Working remotely or even building a small company is not easy, but it’s possible today. Some of today’s most notable companies, including Basecamp, Buffer, Virgin, and WordPress, are building companies with over 100+ employees worldwide. How did they do it?
They found the right ‘tools.’ Practical tools are vital to your team’s culture, productivity, and success when living on opposite sides of the continent and in different time zones. We’ve tested hundreds of online tools to maximize how we stay connected, productive, and happy. Here is a list of the top 14 online tools you will find helpful for yourself and your team. The first four deal with connectivity, while the last four help to make your team happier. The remaining six tolls help to increase your team’s productivity.
1. Slack – Keeping Everyone Connected
Slack is a powerful and free way to coordinate with your team and keep everyone on the same page.
2. Help Scout – Customer Support Inbox Managed In One Place
When we first started, we coordinated our customer support through Gmail. That got messy — fast. With Help Scout, we can invite our support team to the application and coordinate all of our support tickets in one place. They also have a knowledge base feature that allows you to systematize your customer service.
3. Intercom – Live Customer Support
Intercom is a live chat support tool that allows you to send manual and automated notifications to visitors and customers inside the app based on their behaviors. It helps our customers get direct, immediate support and helps us keep everyone happy.
4. Basecamp – Creating company milestones, goals, and organizing files
Basecamp has been around for over 17 years. Which is far longer than most team management tools out there. And their product shows it. It’s a great tool to organize everything in your company or even for yourself to keep everything organized. They have a free plan for one project (also known as Basecamp), and you can input as many users as you want.
5. Stunning– Helping Customers Update Billing Information In One Click
Stunning is a new tool we’ve recently adopted to recover lost revenue in our business. A common issue that every business runs into is failed charges. This could be due to fraud, card expiry, or the customer’s bank rejecting the account for security reasons.
Stunning allows us to help update, remind, and empower customers to update their information with one click.
6. Trello – Coordinating Future Blog Posts, To-Do Lists, And More
Content marketing has been the biggest driver of our website growth thus far, and it’s growing faster by the month. People often ask how we can brainstorm, organize, and publish so many articles at a time. Before, we were using a Google Spreadsheet, which got pretty chaotic.
Now we use Trello to organize everything into various sections: Ideas, To-do’s, To be published, and Published.
7. WordPress – Content Management Platform
I have yet to hear a better platform for content management, which is why companies like Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and 20% of the internet are powered by WordPress.
8. Pomodoro – Workcycle To Maximize Productivity Without Burnout
I often worked for two to three hours without taking a break. When working on something you’re passionate about, putting your head down without resting is easy.
The issue was that I was feeling less productive and losing my creativity after about 60-minutes or so. I’ve recently been adopting the Pomodoro Technique, where you work in 25-minute chunks, then take small breaks (~5 minutes). It’s forced me to focus on completing a critical task without distraction. Taking small breaks throughout the day prevents your team from burning out.
9. Invision – Design And Development Collaboration In One Place
Invision allows our team to collaborate and share comments on design layouts, feature builds, and even prototype new ideas inside the app. It’s saved us a lot of time and keeps our entire team aligned to one product’s vision.
10. Zapier – Automation Of Recurring Tasks (IFTTT For Business)
If you’ve used IFTTT for your automation, you’ll love Zapier for your business. It allows us to automate essential functions of our business without needing to develop it on the back end.
11. Five Minute Journal – Daily Reminders To Express Gratitude and Appreciation
The five-minute journal was initially recommended by Tim Ferriss, who uses it in his daily routine. It’s easy to be caught up with the current events of your day and lose appreciation of what you have in your life. The five-minute journal gives you the template and framework to record your thoughts and what you’re most appreciative of before you start your day and hit the sheets.
12. Calm
Meditation And Peace Of Mind On-Demand
Whenever we feel stressed, Calm is a go-to tool to get grounded again. It provides soothing background noises for you to enjoy, including a guided meditation practice that lasts 5 to 10 minutes.
13. Strides – Powerful Habit Tracker With Visual Data Analytics Of Your Habits
We are what we repeatedly do. As dull as it sounds, having daily routines is what gives us the freedom to do what we want in our lives. I’ve tried multiple habit-tracking online tools, but Strides is one of the best based on visual appearances and usability.
14. 8tracks – Curated Music Selected Based On What Mood You Are In
8tracks gives you music collections depending on what mood you are in.
