10 easy, free tech tools for effective remote working

1. Trello

 If you need to keep track of your latest campaign or project, Trello might be your most essential tool. Among online reviewers, Trello is described as a crowd-pleasing project management tool. It stands out from its difficult-to-use competitors. Its free plan has virtually everything you’ll need for your project including an unlimited number of boards, lists, members and attachments. Users can attach files of up to 10 MB from their computer or from Google Drive, Box, Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive.

2. Zoom

Video conferencing has never been easier. Your weekly catch ups and meetings can be accomplished from the comfort of your laptop. It provides a remote conferencing service that combines video conferencing, online meetings, chat, and mobile collaboration. Unlike most video conferencing platforms, this is 100% free and doesn’t limit the amount of members on one call.

3. Calendly

Along with being able to integrate with Google Calendar with its free plan, Calendly is supporting free integrations with video meeting tools, Zoom and GoToMeeting from now through June, to help make connecting during the COVID-19 easier. 

4. Slack

Not every interaction warrants a video conference or an email with your team. Sometimes, you simply need an image forwarded to you or a quick edit to content. In times like this, you can use Slack to have one-on-one conversations with your team. With the free version you get 10,000 searchable messages, 10 app integrations, 1-to-1 video calls, and a two-factor authentication.

5. Dasheroo

You can start with a pre-built dashboard and a curated set of updated insights. The site organises diagrams, schemes and graphs all in one place to make dissecting data easier.

6. Tiny png

Before exhausting your laptop with endless stock images and downloads, you can compress your PNG files to save data. With your entire office space riding on the confines of your laptop, you can clear up the clutter instantly and free up the space for more important assets. TinyPNG uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your PNG files by selectively decreasing the number of colors in the image, fewer bytes are required to store the data. The quality in image will remain but you’ll use less bandwidth and save more data instantly.

Joanna Swash, CEO of the phone answering service Moneypenny, said:  “We want to help companies during this challenging time, so we’re offering our Digital Switchboard services for free. Many are struggling to deal with the shift in call volumes due to the rapid switch to home working, and we’re on hand to make sure we can provide solutions to help maintain exceptional customer service.”

Moneypenny’s Digital Switchboard system is fully automated and operates just like a traditional switchboard, without the need for a receptionist. The system can answer high volumes of calls and field them efficiently, directing callers to the appropriate person or department.

8. Hubspot CRM

Hubspot offers CRM, which is 100% free and includes an up-to-date view of your entire sales pipeline on a dashboard. If you’re used to relying on face-to- face meetings to discuss targets, the transition from working in the office to home can seem overwhelming.You’ll be able to always keep track of your sales team with individual performance tracking. Unlike most platforms, you can enjoy unlimited data, unlimited users and up to one million contacts with no time limit or expiration date.

9. Miro

With Miro, you’ll be able to build and flesh out ideas with distributed teams as if you were in the same room. Miro is a collaborative whiteboarding platform that enables distributed teams to work effectively together, from brainstorming with digital ‘sticky notes’ to planning and managing agile workflows. With its free plan, you can get three editable boards and start jotting down ideas and send them to other departments with anonymous viewing links. Allowing your team to see visuals of a customer journey is way more effective than manually typing out a description over email or verbally on a conference call. The app integrates with Slack, Trello, Gmail, Zapier, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, Adobe Creative Cloud, Sketch, Unsplash and MS Teams.

10. PandaDoc