TL;DR
👉 Through the wonders of the Internet and cloud computing, an increasing number of remote teams are quietly changing the way the world works and lives from their ersatz offices in cafés, co-working spaces, and living rooms.
👉 While many businesses are taking advantage of remote working, several productivity issues can get in the way of collaborative teams maximizing progress.
👉 Team productivity tools can help boost your team’s productivity by streamlining communication and online collaboration.
👉 This article will explore the eleven best team productivity applications available today that can help you in many aspects, including note-taking, time tracking, video calls, and project management.
Working remotely or hybrid is no longer a luxury but rather an everyday reality for teams from all industries. Statistics show that 70% of global workers are working remotely at least once per week, and this number is likely to only grow over time.
The composition of creative teams is also changing drastically, and now you have more opportunities than ever to work with talented individuals from all over the world.
With all the team productivity apps available nowadays, you can quickly transform how your teams work together and get things done.
We’ll review eleven tools and their key features, pricing, and customer ratings on different platforms like G2 and Capttera to help you decide which productivity app is suitable for your team.
What Are Productivity Tools?
Productivity tools help individuals and business teams work faster and more effectively while making project management easier for business leaders.
Office productivity tools feature the latest options, collaborate between your entire team members, and reduce bottlenecks by simplifying and automating routine tasks. Increasing efficiency is one of the most crucial goals when working, and these tools help you do exactly that.
After identifying your needs and goals, you should decide which tool will be the most useful for your teams.
Why Do You Need Productivity Tools?
These tools can assist businesses in various ways, from scheduling daily tasks to CRM systems or cloud-based collaboration tools like monday.com to make sure everyone involved in a project is on the same page.
Here are a few more reasons why you should consider implementing horizontal productivity tools in your business:
- They enhance your data security.
- They make it easy for teams to collaborate.
- They’re customizable to fit your team’s ideal workflows.
- They unify information across apps by offering seamless integration.
Top 11 Tools to Boost Team Productivity in 2023
Here is the top 11 productivity software to help boost team performance along with employee efficiency in 2023:
1- monday.com
monday.com is one of the best project management software on our list that can boost your team’s productivity and change how they collaborate significantly.
Featuring intuitive dashboards with hundreds of customizable templates, this task management software shows project cycles, estimates, prioritize, and resources based on due dates.
Be a project manager or not, this tool is a must.
Why monday.com?
With monday.com, you can manage projects using multiple views, including the Kanban dashboard. Similarly, you can create tasks, group them, assign them, and add due dates. Using labels such as “to do,” “working on it,” “stuck,” and “done,” the entire team members can describe the status of tasks.
With monday.com as your project management app, you can also make use of several other advanced features that can help your teams perform better, such as:
- Progress tracking,
- Weekly task loads,
- Easy file sharing,
- Smooth automation features,
- Real-time dashboards, and
- Easy integration with other apps.
⭐monday.com G2 Rating: 4.7 (out of 7,470 reviews)
The project management software that will actually work for your team
Manage simple to complex projects and everything in between with monday.com
monday.com Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“I appreciate the automation and the fact that we can do everything from gathering feedback and displaying it in a chart to assigning automated project assignments. It’s been a great help in keeping our teams focused on what they’re strong at while staying on target.”
“I honestly struggle to come up with anything important that I actively dislike about Monday.com. There are a few minor annoyances, such as that archived items are hard to find and search.”
monday.com Pricing
- Individual Plan: $0 free forever (up to 2 seats)
- Basic Plan: $8 per seat/per month (Total $40/month billed annually)
- Standard Plan: $10 per seat/per month (Total $50/month billed annually)
- Pro Plan: $16 per seat/per month (Total $80/month billed annually)
- Enterprise Plan: To get the detailed price for all enterprise-level features, get in touch with sales.
2- Salesforce
Salesforce is a sales productivity software that has an intuitive interface that can help teams streamline an entire workflow; it also accelerates sales processes by offering several integrations, including time management, instant messaging, and video conferencing tools.
Why Salesforce?
Because Salesforce is a business app that can also act as a team communication tool along with an employee productivity tool.
How does it do it all?
Salesforce has several applications on its platform to enable multiple use cases, such as sales, customer service, and marketing.
For example, each relevant team can create custom workflows to meet business goals and make use of the collaboration features – which is quite handy for remote teams.
Another advantage is that this powerful tool has cross-platform capabilities since it offers standout features on mobile devices (IOS & Android) as well.
In short, Salesforce can go as a team management software for each department, just like Google Workspace in a sense. Teams can have personal meetings, obtain project reports, create a document from scratch, use its app on personal devices, and access instant messaging channels, thanks to the integrations Salesforce provides.
⭐Salesforce G2 Rating: 4.3 (out of 15,649 reviews)
Salesforce Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“Salesforce Sales Cloud acts as a centralized repository for customer and prospect information. As a CSM, it allows me to store and manage data related to contacts, accounts, leads, and opportunities in one place. “
“Sometimes you have to fill in too many fields of information.”
Salesforce Pricing
- Essentials Plan: €25/month per user when billed annually (up to 10 users)
- Professional Plan: €75/month per user when billed annually
- Enterprise Plan: €150/month per user when billed annually
- Unlimited Plan: €300/month per user when billed annually
3- Wrike
Wrike is a project management platform that has it all for teams to increase collaboration and productivity at the same time. This platform helps 20,000+ organizations every day, and the number just keeps growing.
Why Wrike?
Why do these companies choose Wrike?
Easy.
Because Wrike has so many elements that affect operations positively by offering robust features that help to streamline each process. For example, teams can make use of interactive dashboards that help display project overviews and progress along with real-time data.
Surely, that’s not all; teams can run projects of all sizes, thanks to the features below on both desktop and mobile apps:
- dashboards,
- automation,
- proofing,
- cross-tagging,
- project resource planning,
- custom item types.
⭐Wrike G2 Rating: 4.2 (out of 3,435 reviews)
Wrike Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“Wrike has been helpful to me & my team in keeping track of our entire workload. The ability to set up custom dashboards so that employees know what to work on that day.”
“While Wrike has dependencies/predecessors built into the system, it doesn’t “hide” tasks being “blocked” by a predecessor in task do-to lists such as on dashboards.“
Wrike Pricing
- Free Plan: $0
- Team Plan: $9.80 per seat/per month
- Business Plan: $24.80 per seat/per month
- Enterprise Plan: To learn more about this plan, please get in touch with sales.
- Pinnacle Plan: To learn more about this plan, please get in touch with sales.
4- Smartsheet
Smartsheet is more than just a project management tool; it’s a platform that offers a dynamic work process, thanks to the features it includes. For example, using bridges get teams to work smarter by creating a series of events that allows triggers and makes work planning easier than ever.
Why Smartsheet?
Just as I said above, Smartsheet is a platform with many robust features that support teams during working hours so that they could improve planning, scheduling, and team collaboration while increasing productivity, especially through automations.
It’s not only automations that will help you, though. Think of all the things you could do with the features below:
- secure request management,
- intelligent workflows,
- workflow automation,
- integrations,
- resource management,
- content management,
- digital asset management.
⭐Smartsheet G2 Rating: 4.4 (out of 13,611 reviews)
Smartsheet Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“I love that you can set alerts, reminders on the sheets you create and the forms you develop through smartsheets. It’s a very handy feature when you want to collect responses and want to be notified of them.”
“Sometimes I don’t think Smartsheet is the easiest as a beginner. I know there are so many functions and possibilities, but it can be a little hard to gain a quick overview, especially with no experience.”
Smartsheet Pricing:
- Free Plan: $0
- Pro Plan: $7 per month/per user
- Business Plan: $25 per month/per user
- Enterprise Plan: To learn more about this plan, please get in touch with sales.
5- ClickUp
ClickUp makes this list as a powerful task management tool that excels at boosting team productivity due to the intuitive user interface and customizable features; teams can easily adapt this platform according to the project they’re working on to be able to stay fully focused on an objective.
Why ClickUp?
ClickUp is a super adaptive platform that aims to help teams create a visual canvas that displays all project indicators in one place—it even offers free training to help teams get used to the platform.
Here are my other favorite ClickUp features that will surely increase productivity:
- multitask toolbar,
- priorities,
- recurring tasks,
- reminders,
- tags,
- custom roles,
- drag and drop attachments,
- localization,
- proofing.
⭐ClickUp G2 Rating: 4.7 (out of 8,352 reviews)
ClickUp Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“Taking in tasks from different departments in our organization and having them properly assigned to the correct teams is a massive time-saver for us. The capability to add watchers and comment on tasks enables us to streamline our processes.”
“Sometimes the UI is not working unless we refresh the page, it is just a minor inconvenience, but it is not a deal breaker for me. I hope they improve the UI responsiveness in future updates.”
ClickUp Pricing:
ClickUp’s pricing consists of four different plans, excluding the free plan:
- Free Forever Plan: $0 (for personal use)
- Unlimited Plan: $7 per month/per user when billed annually
- Business Plan: $12 per month/per user when billed annually
- Business Plus Plan: $19 per month/per user when billed annually
- Enterprise Plan: To learn more about this plan, please get in touch with sales.
6- GetResponse
Saving you tons of time by supporting your sales funnel with automations and increasing revenue, GetResponse is a great marketing tool that you could use to your advantage when it comes to team efficiency.
Why GetResponse?
‘Cause it promises many things that you could benefit from in the name of marketing, especially marketing teams.
With GetResponse as your all-in-one marketing software, you can:
- take your email marketing service to the next level by making use of features like email creator, autoresponders, email analytics, bulk emails, transactional emails, and list management
- build an online place to promote your own business via website builder with the help of features like AI-powered creator, predesigned templates, drag-and-drop editor, forms and popups, and domain management
- automate your workflow, thanks to tags and scores, automation flows, abandoned cart emails, website visitor tracking, and product recommendations
- hold webinars to attract your target audience by using screen sharing, call-to-action button, on-demand webinars, whiteboard, and polls and surveys
- make use of paid ads that call for social media integrations, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Google—all provided by GetResponse
⭐GetResponse G2 Rating: 4.2 (out of 888 reviews)
GetResponse Pros & Cons
ClickUp Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“I’ve been a Get Response customer for over a year, possibly longer, and I originally enjoyed its features. When they announced a new website builder, this piqued my interest more due to my plans to create two websites.“
“When first starting, there was a lot of different terminology that I had to remember and understand. After that, it was much better😊”
GetResponse Pricing
- Free Plan: $0 (up to 500 contacts)
- Email Marketing Plan: $15.58/month when billed annually (up to 1,000 contacts)
- Marketing Automation Plan: $48.38/month when billed annually (up to 1,000 contacts)
- Ecommerce Marketing Plan: $97.58/month when billed annually (up to 1,000 contacts)
- Max Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
*All the plans above include a 30-day-long free trial, making it possible to try them out before committing to an annual purchase.
**The pricing structure above is based on 1,000 contacts only. GetResponse’s pricing plans alter according to the number of contacts you have—the more contacts you have, the more expensive the pricing plan gets.
7- Time Doctor
Time Doctor is a robust team performance management and productivity tracking tool on our list that can be used by all-size businesses to increase productivity across the organization.
Why Time Doctor?
Using this time tracking tool, managers can find out where their teams excel and where they need assistance, allowing them to improve their overall performance.
Time Doctor also generates a wide range of real-time detailed reports, such as attendance, timelines, and activity summaries.
Additionally, Time Doctor offers easy integration with some of the most popular task management platforms available today.
Let’s look at a few of Time Doctor’s main features:
- Track time,
- Team performance reports,
- Hours tracked report,
- Timeline detailed reports, and
- Projects & tasks reports.
⭐Time Doctor G2 Rating: 4.4 (out of 888 reviews)
Time Doctor Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“The screen recording feature. It allows for the ability to see group by group details, as well as down to the singular level of each employee. ALSO, I love how easy it is to deploy,”
“There are times where the response time to reports may cause errors and you have to reload, otherwise not large enough of an issue or occurring frequently enough to cause concern.”
Time Doctor Pricing
- Basic Plan: $5.9 per month/per user when billed annually
- Standard Plan: $8.4 per month/per user when billed annually
- Premium Plan: $16.7 per month/per user when billed annually
8- Todoist
Todoist is a popular to-do list app with a simple interface that lets you manage tasks across multiple projects to increase productivity.
This software will allow each team member to organize, plan, and collaborate on different tasks and projects.
Why Todoist?
Todoist offers advanced features like task views to view all the essential details about a task, including task title, due date, and subtasks.
Furthermore, you can access the platform since it supports Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
Todoist also offers a recurring due dates feature that will help you remember deadlines.
The following are some additional key features of Todoist:
- Real-time notifications,
- Seamless third-party integrations,
- Detailed task record and history, and
- Easy task tracking with a productivity graph.
⭐Todoist G2 Rating: 4.4 (out of 759 reviews)
Todoist Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“The application gives you heaps of ways of cutting up your lineup for the day, for example, top choices, different need levels and labels, the association, variety coding, and names/tabs.”
“There are some features that are lacking, such as inability to add details to your tasks, limited entries, and even some basic features such as reminders are not available in the free version.”
Todoist Pricing
- Free Plan: $0 for starters with 5 active projects
- Pro Plan: $4 per month when billed annually
- Business Plan: $6 per month when billed annually
9- Evernote
Evernote is a note-taking app that helps your organization take notes digitally – and syncs them across all your devices. You can use this app as a digital filing cabinet to organize all your notes, such as recipes, work plans, or daily diaries.
Using Evernote, your team members can access, edit, upload, and share meeting notes and files from any device – even while they’re offline.
Why Evernote?
Aside from taking notes, Evernote allows you to create to-do lists, add images, scan documents with your camera, and take handwritten notes.
The visual bulletin board feature allows you to filter out irrelevant information and focus on the things that are most important. Each team member is able to sync themselves to the current situation and manage tasks easily while increasing productivity.
The following are some of Evernote’s key features:
- Multi-device note synchronization,
- Top-tier organizational system,
- Powerful advanced search,
- Comprehensive formatting, and
- Collaboration tool for productive teams.
⭐Evernote G2 Rating: 4.4 (out of 1,998 reviews)
Evernote Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“I like that my notes are available on multiple platforms, and that’s what first attracted me. I access it on my phone, work computer, and home laptop. I also like the notebook/folder structure and tagging opportunities.”
“The biggest downside might be the cost, which is relatively expensive compared to other collaboration/organization/project management tools.”
Evernote Pricing
- Basic Plan: Free with limited access and storage
- Personal Plan: $14.99/month
- Professional Plan: $17.99/month
- Evernote Teams Plan: $24.99/month
10- Zapier
Zapier is another excellent tool on our list that helps you automate repetitive tasks and workflows by connecting the apps and services you use. As a result, you can automate certain tasks without having to construct these integrations yourself.
Zapier’s “zaps” allow teams to set triggers and complete routine tasks automatically, so you can focus on getting work done. Regardless of where you are or which team you are on, you can automatically access any data you need in the app.
Why Zapier?
Zapier allows you to create an application within the app to make the process more efficient. Zapier also enables developers to create a custom app based on the user’s needs and automates the workflow if the feature is not included in prebuilt apps.
With Zapier, you can connect thousands of apps to create customized automated workflows. You can integrate with web apps such as Facebook Lead Ads, Slack, QuickBooks, Google Sheets, Google Docs, & many more!
Here are some of the best features you can find using Zapier:
- Access controls and permissions,
- Third-party app integrations,
- Custom automations,
- Compliance management,
- Multi-Step Zaps, and
- Search action.
⭐Zapier G2 Rating: 4.5 (out of 1,146 reviews)
Zapier Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“With Zapier in your solution set, no knowledge of code or programming languages is required to automate work across a broad array of applications and services. It’s easy to use and impressively reliable.”
“When you have to repeat workflows with several steps over and over, costs go up quickly, and in some cases, the solution is no longer cost-effective.”
Zapier Pricing
- Free Plan: $0 per month with 100 tasks
- Starter Plan: $29.99 per month with 750 tasks
- Professional Plan: $73.50 per month with 2K tasks
- Team Plan: $103.50 per month with 2K tasks
- Company Plan: $148.50 per month with 2K tasks
11- Slack
Slack is a workplace communication tool on our list that connects users to the people and tools they use every day, regardless of where they are or what they do.
Slack boosts productivity by making communication as easy as possible for your team; you can organize your team’s communication into a project, department, or office location channel.
As a result, users can easily follow the topics they’re interested in. In addition, public channels allow everyone on the team to see what the designers are working on, sales to know the product team’s roadmap, and new hires to get up to speed without having their email inboxes overflowing.
You can also benefit from the following Slack features:
- Access controls/permissions,
- Activity tracking,
- Calendar management,
- Collaboration tools,
- Commenting and notes,
- Real-time synchronization, and
- Document management.
Why Slack?
With Slack, businesses can integrate the countless tools and services they already use and centralize notifications, files, and data from hundreds of apps.
With this, you won’t need to look through emails for a follow-up, switch between tabs or dashboards constantly, or juggle numerous tools, each with its login. By providing information and context needed to make effective decisions quickly, Slack helps teams work smarter and more productively.
With Slack, everything is automatically indexed and archived so that companies can create a comprehensive knowledge base with no effort.
⭐Slack G2 Rating: 4.5 (out of 31,564 reviews)
Slack Pros & Cons
➕ Pros:
➖ Cons:
“Alerting notifications from ChurnZero to Slack; a huge win for CSMs to receive high-risk Alerts within dedicated Slack channels. Compared to other CS platforms, this capability offers extremely effective UI and easy enablement.”
“If you have a large community, then it might get hard to handle it on Slack even though Slack provides some bot support to tackle this situation, but it is not an easy task to set up a bot for your channels.”
Slack Pricing
- Free Plan: $0 per month
- Pro Plan: $7.25 per month
- Business+ Plan: $12.50 per month
- Enterprise Grid Plan: For this plan, please contact sales.
Conclusion
Communication is at the heart of any business, and that’s why it comes as no surprise to discover that customer service, project management, and team collaboration tools are among the most popular and valuable apps for businesses in 2023.
The key with productivity apps is to ensure you’re using them correctly. Start by assessing your team’s efficiency, where bottlenecks occur, and what can be improved.
Whether you need tools to avoid distractions, collaborate on projects, automate repetitive tasks, or coordinate your team’s meetings, you will surely find the right tools for your team in this list.
Once you have selected the right tool for you, consider how you will use it so that it enhances your productivity rather than distracts from it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the 5 most commonly used productivity tools?
Here are the most commonly used productivity tools for your workflow:
1- Monday.com
2- GetResponse
3- Evernote
4- Zapier
5- Slack
