Top 15 remote working software for efficient teams (2023 guide)

To lead a remote team successfully, you need a tech stack that lets you manage projects, communicate with employees, and deliver resources efficiently. If you’re relying on a mix of email, spreadsheets, and synchronous meetings, you’re probably:

Wasting a ton of time on manual tasks
Missing key deadlines and delivery dates
Losing out on opportunities to boost productivity

With the right remote work software, you can automate most team management tasks and work on leveling up your employees instead. In this article, we’ll cover the best software for remote teams so you can improve processes and focus on the big picture.

Let’s get started.

How we came up with this list

There’s no single tool that can handle every aspect of remote work management seamlessly. To compile this list, we focused on the best software for addressing key remote team tasks like:

Time tracking to manage resources, increase productivity, and measure costs
Project management to assign tasks, set deadlines, and moderate workloads
Asynchronous communication to connect with staff via chat and video
Document sharing to ensure that everyone’s working from the same files
Remote desktop access to provide logins and resources securely
Password protection to keep everyone’s accounts secure reduce risk
Employee engagement to keep your team happy and improve retention

Top 15 remote working software

Since the pandemic, remote working has become a business necessity. And while most businesses made this transition overnight, they have been facing significant challenges.

According to Hubstaff’s 2021 Remote Project Management Report, nearly 46% of remote employees admitted to a lack of communication, and 41% struggled with motivation.

Having the right set of remote working tools can help you address these challenges.

Here’s a list of the top 15 remote working software to pick from:

1. Time Doctor for productivity and time management

Time Doctor is a robust time tracking and performance management tool used by major companies, like RE/MAX and Ericsson, as well as by small businesses, like Thrive Market, to boost employee productivity and efficiency.

With Time Doctor, you can track employee attendance, monitor work activity, and manage project resources and costs. The platform also provides automated insights that can alert you to potential issues and help you find what’s working best.

Key features

A. Time tracking

The Time Doctor app tracks the time spent by all employees during work hours, and you can view the tracked time with the help of accurate timesheets.

Unlike other complicated time tracking and employee monitoring apps, Time Doctor is extremely easy to use.

With manual mode, employees can simply start and stop the timer to begin and end their work.

You can also have team members start the timer automatically when they log into their devices. With this setting, Time Doctor runs silently in the background. That means you don’t have to worry about missing any time entries and can help you collect more accurate time tracking data.

B. Advanced reports

Time Doctor generates various advanced reports, which give useful insights regarding your employee’s performance and productivity.

Some of these reports include:

Activity summary report: View your employees’ active, unproductive, and mobile time.
Hours tracked report: Shows the total time tracked by the app and manually added time.
Web and app usage report: See the time spent on websites and apps according to their productivity ratings.
Timeline report: Indicates each user’s start and end times for each workday.
Project and tasks report: Provides the time required for each job and project.

C. Productivity ratings

For accurate monitoring, Time Doctor enables you to categorize websites and apps as ‘productive,’ unproductive,’ and ‘neutral’ for individuals and teams.

It then monitors the time spent on individual apps and websites so that you can have a clear understanding of the time spent by your remote employees.

The advantage?

You can categorize time spent on Facebook as ‘productive’ for the social media marketing team but ‘unproductive’ for everyone else!

This feature helps make the productivity reports more meaningful and accurate.

D. Screencasts

Capturing screencasts is an optional feature in Time Doctor.

If it’s enabled, it allows you to monitor an employee’s screen activities even more efficiently.

With this functionality, you can:

Set the intervals for the screenshots or screencasts.
Download screencasts.
Delete or blur images and videos with sensitive information.

E. Integrations

Time Doctor integrates with more than 50 software, including project management and help desk tools. This feature helps track employee hours and productivity across your favorite workplace apps.

Some of these software tools include:

ClickUp
Basecamp 3
GitHub
Jira
Microsoft To Do

And many more.

Pros

Supports manual time-editing.
Has offline time tracking functionality.
Offers an automatic mode that lets you track time without selecting a task.
Has a desktop app for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.
Offers a mobile app for Android devices.
Available as a powerful Chrome extension.
Integrates with project management apps like Trello, Jira, etc.
Pay employees directly via integrations with Payoneer, Transferwise, etc.
Strict privacy and data protection policies.

Pricing

Time Doctor offers a 14-day free trial (no credit card required). The basic plan starts at $7/user per month.

User ratings

G2: 4.4/5 (350+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 (500+ reviews)

2. Asana for project management

Asana is a cloud-based project management tool and team collaboration software that helps teams with task management and organization.

With Asana, you can plan complex projects, assign tasks, and set deadlines—all while managing workloads for team members. By using the platform’s automation tools, you can oversee projects more efficiently and make progress toward key business goals.