Time management is key to productivity, and thankfully, there are plenty of tools that can help you manage your time effectively and stay on top of things.
In this article, we will discuss the best time management tools that can help you get all the important things done while still having more time left to enjoy your life – because that’s what time management is all about at the end of the day.
Best Time Management Tools and Apps
- Asana
- RescueTime
- Toggl
- Harvest
- Timecamp
- Scoro
- HubStaff
- Evernote
- Microsoft To-Do
- Todoist
- Remember the Milk
- Freckle
- Avaza
- ClickTime
- Clarizen
- Replicon
- FocusBooster
- Forest
- Trello
- Dropbox
- MyLifeOrganized (MLO)
- Getting Things Done
Please note that these are in no particular order and that I don’t prefer them over the other. I have tried many of them and have found some that I really enjoyed using, but what works for me doesn’t necessarily have to work for you, so take your time testing them out for yourself first and seeing which one works best.
Okay, let’s get started.
1- Asana
Asana is a project management software that enables users to plan and structure their work ahead of time to deliver their outcomes with quality and promptly.
It allows users to set and share each project’s details, set its priorities, creates visual plans for it, and eliminate roadblocks – all in one place to improve your time management.
Features
- Activity Feed
- Automatic notifications, reminders, and updates
- Custom Calendars and Views
- Tasks list
- Focus Mode
- Attachments and assignees
- Project break-down
- Goals, priorities, and deadlines
- Comments and sharing
- Kanban Support
Pricing
The free version
Asana is free for teams of up to 15 users. The free version gives you unlimited conversations, tasks, and projects. You also get access to basic dashboards.
Premium Pricing
The premium plan of Asana costs $9.99/user/month and gives you all the features, including unlimited dashboards, unlimited guests, private teams, exporting, customer success programs, and more.
If you want even more control and support, you can contact them for enterprise pricing.
2- RescueTime
RescueTime is web-based time management and analytics tool that anyone can use to track how they spend their time and learn how to be more productive and efficient. You can get a productivity score and even track your offline time.
RescueTime can help users prevent distractions, regain their focus, and increase their productivity and efficiency. It runs in the background and tracks time spent on every web page and application to the minute.
Features
- Automatic Time Capture and Tracking
- Timesheet Management
- Employee Database
- Block distractions with their FocusTime feature
- Detailed logs of time spent on websites and applications
- Tracks time on all your devices
- Available for Windows, Android, Linux, and Mac.
- Available integrations for popular web browsers
- Visual reports
- Reminders
- Productivity score
- Time Categorization into neutral, distracting, very distracting, productive, and very productive.
Pricing
The free version
RescueTime’s basic version gives you time tracking on multiple devices, detailed logs, daily, weekly, monthly reports, and productivity scores.
Premium Pricing
The premium version costs $9/month and adds offline time tracking, more detailed reports, focus time (the feature that prevents distractions), and alerts. The premium version also keeps your data for longer (the free version only keeps the data of the last 3 months).
You can check the best 5 RescueTime alternatives and competitors here.
3- Toggl
Toggl tracks time spent on various projects and gives you a simple breakdown you can use to bill clients accurately.
The app seamlessly integrates with most productivity tools and can blend seamlessly into your already-existing IT structure with no problem.
The solution is cloud-based, and you can start tracking your time with one click using browser integration.
It can track online and offline time and allows users to analyze how they spend their time. In addition, the data is represented visually in colorful charts that make it easy for anyone to understand the data at a glance.
Features
- Single Click time tracking
- Tracks time online and offline
- Visual representation of data using bar charts and pie charts
- Periodical data backup to the cloud
- Integrations with many productivity apps
- Detailed reports and overview
- A day-by-day breakdown of time spent.
Pricing
The free version
Toggl’s free version should be good enough for freelancers, consultants, and even small businesses. It does limit you to only five team members, but you still get access to all the necessary features.
Premium Pricing
Toggl offers three premium pricing plans:
- Starter (for $10/user/month and goes down to $9 for annual billing))
For which you get more detailed reports and timelines.
- Premium ($20/user/month and goes down to $18 for annual billing)
For which you get team management features and access to Toggl insights on employee and project profitability
- Enterprise ($59/user/month – and goes down to $49 for annual billing)
For which you get more time management features, including timesheet audits. You also get business intelligence with advanced reporting and all their distinctive features.
Toggl offers a 30-day free trial.
4- Harvest
Harvest is not only one of the best time management systems you can find, but it’s also a great project management tool that you can use to increase your small business’s productivity.
You can use it to monitor your time or that of your employees, send invoices, and get actionable insights into your performance and business to make business decisions more accurately and efficiently.
Features
- Simple Time tracking
- Powerful reports with actionable insights
- Estimates and Expenses
- Add-Ons
- Generating and Sending invoices
- Automated notifications
- Timesheet Approval
- Integrations with more than 100 Apps and Services
- Mobile compatibility with Android and iOS.
Pricing
The free version
Harvest’s free version is excellent for freelancers. You get all the essential features you need, but it limits you to 1 person and two projects.
Premium Pricing
Harvest offers two premium plans:
- Solo (for $12/month, which goes down to $10.80 for annual billing)
You get all the features, and even though you are still limited to only one person, you can now work on unlimited projects.
- Team ($12/user/month, which goes down to $10.80/user/month for annual billing).
This plan removes the limit on the number of people who can use the account, so this is the team’s plan.
If you think that RescueTime, Harvest, and Toggl are worth your time, you may want to check out this RescueTime VS Harvest VS Toggl Detailed comparison to make the decision more quickly.
5- TimeCamp
Time-Camp is a time-tracking app that freelancers and businesses of all sizes can use because the solution offers plenty of advanced features. Time Camp focuses on two main aspects; time tracking on desktops, cell phones, and timesheets.
Time Camp focuses on taking time tracking to the next level by combining it with billing, invoicing, reporting, and management features.
Features
- Time Entries
- Automatic Time Tracking with Keywords and Rules
- Filtering, Exporting, and Sharing capabilities
- Roles and Permissions
- Reporting
- Billing and Invoicing with support for multiple billing rates – according to employee, task, or project.
- Budgeting
- Reminders and Notifications
- Offline Access
- To-do Task Lists
Pricing
The free version
The free version is available for one user only and gives you only the primary time tracking features.
Premium Pricing
Time Camp offers two premium pricing plans;
- Basic ($7/user/month, which goes down to $5.25 if billed annually)
This takes off the user’s limit and gives you access to the exporting, billing, and budgeting features. You also get access to their integrations.
- Pro ($10/user/month) which goes down to $7.50 if billed annually)
You get all the features they offer, including project costs, screenshots, scheduled reports, and timesheet approval.
6- Scoro
Scoro is a cloud-based business management software that can also help you with sufficient time management. The solution has a user-friendly interface and advanced features such as collaboration, work scheduling, advanced reporting, quoting and billing, and scheduling and tracking.
You can control everything in Scoro through their efficient control hub that gives you access to all the essential features. Scoro also offers country-specific integrations for businesses in European countries.
Features
- Calendar Management
- Project Management
- Customer Relationship Management
- Billing and invoices
- Expenses and Reporting
- Budgets and forecasts
- Multi-Currency and Multi-Language support
- File management and sharing
- Lead management and resource planning
Pricing
The free version
Scoro doesn’t offer a free version but provides a 14-day free trial on all their paid plans.
Premium Pricing
Scoro offers four pricing plans:
- Essential ($26/user/month)
This one gives you access to project, calendar, task, CRM, and quote management features, plus invoices and expenses.
- Work Hub ($36/user/month)
This gives you access to onboarding, timesheet view, advanced billing, reporting, and invoicing features.
- Sales Hub ($36/user/month)
This one adds CRM and sales pipeline features plus some advanced task management and comparative reports features.
- Business Hub ($61/user/month)
This gives you access to all the solutions capabilities – most notable of their team insights, robust sales, and finance reports.
7- Hubstaff
Hubstaff is a time tracker software that can run on your desktop or smartphone and makes it easy to track time. Users can then use the time logs to bill clients, pay their employees, and get an in-depth look at how their time is spent.
You can manually log in the time, but the solution will run in the background and track the websites you visit, and it can even take a screenshot of the page and send it to the managers. Such features make Hubstaff an excellent choice for remote teams.
Features
- Automatic and Manual Time Tracking
- Screenshots
- Activity Levels
- Support for mobile platforms
- Automatic Payroll
- Website monitoring
- Advanced reporting
Pricing
The free version
Hubstaff’s free version gives you basic time tracking. You also get limited screenshots storage.
Premium Pricing
Hubstaff offers two premium pricing plans:
- Basic ($5/user/month)
You can use it for teams with up to 50 members, and you get advanced time tracking features such as screenshots and keyboard and mouse activity. You also get employee payments and specific settings per each user.
- Premium ($9/user/month)
This one adds in-app and URL tracking, automatic payroll, integrations, attendance scheduling, weekly budgets, and idle time control.
8- Evernote
Evernote is not a time management app per se. It’s not a task management app either. Nevertheless, Evernote is one of the best note-taking apps globally and one of the most popular. Moreover, it’s such a feature-rich solution that you can make it whatever you want it to be.
You can use Evernote to do everything, from taking quick notes to managing your tasks, and you can even use it to manage your time. Evernote is an all-in-one solution that you can use from any device to organize your life and thoughts easily.
Features
- Save and sync text, audio, images, handwritten notes, sketches, clipped sections from the internet, reminders, and more.
- Search notes – including text in images and across all your notebooks
- Clip any section you’re reading on the internet.
- Collaboration with other team members
- Chat
- Document Annotation and Pen support
- Reminders and notifications
- Support for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows.
- A web version accessible from any device.
- Quick written, audio, and camera capture notes on phone
- Widgets (on phones)
- Checklists
Pricing
The Free Version
Evernote is completely free to use with access to the vast majority of its features. The two limitations worth knowing about the free version are that you can only install the app on two devices, and your uploads are limited to 60 MBs per month.
Premium Pricing
Evernote offers two pricing plans:
- Premium (starts at $69.99/year)
For that, the limitation on devices is limited, and you get 10 GB of uploads per month, email forwarding, PDF annotation, PDF text search, and Office files.
- Business ($14.99/month per person)
This plan increases the allowance to 20 GB of uploads, and you get enhanced collaboration options, single sign-on, and more.
9- Microsoft To-Do
To-Do is Microsoft’s replacement to Wunderlist (which they acquired in 2015). It’s straightforward to use and has a great “My Day” feature that allows you to add tasks to your day.
The app will also suggest tasks to add to your day if they are still not done.
Microsoft To-Do is not as feature-rich as its competitors, but it has just the right tools to help users improve their time and task management.
Features
- Task Management
- My Day
- Reminders
- Due Dates
- Task lists
- Synchronization across multiple devices
- Support for mobile platforms
- Sub-tasks (steps)
- Attachments
- Notes
Pricing
The free version
Microsoft To-Do is completely free to use on all platforms.
10- Todoist
Todoist is considered by many to be the best task management app in the world. The app is straightforward to use and offers a wide range of useful features that make it a powerful tool for organizing your projects and making it easy to improve your time management.
Todoist’s most notable feature is their productivity scoring system (karma) that motivates users to get more tasks. The app also works online and offline and makes collaboration with other users quickly.
Features
- Projects & Sub-projects
- Tasks and Sub-tasks
- Sharing and collaboration
- Productivity visualization
- Multiple priorities
- Labels
- Notifications and reminders
- Due dates and deadlines
- Team billing
- File attachments and uploads
Pricing
The free version
Todoist’s free forever version gives users 80 active projects with 5 people per project and access to most of their features.
Premium Pricing
Todoist offers 2 premium pricing plans:
- Premium ($28.99/year)
Gives users 200 active projects with 25 people per project. It also gives access to comments, file uploads, project templates, and productivity tracking and charts.
- Business ($28/user/year)
You get all the features, but now you can add up to 50 people per project.
11- Remember The Milk
Remember, the app is a web-based to-do app that enables users to manage their tasks and projects more efficiently.
Users can easily create task lists, tasks, and sub-lists with ease and share them with others for easy collaboration.
The platform also integrates with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Evernote for increased productivity.
Features
- Tasks and sub-tasks
- Add tags, estimated time, links, and notes to tasks.
- Using Google Maps’ tagged locations to organize tasks
- Weekly schedule
- Deadlines
- Support for iOS and Android
- Gmail and Outlook integration
- Integration with more than 1,500 other apps
Pricing
The free version
The free version gives you access to all the essential features but limits the syncing with mobile apps only once per day.
Premium Pricing
The Pro account costs $39.99/year.
This version gives you unlimited access to all of the platform’s features, themes, and more.
12- Freckle
Freckle is an effective time tracking & management solution that helps businesses understand how much time their employees spend on each project.
The app also helps businesses understand how much time their employees log in every day and how they spend this time.
Features
- Simple Time Tracking
- Backups
- Expense Tracking
- Billing
- Multi-Currency Support
- More than 300 Integrations
- Export in PDF, Excel, and CSV
- Support for Mac and iOS.
- Reporting
Pricing
The free version
Freckle doesn’t offer a free version.
Premium Pricing
Freckle offers 3 premium plans:
- Solo ($19/month)
Solo gives you access to the solution and its features, but you are limited to only 1 user. Each new user will cost you $14.
- Team ($49/month)
You can now use it for 5 users. Each new user will now cost you $10. You will also get a dedicated account manager.
- Organization ($199/month)
You now start with 25 users, and each additional user will cost you only $8/month. You will also get a concierge setup, audit log, and priority support.
13- Avaza
Avaza is more than just time management or a task management solution. It’s a software suite for startups and small businesses that helps them increase their productivity and efficiently manage their businesses.
It includes modules for time tracking, project management & collaboration, quoting and invoicing, and resource scheduling.
The platform is easy to use, cloud-based and offers robust reporting capabilities.
Features
- IT Project Management
- Time Tracking & management
- Timesheets
- Client Portal
- Cost tracking and management
- Collaboration
- Gantt Charts
- Kanban Board
- Time and Expense Tracking
- Project Portfolio Management
- Milestone tracking
- Integrations
Pricing
The free version
The free plan limits users to only 1 user, 5 active projects, 10 customers, 5 invoices per month, and 100 MB of storage.
Users still get access to timesheets, collaboration tools, invoicing, resource scheduling, and basic integrations.
Premium Pricing
The platform offers 3 premium pricing plans:
- Startup ($9.95/month)
Users are limited to only 1 user for invoicing and resource scheduling and two users for admin/invoice access. Users are also limited to 20 active projects, 50 invoices per month, and 1 GB of storage.
This plan gives unlimited archived projects, unlimited customers, and basic and advanced integration with QuickBooks Online.
- Basic ($19.95/month)
This plan is limited to 5 users for the timesheet and expenses, 2 users for invoicing and admin access, and 1 user for resource scheduling.
The limitations go up to 100 invoices per month, 50 active projects, and 20 GB storage.
- Business ($39.95/month)
This plan allows 10 users for timesheets and expenses, 5 users for invoicing and admin access, and 1 user for resource scheduling access.
Users also get 30 GB of storage now and access to all other features.
14- ClickTime
ClickTime is a robust web-based time tracking platform that makes time and expense management more effortless.
The solution is easy to use and offers plenty of practical features that make it a powerful tool for organizing your time and getting more productive.
It can generate efficiency reports and offers more than 60 templates for timesheets and expense reports.
Features
- Time Tracking
- Expense Management
- Enterprise Management
- Workforce Management
- Export
- Report templates
- Project budgeting
- Mobile timesheets
Pricing
The free version
Clicktime does not offer a free plan.
Premium Pricing
They have three premium pricing plans:
- Basic (starting at $10/user/month)
Gives users basic time tracking.
- Corporate (Starting at $12/user/month)
It adds powerful budgeting and reporting.
- Enterprise (Starting at $18/user/month)
Adds custom business solutions.
15- Clarizen
Clarizen is a collaborative work management solution that can help any business overcome its challenges and become more productive.
It empowers teams to streamline work and automate processes to become more productive.
The solution features work management, time management, and insightful reporting capabilities to help teams track and stay on budgets and timelines.
Features
- Collaborative work and planning
- Project Portfolio Management
- Task Management
- Issue Tracking and Management
- Expenses and Budgeting
- Resource Management
- Time Tracking
- Real-Time updates
- Project scheduling
- Gantt Charts
- Templates
- Roles and Assignments
- Integrations with third-party apps and services like Salesforce
- Import/export
- Multi-currency and Multi-language support
- Mobile Apps for iOS and Android platforms.
Pricing
The free version
Clarizen does not have a free version available. There is, however, a free trial for the paid plans.
Premium Pricing
Clarizen doesn’t have a clear pricing structure, so businesses need to contact them to get a quote according to what features they need.
They do make it clear that they have two pricing plans: Enterprise and Unlimited. Both are quote-based, but unlimited has fewer limitations than enterprise.
16- Replicon
Replicon is a business tool that can provide tailored time management to your business. This solution unites business management and workforce management to make it an all-in-one business management solution.
The cloud-based time tracking works seamlessly and without needing any input or installation, and it can work for any business size.
Replicon gives users a choice between individual apps and business bundles, depending on the functionality and features needed.
Features
- Cloud-based Time Management
- Project Portfolio Management
- Workforce Management
- Automatic Vacation Management
- Automated vacation management
- Reporting and Analytics
- Expense Capture in real-time
- Compatibility with mobile phones
Pricing
The free version
This solution doesn’t offer a free forever version, but it does offer a 14-day free trial on the paid plans.
Premium Pricing
They offer 3 pricing plans.
- Quick Start ($19/user/month)
Essential time tracking and features only, but you can add TimeAttend, Expenses, and TimeBill for an extra charge.
- Plus Package ($63/user/month)
It gives you access to the basic features, but you can now add more features like TimeOff, TimeCost, and TimeBill. All for extra fees, of course.
- Enterprise Package (Quote-based)
This plan gives you workforce management, project portfolio management, professional service automation, and more advanced features.
17- Focus Booster
Focus Booster is a time management app that helps users create focused sessions using the Pomodoro technique.
Users can set up 25 minutes-session of focus time with no interruptions to get their most important work done. In addition, they can take 5 minutes-breaks between focus sessions or set up longer breaks if needed.
The app also allows users to set up 52-minute sessions and use the 52/17 technique instead of the Pomodoro one.
Features
- Pomodoro sessions
- Automatic or manual tracking of sessions
- Reporting and Analytics about your sessions, productivity, client work, or revenue.
- Export
- Tracking clients’ revenue against sessions.
Pricing
The free version
The free version of Focus Booster is called the starter plan. This plan gives users time tracking, full reporting capabilities, and up to 20 Pomodoro sessions every month.
Premium Pricing
There are two premium plans offered:
- Individual ($3/month or $33/year)
With this plan, users get manual and automatic time tracking, full data reporting, data exporting, and up to 200 Pomodoro sessions per month.
- Professional Plan ($5/month or $55/year)
Users get unlimited Pomodoro sessions with this plan and client revenue tracking along with sessions.
18- Forest
Forest is an effortless mobile application that motivates and empowers users to stay focused and be present. The app uses gamification and game theory to do that.
In a nutshell, the app works as a game; as long as you’re away from your smartphone and – hopefully- focusing on your work, trees will grow in your forest.
It starts by growing a virtual tree, and if users stay away from their phones long enough, this tree will finish growing, and then more trees will start growing, and the forest will start taking shape.
If users get back on their phones too quickly, the trees and the forest will wither and die.
Users can set timers to unplug, and the app will keep on flashing messages on the screen to help users stay on track.
Features
- Planting virtual trees and forests to motivate users to stay focused
- Unlock achievements and earn extra rewards
- Statistics and reports
- Integration with Apple Health Kit
- Tags
- Whitelist feature on Android version
- Users can donate and grow real trees to help the earth.
Pricing
The free version
The app is completely free on Android and is free as a browser extension on Chrome and Firefox.
Premium Pricing
On the App Store (for Apple devices), the app costs $1.99.
19- Trello
Trello is a viral project management application. It uses a simple concept where boards represent projects, and cards in these boards represent tasks.
Users can drag and drop cards from one list to another, attach files to them, add notes, comments, images, and more efficiently.
There are plenty of useful integrations with Trello, and the app’s mobile version makes it super easy to manage your projects from anywhere.
Features
- Drag and Drop functionality
- Boards and Cards
- Comments, notes, and ideas
- File attachments
- Due dates and checkboxes
- Data filtering and search function
- Task assignment
- Developer API
- Integrations
- Mobile applications
Pricing
The free version
Trello’s free version is great. It gives users all the essential features with unlimited boards, cards, lists, checklists, members, and more.
The only limitations are on the size of the attachment – which is limited to 10 MBs -, the Power-Ups (you’re limited to one), and it gives you access to only the Drive and Dropbox integrations.
Premium Pricing
The platform offers two premium pricing plans:
- Business Class ($9.99/user/month – paid annually)
This plan gives all the features with more customization options, and the limitation on the attachment file size goes up to 250 MBs.
- Enterprise ($20.83/user/month – Paid annually)
This is their professional plan for large businesses. In addition, they offer more advanced features such as a single sign-on, two-factor authentication, better encryption and security, a dedicated account executive, onboarding assistance, and more.
20- Dropbox
Dropbox is a top-rated cloud-based productivity tool. It’s a great collaboration solution and makes for a perfect hub for remote teams.
Users can exchange data easily using dropbox, and businesses who don’t need it for collaboration can still use it for data storage and backup.
Features
- Cloud-based backup and data storage
- Offline Access
- Online Backup and file recovery
- File Sharing
- Efficient Syncing
- Automatic Updates
- Bandwidths manual setting
Pricing
The free version
Dropbox gives users 2 GB of storage for free when signing up. No credit card is required.
Premium Pricing
Two premium pricing plans are available:
- Plus ($11.12/month or $109.87/year)
This plan gives users access to 2 TB of storage space and more advanced features such as offline folders in the mobile app and remote device wipe.
- Professional ($27.81/month or $276.83/year)
This pricing plan ups the storage space available to 3 TB of storage and gives users access to all of the features, including 180-day history, watermarking, and full-text search.
21- My Life Organized (MLO)
My Life Organized (MLO) is a task management software that allows users to set tasks, subtasks, and dependencies between those tasks.
Users can prioritize the tasks according to urgency, importance, terms of completion, or start date.
The solution is designed to help users become more productive by finishing their tasks in time, thanks to features like time tracking and calendar view.
Features
- Tasks and Subtasks
- Time Tracking
- Calendar View
- Recurring Tasks
- Priorities
- Deadlines
Pricing
The free version
The mobile versions for iOS and Android are free, but the desktop version is not. They also offer a 45-day free trial with their paid plans.
Premium Pricing
They offer two pricing plans; the Standard for $49.95 and the professional for $59.99. However, it’s not clear what the differences between the two are.
22- Getting Things Done
Getting Things Done was created by David Allen and is a straightforward time management method. You can use GTD to increase productivity and achieve higher levels of performance.
Getting Things Done helps productive people and high-performers get their busy lives organized to ensure everything gets done quickly and organized.
GTD is used by many time management tools today to help its users get the most out of their time.
Features
Here are the five pillars of the Getting Things Done method used by many tools:
- Capture: You need to capture everything from your recurring tasks, ideas, thoughts, and so on. You can use a tool or pen and paper – but it has to be something that can easily into your normal flow.
- Clarify: Users also have to clarify what they must do by breaking them down into actionable steps. For example, you can delegate tasks if you can, but you must define your tasks simply, so there is no barrier preventing you from doing them.
- Organize: You should organize your tasks and to-dos by category and priority. You can and probably should assign them due dates and set reminders to do them.
- Reflect: You should periodically reflect on your to-do lists and check what you have done and what you still need to do. This allows you to adjust your priorities and determine if you need to adjust the system.
- Engage: You should do the tasks. Ensure you know what you should be doing right now and what you should be doing next, and when these tasks should be done.
Pricing
The GTD method is not something you can buy, but you can get the book on Amazon for about $14 if you want to really learn everything about it and take things seriously.
This link is not an affiliate link, and I do NOT get a commission if you purchase through the link.
Did you find the perfect time management tool for you to get the wasted time in your life to a minimum and increase your output and productivity? I would love to learn about it! So tell me in a comment down below!
I would also love it if you shared the article with a friend, and, promise your friend will definitely like it.
We hope you enjoyed this article. If so, you might enjoy these resources:
