24 Best Tools for Running a Remote or Hybrid Team

Most "best remote work tools" lists read the same. Slack, Zoom, Trello, done, plus a pile of unsourced stats about 40% productivity gains that nobody can trace back to a study. This list works differently. It's organized by the actual job each tool does, it names real prices where they're public, and it covers a search intent most competing pages miss: people looking for remote desktop software, not team chat apps.

We360.ai works with more than 120,000 people across 10,000-plus companies in 21-plus countries, and the pattern that shows up across that many teams is consistent. The best remote work tools are the fewest ones that actually get used, not the longest list you can assemble.

What are the top 10 remote working tools to start with?

These 10 sit at the core of almost any best remote work tools list, covering communication, project tracking, file storage, and security, the four jobs almost every distributed team needs on day one. Everything past this list is a refinement, not a requirement.

1. Slack. Channel-based messaging with a free tier and paid plans that add more integrations and longer message history.
2. Zoom. Video calls with a free 40-minute cap on group meetings and paid tiers that remove the limit and add larger participant caps.
3. Google Meet. A free video option built into Google Workspace, useful if your team already lives in Gmail and Docs.
4. Asana or Trello. Pick one project management tool rather than both. Trello suits simple kanban boards, Asana suits teams that need timelines and dependencies.
5. Google Drive. Free storage up to 15GB, with real-time editing in Docs, Sheets, and Slides built in.
6. Dropbox. Stronger desktop sync and version history than Google Drive, at a higher price once you're past the free 2GB tier.
7. LastPass or Dashlane. A password manager stops "shared login in a Slack DM" from becoming your actual security policy.
8. Calendly. Scheduling links that remove the seven-email back-and-forth over meeting times.
9. Grammarly. Writing and grammar checking that catches what a tired remote worker misses at 4 p.m.
10. We360.ai. Workforce analytics that give managers visibility into workload and focus time without keystroke logging or screenshots.

What tools do remote teams need for communication and video calls?

The best remote work tools for communication cover chat and video separately, with one primary option for each rather than several competing apps splitting conversations across platforms. Slack and Microsoft Teams both cover channel-based messaging, while Zoom and Google Meet cover video.

Slack organizes conversations into channels instead of one long inbox, and its free tier works for small teams before you need paid history retention or advanced integrations. Microsoft Teams does the same job but comes bundled with Microsoft 365, which makes it the practical default for any company already paying for Office apps.

On the video side of the best remote work tools list, Zoom caps free group meetings at 40 minutes, which pushes most teams onto a paid tier once meetings run long. Google Meet skips that cap entirely for Google Workspace users and adds live captions in multiple languages. Discord, built for gaming communities, has become a genuine alternative for smaller or younger remote teams that want always-on voice channels instead of scheduled calls.

Which project management tools work best for distributed teams?

Among the best remote work tools, the project management picks are the ones that make status visible without a daily check-in call, since nobody can just glance over at someone's monitor. Trello, Asana, ClickUp, and Jira each solve this differently.

Of the best remote work tools in this category, Trello uses kanban boards and stays simple enough that a small team can set it up in an afternoon. Asana adds timelines, dependencies, and portfolio views for teams juggling multiple projects at once. ClickUp tries to do both plus docs and goal tracking in one tool, which suits teams that want fewer logins but adds a real learning curve. Jira is built for software teams running sprints and story points, and it's the default at most engineering-heavy companies. Monday.com rounds out the category with a more visual, spreadsheet-like board that some non-technical teams prefer over Trello's cards.

Pick one. Running two project management tools "for different teams" is how information gets lost between them.

What are the best tools for cloud storage and file sharing?

For cloud storage, the best remote work tools are Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive, and the right pick usually follows whichever email and office suite your company already uses. All three offer a free tier before you need to pay for more space.

Google Drive gives 15GB free and handles real-time collaborative editing natively through Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Dropbox starts smaller, at 2GB free, but its desktop sync and file version history are noticeably stronger, which matters for teams handling large design or video files. OneDrive makes the most sense if your company already runs Microsoft 365, since it integrates directly with Word, Excel, and SharePoint.

What security and password tools should remote teams use?

On the security side, the best remote work tools are a password manager and, for anyone handling sensitive data, a business VPN, because a distributed team has no office network to fall back on for basic access control. LastPass and Dashlane both handle shared password storage, autofill, and multi-factor authentication, with Dashlane adding dark web monitoring on its higher tiers.

For network-level security, NordLayer (the business version of NordVPN) adds encrypted connections and centralized team management, useful for anyone accessing client systems or internal servers remotely. Companies in regulated industries, healthcare or finance especially, often add a dedicated data loss prevention tool on top of these, since a password manager alone doesn't stop a file from leaving through email.

What's the best remote desktop software for accessing another computer?

The best remote desktop software for accessing another computer, not just chatting with a remote colleague, includes Splashtop, AnyDesk, and TeamViewer. This is a different job entirely from Slack or Zoom, and it's a big chunk of what people actually mean when they search for "remote work tools."

What is remote desktop software? Remote desktop software lets you view and control another computer over the internet, as if you were sitting in front of it. IT teams use it for support, and remote employees use it to reach a work computer from home.

Splashtop publishes clear, public pricing starting at $6 a month for its Solo plan, moving to $8.25 for Pro and $13 for its Performance tier, according to Splashtop's own pricing page. AnyDesk starts higher, at $28.90 a month for a single-user Solo license, according to AnyDesk's pricing page, and scales up from there by number of simultaneous connections. TeamViewer, the category's oldest name, doesn't publish flat self-serve pricing at all. It routes buyers through a license assistant tool instead, which makes it harder to compare at a glance against the other two.

If your team just needs to remote into an office workstation occasionally, Splashtop's published pricing makes it the easiest of the three best remote work tools in this category to evaluate without a sales call.

What design and creative tools do remote teams use?

For design work, the best remote work tools are Canva for quick, template-based graphics and Figma or Adobe Creative Cloud for more serious design and prototyping work. All three support real-time collaboration, which matters when a designer and a reviewer aren't in the same room.

Canva covers social graphics, presentations, and basic marketing assets with a large template library and a workable free tier. Figma has become the default for UI and product design specifically, built around live multiplayer editing and developer handoff. Adobe Creative Cloud still wins for teams that need Photoshop-level image editing or video work in After Effects, though it costs more than either of the other two.

How do you build a remote work tech stack without collecting tools nobody uses?

You build a stack from the best remote work tools by picking one tool per job and cutting the rest, since tool proliferation, not tool scarcity, is what actually slows distributed teams down. Most well-run remote teams land somewhere between 7 and 12 core tools total, not the 24 covered in this list.

Start with the jobs, not the apps, when you're shortlisting the best remote work tools for your own team: one chat tool, one video tool, one project tracker, one storage tool, one password manager. Add design or remote-desktop tools only if the role actually needs them. If you're weighing this against a broader policy decision, like whether your team should be hybrid, remote, or somewhere in between, this hybrid remote work guide is worth reading before you finalize the stack, since the right tools depend partly on how many days people are actually working from the same room.

Even the best remote work tools solve the "how do people work" problem. They don't solve the "is anyone overloaded" problem, which is where workforce analytics like We360.ai come in, tracking workload and focus patterns across whatever stack you land on, without keystroke logging or constant screenshots. That visibility matters more once your policy includes any flexible or self-directed scheduling, since nobody's glancing over at anyone's desk to notice who's drowning.

Start a free trial to see how it fits your existing stack, or book a demo if you'd rather walk through it with someone first.

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