Startup founders and their teams know that effective time management is essential to the well-being of the company. The right productivity apps can help entrepreneurs assign tasks, enhance team collaboration, and much more.
These productivity apps can streamline project management, compile an interactive to-do list, and automate repetitive tasks to save time and keep teams focused. From project management apps to expense management software, these are the best productivity tools for startups.
Top Productivity Apps for Busy Entrepreneurs
Productivity apps range in use case but essentially streamline processes to remove tedious, time-consuming tasks and leave more time for high-level work. Fortunately, there are tons of startup tools that can help entrepreneurs and their teams with everything from time management to payment processing.
1. ClickUp
Pricing: From $7 per user/month (free plan available)
Best for: All-in-one project management
ClickUp is a productivity and project management platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and designed to streamline work processes for teams and individuals. It offers a wide range of features, including task management, document collaboration, goal tracking, time management, and custom dashboards. The platform’s flexibility allows users to organize their work in various views, such as lists, boards, calendars, and Gantt charts, catering to different work styles and project needs.
One of ClickUp’s key benefits is its high level of customization, allowing users to tailor the platform to their specific workflows and preferences. It integrates with an extensive number of third-party apps and provides automation capabilities to reduce manual work.
2. Monday.com
Pricing: From $9 per seat/month (free plan available)
Best for: Visual team collaboration
One of the more popular project management tools, Monday.com is a productivity app that streamlines workflows, improves team collaboration, and makes managing, tracking, and launching projects easy by automating repetitive tasks.
The project management platform includes over 200 templates, collaboration features, and several views such as Kanban, timeline, calendar, and chart. Plus, Monday.com offers over 200 integrations with Google Workspace, video conferencing apps such as Zoom, and marketing software such as Mailchimp.
3. Trello
Pricing: From $5/user/month (free plan available)
Best for: Kanban-style task organization
Trello is a web-based collaborative work management app based on the Kanban work management method. It allows team members to track projects from start to finish, highlighting tasks underway and showing who they are assigned to. The app’s key components are boards, lists, and cards.
Boards are the starting point and focus on the big picture — usually a specific project. Then, within each board, lists can be created to highlight the progress of a project, such as “to do” or “complete.” Finally, each list can be broken down into cards featuring specific tasks, which you can move from list to list as necessary.
4. Asana
Pricing: From $10.99/user/month (free plan available)
Best for: Complex workflow management
Asana is a customizable content management system that many businesses can use. In a nutshell: it’s an organizational tool that helps streamline projects, allowing the team to analyze issues and monitor progress all in one place.
A wide range of productivity features (including project and task management, reporting tools, and communication tools) help companies and their teams get things done quickly.
In addition, Asana integrates with dozens of other workplace applications, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Office365, Gmail, Slack, Zoom, and more.
5. Evernote
Pricing: From $14.99/month (free plan available)
Best for: Note-taking and information storage
Evernote is the perfect little notebook for scribbling your thoughts on the go — plus, its freeware version syncs with Android, iOS, and the web, so you can stay organized across all your devices.
The productivity app allows you to create to-do lists, capture photos, record voice reminders, and sync files. In addition, you can search tasks from any device and share lists and recordings with other team members.
6. RescueTime
Pricing: From $6.50/month
Best for: Automatic productivity tracking
Are you spending too much time browsing the internet? RescueTime will let you know.
The innovative productivity app measures and tracks what you do on computers and mobile devices, then gives you insight into how you spend your time. The free version will tell you what sites you’re on and for how long, while the paid version will provide more in-depth reports.
For a business owner focused on productivity, this tool is a must-have.
7. Todoist
Pricing: From $4/month (free plan available)
Best for: Cross-platform task management
Todoist is a cloud-based productivity and organization app that works on all devices. With a free account, you can collaborate with up to five people on 80 projects, but it doesn’t include the reminders, filters, labels, or themes that come with the paid version.
The paid version also includes productivity reports, automatic backups, an activity log, project templates, calendar sync, and premium support — plus, you can work with 25 people on up to 300 projects.
8. Calendly
Pricing: From $10/seat/month (free plan available)
Best for: Simplified appointment scheduling
Calendly is a virtual availability and booking tool used to book appointments, meetings, and events for individuals or organizations. The app works with your existing calendars, such as Google Calendar or MS Outlook, to automate the process of scheduling.
How does it work? You send a recipient a link, which takes them to your Calendly website. They can view your available days and times and book a slot there. Calendly will then generate an invitation that pops up on both participants’ calendars, and you can either confirm or reject the meeting.
9. Toggl
Pricing: From $9/user/month (free plan available)
Best for: Detailed time tracking
Toggl offers effortless time tracking and reporting for startup founders and entrepreneurs. Available as a mobile or desktop app, the productivity tool allows users to track daily activities across different platforms. You can use it to monitor billable hours, personal projects, and total work hours.
You can track time automatically or add it manually and easily switch between projects and tasks using the app. To help keep track, you can add the client’s name and tags to each assignment or project. In addition, you can use the app’s Pomodoro Timer to help stay focused.
While Toggl is only a timekeeping app and nothing more, it is an essential tool for those who want to understand how much time they’re spending on each task.
10. BILL
Pricing: From $19 per user/month (spend & expense features are free)
Best for: Small business financial automation
BILL formerly known as Divvy, is an financial management platform for startups that offers features for accounts payable and receivable as well as spend and expense management. Their Spend & Expense allows businesses to access credit lines from $500 to $5 million. Then, easily manage employee expenses, review and approve transactions, and capture necessary information all on one platform.
With expense tracking and management taking hours of time for entrepreneurs and their finance teams, BILL’s expense management software is a valuable productivity tool to lighten the workload without losing control and visibility of your startup’s finances.
11. Dropbox
Pricing: From $9.99/month
Best for: Cloud storage and file sharing
Dropbox is a file-sharing tool that allows users to instantly connect and share documents, photos, and videos from any laptop or mobile device. The cloud-based app makes sharing files with your team easy and eliminates the need for dozens of back-and-forth emails. In addition, a handy version control feature means you can make sure users only see the most up-to-date edition.
The app also has a document scanner, allows offline access, and lets users leave comments on files. Plus, you can share with people who don’t even have a Dropbox account.