Recently, working from home has become not only limited to freelancers, so you will find many of those who were accustomed to traditional work now working from home.
For those who are just starting their freelancing journey, we know that it may not be easy at first, so in this article we are going to share with you a list of the 10 best freelancers tools that you should use to be able to manage your life better, from time control to managing your entire freelance business. .
Many of these tools we have been using for more than 5 years - and still are - so we guarantee you that each of them is the best in what you do, and this is precisely what will give you preference and distinction. In your freelancing and your life as a freelancer, so without the need for further introductions we will let you explore…
Top 10 tools for freelancers
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1. The best time monitoring tool
RescueTime
The three most important things for any freelancer are: time, time, and time too! Your time is your most important capital - after you, of course - so you must know very well what consumes your time. After years of self-employment, you will inevitably realize that time management is the difference between the successful and the lazy, between professionals and amateurs, between those who do great work and those who applaud.
So you must decide how to spend your time, and in order to be able to make that decision you must observe and know how you spend your time in the beginning! This is where RescueTime comes in. It's a great set-up-and-forget-it tool that monitors your time while you're working on your PC.
And it calculates how much time you spent at work, how much time you spent browsing social media platforms, how much you spent on that task and this or that site, and based on all that information, it shows you informative and easy-to-browse reports about all that time you spent, and how much is your productivity Based on which activities were productive and which were distracting, such as social media platforms and watching satirical videos, for example.
RescueTime helps you set productivity goals, whether by reducing the time you spend on non-work, or increasing the time you spend on useful activities, by setting specific goals for each of them, and I consider these goals the most important thing that will keep your eyes open on your time and keep you on the right path.
The beautiful thing is that you can determine each activity according to the percentage of its impact on your productivity. For one of them, spending time on social media platforms may be very distracting, and for another person, his work is related to them to a large extent, that time may be productive, so I advise you to take some time to determine the percentage of the impact of each activity on Your productivity depends on the nature of your work, and remember to be honest with yourself, as you are not trying to deceive anyone else.
Hey, we haven't gotten to the best thing about this tool yet, the best thing about this tool is that it's completely free if all you want to do is monitor your time, set goals, and get detailed reports on how you spend your time. But if you want more than that, you can subscribe monthly or annually, and you can try it for 14 days for free as well.
Why the premium subscription?
Personally, I prefer the premium subscription because it gives you great features to increase your productivity, such as the Get Focused feature , which I activate while I am writing this article, for example, and it blocks any activity or site that you have identified as distracting. That is, no more escaping to social media platforms while at work, catching up on mail, or anything else! You just focus on the task you are working on for the time that you set for it to make sure that you work on it with full concentration.
The most beautiful thing about this feature is that instead of blocking the entire site, you can exclude specific parts such as the pages that you manage on Facebook, for example, for work, and also blocking them is by showing a beautiful and motivating quote about work or time, which makes you return to work with greater motivation, also the premium subscription It gives you more control over your reports, unlike the free subscription, which only gives you reports for the last 6 months, which is more than enough anyway.
Today I found that I used that tool for more than 10,118 hours, which is more than a year of time monitored and I will share what I learned from analyzing all this time in full work in an upcoming article, God willing.
The premium account may be useful for you if you are having a big problem with discipline and improving your use of time, if you do not have a problem with this matter, the free account will provide you with everything you need and more.
- Price: Free for the standard subscription, or paid for the premium subscription for $9 per month or $72 per year.
2. The best tool for organizing your daily tasks
Microsoft To-Do
If you choose to work as a freelancer, you may encounter a problem with productivity, where you spend a lot of time producing very little, which is not proportional to the amount of time you spend working. However, the main reason for this problem is often simply not planning your day effectively, by organizing your daily tasks and defining them the day before.
While you may have heard this advice before, it is essential to achieving the highest level of productivity, and I recommend using Microsoft To-Do to acquire this habit. When searching for a tool to help me add and organize daily tasks quickly and easily, I found that most task management tools were focused on adding new features and becoming all-in-one, which lost sight of their main mission. Instead, I recommend focusing on tools that prioritize ease, speed, and simplicity when adding, arranging, and browsing daily tasks.
I found that Wunderlist was the only tool that focused solely on this task, and I continued to use it until Microsoft acquired it and replaced it with Microsoft To-Do. Fortunately, Microsoft To-Do remains completely free and aims to focus solely on adding, arranging, and navigating your daily tasks every day, without any additional features.
How do you best use Microsoft To-Do?
In order to ensure that your productivity becomes better, I advise you to add daily tasks for the next day using this tool because it is the fastest and best and is available on all platforms from your phone to your personal computer and even the browser.
All you have to do is set aside a time each day to answer one question, How am I going to spend the next day? Then you add the tasks you plan to do for the next day quickly and easily With Microsoft To-Do , you can start planning the day and after a while you may find yourself planning the entire week in advance, which will give you a huge advantage and better control over your time and your entire life.
- Price: completely free.
3. The best email management tool
Mailbird
Pierre de Lagours once said, "Tell me what you read and I will tell you who you are." Nowadays, one's email management can also provide insights into their personality. Despite its significance, many freelancers do not pay enough attention to managing their emails. From the speed of one's response to the style and formatting of their emails, it is important to have a reliable tool to manage emails effectively.
While Mac users may not face many challenges managing their emails, Windows users may struggle to find good tools. However, Mailbird has solved this problem by creating the best email management software for Windows users since its launch in 2014. It has received multiple awards and is highly recommended for email management.
Mailbird is crucial in email management, and the number of accounts one manages using it is a testament to its effectiveness. It simplifies the email management process and allows users to send emails with personalized signatures, reflecting their own taste and attention to detail. This creates a positive impression on customers and demonstrates that one cares about even the smallest details. Ultimately, these small details make a significant difference.
Spark phone replacement
The only problem with Mailbird is that there is no mobile app for it, so for this I'm using Spark which is for Mac, iOS and Android phones.
In fact, Spark has some better features than Mailbird , such as automatically sorting messages to see what's most important first, and a great user experience. The good news is that it is planned to be released for Windows users next year, and its mobile experience is what made me really excited about its release because it could put Mailbird in fierce competition.
The special thing about Mailbird is that it is not only an email management tool, but through it you can use many tools that you may need during your work, through which you can directly access your files in Dropbox and add any of them, or talk via WhatsApp or with your team in Slack or even See your daily Microsoft To-Do tasks and more, all in just one place.
The great thing is that Mailbird is free to manage one mail only, but if you want to add more than one mail, you can subscribe monthly or buy it once for life, which is what I advise you to do if you plan to manage more than one email and get better features and do not want to pay Monthly subscription, believe me, you will not stop using it soon.
- Price: Free to manage one email, paid for more than that with two payment systems $ 3.25 per month or $ 79 once for a lifetime.
4. The best tool for managing projects and clients
Notion
If someone told me that there was a tool that would enable me to manage my entire life, I would call them crazy, especially because I prefer specialization, but I was surprised that there is actually a tool that you can use to manage almost anything in your life and it is Notion .
I don't want to tell you that Notion is just a project management tool between you and your team or clients, because it's much more than that, I personally use it to manage everything in my life, my goals, my plans, my income, my clients, what I'm learning, what I'm writing, everything Something in the literal sense of the word, and I have shared in several previous articles my learning plan , and a list of books I have read and will read there as well.
In this article, I will address one of the most important aspects of this tool, which is project management. One of the most important goals that I advise you to use Notion for is to manage the projects that you work on with your clients in a way that enables them to follow all developments and keep them informed of what you have finished and what you are doing, and what is also beautiful is That you can communicate inside it with your customers directly, which ensures that every small part of your projects and your relationship with your customers will be in one place in the end so that you can focus only on work.
How do you use Notion in project management?
In order to best use Notion to manage your projects with your clients, create a new space dedicated to your projects by going to Create or Join Workspace, and then choose the template that suits the project that you will work on with your client. In 90% of projects, you can use the Design Tasks template.
You will then prepare the work steps on the project and arrange the page in a way that makes it easier for your client to understand the work steps, what is required of him and everything about the project, after you have finished all that, invite your client to join you on that page by clicking on Share, then Invite Person, then write the e - mail of your customer.
Then your client or your team will be able to follow every development you make in the work, meaning that you do not need to send daily reports of what you have accomplished during the project, nor messages from the client about what has been accomplished! Everything will be in one place and everyone can know and follow the latest developments without having to communicate in a way that might hinder them from focusing on getting the work done.
What is unique about Notion is that it is very simple in project management. Before I used it for this matter, I used tools dedicated to managing projects such as Asana and Trello , but my clients were finding it difficult to deal with and understand them. I later learned that these tools are for people like you and me and not for our clients. But that all changed after I tried it once with one of my clients and he told me he couldn't believe how great the experience working with me was.
This is a picture of one of the projects I was working on with a client, see how we were communicating and sharing suggestions, edits and even working files inside the tool, without sending a single email, searching for everything everywhere, even your client will have permanent access For work files, that is, he will not contact you to ask whether you keep work files or not after 3 years, as is always the case.
I think that everything I told you is more than enough for you to use Notion to manage your upcoming projects in an easier and simpler way, and to enable you to provide an enjoyable experience for your client that will make working with you a pleasure, because your client will feel that they are involved in everything and that they are in control, and also without the need To stop focusing on his work too which my clients love so much and I'm sure your clients or even your team will too.
- Pricing: Free for up to 1,000 entries, $4 per month for personal use, $8 per month for teams.
- You will get $10 free credit when you get the tool from the following link.
5. The best tool for communicating with customers
Zoom
Zoom is a tool that enables you to hold meetings with your clients via audio or video calls, and enables you to communicate with your clients better and easier than any other tool. You can easily schedule a meeting with one of your clients according to his time zone, while automatically reminding you well in advance of the meeting Don't be put off by it because this gives a negative impression you know.
One of the most important reasons why Zoom is the best tool for you to communicate with your clients is that it enables you to record all the meetings that you have with your clients to come back to when needed, and this is great because you will not need to stop to take notes during the meeting, that is, you will focus only on its purpose , where you can come back to it at any time to take notes as you wish without having to waste your time and your customer's time too.
Zoom also gives you some great features such as the big difference in sound and image quality compared to other tools such as Skype , for example, and you can also use a virtual background instead of your room, or share your computer screen during the meeting, this is very useful if there is something you want to explain to your customer better or Share work before handing it in or to help your client understand something.
Security challenges!
You may have heard about some security challenges that the tool has faced recently, and it is true that I have encountered some security challenges in the past weeks, but do not worry, the problem has been resolved and users are secured, and I do not think that there are any security issues after the release of 5.0.2.
The beautiful thing is that the tool is free and you can use it as you like if you want to communicate with only one person in the meeting, but if the meeting is with more than one person, the maximum duration of the meeting will be only 40 minutes, and you can subscribe for unlimited time, which you will not need In 95% of cases.
- Price: Free and unlimited for personal meetings, starting at $14 per month for small teams and meetings of more than two people.
6. The best tool for tracking and calculating time
Clockify
In the past, time tracking tools were limited to freelancers who work according to time and not according to the final cost of the project, but now that we are all working from home, even small and medium companies rely on these tools to track the time of their employees while working from home as well, and here comes the role of Clockify .
Personally, I do not like the idea of working according to time, but I also know that it is the most appropriate work system for some fields and projects, in addition to that some people use it in order to be able to measure their productivity or their ability to perform tasks at a specific time to avoid wasting time. For all possible scenarios, I found Clockify to be the best tool for freelancers or even business owners to monitor their employees' work from home.
I've been using Clockify on a time based project for about 6 months now and haven't had any issues or found anything extra that isn't in it, I didn't even want to use another tool like Toggle which might be better in terms of experience but is more expensive and saves Fewer free tools, unlike Clockify , which gives you everything you need if you are a freelancer or a small business for free and makes the subscription limited to medium and large companies.
How do you use Clockify correctly?
By using Clockify , you will be able to track the time it takes to perform tasks and projects that require payment for time, and you can add your clients and projects that you are working on to be able to work with more than one client or project at the same time in one place with complete ease, and also set the price of your work hour according to each project Separately.
You can add tasks either automatically during your work or manually, and the tool will calculate the time and final cost of the project according to your hourly rate, and also create great reports on the tasks that you have done and the final cost, and you can send invoices and reports to your customer to pay you with ease, and you can also make reports As you wish, such as reports by project, daily, weekly, or monthly reports if you work with a client who pays monthly for your services or however you like.
After using the tool for 6 months, I found that it saves me a lot of time and does many things. I do not add time manually, or calculate time using a calculator, or even make reports on the tasks that I worked on and how much time it took to complete each of them, or Even make a final invoice for all of that and send it to the customer! All this will happen without any intervention from you, so imagine how much time and effort this tool will save you.
The great thing is that it is available as a program that you can use in Windows directly and gives you all the advantages and you can also use it in the browser with ease, and you can follow everything from your phone also through their applications, which will make it much easier for you to use it.
- Price: Completely free for personal use, starting at $9.99 per month for medium businesses or advanced features.
- If you intend to use this tool for a long time, please subscribe for a month at a time, because this is the least thanks they deserve for providing all these features for free.
7. The best tool for managing your financial life
expenses
At the beginning of the article, I had indicated that time is the most important thing for freelancers, and I believe that financial life management comes in second place, because it controls your relationship with your clients, your lifestyle, and almost everything.
Managing financial life is essential whether you are a freelancer or not, but the freelancer in particular must learn to manage financial life more than anyone.
I realized this in 2015 and I kept searching for a tool that enables me to monitor my expenses because the manual method is not efficient and takes a lot of time. I tried some tools and they were not convincing enough until I tried an expense app, then everything changed .
Since then this app is the most important thing to me, to the point where from the moment it stopped working in Android I bought an iOS phone and I don't think I would consider going back to Android without this app! Being fully Arabic developed by a Saudi team ?? Fantastic and - which makes me proud - has made it better at understanding your requirements and needs than any other app and it has become unbeatable for me in this matter.
Some of the great features of the expense application
An expense application that helps you with several things, the most important of which is adding your income and monitoring your expenses. Believe me, after more than 5 years of using it, I can tell you with confidence that managing your financial life begins when you monitor your expenses. When you record your expenses and watch the numbers, you will become wiser and more objective in dealing with money.
The application also provides setting monthly goals in terms of spending, so you can set a monthly budget for this month and the application will help you know how much you have left of that budget, and help you stick to it with nice notifications when you spend more than it should and that you should monitor your expenses, and other things that help you Determine what your entire financial life will look like.
And the best thing of all is that it gives you detailed reports about your expenses, how much are your average expenses per month, and what is your type of expenses, are they basic or supplementary expenses? It also tells you, based on your expenditure pattern, how much you need per month for your basic requirements and income suitable for your lifestyle. You can also add financial goals such as buying a new car. All you have to do is enter the value of the financial goal and the time you must achieve it, and it will tell you how much you should save per month until You can achieve this financial goal.
I think that if I kept listing the advantages of this application and the benefits of using it on your financial life and your life as a freelancer, this article would not be enough for me to talk about it, so I will let you discover it yourself now and perhaps I will talk about it in detail in an upcoming article, God willing.
- Price: Completely free
8. The best tool for planning and implementing projects
mindmaster
This applies to your business as a freelancer, for sure, as your business grows and you start dealing with more clients and more projects, these problems will begin to appear.
I talk about managing clients and projects, and the resulting dispersion between each client and project, and what should you accomplish? when? And for which client?
What I always say is that all of this doesn't have to happen in your brain, you definitely need it in order to get your work done, because your brain's job is to think, create, and solve problems, not hold that information for a short time.
Over time, I found that the best way to solve this problem is by using the Mind Map method, where you draw a map of what is going on in your mind about the tasks you are working on on a sheet of paper so that you can better arrange your thoughts, and then put it next to you during your work in order to work more Organized, making sure that there is no room for error and that you are on the right track in every project you work on.
Mindmeister almost performs the same task, but without the need for paper or pen, you can plan everything on your mind on your computer screen, which will save you a lot of time while working and give you more flexibility in controlling your thoughts, modifying them, and arranging them in the way you want to work according to for him.
How do you eliminate distractions with Mindmeister?
Personally, I do not start working on a new project without planning it using Mindmeister , which prevents distraction throughout the work because I do not plan and work at the same time, as this is the main cause of distraction during work and lack of achievement.
The next time you are going to work on a project, try planning the entire project using Mindmeister. I advise you to use the Get Things Done GTD template , and after completion, start implementing. You will notice that you are not subjected to any distractions, and you will find yourself focusing only on performing tasks.
- Price: Free for personal use up to 3 mind maps, starting at $2.49 per month for additional features.
9. The best file sharing tool
MEGA
Freelancer One of the most important things you do is receive and send work files, in some areas these files may be small and can be transferred directly without the need for a file sharing tool, but you may not want those files to fall into the wrong hands, and in other areas these files may be Too big and hard to transport through the mail.
Therefore, you need a single place that guarantees you the protection of your customers' files and provides you with a large amount of storage space at the same time. This was a difficult equation that no other file sharing tool than MEGA could achieve .
File sharing is one of the most competitive aspects of the internet, almost every year a new file sharing tool comes out, I can say that I have tried most of them but I haven't found anything that meets the equation I'm after, which is a lot of storage space, file protection as all my clients' files They are files that no one else should see, and easy to send and download files because they are often very large.
If you are looking for speed in sending and receiving, I advise you to use WeTransfer , but you will lose the duration and storage space for your files, and if you are looking for ease in dealing and downloading for your customers, I advise you to use Dropbox , but you will get a very small storage space and it may not be completely safe.
But if you are looking for all of that together, I advise you to use MEGA , as it provides you with 50 GB of free storage space , which is much more than you might need, ensuring that your clients’ files will remain there forever, and also with another level of protection, as their logo is The Privacy Company .
All your files are encrypted with keys that you alone, and whoever you send them to can use them to access your files, in addition to that your account can only be accessed with the password that you specified, and if you lose it, you will lose access to all your files! So I advise you to keep your spare keys in a safe place.
Perhaps the main reason why I nominate MEGA as the best tool is that it provides a MEGA Sync tool that allows you to upload and download files intermittently. If you use Google Drive, you certainly encountered this silly problem that when it stops uploading, you have to restart it.
Not with MEGA. You can upload files in several intermittent sessions if they are large without having to stop your work, or redo the whole process when it fails.
And the best thing is that you do not need to send many files to your client and tell him that you have sent them, just give him access to his files and he will know when they are updated or any new files are added without the need to communicate more than once or inform him via e-mail, i.e. saving more time.
- Price: Free up to 50 GB cloud storage space, paid spaces start from 85 pounds per month for 400 GB cloud storage space.
10. The best tool for managing your entire freelance business!
More
Perhaps the hardest thing about being a Freelancer is that you are a one-man army. You train, plan, prepare, equip, and even go to war on your own, but not after you use Plutio. That tool is a Swiss army knife for you .
As Nayobe said in her song “Good things come to those who wait,” so I prefer to leave the best for last. This tool is so good that it combines most of the previous tools in one tool, and you can consider it the tool that will make managing your freelance business easier than ever. It combines everything you need in your freelance business, from organizing daily tasks and tracking time, to managing your relationships with your clients and projects, and sending invoices and job requests.
You are more than just a freelancer, you are your own company!
With Plutio you will also become more than just a Freelancer, as your customers will feel like they are dealing with a reputable company, because all your Proposals , Invoices , and anything you produce will have your own logo and character, and it will look as if you have spent thousands of dollars on your own visual identity When in fact you didn't do anything!
I think this is the most beautiful thing that this tool gives you, as it increases your Deceptive Value in a way that makes your potential customers want to become existing customers, and your existing customers to become repeat customers and pay more for that.
Speaking a little about using the tool, it gives you a subdomain web address dedicated to your name or your company's name, through which you can access several tools such as managing tasks, adding and managing projects, clients, contracts, and work orders.
Also, there is a private space for communication between you and your clients or colleagues at work. All this with an easy-to-use calendar in which you manage your appointments and organize your time in terms of delivery times, meetings, and others.
The beauty is that you do not need to spend a lot of time preparing them, although this is a one-time event, as you can use many pre-made templates for ready-made invoices and work orders that will save you a lot of time that you will spend writing them yourself and with better efficiency.
It also gives you great ease in creating and sending invoices to your customers, all you have to enter is some small details such as cost and work details, and the tool will add your bank accounts or your PayPal account and all the details to make the invoice look like it is coming from a reputable company, and the customer can also pay by clicking on Direct link to your PayPal account.
This tool is my secret weapon that enables me to manage many clients at the same time very professionally, and honestly, I do not know how to describe the use of this tool or how it will make your life at least ten times easier, but what I advise you is to try it for 14 days for free. I think you'll give it up after that period.
- Price: Free for 14 days, after which the subscription price becomes $15 per month for individuals and up to $30 for teams.
last word
These were the 10 tools for freelancers that you should use to better manage your life, from the best tool for time monitoring and calculating productivity, to the best tool for managing your entire freelance business, I hope that these tools or one of them make your freelancing journey easier, and I hope you find it As useful to you as it is to me.
As you know, the goal of these tools is to help you work better if you are a freelancer or plan to work from home, just remember that tools are not everything, what makes the difference is how you use those tools or tools available to you, whatever they are.
If you would like to know more about any of these tools you can write anything you want to know in the comments and I will be happy to help you figure it out.
Now tell us a tool you already knew of those tools? Do you have other tools that you use to manage your business as a Freelancer? Share with us in the comments.