Apps that help me deliver my work as a freelancer in India
SaaS apps and tools for freelancing that I use to run my solo freelance practice and deliver work internationally from India.
Introduction
Being a freelancer doesn’t mean you can run without some systems in place. Here are some of the tools/apps I have been using ever since I started freelancing. These are tools that support me in delivering client work using Glide, Pipedrive, Zapier, Make, Tableau, etc.
Disclosure: all the links mentioned in this article are affiliate links. It means that if you sign up for these services after clicking these links, I get a % commission from the company when you become their paid customers, at no additional cost to you. Additionally, you sometimes get additional benefits (like extended trials, discounts, support, etc.) when you sign up using my links.
Tools I need to deliver my work as a freelancer
Capturing data for my business
- Google Sheets: recording income (invoices and payments – your CA will love you for this)
- Airtable: powers my affiliate directory built using Glide
- Glide: my directory of all tools I am an affiliate partner with
Automating parts of my freelance work
- Zapier: connecting my Stripe purchases to my income spreadsheet
- Make: connecting my lead sources to my Pipedrive account
- Bardeen: connecting platforms that don’t readily integrate with Zapier/Make
Sales tools to help me capture leads, close sales, and deliver projects
- Pipedrive: to keep track of all my prospects, customers, and projects
- Surfe: to connect my LinkedIn with Pipedrive
- Calendly: for paid discovery calls
- Topmate: for paid discovery calls from prospects in India (still new)
- Fireflies: to auto-record my meetings and generate notes
- Clay: to keep up with friends’ social updates
- Folk: to re-engage with my Glide template buyers
Tools to help me accept cross-border payments
- Refrens: to create invoices
- Stripe: to sell my Glide templates, and sometimes book discovery calls for clients who don’t use Paypal
- Paypal: for affiliate payments and to collect discovery call fees
- Gumroad: to sell my digital products (solutions, How-To articles, automation playbooks)
- Mulya: to accept payments into a virtual US account and only pay 1% in fees
- ICICI Forex Trade account: to accept the majority of my client payments
Other tools that play an important role in my freelance practice
- Coupler: to backup my Pipedrive account, and transform my Google Sheets workbooks
- Notion: composing all my blog posts, and sometimes social media posts
- Coda: to host my paid digital products
- WordPress: hosting my website (massive shoutout to my friend Deepak who takes care of the technical stuff)
- Rebrandly: to create handy links (useful to share Calendly booking pages, affiliate links, resources).
- Porkbun: for domain registrations, free branded email forwarding
- Canva: to create graphics for my blog posts
- Pika.style: to capture beautiful screenshots
- Figma: to create more graphics for my projects
- Tally Forms: for asynchronous commitment-free Glide consultations
- Testimonial: to collect client testimonials
- Krisp: for noise cancelation on my calls
- ahrefs, semrush, whatsmyserp: for SEO
Freelancing platforms to get projects
- Upwork: I started freelancing on Upwork
- PeoplePerHour: I used PPH sparingly and got a few gigs, but no longer active here
- Fiverr: Same as PPH
Summary
I did not plan on using these tools on day 1. I picked them based on the problems I encountered every day in my freelance work. Your journey should be the same, but the goal of this article was to highlight different aspects of freelancing and the systems you need to run your freelance business without losing your mind.