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Are you a freelancer struggling to maintain peak productivity while juggling multiple projects and deadlines? The freelance life is filled with opportunities for creative expression and self-management, but it can also present its fair share of challenges. Managing time, staying organized, and finding the right tools to streamline your workflow can often feel daunting.
Freelancers often wear many hats when managing their business, like managing finances, issuing invoices and quotes, time tracking, logging tasks, writing contracts and agreements, and admin work, on top of actually getting work done. It’s safe to say that as a freelancer, you need all the help you can get to save time.
What Makes a Good Productivity App for Freelancers?
- Task Management: An essential aspect of freelancing is managing tasks efficiently. A comprehensive set of tools should include robust task management features, allowing you to create, organize, and prioritize your assignments. It should help you track deadlines, set reminders, and stay on top of your workload.
- Project Collaboration: Freelancers often collaborate with clients and team members remotely. good tools facilitate seamless collaboration, including shared workspaces, real-time editing, and communication features. These features ensure that you can collaborate effectively regardless of your location.
- Time Tracking: Accurate time tracking is critical for billing clients and managing time efficiently. Your tools should offer time-tracking capabilities, allowing you to log hours worked on various tasks and projects. Some tools even generate timesheets and reports for easy invoicing.
- Finance and Invoice Management Managing finances is a significant part of freelancing. The Tool should include features for generating invoices, tracking expenses, and managing payments. This ensures that you maintain financial stability and professionalism in your freelance business, with bonus points if it integrates with accounting solutions.
- File Management: Freelancers deal with a multitude of files, from project assets to client briefs. Your tools should offer secure and organized file storage, with the ability to easily share and collaborate on documents. Cloud-based storage solutions can be particularly beneficial for remote work.
- Client Relationship Management (CRM): Building and maintaining client relationships is vital for freelancers. A good set of tools may include CRM features to help you keep track of client interactions, manage contacts, and nurture long-term client partnerships.
- Communication Tools: Effective communication is key in freelancing. Tools should offer a range of communication options, from email and chat to video conferencing, enabling you to stay connected with clients and colleagues.
5 Best Productivity Apps for Freelancers
- Bonsai for Solo Freelancers
- Sunsama for Task Management
- Motion For Managing Meetings
- Streak for Relationship Management
- Trello for Project Management
Bonsai
The Best Productivity App for Solo Freelancers
Platforms: Web, iOS, Android
Freelancing isn’t just about getting work done and getting paid. Behind every successful freelancer is a ton of admin work like sending invoices, generating proposals, tracking time correctly, and drafting up contracts. Bonsai (often called Hello Bonsai) is a business management app for freelancers that aims to help in all aspects of running your freelancing business.
Bonsai will create and send branded proposals, contracts, and invoices, with pre-defined templates available for each, so you don’t start from scratch. Bonsai’s invoice builder is extremely feature-rich, as it lets you Invoice your clients an hourly or flat fee, recurring or single payments, It also lets you set up automatic payment reminders, and even bill your clients via Stripe, PayPal, Wire Transfer, or even a Mailed Check.
Bonsai’s Proposal maker lets you make professional proposals and offer multiple upsell packages, as well as even accept a deposit. You’ll also be notified when your client accepts your proposal.
Bonsai’s Time Tracker lets you track your time easily and bill clients more accurately. You can set an hourly rate per project for tracking time and automatically invoice the completed timesheet for your clients and you can track time on projects with your collaborators and see how many hours still need to be billed.
Bonsai also has a CRM built-in, which lets you manage client relationships, and manage projects for each client by uploading documents, adding tasks, invoices, timesheets, and more.
You can also use the built-in task and project management solution to better manage your clients’ projects and tasks since the task manager lets you add new tasks in seconds or reuse tasks you’ve created in previous projects.
Finally, Bonsai also has Bonsai Business Banking, which is a banking solution for small businesses and freelancers so you can manage your finances, prepare your taxes, and get paid faster, as well as robust expense management.
Overall, I’ve found Bonsai to be the perfect app to run your freelancing business, and it was actually my tool of choice when working as a solo freelancer.
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Bonsai Pricing: $24/month for the Starter Plan or $39/month for the Pro Plan, however, you can get 2 Months Free if you go with the yearly billing. There is a 7-day free trial available
Sunsama
The Best Task Management App for Freelancers
Platforms: Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android
Sunsama is one of the only productivity apps I’ve used for so long, without feeling slowed down by using, and actually being able to organize my tasks. Upon first impressions, you’ll notice that the app has a pretty simple interface that only shows you what you need to currently see, and doesn’t overwhelm you with information.
The Sunsama dashboard is split into three sections, a calendar view to the left-hand side, a Kanban-style board in the middle where you will be able to block time for each task, as well as fine-tune each task, and a panel to the right, which has all of your tasks that you’ve imported from other apps, which you can simply drag and drop into the middle panel to pull the task into Sunsama. You can also switch the middle board to a calendar view, to better see your week ahead and how your tasks fit into your
Sunsama lets you add a planned time to each task, as well as drag and drop your tasks to your calendar, to automatically timebox them for your workday.
Sunsama is also one of the only apps on this list that integrates with Notion to pull tasks from there, and changes done in sunsama will also automatically reflect in Notion. I really like how I can pull tasks from all of my other apps, and even turn my emails into tasks, which is good for keeping up with clients
Sunsama also has time tracking built in, which is great for billing clients. as well as different task types, the first of which is the normal daily tasks that you create every day, you will also be able to create Goals for every week, as well as create a backlog of tasks that you plan to get done in the near future.
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Sunsama Pricing: $20/month or $192/year, however, you can get an exclusive 30-day free trial using the deal below. No credit card is required.
Motion
The Best Meeting Calendar App for Freelancers
Platforms: Web, iOS, Android, Chrome Extension
Motion is a task management and calendar app that uses AI to schedule and plan your day for you, as well as help you book meetings efficiently. When you first sign up for the app, you will be prompted to connect your Google or Microsoft Calendar, you will also set your work hours that motion will add work-related tasks. You will also add your recurring time blocks and tasks, like lunch, or replying to client’s emails.
Motion’s user interface is pretty simple and makes it easy to see a full overview of your upcoming tasks and client meetings. Motion’s main feature is the AI scheduler, which is frankly unmatched by any other tool that uses AI. The AI automatically sorts tasks into free slots in your calendar depending on the task’s priority, due date, and when you can work on the task. and how they can fit in between your meetings.
Motion also has one of the best meeting schedulers built-in in any app, called the Meetings Assistant, you can create booking pages similar to ones created using Calendly, though much more streamlined, that you can send to clients. You can also create one-off meeting links using the assistant, you pick times when you are available and ready to host a meeting, and the assistant automatically creates a pre-filled message to send to your attendee as well as a booking link.
The Chrome extension lets you create booking links without having to use the web app, and it also enables some keyboard shortcuts you can use to create and manage tasks, as well as notifications that can tell you when you should move on to the next task or meeting.
Overall, you’ll feel that the app is pretty customizable to be able to follow your schedule and help you get in more meetings within the day, and the settings can really fine-tune the AI to your liking, as well as allow you to get more done, without having to adapt much to the app.
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Motion Pricing: $34/month or $19/month if billed yearly. Motion also has a team plan, which is $20/user/month or $12/user/month. There’s a 7-day free trial available for our readers
Streak
The Best Relationship Management App for Freelancers
Platforms: Gmail, Chrome Extension, Android, iOS
Streak is one of my favorite Gmail tools for its simplicity, ease of use, and features. Streak is a CRM built right into Gmail, which lets you manage your relationships with clients easily, sales emails, support messages, and manage projects, without leaving your email app. Streak will let you update records of your CRM while sending out email replies, so you won’t have to copy and paste records out of your email app to your CRM software.
Using Streak, you can easily see the state of every email in your pipeline, as well as sort your emails by their place in your sales funnel. Streak also has free email tracking, so you can see straight away when your prospects read their email. Streak also comes with a Mail Merge built-in which lets you send bulk emails using variables so you can change out each prospect’s name, and other info, which is extremely helpful when reaching out to many prospects at once.
If your email thread starts to branch out into different topics, you can easily split them into multiple threads, so you can keep everything organized. Streak also has a library of customizable snippets built-in, so you can quickly add the text you frequently reuse like your pricing or deliverables, as well as scheduling your emails so they can be sent out at the right time.
You’ll also be able to see the details of every prospect in the sidebar like the screenshot above, so you can know who you’re talking to. Streak also has a Task Manager built-in, so you can see every upcoming task on the sidebar.
You’re also able to automatically track and share every interaction between you and your prospects across your entire team, including emails, call logs, files, notes, tasks, and more. You can also make custom views by sorting, filtering, and searching your emails, so you can see only specific parts of your sales pipeline to reduce friction.
Finally, streak integrates with Zapier and all Gsuite apps, so you can have Streak available everywhere you work, and lets you import contacts from Google Sheets or any CSV files. Using Streak’s Mobile app, you can easily access information as well as download specific contacts to your phone, and automatically log calls to reference later.
Overall, I’ve found Streak to be the best CRM, especially considering how it doesn’t come with many unnecessary features like other standalone CRM apps.
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Streak Pricing: Streak has a Free Plan, but starts at $19/month or $15/month if billed yearly for basic CRMs, or $59/month or $49/month if billed yearly for Advanced CRM features.
Trello
Platforms: Web, Windows, macOS, Android, iOS
Trello is one of the leading Kanban-style Task management apps for single users and teams, and it is used by many organizations around the world like Coinbase, Google, Zoom, and Visa.
Trello’s main view the called the “Trello Board” which is just a Kanban board, but with the Trello sparkle on top. Each Trello Board can have multiple “Lists “which are similar to steps in your workflow, for example, you can have lists for “To-Do”, “Doing”, and “Done”, and you can sort tasks into them depending on the stage the task is in. Each organization can also have multiple boards, so you can have a board for every client.
You can also view your tasks in the timeline view, the calendar view, and the Map View, which is especially nice if you do freelancer field work and often has to travel between locations for work. There is also the Table View, which is very similar to a spreadsheet where you can see your tasks, who’s assigned to them, due dates, and more.
you can also see a general overview using the Dashboard View, where you can view insights on what you need to complete, the progress done in each task, and more data about your organization.
Another great part of Trello is Butler, which is the automation engine built right into the app, that you can use to automate virtually anything in Trello, from changing the status of tasks, assigning team members, adding a due date to tasks, marking tasks as complete, as well as integrating with all of your favorite apps, like Slack and Jira. Butler will also recognize repetitive actions you do and suggest you automate those as well.
however, there are always going to be missing features you need, which is why Trello has “Power-Ups” that you can install on your Trello Board to add missing features, like a Voting feature for tasks, List Limits, Google Calendar 2-way sync, and more! You can also create Power-Ups and share them with other users or create private power-ups for your organization.
There is also a pretty big template library that you can utilize so you don’t start from square one when you switch to Trello. Templates range from ones for Marketing Teams, Design Teams, Education, and Engineering, to ones for Remote Work, Podcasting, and most importantly, freelancers.
Trello is a very robust app made to actually make you more productive, instead of spending time checking in with all of your clients, you can do so in the comfort of your own dashboard. Trello has a limited free plan, and its paid plans start at $5/month/user if billed Annually.
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Trello Pricing: Streak has a Free Plan, but starts at $6/user/month or $5/user/month if billed yearly for all basic features, or $12.50/user/month or $10/user/month if billed yearly for Advanced features.
Conclusion
Overall, I’ve found that by using these apps, Freelancers can get more work done, cut down on admin work, or be more focused while working, furthermore, I’ve found that these apps have also made work easier, by simplifying Invoicing, quotations, sales meeting,s payment collection, and Project Management.
