Remote and flexible work options are here to stay for companies across the globe. The benefits of a work-from-home (WFH) lifestyle include everything from increased productivity and employee satisfaction to better work-life balance and lower operating costs. 

75% of remote workers say that they’re more productive without typical in-office distractions. It’s no surprise that many forward-thinking organizations see remote work as a win-win for everyone involved.  

With the WFH lifestyle comes an array of tools to help remote employees improve performance. Let’s take a look at some of the top tools you and your team can use this year to reach new heights. 

• What are work-from-home tools? 
• What to look for in work-from-home tools
• 13 must-try work-from-home tools

What are work-from-home tools? 

WFH tools go beyond the essentials like a computer, phone, and dependable internet connection. These digital tools should make your workday easier, encourage asynchronous communication, and promote collaboration. 

Remote work software may include communication and networking systems like video conferencing applications, messaging tools, cloud storage, project and task management systems, and more. These tools are necessary to help teams manage workloads, stay aligned on deadlines, and improve communications around projects and tasks.

What to look for in work-from-home tools

• Accessibility 
• Productivity 
• Cost effectiveness 
• Ease of use

1Accessibility 

Remote workers should be able to access company tools from almost anywhere using the internet on their computer or phone. Search for WFH tools with minimal maintenance and installation when looking to implement something new. Luckily, many of the best tools are cloud based, making them highly accessible to all users. 

2Productivity 

When looking at WFH tools, ask yourself if the tool will be able to serve your team’s needs effectively. A good tool will serve its purpose well. You can research customer reviews to see how other companies use specific tools and to determine if a specific application or software is right for your team.

3Cost effectiveness 

Even the top WFH tools shouldn’t be too expensive. If you’re working on a budget, compare the pricing of different tools to see what will best meet your needs at a reasonable cost. Beware of tools with hidden additional costs that may arise after you make your purchase. 

4Ease of use

While there will be a learning curve with any new tool, the best WFH applications and software will have intuitive user interfaces. Search for a well-designed tool that is easy to operate. Employees will be more likely to implement a tool into their workday if they enjoy using it!

13 must-try work-from-home tools

• Fellow
• Evernote
• Calendly
• ClickUp
• Asana 
• Monday.com 
• Google Meet
• Slack
• Google Docs
• Trello
• Toggl
• Time Doctor
• Hubstaff

Meeting tools

1Fellow

Features:

Fellow is the best place for teams to gather and have productive meetings. Using Fellow, you and your teams can build collaborative meeting agendas, record decisions, and hold each other accountable. It’s the meeting agenda app your team will love to use. Our tool is rated the #1 meeting management software on G2 and is loved by some of the world’s best teams. Make your meetings delightful today by assigning action items and giving and receiving meaningful feedback during and after each meeting. 

Pricing:

• Free – $0/month (for teams of up to 10 people)
• Pro – $6/month (per user for teams of up to 50 people)
• Business – custom pricing (for organizations that need a hub for all of their meetings)
• Enterprise – custom pricing (for companies looking to implement a holistic management system)

2Evernote

Features:

Using Evernote, you can create and assign tasks inside your notes with reminders, due dates, and flags. It’s a paperless alternative for your important documents, too. You can use the tool to save information that matters without the desk clutter and save and mark up web pages with arrows, highlights, and text to make them more useful to you. 

Pricing:

• Free – $0/month
• Personal – $10.99 CAD/month 
• Professional – $13.99 CAD/month 
• Evernote Teams – $14.99

3Calendly

Features:

Calendly is a scheduling automation platform that you and your team can use to eliminate the back-and-forth emails that go along with scheduling meetings. Calendly is beneficial for teams across various fields looking to implement seamless scheduling processes. You and your teammates can email, text, or add your availability to your website for internal colleagues, prospects, and recruits to book high-value meetings with you. 

Pricing:

• Basic – $0/month 
• Essentials – $9 USD/month (per user, billed annually)
• Professional – $12 USD/month (per user, billed annually)
• Teams – $16 USD/month (per user, billed annually)
• Enterprise – custom pricing

Project management tools

4ClickUp

Features:

ClickUp is a cloud-based tool that helps teams plan, track, and manage any work that requires project management. It strives to replace other applications like Trello, Jira, and Asana. You and your team can use ClickUp to build an effective workflow, create marketing campaigns, develop and manage sprints, and more. 

Pricing:

• Free – $0/month
• Unlimited – $5 USD/month (per user)
• Business – $12 USD/ month (per user)
• Business Plus – $19 USD/ month (per user)
• Enterprise – custom pricing

5Asana 

Features:

Asana is a digital project and task manager. It aims to get rid of siloed work culture so your team can focus on what’s important: organizing work and ensuring seamless collaboration. The tool brings your team’s work together in one shared space in timelines, list views, and boards so you can make it easy for your team to focus on the priority tasks at hand. 

Pricing:

• Basic – $0/month
• Premium – $10.99 USD/month (per user, billed annually)
• Business – $24.99 USD/month (per user, billed annually)
• Enterprise – custom pricing 

6Monday.com 

Features:

Monday.com is a work operating system that helps teams shape workflows to boost team alignment, efficiency, and productivity. Using this task management tool, you can customize your work, processes, tools, and files. You can also bridge silos to bring teams within your organization together to drive business impact. The tool gives you a high-level overview of your organization with customizable dashboards, which is beneficial for managers who want to decide when to scale their teams. 

Pricing:

• Individual – $0/month (up to two seats)
• Basic – $11 CAD/month (per user, billed annually)
• Standard – $14 CAD/month (per user, billed annually)
• Pro – $22 CAD/month (per user, billed annually)
• Enterprise – custom pricing 

Collaboration tools

7Google Meet

Features:

Google Meet is a G-Suite tool for video and audio calls. You can use the tool to present business proposals, collaborate on projects, or have one-on-ones with your direct reports from any device at any time. Google Meet makes it easy to collaborate with simple scheduling, easy recording options, and adaptive language to help everyone stay engaged. You can join as many meetings as you’d like, so there’s no need to stop the collaboration before its natural end. The best part is that you can use Fellow’s Chrome extension to easily take notes, jot down feedback, and assign action items during every meeting. 

Pricing: 

• Business Starter – $7.80 CAD/month (per user)
• Business Standard – $15.60 CAD/month (per user)
• Business Plus – $23.40 CAD/month (per user)
• Enterprise – custom pricing

8Slack

Features:

Slack is a digital headquarters for teams across the globe. The application can bring your team together using organized spaces for everyone and everything you need for work. Teams love this tool because of how easy it is to chat, send audio and video clips, or hop on a huddle to talk things out in real time. You can use the channels feature to connect across departments, companies, and time zones, too! 

Pricing:

• Free – $0/month 
• Pro – $6.67 USD/month (per user, billed annually)
• Business+ – $12.50 USD/month (per user, billed annually)
• Enterprise Grid – custom pricing 

9Google Docs

Features:

Google Docs is a tool for creating collaborative online documents. You and your teammates can use the platform to edit documents together securely and share in real time from any device, using any modern web browser. Use @-mentions to pull relevant people into the document, files, and even events into your online Docs and connect with other Google apps you already love to save time. 

Pricing: 

• Business Starter – $7.80 CAD/month (per user)
• Business Standard – 15.60 CAD/month (per user)
• Business Plus – $23.40 CAD/month (per user)
• Enterprise – custom pricing

10Trello

Features:

Trello aims to bring all of your tasks, teammates, and tools together in one place, even if everyone works remotely. Using boards, lists, and cards, you can easily organize what needs to get done and who’s doing what. From brainstorming sessions to project management, you can use Trello to keep your tasks in order, track your colleagues’ deadlines, and ensure your direct reports and employees across the company are aligned. 

Pricing:

• Free – $0/month 
• Standard – $5/month (per user, billed annually)
• Premium – $10/month (per user, billed annually)
• Enterprise – $17.50/month (per user, billed annually)

Time-tracking tools

11Toggl

Features:

If you’re looking for an intuitive tool that makes time tracking painless for the whole team, look no further than Toggl. It’s especially useful for teams that need to track billable hours and are currently filling out timesheets manually. Toggl will help you make payroll and quarterly reporting easy with accurate time reports you can use to inform team and company-wide decisions. 

Pricing:

• Free – $0/month (for up to five users)
• Starter – $9 USD/month (per user)
• Premium – $18 USD/month (per user)
• Enterprise – custom pricing

12Time Doctor

Features: 

Time Doctor is an automatic time tracker that informs you where your team excels and where you could use assistance. Managers can use Time Doctor to measure how their team spends its time and offer encouragement (or step in) when necessary. It can also help recognize strong performers on the team and give employees valuable knowledge about their strengths and weaknesses. 

Pricing:

• Basic – $70 USD (per user, billed annually) 
• Standard – $100 USD (per user, billed annually)
• Premium – $200 USD (per user, billed annually)

13Hubstaff

Features: 

Hubstaff is a work time tracker for managing field or remote teams. The application contains a time tracker, online timesheets, time reporting, a time clock, and geofence time tracking, alongside a variety of other employee monitoring, workforce management, and agile project management features. Hubstaff can help you improve workplace productivity by keeping employees and managers informed of how they’re spending their days. 

Pricing:

• Desk Free – $0 USD/month (one user)
• Desk Starter – $5.83 USD/month (per user)
• Desk Pro – $8.33 USD/month (per user)
• Enterprise – custom pricing 

Parting advice

Without WFH tools, it may feel impossible to get everything done. You may have a hard time keeping yourself and others accountable, communicating quickly, delivering feedback, running effective meetings, or delivering simple status updates. 

The right WFH tools will allow you to work faster and more efficiently while avoiding common mistakes and errors. Try one of these 13 tools in 2023 to get the job done right!