If you're an executive assistant, you don't need to tell us how diverse your responsibilities are. You're not only serving as a facilitator for your boss—planning their travel, managing their schedule, and generally making things happen—you’re also the first line of defense against endless emails, requests for meetings, and irritating offers.

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to help you save time, organize your work, and manage your responsibilities more effectively. To help you out, we've compiled a list of the 17 best executive assistant tools, software, and apps.

In a hurry? Here's a quick overview of the 17 best executive assistant apps

1. Microsoft OneNote: Best free note-taking app.
2. Notion: For when you need a note taker that does a lot more.
3. EverNote: The most feature-rich note taker, but it's pricey.
4. Otter.ai: For when you need easy, affordable automated transcriptions.
5. Rev: For when you need high-quality transcriptions, including human transcriptions.
6. Microsoft Teams: Best meeting software for Microsoft 365 users.
7. Google Meet: Best conferencing software for Google Workspace users.
8. Zoom: Top-rated stand-alone conferencing software. 
9. Vimcal: A calendar scheduling tool designed for executive assistants.
10. Google Calendar: Simple, free calendar.
11. Outlook Calendar: Microsoft’s free scheduling tool.
12. Calendly: Put an end to scheduling conflicts.
13. EA Buddy: The scheduling tool for executive assistants.
14. Todoist: Manage all your tasks in one place.
15. Asana: Manage your tasks for free.
16. TripIt!: Makes travel planning a breeze.
17. Magical: Saves hours every week with no-code automation.

The 17 best executive assistant tools

​These apps will help you do everything from managing your executive's busy schedule to preparing for business travel.

For taking notes

1. Microsoft OneNote

If you're looking for a free note-taking app, Microsoft's OneNote is one of the most popular choices. Beyond its traditional note-taking functionality, the app has lots of additional features like scanning, image-to-text conversion, audio note-taking, and even equation solving. It has a web app, as well as apps for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android.

The free version gets you 5GB of space, but if your company has a Microsoft 365 subscription, then you'll get 1TB of storage. 

2. Notion

Notion serves multiple functions, including note taking, task management, and knowledge management. If you want a note-taking app that doubles as a task manager, then it's worth considering. It comes with collaboration features and lots of Notion templates to help you get started. The free plan offers file uploads for up to 5MB, seven days page history (which is pretty limited), collaborative workspaces and up to 10 guest collaborators, and options to export your whole workspace.

The paid plans start at $8 to $10 per month, depending on whether you pay annually or monthly. Unfortunately, Notion misses out on some key features that EverNote and OneNote offer, including OCR (image recognition), email forwarding, scanning, and audio recording. So unless you have a use for its hybrid functionality, you'll get more value out of a dedicated note-taking app.

3. EverNote

EverNote used to be the app for note taking, but in recent years, its pricing has gone up, and the free plan is quite restrictive (you'll get a measly 60MB of new storage each month with a 25MB file upload limit). Still, in terms of overall functionality, EverNote remains a category leader. 

EverNote's premium plan costs $7.99/month (or $69.99/year), and it takes your storage up to 10GB/month with a max file size limit of 200MB. It also offers version history for your notes, annotation for PDFs, a slideshow mode, scanning features, and even an option to digitize your business cards. 

If EverNote Premium is within your budget, it's an excellent, feature-rich platform to consider. Otherwise, OneNote offers better value for money. 

For transcriptions 

4. Otter.ai

If you need to transcribe your boss's meetings or interviews, Otter.ai is an excellent, cost-effective choice if you don't want to pay for human transcription services. The app's transcription speed is fast, and it supports all your major video conferencing tools, like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom. The generous free plan gets you 300 transcription minutes per month, with a limit of 30 minutes per conversation.

5. Rev

If you want a very reliable, accurate transcription service (and are willing to pay a premium for it), then Rev is easily your best bet. The app consistently delivers high-quality results, and its flexible pricing plans cater to both consistent users and sporadic ones. The subscription plan starts at $29.99 a month for unlimited Zoom transcriptions, and up to 20 hours of audio transcriptions.

The pay-as-you-go plans start at 25 cents per minute for auto-transcriptions, but if you want to use the human transcription services, you're looking at $1.50 per minute. 

For meetings

​If you need to set up meetings for your boss, it's usually best to check what software suite your organization is using, like Microsoft 365 or GSuite. With this in mind, the most popular software for conducting virtual meetings are…

6. Microsoft Teams

Teams comes included with Microsoft 365 subscriptions and Windows 11, and if your organization is using it, it's the most convenient tool for hosting meetings. It's super customizable, comes with an integrated chat, and has lots of nifty features like live captioning and the option to muffle background noise. You can also record your meetings (they'll be uploaded to Sharepoint) for later.

Teams has a web app, iOS and Android apps, and desktop apps for Windows and Mac. 

7. Google Meet

Google Meet is to GSuite users what Teams is to Microsoft 365 users, although the generous free version is available to anyone with a Gmail account. The free version lacks meeting recordings, polls, noise cancellation, and other advanced features, but it lets you host meetings with up to 100 members for up to 60 minutes. 

If your company is using Google Workspace, though, then you'll have access to the paid plan, which comes with many advanced features, like break-out rooms and recordings. It also saves your recordings directly to your GDrive. Another plus of Google Meet (or, drawback, depending on your preferences) is that it works entirely from your browser.

9. Zoom

Zoom doesn't really need an introduction, but we couldn't leave it out of this list. Zoom came seemingly out of nowhere during the pandemic and dominated the video conferencing market for a while. The app is very stable, especially for large meetings, and it comes with a generous free plan. The free version lets you add up to 100 participants, and meetings are capped at 40 minutes per session, or 30 hours for one-on-one sessions.

Zoom's paid tiers unlock a lot more features, including cloud storage to record your meetings, premium apps (like Advanced Breakouts, or Kahoot for gamification), better limits, advanced support, and location-based toll dial-ins.

If you need a stand-alone meeting software, Zoom remains one of the best choices. 

For scheduling

9. Vimcal

Billed as "the only calendar designed for executive assistants," Maestro by Vimcal is a tool that is sure to make scheduling meetings for your boss less of a headache. The app makes it 90% faster to find available times in the schedule, simplifies hold time blocks, automatically detects time zones, and even lets you manage multiple exec calendars in separate tabs so you can keep things looking organized and clutter-free. (No more clicking through multiple color blocks on a random Tuesday two weeks from now to try to find the one you're looking for!) The product is currently in beta, but you can get early access today. Plans for Vimcal start at $15/month.

10. Google Calendar

Google Calendar is an excellent free scheduling software for executive assistants. Your boss can delegate their executive's calendar to you, letting you create and edit their events, manage their schedule, respond to invitations on their behalf, and receive any notifications about changes to their calendar. 

Google Calendar also supports syncing with other calendars, and even with task management apps like Trello. You can also create and manage to-do lists, set reminders, and color-code your entries. If your company uses Google Workspace, it's a no-brainer for scheduling.

11. Outlook Calendar

Outlook is Microsoft's webmail service, and the sleek, minimalistic application comes with a calendar feature. Outlook Calendar has all the essential scheduling and organization features, plus options to adjust your calendar view and create categories or set reminders. 

If your organization uses Microsoft 365, then you can also see your colleagues' calendars and book meetings with them accordingly. Like Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar is free to anyone with an Outlook account.

12. Calendly

When people have different, conflicting schedules, finding a time that suits everyone is a scheduling nightmare. Fortunately, Calendly makes this easy by letting people choose a time that's convenient for them and booking their meeting with your boss. The free plan is fairly limited, only allowing you to connect one calendar and schedule events of up to 15 minutes, but it does the job and lets you book unlimited meetings. 

If you want better support and features like email reminders, follow-ups, group events, and unlimited event types, you can upgrade to the Essentials plan for just $8. Calendly's Professional plan unlocks a lot more features, but you probably won't need them—the Essentials plan is usually enough for executive assistants. 

13. EA Buddy

EA Buddy is a cool scheduling app built specifically for executive assistants. It helps you collect people's availability without having to manually create tables, and it automatically formats invites to each person's time zone. Its automatic scheduling features help you identify the best slots when you're dealing with people from different time zones, and you can create and save calendar holds.

EA Buddy offers a limited free plan, and the Pro tier costs $9/month. 

For managing tasks

14. Todoist

If you're looking for an app to manage everyday tasks, create to-do lists, and just improve your productivity overall, then Todoist is one of the best choices for an administrative assistant. It has a pretty generous free plan, but the Pro version ($5/month or $48/year) also offers great value for money. The Pro plan unlocks a lot of features beyond simple to-do lists and task tracking, like calendar sync, email forwarding, reminders, productivity reports, an activity log, and much more.

Despite how feature-rich the platform is, its interface is super welcoming and really easy to navigate, so you never feel overwhelmed. You can add and manage your tasks, and Todoist will automatically reschedule them for you if you miss their deadlines. It also supports integrations with lots of different apps, which is really helpful. For example, you can integrate with Outlook or Gmail to turn any email into a to-do.

15. Asana

Asana is something of a hybrid between a simple task management app and a project management solution. While it's more powerful than the former, it lacks features like resource management and expense tracking that are typical of other project management tools. 

For an executive or personal assistant, though, Asana is an excellent tool for boosting productivity with a really generous free version. You can use it to track and manage tasks, assign responsibilities, create timelines, and more.

For travel planning

16. TripIt!

Travel coordination and planning get hectic when things start to converge. The airline is emailing you about a delay, the hotel is reminding you about your booking, and—oh shoot—did you finish registering for the car service? 

TripIt! is designed to help you navigate the chaos by connecting with your email account(s), or in this case your boss's accounts, to consolidate and summarize important travel information. It strips off all the extra information and only gives you details like confirmation numbers, departure times and airport terminals, important phone numbers, and so on.

Bonus: for saving time in your daily work

17. Magical 

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Magical is a free, no-code task automation app that helps you save time by automating boring, repetitive work. The app’s combination of text expansion and automatic data transfer features helps you automate tasks like sending emails, filling out forms, sending out “thank you” messages, and lots more.

With Magical, you can create and save fully customized text templates that you can use whenever you need to, wherever you’re working. For example, let’s say you regularly send people email follow-ups to confirm their meetings with your boss. You can save a template like:

“Hey {First Name},

Just wanted to confirm that you’re still available at {time} for your meeting with {your boss’s name}, on {day}. I’ve sent you an invite on {meeting platform}. {Your boss’s name} is looking forward to meeting you.

Regards,

{Your Name}”

You can save this template in Magical with a short name like “fp”. Then, whenever you need to write a message like this, just type “//” and let the text expander take over.

Similarly, if you find yourself copy-pasting a lot of data across your open tabs, Magical can help you out with this, too. The app helps you teleport data across your open tabs—all you need to do is have the source and destination tabs open, and Magical takes care of the rest.

The best part? Not only is Magical free, but it requires zero setup. Just add it to Chrome and get started right away.

Find what you were looking for?

We hope you found some of these apps helpful! Executive assistant work is super diverse and juggling so many responsibilities gets tough, but using the right tools can really help you out. 

P.S. Don't be shy about asking your boss to put these apps on the company tab. After all, they'll help you be more productive and make your boss’s life easier!