Working from home is no longer a fancy, futuristic and privileged option of the few. Now that COVID-19 has hit us, working remotely is the new normal all over the world. Even lawyers, accountants, and all those other classic and conservative fields are working from home now. Which is why the remote toolbox comes in handy.

To support the new normal, future of work, what better timing for a post including all our favorite tools that allow us to work from anywhere? At Joes & Cos, we’ve joined forces to get our collective minds working together on a list of all of our favorite remote tools that we have been using for the past six+ months of confinement.

Below is our list. Please share your favorite tools in the comments too. Sharing is caring, as they say 🤗

As the list grows, we’ll eventually publish all the amazing tools that we have been using and share them in an easy-to-use, grab’n’go form. 🙌 

The Remote Toolbox That Lets You Work Anywhere

Tools that let you communicate

Whether you have 1, 10, or 100 colleagues, being able to communicate is crucial. But communicating isn’t just possible physically in an office thanks to the internet and different software that lets you communicate with people across time zones and geographical locations. The following programs let you communicate with messages, chat, calls and video meetings. Here are our favorite ways to communicate with a breeze online.

Skype – the Scandi cool kid
Being Scandinavian, Skype has always held a special place in our hearts, being the cool kid who challenged the big players. Now that they are part of Microsoft, they are not quite as cool anymore, but since EVERYBODY has Skype, it’s just always been an easy tool to use. Then came corona, and WOW, now it just seems to be a whole new ball game.

Zoom – Immense growth thanks to corona
“Let’s Zoom” is suddenly a well-known phrase. The program was rather small pre-corona but is one of those businesses who gained success thanks to the pandemic. Our favorite feature is the feature that lets you change the background. It just makes it a lot more fun to chit chat with a palm tree in the background than with a boring, white wall.

Google Meet – from Hangout to Meet
Google understood the needs of the changing work places and updated their old Hangout which is now called Meet. Some of the best engineers at Google must have been doing quite a few all-nighters to get Meet to where it is now, which is ten times better than what Hangout used to be. Our favorite feature is the ability to add real-time captions. It basically gives you live subtitles while speaking – which again is a good reminder of how advanced the technology is today (and a bit scary!).

Slack – the one that integrates
Needless to say, Slack is an old-time darling for a lot of startups. Slack is brilliant as it lets you integrate everything into the platform from reminders to calendar tasks, new subscribers on your platform, new sales, and all that other stuff you want to be passed around when you grow out of your one-man band.

Tools that let you stay productive

 Sending out newsletters. Organizing your tasks and work days. Planning the future. Productivity is key in most jobs, whether you work from an office, your home, or your third place. The remote toolbox let’s you stay productive from anywhere. Here are some of our favorite tools that bring out the best in your productivity.

MailChimp – the newsletter master
Newsletters are vital to most companies, small or large. When you finally get people on your platform, it’s key to keep them engaged. A great way of doing so is through newsletters. They come in handy when it comes to sharing news, promotions, and invitations. While not super advanced, MailChimp’s free plan has just enough to get you up and running. MailChimp integrates into all those other platforms that you might use, which makes it super easy to share contacts across platforms, as well as keeping track of your performance.

Trello – let’s you stay organized
Sharing is caring, and when it comes to sharing “to-dos”, Trello is by far our favorite. Trello is the website that lets you stay organized and on top of all your ideas and tasks. The website lets you build your on dashboards with different bullets and columns which can be shared among relevant team members. At Joes & Cos, Trello is our collective mind that makes sure we have a place to hang up all those milestones, goals, and ideas that are flying around in a startup.

HubSpot – for bootstrapped businesses
HubSpot is a platform for inbound marketing and sales. There are a bunch of CRM/Sales systems out there that are similar to HubSpot, but the only one which is free until your business kicks off, is HubSpot, which is why it got our bootstrapping hearts. People say it gets expensive to use in the long run, but we haven’t yet reached that point. So far, the platform integrates so easily and smoothly with our other platforms like MailChimp, G Suite, etc. that we can only say it’s a great tool for us.

Boomerang – the email scheduler
If HubSpot is overkill for your situation, luckily there are some other ways to get on with some of those awesome features you’d like to have access to, such as sending and receiving emails at certain times. Boomerang does just that, if G Suite/Gmail is your mailhost. It’s an extension and works wonders.

Loom – the video messager
They say that a picture is worth a 1000 words. What does that says about videos? Marketing trends say that video is the sh*t, and Loom surely agrees. With Loom, you can turn your message into a video and embed that video in emails. Very cool and on-trend!

Tools that let you design

Hiring a graphic designer to take care of the digital design can become an expensive post in your budget. While graphic designers are a godsend, there are several tools that let you do some of the work before needing to hire assistance. From the remote toolbox, these are the ones that work wonders for your graphic design work.

Figma – become a designer
Figma is a design and prototyping tool for digital projects that lets you collaborate with other creators. Similar to Sketch, Figma has you covered when it comes to designing graphics. Their free version is more than plenty as long as you are not using it at a more professional level.

Coolers – color guide on steroids
Are you into colors and aesthetics, Coolers is for you. It’s your Pantone color guide on steroids. It basically tells you what colors go with what colors. Give it a try next time you want to make your newsletter or website stand out and be stylish at the same time.

HTML Sig – the signature maker
If you have a Mac and want to upgrade your email signature, this is your answer. Using HTML SIG won’t cost you anything if you just test it and then copy/paste the result into your signature. (We didn’t tell you that by the way!)

…And a few gadget tools

Momentum – the awesome dashboard
Do you want an awesome dashboard every time you open your browser? Momentum is a Google application, also available on Firefox, that lets you build a cool dashboard that includes a background, a note, the time and the weather. With Momentum, you’ll have people asking you how you got that cool dashboard. Have a look and you’ll see why.

Parity – free advice from successful entrepreneurs
Starting a business is no easy quest, which is why Parity comes in very handy as a great resource for helpful advice. It’s a platform that gives you access to everything you need to learn about building a business taught by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. Parity is full of helpful advice, blog posts, tutorials, and courses.

All there is left to say is good luck testing out some of these great tools from our remote toolbox. We hope you enjoy them and that this toolbox for remote work helps you brighten your work day, whether that’s at the office, at home, or at your third place.

We hope you enjoyed this blog post. Joes & Cos is the platform that grants you access to working spaces around Copenhagen to let you work wherever you want, however you want. The app brings you the future of work and lets you create your own work/life balance. Read more here or download the app here.