Having an arsenal of productivity tools seem to be very important nowadays, as the digital era has opened us to an abundance of distractions; therefore, people feel the need to create tools that can help them focus. More tasks, more projects and that means more time needed. As everything today is about being proactive and productive, as a developer, you are always busy coding away for your clients’ projects that are urgent and need to be done fast. Here’s a post that will show all the magical productivity tools.

But what are productivity tools?

These productivity tools can be found as software or online applications that allow people to keep track of their tasks and time you’ve spent working and with the scope of better self-organisation and smooth teamwork.

But how helpful are these productivity tools?

These tools are very helpful, and usually, these tools are necessary when you have more multiple projects. How else can you stay focused when you see your inbox is full of emails, someone tagged you on a Social Media, or there is a video on YouTube that you need to watch right now?

These tools can help you not to get stuck down that rabbit hole that can appear but also, these tools can help you optimise those tasks and make the most of them at the same time.

What are the best productivity tools?

So here is a list with some productivity tools that any developer, designers, product managers or anyone else who are looking for productivity tools, but like always you should analyse and choose which one that fits your needs.

Time Tracking Tools

1. Clockify

Clockify is a super simple time tracker and time-sheet app that lets you track work hours across multiple projects. It’s straightforward to use this time management tool, and it can helps you when you have to provide better estimates for your new customers. Clockify user interface is clean, intuitive and beautiful.

Price: Free

2. Toggl

Toggl is a really useful time tracking app that offers online time-tracking and reporting services. It tracks time based on your tasks through an task-timer or through manual entry, this app is ideal for freelancers and small businesses. Also, Toggl has a handy browser add-that allows you to track time without ever having to open the web app.

Price: Free, also there are paid options, starting at $9.00 per user/month (billed yearly).

3. Jibble

Jibble is a multi-device, cloud-based time and attendance tracker. The app allows the user to use the services remotely, just not only from a computer but also from your mobile phones which makes it more accessible. Also, you can see how much a project cost in developers’ time which can help with pricing out a job.

Price: Free, there’s some paid options starting at $1.50 per active user/month

If you are looking for some more time tracking apps, previously on SomeWhat Creative I’ve wrote a post showcasing 6 Time Tracking Apps for Freelancers, which you can find that post right here.

Communication Tools

1. Slack

Slack is a team communication and collaboration application that also can replace email that inturn help you and your team life productivity at a different level.

Slack was designed to support the various way people work together, so you can collaborate with people online as efficiently you find in face-to-face collaboration.

You’ll find that Slack has a very intuitive and clean user interface, and it allows the team to sort multiple conversations quickly. It is also handy for organising different projects into the right conversations, especially over long periods of time, something really good about this tool is that it supports any device you use on a regular basis simultaneously. So you will never miss any information or notification not being at work you will eventually get notified on another device such as your smartphone.

Price: Free for those small teams trying out Slack for an unlimited period of time, paid plans available starting at $6.67 USD/Per Month

2. Rocket Chat

Rocket Chat is a free, open-source and unlimited communication tool that has good & clean usability. It’s a handy tool for communicating and collaborating with your team, share files or chat in real-time and you can even switch to video/audio conferencing.

You can have complete access to the source code, and you can fully customise, extend or add new functionality to meet your requirements.

You have the freedom to control and centralise your communication with internal or external clients by choosing where to host their data securely, and by opting for a fully customisable the interface with a range of plugins, themes, and integrations.

Price: Free, or Pro at $3.00 per user per month.

3. Flock

Flock is an app that organises all your team’s conversations, apps and tools in a single place, so you can get on the things that matters and that is getting work done faster.

Flock adds some productivity concepts in the app. such as different channels and private chats, also you can have to-do lists with assignments and due dates and you can pin documents/files in a conversation or channel.

Price: Free for Smaller Teams or starting $4.50 per month for business that are a bit bigger

4. Zoho Cliq

Zoho Cliq is a cloud based collaborative and interactive app that allows teams to make video and audio calls, also chat and share files.

You probably notice that Zoho Cliq looks somewhat the same as Slack, and it adds the ability to see multiple channels in a single window. It has a forking option for branching discussions. Zoho’s Cliq has a fast handling system and a friendly interface also on you will see on this platform is that it integrates many other advanced features such as polls, event invitations, and visual assignment tools.

Price: Free or Unlimited at $0.9/user/month billed annually

5. Chanty

Chanty is a fast and simple chat app that designed to boost communication and productivity in teams. Plus you can manage your tasks by turning messages into tasks in one click. With the app you will see that one of the most important feature that this app has is Simplicity, the interface and layout are great, they are simply made to support work.

Also Chanty allows code snippets, and you can enjoy a quick and easy way to share blocks of code with your dev team, your colleagues can open and read snippets without leaving the chat app.

Price: Free or $3.00 per user/ per month

Sharing & Taking Notes Tools.

1. Boostnote

Boostnote is an intuitive, styling and utmost open-source markdown note app for devs. As it’s Markdown its makes it easy to organise information. Firstly, Boostnote is not an app that is suitable for everyone, as it’s much more appropriate note-taking app for coders.

Something that is nice about Boostnote is that it provides folders and tagging for better organisation of your notes, also it supports checkboxes and includes a progress bar to track the completion of all your tasks.

Price: Basic $0.00 for 100MB Cloud Storage Size or Premium at $3.00 per month USD for 2GB Cloud Storage Size and after that it’s $5.00 USD for every 5GB.

2. Joplin

Joplin is a free and open-source note taking and to-do app, that can handle a large number of notes organised into note-books. The notes are searchable, can be copied, tagged and modified either directly from the app or through your own text editor. All the notes you find will be in Markdown format.

These notes can be synchronised with various cloud services including Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, WebDAV or a network directory. You can sync the notes, notebooks, tags and other metadata into plain text files so that it can be easily inspected, backed up and moved around.

Price: Free

3. Evernote

Evernote is an app to help you capture, prioritise, and archive ideas, projects and to-do lists. This apps is a perfect place to store all the materials you need for any project and manage the moving parts, deliverables and deadlines you find with those projects. It doesn’t matter if you work alone, or with a team, Evernote makes it easy to send important information to colleagues or clients.

Price: Basic Evernote is Free or Evernote Premium is $7.99 per month or you can choose Evernote Business which is at $14.99 per user per month

4. Quip

Quip is a very useful and complete app that combines content and communication in a single simple experience. Quip gives teams a place to collaborate through documents, spreadsheets, checklists, and chat.

One of the best features in Quip, is the collaboration app which allows you to edit documents and discuss them in real-time with others. Quip is similar to Slack, as there’s an option to notify everyone with an @ option to send messages to a team. It integrates well with Salesforce, also, you are able to insert Kanban boards inside Quip.

Price: Starting at $10.00 per user per month

5. Notion

Notion is an all-in-one Cloud based workspace, where you can write, plan, collaborate and get organised. It’s also a note-taking app with markdown support that integrates tasks, wikis and databases.

Notion has a Kanban board interface which simplifies the process of creating and storing collaborative documents. With this app, I’ve found is that you can share with your clients some determined information and hide the rest not to overwhelm them with extra information. Also, you can easily configure Notion to suit your needs while you are using it.

Price: Start for free, or as low as $4.00 a month.