44 Productivity tools that will make your life much easier

Productivity Tools That Will Make Your Life Much Easier

Introduction

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and consistent effort.” – Paul J. Meyer, a renowned personal and professional development expert.

While productivity is a personal trait, productivity tools are influential assets. These tools help individuals claim the edge and organizations gain efficiency.

Also, considering the competitive times and abundance of choices., selecting the right tools becomes difficult. But here is a list of various productivity tool types for you to select the best fit for you.

What are productivity tools?

Productivity tools are the software that allows users to work on tasks efficiently and easily, ultimately saving them time, energy, and resources.  These tools enhance business productivity by streamlining operations, reducing manual efforts, automating repetitive tasks, organizing information, and improving collaboration.

44 Best productivity tools [2024]

Here’s a curated list of productivity tools designed to enhance efficiency, streamline tasks, and keep you organized.

Project management

1) ProofHub

table view of ProofHub

ProofHub is a leading choice when it comes to finding the best productivity tools for project management software. The tool offers advanced features to help you handle multiple projects, manage tasks, and track progress. 

The collaborative software facilitates teamwork by centralizing all your projects, team communication, and work-related information, saving time in locating information. It ensures everyone stays on track and aligned with objectives for enhanced accountability and successful execution. 

Top features:

  • One place to manage work from start to finish
  • You have complete control over tasks
  • Communicate and collaborate with your team in real-time 
  • Multiple views like Kanban board, Gantt chart, etc. to get a quick overview of progress
  • Keep track of time spent on each step
  • Simplify and organize your workflow by uploading files and documents.

2) nTask

ntaskmanager

The next tool that makes it to the productivity tools list is nTask. It is a project management software that keeps your team in sync and focused.  From planning projects and managing tasks to tracking task progress and status, you get everything in one place.

Also, you get a dedicated document management system to manage all your project documents.  

Top features:

  • Time tracking and employee timesheets
  • Meeting tools with the ability to create meeting agendas, discussion points, and follow-up actions
  • To-Do Lists
  • Team Collaboration

3) GanttPro

GanttPRO

Another great team productivity tool is GanttPRO. With GanttPRO online Gantt chart software, you can be sure all of your team members keep track of tasks. A visually appealing Gantt chart timeline provides project participants with an immediate picture of how the plan is progressing. Thanks to collaboration opportunities, no detail will be lost.

Top features:

  • Task management and assignment
  • Team collaboration with comments, files, and notifications
  • Time log for personal tasks, personal calendars
  • Deadline management
  • Export and Sharing via Public URL
  • Resource workload

4. Birdview

BirdView

Birdview is one of the work management tools to increase productivity. The tool provides you visibility into all projects, resources, and finances so that everyone gets a single source of truth. It is great for teams aiming to enhance their efficiency, collaboration, and project visibility.

You can start by selecting the functionality that you need, and add more features later on as your business grows.

Top features:

  • Advanced project and task management
  • Budget and cost management
  • Resource planning and scheduling
  • Custom reports and dashboards
  • Portfolio management and analytics
  • Time tracking

Scheduling & Calendar

5) Calendar

Calendar Logo

Calendar comes across as one of the best productivity tools for scheduling & calendar. The AI-enabled solution learns your schedule and organizes meetings and events on its own on your calendar. Also, its customizable interface allows you to schedule events and teams.

It also syncs across multiple calendar tools and devices, saving you time to focus on high-priority tasks.

 Top features:

  • Share calendars and designate who sees what on your calendar
  • Analytics for your Calendar so you can see where you’re opening your time each day.
  • Automatically invite and schedule meeting attendees
  • Leverage analytics tools to assess calendar data and reveal how you spend your time with people and in meetings
  • Integrates multiple digital calendars like Google Calendar, Outlook, and iCal as well as another email, project management, and collaboration tools.

Marketing Tool

6) HubSpot’s Marketing Hub

HubSpot - Help Desk Software

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub is the best team collaboration software to launch, manage, and sustain your marketing efforts and campaigns. Since the Marketing Hub is connected to HubSpot’s all-in-one CRM tool, your team can control your customer’s journey from the moment they visit your site to when they sign-up for your tools.

Each customer’s interactions are stored and shared among your teams to ensure every member can view, engage, and connect with any potential customer and coordinate with your team.

Top features:

  • Data sync between Marketing, Customer Service, and Sales teams
  • Contact database and contact management
  • Shared conversations for each contact
  • Automation software for email, social media, and more
  • Tool integrations with no code required

Email Management & Email Finder

7) Clean Email

clean.email

Clean Email is an email inbox cleaner app to save you time from cluttered inboxes. It is one of the productivity tools that make work easier by grouping similar emails together using filters and rules. The tool can automatically delete multiple emails, block unwanted senders, or unsubscribe from any email subscription.

This helps you save time and focus on what truly matters. You can even set up some auto clean rules to ensure that your inbox won’t look messy again.

Top features:

  • Convenient, bulk email organization.
  • Smart sorting of email messages.
  • Block unwanted senders
  • Unsubscribe from noisy marketing newsletters.
  • Automated rule-based inbox management.

8) Email Finder

Hunter - Email Finder

Email Finder is an email productivity tool created by Hunter to help you find email addresses in seconds. Just add the first and last name of the person you need to reach out to and the website’s domain. You’ll get the result in seconds.

This tool also comes with a Chrome extension that can find the email addresses of a website in a single click.

Top features:

  • Instant verification
  • Access to 66 million website data sources
  • 25 free email lookups per month
  • Can perform bulk email lookups for a list of people
  • Available in the API

9) Right Inbox

Right Inbox - Email Finder

Right Inbox is one of the best productivity tools for email management & email finder. Many professionals use it as a Gmail extension for next-level email productivity.

Right Inbox saves you time on repetitive tasks and helps you to send better emails, in less time consistently.

Top features:

  • See who opens your emails with email tracking
  • Send sequences with follow-ups that automatically send if a recipient doesn’t reply
  • Set email reminders to not lose track of important conversations
  • Schedule emails to be sent later
  • Add notes to emails, for your eyes only

10) Sanebox

If you need an app that declutters and cleans up your inbox automatically, then Sanebox is the app for you. It automatically sorts your emails into different folders depending on each email’s importance so that you can focus on what matters.

Top features:

  • Uses smart filtering for email prioritization
  • Saves your attachments into the cloud
  • Snooze email until a time set by you

11) Unroll.me

UnrollMe

The best thing about Unroll.me is that it is as simple as it can get. It cleans up your inbox by arranging your subscriptions in the form of a virtual roll-up. You can access it whenever you have some free time.

Top features:

  • The roll-up allows you to read emails at the time chosen by you.
  • Makes your mailbox clutter-free
  • Secure and easy to access

12) Boomerang

Boomerang for gmail

Boomerang is a dedicated email management application for Gmail that schedules and sets email reminders. The coolest thing about it is that it allows you to ‘boomerang’ a message back to your inbox to remind you about it at the set time.

Top features:

  • Get the ultimate control over when to send and receive an email message
  • Remove interruptions so you can finish important tasks
  • Block off times for deep-focus work

13) Inbox

Inbox by Gmail is the inbox that works for you. It saves a lot of time by preventing any need for you to dig through emails by showing you the highlights directly.

Top features:

  • Add reminders to the top of your inbox
  • Snooze emails and reminders
  • Use bundles to group messages and get the clutter out of your way

14) Airmail

Airmail

It was designed from the ground up to provide you a consistent experience whether you have single or multiple accounts. It is a lightning fast mail client for Mac and iPhone.

Top features:

  • Modern and easy-to-use interface
  • Get to your emails without any interruption
  • Powerful and customizable email app

Communication

15) Slack

Slack: best team management tool

It is the perfect team collaboration software that unifies your entire team’s communications. It integrates with the apps you use every day such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box to name a few.

Top features:

  • Chat and team communication
  • Set up reminders
  • Highlight words to be notified as they appear in a conversation

16) Shift

Shift

Consider Shift as the browser to manage multiple web applications and accounts in one place. It saves you from logging in and out chaos by connecting all your Gmail, Office 365, and Outlook accounts. It provides you seamless browsing experience by facilitating a quick switch.

Top features:

  • Cross-platform support (MacOS, Windows, Linux)
  • Manage all of your apps and accounts in one place
  • Custom desktop notifications
  • Unified search across all your Google accounts to find exactly what you need
  • Focused browsing web tabs

17) Fleep

Fleep

Fleep acts as a flexible messenger that integrates with email and lets you share and store files easily. Give it a try, if you are tired of those endless email conversations.

Top features:

  • Truly flexible communication
  • Everything is in one place and easy to keep track of
  • Contact anyone, anywhere, and on any device

18) Chanty

chanty

Chanty is a team communication and collaboration software to boost communication among teams. Your team can use it to communicate 1:1 or in groups – both private and public. They can share files, mention members in comments, and pin ideas for quick access. 

Apart from this, it offers a centralized interface called Teambook, where you can manage tasks, teams, files, links, calls, and timelines in one place. 

Top features:

  • Free unlimited message history
  • Built-in task management
  • Audio/video calls and voice messaging
  • Integrations
  • File sharing

19) Bit.ai

Bit.ai: best team management software

Bit.ai is a document management and knowledge-based solution to store, share, track, collaborate, and manage all company assets. Be it documents, files, or other content, your team can access everything effortlessly, getting some actual work done. It offers live documentation for real-time collaboration.

Also, you can stack various elements like diagrams, surveys, texts, etc. together under one smart roof as per your preference.  

Top features:

  • Real-time collaboration on work without the to-and-fro email and chat messages
  • Share documents with the team and clients, or keep them private. You can even generate trackable links to get intelligent insights on user engagement. 
  • Store all media files- videos, images, PDFs, logos, etc in one central location for easy acces

20) Google Docs

Google Docs

Google Docs is a free web-based productivity tool teams can use in their routine business operations. You can create, write, edit, share, and collaborate on these docs from anywhere, anytime.

It is a widely used document storage and work management software that allows individuals to collaborate. You just need a Google account to access it at no cost. 

Top features:

  • Smart editing and styling tools
  • Choose from a variety of resumes, reports, and pre-made documents
  • Create a document through a browser or mobile app

21) Skype

Skype

Skype is a popular video conferencing app that facilitates collaboration via video call – regardless of the location. Apart from that, you also get multiple collaborative features, such as screen sharing, call recording, and smart messaging.

It also provides end-to-end encryption to keep your information private and secure as per security standards. 

Top features:

  • Take your conversation to a new level with rich video features
  • Share messages, photos, and emoticons in real time
  • Call mobile and landline numbers at affordable rates

22) Zoom

Zoom: tool for team communication

Zoom is one of the best productivity tools for remote workers. It provides remote conferencing services using cloud computing. It is a real powerhouse tool that can accommodate up to 500 participants to collaborate seamlessly.

Top features:

  • HD video and high-quality audio
  • Screen sharing and a full suite of collaboration features
  • Easy to start and join

23) GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting: best software for team management

GoToMeeting allows turning online meetings into conference calls. It is an online video conferencing tool for users to schedule meetings and share screens. No matter where you are, your personal meeting is now just a few clicks away.

Top features:

  • Simple answer calls – no codes or PINs needed
  • Dynamic video conferencing
  • Screen sharing without the hassle
  • 6 HD video feeds per session
  • Highlighting tools to mark up what’s on the screen

Time tracking

24) Toggl

Toggl Track

Toggl is one of the best tools for office productivity. It is an ultimate time-saver app that is insanely simple to use. Toggl’s time tracker is built for speed and drives a stake in the heart of timesheets.

This time tracking software can integrate tens of other tools to increase its functionality.

Top features:

  • Instant overview of your billable time and team progress
  • Offline time tracking and mobile functionalities
  • Reports directly delivered to managers

25) Harvest

Harvest online time management tool

Known as one of the best time-tracking software, Harvest lets your business tick. Whether it’s from the web, your smartphone, or another application, time tracking was never so easy.

Top features:

  • Simple and intuitive interface
  • Get insights into the project with powerful reporting
  • Create and send invoices online

26) Paymo

Paymo is a project management app

Paymo is a productivity tool that helps you evaluate your team’s performance and optimize it for the better. You can use it to stay on top of how they spend their time across various activities. You can use these insights to track expenses, invoice clients and get paid faster. 

Apart from this, you can use the tool for project planning, task management, and team collaboration. 

Top features:

  • Accurate tracking of the time spent on tasks and projects
  • Detailed project reports
  • Categorize all time entries and automate

27) Everhour

Everhour

With a comprehensive range of features, Everhour stands as one of the best productivity tools for time tracking. Its intuitive design and powerful functionality help teams reach their goals faster. It helps you stay in sync with project estimates, ensuring you are always on track and finishing work on time.

Top features:

  • Manual time entry
  • Seamless integration
  • Reporting
  • History of entries
  • Multiple time formats

28) Hubstaff

Hubstaff: best software for team management

Hubstaff is a time-tracking application software trusted by more than 8,000 remote teams. It’s time tracker runs as software on your desktop or as a mobile app making it easy to track time. You can use these insights for invoicing clients, paying employees, and locating any inefficiencies. 

Top features:

  • Randomized screenshots enable you to keep track of who is working on what
  • Tracks the number of mouse movements and keyboard strokes by employees
  • 30 plus integrations

29) Time Doctor

Time Doctor is a workplace analytics platform to keep an eye on your team’s activities, workload, and productivity. The software with real-time dashboards, reports, and a time tracker, allows you to enhance team performance & efficiency.  It is a complete time-tracking and productivity tool designed specifically for remote teams.

Top features:

  • Screenshots recording
  • Web and app usage monitoring
  • Alerts to avoid distractions

Note-making

30) Evernote

Evernote best note taking tool for remote workers

Evernote is a reliable note-making app that enables you to remember everything. One of the best Android apps for productivity, the tool lets you stay organized and get more done. With Evernote, you can capture, organize, and share notes from anywhere so that your best ideas are always with you and in sync.

Top features:

  • Collect everything in one place and make it more accessible
  • Add attachments, links, and audio recordings
  • Scan and search for information from business cards

31) Microsoft OneNote

Microsoft OneNote

It is a digital note-taking app that works on any device or platform be it laptops or smartphones. It has got you covered to type, write, or draw with the free-form feel of pen to paper. It comes in handy while taking impromptu notes.

You just have to pick a notebook, a section, and create a new page and you’re good to go!

Top features:

  • Real-time collaboration
  • audio/video recording
  • Optical character recognition from images

32) Simplenote

Simplenote

Simplenote offers the simplest way to keep your notes – light, clean, and free. It saves you time invested in locating files. Instead, you just need to type what you are looking for and your list will update instantly. 

Top features:

  • Your notes stay updated on all your devices
  • Find notes quickly with instant searching and tags
  • Backup, syncing, and sharing – it’s all free

33) Box notes

Box Notes - Note Taking

Whether it’s brainstorming with coworkers or the meeting notes you share with others, it is all about real-time collaboration. And, Box Notes is an online note-taking app that makes it easier for team members to work together. Just create notes and never worry about security.

Top features:

  • Easy to create meeting notes, share ideas, and track status updates
  • Live editing enables real-time collaboration
  • Every note you create or share is secured by enterprise-growth security

34) Dropbox paper

Dropbox Paper good app for note taking

Dropbox is one of the best productivity tools for note-making. It is an online word processor where teams can bring ideas to life in a single place. This productivity software provides an ultralight interface, making conversations more connected and alive with stickers and emojis.

Top features:

  • Anyone can see and update Dropbox files in a Paper doc
  • Changes are automatically saved
  • Seamless presentations

35) Google keep

Google keep - App for note taking

Google Keep is a full-featured notes app known for its simplicity to jot down reminders, capture ideas, create checklists, take meeting notes, make to-dos, and much more. You get digital sticky notes and as a part of G-suite, you can integrate your notes with Google Docs.

It works well on Android phones, iPhones, Google Chrome, Firefox or even Smartwatch.

Top features:

  • Two kinds of reminders ― time and location
  • Audio notes by using Google’s speech-to-text engine
  • Sync with Chrome and Web app
  • Color-code your notes
  • Location reminder when you are in a certain area

Distractions and focus

36) Freedom

Freedom

Freedom comes across as one of the best productivity tools for blocking distractions and maintaining focus.

You can use it to block apps, websites, and the internet for improved productivity.

Top features:

  • Block whatever and whenever to be more productive
  • Sync blocks across Mac, Windows, iPhone, or iPad
  • Plan out sessions that recur daily or weekly

37) Self-control

Self Control

It is a free and open-source app for macOS with which you can block your access to distracting websites, mail servers, or anything else on the web. Just set a period to block the website and click ‘Start’. You won’t be able to access it – even if you switch off or delete the app.

Top features:

  • Limits your social media addiction
  • Enables focus
  • Better work-life balance

38) Focus booster

Focus Booster

Based on the Pomodoro technique, the Focus booster empowers you to maintain focus and keep distractions at bay. Sessions are automatically recorded in your timesheets so that you don’t have to recall where your time was spent.

Top features:

  • Instant focus
  • Encourages better work habits
  • You can use it on any computer, on the web, or your mobile

39) Forest

forest productivity tool

It’s a great tool that allows you to put your phone down and focus on what’s important. Here, the idea is to build a forest of trees where every tree symbolizes your task. Whenever you want to focus, plant a tree and it will be killed if you leave the app.

Top features:

  • Stay focused in any scenario
  • It partners with a real-tree planting organization

40) Brain.fm

Brain.fm

Brain.fm is a popular productivity app that uses music as brain stimulation. It unlocks music’s potential to influence cognitive states. The team proactively works with leading auditory neuroscientists to validate their findings.

Top features:

  • Beneficial to boost focus, meditate, and sleep
  • Designed for noticeable results in less than 15 minutes
  • Better work-life balance

Health

41) MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal is popular and one of the best productivity tools for health. You can use this easy-to-use tool to count your calories. Along with this, you get free access to the world’s largest nutrition and calorie database.

Top features:

  • Helps you to lose weight the healthy way
  • Promotes better eating habits
  • The web and mobile apps sync automatically

42) Yoga Studio

Yoga Studio

This one lets you take your studio wherever you go. It includes 65 ready-made classes. Choose your level (beginner, intermediate, or advanced), duration (15, 30, or 60 minutes), and focus (strength, flexibility, relaxation, balance, or combination) to find the perfect class for you.

Top features:

  • Yoga classes by Rodney Yee – a renowned yoga instructor with 30+ years of experience
  • 25 hours of ready-made HD video classes
  • Perfect for beginners, awesome for experts

43) Map My Fitness

Map My Fitness

It’s a fitness-tracking app that enables you to own every workout backed by the world’s digital health and fitness community. You can create challenges for yourself and your friends, or even join a community challenge.

Top features:

  • Track your fitness with any device
  • Adaptive training plans
  • Create challenges and train smarter

Email marketing

44) Litmus

Litmus

Litmus is one of the best productivity tools for email marketing. It is a highly versatile tool that makes your email management easier, faster, and better. It is the easiest way for teams to create a great email for every subscriber that could be opened across many different apps and devices conveniently.

Top features:

  • Build, edit, and instantly preview your emails
  • Get full visibility into every aspect of your email program
  • Test critical elements that could impact email performance
  • Work more efficiently and get more done

Conclusion

Productivity tools are a must-have for organizations looking to enhance their overall work quality and efficiency standards.  Be it productivity tools for project management, communication, or time-tracking, these are essential for teams to get more done in less time. Out of all the tools mentioned above, ProofHub stands out as the ultimate productivity injector to streamline workflows. This all-in-one project management and team collaboration software offers comprehensive solutions to manage tasks, track progress, manage time, share files, and collaborate in one centralized place.

You get a 14-day free trial to try all its features and experience benefits firsthand. If you are someone seeking enhanced productivity without the hassle of multiple tools, ProofHub is just for you.

FAQs

What are the 4 types of productivity tools?

Although there are various types of productivity tools to help businesses boost efficiency, the four major types include – 

  • Project management tools: These tools are designed to help teams plan, manage, track, and execute projects efficiently for successful project delivery. 
  • Communication tools: These tools help teams stay connected, coordinate efforts, and build relationships by facilitating real-time communication. 
  • Time tracking tools: These tools help businesses and teams track time spent on various tasks and projects for managing workloads and understanding productivity levels. 

Note-making tools: These tools help you capture important ideas, organize information, and share insights.

Why are productivity tools important?

Productivity tools are important to businesses and teams for the following reasons:

  • Boost Efficiency: These increase team efficiency by eliminating manual processes and automating tasks to streamline workflows.
  • Enhance workflow visibility: These tools enhance workflow visibility by providing insights into progress, bottlenecks, and milestones, facilitating data-driven decision-making.
  • Track performance: These tools help you track team performance for effective deadline management and project planning.
  • Improve collaboration: These improve your workplace collaboration by creating opportunities for real-time collaboration and communication.
  • Ensure accountability: These tools help you hold the team accountable by clearly defining responsibilities and overall goals.

Try ProofHub, our powerful project management and team collaboration software, for free!

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