Productivity services that are worth subscribing to

Everyone wants to be productive. And to be productive, we need the right set of tools. Those tools include software or online services that can help us become more efficient at work. However, those tools come at a cost through subscriptions. While we prefer those that are free, some services are worth paying monthly or yearly. Here are subscription-based productivity services that can help you with your daily tasks.

Office 365

Starting with the most popular, Microsoft Office 365 is a suite of applications that includes Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint Outlook, Publisher, Access. It also includes services such as 1TB OneDrive cloud storage and the use of Skype for business. Here are the prices and included apps of each plan:

If you don’t need the other apps and cloud storage, you may opt to purchase the Office Home & Student 2019, which includes Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint only for a one time fee of PHP 6,999USD 119INR 10,111EUR 114CNY 869.

Grammarly

Grammarly is a web-based writing assistant service that allows users to create better, error-free documents and posts. It marks grammatical errors, misplaced or missing punctuation marks, passive sentences, and overly used words. Grammarly also provides users with suggestions and replacements for those errors that could be easily applied with one click. It also shows you the overall score of your composition based on correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery.

Grammarly offers a free service, which only checks for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Paying for the premium subscription unlocks other features for correctness, clarity, engagement, delivery, as well as checking for plagiarism. The Business plan, on the other hand, allows more than three users on the account and has additional features such as the inclusion of an admin panel, centralized billing, team usage statistics, and priority email support.

The premium plan costs USD 11.66PHP 684INR 988EUR 11CNY 85 a month, while the business plan costs USD 12.50PHP 734INR 1,059EUR 12CNY 91 a month. Grammarly bills you annually.

Cloud Storage

If you need to access files across multiple devices, extra storage, or have multiple people working on the same project, then you’re going to need cloud storage. While most cloud storage providers offer its users with free storage, subscribing to a premium plan grants users access to more storage allocation, syncing features, and file sharing. Some cloud storage services such as Google Drive and Microsoft One Drive also integrate other apps included in their suites such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google’s G Suite. Here are the yearly subscription prices of three popular cloud storage providers:

Google Drive offers the most storage for free out of the three, followed by OneDrive, then Dropbox. Google Drive also has the most available plans, offering cloud storage from 100GB to 30TB. Microsoft OneDrive also offers 100GB cloud storage, although it’s more expensive compared to Google Drive. OneDrive’s Personal plan grants users offline access to Office 365, and the Home plan allows access to up to 6 users, effectively granting users 6TB of cloud storage. Lastly, Dropbox is offering 2GB free cloud storage, 2TB for their Dropbox Plus plan, and 3TB for the Dropbox Professional plan. While Dropbox doesn’t have a suite of apps like the other two, it makes up for with a host of features such as file recovery, Dropbox rewind, and folder sharing.

Adobe Creative Cloud

The Adobe Creative Cloud is a suite of apps and services designed for photography, design, video, web, UX, and more. The whole suite includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, AcrobatPro, Dimension, InCopy, Spark, Capture, Comp, Lightroom/Lightroom Classic, Bridge, Photoshop Fix, Premiere Pro, Audition, After Effects, Character Animator, Media Encoder, Animate, Premiere Rush, Fuse, Aero, Substance, XD, Dreamweaver, Fresco, and Capture.

Adobe’s apps have support for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and some of their apps have mobile ports so you can work on your android devices as well. Adobe is offering a lot of plans designed to suit each person’s needs. Pricing can be found here:

Individual Plans

Business Plans

They also have variable plans for students, teachers, schools, and universities, which you may check out here.

Slack

Slack is a team management and collaboration software that allows team members to communicate with each other instantly, send files, and photos in an easy to use interface. You can create channels, integrate other apps such as Google Drive and Office 365, and have one on one voice and video calls with other teammates. Slack is a great tool for remote teams as they can communicate and coordinate with each other in real-time. Slack offers a free service, with additional features unlocked by getting the Standard and Plus subscription plans. Here are the prices of each plan per month:

Every plan also includes the features of the plan it succeeds.

QuickBooks

Freelancers, small to medium enterprises, and the like, would benefit from the subscription-based accounting software QuickBooks. Users can track their cash flow, create and send invoices, and manage taxes from their Windows PC, Mac, and mobile phones. They offer three paid subscription plans and a 30-day trial, so you can find out whether or not their service is for you. Here are the prices and features of each plan:

Like Slack, each plan also includes the features of the plan it succeeds.

And there’s our list of subscription-based services that will give you a boost in productivity. What other subscription-based services do you use to work better? Let us know in the comments below!