Clocking out early, working from the couch, taking a vacation without asking for permission — these are just a few of the many perks of freelancing. But despite the freedom, it’s not all fun and games.
As a freelancer, you’re responsible for all parts of your business: bookkeeping, contracts, admin, and more. And if you’re not strategic, freelancing can quickly turn from a creative’s dream to a nightmare of unanswered emails and double-booked meetings.
Luckily, today’s technology can make managing a freelance business much easier. With the right AI tools in your corner, you can find even more freelancing success.
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From scheduling platforms to website builders, AI-powered technology can save you time, money, and sanity as a freelancer. Below, learn about some popular AI tools you may want to adopt for your business.
Using Grammarly is like having a built-in writing assistant to proofread, edit, and spell-check your work — essentially ensuring your words make sense. (Because we’ve all written something on too little sleep.) Grammarly also helps define your tone and style and helps clarify the message you’re trying to get across.
Cost: Grammarly’s free plan may be all you need for casual writing. It includes spelling and grammar checks as well as analyzing your tone. The Pro plan is a step up: It costs $12 per month (after a free trial) and includes everything in the free plan, plus sentence rewriting, tone adjustment, personalized suggestions, plagiarism detection, and more.
Best for: This tool is great for writing emails, sales copy, blog posts, social media captions — or anything else — while running your freelance business.
Note: Grammarly is now part of Superhuman, a productivity suite that includes email, scheduling, and integration tools all in one place.
You can think of Notion like a digital notebook, but with AI superpowers. It’s an all-in-one workspace freelancers can use to track and manage projects, take notes, assign tasks, and so much more. For example, you can use Notion’s AI to build and store client guides, create proposals, build workflows, or collaborate with team members.
Cost: Notion has several tiers to choose from, including a free option. The free option only includes an AI trial, but it still gives you access to Notion forms, sites, mail, calendar, and databases. To access Notion’s AI Agent (for complex tasks using information from connected apps), you’ll have to pay $20 per month.
Best for: Notion is a hub for all things project management with a range of robust capabilities. If you’re looking to pare down your tech stack, it could be a good solution.
There’s nothing worse than sending dozens of back-and-forth emails to set up a meeting, only to have to reschedule at the last minute. And when you’re a freelancer, you’re likely scheduling lots of meetings with different clients, contractors, and collaborators.
Enter Calendly, a scheduling software that lets you connect your personal calendar and customize your availability so clients can easily book an appointment. All you have to do is share your meeting link.
Cost: Calendly offers a free plan that limits you to one meeting type. If you have multiple types of bookings — say you need to offer both a 30-minute discovery call and a two-hour onboarding call — you’ll need to pay for the Standard Plan, which costs $10 per month.
Best for: This is for anyone who meets with clients or customers and needs an efficient scheduling system.
ChatGPT is a generative AI tool with seemingly endless applications. You can treat it like a virtual assistant and assign it a range of tasks and to-do’s. Use ChatGPT to help you brainstorm content topics, write outlines, collect research, draft emails, prioritize tasks, summarize notes, and more.
Cost: ChatGPT offers a free plan with limited messaging, features, and memory. Upgrade to Plus for $20 per month for expanded messaging and capacity, plus advanced reasoning and the ability to create custom GPTs. (There’s also a Pro plan for full access to ChatGPT’s capabilities — but it’ll cost you $200 per month.)
Best for: Freelancers of all kinds who want to save time on daily tasks like writing, brainstorming, researching, and more can benefit from this tool.
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In today’s online world, customers may think twice before hiring you if you don’t have a professional-looking website. But don’t let that scare you; you don’t need to know a thing about coding to create a presentable website.
Squarespace AI helps you build a custom website for whatever type of freelance business you run. It’ll use your input on brand personality, content, and website sections to create suggestions for your custom site, which you can refine for a totally personalized website.
Cost: Squarespace’s Blueprint AI Builder is free, but you have to pay for a Squarespace account to publish your site. Prices range from $16 to $99 per month, depending on the features you need.
Best for: This tool is an excellent solution for any freelancer who wants a professional website ASAP, but doesn’t want to design and build it themselves.
Accounting and invoicing are often overlooked parts of freelancing. But without them, you can’t get paid. FreshBooks is an accounting and invoicing software with time tracking, expense management, financial reporting, and other bookkeeping tools to keep your business finances clean and organized. Rather than keeping a spreadsheet of expenses, proposals in random Google Drive folders, and a handwritten sheet of your hours worked, you can consolidate it all in FreshBooks.
Though it’s primarily focused on automation, FreshBooks does integrate with third-party tools to harness the power of AI for expense tracking, invoicing, and more.
Cost: FreshBooks recommends two plan options for Freelancers: Lite, which typically costs $21 per month, and Plus, which typically costs $38 per month. (Both Lite and Plus plans were on sale for 60% off at the time of writing, and both offer a free trial.) One of the primary differences between these two plans is the number of clients they let you invoice: Lite limits you to five, while Plus gives you 50.
Best for: Freelancers who need to send proposals and invoices with minimal effort will get a lot out of FreshBooks, especially those who care about having a polished look. It’s also a great tool for anyone who wants a less chaotic way to document business finances.
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While AI can drastically speed up your workflows, save you money, and expand your capacity as a freelancer, you can run into trouble when you don’t use it responsibly.
Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind when using AI as a freelancer.
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Don’t use AI to create deliverables. If your job is to write blogs, design logos, or produce social media content, your clients are paying you for your skills. Don’t use AI to create those deliverables and charge your clients as if you did the work yourself. After all, your clients are paying you to do the work. If they wanted it done by AI, they wouldn’t have hired you.
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Be cautious when sharing personal or confidential information with AI tools. Conversations with AI can be used to train large language models (LLMs), putting your (or your clients’) private information at risk.
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Only use reputable tools. Be careful when using an AI tool without a proven track record. Reputable tools will publish their privacy policies, offer customer support, and fix security issues when they arise.
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Verify AI outputs. If you’ve used AI in the past, you’re probably aware that it can make mistakes. Don’t take AI outputs at their word — make sure to verify any facts, figures, and statistics, and check for plagiarism.
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AI tools are an incredible resource for freelancers in any industry. But they should enhance your career, not take its place.
Use AI for busy work and administrative tasks that take up valuable time but don’t need your deep thought process. And save the highly skilled, creative tasks for yourself — your work needs you and your human brain.
