Find the best Productivity Software
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CDR is a cloud-based reporting solution designed for the construction sector. The solution caters to the needs of subcontractors, government contractors, trade specialists and general contractors. The solution allows users to generate reports with tai...Read more about CDR
ActivTrak’s workforce intelligence platform transforms work activity data into actionable insights to optimize performance management and boost business productivity. Unlike traditional employee monitoring tools, ActivTrak is the only complete solution wit...Read more about ActivTrak
Your power browser. Shift is the first browser to merge all your web apps into one powerful window. Streamline everything you do online when you install Shift and access thousands of apps without leaving your browser. Connect all of your Gmail, Outlook, a...Read more about Shift
Zoho Sprints is a cloud-based product roadmap solution for businesses of all sizes. The solution is designed to be used by agile teams and offers features such as user dashboards, reporting, scrum boards, timers and timesheets. Zoho Sprints can also be acc...Read more about Zoho Sprints
Right from 2006, Zoho Projects has been a major contributor to every project management need. Automating workflows, allocating tasks, recording time logs, relaying project updates, effective team collaboration, gathering analytical insights via reports and...Read more about Zoho Projects
Trainual is a cloud-based learning management system. The solution serves various industry verticals and allows organizations to automate training and onboarding process. It helps in organizing training modules in a centralized system. The solution pr...Read more about Trainual
Confluence is a project management solution that enables organizations to create, collaborate, organize and review project documents. The system offers both cloud-based and on-premise deployment. Confluence’s editor feature allows employees to create ...Read more about Confluence
Jira Software is a business process management tool used by agile teams to plan, track and release software. Jira Software supports Scrum, Kanban, a hybrid model or other unique workflows. Jira enables users to create project roadmaps to map out all proje...Read more about Jira
Zenzap is a professional instant messaging software designed to enhance team communication and collaboration. It serves businesses across various sectors, aiming to streamline teamwork. Key features of Zenzap include secure instant messaging tailored for ...Read more about Zenzap
Goodnotes is a cloud-based and on-premise note-taking application that offers a fluid and natural handwriting experience on digital paper. It integrates the ease of handwriting with the effectiveness of digital tools and advanced artificial intelligence (A...Read more about Goodnotes
Microsoft Excel is a productivity solution that helps businesses of all sizes create spreadsheets to organize data and perform calculations. The platform enables managers to format and present data in charts, graphs, sparklines, tables and other formats. ...Read more about Microsoft Excel
AI-powered enterprise search, intranet, and knowledge base in one. Search for content across all your knowledge sources (Gdrive, Onedrive, Box, Dropbox, Sharepoint) Create, improve, or synthesize verified content and translate it to over 100 languages. ...Read more about Guru
Grammarly Business is a web-based communication management and written content curation system that helps businesses across all industries to polish their written communications. The platform offers a range of features including grammar checks, grammar sug...Read more about Grammarly Business
Writesonic is an AI-powered writing assistant with a mission to empower everyone in the world to write anything and publish anywhere. It's like Canva for writing, with tools to simplify the process of creating, editing, and publishing articles, blog post...Read more about Writesonic
Google Docs is a web-based document management application designed to help users create and edit documents in real-time. The platform allows employees to collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, add comments and access custom templates for res...Read more about Google Docs
Jasper is artificial intelligence (AI) that helps businesses create content for blogs, social media posts, Facebook advertisements, and websites. Used by 50,000+ marketers, entrepreneurs, and content writers to save time writing content and inspire new ide...Read more about Jasper
Microsoft Word is a productivity solution designed to help businesses of all sizes create, edit, view and share files with co-workers. The platform enables managers to configure access permissions for staff members and convert documents into web pages on a...Read more about Microsoft Word
iLovePDF streamlines document management with a versatile suite of 25+ tools, accessible on mobile, desktop, and via a REST API. Whether merging, splitting, compressing, converting, or eSigning PDFs, it offers an all-in-one solution. Trusted by millions wo...Read more about iLovePDF
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) is a cloud-based suite of collaboration and document management tools designed to help businesses manage video meetings, presentations, multi-person video calls and live streaming. Key features include access control, re...Read more about Google Workspace
Scalenut reduces 90% of time and drives 10x organic traffic by 🛠️automating your entire content lifecycle with AI. Keyword planning, NLP powered topic research, AI writing, content optimization and publishing - all in under one app. Keyword Planner: Buil...Read more about Scalenut
Microsoft PowerPoint is an on-premise presentation solution designed to help professionals and businesses create, edit and share slides with team members, external clients and other stakeholders. Administrators can track changes made by team members and ...Read more about Microsoft PowerPoint
MeisterTask is a web-based task, project, and work management software perfect for teams of any size. Its easy-to-use interface, intuitive functionality, built-in project documentation, and seamless integration with other business tools make it the ideal...Read more about MeisterTask
Slack is a cloud-based project collaboration and team interaction tool designed to facilitate communication across organizations. The solution caters to various industries, including media, research, technology, education, financial services, retail, trans...Read more about Slack
Miro is a visual workspace for innovation that enables distributed teams of any size to dream, design, and build the future together. Miro enables distributed teams to come together to synthesize information, clarify complex ideas, and make decisions fast...Read more about Miro
Project.co is a cloud-based solution that helps small to large enterprises manage multiple elements of projects including payments, tasks, time, people, files and more. It lets users request clients to process payments electronically via credit cards and g...Read more about Project.co
Popular Comparisons
Your Guide to Top Productivity Software, November 2024
Software Advice uses reviews from real software users to highlight the top-rated Productivity products in North America.
Learn how products are chosenExplore FrontRunners
“Usability” includes user ratings for Functionality and Ease of Use.
“Customer Satisfaction” includes user ratings for Customer Support, Likelihood to Recommend and Value for Money.
Reviews analysis period: The reviews analysis period spans two years and ends the 15th of the month prior to publication.
Buyers Guide
This detailed guide will help you find and buy the right productivity software for you and your business.
Last Updated on January 27, 2025Whether you work as a freelancer, or an employee of an organization, you're always looking for new ways to boost productivity. From collaborating with colleagues and clients to tracking projects to delivering the output, you need various tools to help you achieve workflow continuity.
Productivity tools can help streamline workflows and simplify daily operations. Productivity software can take many forms, and can help you manage documents, emails, and tasks; collaborate with team members; and track all projects and activity.
We have created this buyers guide to help you understand productivity software, with all the essential information you need to choose the right tool.
Here’s what we'll cover:
What is productivity software?
Productivity software is a group of applications that help users increase efficiency by facilitating the completion of tasks and projects. This includes word processing, database management, collaboration, time tracking, and project management, to name a few.
For example, using a word processing application will help users produce digital files, making the tasks of creating, editing, storing and sharing documents much more efficient. Similarly, project management software helps users manage projects by offering a visualization of a workflow process which makes delegation, coordination, team communication, and prioritization of tasks and projects easier.
Collaboration features in Slack (Source)
Common features of productivity software
Most productivity software tools have the following features in common:
Collaboration | Collaborate with other teammates and clients by sharing files and documents to review and approve. This allows multiple users to work on the same file from different locations at the same time. |
Activity tracking | Monitor project-related activities in order to track employee time, project progress, tasks assigned and completed, and other metrics. |
Document management | Capture, track, and store electronic documents such as PDFs, word processing files, and digital images of paper-based content. The benefits of document management include document security, access control, centralized storage, and streamlined search and retrieval. |
Email management | Manage large volumes of emails by organizing inboxes and sorting messages based on predefined rules. The software helps in email routing, response management, email archiving, and backup and recovery. |
File sharing | Allow multiple people or computers and mobile devices to access the same file simultaneously to read, view, or modify it. |
Task management | Manage daily work across all functions and tasks that you are involved in. Such a tool helps you manage workflows, organize tasks and activities, and collaborate in a shared workspace. |
Scheduling | Plan availability and assign specific time slots for tasks and resources to your team members in order to achieve your goals and priorities in a set time period. |
Notes management | Record, organize, and store information and notes in short-form documents or text format. |
Project management | Automate task assignment, resource allocation, and milestone tracking for all phases of a project. It also helps you plan for the costs and time needed to execute the tasks involved in the project. |
What type of buyer are you?
Before purchasing a productivity tool, you should determine which buyer category you're in so you can choose the right tool. The majority of buyers fall into the following categories:
Individuals: Buyers in this category are individuals who tend to use software or applications for their own needs, whether they own a one-person business, or work as a freelancer. Their tasks can be made simpler with the use of productivity tools, which can significantly minimize the amount of time they spend on repetitive and tedious tasks. Such users need a productivity app that provides features such as a customizable view of projects, timelines, files, and calendar; The tool should be able to set reminders, create tasks via email, set recurring tasks, and accept payments. These users can opt for free productivity software with basic features.
Businesses: Businesses of any size need tools that help them automate important tasks and reduce bottlenecks in their workflows by providing effective communication within the organization. These users require a productivity suite that includes file sharing tools, content management tools, collaboration tools, project management, and task management that allow them to effectively deliver business outcomes and increase productivity. They should look for a productivity tool that can be accessed anywhere, on any device, including mobile phones and tablets, meet privacy and compliance standards such as GDPR, and integrate with other enterprise applications. This will improve integration between systems and departments, secure business data, promote collaborative working, and drive efficiencies to achieve the highest amount of output.
Benefits of productivity software
Improved quality: Integrating productivity tools into your business systems can help you improve the quality of your service. Tools that provide efficient communication between team members, or between your company and your clients, analytics to monitor improvements and changes in projects, task management, and resource management capabilities will help your employees improve their efficiency. These tools help remove any bottlenecks in processes and reduce errors.
Better communication: Productivity tools that include collaboration features have helped companies to allow remote work. Such tools have reshaped the way people work by providing a means of faster communication in order to collaborate on the same documents in real time, and access files from any location.
Managed workflow: A disorganized workflow will impact the productivity and efficiency of your employees, which will ultimately affect your profits. A productivity app that includes workflow management and project management functionalities will help you track the progress of multiple tasks, eliminate manual tasks, and make delegation and coordination of tasks easier. This helps keep your work organized and trackable, allowing employees to be more goal oriented.
Market trend to understand:
Here’s a market trend to keep in mind when selecting a productivity tool for your business:
Increase in smart device usage has boosted the productivity software market: Advances in mobile technology have allowed people to schedule and take meetings in or out of their office premises, from their home, or while driving. This has led to the increase in the use of productivity tools. Various vendors have developed applications that give remote users the ability to schedule meetings, collaborate, and track projects on any mobile device such as smartphones and tablets.
Moreover, the bring your own device (BYOD) trend has allowed employees to use their own devices at work, which brings in the challenge of security, privacy, and incompatibility with business applications. With this rise in BYOD policies, there is a need for productivity apps that allow seamless integration with other business software and that are available on multiple platforms. Such features will help improve the user experience, security, and employee productivity.
Note: The application selected in this article is an example to show a feature in context and is not intended as an endorsement or recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.