Best Remote Working Tools (That Everyone Should Use)

I built a team from 1 to 45 remote members in 6 countries and 4 continents over an 18-month period. As a fully-remote company with team members all over the world, one of our top priorities is running a well-functioning organization that allows for asynchronous work, good communication, and productive workdays.

This is the software I found invaluable and that I feel every remote team should be using to maximize their productivity and keep a happy team.

Workello

Workello is a pre-hire assessment platform that keeps content teams focused on publishing great content. It’s a tool that helps companies source, assess, and hire better writers, editors, content managers, and other team members to scale their content production.

Why we love Workello:

1. Its elegant and simple design allows even the newbies to quickly get a hang of it and start hiring immediately.
2. Job descriptions and assessments are pre-optimized to keep the top 5% of candidates engaged.
3. All of our candidates from all of our hiring channels stream into a centralized dashboard.
4. We can point and click to send our favorite candidates a writing assessment to filter out the bad writers with good portfolios.
5. Hiring statistics allow us to assess the success of our hiring cycles

‍Best for

Workello is the perfect software for small to medium-size remote companies that want to hire and retain the best talent. It is an essential tool for anyone who wants to grow their content team and publish high-quality content at scale.

Downsides

Workello was built with ease of access in mind. This means that employers can’t modify the application forms and make them more complicated than they should be. Workello was designed to make it easy for the candidates to apply for jobs and not have to repeat the same information from their resumes in another app.

Pricing

Workello has a free plan that allows users to evaluate as many candidates as they want but view only 5 completed assessments. Workello’s annual plan is only $41/month.

Airtable

Airtable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid collaboration tool, or, as we like to call it Google Sheets on steroids. Don’t let the word “sheet” intimidate you (or bore you to death) — Airtable is so much more.

We use Airtable as a content calendar tracker, sprint tracker, and project management tool. It has our entire database of everything we’ve ever created for every client and every internal project we’ve had. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that allows you to very easily track your content production, do project management, and even track tasks that your team does.

Why we love it:

1. Customization options are endless.
2. We can easily assign content to writers and editors, track where it is in the publishing pipeline, and keep all the relevant information on each piece of content we need in one app.
3. We can manage and track our sprints in a handy list form and assign statuses to each task.
4. Airtable has a lot of integrations that make automating tasks easy

Best for

Airtable is perfect for any team that needs a database where they can keep track of their content, social calendar, video editing, or project management. Various user permissions allow for easy management and clear statuses and user-roles help keep the team productive.

Downsides

Although Airtable offers a lot of pre-made templates, inexperienced first-time users might need a little more time before they figure out exactly how they want to set up their databases.

Pricing

Airtable has a free plan that allows up to 1200 records in one base, and paid plans start at $10/month if paid annually.

Grammarly

Grammarly is a spelling, grammar, and plagiarism checker that uses AI technology to provide a readability score and suggestions for improvement. Our editors use Grammarly premium to check for plagiarism, as well as catch tedious spelling and grammar mistakes.

Why we love it:

1. Spellcheck and grammar checks are super fast and easy to do
2. We can use Grammarly’s suggestions to improve the readability and clarity of our content
3. We can set up a brand voice and get personalized suggestions
4. We can easily check for plagiarism

Best for:

Remote teams that produce a lot of content and need to be efficient in their editing process.

Downsides:

Grammarly is not a replacement for an actual editor. It often makes mistakes and doesn’t always understand the context.

Pricing:

Grammarly has a free plan that allows for basic writing suggestions and spell and grammar checks. Premium plans start at $12/month.

Slite

Slite is a workspace for remote teams that allows them to create knowledge bases, manage project tasks, and work asynchronously. We absolutely adore it, so much so that we built our entire knowledge base in Slite.

It’s easy to use, intuitive, and allows our team to work on knowledge base articles asynchronously, but also allows us to collaborate better. We’re huge Slite nerds and have created over 1000 docs.

Why we love it:

1. We can create Knowledge Base articles easily and categorize them
2. We can create project-related documents and share them with clients and team members
3. We can document public-facing company documentation (our vision, values, etc.)

Best for:

Remote-first teams that need to document their knowledge bases, work on content together, and share their documents with others.

Downsides:

Slite doesn’t have the best personalization options as it is made for remote teams in mind. Some of the formatting options that most word editing tools have are missing, but that does not take away from Slite’s overall functionality.

ProfitWell

ProfitWell is a tool that provides subscription analytics, retention, and pricing solutions. They leverage real-time reporting to reduce cancellations, optimize pricing, and give revenue reporting.

Why we love it:

1. We can easily calculate LTVs and get actual data on the performance of our products
2. It allows us to identify the sources of our revenue
3. Helps us reduce churn

Best for:

Companies that operate on a subscription model.

Downsides:

ProfitWell is not easy to set up and some of the data might be irrelevant for smaller companies.

Gomada

Gomada is a solution that allows remote teams to organize and run fun team-building activities no matter where the team members are. It helps teams stay engaged and connected and allows people to get to know each other even if they live on different continents.

Why we love it:

1. It’s easy to use
2. The activities are fun and help our team stay connected
3. We can find out a lot about each other and make team building a habit instead of a chore

Best for:

Remote teams that struggle to find time for team building due to physical distance.

Downsides:

Gomada is still in beta so the options for team building activities are limited.