The world is turning to the “new normal.” Work from home is now slowly turning into a commonality. After experiencing the global pandemic, many businesses are now venturing into this kind of setup.
Employees are now rummaging on their laptops, talking to clients, or finishing a task while in their PJs. Dining room tables became make-shift office desks, and meeting happens while gazing on each other at the screen.
While this is a growing trend these days, many have been in this setup for several years. According to studies, there is a notable growth of 44% in remote workers in the last five years. Experts expect this number of people working from home to increase in the coming years.
You might have discovered many best work-from-home apps that you lean on to boost your productivity if you have been this doing for years. If you belong to those who did not have a choice but to be in this new working framework, you can bank on these available apps to make this arrangement bearable.
In this article, we will discuss some work-from-home apps that can help you in your daily task, either as a team or as an individual.
Best Work-From-Home Apps You Can Use
These apps can help boost your efficiency, improve productivity, help your concentration, and enhance communication between your employer, co-workers, and clients. Leveraging on these apps can
1. Slack
Working with a team with a work from home setup can be challenging. However, one of the ideal and classic communication tools that you can utilize is Slack. This app allows you to communicate with your team through direct messages sent in individual or group channels.
Slack can help minimize delays in response time, which is essential in working with a remote team. Slack is not only for sending instant messages but can also let your team share any attachment and update on work status – being on quick or lunch break.
On an individual level, Slack can set reminders of tasks for you. Just right your reminder and set the time when you want the Slackbot to prompt you of your job.
Price: FREE which you can upgrade to Standard that starts at $6.67 per month
2. Dropbox
Chances are, you might be utilizing this app long before you’re required to stay at home and work on your couch. If you are working remotely for several years now, you’ll know about how Dropbox can become an essential tool with regards to filing sharing.
Dropbox is a great work-from-home app that lets you upload, transfer, and easily share any document, photos, videos, and other big files. Sharing files of any size are probably one of the app’s best feature is you can do it in a breeze. Shared files come in a link rather than the usual huge attachment that can be a bit of a challenge to send via email.
Dropbox also allows you to access files even if you are offline. You can also use the app to scan with the use of your camera and save it in a PDF file.
Price: FREE and a paid version with higher storage that starts at $9.99 per month
3. Zoom
It is deemed as one of the most popular work-from-home communication apps these days. Zoom is another tool that is great for holding online meetings, training, and even webinars.
Not only it became essential to those who are working from home but also to people who want to reconnect with family and friends. It has also become a staple for online classes around the planet.
One of the best features Zoom can offer to have around 100 people teleconference all at once. This feature made Zoom a top choice when holding meetings, online classes, or webinars. Should you want to conduct online training with a more significant number of participants, you can also do so with Zoom, as the app allows up to 100,000 view-only attendees.
Price: FREE which you can upgrade that starts at $14.99 per month
4. Clockify
Checking your team’s productivity is perhaps one of the hardest things to monitor when physically apart. Luckily, because of technology, you can already do so these days.
One of the best app to use to track your employees remotely is Clockify. The tracking work time app monitors your team’s work hours. Before starting with work, your employee has to start time and stop it when done with the day’s workload. If not tracked automatically, you can put additional time manually. You can quickly generate reports to check on their logged hours and all of their tasks.
For freelancers, Clockify allows you to set your hourly rates and your billable time with your daily earning calculated automatically at the end.
Price: FREE which you add features that starts for $9.99 per month
5. Asana
Asana is among the favorites of many remote workers. As a team who is working miles away from each other, team updates can be a bit nerve-wracking. Asana made the job easier for you.
As a project management software, this work-from-home app lets you and your teamwork on projects together wherever you may be. You can add to-do tasks, reminders, work requests, and even create projects along with your team. You can add all of these on a board where you can put due dates, assign task heads, attach files into the project, and many others. You can even add comments to different tasks in the app, which will show in real-time.
Price: FREE which you upgrade to a premium that starts at $10.99 per month when billed annually
6. Toggl
As you work on your own at home, you may be easily get distracted by your bed, urging you to go to sleep. Your living room can also tempt you to open the TV and watch Netflix instead or lay down on your couch, contemplating things for hours. When this happens, you can rely on Toggl to save the day.
Toggl is for remote workers at the very start. This app can help you stay on track and monitors your hours. It can also help manage your workflow. While working on a project, Toggl can remind you if you are taking a long time on the task than you should be doing.
Among its features, it can give you an analytical time management report, make suggestions to track your activities, and integrate your calendars.
Price: Starts at $9 per month when billed annually
7. Calendar
It is easy to lose track of time and even days when working from home. This reason is why it is vital to utilize an app that will help keep track of what day it is in the week.
While you can leverage on Google Calendar to help you manage your time wisely, it does not provide advance features need by most freelance and work at home employees. Instead, you can lean on the app called “Calendar.”
This super calendar can help you manage your time and never miss any critical dates in the future. It can collate your Google, Outlook, or Apple calendars into one so it will be easier to monitor your activities.
Price: FREE with a paid version which starts at $10 per month
8. Todoist
Working at home and working on a daily to-do task is not a very good combo, although it is essential. To help you with this, you can use another great work-from-home app called Todoist.
With Todoist, it would be easy to organize your tasks, take note of deadlines, work on reminders, and set due dates. You can also set which tasks you need to prioritize, assign workload to colleagues, and track your progress. To make it more efficient, sync it with other apps like Calendar, Slack, Gmail, and Amazon Alexa.
Price: FREE with a paid version which starts at $3 per month
9. Spark
Emails play an essential role if you work at home, and Spark is an intelligent email client who prioritizes vital emails. It can notify you when you receive an email from your workmates so you can communicate and correspond with them faster.
Spark can also automatically collect and categorize your emails and allow your team members to work on the same email remotely, leading to better collaboration and less misinformation on your team.
Price: FREE with the paid premium version which starts at $6.39 per month
10. Google Drive
Google Drive is a great app to work with your team. It can offer real-time collaboration as you and your team can work on the same files in Google Docs. You can also work on any statistical data in Google Sheets and even create presentation slides in Google Slides. All of this comes in handy with Google Drive, but interestingly you can also snap a photo using your Android phone and save in the drive as a PDF.
Price: FREE
Final Thoughts
Working remotely at home can be a great privilege as you can avoid dodging with traffic, do not miss family time, and work at your most comfortable outfit. However, one of the biggest challenges is how to maximize your productivity. It is also hard to collaborate with your team and track their performance.
With the help of these work-from-home apps that you can utilize, working on your dinner table can be a great setup. While it is not easy, you can take advantage of these apps to work faster and help develop a better working habit.
About Author:
Maricar Morga worked as a marketing professional for almost a decade. She became part of the biggest real estate company/mall operator in the Philippines and handled concerts, events and community service-related activities. One of her activities became a nominee in the ICSC Asia-Pacific Shopping Center Awards 2018. Leaving her corporate job for good to pursue her dreams, she has now ventured in the path of content writing and currently writes for <Softvire Australia and Softvire New Zealand. A Harry Potter fan, she loves to watch animated series and movies during her spare time.
