Top 25 Most Popular Apps For Freelancers

When it comes to software and apps to help them work, it's no surprise freelancers like free apps. But here's another non-surprise from a recent survey of about 100 freelancers conducted by BestVendor: They also love cloud computing. Most of the top 25 most popular apps from that survey were a combination of both. [caption id="attachment_14937" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Check out BestVendor's infographic to learn more about the survey and see a few of their respondents' also-rans that didn't make the main list this time. Click the image to see the full size version."][/caption] In its survey due to be released Thursday, the New York-based start-up site aimed at connecting users with useful apps and software found not one of the top 25 most popular apps cited by the freelancers was a desktop-only program. Some of them have desktop components, but most were cloud-based apps or sites. So what were the pack leaders? Well, if this were the Olympics, let's just say Google would be the medal leader in this event, with seven of the top 25 apps the freelancers cited — more than a quarter of the list, including two of the top three. Yet, it didn't take the No. 1 spot: File sharing and backup service Dropbox bested the big G for that honor. Beyond file storage and email, several of the tools were directly related to the business aspects of working as a freelancer, with software to help manage projects, invoices, billing and budgeting. To be fair, the demographics of the relatively small sample of freelancers surveyed about what software and apps they use to manage their work was skewed a bit: 44 percent worked in technology and digital media according to BestVendor. Also, primarily they were based in the U.S. and Europe. But this is still an interesting list of ideas for freelancers looking to add primarily free tools to their tool box. In rank order, the 25 most popular freelancer tools are: Dropbox Google Analytics Gmail Evernote Google Apps/Docs Google Calendar Mailchimp Hootsuite iCloud Basecamp Mint Google Voice Quickbooks FreshBooks Prezi Pivotal Tracker Balsamiq Mockups Google Alerts GoToMeeting BatchBook Joomla Posterous Skitch Django Google AdWords OK, so some of them are more web tools than apps, but that's a solid list of software freelancers everywhere should at least check out. YOUR TURN: What go-to app is missing from this list? Which of these apps could you not function without? Tell us in the comments or tweet us @10000words.

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Top 25 Most Popular Apps For Freelancers

Meranda Adams

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Meranda Adams