Remember when Google just meant a search engine? Me neither. Everybody has a Gmail account these days (and often more than one for various work purposes). 

Whether you use Gmail to accept calendar invites, update your team members about projects, or even to process new sales leads, a lot of your daily communication will take place within Gmail. 

But keeping your Gmail organized can be tedious, especially when you're receiving dozens of emails every day. (Forget about reaching inbox zero.)

But with our automatic workflows—we call them Zaps—you can minimize repetitive tasks by easily saving email attachments, automatically following up with new leads, comprehensively managing tasks, and even using AI to clean up your inbox. Here's how to automate Gmail.

Table of contents

• Generate a to-do list from your inbox

• Get AI to enrich your email workflows

• Easily save email attachments

• Send notifications from your inbox

• Follow up with new leads faster

Generate a to-do list from your Gmail inbox

Unless you have a photographic memory, it's practically impossible to keep track of every email that requires you to take action, especially if they're left to languish starred or unread in your inbox. And, if you're like me, a clean and efficient to-do list is a must to sleep at night. 

You can set up a Zap to connect your Gmail account to Google Sheets to create lists from specific emails, automatically add labeled emails to your task manager of choice, and more.

Get AI to enrich your email workflows

Do you need a helping hand when it comes to writing email copy that actually converts leads? Or maybe you sift through hundreds of emails every day, labeling them as you go—and you'd like to save yourself the hassle. 

Fortunately, you can use AI to help you do everything from penning emails to generating a daily digest of your emails in Slack. Once you receive a new email, ChatGPT or OpenAI will analyze the content, then carry out the instructions you give it. Finally, it will send the output wherever you need it to go. Here are a few examples: 

Automatically save email attachments

Constantly losing track of email attachments? This is an issue everyone with a Gmail account seems to face. By setting up automatic workflows, you can easily save Gmail attachments to Dropbox, Google Drive, or whichever cloud-sharing app you use. 

You can even save email attachments to specific folders so you can keep your organization streak going with your file management, not just your inbox. 

Send notifications from your inbox

Working collaboratively with a team comes with its fair share of challenges, communication often being on the top of that list. But with a few pre-set workflows, you can easily turn your Gmail inbox into an effective information-sharing machine. 

For example, you can send an email when a Google Sheet is updated so team members can stay up to date on a project. You can also send emails from your Gmail account to your team chat app of choice, streamlining communication. Or one of my personal favorites: you can send auto-scheduled email updates to your team, minimizing your daily repetitive tasks without sacrificing communication.

Follow up with new leads faster 

You work hard to acquire new leads. From running campaigns across multiple platforms to hosting webinars, you know it's also incredibly important to follow up as fast as possible. If you wait too long to respond—or *gasp* miss their email altogether—there's a decent chance you'll lose a customer. 

Automatically follow up with new leads by sending an email as soon as they show interest. With Zapier, you can set up personalized Gmail auto-responders for instant engagement with a high-intent lead.

The same goes for new customers who sign up for a webinar or subscribe to your newsletter. A simple welcome message can do wonders for your business. With these Zaps, you can automatically send emails in Gmail whenever you get a new subscriber in Mailchimp, for example, or a sign up to your webinar. 

Take your Gmail inbox to the next level

With Zapier, you can integrate Gmail with the rest of your tech stack and manage your email without the anxiety.

This is just the start of all that you can do with Gmail and Zapier. Zapier supports thousands of apps, so you can automate almost any task at work. Start building your Zap now and see what you can create!

This article was originally published in March 2021 and was most recently updated in December 2023 by Elena Alston.

Just like an over-enthusiastic squirrel collects nuts for winter, I eagerly collect Facebook Lead Ads data with no idea how to efficiently organize it. If you're a marketer like me, you've probably had your share of spreadsheet chaos, too. 

Fortunately, you don't have to use a fuzzy rodent as a role model for your marketing workflows. Instead, you can use a Zap—Zapier's automated workflows—to automatically move your lead data from Facebook Lead Ads to an Excel spreadsheet. Let's get cracking.

Before you begin

After setting up your Facebook Lead Ads campaign, you should create an Excel spreadsheet to collect your lead data. 

Create a new spreadsheet and give column headings for the info you're collecting. Facebook Lead Ads lets you collect everything from email addresses to phone numbers to company details. 

For this example, we added column headers for Full Name, Email Address, Page Name, and Form Name. 

How to add new Facebook Lead Ads leads to Excel

Now, you're ready to set up your workflow. Zapier lets you create automated workflows called Zaps, which send your information from one app to another. You can create your own Zap from scratch without any coding knowledge, but we also offer quick templates to get you started. 

If you'd like to start with a template, click on the Zap template to go to the Zap editor. You'll need to create a Zapier account if you don't already have one. Then, follow the directions below to set up your Zap.

Set up your Facebook Lead Ads trigger

Let's start with the trigger—the event that starts your Zap. If you're using the Zap template, this will be selected for you. Otherwise, search for and select Facebook Lead Ads as the trigger app and New Lead as the trigger event, then click Continue.

Next, connect your Facebook account, if you haven't already, then click Continue.

To set up the trigger, select the Facebook Page and Form you'd like to use in this Zap. Then, click Continue. 

Now, it's time to test your trigger step. This will gather information from the Facebook Lead Ads form that will be used to set up the rest of your Zap. Before clicking Test trigger, make sure there's at least one submission in the form (you can add a sample lead if you don't have any submissions). 

Zapier will show you the most recent data from Facebook Lead Ads. Select which data you'd like to use to set up your Zap, then click Continue with selected record. 

Set up your Microsoft Excel action

Now, it's time to set up the action, the event your Zap will perform once it's triggered. In this case, that's adding your Facebook Lead Ads data to Excel.

If you're using the Zap template, these will already be selected for you. Otherwise, search for and select Microsoft Excel as your action app and Add Row as your action event. Click Continue.

Next, connect your Microsoft Excel account, if you haven't already, then click Continue. 

Now, it's time to customize your action step. By default, Zapier will select your OneDrive account in the Storage Source field. But, if you're a business customer, you can switch to Sharepoint.

Next, select the Folder where your Excel spreadsheet is saved. If this is in the root OneDrive folder, you don't need to select anything here. 

In the Spreadsheet field, select the spreadsheet you made to collect your lead data. Then select the appropriate worksheet in the Worksheet field. By default, this will be Sheet1, but you can select a different worksheet if you need.

Once you've selected your spreadsheet and worksheet, the Zap will add fields for the columns you added earlier. Now, you can map the data you receive from Facebook Lead Ads to these columns so your spreadsheet is properly filled out each time a new lead comes in.

For our example, we'll map the Email data from Facebook Lead Ads to the Email Address field, Full Name to the Full Name field, etc.

Once you've mapped all your fields, click Continue. 

Now, click Test step to run your Zap using the sample data you selected earlier. Open the Excel spreadsheet you created, and you'll find the sample data in a new row. 

Here's what our sample data looked like.

If everything looks right, you're ready to use your Zap. Now, every time you get a new lead in Facebook Lead Ads, it will go to your new Excel spreadsheet.

If you follow ChatGPT closely at all, you'll know that you can now create custom versions of the bot—called GPTs—that fulfill a specific purpose. 

From creative writing coaches to tech advisors, you can give your personal GPTs tailored instructions, your own company files to pull info from, and the ability to browse the web and run code. 

But if you want to take your GPTs a step further, you should think about combining them with Zapier AI Actions. 

By pulling in the power of Zapier, you can create GPTs that talk with your favorite apps (like Notion or Google Calendar) and have them carry out actions directly within ChatGPT's interface to make your work life a breeze. 

Want to hear some examples? We reached out to several departments across Zapier and spoke with a few Zapier Experts to understand how they're leveraging GPTs to power their work. Take a look. 

Table of contents

• For scheduling and calendar management

• For personalized outreach and customer communication

• For performance management and reviews

• For knowledge sharing across your organization

• For enhancing lead generation

For scheduling and calendar management 

It's remarkable how many times a meeting can throw me off—even if it's been scheduled weeks ahead of time. 

While a jam-packed calendar is pretty indicative of job success, you still have to make sure you and your team are fully prepped for each and every event—even (and especially!) those last-minute client calls. 

To eliminate the time spent hopping between tools (like searching for project docs in Slack or researching a prospect's professional background on LinkedIn), AI-powered calendar assistants can help. 

As an example, you can build a GPT that connects your Google Calendar and Slack accounts. 

This means that you can ask your GPT about upcoming events on your calendar—and get it to provide a list for any given day. 

The GPT can also send automatic messages to team members in Slack about specific meetings (like if you have a conflict and need to reschedule).  

It can also carry out research online about meeting attendees—all using ChatGPT's web browser functionality. 

The idea is to boil that meeting prep down into less time—and into one interface. Of course, you can add multiple AI actions to your GPT; it doesn't have to just be Google Calendar and Slack actions. You could involve Gmail or Microsoft Outlook—whatever works best for your workflows!

For personalized outreach and customer communication

Another idea—inspired by Nathan Weill and his team of automation experts at Flow Digital—is an email assistant GPT. 

An email GPT can do any number of things, but the major point here is to create an assistant that can help you create personalized emails to prospects or customers—based on company-specific documentation, your own website, and even on the information a prospect might submit via a form. 

So let's say you use Typeform to collect information from prospects—and Gmail to send emails. By connecting those apps to your email GPT, it would be able to write and send personalized follow-ups based on the info your prospect filled out. You could even enrich this process further by connecting your CRM tool (like HubSpot or Pipedrive) so that your GPT can find deals or contacts and create personalized emails based on that. 

And, because you can also upload your own files (like style guides), the GPT will write in a style that's unique to your company.  

You could even build a GPT that is able to reference a company's entire body of blog content, allowing non-technical team members to respond to technical inbound customer queries. This is something that Tom Nassr, co-founder of XRay.Tech, says his team uses to support customers without roadblocks. 

For analyzing different sorts of performance

Another handy GPT—brought to us by Andrés Berte, the Director of Growth at Connex Digital—is a performance management GPT. 

Picture the scenario: Come the end of a quarter or end of the financial year, business owners or managers must carry out a performance review process for their employees—according to a standard operating procedure (SOPs). Traditionally speaking, gathering all the relevant information from various sources takes a lot of time and manual effort. 

But with a performance management GPT, you can have it send you detailed productivity reports and performance assessments about employees based on information it pulls from other apps. 

For example, if you store a list of a sales rep's closed or open deals in Google Sheets or your CRM, the GPT would be able to list them out for you—and analyze the performance based on that data and any other info you give it (like your company targets).  

You could add other AI actions as well. For example, you might send that sales rep's performance data to Evernote, so you have those notes handy during your next one-on-one. Or you might use it to generate insights on open opportunities across your organization, plus track sales progress—and share those insights with your team in Slack. 

For knowledge sharing across your organization

Whether you're training a junior staff member who's just joined the company or you're imparting knowledge to folks who sit within other departments, knowledge sharing is a must for every business. 

While a list of FAQs sometimes does the trick, Andrés points out that junior team members rely on senior employees to share that institutional knowledge, which can lead to delays or bottlenecks. 

In this instance, building a knowledge-sharing GPT that has access to company documentation can free up the time spent on resolving queries and empower junior team members to gain quicker access to information. 

For example, say you store all your company knowledge, data, and operating procedures in a tool like Notion. By connecting it to your GPT, your team members can receive immediate responses to their queries through the chatbot interface, reducing wait times. 

Linking the GPT to other project management tools (like Todoist or Asana) could also help users keep track of their to-dos. 

Say, for example, a junior team member asks the GPT about resolving a specific customer query and the GPT gives it a how-to answer, the GPT could also add it as a task to the team member's project management tool so they can keep track. 

For enhancing lead generation

Another popular use case is that of using GPTs to sift through CRM data and identify highly engaged prospects. By building a GPT that connects directly to your CRM, your business can better focus on growth—while reducing the manual time sales teams spend on manually analyzing data themselves. 

Sales teams can ask the lead generation GPT directly to identify promising prospects, ask it to analyze customer interactions from transcripts, and review previous purchases from similar customer profiles. 

You could connect it to your Google Docs account, for example, or any tool where you centralize that data, then have it share those insights with your sales team in Slack or via Gmail.  

Another example is that of a lead parser GPT. Chris Sammarone, CEO of Upcode, and his team have experimented with AI systems that can automatically format lead data the way they need it to. 

As Chris explains, their leads are generated in all sorts of different formats, and so this process extracts the data from emails, formats it correctly, and deposits those leads directly into their CRM—allowing them to move their leads downstream without manual effort. 

Stay on top with AI and automation

By using any of these GPTs, you'll be empowering your whole organization to work smarter. 

From knowledge sharing to enhancing lead generation, building GPTs powered by Zapier AI Actions is a game-changer, with the potential to save time and money, improve efficiency, and increase productivity.  

You probably collect leads from a variety of sources, like a form on your website and through social platforms like Facebook Lead Ads. But trying to keep your leads straight across multiple platforms can be a hassle and lead to potential customers slipping through the cracks.

Fortunately, tools like LeadConnector make it easy to add all of your prospects and customers to one tool. But manually moving that important data from one app to another is inefficient and doesn't scale.

With a Zap—Zapier's automated workflows—you can automatically add new leads from Facebook Lead Ads directly to LeadConnector as soon as they enter your pipeline. Here's how.

Add or update LeadConnector contacts for new leads in Facebook Lead Ads

Zapier lets you create automated workflows called Zaps, which send your information from one app to another. You can create your own Zap from scratch without any coding knowledge, but we also offer quick templates to get you started. 

If you'd like to start with a template, click on the Zap template below to go to the Zap editor. You'll need to create a Zapier account if you don't already have one. Then, follow the directions below to set up your Zap.

Set up your Facebook Lead Ads trigger

Let's start with the trigger—the event that starts your Zap. If you're using the Zap template, this will be selected for you. Otherwise, search for and select Facebook Lead Ads as the trigger app and New Lead as the trigger event, then click Continue.

Next, connect your Facebook account, if you haven't already, then click Continue.

Now, let's customize our trigger step. Select the Facebook Page and Form you'd like to use in this Zap. Then, click Continue. 

Now, it's time to test your trigger step. This will gather information from the Facebook Lead Ads form that will be used to set up the rest of your Zap. Before clicking Test trigger, make sure there's at least one submission in your form (you can add a sample lead if you don't have any submissions). 

Zapier will show you the most recent data from the ad form. Select which data you'd like to use to set up your action step, then click Continue with selected record. 

Set up your LeadConnector action

Now it's time to set up the action, the event your Zap will perform once it's triggered. In this case, that's adding or updating a contact in LeadConnector.

If you're using the Zap template, these will already be selected for you. Otherwise, search for and select LeadConnector as your action app and Add/Update Contact as your action event. Click Continue.

Next, connect your LeadConnector account with Zapier, if you haven't already. To connect your account, you'll need an API key.

LeadConnector generates a unique API key for every sub-account (client account) that's on your agency list. To find it, open your Agency view, then click on the Settings icon in the sidebar and select API Keys. 

Here, you'll see a list of your clients and the API keys. Hover over an API key and click the Copy icon. 

Back in the Zap editor, click Connect. On the new popup page, paste the API key you copied above. Then, click Yes, continue to LeadConnector. 

Finally, click Continue after connecting your LeadConnector account. 

Now it's time to customize your action step. Here you'll map the data you've collected in your Facebook lead form to the appropriate fields in LeadConnector. Depending on what info you collect or need, you'll fill in different fields.

To add data from Facebook Lead Ads, just click in the appropriate field and select the data you want to map from the Insert Data dropdown.

In our example, we'll add our leads' full name and email.

Next, in the Mark as Lead field, select True. This will flag the contact as a lead in your LeadConnector database. If you don't select True here, the Zap won't move forward.

When you're finished filling in the fields you need, click Continue. 

Now, click Test step to run the Zap using your sample data. You should see your sample lead in your LeadConnect account.

To check, open your LeadConnector account, and switch to the Sub Account (client account) you connected. From the sidebar, go to Contacts, and you should see the sample contact data. 

Here's what our test data looked like. 

If everything looks right, you're ready to use your Zap. Now all of your incoming Facebook Lead Ads data will go to your LeadConnector database automatically. 

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a little too click-happy on the internet. Most of the time, it results in silly errors like having to go to a distant cousin's bachelorette party because I accidentally reacted to the text invite with a thumbs-up instead of a resounding "I'll pass, thanks." Other times, it results in panic. Like when I accidentally delete an important file in Google Drive. 

If you're reading this article, I suspect it's because you're in a similar panic mode. If you recently deleted something (or you deleted it less than 30 days ago), there's still time. Here's how to recover deleted files from Google Drive. 

Note: Files sent to the Google Drive trash are automatically deleted forever after 30 days. But you may still be able to restore them.

How to recover deleted files from Google Drive

Here's how to recover deleted files in Google Drive within the 30-day time window. 

1. Go to your Google Drive.

2. In the side menu, click Trash. 

   

3. Select the file or files you want to recover. 

4. Right-click your selection, and click Restore. Alternatively, you can click the Restore icon, which looks like a clock, above your list of deleted files. 

   

Your restored file will appear in its original location. And because Google knows none of us can be expected to remember where we stored a file last week, let alone last month, they list this info under Original location. 

If the original location no longer exists, search for it in My Drive. 

How to recover permanently deleted files from Google Drive 

If you deleted a Google Drive file for good (meaning you clicked Delete forever after moving it to Trash), you may still be able to recover it. But there are a few limitations:

• You must be the owner of the file.

• The file must have been deleted recently (Google doesn't specify what "recently" means in this case, though).

Complete this Google Drive form, and the support team will try to restore it for you. 

Automate Google Drive

If you don't have systems to keep your files organized, important documents get lost in the digital clutter. With Zapier, you can connect Google Drive with your other apps so you can streamline your digital file management without the extra legwork. For example, you can automatically do things like send email attachments to the right folder or notify teammates about a new file in the Drive. Learn more about how to automate Google Drive, or get started with one of these workflows. 

Related reading:

• How to free up space in your Google account

• How to convert image to text with Google Drive

• How to copy folders in Google Drive

As a content marketer at a fast-paced agency, I've developed a not-so-healthy reliance on Google Sheets templates. They help me visualize complex data at a glance, transform chaotic brainstorming sessions into organized strategies, and keep my content on track. I cling to spreadsheets like Rose clung to that door in Titanic—unyielding, life-saving, and a bit dramatic, but absolutely necessary.

In this blog post, I'll share 21 ready-to-use Google Sheets templates made by yours truly and walk you through how they can bring efficiency to your projects.

Is a Google Sheets template right for you?

First, ask yourself what you're trying to achieve. While the below templates offer convenience and efficiency for various tasks, there are scenarios where dedicated software might be a better fit. Here's how to determine what's right for you.

Use a Google Sheets template if:

• You need a quick, straightforward solution for tasks like budget tracking or simple project planning.

• Basic, pre-designed formats and structures suit your needs without much alteration.

• You want to collaborate without a headache. If you're the type who loves group projects, Google Sheets lets you collaborate without wanting to pull your hair out.

• You're looking for a free or cost-effective tool that integrates well with other Google apps.

Consider dedicated software if:

• Your tasks require complex, specialized functionalities that a basic spreadsheet looks at with wide-eyed terror.

• You need software customized to your unique needs, like a made-to-order burrito—add what you want, leave out what you don't, guac costs extra.

• Advanced data analysis, with sophisticated reporting and forecasting tools, is a necessity.

• You require robust integration capabilities with a wider range of applications beyond the Google ecosystem.

Evaluating your specific needs against these points can tip the scale between Google Sheets templates and dedicated software. It's like deciding between staying in pajamas all day or putting on your fanciest evening outfit. (Mine also happens to be pajamas.) Both have their charm, but it really depends on what kind of day you're planning.

If you think a specialized tool might be more your speed, check out the following app roundups that do a lot of the same things these templates do, and more:

• The best project management software for small businesses

• The best social media management tools

• The best accounting software for small business

• The best employee management software

• The best ERP software

• The best CRMs for small businesses

• The best invoicing software

• The best time blocking apps

21 free Google Sheets templates

The following Google Sheets templates let you hit the ground running, so you can focus on the important stuff, like taking credit for these beautiful spreadsheets.

1. Expense report template 

An expense report template helps track and organize expenses incurred by employees or departments. It simplifies the process of managing expenditures by providing structured fields for items like date, category, and amount spent, supporting easy recording and analysis. Perfect for when you need to justify that "business lunch" that was really just you eating a sandwich while hovering over the break room sink.

2. Cash flow template

A cash flow spreadsheet helps you stay on top of your business's income and expenses. This template makes it easy to track your cash flow over time, so you can spot trends, anticipate shortfalls, and make data-driven decisions.

3. Invoice template 

Use Google Sheets to create and manage client invoices for services rendered or products sold. This template tracks details like customer information, itemized charges, payment terms, and outstanding balances. You can even connect it to Zapier to automate your invoicing process.

4. Balance sheet template

A balance sheet template provides a snapshot of your business's financial health. It shows what you own (assets), what you owe (liabilities), and your net worth (equity) at a given point in time.

It's a useful tool for managing your company's funds and ensuring you have enough cash on hand to cover expenses. It also helps determine if business is booming or if you should start selling office furniture.

5. Profit and loss statement template

A profit and loss statement, or P&L, is one of the most important spreadsheets for any business because it shows whether you're making or losing money. It's like a business's report card, revealing whether you're top of the class or the kid who eats paste in the back.

This Google Sheets P&L template makes it easy to track your revenue, costs, and profits over a period of time. Simply plug in your income sources and expenses, and the spreadsheet automatically calculates your net profit.

 6. Small business budget template

When it comes to budgets, most mere mortals would rather read the entire tax code than create one from scratch, which is why I'm repurposing one from Zapier's small business budget templates.

This template makes it simple to track all of your budgets and projections, forecasting your revenue and expenses for the fiscal year.

Staying on budget is key to the success of any small business. It's the financial tightrope you walk, juggling hopes, dreams, and the harsh reality of how much printer ink actually costs. This free Google Sheets template gives you an easy way to monitor your financial performance and make data-driven decisions. 

7. Payroll template

A Google Sheets payroll template provides an easy, low-cost solution to handle employee compensation for small businesses that don't outsource payroll or use specialized software.

The template has areas to track hours worked, pay rates, and formulas to automatically calculate gross and net pay for each employee based on their hourly rates and deductions.

At the end of each pay period, you can use automation to generate payslips to send to your staff along with their direct deposits or checks. Keeping good records of all payments and deductions will make managing tax season much easier.

8. Project plan template

This project plan Google Sheets template helps you map out all the steps required to complete a project. Break down your project into actionable tasks, assign deadlines, and allocate resources, so you have a clear roadmap to get the work done.

With a comprehensive project plan in place, you'll have confidence that no detail will slip through the cracks.

9. OKR template

Let's face it: coming up with objectives and key results (OKR) is rough enough without having to build your own template to track them. Luckily, some kind soul has done the work for you. (It's me—I'm the kind soul.)

This template lets you define your OKRs, set deadlines, note progress, and see how you stack up against key milestones at a glance. All you need to do is plug in your goals, add some metrics to measure success, and you've got yourself an accountability mechanism. What more could an aspiring overachiever ask for?

Not only will you have a roadmap to keep your team on track, but you'll also get to unleash your inner control freak. Win-win.

10. Project management template

A project management spreadsheet is clutch for keeping tasks, timelines, and team members organized. This Google Sheets template gives you a pre-built sheet with sections for tasks, owners, start/end dates, durations, and notes. Fill in the details for your project, assigning tasks to the appropriate team members and setting realistic timelines.

A good project management spreadsheet predicts how the chaos of your projects might settle into success, showing who's doing what, which balls are in the air, and when they might land.

11. Gantt chart template

A Gantt chart template helps you visually lay out project timelines and schedules. Using horizontal bars, it breaks down task durations, dependencies, and critical paths. It helps manage project schedules, identify bottlenecks, and communicate progress effectively.

To get started, list your project tasks in the first column. In the next column, estimate how long each task will take. See at a glance which tasks overlap or depend on others finishing first. It's like a timeline wearing a party hat. 

12. Inventory template

I originally created this inventory template a few years ago because I needed a simple solution to track my small business's stock. Its simplicity means it can fit a variety of inventory tracking needs. Use it to keep tabs on office supplies, company-owned equipment, or your vintage muscle car collection. (Ok, Jay Leno.)

Track all your items and their location, quantity, value, and comments (in case you want to record that dent in your '67 Mustang's fender). Formulas calculate totals automatically, so you can stop struggling with the calculator app on your phone. You can even integrate this template with Zapier to automatically pull in up-to-date product inventory details. 

13. Event budget template

An event budget spreadsheet provides an easy way to track your event income, expenses, sponsors, and more. Simply plug in your numbers, and the spreadsheet will automatically calculate totals, so you always know where you stand financially.

Whether planning a conference, fundraiser, or company event, this free template puts you in control of your budget and ensures no cost is left unaccounted for. You'll be able to throw the party of the year without dreading the financial aftermath. Let the spreadsheet do the math while you focus on more important things, like showcasing those sweet Macarena moves. 

14. Project timeline template

A timeline template is a visual way to represent and track events or tasks over time. It's a handy feature for project management, historical timelines, and even personal scheduling.

You can create a timeline in Google Sheets by selecting the data range that contains your dates and tasks and then clicking Insert > Timeline.

15. Sales dashboard template

A sales dashboard gives you an at-a-glance view of your sales metrics and KPIs, so you can check progress and spot trends. You'll want to customize it to show the numbers that matter most to your company.

Keep it simple by focusing on essentials like:

• Total sales volume

• Sales growth

• Average deal size

• Win rate

Share the file with your sales team, so everyone's on the same page about progress and priorities. Schedule time each week to review the dashboard together and determine ways to boost numbers or address issues.

With a few clicks, this template transforms into a dashboard tailored to track your sales team's progress so you can whip them into shape. Or gently encourage them with pizza.

16. Social media calendar template

This social media calendar template helps take the guesswork out of your social strategy so you can focus on creating content your audience will love. With all your social posts mapped out in one place, it's hard to double-book content or miss an opportunity to post. Using a Google Sheets social media calendar keeps your online presence organized and consistent.

17. Content calendar template

If there's one thing marketers love, it's convincing you that your life is a desolate wasteland without their latest product. Coming in a close second is content calendars.

A content calendar template offers a structured framework for planning and organizing all content-related activities, including blog posts, videos, email newsletters, and more. Typically, it includes fields for content topics, responsible parties, deadlines, and publishing channels.

By effectively tracking your publication schedule, a content calendar template ensures consistent and timely content delivery, contributing to a more successful content marketing strategy.

18. Timesheet template

This timesheet spreadsheet lets you log your hours and tasks for each day of the week, keeping a running total, so you always know where you stand—no more guesswork or scrambling to remember what you did three days ago. Just plug in your hours as you go for a clear picture of your time usage and maximum time management.

 19. Time-blocking template

A time-blocking template helps you visualize how you spend your time each day, so you can optimize your schedule. This template breaks down your day into 15-minute increments, with columns for each day of the week.

If used properly, this template can transform you into a productivity pro. But also remember that no spreadsheet can replace listening to your body and honoring your own humanity. Take a walk sometimes. Call your mom. Scream into a pillow. Your time-blocking sheet will be there when you get back.

20. To-do list template

A Google Sheets to-do list template is a simple yet effective way to organize your day. It can help you gain clarity, focus your efforts, and achieve more.

You can customize the template by adding or removing columns to suit your needs. For example, you may want columns for:

• Priority: Assign a priority level like high, medium, or low

• Due date: Add the target completion date for the task

• Subtasks: Break down larger tasks into smaller steps

• Status: Update the status to not started, in progress, or completed

Keep your list up-to-date, and be sure to regularly review priorities to maintain an efficient workflow. Before you know it, you'll be on top of your to-do list and have a squeaky clean slate. Easier than dealing with all those crumpled Post-it notes, no?

21. Habit tracker template

A habit tracker keeps you accountable and helps you build better habits. This Google Sheets template is so shiny and full of promise, like that gym membership I enthusiastically signed up for and then used exactly once so I could take a shower when my plumbing was out.

Simply list the habits you want to track down the left column. Each day you complete a habit, check off the corresponding box. At the end of the month, you'll have a visual record of your progress. 

The great thing about digital habit trackers is you can tweak them as needed. Maybe you want to track habits over a year to get the bigger picture. You might add columns for rewards or accountability partners. Get creative—the point is to make this template work for you so you'll actually stick with it.

Tips for creating your own Google Sheets template

Google Sheets is a powerful tool, but that power means nothing if you can't figure out how to harness it for your specific needs. Herepe are a few simple tips for building templates in Google Sheets that you can use again and again.

• Explore Google's built-in template gallery: Google's built-in template gallery offers free templates for budgets, invoices, project plans, and more. Simply open a new spreadsheet in Google Sheets (tip: type sheet.new into your browser) and click File > New > From template gallery. Pick one that suits your needs, and the sheet will open, pre-populated with the template.

• Understand your data: Before you can build an effective template, you need to understand what kind of data you're working with. Are you tracking expenses, managing a project, or something else?

• Keep it simple: Once you determine the purpose, think about the most essential information. Keep your template simple by only including crucial details. You can always add more later, but start with the basics. If you want to show off your spreadsheet skills, start a YouTube channel.

• Utilize advanced features for enhanced functionality: Once you have the basics down, utilize some of Sheets' advanced features to make your template even more powerful.

  • Formulas can calculate sums, averages, percentages, or whatever metrics you need. With a simple =SUM() or =VLOOKUP(), your template will instantly become more dynamic.

  • Conditional formatting allows you to apply custom styles automatically based on cell values. Use it to highlight numbers over a certain value, color-code categories, or flag outliers.

  • Add-ons are mini-apps that extend the functionality of Google Sheets. There are add-ons for project management, billing, inventory management, and more. The right add-on can turn a basic template into a robust tool.

• Collaborate with team members: One of the best parts of Google Sheets is its ability to collaborate with others. Give teammates access to your template and work together in real time. Take advantage of features like comments, chat, and revision history to keep everyone on the same page, literally. 

• Integrate Sheets with other Google tools: As part of the Google ecosystem, Sheets plays well with other Google Workspace apps. For example, you can create a chart from data in a Gmail message, embed Google Sheets directly into Google Docs, use Google Forms to collect data that is then automatically populated in a Google Sheet, or use Google Apps Script to automate tasks in Google Sheets.

Streamline Google Sheets templates with automation

To get the most out of Google Sheets templates, you can connect them with other tools you already use. Zapier lets you connect Google Sheets to thousands of other apps. Set up a Zap to instantly transfer info between Sheets and your other tools. Learn more about how to automate Google Sheets, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Related reading:

• Google Sheets vs. Excel: Which is right for you?

• How to save URLs to Google Sheets without leaving your browser

• How to add a dropdown list in Google Sheets

• How to create Google Calendar events from a Google Sheets spreadsheet

• RACI model: A map for team structure

• How to automatically create documents from a template

I recently started a new position to lead the marketing efforts at a home care services organization, The CareSide, headquartered in Australia. As the first full-time marketing hire, I was responsible for building a new marketing department from scratch. On the one hand, this was exciting. I had the autonomy to structure the team how I wanted and hire people I thought would complement each other well. On the other hand, it was daunting. There wasn't an established HR manager I could rely on. And if I didn't select the right people, then ultimately I was accountable.

Throughout my experiences hiring for my new team, one thing has become clear: reference checks are one of the most important parts of the process.

What are reference checks?

Reference checks are conversations with applicants' previous professional connections, or forms filled out by those connections. Companies ask candidates to provide a list of people they can contact to learn more about their professional background, and the hiring manager or HR team will either send a form, start an email thread, or request a phone or video call.

Typically, reference checks are one of the final steps in the hiring process. Many companies will wait until they've narrowed it down to the top candidate to do reference checks—but I do things a little differently.

I think if you wait until you only have one candidate to do reference checks, you're prone to fall victim to confirmation bias. You've already earmarked one person as your first choice, so you're unlikely to change your opinion unless something goes terribly wrong. We want to believe we're a good judge of character, after all, and there's also the issue of sunk cost.

In any employment reference check, your objective should be to learn more about what it would be like to work with the person and uncover any blind spots you might have missed during the interview. And I think doing that earlier in the process helps you do just that.

How to do an employment reference check

Reference checks are most commonly done in two ways: a phone/video call or an email/form. 

A company recently contacted me to provide a reference for a person I worked with. Below is a screenshot of the reference check email they sent, which included a link to an online form. 

This can work well because it's efficient for the hiring team. You simply send the email and wait for the response to come through. But it's also asking a lot of the other person. In this example, the online form they provided took me over an hour to complete.

I like to speak with references instead—I think you learn more nuanced information that way, and it's usually quicker for the other person. But this all comes down to personal preference and company policy (there might also be more unconscious bias at play in a phone or video call). 

5 reference check questions to help you find the right hire

Reference checks aren't just about deciding who to hire—they can also help you learn how to start someone off on the right foot when they join your team. These are the five reference check questions I've found to be the most effective.

1. What is your relationship with the candidate? When did you work together and for how long?

It may sound obvious, but you need to know who you're speaking with. Is the person their former manager, a peer, or a client? Did they work together recently, or has it been many years since they were at the same company? This context can help you determine how much weight you want to give their answers to certain questions. 

2. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best [role] you've worked with, how would you rate this person's [role] skills? Why would you give them this rating, and what would it take for them to improve?

This question forces a more nuanced answer compared to an alternative such as "Are they a strong [whatever the skill is]?" And it can be used to evaluate hard or soft skills.

I was seeking ratings of 8+, but remember that a scale is always subjective. When I was hiring for a writer, for example, I gave more weight if the review came from an editor or someone with a journalism or content marketing background. (That's question #1 coming in handy!)

Even though nearly everyone received high marks for that writer role, I did get some insightful feedback beyond the numerical rating. For example, one reference mentioned the candidate's writing could be wordy at times and often needed to be reviewed by an experienced editor. Another stated the person sometimes struggled to match their writing tone with the brand voice. These aren't necessarily dealbreakers, but they helped provide additional insights. If I hired those people, I knew what they needed to be trained up on from the get go.

3. What skills would the candidate need to strengthen for them to reach their full potential?

When I first started doing reference checks years ago, I would ask the standard boilerplate question: "what are their weaknesses?" But in my experience, people are expecting this question and often come prepared with rehearsed or insincere responses (e.g., the classic "She's a perfectionist!"). Phrasing the question more positively, so that it focuses on areas for improvement rather than weaknesses, helps set the stage for a more constructive discussion. 

I also like to preface the question with an example of feedback my previous manager gave me that included an area of professional development I was continuing to work on. I want to make it clear that I know that needing to strengthen skills is universal—in the hopes that it makes references feel comfortable being honest with their answer.

Using this approach, I learned new information about each candidate that I could never have picked up on during an interview. For example, one reference mentioned the applicant was very efficient at completing her tasks but sometimes struggled with delegating work to others and trusting them. In a different conversation, I found out a candidate's deferential nature sometimes meant he placed a greater emphasis on agreeing with the ideas of others over his own. His room for growth was learning that empathy and assertiveness are not mutually exclusive. 

4. What advice would you give their future manager?

There's a learning curve anytime you're working with someone new. It takes time to learn about their communication style, how they handle disagreements, and what brings out their best work. This question can help accelerate that learning curve, so you can thoughtfully onboard and get them up to speed.

5. What kind of company would they be a good fit at? What type of company would be a challenge for them?

Although our business is past the early-stage startup phase, the marketing team is nascent. In that sense, the work environment has a startup feel. We don't have established processes and organizational structure yet. I wanted to hire someone who was self-disciplined and comfortable with ambiguity. While this question doesn't directly ask about that, it still gets me the information I need.

It's important to remember that someone's resume or portfolio doesn't tell the whole story. Just because they've previously worked for a big company doesn't mean they won't thrive in a startup environment. Alternatively, some people with startup experience may do better in a more structured environment. 

This question forced me to eliminate one candidate. She had the necessary skills, but according to her previous manager, she struggled with the lack of organization at the last startup she worked for. Although she was able to adapt and make the situation work, it wasn't ideal for her.

Tips for conducting an employee reference check

If the questions above work for you, go ahead and use them. But if you'd like to come up with your own, here are some tips for how to develop reference check questions to ask.

Avoid leading questions

The first few times I did reference checks I felt like I was wasting my time. Each reference spoke highly of the person, which is to be expected to a certain extent, but I didn't learn any new information. Here are some examples of the questions I asked:

• How well do they work with others? Are they humble?

• How comfortable are they navigating ambiguity?

• Would you enthusiastically rehire this person?

Can you see the problem? I was asking leading questions that made it easy to infer the responses I wanted to hear. You're not trying to trick the person, by any means, but you also don't want to hand them their answer on a silver platter.

Share information before asking questions

You can only get an honest answer if the other person feels comfortable speaking openly. I try to set the tone at the start of each call. For the senior content marketing manager role, here's the gist of what I said:

"Hi [name], thanks so much for joining the call. I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to chat with me today. First, I'd like to acknowledge how impressed I've been with [candidate name]. I had a chance to review her portfolio and speak with her last week. We've received more than 1,000 applications for the senior content marketing manager position, so it's been very competitive, and she's stood out as one of the top candidates. I imagine you'll have some positive things to say about her, and I'd like to learn more about those. My goal with this conversation isn't to determine if she's qualified. I can already see that she is. Instead, I'd like to learn more about your experience working with her, determine if this role matches her skills and career goals, and learn what would be the best ways to onboard and integrate her into the team if we were to hire her."

I would follow this introduction by providing additional context about the job, company, and overall work environment. For example, I let them know this would be the second person to join the marketing team, so the person needed to be hands-on and eager to roll up their sleeves. 

By complimenting the candidate and sharing information about the team dynamics, my goal was to establish trust. If I came across as skeptical or immediately jumped into questions, then the other person would be more likely to revert to canned responses. Effective relationships involve emotional reciprocity. By balancing the extent to which I empathized with their perspective and expressed my own needs, I was aiming to create a better two-way channel for the communication of thoughts and feelings.  

Don't hesitate to ask for clarification

We've all been there. We ask a question. Someone responds, but their answer is vague or doesn't fully address what was asked. They may even reflect with "Does that answer your question?"

Normally in these situations, we want to be polite and give an affirmative answer so we can move on. Reference checks are the time to go against this instinct. Ask probing questions if anything is unclear or you didn't get the information you need. 

Here are some diplomatic ways to do so:

• I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. Can you be more specific?

• Can you provide an example that highlights why you think this way?

• Why do you think that?

Even then, you might not get a satisfying answer. But while you have the reference on the line, do your best to nudge the conversation in a direction that will help you make an informed decision.

That's what I tried to do throughout the hiring process for this recent content marketing manager role at The CareSide. It helped, and the reference checks were much more productive—but it still felt like a work in progress. Not every question I asked helped me decide who to hire, so I'll likely adjust my approach again in the future. For example, I'd like to learn more about each person's career goals. I plan to ask about this the next time I speak with someone's former manager. That way, I can know if our company will likely offer the types of growth opportunities the candidate is seeking.

Make your reference checks count

Reference checks are the one time you get to learn about a candidate from anyone other than the candidate themselves. Make it count by ensuring that your reference check questions are going to get you the answers you really need to help you make a hiring decision—and support your new employee once they're part of the team.

Related reading:

• The best employee onboarding software

• How to know when it's time to hire your first employee

• New hire checklist: An employee onboarding checklist template

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a little too click-happy on the internet. Most of the time, it results in silly errors like having to go to a distant cousin's bachelorette party because I accidentally reacted to the text invite with a thumbs-up instead of a resounding "I'll pass, thanks." Other times, it results in panic. Like when I accidentally delete an important file in Google Drive. 

If you're reading this article, I suspect it's because you're in a similar panic mode. If you recently deleted something (or you deleted it less than 30 days ago), there's still time. Here's how to recover deleted files from Google Drive. 

Note: Files sent to the Google Drive trash are automatically deleted forever after 30 days. But you may still be able to restore them.

How to recover deleted files from Google Drive

Here's how to recover deleted files in Google Drive within the 30-day time window. 

1. Go to your Google Drive.

2. In the side menu, click Trash. 

   

3. Select the file or files you want to recover. 

4. Right-click your selection, and click Restore. Alternatively, you can click the Restore icon, which looks like a clock, above your list of deleted files. 

   

Your restored file will appear in its original location. And because Google knows none of us can be expected to remember where we stored a file last week, let alone last month, they list this info under Original location. 

If the original location no longer exists, search for it in My Drive. 

How to recover permanently deleted files from Google Drive 

If you deleted a Google Drive file for good (meaning you clicked Delete forever after moving it to Trash), you may still be able to recover it. But there are a few limitations:

• You must be the owner of the file.

• The file must have been deleted recently (Google doesn't specify what "recently" means in this case, though).

Complete this Google Drive form, and the support team will try to restore it for you. 

Automate Google Drive

If you don't have systems to keep your files organized, important documents get lost in the digital clutter. With Zapier, you can connect Google Drive with your other apps so you can streamline your digital file management without the extra legwork. For example, you can automatically do things like send email attachments to the right folder or notify teammates about a new file in the Drive. Learn more about how to automate Google Drive, or get started with one of these workflows. 

Related reading:

• How to free up space in your Google account

• How to convert image to text with Google Drive

• How to copy folders in Google Drive

For a lot of programmers and developers (100 million as of 2023, in fact), it's impossible to do without GitHub. The cloud-based, open-source community is possibly the best and easiest way to store, collaboratively update, and share code for your software projects. 

While GitHub has seemingly endless uses for programmers, not everyone is comfortable working within the platform. That's why connecting GitHub to your most-used tools—like communication apps and task managers—can streamline projects and enable non-techies in your organization to contribute.

In this article, we'll review four ways to use Zapier's automated workflows (called Zaps) to automate GitHub so you can stay organized and connect your critical teams and apps.

Table of contents

• Send notifications from GitHub

• Create tasks from GitHub issues

• Create GitHub issues from chat and email

• Create GitHub issues from tasks

Send notifications from GitHub

When your team is working in multiple platforms, it's easy for important messages and updates to get lost in the shuffle. You don't want to have to check several apps for relevant notifications; this just invites confusion, missed messages, and delayed work. Instead, it's best to consolidate updates and notifications into one reliable location.

If another developer on your team makes a new commit or adds a pull request, it can be useful to receive notifications of new developments in your project without logging into GitHub. 

With these automated workflows, you can keep yourself and your team up to date by centralizing project discussions in your chat app of choice. Whenever a new commit, mention, pull request, or issue is detected, these Zaps send a channel message in Discord or Slack. From there, your team can quickly respond to new ideas or issues as soon as they crop up.

Create tasks from GitHub issues

When someone on your team creates an issue in a GitHub repository, odds are good that it includes action items—whether it's simply to review feedback, respond to an idea, or approve a pull request. GitHub issues are best used collaboratively, but that only works if the right people receive reminders to come back and keep collaborating.

It's easy to get overwhelmed or confused when trying to keep track of issues in GitHub. Your team may prefer dedicated to-do list apps like Asana, Notion, or Todoist to track action items and stay organized. Wouldn't it be convenient to corral everything into your preferred to-do list app so you only need to check one simplified list for the day's tasks?

With these Zaps, you can automate GitHub by sending new issues to your to-do list. These templates generate new tasks or items in popular task management apps anytime a new issue is detected in a specified repository. That way, you can pass new ideas or tasks directly to your team without copying and pasting between platforms.

Create GitHub issues from chat and email

Have you ever had an idea while chatting over Slack or email, but then it never made its way into GitHub? Sometimes the creative energy of a team conversation just doesn't translate well into action (at least in a timely manner). Maybe someone makes a mental note to add that new issue to GitHub later in the day, but they get distracted or forget a key element of the idea. 

This system is inefficient at best—and at worst, you risk losing good ideas or playing a game of telephone that keeps your team misinformed and unaligned.

Instead, why not turn your Slack channel or email threads into a GitHub command center? By setting up one of these workflows, you can create new GitHub issues from inbound email messages or new messages posted to a specific Slack channel.  

Create GitHub issues from tasks

Your DevOps team might live in GitHub, but the rest of your organization probably doesn't. What happens when your customer success team wants to pass on a feature request? How does your marketing or operations staff make bug reports? 

They likely do things the hard way—by sending an email or DM. But this process is slow and inefficient, and requests can quickly get buried or sent to the wrong person. Of course, it also makes a lot more work for whoever ends up translating requests into new GitHub issues.

Instead, you can save yourself and your team the busy work by using these Zaps to create issues in GitHub directly from new tasks in your team's task and project management apps:

Save more time for development by automating GitHub

You probably got into software programming because you enjoy—well, programming software. You didn't sign up for hours of chasing down feedback and translating Slack messages into new GitHub issues.

Thankfully, you don't have to. Zapier's automated workflows let you effortlessly connect your organization's most-used communication and project management apps to GitHub. This, in turn, creates a streamlined system for notifications, task management, and feedback from non-coders. When GitHub is connected to the rest of your tech stack, you reduce manual data transfer and inefficient processes—which means you can dedicate more time to doing what you love.

This is just the start of what you can do with GitHub and Zapier. What will you automate first?

Calendars can be your best friend—or worst nemesis. They help you keep track of critical meetings and customer calls, but when your schedule fills up fast, it can be a real hustle to prioritize critical tasks and stay ahead of your work. When that happens, you might even find all your time gets sucked into managing your schedule, instead of scaling your business.  

Fortunately, Zapier can help you automate your Google Calendar so you can focus on getting the important stuff done. From automatically cross posting between calendar tools to getting notified when new events get added to your calendar, our Zaps—what we call our automatic workflows—can help. 

Here are some of the best Google Calendar automation ideas to fuel your productivity.

Table of contents

• Cross-post between calendars

• Get meeting reminders

• Prepare for upcoming events

• Manage appointments and video calls

• Create events from tasks

• Set Slack statuses during calendar meetings

• Use webhooks with Google Calendar

Cross-post between calendars

Depending on your role, you may have to manage multiple calendars. Perhaps you have different calendars for each team you manage, or you're managing a client calendar on top of your own. 

These Zaps will cross-post new Google Calendar events to your calendar of choice, so you don't have to worry about juggling multiple schedules or posting to the wrong calendar.

If you're the kind of person who likes to see how you're spending your time across your days and weeks, you can also connect your time tracking tool to Google Calendar. That way, it will create a new Google Calendar event for every new time entry so you (or even your manager) can track your progress and prioritize tasks. 

Get meeting reminders

Between video calls, managing your inbox, and responding to chat, it's easy to forget that you have something on your calendar when you're focused on another task. The same is true for clients you need to meet with. 

These Zaps will automatically remind you, your team, or your clients about an upcoming meeting through email or a team chat app. That way, you'll never keep a client waiting—and you won't be left hanging either.

Want to receive a little more context in your notifications? If you're a busy person (aren't we all?), it might not be enough to just receive a ping with only the title and description of a Google Calendar event. Instead, you can add an AI step to add more context to the event like the purpose, any prep materials, and recommendations about event-related projects. 

Prepare for upcoming events

Of course, it's not enough to show up to the meetings on your calendar. You always need to be prepared—but it can be difficult to fit in prep time when you're wearing many hats. 

Whether you're gearing up for a client meeting, pitch presentation, or other event, these Zaps can help you make time to prepare. Whenever a new event is added to your Google Calendar, Zapier will automatically create a task in your favorite to-do app or project management tool. You can even enrich those tasks with more context by sending the Google Calendar event to ChatGPT first.

You can customize your trigger—the event that starts a Zap—so that only certain calendar events will generate tasks. You can also set it so the same tasks appear every time if you'd like.

Zapier can also automatically create agendas or other meeting documents from a template.

Manage appointments and video calls

It's hard enough remembering (and showing up) to the meetings with your colleagues. What about invitations from people outside of your workplace? It's one thing to forget about a meeting with a coworker, but forgetting about an appointment with an outside client is bad news. 

These Zaps will create Google Calendar events whenever someone invites you to a video call or schedules an appointment with you through a booking app like Calendly.

If you schedule appointments through a form app, these workflows will ensure they're accounted for in Google Calendar. 

Create events from tasks

There are the events that happen on a regular schedule, like your standing team meeting every Thursday. Those are pretty easy to manage. The events that can be harder to plan for are the ones that occur when something specific happens, like when a deal reaches a certain stage in your sales cycle.

You can use a Zap to create a calendar event when specific tasks are added to your task manager of choice, like Notion or Trello. 

If you need to have a meeting when you receive certain information, like an updated row in a spreadsheet, Zapier can also help you schedule calls automatically. 

Set Slack statuses during calendar meetings

If you work a lot in Slack, you'll know that getting tagged in public channels or messaged directly by your coworkers can be distracting—especially when you're on a call. 

Instead, let everyone know that you're not available to respond (even if it's urgent) by automatically setting a Slack status every time you join a new meeting. 

Use webhooks with Google Calendar

Perhaps you use an app that doesn't have a Zapier integration, but you want to create a Google Calendar event when something specific happens in your app. 

If your app has webhook functionality, you can use Webhooks in a Zap. (Webhooks is a premium app, which requires a paid Zapier plan to use.)  

Supercharge your calendar with automation

By using Zapier, you can automate Google Calendar and have a schedule that manages itself so you can focus on running your business. If you need extra help managing your calendar, check out these Google Calendar tricks:

This article was originally published in March 2021 and was most recently updated in December 2023 by Elena Alston.

Whenever I'm working with large datasets in Google Sheets, it's easy for me to lose track of what's what—especially without headers locked in place. Take this simple student grade sheet below, for example. 

Notice that as I scroll across the sheet, the student names and IDs disappear. With this view, it's nearly impossible for me to remember which grade belongs to which student. 

That's where the Freeze function comes in. It lets you pin columns in place so you can see the data you need at all times, even as you scroll through your spreadsheet. 

How to freeze columns in Google Sheets 

Here's the easiest way to freeze a column or multiple columns in Google Sheets. 

In the top-left corner of your spreadsheet, next to column A and above row 1, there are two thick, gray bars running horizontally and vertically. 

To freeze a column, click the vertical bar and drag it across to the right side of the last column you want to freeze. For example, let's pin up to the student IDs in column C.

To unfreeze a column, drag the bar back to its original position. 

If you, like me, get frustrated about having to get your cursor in just the right spot, there's another way. 

1. Open a Google Sheets spreadsheet.

2. Select the columns you want to freeze. 

3. Click View, and then select Freeze. 

4. Click Up to column [column letter]. 

Let's freeze the student IDs in column C again using this method. For this example, click View, select Freeze, and select Up to column C.

It's a simple example, but when you're reviewing grades for 30 or so students—or you're working with a large dataset of any sort—freezing columns and rows makes scrolling through the data much more manageable.

To unfreeze a column, repeat the same steps, but instead of clicking Up to column C, click No columns. 

Automate Google Sheets

Manual data entry is ripe for human error. With Zapier, you can connect Google Sheets with your go-to apps. This way, you can automate your most time-consuming spreadsheet-related tasks. For example, you can automatically add new lead data and form submissions to an existing spreadsheet. Learn more about how to automate Google Sheets, or get started with one of these workflow templates.   

Related reading:

• Google Sheets add-ons to supercharge your work

• Google Sheets vs. Excel: Which is right for you?

• How to use VLOOKUP in Google Sheets

I've been using Notion to take notes and organize my life for a few years now. But after hearing enough rumblings about Coda as an equally powerful alternative, I decided to take it for a spin to see how it stacks up against my tried-and-true.  

I spent time comparing the two tools, feature for feature. Here's what I discovered—and how to decide which is right for you.

Notion vs. Coda at a glance

Coda and Notion serve similar purposes. At the end of the day, though, the best app comes down to what you're using it for.

As one Reddit user put it, Notion is better for handling documents and wikis; Coda is better for databases and automation. 

If you want a detailed breakdown of how Coda and Notion compare in practice, keep reading. But this summary will give you a quick overview of the subtle differences. 

Notion is easier to set up; Coda comes with a learning curve, but it's worth it  

Setup 

Notion is known for being intuitive to use and easy to set up. Once you create an account, you'll also have access to their Getting Started document, which gives you an easy-to-digest rundown of the basics. From there, the app does a good job of guiding you through the rest of its block-based editor as you use it.  

Note: Everything in Notion is referred to as a block. Blocks include basic elements like text, checklists, and headings, as well as media types like images, web bookmarks, video, audio, code snippets, and files.

Coda, on the other hand, calls for a steeper learning curve. It provides plenty of fun and interactive guides to ease you in. But if you want to get the most out of its features, like advanced data integrations, taking the time to watch the how-to videos is the way to go.

Sidebar navigation

In Notion, the sidebar lists all your pages and subpages and follows you everywhere you go. This makes it easy to navigate between documents and resource hubs from anywhere. 

When you create a new document in Coda, on the other hand, a dedicated sidebar appears. All that you see in this sidebar is the top-level page (your new doc) and any of its subpages. Unlike in Notion, you can't access any other documents from that sidebar—you have to return to the homepage to do that. It's a small detail, but losing the comprehensive navigation menu can feel disorientating to a new user like me. 

Templates 

Both apps offer templates for common needs like to-do lists, meeting notes, and campaign briefs. But Notion offers more templates—over 10,000 of them—across a wide range of categories, including org charts and pitch decks for the workplace and expense trackers and resumes for personal use. 

Coda's templates seem more focused on showing off the tool's advanced data integration options. They're impressive, but as a new user, I found them to be overwhelming. If all you need are straightforward templates so you can get to work, Notion certainly delivers. 

Notion is better for text and note-taking; Coda is better for data management

Note-taking

While both apps position themselves as powerful note-taking apps (among other things), Notion's setup is more streamlined and intuitive, making it that much easier to create and edit content. Just click a page, start typing, and you're off. Coda's, on the other hand, is less so. 

During testing, I also found Coda to run a bit slower when toggling between pages—likely because it's trying to process a lot more in the background. If you don't plan to create a lot of text-heavy or data-rich pages, this probably isn't a concern. But if you do, the loading time is worth noting. 

Data management 

When it comes to creating a data management system, Coda is the clear winner. 

While tables in both apps seem quite similar visually, they're miles apart in terms of what you can do with them. 

Here's an example of a project management chart in Notion: 

And here's a similar one in Coda:

As you can tell, Coda offers more advanced features like voting systems, sliding scales, and progress trackers. Need to calculate data? With Coda, you can easily add formulas similar to how you would in a spreadsheet app. Here's a simple example: 

Despite recent updates, adding formulas in Notion is still quite complicated and less user-friendly. I've tried to do it a few times in the past and given up.

You can also connect tables, trackers, and documents stored across Coda pages. This way, you only have to update data in one spot, and Coda will dynamically update the rest. To take it one step further, Coda even lets you create and embed forms on your website that sync directly with your database. It's powerful enough that you could use it as a simple CRM solution.  

Notion is more affordable for individual users; Coda is more cost-effective for teams

At first glance, Notion seems more affordable than Coda, and in some scenarios, it is. But it's not always so black and white. 

For example, Notion Plus starts at $10/user/month; Coda Pro starts at $12/user/month. But Coda only charges per Doc Maker (users who actually create documents). Editors can collaborate for free. With Notion, every workspace user—no matter if they're just viewing or commenting on a doc—has to pay for a seat. 

If you're a small team or individual user who works often with external collaborators, Notion is the more affordable solution. But if you have a lot of team members who need regular access to your whole workspace, Coda is the way to go. 

Note: You can invite guests to review Notion documents for free, but they're able to access only individual articles you invite them to, not the whole workspace. 

It's worth mentioning that both apps offer a free plan. In my experience, Notion's free plan gives individual users, like me, more flexibility to do what they need without paying a dime. For example, I can create unlimited documents and share them with up to 10 guests. But if you share a doc on Coda's free plan, the document is limited to only 50 objects (though it's not clear what counts as an object) and 1,000 rows. 

Both are embracing AI, but Coda AI offers more bang for your buck

As with many other apps over the last year, Coda and Notion have quickly gone all in on artificial intelligence (AI), and as you might expect, they're using it in very similar ways. In both apps, AI powers three main functions: generating new content, editing existing content, and summarizing available content. 

Zapier has other articles that offer an in-depth look into Notion AI and Coda AI, so here, I'm going to focus on how they differ. 

Pricing 

Coda and Notion take different approaches to how they charge for AI functionality, but at the end of the day, you're more likely to get more AI use for your money with Coda. 

Notion charges an additional $10/user/month for the AI add-on, which gives you unlimited use of the feature. But if you're on the Plus plan, this means almost doubling your monthly cost per user. It's also worth noting that Notion AI may temporarily limit your access to AI features or slow down AI-powered performance if you request 30 or more AI responses within 24 hours.

The real sore point? Teams using Notion can't opt to pay for the AI add-on for select users. If you want AI in your workspace, you have to pay for the add-on for every user, even if they don't actively use it. 

In contrast, every Coda Doc Maker automatically gets access to AI-powered features at no extra cost. There are some use limitations, though. Coda AI works using a credit system where each Doc Maker is given a set amount of credits each month—between 2,000 and 12,000, depending on your plan.

But how much can you actually get out of these credits? Here's a quick overview from Coda:

If you frequently use AI to power your work in Coda, the credit system might be too limiting. But keep in mind that you're getting access to the functionality for free, and Coda's ChatGPT integration can plug any gaps when you run out of credits for that month. 

Languages

If you work with an international team, Notion and Coda offer a built-in, AI-powered translator, making it easier to collaborate on docs in the language you're the most comfortable in. 

As of this writing, Coda can write, edit, and translate content in only four languages: English, Spanish, French, and German. 

Notion, on the other hand, offers thirteen languages, including Korean, Japanese, and Italian.

Of course, the right app for you, in this case, comes down to which languages you need to communicate in. 

Notion offers community-led support; Coda offers expert-led support 

If there's one thing that might convince you that Notion must be the best choice, it's its fanatic user following. If people love Notion so much that they create their own niche templates and host community events, it must be doing something very right. 

If you have a support question, or you're looking for new ways to get more out of Notion, you're likely to find an answer in one of their many community-hosted groups or forums. Here's a small sample of what's currently available: 

While Coda's user community doesn't even compare, it does take the cake for expert-led support. For example, on a Team plan, you get free group training sessions with Coda coaches. And on an Enterprise plan, you get access to your own success managers. This is a level of human support that Notion just doesn't offer. 

Coda has more app integrations, but both connect to Zapier

When it comes to app integrations, Coda wins by a mile: it offers over 1,600 app integrations, while Notion offers a mere 80 or so. But both Coda and Notion connect to Zapier, so you can connect them with thousands of other apps to fill any gaps.

Once you've connected your apps, you can automate daily tasks like adding new calendar events or form responses to your database. Learn more about how to automate Notion, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Coda vs. Notion: The verdict

After all my testing, here's where I landed: I'm sticking with Notion. Not because Coda isn't a great app—it is. For me, though, Notion still wins in all the areas I need it to, like note-taking and affordability. 

But my needs aren't your needs. Here's a quick recap of how to decide which one is right for you. 

Notion is the better option if:

• You're an individual user or a small team

• You need a tool that's easy to set up and use

• You create a lot of text-heavy docs

• You appreciate a strong app community 

Coda is better if:

• You're a large or scaling organization 

• You need the app for data management, not just text

• You're willing to spend a bit of time learning how to get the most out of its features

• You prefer expert-led support 

Related reading:

• Notion vs. OneNote: Which note-taking app should you use?

• Airtable vs. Notion: Which tool do you need?

• How a Notion expert automates his workspace

Investing in a unified platform—where all your software applications are connected via a shared system—can simplify data management, prevent silos, streamline communication, and reduce operating costs.

Google and Microsoft are the big names when it comes to unified platforms, but there's another player in the game: Zoho. Zoho has approximately one zillion apps that cover you across your organization, and here, I'll walk you through everything on offer.  

What is Zoho?

Zoho is a cloud-based software suite like Microsoft Office or Google Workspace. It offers business and productivity tools that run the gamut from sales and marketing to finance and legal to IT and analytics. With more than 70 apps on offer, Zoho has been likened to a Swiss army knife due to its wide range of uses. 

While some people dock it for its less-than-modern look, it has something for everyone—and that alone is enough of a reason to consider it.

Is Zoho free?

There is a free forever edition of Zoho CRM for up to three users, and many other Zoho apps offer fully free versions too. But even on its paid plans, Zoho is an affordable alternative among its competitors, making it a great option for small and medium-sized businesses. Its most popular product, Zoho CRM Plus, costs $20/user/month.

Each app in Zoho's suite is priced separately, but you can get many of its apps in pre-packaged and discounted bundles that include tools relevant to a specific role or department. 

• CRM Plus: $69/user/month

• Finance Plus: $249/organization/month

• People Plus: $10/user/month 

• Workplace: $4/user/month

• Marketing Plus: $30/month for 1 user (additional users cost $12/user/month)

• IT management: Prices differ based on infrastructure and users

There's also an option to get all of Zoho's most popular bundles together in one package, called Zoho One, for $45/user (more on that in a bit). 

What are Zoho's apps? 

I had a chance to chat with the Zoho team, and they told me the company funnels 50-60% of its revenue into research and development. That's how Zoho can introduce up to three new products every year to complement existing apps.

The list of Zoho apps is so extensive, it might be quicker for me to tell you which tools Zoho doesn't offer. (Personal emoji generator?) To be totally honest, it's possible I missed one because there are so many, but here's a rundown of Zoho's current offerings, as of this writing.

The best part is that many of these apps natively connect to the others. This seamless unification helps automate processes, eliminate redundancy, and improve collaboration.

What is Zoho One?

At the heart of Zoho's ecosystem is Zoho One, the all-in-one package that gives you access to the enterprise level of Zoho's most popular apps. With a single subscription, you can access more than 45 apps to run marketing, sales, finance, HR, and operations. 

Of course, you don't get everything with Zoho One—for example, Zoho One doesn't include the Ultimate Edition of the CRM or ServiceDesk Plus, Site24x7, or MDM. So if picking and choosing your apps is important, you can get them on an à la carte basis or with one of the bundles I mentioned earlier. 

Connect Zoho to other apps with Zapier

While Zoho is a unified business platform, it's likely you'll find yourself using other niche apps as well. If that's the case, you can connect most Zoho tools to other apps in your business using Zapier. With Zoho's Zapier integrations, you can automate your workflows, so you can focus more on the mission of your business.

Here are a few workflows you can set up to connect Zoho to other apps you use, or you can build your own automation with no code.

Related reading:

• How to automate Zoho CRM

• How to automate Zoho Forms

• The best free CRMs

When tinkering with a few AI image generators, Danny quickly realized how effective AI is at creating repeating patterns. It reminded him of one of his clients and how they're uniquely positioned to adapt a technology like this one.

The client, The Millshop Online, sells fabric and prints and also distributes its own fabric designs in the UK. Danny thought: What if these repeating patterns could be printed on fabric and sold as a unique product?

Danny approached The Millshop’s CEO with this idea: The Millshop could offer a public-facing, AI-powered service allowing customers to create one-of-a-kind fabrics on demand. Customers would describe the fabric they want or upload a photo of their room, and within minutes, they'd receive design options, which they could then purchase directly from The Millshop. 

Despite being in an industry that’s been resistant to adopt new technology, the CEO greenlit the project. Danny was thrilled to start building but quickly experienced some roadblocks.

Building an AI service without a team of developers

This service, dubbed FabricGenie, would be the first of its kind, so Danny knew this project needed to launch quickly and in the most cost-effective way for his client.

Not only did Danny have to develop the AI-powered service, but he also needed to create a landing page, copy, imagery, and more. On top of that, there were different risks he needed to prepare for, like if the system was overwhelmed with too many submissions at once, or if someone used inappropriate language or images. The project was a huge undertaking for one person.

Danny used Zapier and multiple AI tool integrations to do the bulk of the work for the initial creation. Then he leaned on the powerful pairing of automation and AI to keep the service running. 

AI and automation do the heavy lifting

There are about 85 Zaps powering the service, including four that just handle the initial request. The tool works in stages: The first stage handles moderation, the second manages the queue, the third processes the custom image, and the fourth and final stage is the HTML-formatted email with images and links to order samples.

In addition to tackling those crucial tasks, Zapier also manages many of the behind-the-scenes processes and administrative tasks. For example, if a request gets stuck, Zapier manages the notifications and troubleshoots to run those tasks again. Zapier also powers the internal logging to provide Danny and the Millshop team with data about usage and orders.

With Zapier and AI managing most of the system, they were able to save resources for the few tasks they couldn’t automate, like hiring a developer to build the front-end page.

“I can’t think of any other way we could have done this. No other platform or competitor would have been capable of building this,” said Danny.

“The time and cost element is down because of Zapier. If we’d coded this from scratch, I would have had to bring in an entire team. Instead of that, I used Zapier, which saved around $40,000 in the creation of FabricGenie.”

Ideation to launch in only 12 weeks

Ultimately, the entire lifecycle from ideation to product launch took only 12 weeks, which wouldn’t have been possible with a traditional development team. 

Instead, they relied on automation and AI for every facet of the process. They used Midjourney to create the robot character they used throughout the page and marketing for the tool. They created the code using GPT-4 and even debugged the code with AI as well.

The experiment quickly proved to be a success. FabricGenie received over 2,000 requests just two days after launching in June, and The Millshop Online has already sent out and sold many products based on the FabricGenie designs.

The AI tool was a hit with industry insiders, too. Not only are they seeing requests and even press coverage, but they’re also seeing increased interest in the U.S. They’ve even heard from other furnishing and fabric retailers that are interested in partnering with them and using the tool themselves. 

Combining Zapier with the power of AI is driving innovation and creating new opportunities for even the most traditional industries.

As a child of the '90s, I have fond memories of "Don't Copy That Floppy," the Software Publishers Association's attempt to use rap to convince kids that copyright law was cool. Nowadays, it's not only impossible to explain to kids what a "floppy" was, but it's becoming equally impossible to get people to do the opposite of what the video demanded: copy my files.

Please, I am begging you: copy my files. 

When you share a file in Google Drive—be it a Sheet, Doc, Slide, or otherwise—you can choose whether you want someone (or a group of someones) to have "Viewer," "Commenter," or "Editor" permissions.

If they only have Viewer or Commenter permissions, they won't be able to edit the file. To edit it, they'll need to make their own copy by going to File > Make a copy.

But what if you want to let people skip that step? Or you want to avoid having people ask you for edit permission—which you won't give them because you don't want them to edit your file? What you want to do is essentially force people to copy your Google Doc.

Turns out, you can do that with a little-known feature from Google, which I'm now adding to every document I share until the end of time. This is maybe the most underrated and straightforward tip I've ever written about, so I'm going to put it in a large heading with some emoji to make sure you get your money's worth:

🎉 Change "/edit" to "/copy" 🎉

When you select Share and copy the link that Google gives you, the URL will end in /edit. For example, here's a spreadsheet from an article I wrote.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ 16qfk6DL22LpoilIdaDXCUoGC4NlIs1Xzx3Mrelbtg9s/edit

When you click that, you'll be taken to the spreadsheet itself, and can copy it from the File menu. But if you change /edit to /copy, you get this:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ 16qfk6DL22LpoilIdaDXCUoGC4NlIs1Xzx3Mrelbtg9s/copy

When someone opens that second version, the one that ends in /copy, they'll see this:

The recipient only has the option to copy. 

No more panicking about whether you accidentally gave someone Editor permissions, or having to explain to coworkers, "It's a template! Stop making changes!", or saving "Go to File > Make a copy" as a snippet in your text expander because you type it eight thousand times a day. 

Now it's all right there, and it's beautiful.

Automate the process

If you have a Zap (Zapier's word for an automated workflow) with a Google Drive step, you can automatically change the link it provides by adding a Formatter action with the Replace transform function.

The action's output can then be sent via email, SMS, or direct message, and the link will take the recipients to the hassle-free "Make a copy" page. 

Want to remove the human element entirely, and let automation do all the copying for you? Zapier can help with that, too.

Why are people still requesting edit access to my file?

So you've shared the /copy link, and you're still getting access request emails in your inbox. What's happening?

Honestly, I'm not sure. My best guess is that people are seeing the "Make a copy" page and not liking it for some reason. Maybe they think they won't be able to edit it? Maybe they think they're copying the "Make a copy" page itself? Either way, I have to assume they're changing copy to edit in the URL.

Do I have too much faith in people's abilities to try to find workarounds for simple app actions? Maybe. But if your link only exists in the wild using the /copy version, I can't come up with any other possible answer. Please tell me if you figure it out.

In the words of MC Double Def DP himself: See ya, I'm out of here.

Related reading:

• Google Docs features to improve your workflows

• How to add a dropdown list in Google Sheets

• Power up your Google apps using automation

• How to recover deleted files from Google Drive

This article was originally published in February 2021. The most recent update was in December 2023.

Do you ever feel like you use a million different apps to track your life? From your calendar app to schedule meetings to your personal to-do list to track your daily work and home to-dos to your team task app to manage shared responsibilities, it's a lot to juggle.

And if you're not careful, you could lose track of it all and fall behind. Fortunately, it's easy to connect your task and calendar apps so you never miss a meeting or deadline again.

Here's how you can use a Zap—Zapier's automated workflows—to automatically add every new Google Calendar event to your Todoist tasks. Together, Google Calendar and Todoist will keep all of your scheduling information in sync so you only have to open one app to know what's on the docket for the day. 

Add Todoist tasks for new Google Calendar events

Zapier lets you create automated workflows called Zaps, which send your information from one app to another. You can create your own Zap from scratch without any coding knowledge, but we also offer quick templates to get you started. 

If you'd like to start with a template, click on it below, and you'll be taken to the Zap editor. You'll need to create a Zapier account if you don't already have one. Then, follow the directions below to set up your Zap.

Set up your Google Calendar trigger

Let's start with the trigger—the event that starts your Zap. If you're using the Zap template, this will be selected for you. Otherwise, search for and select Google Calendar for the trigger app and New Event for the trigger event, then click Continue.

Connect your Google account, if you haven't already, and click Continue.

Next, select the specific calendar you want to use in this Zap, then click Continue.

Next, it's time to test your trigger step. The information collected in this step will be used to set up the rest of your Zap. If you don't have any events on the Google Calendar you selected, add one now before you test this step.

Click Test trigger and Zapier will find recent events in your calendar. Select one and click Continue with selected record.

Once the test is done, you're ready to set up your action step.

Set up your Todoist action

Now it's time to set up the action—the event your Zap will perform once it's triggered. If you're using the Zap template, these will already be selected for you. Otherwise, search for and select Todoist as your action app and Create Task as your action event. Click Continue.

Connect your Todoist account, if you haven't already, then click Continue.

Now you can customize your Todoist task by choosing a project, adding a title, and so on. The default project goes to your inbox in Todoist, but you can select whichever you want. In our example, we added this task to a daily to-do list project.

The title is the only required field. To get the correct event title from Google Calendar, click in the Title field and select Summary from the Insert Data dropdown. If you're using the Zap template, this will already be selected for you.

In the Note field, we've added the Description from the Google Calendar event, but you can add whatever details are most helpful to you here.

If you'd like to have a specific due date for your event, which is probably helpful, add a date to one of the two Due Date fields. Todoist supports human readable dates like "today" or "tomorrow at noon" in the Due Date (Human Formatted) field, but since the due date is coming from our Google Calendar event, we'll add Event Begins (Pretty) to the Due Date (Raw Formatted) field, which is recommended when using a date/time value from another calendar or to-do system.

You can also assign the task to a specific person, add a priority, or labels to your task. Once you're done customize your action, click Continue.

Click Test action, and Zapier will send the test data to Todoist. Pop over to Todoist and you should see your calendar event added as a to-do in the list you selected:

If everything looks right, you're ready to use your Zap. Now every time you add a new event to Google Calendar, you'll have a new task on your Todoist task list.

More ways to track your events

Todoist works great as a catch-all for everything—from work meetings to dinner dates with friends. If you enjoy sharing data between your Google Calendar and Todoist apps, check out these other workflows:

This article was originally published in December 2020, written by Kaylee Moser. It was most recently updated in December 2023 by Grace Montgomery.

Job searching is terrible. You sign up for job alerts with different companies you admire, as well as a ton of email newsletters in the hopes that a perfect job will fall into your inbox. And then, you scour LinkedIn, Slack communities, and other job boards—while obsessively refreshing your email inbox for new jobs and recruiter emails.

I've been there. This was my routine for eight months after I was laid off from a previous job. While I was pretty strategic in my job search despite my circumstances, looking back, I could've made my job search easier.

I could've combined all of my job sources into a single RSS feed so I only had to check one place for new listings. Lesson learned.

If you're currently looking for a new job—whether you were laid off or just need to look for something better—this tutorial is for you. I'm going to show you how you can use Zapier to combine your favorite job sources into one RSS feed.

Why an RSS feed?

When I worked as a journalist, my coworkers were impressed with my ability to stay on top of the latest developments. My secret: RSS feeds.

RSS feeds are the unsung heroes of productivity, in my opinion. RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) feeds are online files that contain details about every piece of content a website publishes. When you use an RSS reader app, you can catch up on any of your favorite news sites or blogs that have an RSS feed.

We'll be using RSS by Zapier to create a personalized RSS feed.

Before you begin

You need some sort of RSS reader app, which will help you organize RSS feeds from your favorite sites in one place. I'll be using Feedly in this tutorial, but you can use whatever app you'd like.

Set up your RSS reader app so you have at least one section for job-related feeds. Most RSS reader apps allow you to organize your feeds by topic. Once this is set up, open your RSS app and have it ready on standby. You'll need it in later steps.

You'll also need to set up a free Zapier account if you haven't already. Because we'll be combining various sources into an RSS feed, there will be different instructions depending on where the job listing is coming from. Jump to the section that's most applicable to your situation:

• Job newsletters and emails

• Slack messages

Job newsletters and emails

If you're searching for a job right now, I bet you're checking your email obsessively. After a while, it can get exhausting. Unfortunately, some company job boards will only send you alerts for new jobs by email. Or perhaps you're subscribed to a newsletter that rounds up the latest job postings in your industry.

Some companies have RSS feeds for job listings—such as Zapier—but many default to email digests. We'll cover how to automatically add them to an RSS feed, so the only emails you need to worry about are from recruiters.

Here's how to set it up:

1. If you don't already use an RSS reading app, sign up for one.

2. Click the button below to use our template (and create a Zapier account if you haven't already).

3. Connect Gmail and customize your search criteria.

4. Create and customize your RSS feed.

5. Test your Zap.

6. Add your email RSS feed to your reader app.

7. Begin using your Zap.

We'll be using this Zap template—a pre-made automated workflow—for this section:

Connect Gmail and customize your search criteria

Click the button above to get started. You'll be directed to the Zap editor, where you'll be prompted to select your Gmail account. If you've connected Gmail to Zapier before, select your account from the dropdown menu.

If this is your first time, click on the dropdown menu and click + Connect a new account. You'll sign in to your Google account and give Zapier permission to access your Gmail.

Once you've connected your account, click Continue.

Next, type in the criteria under Search String you'd like Zapier to use when a new email comes in. For example, if you only want your Zap to trigger when you receive a new email from a specific person, you'll type in the person's name or email. The same search operators you'd normally use in Gmail work here. By default, Zapier will trigger on emails in all folders. To limit results to your inbox, include the in:inbox search operator.

Click Continue when you're done.

Now we'll test our trigger. Zapier will find the most recent tweet, according to the Gmail search criteria we set in the previous step. Zapier will use this test information in later steps to create the rest of our Zap. Click Test trigger.

Review the test information. If Zapier isn't pulling the right emails or can't find an existing email that meets your search parameters, go back to the previous step, double-check your search operators, and retest.

If your test information looks correct, click Continue.

Create and customize your RSS feed

The Zap template will pre-select the action app and event—the thing your Zap will perform once it's triggered. Click Continue.

Now we'll customize our feed URL and title. Under Feed URL, type in a short slug. Use an easy descriptor to remind yourself what this feed is all about.

We'll need this URL in a later step, so open up any text editor—it can be Google Docs, TextEdit, Microsoft Word, or whatever you'd like. Click Copy next to your feed URL.

The URL will be copied to your clipboard. Now, paste it in your text editor.

We'll come back to this link later. Toggle back to the Zap editor. Under Feed Title, give your feed a name. You can call it whatever you'd like.

If you're using the Zap template, it will automatically fill the Item Title, Source URL, and Content fields.

The Item Title will appear as the article headline in your RSS reader. The Source URL is the clickable link or button your RSS reader will direct you to read the rest of the content. The Content field will already have the email body selected in HTML format.

If you'd like to add or change any of this information, feel free to do so. Just click on the field and delete what you don't want. You can type in text, which will appear the same every time your Zap runs. If you'd like the information to vary depending on the content of the email, select a Gmail field from the Insert data dropdown.

In this example, I want to change the Content field to show my email content in plain format. I deleted the default and selected the Body Plain option from the Insert data dropdown.

When you map a piece of data—such as a contact name—what you see in the editor is a placeholder. This placeholder data will only be used by our Zap when we test it. Once the Zap is turned on, real data from Gmail (or any app you select) will be used when your Zap runs.

Under Automatically Truncate Messages Over 10KB?, click on the dropdown menu and select Yes. This ensures we don't hit an error if we have a particularly lengthy email.

The template will pre-fill the Author Name and Author Email fields. Under the Pubdate field, you can type in "now." Once you've customized your RSS feed item to your liking, click Continue.

Test your Zap

Now, let's test our Zap to make sure it's working. Zapier will add a new email that meets our search criteria to our newly-created RSS feed.

You can skip this test if you'd like by clicking Skip test. However, if you want to make sure specific information is showing up correctly, or it's your first time using an RSS reader, you should test it.

Click Test step to continue.

You'll be greeted with this message if the test worked.

Let's check our RSS reader to see how it looks.

Add your feed URL to your RSS reader app

We'll need to add our RSS feed URL to our reader app. Earlier, you copied your email job listings feed URL into a text editor. Toggle to that window and select and copy that link.

Open your RSS reader app. Each app will have a different method of adding new RSS feeds. Add your feed link, according to your app's instructions, to your job search folder or section. Here's how it looks in Feedly:

And here's how our entry looks in our jobs feed.

Click through to the article and make sure everything is working how you want it. If something doesn't look right, you can go back to the Zap editor and make adjustments to the previous steps.

Once everything is set up correctly, you're ready to begin using your Zap.

Slack messages

Slack and other chat apps are becoming a popular gathering place for professional communities. Depending on the workspace, there may be a jobs channel where workspace members are encouraged to share job posts. This Zap will add Slack channel messages to an RSS feed. While we use Slack in this example, you can substitute with any team chat app Zapier integrates with.

Here's how to set it up:

1. If you don't already use an RSS reading app, sign up for one.

2. Click the button below to use our template (and create a Zapier account if you haven't already).

3. Sign in to your Slack workspace when prompted and select the Slack channel you want to follow.

4. Create and customize your RSS feed.

5. Test your Zap.

6. Add your feed URL to your RSS reader app.

7. Begin using your Zap.

Connect and customize your Slack workspace

Click the button above to get started. In the Zap editor, you'll be prompted to connect to your Slack account. Click on the dropdown menu. If you've connected Slack to Zapier before, the workspace you previously connect will appear in the dropdown menu. If you'd like to connect a different workspace, click + Connect a new account.

This will trigger another pop-up window, in which you'll grant Zapier permission to access your Slack workspace. If you're a member of multiple workspaces, click on the dropdown menu located at the top right-hand corner to toggle to the correct workspace. Click Allow.

Once you've connected your account, click Continue.

Next, we'll choose which Slack channel will trigger our Zap whenever there's a new message. Click on the dropdown menu under Channel and select the desired channel. If the channel has bot messages you want your Zap to ignore, select No under Trigger for Bot Messages.

Click Continue.

Now we'll test our Slack trigger. Zapier will try to find the most recent message in the Slack channel we selected earlier. This sample information will be used in later steps to finish creating our Zap. Click Test trigger.

If your test information looks correct, click Continue with selected record.

Customize and create RSS feed

The Zap template will already pre-select the action app and event for you, so click Continue.

Next, we'll customize our feed URL and title. Under Feed URL, type in a short slug. Use an easy descriptor to remind yourself what this feed is all about. We'll need this URL in a later step, so open up any text editor—it can be Google Docs, TextEdit, Microsoft Word, or whatever you'd like. Click Copy next to your feed URL.

The URL will copy to your clipboard. Now, paste it in your text editor.

We'll come back to this later.

Toggle back to the Zap editor. Under Feed Title, you can call your RSS feed whatever you'd like.

Under the Item Title field, the Zap template will automatically pre-fill with "New post by" and the Slack username the message came from. In your RSS reader app, this will appear as an article headline.

You can always change this if you'd like. To do so, click on Enter text or insert... and delete fields or text you don't want. You can type in text, which will appear the same every time your Zap runs.

If you'd like the information to vary depending on the content of the post, select a Slack field from the Insert data dropdown. This is information Zapier pulled in when we tested our Slack trigger earlier. In this example, I selected the Team Name field.

The Source URL field is typically where an RSS reader will turn into a clickable link. This will usually be a link to the full article. In this instance, we want to link to the specific Slack message. Click Enter text or insert data... and select the Permalink field.

The Content field will already have the text of the Slack message selected. If you'd like to add anything else here, feel free to do so.

Under Automatically Truncate Messages Over 10KB?, click on the dropdown menu and select Yes. This ensures we don't hit an error with a Slack message.

The template will pre-fill the Author Name and Author Email fields. Under the Pubdate field, you can type in "now." Once you've customized your RSS feed item to your liking, click Continue.

Test your Zap

Now, let's test our Zap to make sure it's working. Zapier will add a new message from our desired Slack channel to our newly-created RSS feed.

You can skip this test if you'd like by clicking Skip test. However, if you want to make sure specific information is showing up correctly, or it's your first time using an RSS reader, you should test it.

Click Test step to continue.

You'll be greeted with this message if the test worked.

However, we need to verify that our test worked by checking our RSS reader app.

Add your Slack feed URL to your RSS reader app

We'll need to add our RSS feed URL to our reader app. Earlier, you copied your Slack feed URL into a text editor. Toggle to that window and select and copy that link.

Open your RSS reader app. Each app will have a different method of adding new RSS feeds. Paste your feed link, according to your app's instructions.

Your RSS app may generate a preview of your newly-created feed. Add it to the section or folder of your choice.

Once everything is set up correctly, you're ready to begin using your Zap.

This article was originally published in November 2020, written by Krystina Martinez. It was most recently updated by Will Harris in December 2023.

If you're like me, every Slack message is an excuse to get distracted from whatever you were doing. And before you know it, you're two minutes late for your next meeting. 

Take advantage of the seductive siren call of Slack by reminding yourself about your next meeting where you already are—in Slack.

This Zap—our word for Zapier's automated workflows—ensures you and your team are ready for your next calendar event by sending a Slack notification before scheduled events on your Google Calendar. Here's how to set it up.

Push Google Calendar events to a public Slack channel

Zapier lets you create automated workflows called Zaps, which send your information from one app to another. You can create your own Zap from scratch without any coding knowledge, but we also offer quick templates to get you started. 

If you'd like to start with a template, click on it, and you'll be taken to the Zapier editor. You'll need to create a Zapier account if you don't already have one. Then, follow the directions below to set up your Zap.

Set up your Google Calendar trigger

First, set up your trigger—the event that starts your Zap. If you're using the Zap template, this will already be selected for you. Otherwise, select Google Calendar for the trigger app and Event Start for the trigger event. Click Continue.

Next, connect your Google Calendar account, if you haven't already, then click Continue.

Now it's time to set up the details of your trigger. Start by choosing which calendar you want to use.

Next, type in the length of time before the event you want the notification to arrive. You'll also need to select the unit of time: minutes, hours, days, or weeks.

You can also customize the Search Term field. This will mean the Zap will only pull in calendar events that include this term.

For example, if you only want to remind your team about a weekly call that includes "weekly" in the title of the event—you could type in weekly. Note: if you have other Google Calendar events that include weekly, you will get notifications for those too, so make sure you're using a unique search term.

When you're done customizing your trigger step, click Continue.

Now you need to test your trigger. Zapier will find a recent event in your Google Calendar account in the calendar you selected earlier. This will be used to set up the rest of your Zap.

Now you need to test your trigger. Click Test trigger, and Zapier will provide a sample calendar event, which will be used to set up the rest of your Zap. Click Continue with selected record to test your trigger step.

Set up your Slack action

Now let's set up the action—the event your Zap will perform once it's triggered. Select Slack as your action app and Send Channel Message as your action event. Click Continue. If you're using the Zap template, this will already be selected for you.

Connect your Slack account, if you haven't already, then click Continue.

Now it's time to customize where you want your message to go and how it will look. Click in the dropdown under Channel to select the Slack channel you want your message to go to.

Pro tip: If you're worried about annoying your co-workers while troubleshooting, consider using a dedicated testing channel when you're first setting things up, then switching when you've got things the way you want them.

Under Message Text, you can use a mix of Slack formatting and Google Calendar data to customize how you want your message to look. 

Whatever text you type in this field will appear the same each time your Zap runs. You may want to type in text or any other notes you want. To map information from your Google Calendar event, just click inside the Message Text field. You'll see a dropdown menu of data from your Gmail trigger that you can select from.

Once you've set up how you want your notification to look, you can personalize your Zap further. You can choose to have this message sent from a bot, give it a name, and add an emoji so you can tell it apart from other Slack notifications that come from your team.

Continue to customize your Slack notification by choosing Yes if you want to include a link to the Zap (so you can easily edit it). You can also choose to attach an image and auto-expand any links included in the notification.

If you have Slack channel names in the description of your event or notification and want them to be linked, select Yes.

Next, you'll see the option to schedule this message to send later. You'll want to leave this blank since you already set your notification timing in your Google Calendar action step.

Do you use the same meeting agenda file every week? Add it to your Slack notification by including the link.

Lastly, choose if you want this message to post in a Slack thread. If posted within a thread, you can also broadcast the notification to the entire channel.

When you're done customizing your action step, click Continue. 

Click Test action, and Zapier will send a message to Slack according to how you set up your message earlier. Just remember that the test will send an actual message to your Slack account, so warn your team first so they're not surprised.

Here's how our message looks:

If everything looks right, you're now ready to use your Zap.

How to get private Slack messages for Google Calendar events

Only want to send notifications for Google Calendar events for yourself? Here's a Zap template that sends a private direct message in Slack for upcoming Google Calendar events. That way, you can keep track of upcoming events without notifying everyone on your team.

The process for setting everything up is the same as above. You'll be asked to sign in to Google Calendar and Slack, then allowed to customize things if you want.

This article was originally published in June 2019. It was most recently updated in December 2023.

Pipedrive and Trello both let you use a Kanban-style board to move things through a pipeline. And, honestly, that's kind of where their (meaningful) similarities end. 

I've used Trello for collaborative projects in the past, and I've spent a lot of time testing Pipedrive. I revisited both for this article, testing each one in depth to see where they overlap—and how they compare—and my understanding was confirmed: these two apps aren't quite in the same category. 

Pipedrive vs. Trello at a glance

Pipedrive and Trello share some features, but in the end, they belong to two distinct categories and serve two different audiences. Here's the gist:

• Pipedrive is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool for salespeople.

• Trello is a task management app to help individuals or small teams manage projects.

If that answers your question, then you can head out. If, on the other hand, you want a deeper understanding of each app, read on.

Pipedrive is a CRM built for sales teams

Pipedrive is a CRM, a tool to help sales teams keep track of their leads' contact information, activity history, and associated deals. The objective? Building an in-depth database of customer data to streamline your company's communication and improve business processes.

The day-to-day in Pipedrive involves adding contacts to the database, filling all the relevant fields. You'll then use that data to reach out to your prospects, understanding which of them are better fits for the product or service you're offering.

Once you have a few interested leads, you'll start building deals for each of them. Deals detail what you'll provide for how much, along with special requests your clients have or other relevant project specs. Depending on your industry, these deals may take some time to be greenlit—there may be multiple stakeholders involved in the purchase decision, for instance—so Pipedrive offers a sales pipeline in a Kanban board layout to help you visualize the process. 

This pipeline includes the stages the deal goes through, from qualified to closed won. When you click on a deal, you have all the information about the offer and the client, so you can move back and forth easily while you're on the phone or sending out emails. As you may have more than one person working on the same deal, Pipedrive keeps all the communication activity centralized in the contact and deal pages, helping your team pick up where you left off.

Pipedrive is equipped with deep reports and analytics, showing your performance and providing goal-setting features to keep everyone on track. It also helps you look into the future with revenue forecasting, predicting what's coming based on past performance.

While most CRM apps have all the features mentioned so far, Pipedrive shines because of its attention to detail. It understands the challenges sales teams have to face. The interface is clean and uncluttered, offering all the critical information upfront. The sales pipeline cards have a dynamic icon that provides an at-a-glance status update, letting you see if the deal has a call scheduled or if it's overdue. If you're adding a duplicate contact to your database, the app will let you know right away, keeping your records clean. And automation templates target common repetitive actions that your team has to carry out every day; you can set them up easily with a couple of clicks.

In addition to the core CRM features, Pipedrive has been developing a range of add-ons to help your business find more leads and close more deals. Here's a quick rundown of the whole offering:

• LeadBooster adds live chat and chatbots to your website, so your sales team can pick up the ball right there with your visitors. It also introduces prospecting features, letting you browse a 400-million contact database and set filters to find the right people.

• Web Visitors identifies who's browsing your website. It can tell which company the visitor works at and helps you rank these visitors, so you know who you should contact first.

• Campaigns introduces email marketing features into the platform, helping you set up email campaigns and send them out en masse.

• Smart Docs handles documents like quotes and eSignatures, and even generates filled document templates automatically.

• Projects adds project management to Pipedrive. Once you set a deal to closed won, you can convert it into a project right away. (It feels a bit like Trello here, but not as flexible.)

AI is present in Pipedrive, but it's working its magic under the hood. The AI sales assistant processes your CRM data to help you improve your sales workflows: it tracks your team's performance and lost rates, predicts the likelihood of winning a deal while providing guidance on how to increase the odds, and gives you progress updates so you know how strong the needle is moving forward. You'll interact with these features mostly through the notification tab, as Pipedrive's AI pings you from time to time whenever it finds something actionable.

Pipedrive doesn't have a free plan—but you can try everything out in a 14-day trial—and the pricing starts at $21.90 per user per month to unlock the basic features. Add-ons are paid, too, each going for an average of $25 per month. While not the most expensive app in the CRM market, it's a noticeable financial commitment.

Smaller businesses and freelancers may fail to see the point in investing in Pipedrive, at least while ramping up revenue and building the first relationships with prospects—and there's nothing wrong with that. After all, you can always switch to Pipedrive when you're ready to focus on sales. For those of you that have a more established business and want more consistency and efficiency on your sales processes, then Pipedrive will be a really good companion.

Trello is a productivity tool focused on project management

Trello is the internet's Kanban temple, offering a range of features to help you manage information using lists and cards.

Its top strength is project management, as you can label each list based on project status—to do, doing, and done, for example—and add cards with tasks to each of them. Once you map what needs to be done, you can move the cards from left to right as you complete them. This visual approach is great to let you know what's next, reducing overwhelm and improving productivity. It also breaks linearity, letting you tackle a project with multiple individual parts from any entry point.

There's more than project management, though. If your data benefits from being in a Kanban board at all, you can use Trello to organize it. Social media marketing planning? Check. Keeping an inventory of office assets and their locations? Also possible. Rounding up all design references to start a new project? You get the idea.

Trello cards are powerful and really versatile. They sit on each list with a summary of their contents, quietly waiting to be clicked. When you click one, you can add a lot of information to it: descriptions, comments, attachments, checklists, deadlines, the list goes on. You can add all the information you need to complete a task here, so you can use your Trello board as the starting point to getting everything done. And if you have a team to do it with you, they can pick cards up, work on them, and move them over as they complete tasks.

Need stats? Trello has them. When you switch to the Dashboard view, you can see how your board is changing. You can view numbers of cards per column, due date, member, and label. If you want more, explore the Power-Ups: you can install add-ons that will keep track of other stats and give you more visibility into your productivity efforts. There are dozens of add-ons to explore, adding features such as threaded conversations on cards, a board wiki, or voting.

Kanban is Trello's trademark, but you're not locked in on that view. In addition to the dashboard, you can choose:

• Table view shows your cards in the classic rows and columns fashion.

• Calendar view displays dates on your cards and is useful to keep track of deadlines.

• Timeline view is for cards that have a period of time and works great to understand when each person is working on each task and when it will be finished.

• Map view. When you add locations to your cards, you can see those locations spread around the map. It's great for running inventory across multiple sites—or keeping track of your favorite restaurants.

You can customize a lot about your boards, such as backgrounds and color schemes. It's artsy and pleasant. Moving things around adds a little fun to even the most dreadfully boring admin work. But Trello isn't just fun: it's also smart. Butler, an AI assistant, gives you suggestions on automation to implement: automatically complete subtasks when a card is marked as complete or set up a super card-sorting button, for example. These suggestions are based on your board activity, tailored to the way you use the app.

This is all AI behind the scenes, but it's also at center stage. Trello is connected to Atlassian Intelligence, its parent company's generative AI engine. It's present on most of Atlassian's Cloud software, helping you brainstorm, generate action points, and clean up your English. It's not activated by default: go to Workspace Settings and tick it on. With that out of the way, type /ai to begin or click the corresponding icon in the rich text editor bar.

Since Trello is a more generalist productivity app, you can keep track of more things than you can with Pipedrive. This can be useful for freelancers or small companies where everyone does a bit of everything. The fact that it has a generous free plan—letting you add unlimited cards and access all templates and add-ons for free—is also a good incentive if you're just getting started with productivity apps.

Trello as CRM: Yea or nay?

Hey, if you want to build your own mini-CRM and sales pipeline, using Trello as a CRM isn't out of the question. It won't have the perfect-fit feeling of Pipedrive, but it could be powerful enough while you take the first steps in building relationships with your prospects. Once you're working with more than a few clients or your sales funnel becomes even a little complex, you'll want to ditch your Trello CRM for Pipedrive or another purpose-built tool.

And if you're into tinkering your way to a solution, be sure to check out Zapier Interfaces. It's a no-code tool for optimizing processes with apps and automation, a solid option whether you're building a custom CRM, a project management tool, or an AI-powered flow. Here are the highlights:

• You can start from a range of templates, including a simple CRM or a simple project plan.

• You can set up Zaps to automate any part of the workflow: adding contacts, pulling data from another app, or starting a chain reaction inside your tech stack.

• You can store your data in Zapier Tables. It's in the cloud, ready for access, and it's the best way to feed your information into Zapier Interfaces.

It's free to use while it's in beta. Take a look to see if it fits what you're looking for.

Both apps connect with Zapier

Whichever you choose, be sure to automate the app to make the most of it. Both Pipedrive and Trello integrate with Zapier, so you can connect them to thousands of other apps. Learn more about how to automate Pipedrive and how to automate Trello, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Pipedrive vs. Trello: Which is right for your needs?

You should go with Pipedrive if you need a specialized CRM tool to support a dedicated sales team. Trello is your best choice if you're looking for a more generalist tool with project management features.

Related reading:

• 21 creative ways to use Trello and organize everything

• Pipedrive vs. Salesmate: Which is best?

• Pipedrive vs. HubSpot: Which CRM is right for you?

• Pipedrive vs. Zoho: Which should you use?

• The best CRM software

As a senior technical support specialist at Zapier, I have more than 10 years of experience assisting users who want to make their tech work for them rather than the other way around. When I interact with these folks, they're almost always laser-focused on solving a particular problem—using automation to reduce friction for customers, for example, or to share data across the enterprise. 

Solving a single problem is always a win, and I'm not here to knock it. But I think automation really shows its value when it begins to improve repeated processes and boost efficiencies in areas that might not even be recognized—yet!—as chokepoints. 

Because once you make the investment in automation tools, there may be dozens, if not hundreds, of opportunities to use them in every aspect of your company's work. You just need to know where to look for that next automation opportunity.

Step 1: Evaluate your time

In the effort to uncover automation opportunities, a good place to start is by stopping. I mean it. 

In our go-go world, the pressure to get things done means we often don't take time to evaluate what we're doing and how we're doing it. Now, I know that sometimes it might feel as if stopping means defeat, but I disagree. Evaluating the best way to accomplish your goal rather than jumping in headfirst will save you time in the long run. 

That's why the first thing I tell people who want to leverage their automation investment is, don't be afraid to put a project on pause for a moment. Time and again, I've seen the proof—when you evaluate where you're going and how you're getting there, you'll surely save time in the long run. 

A process may "work," but if you're repeating many manual tasks every day, day after day, week after week, the inefficiencies compound like interest on a loan. 

But if you stop for an hour to build an automation, it reduces time spent every time you use it. So if it saves six minutes per task, five times a day, that one hour you originally invested returns 120 hours saved over the course of a year. Three weeks! It's completely worth it.

Now, this begs the question, do you know where you're spending your time?

Track your time to spot the inefficiencies

Are you so busy getting things done, you're not even aware there's a better way to do it? One way to discover new automation opportunities is to track your time and look for the logjams.

There are several apps and services out there that you could utilize to track where you're spending most of your time. Are you spending a lot of time on a specific app or logged into a specific website? Do you burn through hours communicating with colleagues, sharing data with other departments, or providing clients with updates? Tracking your time by activity or project might reveal where you can automate a task.

If you've been in your job for a while, look at past projects. Most to-do and project planning apps will have some sort of log that shows you all of your past tasks. Take a look at how long these old projects took and remind yourself which tasks you were hung up on. 

Oftentimes, you'll find the 80-20 rule applies—80 percent of your effort goes into just 20 percent of your work. That's the next opportunity to use automation!

Step 2: Automate your habits

We often think about building new habits to improve our work, but psychologists tell us that our brains are lazy and will prefer to repeat bad habits rather than discover new ways of accomplishing our tasks. In a very real sense, we can think of these habits as our daily weaknesses.

Let's say you tend to work through lunch because you've felt you needed the extra time to complete your tasks. But think like a scientist and test that hypothesis! 

What if you used automation to send yourself a daily Slack message with a reminder that taking a break from work to get a bite to eat provided you with better energy and focus in the afternoon, enabling you to be more efficient? These kinds of automated nudges can be applied throughout the day to break habitual routines that no longer serve you. Use this Zap template, one of our pre-made workflows, to set it up now:

Or maybe you're not a morning person. Try an automation that takes upcoming appointments on your calendar and tasks from your to-do app and feeds them into ChatGPT, which returns an itinerary that matches task efforts and appointments with your own energy levels throughout the day. 

Step 3: Revisit past mistakes

The Roman God Janus (for whom we named the month "January") was a two-faced deity who looked forward and backward. We need to adopt this Janus-like approach to uncovering automation opportunities. To prepare for a better future, we need to understand the past. 

Think for a moment—when you were reviewing your old tasks and projects for automation opportunities, were there any that didn't go particularly well? And was there a pattern you could discern? 

For example, was there a breakdown in communication? Were some tasks not completed on time? If so, there's an opportunity to automate to ensure the best possible outcome going forward.

Don't let a lack of preparation derail your goals. Take advantage of Zapier Interfaces to create a shared timeline so everyone working on a project is aware of what everyone else is doing. 

Or create a form and interface for your teammates to report issues, which could then trigger emails or messages to be sent out in Slack or Teams, and then create a ticket in Jira or Zendesk.

Perhaps another way of thinking about this is to prepare for a problem before it happens. There's no way to exactly predict what's going to happen, but preparing for how you'll handle a sudden out of office or loss of a vendor ahead of time is key. Creating automations that help you pivot just might save the day. 

Step 4: Ask your team

Finally, don't try to uncover automation opportunities all by yourself. 

The myth of the solitary creative genius is hard to shake, but research shows that creativity and discovery are often interpersonal qualities. We know how helpful it can be to bounce ideas off another. Make that part of your automation planning process.

You're not in this alone. Talk to your peers, your teammates, and managers. These folks are with you day in and day out. Maybe they've noticed a task that the team struggles with or could be improved. You could also ask them for feedback. Maybe you could use that form and Interfaces approach to aggregate ideas.

Automating and refactoring your workflow can be a group project all by itself. That gets everyone on the same page and also lets your team become more aware of how each individual contributes.

Enabling automation with Zapier

Now let's talk more about accomplishing these goals with Zapier. Here are some questions we frequently field in customer support.

Where do I start?

We never want you to pay for more than what you need, so the free plan is a great place to solve that first obvious automation issue. But to utilize and take advantage of everything that Zapier has to offer—filters, multi-step Zaps, or integrations with premium apps—you'll want to explore the capabilities of our paid plans. 

A great way to experience the power of these tools is to take advantage of the two-week trial period, which lets you check out almost all of the features of the professional plan. 

This will also give you a good idea of how Zapier can benefit your team. Our Team and Company plans offer more users, security options, and top-notch support when you have a question.

How do I build my first automation?

Getting started with building a Zap has never been easier. One way is to check out prebuilt Zaps, which are available in our App Directory on individual integration pages. For example, visit https://zapier.com/apps/slack/integrations and scroll down to the Zapier templates section. 

There, you'll find dozens of Slack-related Zaps to try out. If you find one that fits your needs, just click on it to give it a try. With more than 6,000 apps on Zapier, there's likely a prebuilt Zap that will save you time.

From the same page, you can also pair two apps together. For instance, you can pair Slack with Trello and see all the ways we've thought to integrate them. There's no use reinventing the wheel, right?

But maybe your particular wheel hasn't been invented yet. Utilizing ChatGPT and AI, we've launched the AI Guesser, which allows you to simply type in what you want the Zap to do and then builds it for you. If it's not exactly what you need, don't worry—you can still add steps or make changes after the Zap's been built.

How can I manage and monitor my new Zaps?

With Zapier, you can build a self-monitoring solution—a Zap that manages your automations. Utilize the Zapier Manager option to set up a custom watchdog that DMs you in Slack or sends you an email when there's a failed Zap run. Or maybe it sends you a text using SMS by Zapier when there's an error from one of your integrations. Think ahead and build the alert system that works best for you.

What if I need something custom or unique to my team?

Zapier already integrates with over 6,000 apps and services, with more being added all the time. But what if you need something customized or specific? We have a utility for that. Take a look at Code by Zapier, made even better recently with the addition of AI. 

If you discover that you need a custom code step, AI will help you write your code in either Python or JavaScript to meet your needs. No longer do you have to be a professional programmer to make your Zaps work for you in the best way possible, making the possibilities for automation endless. 

As a member of the support team, I'd be remiss if I didn't end with a plug for our services. As you think about building workflows using Zapier, if you run into any trouble, please don't hesitate to reach out to us, watch some of our YouTube videos, or post in the Zapier Community. There are countless opportunities to learn more.

So, what will you automate next?

Choosing the right accounting software isn't as easy as a shopping spree in Downtown Disney—it takes a lot of care to ensure your business is set up for financial success; you can't just put things in your cart without thinking twice about it. I took FreshBooks for a spin when comparing FreshBooks and Xero, but there's another popular software that should be on your radar as you hunt for the best accounting solution: QuickBooks Online.

FreshBooks and QuickBooks both offer a lot of tools to help you manage your business's finances. I've been testing these apps for a couple years now for this article, and I created a fake company for both and experimented with their features to determine which platform is the best fit for various types of businesses. Read on for my analysis of FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks.

FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks at a glance

FreshBooks and QuickBooks, while both powerful and user-friendly, each have unique strengths that make them a good fit for different audiences.

• FreshBooks is best for freelancers, solopreneurs, and small businesses that offer services and don't intend to grow much. It offers time tracking, unlimited invoicing, basic project management, and basic reporting at a low price.

• QuickBooks is best for medium to large businesses and businesses that have plans to grow. It offers more comprehensive accounting and reporting features than FreshBooks, while also providing unique inventory management for those with physical products—as well as lots of automation opportunities.

This should shed some light on why FreshBooks topped our list of the best accounting software for self-employed individuals, while QuickBooks topped our list of the best accounting software for bigger businesses.

FreshBooks is friendly to freelancers, whereas QuickBooks caters to scaling organizations

FreshBooks is a solopreneur's dream, providing inexpensive access to some great freelancer and small business tools. QuickBooks is more equipped to meet the accounting needs of larger businesses.

Time tracking

Every FreshBooks plan allows you to track time both live and retroactively and bill clients for accrued time. The FreshBooks app is also really convenient for on-the-move freelancers by offering mobile time tracking, invoicing, and expense management.

Meanwhile, QuickBooks only offers manual time tracking for Essentials and above and real-time time tracking with an upgrade to QuickBooks Time (priced at $20 per month for the Premium plan, plus an extra $8 for every additional user). That said, the bonus features that come with QuickBooks Time, such as geofencing and shift scheduling, are more advanced.

Client and accountant access

QuickBooks one-ups FreshBooks in a lot of features that matter to large and growing businesses. While FreshBooks places limitations on how many billable clients you can include in its first two plans (five clients with Lite and 50 with Plus), QuickBooks doesn't stipulate any client limits for any of its plans but notes that its systems limit individual firms to 2,000 clients. For users with more than 2,000 clients, they recommend adding a firm to your account or consolidating clients.

It's a similar story for user and accountant access. QuickBooks offers multi-user access in its higher-level plans, while FreshBooks charges an additional $11 per month for every additional user, regardless of your plan. QuickBooks also allows you to invite two accountants, whereas FreshBooks only allows you to invite one (starting at the Plus plan).

Accounting features

QuickBooks is also more geared toward helping big businesses with accounting, offering bank reconciliation with all of its plans, while FreshBooks requires that you upgrade to its Plus plan to access this feature. It also helps you keep your expenses organized, offering additional tabs for expense claims, bills, and vendors—a great feature for larger companies that sell a lot of products and work with third parties.

Payroll

If you're looking for integrated payroll features, you'll have to look past FreshBooks—at least for now. FreshBooks has no native payroll feature as of this writing, but it offers a separate Gusto integration that allows you to track FreshBooks transactions, update reports, and categorize payroll as expenses. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you'll have to jump through some hoops by talking with an account specialist to set it up. However, it's worth noting that there's a forthcoming FreshBooks Payroll feature powered by Gusto that's currently in beta testing.

Meanwhile, QuickBooks has an optional native payroll service add-on for all account levels. Divided into three tiers corresponding to your account tier—Payroll Core + Simple Start ($75 per month), Payroll Core + Essentials ($105 per month), and Payroll Core + Plus ($170 per month)—this is a predictably robust offering with tons of features. You can set up autopay, handle 1099 e-filing, set up an employee portal, and much more, directly through your existing QuickBooks account.

Pricing

If nothing else indicates that QuickBooks' main audience is larger companies, its price certainly does. The most basic plan costs almost double that of FreshBooks, and its most advanced plan costs nearly quadruple that of FreshBooks. Who's most likely to spend big bucks on accounting software with highly scalable features? Established businesses.

FreshBooks is best for businesses offering services, whereas QuickBooks is best for those offering products

Your choice of accounting solution might just come down to what your business offers.

Invoicing

If your business provides services, there's a good chance you'll be regularly invoicing your clients. Both QuickBooks and FreshBooks allow you to send unlimited customized invoices, but FreshBooks does so for much cheaper—$17 per month compared to QuickBooks' $30 per month. Simply put, FreshBooks is the way to go if invoicing clients for services is the main reason you need an accounting solution.

Sales channel syncing and POS

If you offer a lot of products, QuickBooks can make your life easier. The platform allows you to record daily sales from your channels (imported from Amazon, eBay, or Shopify) and sync data from your sales systems (Square, PayPal, etc). QuickBooks even offers its own POS system—QuickBooks Point of Sale—doubling down on its product focus.

That's not to say FreshBooks can't do any of the above—similar to its payroll features, it may just be a little trickier to set up. Square, for example, offers a FreshBooks integration in its app marketplace. And while FreshBooks doesn't sync directly with Amazon, you can use Zapier to create a custom automated workflow between FreshBooks and Amazon Seller Central.

Inventory

QuickBooks also caters to big businesses that sell a lot of products with its inventory features. Starting at the Plus tier, it sends restock notifications when stock is low, enables you to set pricing rules, provides reports presenting your best-selling items, and now even allows you to categorize products. FreshBooks' inventory features are more limited, though it does automatically update your stock using data from invoices.

FreshBooks is straightforward and limited, whereas QuickBooks is complex and flexible

If simplicity is your cup of tea, you may not need to pay big bucks for a platform that includes every accounting feature under the sun.

Interface and menu items

FreshBooks' simplicity is evident as soon as you enter the platform. When I logged in, I was greeted by an interface that a toddler would enjoy playing around with (no offense): bright colors, clear breakdowns of tools, and relatively few navigational options.

Opening QuickBooks was another story: I encountered over 20 menu items, several widgets with charts and graphs summarizing business metrics, and an overall "business professional" interface.

Despite all of QuickBooks' advanced features, the platform does a good job with user-friendliness. On most of the platform's pages, I had the option to "take a tour" through the interface and its options. Some pages even included walkthrough videos explaining how to use its features. Overall, it's a platform that any office manager should be able to learn relatively quickly.

Reporting

Both platforms allow you to generate reports, but the FreshBooks reports all have the same simple and non-customizable format. These rigid reports can only auto-populate from existing data and can only be altered by a few basic filters.

Meanwhile, QuickBooks offers a long list of customization options for its pre-saved reports and even allows you to build your own custom reports from scratch.

AI

While neither option has AI just yet, it's worth noting that FreshBooks has yet to make any claims about forthcoming AI features, while Intuit has announced that QuickBooks users will soon get access to Intuit Assist, an AI-powered accounting assistant.

Automation

Another area where QuickBooks shines is its workflows feature, enabling you to schedule reminders and automate tasks. For example, you can tell QuickBooks to automatically generate and send reports to people via email on a specific schedule. You can either choose from several templated workflows or create your own from scratch. Granted, this feature is only included with the Advanced plan, so you have to spend quite a bit to access it.

Whichever platform you choose, FreshBooks and QuickBooks both integrate with Zapier, so you can keep all of your business's tools communicating seamlessly. Get started with one of these pre-made workflows, or build your own to connect to any app in your tech stack.

Alternatives to FreshBooks and QuickBooks

Still not sure whether FreshBooks or QuickBooks is right for you? We've already rounded up and analyzed popular alternatives like Xero and Wave so you can see how all the top accounting software options stack up:

• The best self-employed accounting software

• The best accounting software for small business

• The best free invoicing software

• The best invoicing software

• FreshBooks vs. Xero: Which accounting software is best?

• Wave vs. QuickBooks: Which is best?

FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks: Which is right for you?

Like most things in life, there isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to the FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks debate. Each solution has different features offered at different price points, so you should ultimately choose the option that meets all of your business's needs.

If you're a freelancer, solopreneur, or very small business that primarily offers services and needs an easy tool for invoicing clients, FreshBooks likely offers everything you need at a relatively low price point. If you run or work in accounting at a medium, large, or growing business that sells inventory and needs a comprehensive and customizable accounting solution, QuickBooks has you covered.

FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks FAQ

Is FreshBooks a good alternative to QuickBooks?

FreshBooks is a great alternative to QuickBooks if you're a solopreneur, freelancer, or small business owner looking mainly for accounting software that caters to services rather than products.

What are the cons of FreshBooks?

FreshBooks isn't as strong as QuickBooks when it comes to reporting, advanced accounting features, inventory management, and integrating with third-party sales channels.

Are QuickBooks and FreshBooks the same?

QuickBooks and FreshBooks are competing accounting software. QuickBooks is owned by Intuit, which also owns software like TurboTax and Mailchimp, while FreshBooks is an independent company.

How much is FreshBooks per month?

FreshBooks plans are $175 per month (Lite), $30 per month (Plus), and $55 per month (Premium). These prices are discounted if you commit to a yearly contract. You can also add on services like payroll, extra team member access, and advanced payments for additional fees.

Related reading:

• Save time and reduce errors with accounting automation

• 5 simple ways to automate bookkeeping

• The best appointment scheduling apps

This article was originally published in December 2022. The most recent update, with contributions from Bryce Emley, was in December 2023.

Ever-changing social media and search algorithms make owning your channels more important than ever. Online courses are a great tool for building community and growing your list.

Today, anyone can share knowledge as quickly and easily as you can upload a video to YouTube. But to explore a topic in depth, build a community, earn an income, or grow your business by selling online courses? That takes a more robust setup to help you design course pages, build out a curriculum, and promote your course.

I've been updating this article for several years, and this year, after researching and testing more than 60 apps for creating and selling online courses, these are my picks for the best.

The 8 best online course platforms

• Udemy for launching your first course

• Skillshare for teaching creative skills

• Teachable for creating an online school with advanced marketing

• Podia for selling digital products and memberships

• Thinkific for customizable add-ons

• Kajabi for marketing a course on autopilot

• Mighty Networks for building a paid community

• Simplero for managing your business

What makes the best online course platform?

For this piece, I only considered platforms for building and selling an online course, which means I didn't consider learning management systems (LMS). While the terms are often used interchangeably, LMS software is generally used either in a school setting or to help companies train their customers and employees. The platforms to create online courses covered below, on the other hand, are designed for businesses and individual creators to earn money (or build an audience) by selling their courses.

Online course creation platforms can be broadly divided into two categories:

• Course marketplaces

• Course creation software

In a marketplace, your course is a part of a catalog, and you have the option to customize your course landing page but not much else aside from the course content. Most marketplaces let you publish a course for free but take a share of course sales. The major advantage: course marketplaces provide you with an existing student base, so if you don't have much of an online presence yet, you might want to dabble with these first.

Online course creation software, on the other hand, offers many more customization options. You can create branded landing pages, choose from multiple content formats when building your course, and get the necessary tools to market your course. These usually charge a fixed monthly fee, and some platforms also charge a transaction fee.

Unsurprisingly, there's no one-size-fits-all solution for creating a profitable course. Your ideal course creation platform is unique to your needs and goals. Are online courses your bread and butter? Then you need a platform that helps you reach the maximum number of students. Does teaching and engaging with students excite you? Then a course creator with interactive tools would work well. Are you creating a course to engage your existing audience? Then you'll want a tool with robust marketing features.

While every platform has its own unique selling point, I've judged the online course software below based on certain criteria:

• Content formats supported, including video, audio, PDFs, and images

• Editing features and customization options

• Whether or not they're realistically affordable for small and medium businesses

• Support for assessments: quizzes, exams, certifications, etc.

• Marketing and payment features

With those criteria in mind, I narrowed it down to 24 apps worth testing, then spent several days exploring them and running through an in-depth testing process. Here's what it looked like:

• Signing up for an account and completing any onboarding flows offered

• Walking through the core workflow to create a new course, including browsing any course templates, building out the curriculum, and adding course content in varying formats

• Testing out other core features like building quizzes and tests, designing course certificates, scheduling live sessions, and setting up drip schedules

• Customizing the overall design, colors, fonts, logos, landing pages, and more—to the extent possible with each app

• Finally, looking at payment and marketing features like email broadcasts, pricing structures, community building, and SEO

The eight course creation platforms below are the best I found.

The best online course platforms at a glance

Online course marketplaces

Best online course marketplace for launching your first course

Udemy (Web, Android, iOS)

Udemy pros:

• Guided, proscriptive course creation flow

• Built-in Udemy audience

• Minimal editing/design needed

Udemy cons:

• Steep revenue share structure

• Requires video

• Must apply and be accepted to offer paid courses

While the earliest massive open online courses (MOOCs) made learning accessible, Udemy took it a step further: it made teaching online possible. Today, the platform has well over 65 million students enrolled in its courses and an instructor base of over 75,000.

To create a paid course on Udemy, you first have to apply to become a premium instructor. Once approved, you'll see a series of easy-to-follow steps to help you create your first course. As you plan course content, keep in mind that all courses need at least 30 minutes of video and five lectures. You're also welcome to add quizzes, assignments, coding exercises, and discussion prompts.

Why launch your first course on Udemy? Because the platform offers loads of support for creating and marketing a course. For example, if you're not sure if your video lessons are up to snuff, you can submit a sample for review and get feedback on video and audio, along with suggestions for equipment. And for tutorials on planning a course, filming your first video, and related topics, Udemy offers the Teaching Center with tips and tricks.

If you're struggling to make your first few sales, Udemy's tailor-made marketing programs will offer support. Get your course featured in their email blasts, be a part of site-wide discounts, or opt for Udemy's affiliate marketing program. All of these programs are optional, and depending on the promotional channel you choose, Udemy takes a share of course sales.

Finally, Udemy's marketplace insights help you select the perfect course topic and see how it stacks up against other courses on the platform—which is important because of the size of the marketplace you're competing with. Similar to Google Analytics, this feature tells you how popular a topic is on Udemy, its search volume, and related keywords. You can also see the number of existing courses for a topic, top-earning courses in the category, monthly revenue earned, and best promotion channels (Udemy discovery, Udemy search, external sources, paid ads).

To put it simply, with Udemy, you're in good hands.

Udemy price: Free to publish free courses with under 2 hours of video; Udemy charges 3% revenue share on course sales made by instructor coupons and 63% revenue share on all other course sales. (Note: Revenue share does not include processing fees charged by PayPal or Payoneer, or mobile platform fees for mobile course sales.)

Best online course marketplace for teaching creative skills

Skillshare (Web, Android, iOS)

Skillshare pros:

• Quick and easy course setup

• Designed for creatives

• Free

Skillshare cons:

• Requires video

• No support for assessments

• Minimally customizable

If you're an entrepreneur, designer, writer, photographer, or blogger looking to teach your craft online, Skillshare is great for teaching creative skills. You'll find courses on all kinds of topics, both popular and niche: marketing, photography, cooking, hand painting, doodling, and even wall hanging.

The platform offers a membership plan for students that gives them access to all of its 35,000 premium courses. As for creators, it's a free online course platform if you just want to sign up and publish a course, but if you want to get paid, it must be a part of Skillshare's premium catalog.

Free or premium, Skillshare classes have three major moving parts: video lessons, a project, and community discussion. Each class includes 20-60 minutes of video, broken down into 2-5-minute lessons. The practical project then ensures hands-on experience. For instance, a social media class project might require students to promote their Instagram account, or a writing class might require students to draft a pitch. Finally, the community portion of a class allows students to post their work.

Instead of favoring final outcomes, Skillshare encourages students to share their progress, gather feedback, and tweak their work accordingly—which is perfect for the creative topics you'll be teaching.

Skillshare price: Free for creating a premium class. Skillshare pays instructors $10 for premium membership referrals and royalties for minutes watched in a premium class each month.

Online courses software

Best online courses platform for building an online school with advanced marketing

Teachable (Web, iOS)

Teachable pros:

• Tons of built-in marketing features

• Custom-code course editor

• Wide-ranging (beta) AI features

Teachable cons:

• Only 3 design templates

• Pricing structure is less scalable than some

Teachable helps savvy course creators grow and nurture an online audience. To begin with, the platform offers various options to customize the look and feel of your course. Build a website that reflects your brand, create sales pages for launching your course, and if you happen to know some code, use the Power Editor to tinker with it. If not, edit one of the three templates available. Teachable's course builder accepts files from Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, among other content formats.

While several of the apps I tested tout new AI features, Teachable's generative AI was the only one I found somewhat useful. The feature is still in beta, but it generated a course outline, lesson content, and section summaries that were good enough to serve as a solid starting point.

There's flexibility when pricing your course too. You can offer courses on their own or in bundles, and choose between a one-time fee, a payment plan, or a subscription. When you're ready to launch, create coupon codes to see a quick boost in course sales. To build a sales team for your course, use the platform's built-in affiliate marketing option: simply add affiliates, and they'll get a percentage of course sales. No third-party integration required.

Teachable's native email marketing tool lets you filter and message students when they enroll in a course, redeem a coupon, or complete a course. The platform also helps you collect student feedback and uncover insights about your course using Google Forms and surveys. If you'd like to keep in touch with students after they've completed your course, add them to your email list with Teachable's integrations. As they say, the money is in the list.

You can do more with Teachable when you connect it to your favorite apps through Zapier's automated workflows. Automatically add your students to your marketing campaign, track them in a Google Sheet, and more. Discover more ways to automate Teachable with Zapier, or try one of these pre-made workflows to get you started.

Teachable price: The Free plan includes 1 published course or product and 10 students, with transaction fees of $1 + 10% per transaction; paid plans start at $39/month for the Basic plan, which includes 5 products and unlimited students, plus a custom domain, email marketing, coupon codes, drip course content, and a 5% transaction fee.

Best online course creation software for selling digital products and memberships

Podia (Web)

Podia pros:

• Simple, clean course outline builder

• Support for multiple kinds of digital products

• Affordable

Podia cons:

• Email marketing requires additional cost

• Podia transaction fees on top of payment processor fees

Podia lets you build an online store for your digital content. Create online courses, digital downloads, coaching sessions, and even membership sites, all as part of one digital storefront.

All Podia storefronts have a similar template, which is helpful if you find too many options overwhelming. Each store's landing page includes an overview, a "What's included" section, a content section, FAQs, and creator bios. And all courses, memberships, and digital downloads have a separate landing page.

Once you create an online course, you can publish it immediately or pre-launch it to collect emails. If you have additional resources to supplement your course—cheat sheets, eBooks, videos, audio, text, checklists—sell them as a digital download. You can also bundle and sell the two together.

Online content creators often try to nurture an online community on platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. This can work, but you're often at the mercy of algorithmic changes and the rules of the platform you choose. Podia allows you to create your own private membership site, with different membership plans, perks, and content for members. Share updates with your community, notify them about new products, and watch your business grow.

Connect Podia to the other apps you use most through Zapier's automated workflows. Automatically add your students to your marketing campaign, enroll new purchasers in your course, and more. Here are some ideas, but you can connect Podia to thousands of other apps with Zapier.

Podia price: Free to build your draft course; from $33/month for the Mover plan to sell your course, with unlimited courses and members and a 5% transaction fee.

Best online course creation software for customizable add-ons

Thinkific (Web)

Thinkific pros:

• Affordable pricing structure

• Extensive support for assessments

• Course templates

Thinkific cons:

• Limited free plan

Putting together your first online course can be daunting. How many lessons should you include? Where should you add assignments and quizzes? What other file types should you include? Thinkific takes the guesswork out of course creation with its simple and ready-to-use templates.

There are two parts to creating a course on Thinkific: course material and landing page. To get started, choose from the following templates: pre-sell, mini-course, flagship course, membership resource library, and webinar replay. Unlike other course builders, where you start with a blank slate, Thinkific templates provide helpful cues and tips to build a valuable course. Apart from video lessons, the templates are pre-populated with sample quizzes, downloads, surveys, and instructor messages, at regular intervals throughout the course. Add or remove content as you see fit, or follow the template as is.

Thinkific's website builder is one of the easiest to use. Choose the pages you want to include, add your copy, pick a theme, and you're done.

Want to include testimonials on your website? Here's a neat trick to collect them on Thinkific: turn on student reviews for your course and add the ones you like directly to your landing page. Plus, Thinkific offers a number of add-ons and integrations that are super easy to get set up—they add features like AI chatbot quizzes, collaborative whiteboards, interactivity, gamification, and even test prep simulations.

And by connecting Thinkific with Zapier, you can do things like automatically add your students to your marketing campaign or get an SMS message when a course is purchased. Here are some examples.

Thinkific price: Free for 1 course and unlimited students, full eCommerce, and no transaction fees; from $36/month for the Basic plan, which offers most features, including unlimited courses and students, zero transaction fees, a custom domain, and drip content.

Best online course creation software for marketing a course on autopilot

Kajabi (Web, iOS, Android)

Kajabi pros:

• Tons of built-in marketing features

• Decent generative AI feature

• Native email marketing

Kajabi cons:

• Expensive

• Less customizable than some

Kajabi gives marketing superpowers to busy course creators. Its marketing blueprints, called funnels, help you create an entire marketing funnel—from landing page and opt-ins to emails and course checkout—with just a few clicks.

Here's an example: The freebie funnel consists of three touchpoints. The first is a landing page where you collect emails in exchange for a free downloadable, such as an eBook or cheat sheet. When a visitor enters their email, they're subscribed to your freebie email sequence, where you can thank them for signing up and upsell your course. If they choose to purchase, they're taken to a thank-you page. And that's it.

You can also choose what to do with the emails you collect. Add them to an email sequence, remind them about your special offer, or send them a thank-you note after they purchase. Kajabi has templates for all kinds of pages. Select a funnel, add your content, and your marketing machine is all set.

Templates can be handy, but if you want to create your own automations, Kajabi offers a number of if-then scenarios to choose from. When a student completes an assessment, fills a form, cancels a subscription, or has been inactive for a while, you can send them an email, register them for an event, or unsubscribe them from an email list. Given that email is at the core of all its features, Kajabi also has a native email provider that helps you track how many of your emails are opened.

You can do more with Kajabi when you connect it to your favorite apps through Zapier's automated workflows. Automatically get email notifications for new purchases, give new purchasers access to your product, and more. Start with one of the pre-made workflows below, or learn more about how to automate Kajabi.

Kajabi price: From $119/month for the Basic plan for one site, 3 products, 3 funnels, 1,000 active customers, and unlimited marketing emails and landing pages.

Best online course creation software for building a paid community

Mighty Networks (Web, Android, iOS)

Mighty Networks pros:

• Strong community-building focus

• AI-generated course outlines

• Modern, user-friendly interface

Mighty Networks cons:

• High starting price

• Not a ton of native marketing features

Mighty Networks helps you build a vibrant, active paid community around your online course. The app focuses broadly on community-building, which includes paid groups, events, and—you guessed it—online courses.

Users can sell individual courses, community membership, or bundle a combination of the two. Memberships can be priced as a one-time payment or subscription, and pricing is 100% custom. Each course can be priced separately or offered for free to paying members.

Every course comes with a built-in Activity Feed that works to foster engagement and conversation as members complete your course. Members can share all kinds of content, too—from quick text posts to images and links. As the instructor, you can set topics to drive the conversation and build live events (both online and IRL) into your courses. Add icebreaker questions to get the ball rolling, and create polls to engage your audience and gather feedback.

Uniquely, the app offers a small but mighty feature (pun intended) that enables instructors to change the verbiage used in their community. For example, your table of contents can alternatively be called syllabus, course material, or any custom label you choose. Instructors can be professor, TA, teacher, or another custom name.

Mighty Networks also now offers one of the most useful generative AI features (called "Mighty Co-Host"), which can generate an extensive course outline based on your provided topic. It worked really well for me in my testing.

You can do more with Mighty Networks when you connect your favorite apps using the Zapier integration. Bring conversations across channels, automate new member invitations, sync events to your calendar, and more with these (and other) pre-made workflows.

Mighty Networks price: Plans that include online courses start at $99/month for cohort courses and Zapier integration.

Best online course creator for managing your business

Simplero (Web, iOS, Android)

Simplero pros:

• All-in-one CRM, marketing automation, and online course platform

• Native payments

• Customizable settings

Simplero cons:

• Not-so-scalable pricing structure

If you're looking for a capable, customizable online course builder, you can't go wrong with Simplero. Creating and outlining your course curriculum is super quick: click the Create a new course button, and a few screens later, you're ready to build out your curriculum and add your learning content.

But Simplero isn't just a course creation app—it's more like a CRM, marketing automation, and online course tool in one package. That's reflected in the robust automation and list management features included in the app. You can build, publish, and market courses, track sales and financials, and maintain your customer list all in one app.

Head over to Marketing > Done-For-You Campaigns, for example, to install the Course Launch Challenge, a 21-day automated sequence. All you need to do is customize the emails and choose when the automation flow should run. It's a perfect all-in-one solution for when your online course is your business.

And with Simplero's Zapier integrations, you can do even more with the platform, like adding new students to your email list automatically or creating new Simplero subscribers from form submissions.

Simplero pricing: The Starter plan starts at $59/month and includes 1 product, 1 course, and unlimited landing pages; upgrade to the Scale plan at $149/month for 1,000 contacts, unlimited courses and products, affiliate marketing features, automations, and more.

Which online course platform is best for you?

Whether you're passionate about teaching, want to grow your audience, or are just looking to earn an income from your courses, there's an online course creation platform to help you achieve your goals.

When picking a tool to launch your course, consider your budget, time constraints, current online following, and earning potential. If you're simply testing the waters, start with a course marketplace. Once you've validated your course topic and content, only then proceed to launch your own course website. Don't worry about migrating content from one platform to another. Most platforms support this, whether for free or for an added fee.

In the end, software for online courses should allow you to focus your efforts on the course content, not the process of getting it out to your audience.

Related reading:

• How to use social proof to promote your online course

• 5 types of drip email campaigns to help you sell your online courses

• How to create a course for your business in one day

• ClickFunnels vs. Kajabi: Which is right for you?

This article was originally published in September 2018 by Farheen Gani. The most recent update was in December 2023.

The creator economy is buzzing with tools to help online entrepreneurs turn their knowledge and skills into a business. Kajabi and ClickFunnels are two of those tools: they combine several solutions to help creators easily build, market, and sell digital products.

I've been using all sorts of marketing tools for years now, and I created accounts with both Kajabi and ClickFunnels to test all their features and better understand each one's strengths and weaknesses. Here, I'll break down the pros and cons of each platform and explain how they stack up—to help you decide which is the best for your business.

• Kajabi is better for creating digital products

• ClickFunnels offers more for conversion optimization

• Kajabi is better for email marketing

• Pricing is relatively similar, but ClickFunnels has a slight edge

• Both tools integrate with Zapier

ClickFunnels vs. Kajabi at a glance

ClickFunnels and Kajabi are both powerful platforms with tools to help you start and scale your online business. But when it comes down to it, they have pretty distinct core value propositions:

• Kajabi is 100% built for creating digital products, from courses to coaching programs and communities to podcasts. It has a robust digital content delivery system.

• ClickFunnels is focused more on the marketing and sales side. It'll give you fully automated funnels optimized for conversion to make promoting and selling your digital content easy.

Having said that, ClickFunnels and Kajabi do share many similarities that can make it tougher to pick between the two. So here's a quick rundown of their features—but keep reading for more details about each app and my experience testing them.

Kajabi is better for creating digital products

Both platforms allow you to create digital products, like courses and memberships. But Kajabi supports more product types, including coaching programs, communities, and podcasts, which can help with scaling your business.

Let's start with a product that's shared between them: courses.

Kajabi and ClickFunnels offer a nearly identical course creation workflow: provide general information about the course, and receive a structure with modules and lessons to hit the ground running. Customizing the modules and lessons is straightforward with both tools. You can drip the course to customers over a set period or lock modules to encourage them to complete specific lessons. Both platforms allow you to upload video and audio course materials directly from your device without third-party hosting sites.

But after that, Kajabi takes things up a notch by offering "when, then, if" automation rules in lessons to better manage your students and business. For example, you can set a rule to issue students a certificate or grant them an offer when they complete a lesson. 

And if you want to give your students a more interactive learning experience, Kajabi allows you to hold live video sessions. For instance, you could hold weekly Q&A sessions to discuss the course and answer any questions your students might have. It even lets you record sessions and publish them as lessons.

Kajabi's courses also include assessments with short answer, file upload, and other question types, and you can require a passing grade to advance in the course to help increase student engagement. There's even automatic grading for checkbox and multiple-choice questions. 

These advanced features are all notably lacking from ClickFunnels' courses.

When you're ready to create a recurring revenue system, Kajabi allows you to build subscriptions—you just have to add the course and community to an offer. You can create communities with multiple paywalled access groups that subscribers can only join after purchasing. And you'll get features like circles (Q&A), challenges, live meetup sessions, and broadcasts to manage your community. 

It's a really streamlined process: create a course > create a community > add them to an offer. 

In ClickFunnels, creating a membership program follows a different process. The platform doesn't support communities, so memberships are paywalled pages inside a sales funnel. Setting up the membership funnel is pretty confusing—I spent several hours watching YouTube videos to figure it out. Since ClickFunnels and Kajabi play very well together, I'd argue that it's better to integrate the two, so you can create courses and memberships with Kajabi and then use ClickFunnels for sales.

ClickFunnels offers more for conversion optimization

Once you're done creating your digital products, you need a way to sell them. Both platforms provide sales funnels to help you capture leads and turn them into customers, but ClickFunnels' system is on a whole other level. The reason is obvious: the tool was built for sales.

Creating funnels is similar in both Kajabi and ClickFunnels: start from scratch or select a template, then customize it with a visual drag-and-drop builder. After that, ClickFunnels quickly differentiates itself with powerful funnel workflows, A/B testing, and conditional split paths.

When setting up a funnel in ClickFunnels, you can create variations of every page and then split traffic between them to see which brings in the most sales. You can test everything from design to headlines, copy, images, and CTAs, and then use the results to optimize your offer and improve conversions.

Once you set that up, you can further optimize your funnel with conditional split paths that direct visitors to follow different steps depending on the action they take on your page. For example, you can set a condition to send visitors down a YES path and reward them with a gift, like early access to your course, if they provide their email address. Visitors who do not meet that condition will go down the NO path.

This feature helps you filter customers who pass on to the steps in your funnel. That way, you can target them better with upsells, downsells, and emails, increasing your chances of conversion. Unfortunately, Kajabi is lacking in this aspect, as it doesn't allow any form of funnel testing or optimization. That means there's no way to know why your funnel isn't performing as expected or the specific ways to improve it.

On top of that, ClickFunnels gives you many more funnels on all plans than Kajabi. And if you're also promoting physical products, you'll find ClickFunnels' funnels especially useful, as they enable you to promote several products simultaneously.

Bottom line: if driving the most leads to your offer and converting them to customers is your primary goal, ClickFunnels is your best bet.

Kajabi is better for email marketing

Part of the marketing and sales capability of ClickFunnels and Kajabi is built-in email marketing. In both, you'll find automatic tagging systems, good-looking email templates, and an interactive drag-and-drop builder to make customization easy. But when it comes down to it, Kajabi offers a more streamlined process, making it a better fit for creators.

For example, once you sign up with Kajabi and upload your contact list, you can start sending emails immediately. There's no need for any extra setup or configuration. ClickFunnels is quite the opposite: it requires you to set up a custom domain and SMTP authentication before you can send emails. While this might not be a big deal for experienced marketers, less tech-forward creators might find it complicated.

That said, the most notable difference between ClickFunnels and Kajabi's email marketing is that ClickFunnels limits you to email broadcasts, while Kajabi allows you to send broadcasts and dripped email sequences. You'll find templates for real situations like making a referral, announcing an event, or showcasing your products. You can easily customize each template to your liking, set your schedule, and Kajabi will handle the rest.

You can even use automation rules to make your campaign more powerful. So, you can automate things like "when email is clicked, add a tag and send a single-use coupon." Kajabi also includes thoughtfully-written email copy inside all its templates. You're at liberty to personalize the copy or discard it, but it comes in handy if you want to save time and use tested copy that's proven to convert. 

With ClickFunnels, you don't get email sequences out of the box. The only way to set up a sequence is to trigger a workflow (e.g., an event) and then use delays to connect the different emails as separate steps in your workflow. If that workaround is too complex, you can integrate your favorite email marketing tool, but you'll have to pay extra for it.

Pricing is relatively similar, but ClickFunnels has a slight edge

Neither ClickFunnels nor Kajabi would be considered downright affordable. They're both on the pricier side of marketing software, with starting prices just shy of $150/month. But when you compare the features they offer at different price points, ClickFunnels has the slight edge. 

For instance, Kajabi's basic plan costs $149/month and includes three products (courses, podcasts, and communities), three funnels, and one admin user. Meanwhile, ClickFunnels costs $147/month for the same level and gives you 20 funnels, unlimited products (including courses), and three admin users. Their middle plans are also similar in price, with ClickFunnels having the upper hand with funnels and products.

The pricing gets significantly different in their highest tier, where ClickFunnels charges $297/month and Kajabi $399. You still won't get unlimited funnels or products in Kajabi, but you'll be able to access a custom code editor if you want to customize your emails and pages with CSS styling. Meanwhile, ClickFunnels offers this code editor on all its plans.

There's no clear winner here because they both lack entry-level pricing, but ClickFunnels offers a lot more features for its price.

Both tools integrate with Zapier

Every tool becomes more powerful when you connect it with the rest of your tech stack. And since both Kajabi and ClickFunnels integrate with Zapier, you can connect them to thousands of other apps. This means you can do things like automatically create contact profiles when someone completes a form or create tasks for new purchases. 

Learn more about how to automate Kajabi or how to automate ClickFunnels, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows. 

It's also possible you'll want to use both tools: Kajabi for creating your course and ClickFunnels for promoting it. In that case, you can use Zapier to integrate Kajabi and ClickFunnels.

Kajabi vs. ClickFunnels: Which should you choose?

Go with Kajabi if delivering digital content via courses or communities is your main goal. You'll get all the tools you need to turn your knowledge into income without paying for additional software, and you can promote it well, especially via email marketing. You just won't have access to in-depth conversion optimization features.

Choose ClickFunnels if sales and marketing are your priority and you don't mind using a different tool to deliver digital content. ClickFunnels will give you a robust system to market and sell both digital and physical products.

Related reading:

• ConvertKit vs. ClickFunnels: Which should you use?

• Kajabi vs. Teachable: Which online course platform should you use?

• The best platforms to create and sell online courses

If you spent an hour working on a client project, but no timer was around to track it, did you even do any work? (That's how that saying goes, right?)

As a freelancer, I'm responsible for every aspect of my business, from client work to marketing to record-keeping and admin. I keep detailed records of how long every business task and client project takes me, which helps me price my services accurately and avoid overbooking my schedule. But whether you're a solopreneur like me or a 9-5 office worker, knowing how you spend your time gives you crucial insight into—and control over—where you spend your energy.

Time tracking apps make it easier to record billable hours, streamline your business processes, and improve your personal productivity. The best time trackers have built-in timers but also let you edit or add time manually. Some of these apps even incorporate AI for a hands-off tracking process, so you can focus on deep work and leave the analytics for later.

After several weeks of in-depth testing, I've rounded up the best time tracking apps for individuals and teams so you can choose the app and features that match your work style best.

The best time tracking apps

• Toggl Track for a free time tracking app

• HourStack for integrating with your team's project management software

• Timely for automated time tracking for large teams

• Memtime for simplified automated time tracking

• TrackingTime for visualizing time differently

• RescueTime for reducing distractions

What makes the best time tracking software?

When you know how you spend your time, you can analyze your work trends and make smarter business decisions. Whether you're working solo or in a small team, time tracking software can give you a complete overview of your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly work. 

What do you do with this information? Perhaps most importantly, project time tracking can help you get paid, allowing you to feel confident about your invoices rather than trying to estimate how much time you worked after the fact. If you're part of a team, time tracking can help you answer the question, "What have you been working on this month?"

When evaluating the best time tracking apps, I considered the following criteria: 

• Real-time tracking. Nearly all time tracking apps let you track in real time, meaning they give you a running clock that you launch when you start a task, and that you can pause or stop when you finish. 

• The ability to edit time tracked or manually add time blocks. The best apps let you correct time tracked after the fact, such as if you accidentally leave a timer running while you take off for lunch. You should be able to edit the time log to subtract however many minutes you weren't working. You also want an app that lets you enter a block of time post hoc in case you forget to launch a timer at all. For example, if your phone rings and you jump into a 20-minute consulting call, you might not start a timer, but you do want to log and bill for those hours worked.

• Reporting features. The most powerful time tracking apps offer dashboards and reports that let you break out daily, weekly, or monthly time spent per project, per person, or per client. 

• The ability to create an invoice or export data. Once you aggregate all your time spent on your work, you have to be able to take action on it. All these apps let you either automatically create invoices from the time tracking data stored in the app or export that information into PDFs, CSVs, or Google Sheets to share with the right people.

• Multiple points of access. The best time tracking tools make starting a timer easy and convenient. They have the versatility to let you start a timer from wherever is most convenient to you, whether that's your browser, a desktop app, or your mobile device.  

• Bonus: AI features. Artificial intelligence is automating and simplifying workflows across tools of all industries, and time tracking apps are no exception. I gave special consideration to time trackers that use AI to auto-track your time or use machine learning to automatically assign time blocks to related tasks and projects.

What's not included in this roundup

Here, I focused specifically on finding a time tracker for freelancers, individuals, and small teams. I didn't consider employee monitoring software, which often includes some type of time tracking. I did include two automated tracking tools that monitor users' activities—but the data is for each user's eyes only. With these tools, you choose how much (if any) data to share with your supervisors. If you're looking for more team-focused apps, take a look at Zapier's picks for the best free timesheet software.

Additionally, I haven't included project management, invoicing, or accounting apps that come with an add-on or built-in time tracker. While time-tracking clocks can be very helpful inside these tools, I assume if that's what you need, you're likely shopping for a more robust solution. 

The best time tracking apps at a glance

Best free time tracking app

Toggl Track (Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, Web, and browser extensions)

If you need a time tracker tool but can't pay for one, you should use Toggl Track. In fact, until I found my new favorite timer while researching for this article, Toggl has been a daily part of my freelance workflow. The time tracking tool has a generous free tier of service that gives you access to all its apps (Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, Web, and browser extensions) and includes all the core functionality you'd expect in a time tracking app. 

Toggl Track works so effortlessly primarily because it doesn't ask much of you when you start timing a task. With many time tracking apps, you have to have a client, project, and task entered into your account before the app will let you track time. If you don't, you have to set your task aside for the time being and enter them. With Toggl Track, you can track your time right away, view your tracked time entries in a grid or calendar format, and worry about the details later. 

Additionally, when you use Toggl Track through the Chrome or Firefox browser extension, a Toggl timer button shows up in just about every web app you could imagine, from Google Docs (and other Google apps) to Help Scout. Because you always see the Toggl Track button while you're working, you have a continual reminder to track your time. I also like keeping the desktop app open on my computer, so even if I start a timer from my browser window, the running clock will appear on my Mac's menubar. The easy accessibility from wherever I am makes Toggl's timer one of the most flexible and easiest-to-use tools I've tested—and it's why I've used it regularly for over three years now.

Toggl Track also has some of the most detailed options I've seen in a time tracking app. For example, in the Toggl Track Chrome extension, you can automatically start and stop tracking time based on whether the browser is open or not. It also has excellent idle detection, which helps you maintain high accuracy across your records. When the app detects your computer has been idle but a timer is still running, it offers ways to correct the recorded block of time. That way, if you're interrupted while working and get sucked into a 20-minute conversation, Toggl Track can knock out those 20 minutes from your record. Toggl Track even has a Pomodoro Technique setting, so that you can work for a set amount of time on a project that requires your focus and then take a short break, all with simple stopwatch-like reminders. 

Toggl has also recently upgraded its dashboards and reporting features for even more in-depth data analysis. You can create customized dashboards to see weekly stats or team summaries, and then generate reports filtered by team, tag, or client.

For even more flexibility, use Toggl Track's Zapier integrations to connect Toggl Track with your favorite apps, so you can start new time entries in Toggl Track when calendar events start, add new entries to a spreadsheet, and more.

Who Toggl Track isn't right for: While the free plan is simple and easy to use for basic time tracking and reporting, you'll need to upgrade to Premium if you want granular insights into your work, saved reports, or billable hours. For your money, another app on this list would probably work better for you. And there's no free task management or planning feature, so if you're looking for a way to schedule and track your team's workload, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Toggl Track pricing: Free for up to 5 users; $9/user/month when billed annually for the Starter plan, which includes time rounding, billable rates, saved reports, and more.

Best time tracking app for integrating with your team's project management tool

HourStack (Web, Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge)

If you're looking for a project time tracker that integrates smoothly with your favorite project management tool to help your team both plan and track your time, HourStack is worth exploring.

HourStack is a sleek and easy-to-use combination calendar and time tracker that continues to impress me. The app has native integrations with popular project management tools like Asana, Google Tasks, Trello, Todoist, and even Google Calendar. When you connect to one of these apps, you can view your tasks from a sidebar from within HourStack—and drag and drop them directly into your HourStack calendar to schedule your team's workload. 

And the best part? The integration works both ways, so you can mark tasks completed from HourStack, and they'll update in your project manager. As a productivity tool nerd, I was impressed and excited by this feature.

The power of HourStack is in its simplicity. There's no danger of being overloaded or distracted with complicated settings or interfaces. The Calendar page shows you your planned tasks and lets you schedule and record work time. The Reports page, which is filterable by clients, projects, and labels, displays your scheduled vs. logged hours, along with how many tasks you've completed. And with the browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge, you can quickly add or start tracking project time without needing to input a task or project first. 

If you need to connect HourStack to a tool that isn't supported natively, you can make your own HourStack integrations using Zapier. Connect HourStack to thousands of apps, so you can coordinate your time tracking however it's most useful. Here are a couple of examples.

Who HourStack isn't right for: Those who want a desktop and/or mobile app. HourStack works in your browser and through browser extensions, and while it's very responsive for mobile, some users might feel constrained by the limited points of access.

HourStack pricing: $12/month for one user; $15/user/month for teams.

Best automated time tracker app for teams

Timely (Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox)

The best time tracking apps make it as painless as possible to capture an accurate record of how you're spending your time. What's more painless and accurate than an automated time tracker?

Timely is a time tracking app from Memory AS that makes "Memories" of every software and website you use during the day. Then, whenever it's convenient, you can drag and drop these Memories into their assigned tasks or projects to create a Timesheet. 

If you're a part of an organization, a tool like this might seem a little scary—but Timely isn't an employee surveillance app. All the data it collects is private to you, and only you decide how much to share on your Timesheet. And if you don't want the app to track your activities at any point, you can easily toggle off the app from your menu bar.

The great thing about Timely is how easy it is to start using it. After downloading the desktop app, you'll be prompted to connect to your calendar and/or conferencing tools so that Timely can incorporate your meetings into your work schedule. You can also easily add projects, tasks, and clients and set up your hourly rate for people and projects. 

Then, just let the app work in the background. There's no need to remember to start and stop a timer—just spend a few minutes at the end of the day dragging and dropping activities into their respective projects on your time sheet, and you'll have an accurate and detailed accounting of how you spent your time. 

It even records when you're in a Chrome tab group—which I love, since I use tab groups to organize different projects I'm working on at the same time. This thoughtful Timely feature makes it easy to assign tracked web activity to projects. And the new AI assistant also learns patterns in your time tracking and, after the first day or so, starts making suggestions for categorizing activities as projects.

Timely offers very detailed and customized reports. Easily view unbilled hours and reports for the whole workspace or just a specific project. You can also create report templates for customized views, filtered by clients, projects, people, tags, or teams. Then, when it's time to invoice, Timely connects to QuickBooks to create invoices and push them to QuickBooks Online when they're ready to send. 

And if you like planning ahead, Timely also offers a task planner feature for an additional $5 per month. You can plan out tasks by the assignee or the project. Then, every day, drag and drop your activities into their respective tasks on your Timesheet to compare planned vs. tracked time for each task.

What makes Timely such a great choice for teams is its emphasis on team scheduling and project management. You can click on the People tab to see a dashboard overview of planned vs. logged time, a breakdown by user, and an activities report for the team. Timely makes it easy to see who's at capacity and who's over-scheduled—and you can even filter for missing or overtime hours.

To get the most out of the app, you can integrate Timely with Zapier. Connect Timely to the rest of your tech stack to streamline processes like creating new clients or projects in Timely.

Who Timely isn't right for: Users who don't want an AI tool to track their every move on their computer. Also, if you do a lot of work off-screen, Timely may not be the right fit for you; it's focused primarily on tracking and categorizing computer-based work.

Timely pricing: $9/user/month for the Starter plan (up to 20 projects and 5 users). The Premium plan is $16/user/month for unlimited projects and 50 users.

Best time tracking app for simplified auto-tracking

Memtime (macOS, Windows, Linux)

Memtime (formerly timeBro) is a relatively new automated time tracking tool that has quickly become my new favorite. I may give up my years-long Toggl reliance after spending a few weeks letting Memtime run in the background of my work.

Much like Timely, Memtime is a desktop app that keeps track of your computer activity, so you can categorize it later. No more remembering to start or stop a timer; just visit the app at the end of your workday to review and categorize what you've done.

What I love so much about Memtime is its simplicity. The other auto-tracking tools I tested (including Timely) have so much emphasis on team project management and timesheet creation that it's easy to become overwhelmed. If, like me, you're not collaborating on projects with others or planning to submit detailed timesheets to your supervisor, tools like Timely might be overkill. Memtime's interface is much more minimalist, with a running log of your activity, a space where you can create entries with a click, and an overview of your day's work. There's also a page for project management—where you can add clients and projects manually or import them from your other apps—and a reporting page with your productivity stats. You can also sync Memtime with your calendar to view events alongside captured activities.

To create new time entries in the Timeline view, it's easy to click on the timeline and drag your cursor to adjust the entry's duration. The display is broken down into five-minute intervals (or you can choose a one-minute breakdown if you prefer to be more granular and don't mind scrolling). Alternatively, you can use List view, which lets you drag and drop activities to log new entries. 

One thing to keep in mind is that Memtime only works in a desktop app; no mobile app or web access. And since Memtime uses five-minute intervals by default in the Timeline view, I found the total logged work time to be less precise than Timely. But since I'm just tracking for my personal use, the simplicity of Memtime is worth the sacrifice. 

If you're looking to dip your toe into automated time tracking but don't want to be overwhelmed with team or project management features, I absolutely recommend trying Memtime.

Who Memtime isn't right for: Users who don't want an AI app tracking their computer activities. Also, the tool is a little too minimalist for teams—and if you're looking for multiple integrations or a mobile app, look elsewhere.  

Memtime pricing: $12/user/month (with a 24-month subscription) for the Basic plan, which comes with fully automated time tracking and calendar sync. The Connect plan starts at $18/user/month for project management software integration.

Best time tracking app for visualizing time differently

TrackingTime (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Web, Chrome, Firefox)

TrackingTime is a collaborative time tracking tool that looks different from many other time tracking apps. It represents time in blocks or windows, just as if that working time were an event on your calendar. It's not the only app that lays out your time in this fashion, but it does offer the most opportunities for customization. For example, you can choose between a day, week, month, or team view.

The daily view has the most helpful layout I've seen, showing the full month's calendar on the left (with each day displaying an icon to show the amount of time tracked) and the day you select on the right, color-coded and organized by blocks of tracked time.

TrackingTime also puts more emphasis on planning your time before you start working compared to other apps. For example, you can schedule blocks of time on your calendar for tasks you intend to work on later in the week or for recurring events, like meetings.

The Projects tab is the closest to a traditional project management tool that I've seen, with a sleek and user-friendly interface. It looks similar to an Asana list, where you can view tasks broken down by project, client, priority, or date. Clicking on a task expands a side panel where you can view tracked time, add attachments or subtasks, and set custom fields. If you're looking for a time tracker that doubles as a relatively robust task manager, TrackingTime is worth checking out.

If you'd rather keep your task manager separate, TrackingTime's Chrome extension integrates with several productivity tools, allowing you to start a timer directly from apps like Airtable, Asana, and Notion. Or you can connect TrackingTime to Zapier to help it talk to all the other apps you use. Here are a couple examples to get you started.

Who TrackingTime isn't right for: Users who don't care about time blocking or scheduling specific tasks in advance.

TrackingTime pricing: Free for up to 3 users; $5.75/user/month for the Pro plan for unlimited collaboration, advanced reporting, and team management features. 

Best time tracking app for reducing distractions 

RescueTime (Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, Chrome, Firefox, Brave)

RescueTime is an automatic time tracking app that prioritizes mindfulness, deep work, and reducing distractions throughout your workday. 

To start using RescueTime's (far superior, in my opinion) "Focus" version, you'll first install a small monitoring app on your computer. This software works in the background to observe your computer usage and powers the RescueTime Assistant, "a digital wellness coach."

The Assistant is accessible on your desktop's menubar, taskbar, or system tray, and helps you manage your daily work progress, goals, and reports. For example, it may alert you when you're distracted and multitasking more than normal.

RescueTime's most interesting set of features are designed to help you focus and take on deep work—high-value, mentally-demanding projects. RescueTime refers to this type of work as "Focus Work." You can determine the activities that qualify as Focus Work in your settings and set goals for how much Focus Work you want to complete in a day. 

When you're ready to tackle this kind of deep work, you start a "Focus Session." During this session, RescueTime blocks all websites that you've identified as personal activities (like social media sites or YouTube). It keeps track of how well you're concentrating, and at the end of the session, it will give you a detailed report. 

There's a learning curve with RescueTime. You have to familiarize yourself with all these terms and how RescueTime defines and categorizes certain activities. But once you feel comfortable with the vocabulary and the settings, you won't have to tinker with much else and can immediately dive into your deep work.

This is also the only app in this roundup that does not let you export your hours or automatically create an invoice. RescueTime is for the person who wants to track their hours worked for their own benefit, learning more about their working habits and how to optimize their productivity.

One word of warning: when you sign up for RescueTime, you're given the option to choose your priority ("Focus" or "Analytics"). RescueTime's strengths lie in its focus-friendly features, so if you try it, I recommend choosing Focus when you sign up. I tried Analytics at first, and I wasn't impressed. Going that route, I missed out on the active coaching included in the desktop version of the Focus app. Instead, the desktop app was very minimalist, directing me to a browser dashboard where I could see a list of my activities—but without the easy categorizing and exporting functionality that I found with an app like Timely. 

Also, while RescueTime has recently implemented a new "Timesheets AI" feature that lets you categorize your tracked time into projects, I found it to be a little too clunky for daily use. Maybe after a few updates, RescueTime will become the perfect dual distraction reducer and timesheet log. But for now, it's a great choice for reducing distractions and gamifying focus.

You can do even more with RescueTime by using RescueTime's Zapier Integrations. Zapier can connect RescueTime to all the other apps you use, so you can spend more of your time on that Focus Work.

Who RescueTime isn't right for: Users who want to easily track time for individual projects and tasks.

RescueTime pricing: Free Lite plan for individuals, which doesn't include activity blocking, advanced reporting, goal setting, or offline time entry. RescueTime Premium starts at $12/user/month.

What makes the best time tracker?

The right time tracking app takes the guesswork out of scheduling and accounting for your workday. Easily start and stop timers, add or edit time entries manually, and export or review your data for more accurate invoicing and planning. And you can save even more of your valuable time by automating the data flow between your other apps and your time tracker of choice. That way, you're spending your time where it matters most.

Related reading:

• The best meeting schedulers

• The best AI scheduling assistants

• The best time blocking apps

• Timesheet templates to help you track your time

This article was originally published in September 2018 by Emily Esposito. The most recent update was in December 2023.

It used to take a computer engineering degree and months of work to design a simple app—but not these days. Now, no-code app builders make it easy for even tech newbies to create custom tools for both front-end and back-end processes. You might build an app for your eCommerce store or paid course, for example, or turn your databases into interactive client portals and internal dashboards.

But your custom apps are only as powerful as they are efficient. It's still up to you to be aware of important updates, keep accurate data logs, and stay in touch with the app's users. Thankfully, there's also a no-code way to tell your app to communicate with the rest of your tech stack: Zapier's automated workflows.

In this article, we'll show you four of the best ways to automate your app builder so you can maximize your custom app's effectiveness while saving yourself valuable time.

Table of contents

• Send notifications

• Connect your no-code app with your spreadsheet or database

• Add to your email list

• Back up files

Send notifications

There could be many reasons you might want to send a notification whenever a specified action occurs in your custom app. Whether it's sending follow-up messages to new subscribers or notifying your team of important updates, automation can keep the right people informed without bogging you down with busywork.

Send automated emails

For instance, say your customer-facing app lets users create accounts or make purchases. It's a good idea to send them a follow-up email whenever they take that desired action. 

But managing welcome emails for each new customer or subscriber can quickly get unwieldy—especially as your app becomes more popular. Instead, set up a Zap that sends welcome emails automatically. You'll show new customers great customer service without being glued to your app builder's dashboard.

Or maybe you want an easy way to stay up to date on changes to an app database. You could send time-sensitive notifications to your team for new orders or customers. Or if your staff uses a custom employee portal, it could be useful to send your HR team automated emails whenever there's a new PTO request. These Zaps send custom emails to you or your team whenever a new record is created in your app builder of choice.

Send Slack notifications

If your team lives in Slack instead of email, send those important updates to a Slack channel instead. You may want to notify your customer success team of new subscribers, update your IT team on incoming requests, or make company-wide announcements for new additions to your staff directory. 

No matter your use case, these Zaps can get it done. Whenever a new workflow trigger event is received in Bubble or a new user is registered in Backendless, your chosen Slack channel will receive a custom message.

Connect your no-code app with your spreadsheet or database

Custom apps are powerful tools for a great user experience, but when it comes to data storage, nothing beats a good old-fashioned spreadsheet. For everything you store in a custom app—be it product inventory, work orders, employee data, or customer purchases—you likely want a backup database for that crucial information, as well.

But manually copying and pasting data from one app to another doesn't scale. And as your business grows, it'll become increasingly impossible to stay on top of new entries.

Thankfully, you can effortlessly sync your no-code app builder with your spreadsheet or database of choice using automation.

Connect with Google Sheets

These Zaps automatically copy new record information from Adalo, Bubble, and Glide to a Google Spreadsheet. Whether you're using a Google Sheet as a backup, for data analytics, or as a central hub for further automation, these integrations are a great starting point. 

Or, if you prefer to add new information to a spreadsheet first, these Zaps let you skip manually copying and pasting that data into your app builder. Anytime there's a new spreadsheet row detected in Google Sheets, a new Softr user or Backendless object will be created automatically. 

Connect with Airtable

If you use an Airtable database for storing and managing your business data instead, you can use these automated workflows to keep your Softr or Adalo apps in sync. That way, your data will stay effortlessly consistent and up-to-date across both systems.

Add to your email list

If you use no-code app builders to create customer-facing apps, it's crucial to ensure new app users are consistently added to your customer database. Anytime a customer makes a purchase from your eCommerce store or books an appointment for a service, you'll want to save their information for future marketing or customer service efforts.

But without automation, you'll be stuck manually exporting CSV files or copying and pasting user data from your app builder to Mailchimp. Not only is this process tedious and time-consuming, but it risks letting new users fall through the cracks.

Instead, use one of these Zaps to add or update subscribers in Mailchimp or Flodesk whenever a new account is created in your custom app.

Back up files

Finally, whether your app contains product information, portfolio photos, or instructional videos, it's a good idea to keep a backup of important brand documents in your Google Drive. But uploading files to two apps takes double the time—and forgetting to create manual backups is all too easy.

Thankfully, you can skip the tedium of manual file management by automating your app builder. These Zaps keep you organized by uploading files to a designated folder in Google Drive whenever a new record or trigger event is detected in Adalo, Bubble, and Glide. 

Get more out of your custom apps with automation

No matter how you use no-code app building, it takes a lot of effort and time to manage custom apps. You need to stay aware of important updates like new users or back-end requests. It's also important to keep backups of data and files, whether you're using a database or Google Drive (or both). And if your app is customer-facing, you'll need to copy new user information into your email marketing software to nurture new leads.

Doing all this work manually gets old fast, not to mention wastes all the time you saved by not having to learn to code (well, maybe not all the time, but at least one semester of a computer engineering program, right?). 

Instead, you can use automation to connect your custom apps to the rest of your most-used tools—ensuring up-to-date records and timely responses, minus all the grunt work.

Ready to automate your no-code app? See what you can start building today.