People often choose to be freelancers due to various reasons. But, one of the motivating factors for that would be freedom. Freedom to do stuff on their own or in the way they deem fit. Thus, a freelancer can decide for himself/herself the pace of their work, choose their clients and set personal targets for themselves. Nevertheless, freelancers have the burden of managing a whole enterprise on their shoulders.
But, freelancing is mostly about a lot of uncharted work. It requires doing every little and big task on your own. They need to do finances, look out for new projects, and most of all plan and maintain their schedule. Freelancers are now on the rise. As contractual work becomes the norm of the day people can provide services to one or more companies. Thus, there arises a need for efficient tools that would aid them in their venture.
Freelancers have gone with both free and paid tools from time to time. There are thousand plus such tools online that can add serious value to a freelancer’s day. But, are they truly worth the changing times and new challenges? We have come up with a loaded list of tools for you to see. Following is a list of the top tools discussed in detail:
Calendly
Calendly is a great calendar tool. It is a hub for scheduling meetings. The one best thing about this tool is that it cuts the drudge of back and forth emails and you can easily jump on a call with your potential clients. It schedules meetings after adopting your daily routines and availability. Calendly also, schedules calls in integrated platforms like GMeet, iCloud, Salesforce, Slack, and Mailchimp. But even all of the free features can prove to be limited and one might need to spend some money on it.
Slack
Slack is the staple communication tool for any organization out there. Also, people working on long-term projects adhere to Slack. It has a ton of features and can come in handy. It is meant for day-to-day business communication and is the formal/professional WhatsApp for some reason. Slack is generally free but, one can miss out on important features if not purchasing their premium plans. However, Slack provides an integrated workplace experience.
Boomerang
It is a great communication tool that helps with our day-to-day email interactions. It is able to schedule emails and is a number one choice for email marketing. One can draft emails and put them on a timer to be later sent during working hours. Other features of Boomerang include the user to see if the emails have been opened and set up follow-ups accordingly. However, it has certain limitations and one needs to subscribe to a plan for accessing other premium features.
Google Drive
A well-known and popular alternative to the Dropbox GDrive is much more reliable and efficient. It comes with the default G-Suite apps like Docs, Sheets, and Forms. It can help a person working online to collaborate with a few co-workers. However, there is limited space in GDrive. It comes with 15 GB of cloud storage which can be easily exhausted. One needs to go for a workplace upgrade in order to get a good amount of storage space.
Spinbackup
If you believe in backing up all your work and use Google products Spinbackup is for you. It helps you backup data on your Google apps offsite. It is always better to have backups in case your Google account gets corrupted. Spinbnackup is one of the initial choices that freelancers make. With a large amount of database and ongoing projects, they need to manage and sort out their workspace. So, if you are skeptical about losing your important things this is for you. Again, this app has its drawbacks and needs your money to unlock some valuable features.
Grammarly
It can be easily placed on the best chrome extensions list. It checks your grammar, punctuation thoroughly and comes up with great suggestions. It can also look up the subject-verb agreement for its users and detects words that have been placed in the wrong context.
Canva
It appeared to the public eye due to the promotion by Guy Kawasaki, who owns a large stake in it. It is the most popular app for designing graphics. People even belonging from a non-graphic design background can use it to design some great things here. It needs no introduction separately and has plenty of users all over the world. Canva is versatile, simple, and has all sorts of features. However, it requires the user to spend money to unlock some very useful features.
PayPal
One of the top-rated finance app for businesses and freelancers alike is PayPal. Clients paying the user through a bank transfer can cost a large amount of money. Not only that it takes a huge amount of time as well. Therefore, PayPal is the most convenient payment platform for any freelancer out there. It is secure and is supported by 25+ countries. It is a verified source of payment in many countries and a number of merchants solely rely on PayPal for their daily transactions. But, one of the major drawbacks is that it charges a large commission and a big transaction fee.
Trello
Trello is one of the best project management. It has great visuals and graphs that can prove to be quite efficient. Trello helps to create boards and flashcards which can be customized to one’s own needs. It can help you with any sort of personal or professional task management. Many top businesses use Trello as their editorial calendar. However, unlike any other tool, Trello has free signups.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management tools. It has a ton of features and is trusted by many freelancers and businesses at the same time. It helps you run analytics reports and can allow your team to view relevant scheduled posts.
The tools mentioned above have similar drawbacks; either they need you to be subscribed or provide a non-integrated user experience. It is very crucial to have something that manages all of the workload and puts things in the right place. Maybe a smart manager that could look after all of the daily needs? Then you must surely use StepOut’s SaaS tool. It provides an integrated and all-encompassing environment for all of your business needs. It does not even charge any commissions from its users. It is highly recommended and is meant to aid you in your ventures.
