As the COVID-19 outbreak continues its damage around the world, governmental agencies and scientists have begun urging everyone to stay away from large gatherings and avoid all non-essential travel. Many companies and organizations have now enabled their employees to work from home in an effort to lower the chances of contracting the virus. While new COVID-19 cases continue to be reported from several countries, the best way to avoid the SARS-CoV-2 virus is to give special attention to personal hygiene and stay at home as much as possible.
Working from home has several benefits, but it’s also not everyone’s cup of tea. If you’re a seasoned employee who’s spent several years working from an office, then working from home is going to take some getting used to. To help you become productive and get back to your stride, we’ve already shared our Tips to Work from Home to Stay Healthy and Productive.
In this article, we’re going to share some apps and services to help you Work from Home more efficiently and effectively.
We’ve broken down our recommendations into categories so you can jumpstart your search below. If you think we’ve missed out on anything crucial, leave a comment below or reach out to us on Twitter @Readdle.
- Team Communication
- Team Collaboration
- Meetings & Conferencing
- Project Management
- Productivity & Task Management
- Time Tracking & Scheduling
- Cloud Storage & File Sharing
- Remote Desktop and Screen Sharing
- Miscellaneous
Team Communication
Communicating with your team is one of the most important factors when working from home. Efficient communication with your team members ensures that everyone is on the same page and efforts are being put to use on the correct tasks. While no software can come close to replacing the efficiency of conversing with your teammates in person, many software services available today offer the tools and experience of making team communication as smooth as possible.
1. Slack
Slack is one of the most popular team communication apps available today. By offering a Free plan to get started, Slack ensures that teams of all sizes can get on board without any commitment. Once onboard, you can create channels to keep your discussions focussed. Slack also offers voice & video calls with your teammates so that you don’t have to depend on other software for your virtual meetings. Slack also features deep integration with most online services, making it easier to work and saving you time.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, watchOS, Android, Windows, and the Web
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $3.20/user/month.
2. Flock
Flock is another team communication and collaboration tool that enables seamless communication with your teammates. It’s very similar to Slack in most ways, including the ability to make video calls and share your screen.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, watchOS, Android, Windows, and the Web
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $6/user/month.
Team Collaboration
When working remotely, you obviously cannot get into a huddle and work together on a project like you would in your workspace. There are many apps that will help you collaborate with your teammates and get more work done together.
3. Spark
Spark is an incredibly powerful email app by Readdle that improves your email experience. It’s an exceptional email app for handling personal emails, but where it really shines is with its awesome team-focused features. Spark for Teams is a suite of features and tools that help you create, share and discuss emails with your teammates.
Spark enables you to draft and collaborate on an email with your team members, discuss an email internally using comments, assign and delegate emails to your teammates and even set deadlines for them. For frequently used responses, Spark can even help you with Shared Templates. Download Spark for free to get started with the best email experience for teams.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, watchOS, and Android.
Pricing: Free for Personal use and basic Teams, optional paid plans for advanced team features starting $6.39/user/month.
4. Coda
Coda is a powerful new kind of document format that brings the concept of building blocks to a standard document. Rather than thinking of a document as a plain white sheet of paper that holds blocks of text with different formatting, Coda reimagines a document as a canvas that holds your data in any way you like.
Your Coda doc can hold paragraphs, tables, buttons, interactive checkboxes, etc. Coda makes for a great way to collaborate with your team since you can plan, strategize and implement right in the same doc. Check out these hundreds of readymade Coda templates to reference and get started with.
Platforms: iOS, Android, and the Web
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $10/maker/month. Always free for Editors and Viewers.
5. Droplr
Droplr is a handy menu bar app to quickly share screenshots, files, and screen recordings with your team members. When working from home, you obviously cannot summon your teammate to your desk and point at your screen to get their feedback. That’s where Droplr comes in. With a quick keyboard shortcut or a Drag and Drop action, you can instantly upload and share a file or screenshot. You get a short URL to send to your colleagues or paste in your Slack channel. When taking a screenshot, Droplr also lets you annotate it.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Windows, and Google Chrome extension.
Pricing: $6/month for individuals, $5/user/month for teams.
6. Fluix
Fluix is a mobile-first workflow management software that bridges the gap between the field and your office. Fluix was designed from the get-go for environments where employees have to work remotely most of the time and documents and data has to be exchanged and synced with the main office. Fluix allows you to annotate and fill out PDF forms on iOS devices, collect signatures, receive real-time field data to analyze & improve efficiency, collaborate and get approvals faster, distribute contracts, and lots more.
Platforms: iOS and the Web
Pricing: Free 30-day trial, $20/user/month after that.
Meetings & Conferencing
Although Slack offers the ability to have audio or video calls with your teammates or share your screen during a call, there are times when you’d rather have your meetings separate from Slack. Slack does work wonky at times during calls, but you may also need to be a part of meetings or video conferencing with people who are not part of your Slack team. Customers, vendors, contractors, suppliers, etc. shouldn’t have access to your Slack channels and meetings with them are best handled separately. In such cases, here are the apps we recommend.
7. Zoom
Zoom is one of the most popular services for video conferencing & webinars. It offers several important features to hold online meetings with your team members. Zoom is a widely used app across various industries and holds a reputation for being consistently good at it. If you’re using Spark Email, you can directly integrate it with Zoom.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and Browser Extensions
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $15/host/month.
8. Google Hangouts Meet
Google Hangouts Meet is also a great option for hassle-free video conferencing and meetings. Setting up a meeting with Hangouts Meet is fairly easy — just share the link with whoever you want to connect with and they can join in seamlessly.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and Google Chrome
Pricing: Part of Paid G Suite plans
9. GoToMeeting
GoToMeeting is another popular video conferencing software that you can try for your team meetings and Spark offers direct integration with it.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and Browser Extensions
Pricing: $14/month onwards.
Project Management
When you’re part of a team, chances are you are already using a project management toolset or app to help you with your work. In case you’re a small team, or if you want to hear what our recommendations are, read on.
10. ClickUp
ClickUp is an all-in-one project management tool that offers various advanced features to help small to large teams get tasks done and collaborate efficiently.
Whether you’re office-based or remote, ClickUp helps you save time, boost productivity, keep you aligned, and stay up-to-date at all times.
Use functional collaboration features such as a built-in Chat view to discuss work-related items, Assigned Comments to assign an action item to a particular colleague, Multiple Assignees to delegate tasks to more than one person, and so much more. To optimize ClickUp, simply integrate it with 1000+ work apps and bring all your work in one place.
Platform: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and the Web
Pricing: Free Forever Plan, with optional paid plans starting at $5/ user per month.
11. Asana
Asana is a fantastic work and project management app for teams. It helps team members stay focused and productive by allowing them to organize and prioritize their tasks. Asana is what we use at Readdle to handle our marketing tasks. There are several features that make Asana one of the best project management tools out there, but it’s the very elegant experience that it offers that sets it apart from the rest.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and the Web
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $13.49/user/month.
12. Trello
Trello is another team-focused project management tool from the house of Atlassian. Trello offers a familiar and easy to understand Kanban board approach to project and task management. It’s a great way to collaborate with your teammates and get work done by prioritizing the tasks, assigning them to respective members and following their progress across the board.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and the Web
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $10/user/month.
13. Notion
Notion is also a powerful tool to stay organized with your team members. It is offered as an all-in-one workspace for you to write, plan, and collaborate. You can use it to create to-do lists, jot down notes, prepare full-fledged wikis, use it for project management, and so much more.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and the Web
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $4/month.
Productivity & Task Management
14. Calendars
Calendars is a beautiful calendar & planner app by Readdle for your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Calendars by Readdle helps you stay organized and sane between your busy schedule. It’s a great way to plan your time and break down the day into small chunks of activities that you can then track the progress of. Calendars by Readdle is available for Free on the App Store.
Platforms: iOS
Pricing: Free, with an optional in-app purchase for $6.99
15. Todoist
Todoist is one of the best To-Do list and Task Manager apps available today. Featuring a simple & elegant UI, Todoist helps you plan and organize your tasks effectively. Create tasks and sub-tasks, organize them into various projects, assign deadlines, create reminders, add comments, and lots more. Getting Things Done with Todoist is something we highly recommend. Todoist is available for macOS, iOS, Apple Watch, Android, Windows, Wear OS and even on the web. Todoist also offers email plugins in the form of a Gmail Add-on, Gmail extension for Google Chrome, and an Outlook plugin for Windows PCs.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, watchOS, Android, Windows, and the Web
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $36/user/year.
16. Things
Things by Cultured Code is our recommendation for a personal task manager if you’re using Mac and iOS devices as your primary workhorses. Things boasts of a beautifully designed UI that offers a delightful experience. It syncs your tasks across all your devices using its own Things Cloud service, and even works great with the Apple Watch.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, and watchOS.
Pricing: $10 for iPhone, $20 for iPad, and $50 for Mac.
17. 1Password
1Password is one of the most popular password managers available today and easily one of the best ones. 1Password works great for individuals and families, but it's 1Password for Business that we really want to highlight here. There are some incredible team-focused features built into 1Password and it is one of the best ways to start securing your online presence.
1Password has recently removed trial limits to help businesses work securely from home. If you sign up today, you can effectively use 1Password for up to six months absolutely free. If your team hasn't yet made the switch, we highly recommend 1Password.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, watchOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and the Web.
Pricing: Plans start at $3 for individuals, $5 for families of 5, $4/user/month for small teams and $8/user/month for businesses who need more control and advanced features.
Time Tracking & Scheduling
18. Toggl
Toggl is an awesome free time tracking software that helps you get things done. With Toggle, you can track your own or team’s time, create one-click timers, set up reminders, and integrate with over 100+ apps. If you don’t like to automatically track your time, you can even manually feed entries or integrate it with your calendar. Insightful reports by Toggle give you a deep look into how you spend your time and allow you to constantly make amends for the better.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and the Web
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $10/user/month.
19. Qbserve
Qbserve is an automatic time-tracker for your Mac. It runs in the background and tracks how much time you’ve spent in each app or on each activity. It runs locally on your Mac, so all tracking is done on-device. A nifty menubar icon, coupled with notifications, remind you whether you’ve been productive for the last 2 hours or whether you were distracted.
Platforms: macOS
Pricing: $29
20. Time Zone Converter and Clock
Time Zone Converter and Clock is a must-have tool for anyone who works with teams spread across different time zones. It sits in the macOS menu bar and lets you set up multiple cities to track time from. The beauty of TZC comes from the dial that converts time zones for you. Turn it left or right to jump forward or back in time and know exactly what time it is in a particular city when it’s certain o’clock in your own time zone. Rotating the dial changes the time across all the cities, so it’s a great way to simultaneously convert time across multiple time zones.
Platforms: macOS and Windows
Pricing: $4.99
Cloud Storage & File Sharing
21. Google Drive
Google Drive is pretty much the de facto standard for online storage and file sharing these days. This cloud storage service is powered by Google’s massive infrastructure and considering how pretty much everyone holds a Google account, sharing files and data through Google Drive is a no brainer for most people. Most Google accounts come with at least 15GB of free storage, and you can always upgrade to a higher storage tier for as low as $0.99/month. If your team uses G Suite, then you get a lot more free storage (30GB per account or more) and also included are team-specific sharing features.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and the Web
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $2/month for 100GB.
22. Dropbox
Dropbox is a popular competitor and alternative to Google Drive. It was immensely popular with individuals but has recently switched its focus on businesses by discontinuing its free plan.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and the Web
Pricing: $10/month onwards
23. Box
Box is another great alternative to Google Drive and Dropbox that you can use to store your documents and files online and share them with your team members when required.
Platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and the Web
Pricing: Free, with optional Paid plans starting $5/user/month.
24. Documents
Documents is the app for your files. It’s the home for all your files, no matter where you store them. Documents integrates with many of the popular online cloud storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud Drive, OneDrive, etc. and even lets you connect to (s)ftp or WebDAV servers. With Documents, you can access all your files, move or copy them from one location to another, and even read or play them right in the app. Documents is a must-have app for your iPhone and iPad. Get it for Free from the App Store.
Platforms: iOS
Pricing: Free, with an optional subscription for professional PDF editor at $49.99/year
Remote Desktop and Screen Sharing
When working from home, it’s not always possible to carry your work machine home, especially if you work with large desktop Macs or PCs at work. In such cases, it becomes crucial to access your data remotely from your home.
Everyone has heard about remote desktop software like Microsoft’s Remote Desktop, Apple’s Remote Desktop, TeamViewer, etc. so we’re not going to bore you with those. Most of these apps are enterprise-focused and either are too expensive or are quite overwhelming. Instead, we’ll recommend a tiny app called Screens.
25. Screens
Screens is a little app for iOS and Mac that helps you access and control any PC or Mac from anywhere. Screens is a VNC client, built according to modern standards and bundled with a delightful set of features. It supports Dark Mode and Multiple Displays. You can setup multiple PCs and Macs in the app and organize them into groups. Connecting to any PC or Mac is as simple as tapping on their thumbnail. There’s a handy Curtain Mode offered in the app that obscures the display of the remote computer. Screens is a fantastic utility to remotely access your work computer as you work from home.
Platforms: iOS and macOS
Pricing: $20 on iOS, $30 on macOS
Miscellaneous
These are some small yet fantastic apps that will surely improve the experience of working from home for you.
26. Magnet
Magnet is a powerful utility for Mac that keeps your workspace organized. It helps to declutter your screen by snapping windows into organized tiles. You can drag windows over the preset areas to automatically resize the windows, or use the customizable keyboard shortcuts. Once you start using Magnet to handle your windows management, you’ll find yourself wondering how you lived without it.
Platforms: macOS
Pricing: $2
27. Hocus Focus
Hocus Focus is another powerful tool for Mac that keeps your desktop organized. It’s based on a simple cleanup approach — hide any inactive windows. That’s right, instead of constantly managing a mess of overlapping windows on your Mac, leave it to Hocus Focus to neatly declutter your desktop workspace. By default, the app will automatically hide any windows that you haven’t brought into focus for more than 30 seconds. You can customize the duration for each app, and create custom profiles depending on your requirement. For example, it ships with a “Focus Mode” that automatically hides any window that loses focus. Hocus Focus is a fantastic utility to declutter your workspace and stay focused.
Platforms: macOS
Pricing: Free
28. Vanilla
Vanilla is a little utility app for Mac that cleans up the clutter of icons in your menu bar. A majority of users who work from home do so on a laptop which gives them the freedom to move around when required. The small screen estate on a laptop means that there’s limited space for your icons. Vanilla lets you pick what icons you always want to see in the menu bar and which icons you want to stay hidden. Configuring and deploying Vanilla is a breeze. Your icons aren’t permanently hidden, you can always tap the little left arrow to reveal what’s hidden underneath.
Platforms: macOS
Pricing: Free
29. Noizio
Noizio is a lovely menubar app for macOS that holds a collection of ambient sounds and noise. You can use Noizio to mix and match various ambient sounds and create an environment to your liking. The app has sounds for rain, drizzle, wind, campfire, river, night, coffee shop, and more. You can control the levels of each individual sound and create the perfect mix you need. Noizio is also available on iOS.
Platforms: macOS
Pricing: $10
30. Amphetamine
Amphetamine is a super simple way to keep your Mac awake. The app sits in the menu bar and offers a simple toggle to keep-awake your Mac and/or its displays. There are easy to configure triggers to do this automatically, such as “in X hours” or “in X minutes,” “While App is Running...” or “While File is Downloading...”
Platforms: macOS
Pricing: Free
31. Documents VPN
VPNs have become a necessity for most online tasks these days. If you use a particularly aggressive ISP at home that doesn’t care about privacy, you need to invest in a good VPN service. While free or cheap VPN providers are dime a dozen, they’re usually powered by shady business ethics or don’t have long term goals of sticking around. Most good VPNs that value user privacy, have a strong and moral business plan, provide good infrastructure and great customer service usually cost upwards of $5/month. Readdle's Documents app now comes with a built-in VPN feature that lets you browse the web safely and securely. Documents VPN on iPhone makes your browsing faster and safer. It works across all the apps on your iPhone or iPad, and works even if you quit Documents. Get Documents for Free from the App Store and switch to a secure web-browsing experience.
32. MacCleaner Pro
MacCleaner Pro by Nektony is a handy set of tools to keep your Mac running with tip-top performance. It helps you clean up and speed up your Mac, so you can always get the best out of it and finish your tasks with ease. You can perform several different actions using MacCleaner Pro, such as freeing up disk space, clearing up old files and junk, freeing up RAM, reindexing Spotlight and Mail, cleaning up caches, and lots more. Check out MacCleaner Pro today.
If you need more tools, check this list of 500+ apps for remote workers.
Do you know any other apps that should most definitely be on this list here? Leave a comment below, or let us know on Twitter @Readdle.
Preshit Deorukhkar 
