10 Best Productivity Apps & Productivity Software of 2023

monday.com is an easy-to-learn project management app that doubles as a productivity tool with key features that that help you manage tasks and the workflows that carry multiple tasks from start to finish. It's a great team productivity tool for getting a clear view of the work that needs to be done and the status of each task at a glance.

Why I Picked monday.com: monday.com is vaguely similar to a spreadsheet at its core, but a much nicer-looking project management tool that lets you quickly toggle between multiple views of work even for repetitive tasks(view as a list, on a map, on a Kanban board, in a spreadsheet, and other views). It also provides alerts, notifications, and the ability to attach files and communicate with colleagues.

monday.com Standout Features & Integrations

Features include a customizable task board for managing task status, assignee, due date, hours spent, etc. Users can upload and attach files to cards, make comments, mention teammates, set reminders, and more. You can measure your productivity through reporting dashboards that can collect data from multiple boards.

Integrations include Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Typeform and many more, accessible via Zapier.

Wrike is an award-winning, easy-to-use productivity software trusted by 20,000+ organizations worldwide. The tool is suitable for teams of anywhere from five team members to an unlimited number of members. It’s highly configurable and allows users to customize workflows, dashboards, reports, and request forms.

Why I Picked Wrike: Wrike’s simple interface enables users to switch between Kanban boards, interactive drag-and-drop Gantt charts, and traditional workload views, allowing them to choose how to visualize their priorities. Wrike has an easy-to-use, intuitive interface and navigation with distinct spaces, folders, and tasks. Toggle quickly from the home screen between timesheets, dashboards, calendars, reports, and activity stream.

Wrike is available on Mac and Windows operating systems, and also features task lists, subtasks, schedules, shared workflows, file sharing, and real-time communication and collaboration. Unlock advanced insights with performance reporting tools, resource management and allocation, and more.

Wrike Standout Features & Integrations

Features include project management, task scheduling/tracking, resource management, expense tracking, API, budgeting, Gantt charts, marketing automations, collaboration support, and reporting.

Integrations include 400+ pre-built native integrations, including integrations with the most popular file management software from Microsoft, Google, and Dropbox, along with sales and marketing software from Salesforce and Marketo.

Lucidspark is a virtual whiteboard for real time collaboration that helps you and your team bring your best ideas to life. The tool is designed to facilitate collaboration and brainstorming among teams. It provides an interactive, shared space where users can generate and organize ideas, create mind maps, and develop strategies.

Why I picked Lucidspark: As a collaboration tool, it is great at connecting people in real time and helping them create something together. The specific reason why I think it's a good fit as a productivity tool is because of the time it saves compared to a scenario in which you don't have this tool.

Since everyone can connect at the same time and edit elements in the whiteboards in real time, it decreases the time it takes from ideation to finished product, whether that is a mind map, putting together a project roadmap, creating a Kanban board and assigning tasks, or simply brainstorming ideas and voting.

Lucidspark Standout Features & Integrations

Features include its in-product chat and voting system. The chat feature lets your team communicate and @mention people in the team if they wish a direct response. This keeps communication flowing if you are not connected through audio. The voting system helps this collaboration by allowing users to cast votes on their preferred items. When you set up a voting session, you can select how many votes each person gets and which objects they can use to vote, among other options. Then, the system will automatically count for you.

Integrations include everything from Slack, Google Workspace, Asana, Atlassian, and Office365, to more industry-specific applications like Salesforce, AWS, Azure, and BambooHR. Lucidchart has a free plan available for individual users.

SaneBox is a productivity tool that helps you manage your email inbox more efficiently. It's designed to save you time by filtering out unimportant emails and organizing the rest into folders so you can focus on what really matters. SaneBox works with most email providers and clients, making it a versatile option for anyone looking to improve their email management.

Why I picked SaneBox: I chose SaneBox as one of the best productivity apps because it tackles one of the most time-consuming tasks we all face daily —managing our email inboxes. With the constant influx of emails, it's easy to get overwhelmed and lose track of important messages. SaneBox helps you regain control of your inbox, allowing you to focus on the emails that truly matter and be more productive.

Sanebox Standout Features & Integrations

Features: There are several features that make SaneBox stand out from other email management tools. First, its smart filtering system automatically sorts your emails into different folders based on their importance. For example, it moves unimportant emails to a 'SaneLater' folder, so you can focus on your most important messages first. It also has a 'SaneNoReplies' folder that keeps track of emails you've sent that haven't received a response, making it easy to follow up on those messages.

Another great feature is the 'SaneBlackHole' folder, which allows you to quickly unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters and promotional emails. Simply drag the unwanted email into this folder, and SaneBox will automatically unsubscribe you from the sender's mailing list.

Integrations: SaneBox integrates with many popular email providers and clients, such as Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and more. This means you can use SaneBox with your existing email setup without having to switch to a new platform. Additionally, SaneBox offers integrations with productivity tools like Evernote, Todoist, and Trello, allowing you to create tasks and save important emails directly from your inbox.

Slack is a collaboration and messaging platform that enables teams to communicate and work together in real-time. It offers a range of features, including channels, file sharing, integration with other software tools, and robust security.

Why I Picked Slack: If you’re doing a lot of task management and delegation within a team, Slack is a best-in-class tool for team collaboration. Slack provides a platform for you to communicate with team members-this includes private chats and group channels, file sharing, tagging and mentions, and loads of integrations with productivity apps to sync up your activities. You can use this tool to break out of endless email threads and enjoy a more transparent, easy-to-follow flow of communication and resources between you and your collaborators.

Slack Standout Features & Integrations

Features include collaboration, file sharing, powerful search, customization, robust security, and has a mobile app, and third-party integrations/plugins.

Integrations include Teamline, Workstreams, ClickUp, Asana, Sentry, SimplePoll, Trello, and dozens of development, management, communication, finance, media, marketing, design, wellness, and other apps. 

Trello is a Kanban board app that can be used to organize tasks visually. It’s user-friendly, with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to learn. This popular tool can be used to help you visualize your deadlines, items in progress, and completed tasks, enabling you to make informed decisions about what to work on next according to the big picture.

Why I Picked Trello: Trello is a popular project management tool that helps teams organize tasks and collaborate on projects visually and intuitively. It uses a system of boards, lists, and cards to represent tasks and workflows, allowing team members to easily see what needs to be done, who is responsible for each task, and what the status of each task is. Trello can be customized to fit a wide range of project management needs, and it offers features such as due dates, checklists, attachments, and team member assignments. Its flexibility and ease of use make it a great tool for teams of all sizes and types, from small startups to large enterprises.

Trello Standout Features & Integrations

Features include boards, to-do lists, task management, workflow management, priority labels, due dates, file sharing, communication, a mobile app, and third-party integrations/add-ons.

Integrations include 200+ apps and tools your team depends on, like Slack, Google Drive, Salesforce, Dropbox directly into your Trello boards. (Note: Some connections require an additional subscription fee.)

Todoist is similar to Wunderlist, providing a simple interface for creating, sharing, and prioritizing tasks. You can collaborate by sharing out your lists and assigning tasks to others, and you can use labels and priority tags to bring organization to your task lists.

Why I Picked Todoist: Todoist has a smart rescheduling feature that suggests an optimal time to schedule tasks that need to be pushed out to a future date based upon past behavior and what you’ve already got on your plate.

Todoist Standout Features & Integrations

Features include task scheduling/tracking, project management, calendar management, email integration, third-party plugins, time management, campaign management, and notifications.

Integrations include Google Drive, Google Maps, Dropbox, Apple Maps, Calendar Sync, and Slack, as well as more options through Zapier (which may incur additional costs). 

Asana is another popular Kanban-style task management tool that helps you visually organize and prioritize your work. Use this tool to set priorities, deadlines, tasks, and assignees, and to easily visualize and adjust the flow of your work.

Why I Picked Asana: This is one of the most popular and widely used productivity apps along with Trello, and with a sleek, clutter-free design and a robust suite of integrations, this is a productivity tool that you can use and adapt to a wide range of work and personal projects over time.

Asana Standout Features & Integrations

Features task and project management, collaboration tools, calendar views, customizable dashboards, integrations with other tools, templates for different workflows, a mobile app, reporting tools, and automation capabilities.

Integrations include Microsoft Teams, Adobe Creative Cloud, JIRA Cloud, Salesforce, Tableau, Slack, Clockwise, MS Office 365, Google Calendar, Gmail, Power BI, Outlook, ServiceNow, JotForm, Google Drive, Looker, Vimeo, DropBox, Trello, GitLab, and a growing list of other apps. Plus, a plan with Zapier or Tray.io can let you access other apps to connect with Asana. 

Hubstaff is a lightweight, native time tracking software that includes screenshots, time tracking, and project management tools. It’s been designed well with a simple interface and design that makes it really easy for your team to enter their time and for you to track their progress.

Why I Picked Hubstaff: When you’re working with a distributed team it can be hard to verify exactly what people are doing and how they’re spending their time so Hubstaff has some pretty handy snooping tools to give you insight into what your team is doing in the time they’re logging to your project with screenshots and activity levels. Now you can also see which applications your team members are using and what URLs they are browsing while they’re tracking time.

Budget management is helpful and straightforward—using Hubstaff, you can easily set time limits and budgets for your team to bill against with a maximum number of hours you want a member to be able to work in a week and the app will automatically prevent them from exceeding the limit.

Hubstaff Standout Features & Integrations

Features include task management, time tracking, collaboration, Gantt charts, resource management, budget tracking, reporting & analytics, mobile app, invoicing, screen capture & activity tracking, GPS tracking, and third-party integrations.

Integrations include Wistia, Databox, Seventh Sense, Zerys, PandaDoc, Aircall, Eventbrite, and dozens of other apps.

Visor is a cloud-based SaaS product that aims to help individuals and businesses manage their time and tasks more efficiently. It's best suited for individuals and teams who need a comprehensive and easy-to-use productivity tool that allows them to manage their projects, tasks, and time all in one place.

Why I picked Visor: I chose Visor as one of the best productivity software because it's an all-in-one solution that brings together task management, project management, time tracking, and calendar features in a user-friendly interface. I appreciate that I can keep track of everything I need to do without having to switch between multiple tools or apps.

Another great feature is its real-time collaboration capabilities, which allow you to work with your team members on projects, assign tasks, and track progress. This feature makes it easy to communicate with team members and stay on top of everything that's going on in your projects. It also has an intelligent scheduling feature that suggests the best time slots for each task based on your availability and workload. This feature is particularly helpful when you have a lot of tasks to complete and you need to prioritize your time effectively.

Visor Standout Features & Integrations

Features include API, dashboards, data export/data import, data visualization, external integrations, Gantt charts, project management, task scheduling/tracking, resource management and third-party plugins/add-ons.

Integrations include Jira, HubSpot, and Salesforce.