The Best Tech Stack for Remote Working: What High Performance Teams Actually Use

Fully remote or hybrid working is now a firmly entrenched way of working within most organisations and cultures around the world. And yet, so many teams are still cobbling together tools like a duct-taped spaceship, Slack here, Notion there and probably too many meetings in between.

But if you look at the highest-performing distributed teams, the ones that ship fast, stay on the mission and don’t burn out, they’re using the right combinations of tools, for the right types of work, real-time and asynchronous. 

They’re intentional. Integrated. Can you say the same about your environment?

So if you're a team lead or founder asking:

"What tools should we actually use to collaborate better remotely?"

Here’s the playbook.

1. Foundation: Get Real-Time AND Async Right

The best remote teams know: almost nothing needs to happen live.

They separate real-time collaboration (things that are better together, like brainstorming or urgent issues) from asynchronous work (status updates, documentation, progress tracking).

Here’s how to support both:

Real-Time Stack:

• Slack or Microsoft Teams – Chat, channels, quick decisions, emojis.
• Zoom or Google Meet – Live meetings, screen share, breakout rooms.
• Miro – Whiteboarding, strategy mapping, design sprints.

Async Stack:

• Loom – Short async videos to replace meetings.
• Google Docs / Notion – Collaborative writing with comments, tags.
• Briefmatic – Your task inbox from all your tools in one place (more on that below).

2. Project & Task Management: Clarity, Not Chaos

This is where most teams lose the thread. Often too many tools or the wrong tools for the wrong job. Use a project management tool to keep everyone aligned across projects and use task management apps to help individuals and leaders stay on top of ALL their work across all their apps.

What works best:

• Asana – Beautiful UI, simple workflows, great for marketing/product teams.
• Jira – Still best for engineers and technical PMs.
• Briefmatic – Pulls your tasks from Jira, Slack, Gmail, Notion so you focus on what’s actually on your plate.

If your team is always asking “what’s the priority?” you don’t need more meetings, you need better visibility.

3. Documentation: Where Knowledge Lives

Remote teams don’t have hallway conversations. So documentation is your team memory.

Pick one of these and go deep:

• Notion – Flexible, beautiful, perfect for team handbooks, wikis, and OKRs.
• Google Workspace – Fast, simple, still the gold standard for async comments and track changes.
• Confluence – Great for technical teams, integrates well with Jira.

The best teams document decisions, meeting notes, processes - and they do it where everyone can find it later.

4. Access & Security: Invisible but Essential

The more remote you go, the more important it is that security doesn’t slow people down.

• Okta or Azure AD – Single sign-on (SSO), secure access control.
• 1Password or LastPass – Password managers that keep sensitive credentials out of Slack threads.
  
  

If your stack requires 12 logins and everyone’s still using “password123,” start here.

5. The “Secret Weapon” - Briefmatic

Let’s be honest: switching between tools all day is draining.

What Briefmatic does (full disclosure: I’m biased, but also right):

• Pulls in your tasks from email, Slack, Gmail, Figma (and more)
• Shows you everything that needs your attention - in one place
• Helps you block time to do deep work (hello, Scheduler tab)
• Makes async updates visible and trackable (no more lost Slack comments)

For busy team leads and ICs who need clarity, it’s like having a chief of staff in your browser.

Want your team to actually do the work, not just talk about it?
👉 Start your Briefmatic trial and get a clearer view of what’s on your plate.

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