Everyone struggles to be productive from time to time. Some might be struggling to organize what to do in a day, while others have difficulty remembering things. Fortunately, no matter what challenges you face in your daily life, there are a lot of productivity apps that can help in a variety of ways.
We’ve rounded up some of the best productivity app choices on the market. Read on to find the one that fits you the best!
What sets one productivity app from the rest of the pack? Here are four factors that define truly great productivity apps, regardless of type.
Intuitive interfaces: Simple, easy-to-read interfaces are a must these days. However, a good interface isn’t just about having pretty colors or an aesthetically pleasing design. The best productivity app should offer a user experience that everyone can understand right away, even if they’re not totally tech-savvy.
Robust automation: Automating low-impact repetitive tasks – such as reminding people of meetings or notifying your team when your task is done – is one of the keys to productivity. Not only does this prevent you from forgetting to do those daily tasks, but it also frees up your time and brainpower to do more high-impact, high-concentration tasks like brainstorming or ideation.
Collaboration features: Being productive involves communicating easily and instantly with your remote teams. If necessary, your productivity app should enable collaboration between team members, whether it’s via document annotation or video calls.
Third-party integrations: It’s nearly impossible to find one tool that can do everything. However, you can minimize switching between apps through third-party integrations. Integrations allow you to do things on other programs without leaving your main productivity apps. For instance, you can send a meeting invite to a coworker on one app while simultaneously scheduling it on your Google Calendar.
What Are The Benefits Of Using Productivity Apps
There are three main benefits to implementing productivity apps in your company – let’s break them down:
Improve the quality of work: A productivity app is bound to improve your employee’s quality of work. Automating menial tasks like meeting reminders or task follow-ups frees them up to put more effort into meaningful, involved work. More than that, task management tools often make it easier to check on your team’s output, allowing you to give more detailed feedback to further improve their work.
Foster effective collaboration: Collaboration tools that let team members share information easier also help your team get the big picture much easier. In addition, these tools make it easy to assign persons in charge, so your team won’t have to argue about who’s responsible for what task.
Track performance easily: Running a team means you need to do regular performance reviews. If you don’t have a solid grip on what metrics are needed, it can be tough to know when you’re being productive. Fortunately, most task management apps let you attach goals to tasks so you can review them easily once the tasks are assigned. From there, reviewing a team member’s performance is as easy as seeing whether those personal goals are achieved or not.
Choosing The Right Productivity App
So, how do you even begin to look for the best productivity app, anyway? Here are three things to think about when choosing a productivity app:
Team workflow and pain points: The first thing to do is review your workflow and find weaknesses or chokepoints – this will give you insight into what tools you’ll need to close the gap. For instance, your team may be forgetting tasks because their notes are scattered in different places.
Current tools in use: Your productivity app shouldn’t be redundant to your current software, but keep an eye out for tools that can work with systems you already have in place. For example, if your productivity app of choice is compatible with your calendar app, you can save time and energy by integrating the two and automating processes between them.
Budget: As a small-to-medium business, you may not have a lot to spend on productivity tools. Find one that fulfills your needs but doesn’t break your bank.
How We Evaluated The Best Productivity Apps
We compiled this top 10 list of the best productivity apps based on how well they may help your business, based on its key features, pricing plans, and integrations with other apps.
This list of apps contains a variety of productivity tools, from note-taking to task scheduling. Evaluate your needs and choose the personal productivity app that best fits your situation.
Todoist gets all the tasks you need to do out of your head and into the app. Moreover, Todoist also supports thousands of app integrations through Integrately. This task management app offers key features such as:
Quick task recording: Fill your task lists in seconds.
Task prioritization: Highlight important tasks so you know how to prioritize.
Task delegation: Assign tasks to other team members easily.
Plans & Pricing
Todoist offers a free plan with limited team members and projects. Paid plans start at $4/month per user.
Easily distracted? Freedom has you covered. Using Freedom is as easy as it gets – simply choose the apps you want to block and how long you want to block them for. As soon as you start the timer, you’ll be free from distractions and temptation for the duration of the time block! Other key features offered by Freedom include:
Website limiter: Set daily time limits on certain sites.
Browsing insights: Check how long you spend on distracting websites.
Ambient sounds for focus: Improve your concentration with built-in ambient sounds and focus music.
Plans & Pricing
Freedom Premium costs $8.99/month per user or $3.33/month per user if you pay annually.
If you forget things often, Evernote might just be your new best friend. This robust note-taking tool boasts multi-device sync, so you’ll never lose your notes – even if you lose your device! You’ll also get these features as part of your Evernote subscription:
Multimedia notes: Include images, video, and other file types to enhance your notes.
Document scanner: Scan documents with your mobile device to save them and reduce clutter.
Webpage clipper: Take clippings of websites and scribble on them with digital markers.
Plans & Pricing
Evernote’s paid plans start at $7.99/month per user.
Put in the work to make it smart – there is no time for hard work anymore! And Integrately is your helping hand in doing so! It is a popular automation tool to integrate your apps and workflows. With its powerful automation engine, it can connect all your existing applications, automate complex tasks and help you enhance the overall efficiency of your business processes. It also saves you a lot of time, money, and resources.
Notable Features:
Best for Non-Techies: No technical expertise or coding skills are required to use Integrately.
Millions of ready-to-use 1-click automation
Webhook: Integrate any of your applications beyond the ones provided
Smart Connect: Automatically maps the data fields between 2 connected apps
Plans & Pricing
Integrately’s paid plans start at $29.99 (when billed monthly) and $19.99( when billed annually)
Part of Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite), Google Calendar is a simple and intuitive calendar app where you can invite people to meetings and track appointments. In addition to offering hundreds of integrations through Integrately, Google Calendar also boasts advanced features like:
Shared calendars: Peek at your team members’ schedules so you don’t double-book meetings.
Out of the office feature: Get peace of mind while out of office by automatically rejecting meetings.
World clock: Never get confused by time zones again – just add all your coworkers’ time zones.
Plans & Pricing
Google Calendar is free with every Google account.
Building habits is tough. Loophabits help you solidify good habits by reminding you to do things like exercise, cook healthy food, meditate, and many others. It does so with key features like:
Habit scoring: Calculate the strength of your habits through a score. It builds as you perform them, while missed days make your habit score weaker.
Flexible habit schedules: Fit reminders into your schedule. For instance, you can build a habit to exercise every two days instead of daily.
Unlimited habits to track: Build as many habits as you want, as Loop doesn’t set any habit limits.
Plans & Pricing
Loop is completely free for all Android device users.
Streaks is another habit-building app that motivates you to keep up your habits – else you risk dropping your streak back to zero. This app for iOS mobile devices offers key features like:
iOS Health integration: Track daily fitness-related goals like walking or running a certain distance.
Schedule customization: Set specific days for your tasks that don’t occur on a daily basis to prevent accidentally breaking your streak.
Task statistic dashboard: See your longest streaks and completions to keep yourself motivated.
Plans & Pricing
Streaks is available for iOS and Mac users for a one-time purchase of $4.99.
Found an interesting article but don’t have time to read it? Pocket has you covered. With this app, you can save interesting articles and read them when you’re free. Some additional features offered by Pocket include:
Text resizing: Adjust text sizes for a better reading experience.
Category-based tagging: Organize your saves organized through tags.
Audio playback option: Listen to audio versions of articles instead of reading them.
Plans & Pricing
Pocket offers an ad-supported free version. It also has a premium version at $4.99/month.
When chat just won’t cut it, you can send a Loom video instead. This async communication app lets you record quick videos of your screen to explain things that are hard to convey through text. Some extra features offered by Loom include:
Instant video recording and sending: Record and share videos within minutes.
Multiple app versions: Use Loom on desktop computers, tablets, and mobile devices.
Video library: Save your videos for later reference.
Plans & Pricing
Loom offers a free version that limits your videos to five minutes each. Premium plans start at $10/month per user with a 14-day free trial.
Sometimes, you simply don’t have time to write things down – that’s where Dragon speech recognition software comes in. It lets you create notes and documents simply by dictating things into your microphone. This software offers advanced features like:
Vocabulary learning: Minimize corrections by teaching Dragon your most-used words.
Background noise filtering: Keep dictations accurate by filtering noise from your surroundings.
Voice-applied formatting: Apply text formats like bold or underline with your voice.
Plans & Pricing
Dragon’s professional dictation app comes at a one-time purchase of $500.
If you’re a visual learner, Coggle may be the best mind mapping app for you. It lets you create beautiful online flowcharts and mind maps with key features like:
Real-time collaboration: Work together on mind maps simply by sharing the link.
Version control: Revert to any previous flowchart version easily.
Floating annotations: Add extra notes that aren’t part of your mind maps.
Plans & Pricing
Coggle’s paid plans start at $5/month per user.
What’s The Best Productivity App For You?
The best productivity app for you will depend on what you need as well as the budget you have. Look into your team’s requirements and find an affordable productivity app that fulfills those needs.
If you’d like to take your productivity apps to the next level, sign up for Integrately today and get thousands of automations for free!
Frequently Asked Questions About Productivity Apps
Want to learn more about productivity software? Here are two of the most common questions about productivity apps, answered.
FAQs about Productivity Apps
What is productivity software?
Productivity software is any kind of app that maximizes your productivity. With a productivity app, you can remember tasks and appointments easier, streamline your workflow, and effectively manage your time.
Are productivity apps effective?
Productivity apps can be highly effective when used correctly. The effort you put into building better habits and staying productive is just as important – if not more so – than the tool you use.
Author - Abhishek A Agrawal
Abhishek is the founder of Integrately, CompanyHub, and Dreamwares. He is passionate about technology and entrepreneurship. He is always looking to leverage technology for the growth of the business. He has a deep understanding of how businesses work and uses this knowledge to build products that help entrepreneurs grow their businesses.
#1 Highest rated Zapier alternative for non-techies
