2. Team Communication: Bit.ai

Bit is a great tool for remote teams, as it will bring all of our company documentation, media, files and knowledge to one accessible place.  We can collaborate on interactive digital workplace documents and access all of our digital content from Google Spreadsheets to Airtable Databases.  Also, Bit will allow our team to save and access any type of digital content we add to our documents or workspaces for the purpose of easy re-use.

3. Version Control: BEANSTALK

I feel like BEANSTALK will be a great option for our team, as I believe we will be doing a fair amount of outsourcing, as well as the added functionality BEANSTALK brings by allowing the use of both browser and cloud.  As it is easy to use and can integrate with any messaging or email platforms, I feel like its perfect for us.  BEANSTALK provides excellent encryption, can cater to any team size, and will keep us well informed during deployment with its “release note” feature.

4. Prototyping: Justinmind

Justinmind will likely be the best prototyping tool for us, as it is an all-in-one tool that will help us build wireframes to prototypes without any coding.  Justinmind specializes in building exceptional user experiences, by letting you design from scratch while accessing a huge range of web interactions and mobile gestures.  Ensuring that our designs adapt to fit multiple screen resolutions, prototyping smart forms and data lists without coding, and providing regularly updated UI kits for web and mobile are just some of the ways it will benefit our team.

5. Time Tracking: Hubstaff

This is a very easy to use solution for us, and probably my first choice for our team.  Hubstaff works very well for remote teams as it offers some employee monitoring capabilities, and makes its time tracking apps available for all major platforms which is key to the success of our team.  Many features work online, but this software will also allow us to work offline as well!

6. Project Management: Basecamp

Basecamp is definitely my first choice for a Project Management option for this team.  Its simple, easy to use, easy to understand, and just works.  Not only is it flexible and reasonably priced, but it integrates with a wide variety of other services that will greatly benefit us.  Basecamp has been around since 2004, and has a commanding handle on what it takes to be effective when it comes to remote project management.  The best part of all  is that Teachers and Students can use Basecamp for free!

7. Code Testing: Atom

Aside from having one of the most visually pleasing home pages, Atom is an amazing choice for us.  Atom is to GitHub, what Visual Studio Code is to Microsoft.  While these two options are very similar, Atoms Material UI has taken it one step ahead of Visual Studio Code on the design front.  Atom uses an extension-based approach to almost everything.  I feel that we can live with the slight lag in performance, as we will benefit more from the vast amount of flexibility the plug-ins will allow us.

8. Digital Marketing Analytics: Google Analytics

Being one of the most used saas tools around the world when it comes to remote work, I believe this is the answer for us.  It is a great tool for gaining user insights and performance analysis, boasting features such as; analytics Intelligence, user interaction tracking, data visualization, detailed reporting, and time on site tracking.  Google Analytics is a freemium solution for us, and will even allow our team to examine advertising ROI, social networking site, video, as well as applications running on site.

9.SEO: Google Search Console

Definitely my first choice for our team, Google Search Console will be extremely beneficial to us.  GSC lets us monitor how our website appears on Google search results.  We can see what queries our web pages appear for, and how often people click through to our site.  It will allow us to check that our site is indexing correctly, fix problems and request re-indexing, as well as send alerts when Google has a problem with our site.  I almost forgot to mention, it is completely free to use.  If you have a site, you qualify for an account!

10. Page Speed Testing: Google PageSpeed Insights

This tool will provide us with suggestions to improve LCP, and confirm whether our site passes the Core Web Vitals test.  The provided tools will display the total LCP, FCP, the time to interact, and the full blocking time.  Basically, it will analyze the content of a web page, and then give us numerous suggestions as to how to make the page faster.  It is fast, free, easy to use, and the obvious choice for our new team!