The Best Free Apps For Freelancers

Freelance life is complicated.  You’re doing everything for yourself now.  You’re so busy working ‘in’ your business, you don’t have the time to work ‘on’ your business.  It’s not always about working harder, but smarter.  

There are so many great tools for freelancers on the market, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the choice.  Even better, most of these tools have free versions that you can test for yourself with no financial risk and move to the paid versions if you need to scale up at any point in the future.  

Here are some free tools to make your freelance life more productive: 

Finance – Coconut Business Bank Account

Opening a bank account as a freelancer used to be an ordeal involving a lot of paperwork, trips to the bank and complicated fees.  Not anymore.  There are a number of online business accounts designed for the needs of freelancers.  

Coconut has been specifically created for those that are self-employed.  The account can be up and running in minutes and the whole thing can be run from your smartphone.  

In addition to your account, you also get a range of tools to help you run your business including customised invoicing, expense management and tax estimates.  

Recently, Coconut has introduced features such as being able to connect to accounting software such as Xero, and also additional bank accounts and credit cards to capture all business expenses. 

Find it at www.getcoconut.com

CRM/Marketing/Email – Hubspot 

Hubspot is one of the world’s best-known marketing automation platforms.  In addition to enterprise software development level features, their free marketing tools are some of the best in the business too, outperforming a lot of their paid-for rivals.  

Built around the Hubspot core product CRM, the free tools also include: 

• Email – simple drag and drop editor, send up to 2000 emails per month
• Forms – add forms to your website/emails 
• Dashboard – the nerve centre of the platform where you can track leads, campaigns and engagement across various channels
• Contacts – a single database to manage all interactions with clients and contacts
• Ads – track up to $1000 worth of campaigns
• Live Chat – add a live chat function to your website that integrates directly with your CRM system. – And if you need to create business proposals, you even integrate it with one like Qwilr, here’s an example of a template.

Hubspot also integrates with Zapier, WordPress, Drupal, Shopify and Magento. 

Find it at https://www.hubspot.com/

Time Management – Toggl 

Time tracking is vital for a freelancer.  Whether you’re keeping track of time for your own records, or using it to provide project reports to clients, Toggl is super simple to use and can sync between phone, desktop, Chrome extension and the Toggl website. 

You have the option to track in real-time (with a single click), or manually add in projects later.  

The free version lets you track unlimited projects and clients and produce a number of reports in pdf or CSV format. 

Find it at www.toggl.com

Graphic Design – Canva

Canva is a graphic design tool for those people who don’t do graphic design.  The online software allows you to create professional-looking social media graphics, presentations, slides and other documents from a range of templates.  

It’s drag and drop editor is great for those with little experience with graphic design software. Its interface is extremely intuitive and the range of templates is also comprehensive. 

There are also basic photo editing features which means you can do all basic graphics, photo editing and layout from within one app. 

Find it at www.canva.com

Project Management/Collaboration – Trello

Say goodbye to spreadsheets and endless emails.  Trello was created to provide a simple to use, visual interface for collaboration.  You can use boards, lists and cards to map out and track your projects through to completion. 

The free version allows you to run multiple boards, perfect for freelancers.  It syncs across all of your devices too.  

Even if you don’t need to collaborate with others on a project, many freelancers use Trello as a project management tool for their own tracking.  

With nearly 30 million active users, Trello is fast becoming the go-to software for project management and collaboration. 

Find it at www.trello.com

Writing, Spelling and Grammar – Grammarly

Don’t let bad grammar affect your work.  Grammarly is a fantastic program that goes way beyond a spellcheck function.  It looks for grammatical errors and recommends alternatives.  You also get an email every week saying how many words you’ve checked, how productive you were compared to other Grammarly users and how your vocabulary compares too.  It will also tell you any recurring mistakes you are making throughout your writing.  

Grammarly also has Chrome and WordPress plugins in addition to a mobile app.  

Keep It Simple

When you’re a busy freelancer, it’s easy to get lost in all of the apps and programs claiming to make your life easier.  Some of them work, some of them don’t. What works for one person, may not work for another.

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