Figure 1. source

Free software is the most attractive software. However, when we want quality and convenience, sometimes it’s inevitable to pay for it. Software developers have to make money, and some choose to do that by selling their products. Instead of looking for free alternatives that don’t deliver the same results, it’s wiser to pay the small price and get the ultimate experience.

Educators and students, however, need affordable solutions that deliver great results. They don’t have any money to waste. When they are ready to pay for software, they have to get extreme value for their money.

Students need software to write a research paper, classify research sources, make presentations, and plan their schedule. Educators mostly need software for planning, distributing tasks, and making presentations.

Let’s get into the specifics. We’ll list cheap software options that both students and educators will benefit from.

Best Cheap Software for Students and Teachers

1. Labii

Labii is an electronic lab notebook, trusted by researchers and university professors. If you don’t know how to write a good research paper, this is where you start. If you already know how to handle the research paper format, but you need a tool that helps you organize, manage, and interpret your research data, this is the one.

Labii is intended for storing and managing valuable data, so it guarantees security to its users through SSL encryption.

The Start package costs $120 per year. That seems like a lot of money, but keep in mind that Labii is for advanced researchers and scientists, who need 100% reliability. There’s no free or cheaper tool to substitute this one. Look at it this way: it’s actually $10 per month. Suddenly, the price doesn’t seem expensive.
If you’re just a high-school/college student or teacher, you won’t need to rely on such sophisticated software.

2. Trello

Trello is a project management app that works well for individual projects, but for teamwork as well. It’s a tool that lets you create boards for different projects. You’ll plan each step and move the tasks throughout the boards. If you invite people to share the board, you can distribute tasks and watch how everyone makes progress.

A student who hires writing helper can use Trello to watch them how they work on the research, writing, and editing stage. They will observe the changes in the documents attached, so they will keep pace with the progress. A teacher can use Trello to assign research paper topics and remind their students about the due date.

Trello has a free version, which is perfectly suitable for students. Those who need advanced features will still pay an affordable price: only $9.99 per month for the Premium plan.

3. Dropbox

Students and professors store plenty of documents. They have projects, reading material, and data from research. In addition, they want to keep thousands of personal photos without suffocating their computers. They need a tool that helps them organize all these files on the cloud.

Dropbox is great for collaboration, too. You can share files with specific users, so you can work together on a project. Students can submit projects via Dropbox, so they will avoid uploading large files in an email message that might get lost in a busy inbox.

Dropbox is perfect! There’s a free plan that’s okay for personal use to some extent. Those who want to upgrade will pay a price of $9.99 for the Plus and $16.58 per month for the Professional plan.

4. Hemingway Editor

This tool makes writing easier for students and grading easier for professor. It’s a writing app that will make your style bold and clear, just like Hemingway’s. It will warn you about long sentences, complex phrases, and words that have simpler alternatives.

Gone are the days when academic writing was supposed to be “advanced” and unreadable. Today, it’s all about clarity of the message. This tool helps students to achieve it and professors to verify it.

The desktop app is available for Windows and Mac. It’ costs $19.99 (one-time payment). There’s a lite version that’s available online for free.

Are You Using the Right Software?

Being a student is no longer about reading hefty books and writing papers by hand. Technology makes things easier today, but it also makes you more effective. When there’s a program for something, it would be a shame not to use it.

All tools we listed above are quite affordable. If you need them and you can invest in them, don’t hesitate. Both teachers and students become more productive when they start using the right tools for the right purpose.

Some of these tools have free versions, which are perfectly good for a start. You can test them before you go for the full-featured pricing plan.

BIO: Ray Campbell is a writer who used to hate writing. Since he started planning his projects and using different tools to make his work easier, he fell in love with the process. Today, Ray relies on freelance writing gigs to finance his trips around the world.