do List Apps of 2023 for Personal Task Management

9. Standard Notes

Standard Notes is an open-source personal productivity app that is both free and secure. With end-to-end AES-256 encryption, this small business productivity app makes sure that any data sent across the servers is encrypted. This means it is protected against loss, manipulation, or even leakage of data.

How important is this? Well, according to Accenture, there are more than 130 large-scale, targeted breaches in the U.S. every year – and this number is growing by a whopping 27 percent per year.

Plus, this software is simple and lightweight. Without complicated features, it lets you sync unlimited data across multiple platforms.

Key Features:

You can avail the following features with Standard Notes:

• Two-factor authentication for security
• AES-256 encryption for privacy
• Note version history (up to 100 years)
• Automated backups of data to Email, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive
• Automatic sync (unlimited data)
• Unlimited access to powerful extensions, editors, and themes
• Web and Offline access
• Unlimited devices
• Best Productivity Apps for Mac, Windows, Best Productivity Apps for iPhone, Android, and Linux

Pricing Plans:

• Free and Extended ($34.99 per annum) plan.

10. Google Keep

If you have a knack for sticky notes, Google Keep is for you. It is a sticky note app powered by Google. This is one of the free productivity apps that lets you quickly jot down your thoughts before they slip your mind. Simple and beautiful, the app lets you quickly create a to-do list to get a heads up for what lies ahead. The different colored sticky notes make organizing and retrieving notes quick and easy.

You can set location and time-based reminders with your to-dos so that you never have to miss a detail. The tool also provides real-time collaboration with friends, family, and colleagues to instantly make changes to your checklists.

The quick search feature allows you to look up your desired notes instantly and fetch the needed information in no time.

Key Features

• Color-coded sticky notes
• Checklists management
• Sharing of lists for easy collaboration
• Sorting filters to improve accessibility
• Time-based reminders
• Location-based reminders
• Voice commands
• Conversion of notes to Docs
• Integration with Google Drive

Pricing

• Google Keep is free.

11. Otter

Hate typing for keeping your notes organized? Otter can be one of the best free productivity apps for you. Working on the algorithm of voice recognition, it is a smart note-taking solution for teams who need quick answers.

Record audio and the application will transcribe it into smart notes for you, eliminating the hassle of manual typing for keeping track. This productivity app caters to all kinds of conversations, ranging from classroom lectures to more professional team meetings for reviewing and collaborating on critical matters.

For teams, you can also conveniently create groups and share voice notes to keep everyone on the same page.

Key Features

• Audio recorder
• Public and private notes
• Shareable voice notes
• File attachments
• Search filter to find the desired results
• Audio importer
• Integration with Zoom

Pricing

• Free, Premium ($9.99 per month), and Enterprise (upon request) plans.

12. Notion

There are many productivity apps that claim to be an all-in-one solution but there are very apps that I believe can live up to that expectation.

So, when I heard of Notion, I was a bit skeptical about whether it could fit the bill as one of the best productivity apps for note-taking.

My current assessment is that you can manage almost anything in Notion.

Notion has been built up as an all-in-one workspace. I would say that is an accurate description as Notion pretty much defies traditional categorization.

That’s because you can do so much with this tool. It’s incredibly flexible.

You can use it as a Note Taker, has a beautiful Hyper Markdown system, you can also link in documents with other documents, provides the ability to create databases, create checklists, habit trackers, calendars, and to-do lists.

Key Features

• Multiple Views
• Powerful Note Taking
• Tasks and Projects
• Multiple Views
• Integrations

Pricing

• Personal free
• Personal Pro – $4
• Team – $8
• Enterprise – Contact Sales

Best Productivity Apps for Time Tracking

13. Harvest

The next app on our list of free productivity apps is Harvest. A time tracking tool that doubles as an invoicing application. Harvest enables you to track time and expenses being spent on a particular task by generating timesheets.

The timesheets are also utilized to track the time each individual spends on a specific task compared with their capacity, on a weekly basis.

Through Harvest, you can generate invoices for your clients by logging billable hours and the corresponding expenses. This creates transparency while producing invoices.

Key Features:

The app comes with the following key features:

• Time tracking
• Expense tracking
• Invoice management
• Automatic reminders
• Notes within tasks
• Working capacity tracking with actual work
• Multiple third-party application integrations

Pricing:

• Free (1 person, 2 projects), Solo ($12 one-person, unlimited projects), and Team ($12, 2+ persons, and unlimited projects) plans. Harvest comes with a free trial period of 30 days.

14. RescueTime

RescueTime is a free productivity app that stands up to its name i.e. it does just that – rescues you from wasting time helping you stay on track. With a central dashboard that can be set to daily, weekly, or yearly, you can track time spent online as well as offline.

You can choose from a number of reports spanning time spent on different apps and websites to the goals accomplished. You can ensure you stay on top of your game by monitoring your goals through weekly email reports, the goals report itself, or simply through the dashboard.

You can even create alerts and notifications for goals reached. A cool thing about RescueTime is that you can block out access to distracting websites during a certain time period. This helps you stay focused instead of wandering off to more unproductive activities.

Key Features

Avail the following set of characteristics with RescueTime:

• Time tracking with detailed reports for time spent on applications and websites. Multiple types of reports including reports on time spent in different categories, level of productivity, and the number of goals achieved.
• A weekly email report summarizing your activities and productivity score.
• Central dashboard to view progress against goals set, in weekly email reports and goals report.
• Pre-defined and customizable categories for grouping activities with built-in productivity scores that cater to thousands of websites and applications.
• Block access to distracting sites to retain focus on the work at hand.
• Offline time logging for meetings, phone calls, as well as time spent on travel.
• Create alerts and notifications about goal accomplishments and other things.
• Log-able highlights the activities accomplished throughout the day.
• Mobile app for Android

Pricing

• RescueTime offers a Free and Premium plan at $4.50 per month or $36 per year.

15. Hours

Hours is a free productivity apps that you can use personally or for your teams. With easy-to-set-up options and simplified navigation, you can efficiently generate reports with multiple options and share them. You even have the option of generating reports with or without data visuals.

On logging in, you are welcomed into a central dashboard with available modules in the left panel for easy access. A centralized timeline helps you toggle between weeks with the option of setting start and end dates through the time block. There is a timesheet option to log and view billable hours.

You may even exclude team time from reports generated for personal progress monitoring. In addition, you can create unique settings for your time reports through time formats, units of time measurement as well as setting the start of the week.

Key Features

With Hours, you can make use of the following features:

• Central dashboard with modules for reporting, setting timers, and downloads.
• Multiple timers can be switched between.
• Option to create multiple teams.
• Data analysis in part or whole through reports and visuals on multiple levels.
• Timeline to monitor progress with an option to make adjustments by dragging the start or end time of a time block and switching between weeks
• Timesheets for managing hours done through the selected week.
• Report generation with options of Detail or Summary.
• Primary and Secondary group reports through criteria including Person, Project, and Track.
• Options to show/hide data visualizations, start and end times, and time as decimals.
• Share reports externally through a generated link.
• Option to download, generate CSV reports, and print them.
• Settings module with options to set time formats, units of time measurement, and setting start day of the week.
• Snapping and rounding option for time.
• Option to exclude team time from personal reports.
• Option to switch from personal app to team tool in order to track, assess, and report time spent.
• Mobile app for iOS

Pricing

• Hours offers a Free and Pro plan at $8 per user per month.

16. Toggl

Toggl is another time tracking entry in this round-up of free productivity apps. A dedicated time tracking tool that comes with some pretty powerful features to help you better manage your time and make informed decisions. The basic version of the app comes with an automatic task timer which you can start when you start working and turn off when you’re done.

There are also multiple reporting tools that let you track your performance and see where exactly are you spending your hours to better evaluate the current situation.

On the other hand, the advanced version of the tool comes with elaborate time tracking features, including timesheet management, email reports, and much more.

The beautiful and intuitive user interface makes navigation across the application smooth and effortless.

Key Features

• Automatic task timer
• Timesheet management
• Multiple performance measuring reports
• A browser extension for tracking time in multiple tools
• Email reporting to get insights directly into your inbox
• Bulk editing for making changes simultaneously
• Pomodoro timer
• Detailed weekly reports to summarize performance
• CSV file imports
• A project dashboard with paid plans
• Third-party application integrations

Pricing

• Starter ($9 per user/month)
• Premium ($18 per user/month)
• Enterprise (custom pricing) plans

17. Clockify

Next up on our best free productivity apps is Clockify. It is a time tracking app that offers time tracking to an unlimited number of users, for free. You and your team can track time in real-time as you work, or add it manually or in a timesheet once done with your work.

Afterward, you can view and analyze your own and your team’s time results in the reports section of the app that provides a detailed summary, and weekly overview of your work hours (and an option to share reports with others via links). These reports will show what activities take most of your time, where you waste time, and how you could improve your time utilization in the future.

In addition to the listed essentials for time tracking, you can also enhance your time management efforts through paid features that expand the app’s functionalities towards even better productivity.

Owing to the listed features, Clockify can be a great asset to remote teams, freelancers, large organizations, or anyone looking to track and manage their time.

Key Features

• Track time as you work, with a timer
• Add time manually, or in a timesheet
• Analyze your time use in Reports
• Export Reports in PDF, CSV, or Excel
• Track what your team is currently working on from the Dashboard
• Label and categorize time entries with projects, clients, tasks, and tags
• Add custom fields to your time entries, in the form of texts, numbers, switches, links, and input fields
• Track your project progress when compared to your project estimates
• Use project templates to easily create multiple projects that have the same task structure
• Track and manage time with a Pomodoro timer
• Integrations with 50+ most popular project management and productivity tools, and with hundreds more via Zapier and Try Integromat
• Available for Windows, Mac Productivity Apps, Linux, iOS, Android
• Browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox

Pricing Plans:

• Free forever plan for teams that need a simple and easy time tracker
• Plus plan at a flat rate of $9.99 per month
• Premium plan at a flat rate of $29.99 per month
• Enterprise plan at a rate of $9.99 per month per user

Notable mentions:

• Bloomberg has cited Clockify as one of the apps in which one should invest 1 million dollars in 2020.
• Techradar has cited Clockify as one of the Best productivity tools of 2020: free and paid apps.

18. DeskTime

Desktime is a productivity app for time tracking that allows you to follow along with your own or your team’s computer use.

Once the application is installed the Desktime app keeps a track of all time spent on the computer either on applications or on websites without any manual input.

Each app or website is divided into three main categories: Productive Apps, Unproductive Apps, or Neutral Apps.

As you use this time-tracking productivity app on different apps and websites your productivity bar will begin to fill up.

It will highlight the productive time spent and unproductive time spent on the system. Grey will highlight neutral productivity.

This ratio of productive time spent is used to calculate your overall productivity percentage.

This productivity score is compared to your entire team and each team member is given a score accordingly.

Best of all you can set up projects and then track time spent on each project.

Key Features

• Automatic time tracking
• Offline Time Tracking
• Private Time Option
• Document Title Tracking
• Pomodoro Timer
• Invoicing
• Cost Calculation
• Third-Party Integrations
• Custom Reports
• Absence Calendar

Pricing

• Lite – Free
• Pro – $95
• Premium – $124
• Enterprise – $190

19. TMetric

TMetric is a simple solution to log your work hours and measure productivity. The app supports a Free plan with basic functionality for time tracking, analyzing data in reports, and managing projects and a team of up to 5 users. After you upgrade to a paid plan, you’ll get access to more features, such as time off management, screenshot capturing, payroll, and more.

The tool supports web, desktop, and mobile apps, and a browser plugin, so you have a choice where to keep track of your time for your convenience.

Depending on what country you are from, you can take advantage of TMetric in English, German and Russian. The interface is friendly and intuitive.

And, it’s also possible to integrate the tool with almost any project and task management system for better time and activity tracking in any place.

Key features

• Tracking time with a timer
• Adding time manually
• Idle detection
• Activity tracking
• Screenshot capturing
• Time tracking permissions
• Reporting
• Exporting reports to CSV, PDF
• Project management
• Task management
• Billable and cost rates
• Invoicing
• Team management
• Time off management
• Payroll
• Integrations with 50+ tools

Pricing

• Free
• Professional ($5 per user/month)
• Business ($7 per user/month)

Best Productivity Apps for Project Management

20. GanttPRO

#2 in this roundup for the best productivity apps is a Gantt chart tool – GanttPRO. Single users, team leaders, project managers, CEOs, etc. will be much more productive in managing plans and projects if every assignment, task, or duty will be clearly visualized on a timeline.

GanttPRO gives a perfect opportunity to plan, track, manage, and successfully complete projects in a timely manner and within budget.

In GanttPRO, users can create and assign multiple tasks, track progress, collaborate on projects, invite team members, or create virtual resources to work with them on a common goal.

To become an advanced user of the tool, you need up to 10 minutes. The software offers a nice UX/UI design and an intuitive interface.

Key Features:

With GanttPRO, you can:

• Create and assign tasks
• Create dependencies
• Track the progress of each task and project
• Set project and personal working calendars
• Export charts
• Share via public URL
• Create baselines
• Manage resources
• Save own projects as templates
• Undo actions
• Browse the history of changes in a project
• Set project and personal working calendars

Pricing Plans:

• Free trial. Paid plans start at $5.90 per user per month.

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21. Hubstaff Tasks

Hubstaff Tasks is a visual project management tool that offers teams a smarter way to work. It is built with Agile in mind and makes use of Kanban boards to help teams organize projects and accomplish tasks with efficiency.

You can add details, create checklists, and communicate with team members using task cards. Moving tasks from one stage to another will send notifications to task assignees and is done with a simple drag-and-drop mechanism.

Its Sprints feature simplifies prioritizing tasks and beating deadlines. This allows you to easily stay on top of work and keep projects moving forward. With Hubstaff Tasks’s custom workflows, you can automatically assign tasks to team members and move tasks to the next project stage with just one click.

Hubstaff Tasks’s intuitive interface makes it easy to get the hang of so you can start collaborating right away.

Key Features:

• Assign people and add followers to tasks
• Create checklists and progress bars inside tasks
• Create task labels and add them to task cards
• Prioritize tasks with Agile Sprints
• Automate the process of assigning tasks to people and moving them to the next stages with custom workflows
• Communicate with and mention team members in task comments
• Stay updated with your team’s progress with automated stand-ups

Pricing:

• Free
• Premium ($5 per user/month) plans.

22. Nifty

Nifty centralizes project communication, planning, and tracking with a bird’s-eye view across all of your projects and teammate workloads. It simplifies team workflows by consolidating all phases of a product’s lifecycle into a single tool. It combines both project management and team communication in one browser tab. It is one of the free productivity apps that comes with strong project management features.

Agencies working with numerous clients might find Nifty useful, as it allows their clients to collaborate and track their progress on tasks, reducing the time spent looking for feedback across several communication channels. 

Nifty allows you to import data easily from other productivity tools, so you can quickly establish your workflow. This way, your team can use one tool for both internal and client-side communication.

Key features

• Automated project status reporting based on task completion 
• Built-in Google Docs, Sheets, and Presentations for copy and scopes
• A built-in time tracker to track billable work across members, tasks, and projects
• Client collaboration, allowing them to get involved in the workflow
• Both Kanban Board and Task List views 
• Team chat, for solving problems on the spot 
• Project discussions within tasks 
• Project templates

Pricing

• Starter: Free, best suited for individuals and small teams up to 10 people, 1 GB storage space
• Pro: $99* per month, unlimited team members, 500 GB of storage space
• Business: $149* per month, unlimited team members, 1 TB storage space
• Enterprise: Fully customizable solution

23. Flow

If you are looking for a hassle-free project management experience that is not strictly professional and restricting, Flow might be the best productivity app right now. For you, I mean.

Yes, Flow indeed enables power users to delegate work, organize team-based activities, monitor, prioritize, and all there is to project management. But the subtle touch of “productivity” comes in the form of communication.

Collaboration is to the point within a fuss-free interface. It takes less time to discuss work. This way, Flow helps you to focus on work, rather than circling discussions that have no end.

Of course, you can collaborate later if something is not clear about a particular task.

Key Features

• Based on the latest Agile methodologies. Work fast in a clutter-free virtual space.
• Minimizes extra communication between team members and helps to keep things on point.
• Offers a separate client portal for easy PM contacts management.
• Supports milestone tracking, resource, and budget management.
• Utilize Flow Kanban boards and Gantt Charts for CPM methodologies.

Pricing Plans

• Flow has a free trial for evaluation.
• Paid plans start with Flow Basic at $6 per month, per user.

24. Goplan

Goplan is combining business and project management for individuals and professionals alike. Yes, we know that such type of productivity apps is a lot to digest because it is focusing on one too many features altogether.

However, Goplan is reportedly notorious for offering real-time access to project status, milestones, and timesheets through in-built tools.

Another flagship feature of this productivity app is the Calendar. Beyond scheduling meetings and last-minute agendas, Goplan’s calendaring system helps you to share notes and track issues attentively.

Key Features:

• Comes with an intuitive minimalistic web 2.0 interface.
• Primarily developed for mitigating project management, SDLC, and business-related issues.
• Manage projects and communicate with clients in one place.
• Real-time collaboration.
• Milestone, time, and budget tracking system.
• 24/7 entirely Web-based SaaS service model.

Pricing:

• Goplan has a free trial for first-time users.
• Paid plans start at $10 per user/ per month.

25. Basecamp

If you ever need a project management app to manage projects in 2020 then Basecamp is one of the top solutions available.

There are over 200 project management solutions to improve productivity in 2020.

Narrowing down your options to one or two tools is tough.

In terms of features, project management solutions are very similar. But this doesn’t mean that all solutions are the same.

Basecamp’s user interface though is quite different from most solutions available.

Instead of showing you a top-down view of information, Basecamp organizes information into small camps. In addition, Basecamp offers the right mix of integrations as well.

All the essential integrations you might find in tools like Wrike and Asana you’ll also find on Basecamp. These include automation, time tracking & automation, and chart building & reporting tools.

Key Features

• To-do lists
• Message Boards
• Schedules
• Documents & File Storage
• Real-Time Group Chat
• Check-in Questions
• Client Access
• Hill Charts
• Direct Messages
• Email Forwards
• Reports
• Notifications
• Search

Pricing

• 30 Days free trial
• Flat plan for $99/month

Best Basecamp Alternatives:

Top 15 Free Basecamp Alternatives To Use in 2023

Best Productivity Apps for Designing

26. Canva

Designing is an integral part of visual communication, and graphic designers go through multiple productivity hurdles throughout the day to come up with a perfect piece of art.  Therefore, the 10^th spot on our list of free productivity tools goes to Canva.

A simple design platform that provides an easy graphics design solution to teams. Coming with a diverse set of design features, Canva enables users to create professional designs within a matter of a few minutes.

It’s a perfect tool for beginners and those who’re not really inclined towards advanced graphic design, as it comes with a vast set of images, fonts, and templates to help users build designs from scratch.

Key Features:

Out of numerous design features, some of the key ones are:

• Design grids
• Custom graphs and charts
• Photo straightener
• Built-in design templates
• Image transparency
• Photo editor
• Stickers and badges
• Photo frames
• Drag and drop functionality

Pricing:

• Free forever, Canva for work ($12.95 per user/month), and Canva enterprise (pricing upon request) plans.

See also:

Getting Things Done (GTD) Method and 14 Best GTD Apps & Tools

27. Lucidchart

The 13th free productivity app on our list is Lucidchart. It’s an online diagramming tool that allows organizations and teams to create and share professional diagrams. The platform helps in creating flowcharts to cater to all kinds of business needs, ranging from simple flowchart diagrams to complex technical ones.

Coming with advanced tools, Lucidchart allows users to create all kinds of diagrams without any technical difficulty.

Key Features:

• Organizational charts
• Data flow diagrams
• Workflow diagrams
• Network diagrams
• Mind Maps
• Concept Maps
• Value Stream Maps
• Process Maps
• ER Diagrams
• Wireframes

Pricing:

• Basic ($4.95 per month)
• Pro ($9.95 per month)
• Team ($20 per month)
• Enterprise (pricing upon request) plan

28. Crello

If you are looking for free productivity apps for designers, then this one is for you. Crello is a perfect online design service for marketers, bloggers, students, SMM managers, and entrepreneurs who don’t want to spend hours creating cool visual content. With Crello, anyone can create a post for social media or the web and quickly prepare video ads and animated designs in minutes. Besides, you don’t need to have graphic design skills for that.

Crello has many functions but they are so comprehensive that it takes seconds to figure out how it works. The editor has a huge library of premium photos, illustrations, and images. Even if you use a free plan, you have access to a variety of templates and stock images. Also, you have a free trial of the PRO plan to get the taste of all premium features and visual content.

Key features of Crello

• a wide range of graphic and animated design templates
• possibility to make videos and animation
• access to hundreds of thousands of free and premium images
• possibility to upload your own fonts, videos, and images
• good-looking video clips for any purpose
• easy-to-use without any prior design experience

Pricing

• Free plan
• Paid PRO plan, $7.99 per month. You can get a Free Trial for the PRO plan.

29. CloudApp

Another incredible free productivity apps on our list include CloudApp. CloudApp is the application for you and your team if you like to collaborate visually rather than writing essays to each other. This is the application that helps you save up to 56 hours a week because of its fast mode of information transfer.

Whether you want to talk to a colleague, client, or customer through video call, screenshotting text chains, or even through gifs, CloudApp is the software for you.

Let us take a look at some of the features that the application offers.

Key Features

• Wide range of plugins
• Viewing, tracking, and deleting files from the menu bar
• Drag-and-drop interface
• CloudApp API

Pricing

• A subscription will cost you about $9/ month
• Forest can be purchased on the iOS device for $1.99

30. PicMonkey

One of my favorite productivity apps for designing is PicMonkey.

It’s a free in-browser photo editing software and I use it to do a lot of my very cool graphics.

If you want to make high-quality graphics for your blog or Instagram, then PicMonkey is the tool for you.

PicMonkey is not only important for social media marketers, and small businesses but essentially anyone who wants to communicate visually and stand out from the crowd.

With this design-oriented productivity app in 2020, you have the capability to empower creatives to make high-impact images to promote your business or personal brand.

Key Features

• Edit Photos
• Design with Video
• Create stylish graphic designs
• Photo Editor + Touch-up tools
• Textures, gradients, and filters
• Edit individual layers
• Text effects like curve plus outline
• Easy to use templates for better results
• Collage layouts
• 1000’s beautiful templates
• 1000s of creative designs
• Millions of Stock photos from Unsplash

Pricing

• Basic: $7.99 USD/billed monthly
• Pro: $12.99 USD/billed monthly
• Team: $33.99 USD/billed monthly

31. RecordCast

Screen recording has become a powerful tool that we have available to cover needs, from reporting problems to a technical area, to creating content for a communication channel, such as YouTube. We want to present RecordCast, which can record the screen video and edit it without installing software.

It is designed for creating screencasts and editing videos with an integrated editor. Due to the intuitive interface, it is very easy to figure it out.

You have the option to record yourself with your webcam and microphone, and you can even record the entire desktop from Chrome. Just click “Start Recording” and when you’re done press the red button in the middle to end the recording.

At the end of the recording, thanks to its powerful integrated editor, RecordCast then allows you to edit the videos by applying various effects to them, removing their imperfections, and optimizing the downloading resolutions for various usages. It also allows you to add special effects and animations quickly and easily with a few clicks.

Key Features

• No registration, no login, no installation required
• Record screen from the screen and webcam simultaneously
• Control the computer microphone while recording
• Insert animations and special effects
• Make ruthless cuts of breaks and unnecessary parts

Pricing

• 100% free

32. FlexClip

Almost all small businesses love to showcase their products, services, and promotional offers with videos on YouTube or other social media platforms. Even if you have good video recording skills, you still need editing to bring perfection.

FlexClip is an intuitive online video editor that helps you create your video without editing skills. It allows you to create professional videos with the help of predefined templates, to be embellished with the addition of stickers, music, and texts. The platform also allows adding logos along with videos, which facilitates the recognition of the public towards the user.

Anyone with no experience in editing can use it without the need to opt for sources of instructions or guides. From short Instagram promotional videos to long YouTube videos, everything is manageable in FlexClip.

Key Features

• Thousands of exquisitely customized templates
• Over a million royalty-free photos and video clips
• Trim videos to eliminate irrelevant parts
• Bulk upload of videos
• Rotate your videos clockwise and counterclockwise
• Add images, audio, titles, and backgrounds
• Apply transitions and filters
• Social sharing opportunities for edited videos

Pricing

• Free
• Basic ($5.99 per month)
• Plus ($9.99 per month)
• Business ($19.99 per month)

Best Productivity Apps for Students

33. Pocket

We come across eye-catching articles, videos, memes and so much more on a daily basis. However, as most of us are pressed for time running about our work and life routine, more often than not, we don’t get the time to really look into these.

Plus, it is hard to save multiple sources of information only to be visited later through multiple sites and apps. It would be so much easier if we could handpick them and keep them in our pockets for easy access, right? Well, now, you literally can.

Making it to the list of top free productivity apps, Pocket helps you save links, articles, videos, pictures and so much more to easily access later. You don’t have to go back to various websites and social sites, Pocket will get the data for you and display it on its interface.

Starting out as Read It Later, designed for saving articles, this productivity app evolved into a more general-purpose service with the ability to save images, videos, links, and a lot more. And we are glad it did.

Key Features:

Some of the cool things you can do with this app include:

• Save from multiple resources including your browser and more than 800 apps including Twitter, Flipboard, and Feedly
• Automated syncs with your phone, tablet, and computer
• Offline access to and viewing of articles and webpages
• Advanced Search Operators
• Search through Title or URL
• Search Full-Text, Tag, Author, or Topic
• Sort Search Results by Relevance or Date Saved
• View Recent Searches
• Backup of articles and webpages saved
• Suggested Tags for quick organization

Pricing Plans:

• Pocket and Pocket Premium (4.99$ per month or 44.99$ per annum) plans.

See also:

Top Productivity Podcasts for Project Managers of 2020

34. Prezi

A popular online presentation-making platform, Prezi takes up the position in this collection of best free productivity apps.

Prezi adds fun and creativity to the way people make presentations by providing unique features to make the data more engaging and eye-catching. Instead of using traditional means of switching between slides, Prezi uses a canvas-based approach. You can create your presentations on one wide canvas, zooming in and out on particular frames to shift focus.

An easy-to-use tool, Prezi allows users to have complete control over how they want their presentations to look with customized templates and a variety of other tools to choose from.

Key Features:

• Design-templates
• Adding files and images
• Presentation analytics
• Zooming in and out
• Drag and drop interface
• Charts and graphs
• Integration with Slack and Salesforce
• Compatibility with Android and iOS devices

Pricing:

• Standard ($5 per month)
• Plus ($15 per month)
• Premium ($59 per month) plans

35. Forest App

What is the Forest App precisely? At one level, you could judge it to be a smartphone game. Unlike popular mobile games, Forest facilitates time away from your phone. Therefore, it’s on our list of productivity apps.

On another level, it’s a tool for measuring your ability to stay away from your mobile device for a fixed period of time.

This game is called Forest because the game is all about planting a virtual tree. For example, a virtual tree takes five minutes to grow, then it will only grow if you are capable of staying away from your phone for at least five minutes.

I would recommend this productivity app to anyone who wants to do more intensive work.

Key Features

• Forest allows you to focus on important components of life
• Includes one of the cutest gamified timers
• Over 700,000 real trees were planted on Earth by our users
• Reduces mobile addiction
• The harder you work the lusher your forest will be
• Stay focused and plant real trees

Price

• Forest can be purchased on the iOS device for $1.99

36. Skitch

Do you want to get your ideas across using fewer words using shapes, annotation, and sketches; then Skitch is the right app for you. The best part is this tool is free and this factored in while including this in our best free productivity apps list.

This is an easy-to-use tool where you can use screenshot annotations for presentations allowing you to hide or highlight text.

It allows you to capture the full screen or just a portion of the screen, and then you can execute different types of edits like highlights, text, arrows, etc.

Another important feature this tool offers is the Blur option which allows you to hide confidential information.

Key Features

• Quickly focus on what’s important using markup and annotation.
• Use Skitch on your phone and desktop to share ideas.
• Smooth and responsive pen tool
• Hold & Lock feature allows you to lock the current tool through disabled auto-switching
• Upgraded move tool usability

Pricing

• Free, with an in-app purchase option

37. IA Writer

Digital nomads occasionally need a simple notes creator where they can brainstorm. IA Writer is nothing fancy; it’s a fantastic plain text editor with a strong distraction-free environment.

Users are reportedly able to write more because of the IA Writer’s screen interface. As soon as the file is executed, you will see a blank screen with the omission of all other shortcuts to external programs. No more unwanted icons, no more productivity loss.

Both iOS and Android users can benefit from this productivity app. There’s a Pro version where you can benefit from some extra features – i.e. if typefaces, various workflow options, and fonts are your priority.

Key Features:

• Excellent productivity tools for freelance writers.
• Features a distraction-free program interface.
• Offers text color, workflow variances, and typeface options.
• Available to iOS and Android users.

Pricing:

• Free of cost

38. Motion

If you’re a university student pursuing a degree in Films then Motion is the productivity app just tailored for your needs.

It is a behavior-driven motion graphics app used to create amazing imaging effects in real-time for a wide variety of broadcast, film, and video projects.

Motion is an app that helps you create cool effects and GFX that can boost your production quality tremendously.

It works really well with Final Cut Pro X. Using both apps you can create awesome templates that will make your life easier during editing.

Key Features

• Capture the perfect picture
• Use your digital camera
• Desktop Class Movie Editing
• Animate with in and out points
• Composition guides for positioning
• Bring the video to life with the best sound effects
• Make it your canvas
• Get rid of unwanted objects in your movie
• Many imports option
• Green Screen
• Add Facial Expressions to Lego Figures
• Share it with your network

Pricing

• iPhone, iPad, and iPod: $4.99
• Android and Chromebooks: $4.99
• Mac: $9.99
• Windows: $9.99

Best Productivity Apps for Collaboration

39. Cisco Webex Teams

#8 on our list of the best free small business productivity apps is Cisco Webex Teams (formerly known as Cisco) Spark.

This app helps your team achieve optimum collaboration making teamwork easier and teams more productive. In one app, you get to arrange meetings, message teams, share files, make video calls and carry out whiteboarding all the while integrating with WebEx.

Plus, Cisco holds a prominent place in tech security and networking. Cisco Webex Teams helps your data and conversions stay protected against data breaches and security threats.

Key Features:

Here are some features you can use for making your meetings and collaboration more productive:

• Team collaboration through group chats, private messages, and video calls
• Organize group chats in teams and spaces
• Built-in whiteboard app and companion device for brainstorming ideas
• Switch devices during the same call
• Video conferencing (full-screen, up to 7 video feeds, or split-screen)
• VoIP or phone call-in
• Markup tools and whiteboard
• Record meetings (including video)
• Share the presenter role
• Free mobile apps
• Availability on Best Productivity Apps for Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, and Web apps

Pricing Plans:

• You can try Cisco Webex Teams for Free
• Premium pricing plans (Premium 8 at $24 per month, Premium 25 at $49, Premium 100 at $69).

40. Zoom

Next up, we have Zoom!

Giving us all the right reasons to include it in our list of free productivity apps, Zoom is designed primarily for video calls between team members. You can utilize the platform for all kinds of virtual team meetings, online conferences, and professional webinars.

An effective tool for remote teams, Zoom also allows screen sharing and whiteboarding, along with other collaboration features. Easily create a group of relevant team members and instantly start collaborating.

Key Features:

• Group collaboration
• Drag and drop file sharing
• Video meetings
• Screen sharing
• Whiteboarding
• Audio calls
• Third-party application integrations

Pricing:

• Free, Pro ($14.99 per month/host)
• Business ($19.99 per month/host)
• Enterprise ($19.99 per month/host) plans

41. Slack

With over 8 million daily active users, Slack is one of the team-free productivity apps you need if you don’t want the information to fall through the cracks. A single platform for your team to timely collaborate on things that matter without any fear of missing out.

Through distinct channels, classify your conversations on the basis of projects, tasks, or teams to keep your threads relevant. The team mention feature allows you to tag respective team members and make roles clear.

You can also voice or video call from within Slack with your team members and even share screens if required.

Key Features

• Distinct team channels
• Drag and drop for file uploads
• Team mentions
• Audio and video calls
• Emoji support
• Ability to star and pin messages
• Archive chat
• Hundreds of third-party application integrations

Pricing

• Free, Standard ($6.67 per user/month)
• Plus ($12.50 per user/month)
• Enterprise Grid (pricing upon request) plans

42. Troop Messenger

Troop Messenger is a team chat application that keeps both the communication and collaboration within the teams at the same pace whether they work inside the office or outside i.e. work from home. Productivity is no more an issue in the case of this office chat application that offers exceptional features for remote team collaboration.

Using Troop Messenger, you can send or receive text, files, images, media, and other important data seamlessly. Without hassles, this tool lets you assign the work to the remote teams, track the progress, and monitor and manage all your teams wherever you are.

Besides, this remote working tool is accessible over the web and mobile apps (both Android and iOS) ease any task on the fly. Also, this tool uses a high-end security pin and fingerprint access to ensure privacy and data confidentiality.

Key Features

• Troop Messenger allows guest collaboration that lets your clients and vendors communicate for the short term. You can add/remove anybody as and when required.
• It has a myriad of features such as Burnout (incognito chat), Advanced filters, Fork out (send a message to multiple people at a time), Recall, Mute conversations, Audio messaging, Flag (mark important messages), etc.
• It lets you track and share the live location.
• This tool is easy to integrate, implement, and understand.
• It lets you make both audio and video calls and share your screen in real-time. Cattle call is a video call feature that lets you create video conferencing, meetings, webinars, webcasting, give training, etc.
• It lets you integrate tools such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and LDAP.

Pricing

• Premium plan starting at $1/user per month
• Enterprise plan starting at $5/user per month

43. MS Teams

Microsoft Teams has become most organizations’ global collaboration platform.

It meets the requirements of SMBs and blue-chip conglomerates to work together, especially with social distancing in practice at the moment.

Organizations use it for text, video calls, and meeting management.

File sharing has some use as well while the Planner function is effective as well but they are shared with other apps.

If you’re a Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint user then MS Teams is one of the top productivity apps for collaboration.

Key Features

• Enables to form team groups within the platform which facilitates team chats and file sharing
• Highly customizable
• Integration options
• Included with Office365 business accounts
• Tightly integrated with other MS Office apps
• Directly connected to SharePoint

Pricing

• Microsoft free options: Free
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $5/user/month
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard: $12.5/user/month
• Office 365 E3: $20 user/month

44. Spike

With efficiency, collaboration, and workflow optimizations becoming key elements of success at work, taking notes is a major pain many remote workers and professionals have these days. Capturing these important ideas while they’re being mentioned in a multi-participant call or endless exchanges of ideas can save a lot of time.

Spike addresses this difficulty by allowing users to collaborate on notes in real-time, see how others interact with it, hop on a chat about specifics, and use an extensive toolset for keeping the workflow streamlined.

In addition, Spike’s conversational approach to emailing, group collaboration, and note-taking ushers in a plethora of creative uses: distributing work between collaborators, scheduling, and setting up Gantts are among the uses people use Spike for. It is a fully-featured email client.

Key features

• Real-time, collaborative notes, and docs
• Assigning notes and tasks to users
• Sharing files instantly with anyone
• Voice and video calls from within the app
• Rich markup toolset, with tables, checkboxes, and many more
• Full integration with major email providers
• Web or application-based (iOS, Android, macOS, Windows) – work is cross-platform with live sync

Pricing Plans

• Free for personal accounts + premium options,
• $6 a month for business accounts (free trial available)

Best Productivity Apps for Offices and Businesses

45. LastPass

With plenty of applications to go through the day, remembering their passwords is an additional struggle that can keep you on your toes. Not to worry! We have a productivity app for that too. LastPass saves all your passwords for you.

Through this browser extension, you don’t have to manually enter your passwords each time you access any application. Just remember your LastPass master password and the tool automatically saves all your app logins for you.

The built-in password generator allows you to create strong passwords to further protect your accounts against hacking.

Key Features

• Two-factor authentication
• Password generator
• Data encryption
• Digital wallet for online shopping
• One-to-one sharing of passwords and notes
• Single sign-on for enterprises
• Fingerprint login
• Secure username generator

Pricing

• Premium ($3 per month – one user)
• Families ($4 per month – 6 users)
• Teams ($4 per user – 5-50 users)
• Enterprise ($6 per user – 5+ users) plans

46. Mopinion

Customer feedback is considered crucial in every business operation and this productivity app believes the same.

Mopinion is a data analysis and reporting solution that helps you analyze user feedback from your website and mobile apps. Easily gather feedback through real-time customizable forms and comprehensively analyze the data to make informed decisions.

The application facilitates multiple methods of collecting data, that is, through email, in-page, and in-app feedback to provide maximum flexibility. The tool not only analyzes the feedback data, but it also runs analysis on text, sentiments (emojis), and most commonly used words to exactly interpret what the user wants.

Key Features

• Data analytics
• Customizable feedback forms
• Dashboard
• Multi-channel feedback collection
• Text analysis
• Sentiments analysis
• Trend analysis
• Email alerts and reminders
• Integration with project management tools

Pricing

• Mopinion comes with multiple plans facilitating small teams, businesses, and digital agencies. The plans further have sub-plans catering to your team’s needs.

47. Office 365

One of the leading productivity apps one can get their hands on is Office 365. A full-featured suite of applications that make your work more streamlined and effortless. The full range of tools Office 365 comes with include Outlook, OneDrive, OneNote, Word, Excel, Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Yammer, and more.

Each individual app comes with its own set of rich features that make information handling enhanced and powerful. The best part is that Office 365 can be easily synced with all of your devices to help you take your work wherever you go.

Key Features

• Multiple Office apps to increase your productivity
• Real-time changes made in Word document by team members
• Skype integration to chat with team members
• Offline access to applications
• Editing and conversion of documents, spreadsheets, and slides into PDF
• Syncing with mobile apps to work on the go
• 50 GB of email storage

Pricing

• Office 365 comes with 2 plans – Home and Business. Home plans start from $59.99 per year, while Business plans start from $5 per user/month

48. Calendar

If you are in the market for an amazing application that will take your productivity game to the next level, then Calendar is the one for you.

It is the smartest tool, powered by AI, that is always learning from you for you. This way, when you repeat a task or plan out your day, month, or year, it will do all of that stuff for you, having read your behavior at every step.

With this application, you can book any meeting or choose a different time for your other engagements, straight from the application. And you also don’t have to worry about any overbookings because if you have some engagement booked at a certain hour, the application will not book any other engagement at that time slot.

Let us take a look at some of the features that the application offers.

Key Features

• AI Integration
• No task repetitions
• Control all of the tasks from the application itself

Pricing

• Free Trial is available
• Contact the company for subscription details

49. HubSpot CRM

This incredible free productivity app was built with the modern world in mind. With its amazingly intuitive and automatic features, HubSpot takes care of all of the little things that you do as a manager while using a productivity application of this genre e.g. recording calls, managing all of the data, logging emails, and freeing up selling time in the process.

Let us take a look at some of the features that the application offers.

Key Features

• Pipeline management
• Contact database
• Content management
• Email archiving
• Email tracking
• Shared history
• Task planning
• Prospect database
• Lead timelines
• Contact history

Pricing

• Free Trial is available
• Contact the company if you want to buy a subscription

50. Google Drive

In today’s world, information overload can drive you insane if you don’t have a proper channel to store it. That’s why you need Google Drive as your next go-to free productivity app. It’s a single place to store all your files, both personal and professional.

You can access all of your saved files from anywhere through easy syncing of your devices, and even invite other people to view and make changes to your files for streamlined team communication. Additionally, all of the Google suite apps, including Docs, Sheets, and Slides come integrated with your Drive to smartly manage all of your professional needs.

With a Google account, you get the first 15 GB of storage space for free.

Key Features

• File attachments of all kinds, including documents
• Folders and files sharing with anyone to collaborate seamlessly
• Easy syncing with computer, mobile, and tablet for quick access
• Powerful integration with third-party applications
• Docs, Sheets, and Slides to handle all of your work documents
• 15 GB free storage space to help you get started
• Files and folders backup

Pricing

• Free for 15 GB storage
• $1.99 per month for 100 GB storage

51. Onehub

If file sharing is your IT company’s necessary requirement, then Onehub helps to pull it off – and that too with multiple user support.

Of course, who am I kidding, every other business needs a dose of file-sharing every once in a while. This makes Onehub one of the best free productivity apps to date. There are paid plans as well, but you can opt-in if your business needs to transition.

While this tool lays emphasis on file-sharing as one of its main highlights, it also leans on secure document management in the cloud. Everything is maintained server-side with a sense of efficiency and reliability.

On top of it, you can also customize your file storage and virtual storage environment according to the brand of the business.

Key Features:

• Trusted by popular business brands.
• Set role-based permissions to practice document security.
• Use different preset limits for multiple users.
• Boost productivity via easy file management & organization practices.
• Google Drive file editing.
• Collaboration among team members.
• Invitation support for stakeholders!

Pricing:

• Onehub is available as a Free Trial package
• Paid plans start with the Onehub Team package at $29.95 per month.

52. MindMeister

On #9, we have MindMeister. A powerful mind mapping tool allows users to visually structure ideas and share them with team members to brainstorm on them. MindMeister is one of the best free productivity apps to ideate and document thought processes as you go along.

With MindMeister, you can easily develop mind maps in the form of slides and share them with relevant team members to collaborate on them. Team members can comment on all the ideas, vote on them, and discuss the relevant changes required.

Team members can also see all the changes that are made in a particular mind map so that everyone stays updated on a particular activity.

Key Features:

• Built-in presentations
• Customized themes
• Shareable links to mind maps
• Due dates and priorities
• Assign tasks
• Built-in mind map templates
• File attachments
• History mode for retrieving older ideas
• Meeting management within specific mind maps
• Integration with MeisterTask for project management

Pricing:

• Basic (Free), Personal ($4.99 per month)
• Pro ($8.25 per user per month)
• Business ($12.49 per user per month) plans

53. Scanbot

Productivity is all about saving time and doing more constructive work. For example, why type information or capture images to manage later if you can scan existing information and have it organized into various elements on its own? With Scanbot, you can store information through single scans and have that information used in multiple ways.

With a click, you can digitize important documents, images, and multiple pages of a contract. You can store information and send it to fax in more than 50 countries.

What’s more? It’s super smart. You don’t have to spend time adjusting images taken in a hurry. Scanbot will do that for you too through perspective correction. The scanned document is straightened and positioned correctly before converting it into a PDF file.

Key Features:

With Scanbot, you can manage your documents as follows:

• Scan multiple types of documents including receipts, receipts, business cards, contracts, whiteboards, flip charts notes, and newspaper articles
• Detect QR codes for contacts, locations, URLs, locations, hotspots, and more
• Scan product barcodes and search for it
• Save documents to specific folders
• Sharing documents through email
• Optimize scans for black and white, grayscale as well as color
• Save scans to cloud service through customized settings for a specific folder and automatically
• Save scans in PDF or JPEG file formats
• OCR (optical character recognition) for automatic text recognition from scanned documents
• File search through OCR
• Add signatures, and comments and highlight important information
• Lock Scanbot with a unique passcode or with your fingerprint (Touch ID, iOS 8+ only). Protect your PDF scans, too.
• Call numbers, open URLs, or navigate straight from the scanned documents
• Name templates for your scans (date, time, or location)
• Rename scans via placeholders of calendar entries, date, time, location, or custom placeholders.
• Multiple themes
• Supported as an iPad Productivity Apps

Pricing Plans:

• Scanbot comes with a Free and Paid ($ 6.99) plan.

54. CamScanner

We come across multiple instances in a day where we need to quickly scan a document, personal identification card, or images. These materials may be required for professional use or personal notes.

CamScanner makes it easy to scan an array of materials on the go, edit them and share them externally.

Instead of relying on text, you can just take a snap and let the app enhance image quality and declutter the background. You can even export these files in multiple formats and through various channels.

A really cool feature is the OCR (optical character recognition) which helps you extract texts from images for further editing or sharing.

Key Features

CamScanner makes your life easy with the following feature set:

• Mobile scanner to scan anything including images, documents, etc.
• OCR (converting image to text) in 16 languages.
• Auto edge cropping to clean scanned images or documents.
• Synchronize with multiple devices.
• Supports wireless printing and global faxing
• Share and collaborate through multiple channels including email, WhatsApp, WeChat or external links.
• Mobile apps for iOS and Android

Pricing

• CamScanner comes with Free,
• Premium ($ 4.99 per month)
• Business ($ 6.99 per month per user) plans.

55. Snagit

With an easy-to-use interface and excellent image editing tools, Snagit makes it one of our top picks for best productivity apps.

Add context to your discussions with this productivity app which lets you perfectly capture and share screenshots with your team members to collaborate seamlessly. The application comes with a built-in screenshot editor which allows you to instantly make changes to the picture and communicate the desired message.

Through the screen recorder feature, easily record yourself while working through things and share across your team to clear all ambiguities. Moreover, you can also add notes, text, or arrows to your images.

Key Features

• Screen recorder
• Screenshot editor
• Image combining tool
• Scrolling screen capture
• Audio recorder
• GIF creator to add to any document
• Video clips trimmer
• Third-party application integrations

Pricing

• Snagit caters to a variety of industries and its pricing plans are designed accordingly. The 4 main categories of plans are Individual, Business, Education, Government, and non-profit. The pricing varies with the number of users.

56. Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the best CRM applications for growing businesses because of the numerous features, third-party integrations, and add-on features it offers.

For large businesses that need a lot of features and want a single environment to address them, Salesforce is one of the best options available.

But that doesn’t mean that growing small businesses don’t have the option to use Salesforce.

With the explosion of the SaaS world, Salesforce has now expanded its scope of streamlined options that are easier and more affordable to make functional.

The amount of scalability of Salesforce makes it an ideal choice for companies that are expanding quickly.

Salesforce offers third-party integrations for thousands of apps and software that range from add-ons to third-party solutions.

Key Features

• Easy import process
• Comprehensive business ecosystem
• Popular Integrations
• Active Online Community
• User-Friendly Productivity Features

Pricing

• Salesforce Sales Cloud
  • Essentials: $25
  • Professional: $75
  • Enterprise: $150
  • Unlimited: $300
• Salesforce Service Cloud
  • Essentials: $25
  • Professional: $75
  • Enterprise: $150
  • Unlimited: $300
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud
  • Essentials: $400
  • Professional: $1,250
  • Enterprise: $3,750
  • Unlimited: By Request

57. DejaOffice

DejaOffice is the most affordable CRM for businesses that seek the security and privacy of an in-house database.  It is based on a traditional contact-centric model where Tasks, Calendars, and History are all tied to a Contact record. 

For entrepreneurs who do not like to be stuck with expensive monthly subscriptions, the one-time-price CRM is a great solution.  

DejaOffice also has powerful multi-user features like a multi-user scheduling calendar and the ability to pop up events and memos on a coworker’s computer.

Because most CRM systems are now SaaS based, a traditional PC-based solution is disruptive.  DejaOffice also has powerful iPhone and Android apps – true Apps that work even when the phone is out of range, which is unique in the CRM world.

Key Features

• Secure Sync to DejaOffice on iPhone and Android
• Telephone Tech Support
• Affordable One-Time Price

Pricing

• DejaOffice PC CRM for Windows
  • Standalone: $50 – One-time price
  • Express:: $130 – One-time price
  • Multi-User: $200 for 5 users ($40 per user) – One time price
• DejaOffice CRM Mobile App 
  • iPhone:: Free
  • Android: Free

58. Right Inbox

More than 250,000+ professionals have added Right Inbox to Gmail for next-level email productivity. Right Inbox is a chrome extension that sits in your Gmail account. It saves you time on repetitive tasks and helps you to send better emails, in less time consistently.

If you work in sales or recruiting this extension can be a great resource. Follow up with leads and track email clicks and opens within your Gmail account. If you spend a lot of time in email, their email reminder feature is very useful to ensure you never lose track of important messages.

Key Features

• Reminders – never lose track of your most important emails.
• Email Tracking – know who is opening your emails and who isn’t.
• Email Templates – Save yourself time with the email templates feature.
• Sequences – send follow-up emails depending on whether the last email has been opened or not.
• Recurring Emails – Stop sending the same email over and over again.
• Send Later – need an email to reach someone’s inbox at a specific time? Use the send later feature with timezone support built-in.

Pricing Plans

• Right Inbox comes with a Free and Paid ($ 5.95) plan.
• They also offer team plans which start at $4.95.

59. Fyle

Fyle is an intelligent expense management software built to boost your employees’ productivity by taking care of mundane expense reporting, tracking, and management tasks. With Fyle, you can access all your employees’ expense reports and necessary documents under one platform. This allows you to spend less time and energy collating physical records for tax season. 

For accountants and finance teams, it takes care of the tedious reconciliation process. The software helps to reconcile credit card transactions, expenses, and receipts automatically. This frees up your accountants to do more intuitive work and eliminates manual interventions and errors.

Also, Fyle comes with a robust policy check engine that can audit employee expense reports in real-time. With the software’s help, your finance team can enforce company policies rigorously while curbing potential fraud and increasing compliance.

Key features:

• OCR-based receipt scanning for paper receipts
• Mileage tracking for different types of vehicles
• Per diem reports for multiple expenses, currencies, and employees
• Create an expense report via text message, WhatsApp, Fylemail, Slack, Gmail, and Outlook
• Schedule and automate expense reports creation and submission 
• Integrate comprehensive company expense policies into Fyle
• Auto-flag violations that are against company rules such as duplicate expenses, expenses made on weekends, etc. in real-time
• Automatic corporate card reconciliation
• Ability to integrate with card provider and get direct bank feed
• Track and gain visibility into multiple card programs
• Create an approval workflow based on your company hierarchy
• Make bulk payments to multiple employees at the same time
• Get accurate spend insights and analytics based on categories, departments, cost centers, projects, and business units.
• Direct integration with your favorite travel and accounting tools

Pricing:

• Standard ($4.99 per active user/month billed annually)
• Business ($8.99 per active user/month billed annually)
• Enterprise (Custom pricing based on volume and usage)

60. Scribe

For anyone creating documentation or sharing instructions, Scribe can instantly save you time. It’s a free Chrome extension that captures a workflow you complete on the computer, instantly turning it into step-by-step instructions with screenshots. Individual guides can be shared via link or embedded in another tool, such as a CMS or knowledge base.

Users often use Scribe to create SOPs, work instructions, customer support guides, knowledge base articles, or quick how-to guides.

Scribe’s newest feature, Pages, allows users to create more complex guides, stringing together individual Scribes with other instructions like YouTube or Loom videos. It’s a free replacement for manually creating instructions in Word or Google Docs.

Key Features

• Instantly create step-by-step instructions with screenshots and written instructions
• Free Chrome extension with unlimited use and users
• Teams functionality for finding saved and popular guides
• Recommended Scribes shows you the most popular public guides for the app or website you’re in
• Pages include integration with tools such as YouTube and Loom
• Scribes can be embedded into Notion, Asana, ClickUp, HubSpot, WordPress, Guru, or other tools

Pricing

• The free plan includes a Chrome extension with unlimited users, guides, and pages
• The Pro plan is $29/user per month and allows desktop recording, screenshot editing, white labeling, and more

Best Productivity Apps for Web Automation

61. Zapier

Time and again, we find ourselves working on more than one application to get things done. The perpetual need to hop from one app to another usually results in frustration and decreased productivity.

This is where Zapier comes into play! Integrating and automating the applications that you use daily to provide a streamlined user experience.

This free productivity app connects your applications and creates workflows, also known as Zaps so that you keep your focus on important things. By creating a Zap, the application essentially works on a cause-and-effect principle. You set up an action that is repeated every time a specific ‘trigger’ happens.

An example of this is getting a Slack notification every time you receive an email in Gmail. You just need to create a Zap once and the application will repeat it automatically without any need for further actions.

Key Features:

• Creation of Zaps
• Activity dashboard
• Online Zap templates
• Tasks management
• Tasks history
• 1000+ application integrations

Pricing:

• Basic (free forever)
• Premium (starting at $20) plans

62. IFTTT

On #16, in this roundup of free top productivity apps, we have IFTTT or If This, Then That. The tool works on a similar principle of cause-and-effect by integrating multiple applications for you. Through IFTTT you can connect applications and devices, and the resulting combinations are called ‘Applets’.

By creating Applets, you’re connecting two devices and prompting the application to automatically complete the tasks for you. You can pre-define a task, and let the application complete it on one app, based on the condition on another app.

The tool comes with a pre-built Applets repository that you can easily utilize to make things easy for you, but you can also create them according to your preferences.

Key Features:

• Pre-built Applets
• 300+ Application integrations
• Home appliances integrations
• Activity dashboard
• Custom notifications
• Simple user-interface

Pricing:

• Free plan
• Developer plan at $199/year

63. Semaphore

Semaphore enables developers to adopt Continuous Delivery at the right scale by getting rid of all technical restrictions. This is done to decrease the number of employees required, and the need for purchasing expensive infrastructure. Using semaphore is as simple as defining your workflows and then simply focusing on developing your app!

Key Features:

• Customizable scaling
• Programmable pipelines
• Incomparable flexibility

Pricing:

• Free plan
• Pay-as-you-go starting at $0.000125/sec for Linus/Docker/Android
• Enterprise Cloud

Best Productivity Apps for Social Media

64. Buffer

If you have an active social media life, you need Buffer. Buffer is designed and created primarily for helping you manage social media content. You can share content through multiple social media sites and stay connected to all social media accounts all the while facilitating your social media schedule and posts.

Buffer helps you accomplish this by logging into social media sites in one go instead of you having to log in manually for each site. The software basically does this through automatic post scheduling on all the linked social media sites, taking away the worries of daily posting.

If you own a small business or are a freelancer, this productivity app can be a great asset professionally. It also comes with advanced data analytics.

Through a number of clicks, retweets, user reach, and mentions, you can assess the effectiveness of posts and easily carry out community management.

Plus, this top productivity app helps you integrate with integration with WordPress, Chrome, RSS readers, and other significant tools for tracing out content.

Key Features:

Here is a list of features and facilities Buffer can offer you:

• 2-step account login (for security)
• Multiple posts and tweets with one click
• Customized scheduling
• Social profile sharing
• Multi-media format sharing
• Team collaboration (through administrator rights)
• Profile management
• Analytics and insights
• Statistics monitoring and comparison
• RSS feeds connectivity
• iOS and Android support
• Category: Part of the Best Productivity Apps for Mac

Pricing Plans:

• Starter (Free, Pro: $15 per month) and Business (Small: $99 per month, Medium: $199 per month, Large: $399 per month) plans.

65. Hootsuite

Another productivity tool on our list is HootSuite. This tool is an oldie but remains one of the most important tools that we are going to discuss in this article.

As we know how important social media has become in our lives and how vital it is for our responses on social to be impeccable and timely. This is where HootSuite comes into its own.

This productivity tool allows you to handle all of your social media accounts from a single interface so that you can see everything updating in front of your eyes at all times and you don’t miss any important updates regarding your professional and personal life.

So, you can schedule your posts, delegate social assignments to your social media teams to deploy at the appropriate time, measure the performance of your social media handles, and much more.

Key Features:

• Connect 20+ social networks
• Text, image, and video sharing
• Post publisher with the calendar
• Analytics and insights
• Social streams

Pricing:

• Free plan
• Professional plan at $19/month
• Team plan at $99/month
• Business plan at $599/month

Notable mentions:

• Thrive Agency ranked Buffer #1 on its list of PM Tools for Social Media Managers. Thrive is a creative digital marketing agency headquartered in Texas working with clients globally to offer digital value.

See also:

10 Best Productivity Hacks to Crush It in 2020

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🎁 Bonus Tools

66. Drag App for Chrome:

Drag is a task management tool that helps users to streamline their inbox for easy communication. This Gmail add-on turns your email inbox into respective Kanban boards for convenient tracking and accessibility. The application integrates with other Google Apps without any trouble, facilitating the users to minimize switching between multiple applications.

67. Agilean

Agilean is a project management software designed for IT enterprises. The software provides Kanban boards for planning and execution of respective projects and tasks.  Agilean provides analytics and reports for each task as well, which makes monitoring and controlling easy for the user. Additional features such as task dependencies, Gantt charts, and integration with other applications are also offered.

Notable mentions:

Apiumhub ranks Agilean as no. 1 on their list of 13 Agile PM Tools You Should Know. Apiumhub is a software development company based in Barcelona that transformed into a tech hub, mainly offering services of mobile app development, web development & software architecture.

68. Track.ly

Another notable addition to our list of free productivity apps is Trackly. Keeping track of daily time spent on multiple activities can become difficult, especially if you’re working on more than one task at a time.

Track.ly is a productivity tracker for you and your team, which monitors your daily time spent on various activities and lets you analyze your behavior patterns regarding the time being invested in each activity, consequently helping you to effectively manage your time.

69. Gmelius

The last tool in our list of free productivity apps is Gmelius. A complete CRM solution seamlessly integrated with Gmail and G-suite. Best suited for small and mid-sized companies, Gmelius provides efficient email integration to keep track of all the clients’ communication.

Gmelius converts all of the messages in your inbox into tasks and then transfers them to respective Kanban boards so that you and your team can track them in a better way. This helps the teams to understand the workflow better and act upon it accordingly.

70. Bulkly

Connect your Buffer account to Bulkly and you can easily add content to your Buffer queues automatically. You can create a variety of social media updates using CSV files, RSS feeds, or even by importing your previous Buffer posts. Best of all, you can automatically recycle all this content into Buffer giving you a true set and forget approach to scheduling social media updates. Plans start at $12 a month.

Productivity Apps Common Questions

1. What Are Some Important Features that Productivity Software should have?

Here are some important features that the productivity software you choose should have. They are:

• Organization of different tasks and priorities
• An Easy-to-Use and Intuitive User Interface
• Integration with third-party applications
• Extra security
• Affordable
• Easy Management of all of the different tasks and processes
• Word Processing
• Spreadsheet creation
• Cloud Database
• Multiple-platform support

2. Why do People Use Productivity Apps?

Productivity applications are important tools that people use to make sure that their professional and personal lives get more productive and that they can achieve more, on a daily basis.

Many different apps can help you do that, but to make sure that you make the right call, consult the document, compare different features and prices of the apps, and make the right choice.

3. What are the best online productivity tools of 2023?

The Internet is full of tools for this and that purpose. To go through each tool is a nightmare. Even narrowing down your choice from the hundreds of options available online is a hassle. Following, however, are some of the best online productivity tools that you can start your search with:

1. nTask
2. Trello
3. Asana
4. Bitrix24
5. Todoist
6. Zoom
7. Slack
8. Clockify
9. Chanty
10. Harvest

4. What is the best team productivity app for small to medium-sized organizations? 

nTask is perhaps the best team productivity app for small to medium-sized organizations. Small organizations need a compact, all-in-one solution that is not only feature-rich but also inexpensive. 

nTask, fortunately, is a tool that comes with comprehensive management solutions and productivity features. It is easy to use and offers tons of advanced features. In addition, it offers mobile apps, foolproof security, and third-party integrations, making it easy for users to manage and improve team productivity. Its seven solutions are designed to help users manage different aspects of their business. The modules in question are:

1. Project management
2. Task management
3. Team management
4. Risk management
5. Issue tracking
6. Time tracking and timesheets
7. Meeting management

Overall, the tool offers great value for money and is a must-have for small to medium-sized businesses.

Conclusion

So there you have it, these were the most amazing and effective productivity applications in the market right now.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that not each of them is going to fall perfectly under the criteria that you have set for yourself, so you need to make sure that you make the right decision while choosing the application.

Compare the apps whose features and prices attract you and choose the best one from them.

Do you have a list of top free productivity apps that you and your team stand by? Give your suggestions in the comments below. Happy Hunting.

See also:

The 27 Best Task Management Software for Startups in 2023