Many people are working from home right now due to lockdown in the whole world because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While for some people it is not a new thing as most of the IT people are doing work from home. Now if you have thought of going full-time freelancers and want to work from home or wherever you are like a café or vacation then you should need some important and basic software or tools to work from home. Here in this article, we are going to tell you the most very important software you need on your computer or phone when you are working from home.
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1. Office Suits
MS Office (Paid)
This is the most important thing you need when you work from home and nothing can beat MS Office in the present time. We all use and love it. With this office suite, you get various tools like Microsoft Word, Excel (spreadsheets), PowerPoint for presentations, and their email calendar and task manager application Microsoft Outlook.
MS Office 2019 is the latest and the best available office suit right now for any computer OS. It can be installed on Mac, Windows, and Chromebook. If you need it for personal use then Office 365 would be a great choice and it comes at $70/year for a user. Office 365 Home Edition which covers up to 6 people costs around $100/year.
LibreOffice (Free)
Well everyone doesn’t afford the hefty price of Microsoft and doesn’t want to bet involved in downloading MS Office Premium for free then LibreOffice is the best official free office suits. This office suite is very compatible with MS Office and it has got alternatives to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel Spreadsheet. It can be downloaded on Mac, Linus, and Windows of course but there is one drawback that it doesn’t have an MS Outlook alternative.
2. Office Online
Microsoft Office Online is another best alternative to consider but it is web-based and you will need internet connection all the time just like its name says. This can be used on any device and sync your documents easily. Well, many people don’t use it as it has limited features but if you work from home and while you are outdoor and you don’t have your laptop with you then you can easily get office suits on your phone synced with this powerful tool. It has also great compatibility with MS office for computers.
3. Thunderbird
Not included with the free Office suites is an outlook alternative so if you need a free cross-platform email client for Windows, Mac, or Linux, Thunderbird is what we recommend. Thunderbird is developed by the Mozilla Foundation which is obviously the makers of the Firefox browser. Thunderbird supports unlimited email accounts and syncs easily with most email providers like Gmail, Outlook and some other big names in the market. You will find various other features like tab email, add-ons support, dark theme and many others.
You may need a screenshot tool when you work from home as it will make your life easier. You may want to send the screen of the screen that you are working on and ShareX is what we recommend for it. It’s available for Windows 7/8.1/10. It will soon be available for Linux and Mac. ShareX is free and open-source and includes various methods to capture your screen along with annotation tools to mark up your image.
ShareX blows away the screenshot tools built into the Windows operating system with a lot more choices when capturing your screen. In addition to full screen, you can capture any open window, a specific monitor, there are various ways to capture a region, and it even lets you record your screen.
Alternatives for shareX on other operating systems include Shutter for Linux and macOS. There Skitch from Evernote which is available in the App Store
5. Todoist
This is not only great for your home life but it can help you to stay organized in your work life as well. You can keep track of all the projects, goals, tasks to do in a day or a month, and everything can be synced on all of your devices. This is completely free to use with its basic service. If you wish to collaborate with others and want additional features then their premium plan is $3/user monthly. A business plan is $5 per month per user.
Todoist can be downloaded on Windows and Mac. It can also be installed on iPhone and Android smartphone plus, a browser extension for most of the browsers is available.
6. Slack
When you working from home or working remotely, communication is one of the biggest hurdles you’ll have to overcome. Slack is an excellent instant messaging platform that’s especially useful when working with the team on a specific project. It is not only highly customizable but you can integrate it with more than 2,000 collaboration and office tools from its app directory.
The free option for Slack has too many restrictions so if you want to go for a premium plan then it costs $6.67/month for one user. This instant messaging platform can be a great alternative to Skype and it is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and also available as an app for iPhone and Android phones.
7. VLC Media Player
This is another mandatory tool you need when you are working from home. This is amazing too for times when you need to play an audio or video file type that can’t be played with a media player that comes with the system. VLC is free and open-source with excellent file format support and unlike some of its competitors, its ad-free and does not track its users. VLC can be downloaded on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
8. Software for video conferencing
While working from home, sometimes you may have to arrange a video meeting with your clients, subordinates, employees, or any work-related people and that’s when you need a tool that lets you allows it. There are many video conferencing software for all the OS but Skype is one of the most used tools in this segment. Well, recently in the time of quarantine, the Zoom Video Meeting app has gained much popularity but has met with criticism about the privacy of the users.
So, we recommend sticking to Skype would a great choice right now.
9. OneDrive
When you work from home you must need a reliable file sync and cloud storage service and what could be better than OneDrive. It let’s see store share and sync your files across multiple devices. OneDrive is supported on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. It has some limited features in freemium like 5GB of space and you will get 100GB with the plan of $1.99/monthly.
When you subscribe to office 365 Personal, 1TB is included and with office 365 Home, you get 1TB/person for up to six people. Another similar service to consider include Google Drive which offers 15 GB for free. It is supportable on Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.
Final Words…
These are some of the best and must-needed software to work from home. Working from home is easy but you need to be connected with the people regularly and you have to get all of these applications at a cost so check for a business plan or plan for more people in case if you some friends who also work from and willing to share a plan with you.
