Top Tools For Solopreneurs and Remote Workers

Are you considering becoming a remote worker or a solopreneur? This lifestyle comes with its own challenges. Here are some of the top tools for every solopreneur.

Not so long ago, remote work was considered only telephone-based customer care roles at below minimum wage. How times have changed now. Remote working has become a full-time career for many.

The technology has played a big role in making remote work mainstream. 

People all over the world have been able to make an actual living and supporting their families and making successful careers. Many freelancers have taken remote working to the next level and created their businesses. This has given rise to a new wave of remote workers and solopreneurs.

Remote workers and solopreneurs are in a different class by themselves. Given all the typical pressure of an entrepreneur that they’re under, and the fact that they have little-to-no outside assistance, solopreneurs need tools to help them reduce the time they spend on mundane tasks.

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Here are some of the top tools for solopreneurs looking to adopt a remote work lifestyle.

Collaboration and Communication Tools for Solopreneurs

Communication is the biggest challenge that remote workers and solopreneurs face. They need to be in constant touch with the clients and team members across the world. Here are some cool tools for remote workers that can help them stay in touch with their team as well as clients.

Skype

Everyone knows it. Everyone uses it. Skype is a very popular video conferencing and messaging app. It’s a great, and cheap way of keeping in touch with your clients and teams. 

Slack

Slack is a shared workspace which makes conversations are organised and accessible. On Slack, you can create multiple workspaces for different clients or projects. 

Zoom

Zoom is very powerful and easy to use video conferencing software. Anyone with a free account can make audio or video call up to 45 minutes. It is also possible to organise webinars for a limited amount of viewers.

Email Marketing Tools for Solopreneurs

Every small business relies on building up an email list. Keeping in touch with your email lists is essential for keeping things fresh and updated with your subscribers. Here are some of the best email marketing tools for Solopreneurs.

MailerLite

MailerLite is an email marketing tool. It provides all the latest email marketing features designed to help you grow subscribers and build stronger relationships. Sign up for a free account to try everything including our drag & drop editor and automation features.

Pricing: Free for first 1000 subscribers.

MailChimp

MailChimp is a web-based email marketing service. It helps you design email newsletters, share them on social networks, integrates with services you already use, and track your results.

Pricing: Free for first 2000 contracts

Client Acquisition & Sales & CRM for Solopreneurs

CRM or client acquisition tools essential for any business owner – whether they are freelancer, solopreneur or small business. You need a tool that can organise your contact and sales cycle data somewhere. Here are some of the best CRMs for freelancers and remote workers.

Agile CRM

Agile CRM’s software manages projects effectively with the streamlined drag-and-drop project management tool, it¿s easy to manage tasks between your sales and marketing teams. The project management software encompasses different options to check and track the status of your projects.

Pricing: Agile CRM pricing starts at $8.99 per month, per user. There is a free version of Agile CRM. 

Zapier

Have we mentioned that we love Zapier? With Zapier, you can easily automate pesky, repetitive tasks that eat up a lot of time, create room for error and yet add little value to your day. What’s not to like? Zapier integrates with over 1,000 web applications (including Hatchbuck!) and seamlessly streamlines your workflows to make creating conversations simple and closing sales a no-brainer.

Pricing: Free for personal tasks, plans start at $20/month for businesses

Google Apps

Google Apps can serve as the ultimate solution for the bootstrapping solopreneur. If you’re not ready to spend a monthly fee on a CRM, you can certainly get Google Apps to do the trick. Set up your own custom forms in Google Forms, use Google Sheets to track and sort prospects, or use one of the many available third-party apps to integrate your Google account with tools to fit specific needs.

Pricing: Varies depending on the app

Productivity and Project Management Tools for Solopreneurs

Productivity and project management can be an issue for remote workers and work from home. It helps to use the right kind of tools to organise their ideas, time and project. Here are some project management tools for remote workers.

Evernote

Have you ever had a brilliant idea but didn’t have a good place to jot it down? Evernote seeks to prevent such tragedies by offering several note-taking options on multiple devices, all ending up in the same place. Moreover, Evernote allows you to add all kinds of media to your notes, such as snapping webpage content or uploading your own images. Lastly, you can create to-do lists that will hopefully help you turn your notes into a finished project.

Pricing: Free to try. €6,99 monthly for the premium plan

Todoist

Like Evernote, the idea of Todoist is allowing users to create tasks even when they’re on the go. Available across several devices, Todoist makes it simple to add new items and utilises smart word recognition tools to automatically set due dates and reminders. The service also integrates with certain digital assistants, cloud services, and other tools to boost your productivity that much more.

Pricing: Free for upto 80 projects. €3 monthly for the premium plan

Trello

Trello can best be described as a digital corkboard, allowing you to pin up notecards and organise ideas. With the option to create multiple boards, columns, and cards, the service enables users to get as granular or as big picture as they’d like. On top of that, Trello can be great for collaboration as you can invite additional users to various boards. Also helpful is the ability to attach files to each card, making it easy to keep all of your relevant project documents in one place instead of letting them be strewn across multiple e-mails.

Pricing: Free basic plan. $9.99 monthly for the premium plan

Time Tracking and Accounting Tools for Solopreneurs

Tracking your billable hours is a very important aspect for freelancers and remote workers. Many clients feel more trustful when their contractors or remote teams use legitimate time tracking tools. Accounting is also extremely important and they can allow remote workers or freelancers or solopreneurs to bill their clients and send invoices in a timely manner. Here are some of the best time tracking and accounting tools for

Actitime

actiTIME is a time tracking software that allows users to enter worked hours as well as time off and sick leave in a user-friendly interface. This simple application has a powerful reporting functionality with dozens of detailed reports for almost any management or accounting needs. Users also have access to colorful charts that represent management and team analysis.

Pricing: $6 per user/mo

Freshbooks

Last but not least is Freshbooks, which has also been growing in recent years. In addition to some of the basic features offered by Quickbooks and Xero, Freshbooks includes time tracking tools that may come in handy. Also notable is that Freshbooks boasts a number of integrations ranging from payments through Stripe to project management tools like Trello (which we’ll talk more about later). Once again, it’s worth comparing the features of Freshbooks to other options to determine which one best meets your needs.

^{Pricing: $15.00  $7.50 for 5 billable clients}

Social Media Management Tools for Solopreneurs

Social media is very essential for those who are active in marketing jobs. Most small businesses or solopreneurs should invest in social media efforts to create brand awareness and genuine relationships with their fans and followers. Here are some of the best social media tools for solopreneurs.

Tailwind 

Tailwind is a Pinterest and Instagram post scheduling tool that helps you strategically schedule posts and discover new content. If you aren’t using it yet, you can also get a free trial and try it out on your Pinterest account.

^{Pricing:  $9.99 per account per month}

Buffer

Buffer is a social media automation tool for the web and mobile, designed to manage accounts in social networks, by providing the means for a user to schedule posts to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Stories, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, as well as analyze their results and engage with their community.

^{Pricing:  $15 per account per month}

Automation Tools Tools for Solopreneurs

Last but not least, one-way entrepreneurs can save themselves time is by leveraging automation. No, we’re not talking about robot employees — just algorithms. You may actually be surprised how many helpful tools services such as IFTTT and Zapier have to offer. Additionally, these platforms and others may make it easier to manage your social media accounts without spending all day online.

Zapier

Zapier allows you to connect apps and automate workflows. It’s like the duct tape of the internet. Connect the apps you use everyday to automate your work and be more productive. 1500 apps and easy integrations – get started in minutes.

^{Pricing:  Free for 100 tasks. $19.99 per month for 750 tasks}

IFTTT

Short for “If This, Then That,” IFTTT allows users to create a number of applets (formerly called “recipes”) to automate different tasks. While some of these applets may be somewhat silly — like updating your smartphone wallpaper to NASA’s photo of the day — others could potentially help you score gigs or streamline your workflow. For example, one applet will e-mail you whenever a Craigslist post matches your specified search terms. IFTTT also integrates with several of the project management tools we discussed, providing even more tools and options beyond what each of these services offers on their own.

Content Creation Tools for Solopreneurs

Many solopreneurs and small business owners need to create content for their brand blogs or social media channels and email lists. Here are some recommended content creation tools for bloggers and solopreneurs.

Grammarly

Solopreneurs often begin by doing everything themselves, including writing their own copy for email, social media, website pages and advertising materials. This is an effective way to keep initial costs low, but not all solopreneurs have the requisite skill set to write a beautiful copy. Grammarly evens the playing field by catching grammatical and punctuation mistakes often overlooked by word processor applications. The free version also allows you to check for plagiarism, to make sure nothing you’ve read for research accidentally makes its way into your finished product. The upgrade option catches more details.

^{Pricing:  $15 per account per month}

Passwords Security and Backup Tools for Solopreneurs

Keeping your data safe is an absolute priority for businesses – whether solopreneurs or freelancers. Here are some passwords security and backup tools for every solopreneur and freelancer.

Dashlane

Dashlanes gives a complete picture of your online security. The Identity Dashboard puts key metrics and alerts in one convenient place, so you can understand what to improve and take steps to be more secure.

Dashlane works across your smartphone, tablet, and computer to provide some significant upgrades to your digital life. You’ll be able to store, manage, and change passwords all in one place, and automatically fill out forms and payment info with just a click. Sync all your work and personal devices to log in easily everywhere.

^{Pricing: Free available. $3.33 per month}

Backblaze

Backblaze cloud backup has backed up over millions of gigabytes of data for Mac and PC laptops and desktops. To date Backblaze has restored over 30 billion files for our customers. Without our cloud backup service, those files would have been lost forever.

^{Pricing:  Free available. $6 per month}

Dropbox

Dropbox is a secure file sharing and storage solution. It is a cloud-based file-sharing software system that caters to individuals and businesses of all sizes. This solution allows users to share files and send file requests to people even if they don’t have a Dropbox account.

^{Pricing:  2GB Free available. €9.99 per month for Plus plan}

LastPass

LastPass is a freemium password manager that stores encrypted passwords online. The standard version of LastPass comes with a web interface, but also includes plugins for various web browsers and apps for many smartphones.

^{Pricing:  Free for 1 user. €2.67 per month per user}

Collaboration & Outsourcing Tools for Solopreneurs

Sometimes even solopreneurs or freelancers need to work with other specialists and need the support of subject matter experts. Here are some top collaboration & outsourcing tools for solopreneurs.

Upwork

Upwork, formerly Elance-oDesk, is a global freelancing platform where businesses and independent professionals connect and collaborate remotely. In 2015, Elance-oDesk was rebranded as Upwork. Upwork connects businesses of all sizes to freelancers, independent professionals, and agencies for all their hiring needs.

Fiverr

Fiverr is an online marketplace for freelance services. Founded in 2010 and based in Tel Aviv, Israel, the company provides a platform for freelancers to offer services to customers worldwide. 

Hiremymom.com

Hire a full or part-time virtual assistant to help with customer support, email marketing, social media or other behind and in front of the scenes work needed to grow your business. Affordable. Amazing talent pool.

Are you a jet setting remote worker or a solopreneur? What are your favourite recommended tools for solopreneurs? Tell us in the comments below.