Freelance work is a completely new form of labour. This type of employment relationship is beneficial for both companies and talents. It allows companies to avoid steady employment and all the expenses and responsibilities that come with it.
On the other hand, the freelance working concept also helps professionals to earn a second income. In time, some talents completely shift to this type of work.
Since the number of freelancers is constantly growing, both in Western countries and in the developing world, many companies tend to cater to this type of crowd and release solutions that will help them to cope with their everyday responsibilities. Some of the most famous freelance marketplaces include Upwork, Fiverr, 99Design and Freelancer. These are all million-dollar companies that have developed their business operation by connecting employers and freelancers.
Many tech companies also realized that the growing freelance market offers great opportunities, so they’ve developed apps and software that are highly useful to employees who work from home.
In this article, we’re going to review the ten apps that are most helpful to freelancers.
10 Best Apps to Help Freelancers Work Smarter
1: Upwork – for Finding Work-Best Apps to Help Freelancers
This is by far the most popular freelance marketplace. It connects you to the huge database of clients, who offer both gigs and steady employment. Freelancers are paid per hour or after the job is done. Each member has a profile that can be used as both a professional biography and a business portfolio. Besides advanced search options, easy (although expensive) payment system, Upwork also offers a wide variety of tests that allow you to test and show your knowledge to possible employers.
2: Google Drive – for Storing and Saving Your Work
Google provides a great number of helpful apps to both free and paid users. Google Drive allows you to store your work and share it with employers or colleagues with the use of sharable links. Each Google account comes with 15GB of free space. This space is used across all apps and that’s also where Gmail attachment and Google Docs are stored.
3: Google Translate – for Translating Employer’s E-mails and Communicating With Foreign Clients
Google Translate is the most popular translator in the world, with functionality in several dozen different languages. Freelancers often need to communicate and exchange emails with foreign clients and Google Translate can easily bridge the language gap. You can use it for translating small parts of the text within the app or for translating whole web pages, in which case the app connects to the page itself and showcases the translation inside an HTML code.
4: Active Collab – for Project Management and Collaboration
This another great App to Help Freelancers get the job done. Many freelancers who have found steady employment online need to work in remote teams. Active Collab is one of the most popular collaboration apps on the market. You can see how it compares to other apps on the market by reading this exhaustive project management tools comparison.
It comes with a wide variety of basic functions that allow users to schedule tasks, communicate and exchange files. Unlike other similar apps, Active Collab also has a time tracking feature, which allows you to track your work and charge your clients accordingly. The invoices can also be sent through the app, which drastically saves time and makes payments more transparent.
5: Toggl – for Time Management-Best Apps to Help Freelancers
Toggle is a specialized time management app. It allows you to create projects and tasks and track the time you spend on each one of them. The Toggle data can be used for charging your expenses or for improving your work and making it faster. The app provides clean-looking reports that you can send to your clients. It comes with both mobile and desktop version, and it also has a specialized Google Chrome plugin.
6: WaveApps – for Budgeting: Top Apps to Help Freelancers
Creating and sending invoices is one of the most boring freelance tasks. WaveApps helps you to create professionally looking invoices, receipts, and price estimates. In addition to this, the app also allows you to track your income and expenses and improve your bottom line with some smart budgeting. It is a free app and it comes with excellent customer service and support.
7: Skype – for Communicating With Your Clients and Fellow Freelancers
As one of the most respective communication software on the market, Skype has become the standard communication app in the freelance world. It allows you to communicate with other Skype users for free, and you can also use it for calling both mobile and landline phones abroad at very competitive rates. Many clients who employ freelance teams also like to use Skype’s group video chat functionality for organizing team meetings.
8: DeskSurfing – for Finding an Ideal Workplace
Freelancers often work from co-working offices and other shared spaces. DeskSurfing helps you to find an ideal workspace that offers both career advancement and socializing opportunities. This app’s trendy appeal mimics the taste of the young and the restless freelancers who are also their main audience. DeskSurfing presents hundreds of free working spaces worldwide. It offers advanced search with many different filters and a very functional searchable map.
9: 1Password – for Saving Passwords
If you run several accounts on different freelance marketplaces, social networks, and collaboration apps, 1Password is the perfect place to store all of their passwords securely. This isn’t a classic app, but a Google Chrome expansion. You don’t need to insert passwords manually because the add-on remembers the passwords you’ve entered while working on the Chrome browser. You can get them with the touch of only one key. This way, you’ll avoid the annoying password recovery process.
10: SelfControl – for Minimizing Distraction (Best Apps to Help Freelancers)
Weak willpower produces most distractions when working from a personal computer. It forces you to check your social channels on a regular basis and spend lots of time browsing the Facebook, Instagram or Twitter timeline. SelfControl is a desktop app for Mac OX that can easily solve this problem. It can block mail servers or websites for a permitted period and allow you to focus on your work.
If you work as a freelancer, you shouldn’t use dozens of apps at once. Most of the apps we’ve presented here cover a specified area. You can choose from five to seven apps depending on the needs of your freelance work. In order to avoid tool obsession, review the list of apps you are using on a monthly basis and discard the ones that don’t provide the expected benefits
For more such interesting article like this, app/softwares, games, Gadget Reviews, comparisons, troubleshooting guides, listicles, and tips & tricks related to Windows, Android, iOS, and macOS, follow us on Google News, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest.