37 Trending Productivity Tool Businesses [2024]

Updated: November 10th, 2023
Start A Productivity Tool

In today’s fast-paced world, where time is money, productivity tools have become indispensable. These software solutions are designed to help individuals and businesses streamline and enhance work efficiency.

If you are interested in starting a business in this field, you need to identify a specific productivity challenge faced by your target audience. It could be anything from project management to time tracking.

Once you have identified the challenge, you need to develop a user-friendly software solution that addresses this challenge, focusing on simplicity and effectiveness. It is essential to keep the user experience in mind while designing the software.

Once your solution is ready, you need to market it effectively by highlighting its benefits and offering a free trial to attract potential users. By following these steps, you can be successful in the productivity software market.

Looking for some examples of a productivity tool?

Interested in case studies of a successful productivity tool? Check out our full list of success stories.

1. Asana

Work anytime, anywhere with Asana. Keep remote and distributed teams, and your entire organization, focused on their goals, projects, and tasks with Asana.

Where they're located: Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Website traffic: 50.1M/month

2. Setapp

Setapp is a large collection of powerful Mac apps available by subscription. Sign up and get full access to top software right away. Explore, discover, enjoy.

Where they're located: Kyiv, Ukraine
Current team size: 70
Website traffic: 2.25M/month

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Learn more about starting a productivity tool:

Where to start?

-> How much does it cost to start a productivity tool?
-> Pros and cons of a productivity tool

Need inspiration?

-> Other productivity tool success stories
-> Marketing ideas for a productivity tool

Other resources

-> Productivity tool tips

4. RescueTime: Automatic Time-Tracking Software

Only 10% of people say they feel “in control” of how they spend their time. RescueTime is the world’s most powerful time management software. Start your free 14-day trial today.'

Website traffic: 1.67M/month

5. Hubstaff

Simple yet powerful employee work tracker with screenshots, timesheets, billing, in-depth reports, and more. Understand productivity issues and act on them.

How much they make: $6M/year
Where they're located: Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Current team size: 54
Website traffic: 2.64M/month

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How We Grew Our Time Tracking App To 10,000 Paying Customers

Hubstaff grew its time tracking app to 10,000 paying customers and $6 million in annual recurring revenue by solving a real problem in the market without any big incumbents, using SEO tactics and a differentiated product with proof of work features that answered the need for owners and managers to know how long development tasks should take, manage back-office tasks, and track remote team or freelancers' work.

About
Jared started Hubstaff over 10 years ago
Revenue
Jared grew the business to $500K/month
Read by 6,109 founders

6. Notion VIP

Notion is bursting with hidden gems and a jam-packed roadmap. Don’t miss major updates, expert tips, templates, add-ons and much more. Bolster your Notion savvy. Be a Notion VIP.

7. CIOReview

CIOReview is a leading print magazine that bridges the gap between enterprise IT vendors & buyers. As a knowledge network, CIOReview offers a range of in-depth CIO/CXO articles, whitepapers, latest Enterprise Technology News to help CIOs & IT leaders make the right decisions

Website traffic: 90K/month

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8. Tactiq

Tactiq is a browser extension that automatically saves live captures in Zoom and Google Meet to your Google Drive, Quip, Notion or other platforms. Get live captions directly from Google Meet to your Google Drive. Add notes during the Google Meet and Zoom meetings Capture valuable meeting insights & share them throughout your organization. Tactiq makes sure everything that you can access to everything that was discussed during the meetings: transcript, chat, decisions, action items. Tactiq extension captures these insights and can easily be accessed through our knowledge traceability platform. All-in-one solution for meeting notes, summaries and knowledge management. Share insights, capture video highlights, and store meeting notes for synchronous communication.

Where they're located: Sydney NSW, Australia
Current team size: 5
Website traffic: 160K/month

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9. Routine

Routine is your centralized place to collect, organize and act upon your professional and personal tasks.

Where they're located: Paris, France
How much did it cost to start: $10K
Current team size: 7

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How We're Building A Super Fast Productivity App & Got Into YC

Routine is a pre-revenue productivity app start-up founded by Julien Quintard, leveraging natural language processing to create a super-fast console-based platform combining tasks, notes, and time with automation, receiving positive feedback and currently focusing on refining the MVP before launching.

About
Julien started Routine over 2 years ago
Revenue
Julien grew the business to $0/month
Costs
It cost Julien $10000 to start the business
Read by 2,680 founders

10. Vermeer Corporation

Vermeer Corporation is a global manufacturer of industrial and agricultural machines. From skid loaders to hay balers, we find a need and build a solution.

Where they're located: Downtown Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Website traffic: 170K/month

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11. Contapp

More than just a business card scanner. The smarter and more convenient way of digitally managing business cards, whilst helping reduce paper waste.

Where they're located: London, UK
Current team size: 1

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12. Productivity Inc

Look no further than Productivity Inc. for your metal working equipment needs. Shop here for the best metal working supplies in the Midwest.

13. DisplayBuddy

Control brightness, contrast and volume of your external displays from your Mac menu bar.

How much they make: $18K/year
Where they're located: Singapore
How much did it cost to start: $100
Current team size: 2

I Launched A Mac App With Zero Advertising [800+ Customers In First 8 Months]

An iOS engineer based in Singapore created DisplayBuddy, a Mac app that allows users to control external displays from their menu bar, which has now reached an average MRR of $600 and garnered 900 happy customers and 6,000+ users on SetApp.

About
Siddharth started DisplayBuddy about 3 years ago
Revenue
Siddharth grew the business to $1.5K/month
Costs
It cost Siddharth $100 to start the business
Read by 2,252 founders

14. Gagesite

15. WritePhobia

Helps you set writing goals and stick to them.

How much they make: $360/year
Where they're located: New York, NY, USA
How much did it cost to start: $50
Current team size: 0

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I Built An App That Punishes Writers If They Don't Write

Burak Kanber created WritePhobia, an app that motivates writers to write regularly by punishing them for not meeting their word count goals, which has gained a usership of a few dozen users in public beta and has found success through word-of-mouth marketing.

About
Burak started WritePhobia almost 3 years ago
Revenue
Burak grew the business to $30/month
Costs
It cost Burak $50 to start the business
Read by 2,376 founders

16. Paced Email

How much they make:
Where they're located: London, UK
How much did it cost to start: $0
Current team size: 1

17. Rize

Rize is an intelligent time tracker that improves your focus and helps you build better work habits.

How much they make:
Website traffic: 80K/month

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18. Qwaiting

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How much they make: $792K/year
Where they're located: Elkhart, IN, USA
Current team size: 50

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Launching A $790K/Year Queue Management System [From Singapore]

Singapore-based Qwaiting's cloud-based queue management software helps businesses manage customer queues, reduce wait times, increase productivity and improve visitor experience. With average monthly revenue of $66k, Qwaiting has attracted 500+ clients and specialises in data analytics reporting, customer feedback support and centralised management.

About
Rohit started Qwaiting about 5 years ago
Revenue
Rohit grew the business to $66K/month
Read by 2,944 founders

19. Pull Reminders: Pull request reminders for Slack & GitHub

Dev teams at 1,000+ companies like Pivotal, Instacart, and WeWork use Pull Reminders to stay on top of code reviews and ship faster.

How much they make:

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20. COING

Creators of Clockify, Pumble, and Plaky. We build great ideas, what's yours?

Where they're located: Palo Alto, CA, USA
How much did it cost to start: $3K
Current team size: 200

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21. ProgressBar

ProgressBar shows you how much of your day has passed, so you can make time for what matters.

Where they're located: London, UK
Current team size: 1

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How I Built A Productivity Taskbar App That Shows Your Day and Year Progress

ProgressBar, a Windows taskbar app designed to show your day and year progress, generated sales beyond the founder's wildest expectations and won Product of the Day on ProductHunt after just one day of its launch.

About
Apurva started ProgressBar over 2 years ago
Revenue
Apurva grew the business to $0/month
Read by 1,656 founders

22. eWebinar

Provide rich, engaging and automated webinars using a combination of pre-recorded video, real-time interactions and live chat. Scale your time today.

How much they make: $600K/year
Where they're located: Vancouver, BC, Canada
How much did it cost to start: $500K
Current team size: 0

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How A Non-Technical Founder Bootstrapped A $50K/Month Automated Webinar Platform

Melissa Kwan, CEO of eWebinar, discusses how she identified the pain point of running the same webinar over and over again, leading her to build an automated webinar solution, with a current MRR of $50k and a focus on word-of-mouth marketing.

About
Melissa started eWebinar almost 5 years ago
Revenue
Melissa grew the business to $50K/month
Costs
It cost Melissa $500000 to start the business
Read by 2,792 founders

23. Llama Life

Say goodbye to never-ending lists, and hello to daily bliss 🎉

Where they're located: Melbourne VIC, Australia
Current team size: 2

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24. QQ Labs

Gain valuable time in your life. Turn your phone into a minimalist phone and reduce your screen time.

How much they make: $120K/year
Where they're located: München, Nemecko
How much did it cost to start: $100
Current team size: 1

I Created An App To Reduce Screen Time & It Just Hit $20K MRR

Minimalist Phone, a phone app that helps people prioritize their mental health by discouraging screen time, generated $20,000 monthly revenue from an initial investment of $3,100, with an estimated total of 500,000 downloads on Google Play soon.

About
Martin started QQ Labs about 3 years ago
Revenue
Martin grew the business to $10K/month
Costs
It cost Martin $100 to start the business
Read by 4,638 founders

25. Planndu

A task manager that helps you get things done and build good habits. Use Planndu to take notes, make checklists lists, improve focus and get more productive.

How much they make: $8.4K/year
Where they're located: Lisbon, Portugal
How much did it cost to start: $300
Current team size: 2

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62 Days And $300: How We Built An App That Helps Increase Productivity

Planndu is a productivity app that offers a focus timer, task prioritization, and note-taking features to help users manage their time; the company's revenue from subscriptions has grown by a commendable 24% month-over-month with 851 new users joining last month, proving its success.

About
Yarik started Planndu over 1 year ago
Revenue
Yarik grew the business to $700/month
Costs
It cost Yarik $300 to start the business
Read by 1,886 founders

26. Bloomy Lab

Bloomy Lab focuses on digital vision of your company: UI/UX design, web development, mobile app development, unique branding, logo design, and all visual marketing tools. The most qualified and extremely talanted team will help you market your business! Get a 10% discount for your first order now!

How much they make: $480K/year
Where they're located: Kyiv, Ukraine
Current team size: 19

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On Starting A Web And App Development Studio Coming From The Real Estate Industry

Bloomy Lab, a web and app development studio, shares insights on how they developed their virtual staging platform Tantify and their process of launching new products without any ads, resulting in 40,000 downloads and $1,000 monthly revenue, as well as their plans for future expansion.

About
Aleksandr started Bloomy Lab over 4 years ago
Revenue
Aleksandr grew the business to $40K/month
Read by 6,105 founders

27. Omnifia

One workplace hub with all your favourite apps. Discover all your workplace updates in one glance. Search across all your apps with one query.

Where they're located: London, UK
Current team size: 3

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28. FocusTask

Where they're located: Bratislava, Slovakia
How much did it cost to start: $1K
Current team size: 0

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29. Finale To Do

Finale To Do is a minimalistic yet powerful task manager, planner, and reminder. It is a flexible tool to help you organize work, life, studies, hobbies, grocery lists, or anything you can throw at it.

How much they make: $48K/year
Where they're located: Boston
How much did it cost to start: $0
Current team size: 2

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How We Achieved 500% User Growth In Our First Month [Task Management App]

Finale To Do is a mobile task management app that offers a highly customizable and aesthetically pleasing experience, boasting a $4,000/month net and gaining a 500% increase in users in its first month.

About
Grant started Finale To Do almost 2 years ago
Revenue
Grant grew the business to $4K/month
Read by 1,937 founders

31. ClickUp

Our mission is to make the world more productive. To do this, we built one app to replace them all - Tasks, Docs, Goals, and Chat.

How much they make:
Where they're located: San Francisco, California, USA
Current team size: 800
Website traffic: 16M/month

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32. TIMEFLIP

Time tracking made tangible

How much they make: $600K/year
Where they're located: Poznań, Польша
How much did it cost to start: $130K
Current team size: 5

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Inventing A Gadget To Help You Track Your Time

TimeFlip, an IoT device that assists with personal time management and productivity control, has sold over 5,000 units globally, with half of the sales coming from North America, and has plans to expand into Walmart, Best Buy, and Home Depot in the near future.

About
Pavel started TIMEFLIP over 7 years ago
Revenue
Pavel grew the business to $50K/month
Costs
It cost Pavel $130000 to start the business
Read by 5,210 founders

33. BeforeSunset

BeforeSunset is a simple, flexible yet powerful time tracking and budget management software that gives actionable insights.

How much did it cost to start: $250K
Current team size: 16

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34. WorkTrek

Optimize your operations and improve service delivery with a single cloud CMMS platform that unifies field service, asset management and maintenance management.

How much they make:
Where they're located: Zagreb, Hrvatska
How much did it cost to start: $10K
Current team size: 8

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35. OneTap

How much they make:
Where they're located: Baltimore, MD, USA
How much did it cost to start: $0
Current team size: 1

36. KTool

KTool is the ultimate Kindle tool. It lets you send web articles to Kindle: blog posts, Hacker News discussions, newsletters and many more.

How much they make: $12K/year
Where they're located: Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 1

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Building A $1K MRR Kindle Productivity Tool To Limit Screen Times

"Read about the journey of KTool, a productivity tool for Kindle owners, as its founder Daniel Nguyen shares how he built the business, reached $1,000 in monthly recurring revenue, and utilized various strategies such as building in public, ASO, and engineering as marketing to attract and retain customers."

About
Daniel started KTool about 2 years ago
Revenue
Daniel grew the business to $1K/month
Costs
It cost Daniel $500 to start the business
Read by 1,167 founders

37. Chaser

Where they're located: San Francisco, CA, USA
How much did it cost to start: $75K
Current team size: 4

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