Most people opt for freelancing because of its perks, but along with these benefits, there are numerous responsibilities. Freelancers do get flexible timings, desired work, and desired client, but with all this freedom they also have to handle everything, literally everything.

At present, many tools have been developed for assisting freelancers because, first of all, no one can manage all this work without any reinforcements and secondly, freelancers usually prefer to work alone. Even if you are a great multi-tasker, you need some tools to get your work life together.

So, I am going to jot down some of the best tools for freelancers which you will either need right now or maybe in the future.

Project Management Tools

Project management tools are essential for taking your business to new heights as they allow you to monitor each and every aspect and no asset is lost.

Asana

Asana is a beautiful collaboration tool used by everyone nowadays. It is mostly preferred for professional use rather than personal, but it works really well for teams who want to collaborate on a project.

Trello

Trello is one of the best tools for freelancers due to its multi-purpose layout and visual features. You can set up cards, boards and lists to collaborate with clients or colleagues. It can be used either for personal or professional tasks to keep everything organized.

Basecamp

Basecamp helps you save time by organizing everything in one place like to-do lists, boards, and multiple projects. It offers a 30-day free trial as well.

Communication Tools

Communication is the essence of an effective business so you need the best tools for communicating with your clients all over the world.

Boomerang

Boomerang is an email management tool that allows maximum productive conversations through emails. It has a brilliant feature that helps you in scheduling emails and automatically sends those emails at the specified time. There is an option for an automated response as well.

Hunter.io

Hunter is an email finder and allows you to find available contacts when you mention a company’s name.

Slack

Slack is another one of the best tools for freelancers who have long-term clients, to communicate at a simpler level than emails. It is widely used by companies and organizations and you will have to do so someday.

Creative Tools

These are the best tools for freelancers who have no idea about graphic designing but are somehow stuck with it in some project. Although there are many, I am going to enlist a few free and amazing ones.

Canva

Canva is the most famous tool in this regard because it has so many options and professional features that you will create any visual design like a skilled Graphic designer.

Behance

Behance is a free portfolio building tool for freelance writers and designers, allowing them to display their set of skills.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud is a paid service which comprises of designing tools including Adobe Indesign, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Adobe XD and Premiere Pro.

PicMonkey

PicMonkey is another photo editing and graphic designing tool with an easy-to-use interface, allowing freelancers to create the best designs with personal or customized templates.

Calendar Tools

Calendar tools seem like an irrelevant idea, but it is ideal for those freelancers who are less disciplined or they need someone to help them keep track of assignments and meetings.

Google Calendar

Among Calendar tools, Google calendar is one of the best tools for freelancers because it is very easily accessible and has multiple features for professional use.

Calendly

Calendy is a must-have if you spend a lot of time setting up meetings. It easily schedules all the appointments based on your timezone and convenience.

Money Management Tools

Well, money management is the most obvious task that all freelancers perform whether it is receiving payments or managing taxes. For this purpose, some of the best tools for freelancers are listed down.

Paypal

PayPal is the most used payment method all over the world due to its compatibility, low transfer rates, and availability in over 200 countries. If you want to work with a foreign client, it is essential to have a PayPal account.

Square

With the help of Square, you can accept credit card, cash and check payments which will get deposited within one to two days.

Mint

One of the best tools for freelancers out there is this amazing budgeting app. It helps in collecting all your financial information at one platform and in tracking bills, budgets, taxes and investments to create a complete outline.

Fresh Books

Freshbooks is a free accounting software which helps you in keeping track of the project, invoices, time and provides the facility of accepting credit card payments.

Social Media Management Tools

Almost all freelancing services require social media marketing and management. However, it is difficult for some people to manage this all by themselves. If you are a social media manager, these tools will be a huge help in boosting your social media services.

SmarterQueue

One of the best social media management tools for freelancers who require regular posting. SmarterQueue grants you access to all social networks and allows custom posting as well as an automatic system of creating posts every day without any specifications.

Buffer

Buffer is popular due to its scheduling feature, where you can create a line-up of posts with specific date and time and buffer will post these according to the provided schedule or the order in which these posts were added.

Hootsuit

HootSuite is unique in its features and training services, but it is popular due to its reasonable plans. Like other social media tools, it also allows you to connect every social network on one account and update status on all social accounts with one click. You can also schedule posts for a certain date or time and HootSuite will post it automatically.

BoardBooster

If Pinterest is a part of your social media service then BoardBooster is the tool for you. It is specific to Pinterest and allows you to effectively create pins and improve them. It doesn’t require manual posting, you may also schedule pins for future.

Voice & Video Chat Tools

As I stated earlier, communication is the key to building an understanding and creating a constructive alliance. Voice and video chat tools have opened doors for many opportunities because these are used for contacting clients all over the world, increasing freelance scope day by day.

Skype

Skype is a popular video and audio calling tool, providing free services on both local and international calls. To connect via Skype,  all you need is a good internet connection.

Zoom

Zoom is another video chat tool, but more useful if you give online workshops and seminars. It allows you to record the video chat and connects you with over 100 people. Zoom has a free plan (limited) and paid plans as well.

Cloud Backup Tools

Backup and storage of work is a necessary part of any job but extremely important for freelancers. Cloud tools allow storage of all files online and also serve as the best tools for freelancers for sharing files with everyone.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud storage software that you can create with any email and store & share your data. One important feature is that you can install it on your device so your data can sync automatically. However, it provides a limited storage space and that’s a big drawback sometimes.

Google Drive

Google Drive is associated with Google and is widely used because everyone has a Google account thus making it easily accessible. Apart from this, it also offers access to some tools like Google Docs, Sheets and Slides which allow you to work online along with storage and sharing.

Spinbackup

This is basically for creating a backup of your backup. Sounds weird but it’s very beneficial for safekeeping, in case you lose your email account then you can access it through spinbackup.

Productivity Tools

Being a freelancer, you get the benefit of setting your own work schedule, choosing your own client and being your own boss. But everyone needs some kind of supervision to perform assignments punctually and effectively. That’s why productivity tools have been developed to assist you in this regard.

1Password

As the name indicates, this tool will help you remember all your passwords and usernames. It is one of the best tools for freelancers because freelancers have a list of websites and account to keep track of and 1Password makes it easier for them to safely store this information.

LastPass

LastPass is one of the best utility to save passwords for sites. It has different plans and the best thing is, it offers a free plan that is essential for normal users. You can trust them to store your password, credit card information, bank accounts, addresses, secure notes, etc.

IFTTT

IFTTT is the abbreviation for “if this then that” which actually points towards its feature, allowing the user to create applets. These applets are basically created for integrating different websites and apps and can be based on any apps or networks you need.

Pocket

Pocket is quite a useful one as it helps you store links, articles, videos or anything that you want to watch later. This tool helps freelancers for referring purposes if they find something related to their work on any device.

TextExpander

Everyone has a certain set of words that they either use a lot or they have to use. Among the best tools for freelancers, this one has to be included because it saves you from the extra trouble of writing the same thing over and over again. TextExpander automatically writes the sentence when you mention your specified word.

Content Writing Tools

Content writing is one of the most important freelance skills, but this skill always requires a set of tools either for grammar, editing, checking plagiarism or SEO optimization. Writing tools are essential even if you are not providing content writing services, they always come in handy.

Hemingway

Hemingway is a grammar checking tool which not only offers correction of grammatical errors but also the insights regarding the content. It interprets the readability of the text with the help of words and sentence structure used. It is another one of the best tools for freelancers due to its interesting features.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO lies among the top 5 WordPress plugins, so if you use WordPress this is a  must-have tool. It makes the pages and posts SEO friendly and also guides the user through an effective keyword use.

Grammarly

Grammarly is by far the best tool for checking grammar. It identifies grammatical errors, wrong spellings, and word use and suggests the correction while explaining the errors.

Grammarly has both free and premium versions, the premium version also includes a plagiarism checker.

KWFinder

Finding a keyword is the first and most important step if your content has to be SEO. KWFinder offers assistance in this regard, it suggests keywords and also helps in searching the keywords used globally.

Evernote

Evernote is an ideal tool for everyone as it securely stores all the information you need and helps in organizing your ideas and saves time.

Although, Evernote is more of a productivity tool, it is highly significant for content writers.

Proposal Tools

Freelancers should not only rely on job portals for projects if they want to earn in bulk. Proposal tools are crucial nowadays due to the increasing competition and designing attractive drafts will help you secure more clients.

Proposify

Among proposal tools, Proposify is the most famous and diverse tool, offering numerous templates and designing tools to create a mesmerizing proposal. It saves almost half of your time and allows you to keep track of the proposals, it notifies the user whenever a client opens your proposal.

Prospero

Prospero has revolutionized freelancing business with its amazing features. It has an easy-to-use interface and offers a fast and reliable way of creating impressive proposals. It has a unique built-in feature of automatic content creation that helps in writing quickly and efficiently.

SlideShare

SlideShare is an extension of LinkedIn which helps in building visual proposals in an organized manner. You can create presentations, documents or infographics in half the time due to its prepared templates.

Time Tracking Tools

Being a freelancer, you have to manage your time by drafting a line between your personal and professional life. This can only be done if you have a supervising hand and time tracking tools play a huge role in this regard. These tools are highly significant for all freelancers whether newbies or experienced ones

Harvest

Harvest has created its place among the best tools for freelancers due to its simple time tracking features. It helps in scheduling projects, keeping track of time spent on each project and integrates with other tools like Trello, BaseCamp, Asana, Slack, PayPal, and many more.

StayFocusd

As a freelancer, it is easier to get distracted from work because you are on the internet all the time and there are many social networks which help you in wasting time. StayFocusd is the tool which will keep you from spending a lot of time on these websites if you add this extension on your browser.

Toggl

Toggl is the simplest time tracking tool that works on all devices keeping you in sync. It allows the users to work smarter by tracking the amount of time they spend working on a single project and helps in determining hours to charge for.

Other similar tools are OfficeTime, Hubstaff, and RescueTime.

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