cloudHQ Blog

Categories
Sort By: Most Recent  |  Popular

free email tracker

We Tried 5 Top Productivity Chrome Extensions—These Were Our Favorites

by

 

We love productivity Chrome extensions.

If you didn’t know this, you haven’t looked at our list of over 50+ free productivity extensions for Gmail.

And if you use Gmail, we absolutely recommend trying (at a minimum) the most popular ones from that list:

Multi Email Forward

Multi Email Forward lets you select multiple emails and forward them all at once! You can even select your entire inbox and forward it to a new email with 1 click.

Free Email Tracker Tracking

Free Email Tracker gives you the ability to track who’s read your emails, when they were opened, what links were clicked, and what device was used — all from an easy-to-use dashboard.

Meeting Scheduler

Meeting Scheduler is the easiest way to let people choose a time to meet with you! Click the “Calendar” icon from a new email to create a link to your calendar. Recipients can click the link to select an available time from your calendar.

5 New Productivity Chrome Extensions We Tested and Found Helpful

Of course, there are extensions outside Gmail-specific tools that are great at helping you get more done in less time.

We went hunting to see which ones showed up on the various “best of” blogs lately. We tried a bunch of new ones and ended up finding five that we really liked.

5. Wikiwand

Wikiwand takes the functional Wikipedia page you’ve come to expect and turns it into something beautiful.

Wikipedia goes from this:

To this:

I have to be honest, it didn’t help my productivity that much. Mostly, it just made the experience of using Wikipedia more enjoyable.

It did make things easier to find—and that left navigation bar is much nicer with this extension activated.

If you use Wikipedia often, this one is worth an add.

4. News Feed Eradicator for Facebook

At number four is News Feed Eradicator for Facebook, which was easily the most painful experiment of the bunch.

I don’t use the Facebook News Feed that much. But I do like to scroll through the latest updates when I log on. Seeing this blank screen instead was jarring.

It was fantastic for productivity—don’t get me wrong. I have a number of tasks I do on Facebook every day that are directly related to my job.

I kept the extension installed in case I wanted to use it later. But I admit I disabled it.

I guess I’m a bigger Facebook addict that I thought.

3. StayFocusd

Number three is StayFocusd, another productivity extension that was cruel and unforgiving and… I have to admit… very effective.

It let me list sites I know I use to procrastinate, then limit the time I spend on those sites.

I don’t know what you do when you’re wasting time, but I read the news. Yahoo. Google News. The BBC.

If I’m really procrastinating, I go down the YouTube rabbit hole and I never come back.

To keep me on track, StayFocusd asked me what sites I wanted to restrict. Then it asked how much time I wanted to allow myself.

I decided to be harsh on myself and listed 5 minutes.

Two hours later, when I started procrastinating, a little red countdown timer appeared in the upper corner counting down the 5 minutes I had on a restricted site.

Not wanting to use all my allotted time, I got back to work—quickly.

2. OneTab

Our second favorite new productivity extension is OneTab, which collapses all of your open tabs into ONE tab with just a click.

Quick: How many tabs do you have open right now?

I have 26!

It’s crazy that I operate with that many pages open, but such are my habits.

You know when I found it most helpful? When I was streaming music or a video and someone called me via Skype, which happens to me several times a week.

In the past, I’d frantically search for the Pandora or YouTube tab trying to turn it off so I could answer the call. I almost never found it in time.

No longer. Now I can get to any tab in a blink.

1. Noisli

The new Chrome extension we loved most in these tests was Noisli—a creative little ambient noise generator you can control from within Chrome.

Noisli plays a variety of ambient sounds. What I love is the ability to mix them together to create my own ideal ambient soundtrack.

When I first opened Noisli, it immediately started playing the sound of rain with a mix of thunder.

I was in love from the start. There are also the sounds of waves, river water, leaves blowing, a train on railroad tracks, and a variety of other options.

Dial them up or down as you like, then control them from the Chrome extension in the top right of your browser.

If you’re curious, my custom mix is Rain (high) + Thunder (low) + Fireplace (medium) + Coffee Shop (low).

Other Productivity Chrome Extensions from Our Library of Tools

In addition to the extensions we highlighted above, we invite you to look over our full list of productivity Chrome extensions.

Almost all are 100% free to anyone using Gmail or an email hosted by G Suite.

New Feature Freebie: Email Read Receipt Tracking

by

 

Imagine that you’ve just emailed the biggest contract that you’ve ever sent in your entire career, and you know that you’ll eventually need to negotiate it.

Maybe it’s a sales quote, a partnership, or a job application– whatever it is, wouldn’t you love to know how many times your email was opened, or how many times your links were clicked on?

That kind of information is key because it gives you a very strong indication of the bargaining chip that you’ll have to work with.

Our Free Email Tracker extension does just that, and boasts 5 different types of notification options the instant someone reads your email:

  1. SMS text
  2. Email message
  3. Desktop notification
  4. Link tracking
  5. Reminders if your email was not read after 48 hours

Here’s a quick movie to show how it works with our newest features:

So what’s new?

Now, you can:

  1. Remove your link tracking from any links within your email, but still know when your email was opened.
    • This option is usually used when you’re just trying to understand if there’s any interest in what you’re sending. It’s very preliminary, like a cold email outreach.
  2. Control your notifications per email that you send.
    1. SMS text notifications
      • This is excellent for time-sensitive contracts that you want to close. Once you get a read receipt text notification, you should call that person immediately and start your closing process.
    2. Email notifications
      • This is usually a good option to keep a record when something is not urgent, but you would still like to know if someone read your email. Marketing people and team managers like to use this functionality.

Let’s get you started with a guide so that you can see how easy it is track your emails.

Step 1. Install Free Email Tracker

Free Email Tracker is very easy for you to install on your Chrome browser.

All you need to do, is to navigate to the Google Chrome Store, and click on the “+ ADD TO CHROME” button.

Once you’ve installed your Free Email Tracker, your Gmail will automatically refresh. Once it does, you’ll notice a new icon on the bottom of your emails when you hit the compose button. That’s your new Free Email Tracker icon.

Step 2. Email or SMS notification read receipts

When you click on your new icon in your “compose email” window, you’ll be able to enable email and/or SMS notifications for each email that you send. Select whichever method is most convenient for you, and you’ll be notified right away when your sent emails are opened.

For example, if you just wanted to send yourself an SMS notification when your email has been read, just click on the Free Email Tracker icon when composing your email, and then select “Send me SMS notification” before sending your email. A green check mark will appear next to it to ensure that’s the option you chose.

Your phone number can be added, or modified, through the “Manage settings…” selection, as seen above.

Step 3. Desktop notification read receipts

In the event that you would like a desktop notification, just click on “Manage Settings…“, which will bring you to your dashboard.

Simply select the first notification option called “Desktop notifications each time my email is opened“, and you will get a desktop notification the instant your email is opened.

Under Settings, you can also set desktop, email, or SMS notifications by default, as well as reminders when an email has gone unopened for 48 hours.

Step 4. Disable link tracking

All tracked emails that contain links automatically track whether the email recipient clicked on any of your links. To disable it, just make sure the next to “Link tracking enabled” isn’t selected.

With these new Email Tracker features, you can enjoy even more customization to meet your specific email tracking, read receipt needs. Try it today!

 

 

3 New (Free) Email Tracking Upgrades

by

 

Last week, we got a lot of feedback from our users after releasing Free Email Tracker, a tool that lets you track who opens your emails, and when- for free.

Because of that feedback, we decided to focus on making it even more polished with 3 new features:

  1. Notifications: SMS Text, Desktop, and Email Notifications for multiple recipients in an email
  2. Reminders if your email has not been opened after 48hrs
  3. Multiple Recipient Tracking (e.g. Cc, Bcc)

Here’s a quick look at each new feature:

1. Desktop, Email & SMS Notifications

Let’s say you send an extremely important email.

You’d love to be notified the moment your recipient opens the message.

Using Free Email Tracker, if your email is opened while you’re on your computer, you’ll get an instant Chrome desktop notification:

You’ll also get an email notification for good measure:

And if you’re not on your computer, we’ve got you covered there too.  That’s where SMS and email notifications come in.

When enabled, SMS and email notifications will send you a text message or email as soon as your message is opened by a recipient- for each recipient in your email.

That way, you’ll know immediately when your email has been opened, whether you’re at your computer or not.

To enable SMS or email notifications, select the box in the Email Tracker dashboard:

Dashboard Access Free Email Tracker
 

Free Email tracker

2. Reminders for Unopened Emails

With reminders, you can receive a notification if your email goes unopened for 48 hours.

This gives you a heads up that the email you’re using might not be active. Or, it might be that the person is on vacation or in training for a week.

Whatever the case, a notification will alert you that your message has NOT been received.

That, in turn, allows you to email someone else or try a different method (text, phone call, etc.).

3. Multiple Recipient Tracking (e.g. Cc, Bcc)

This is a big feature that a lot of you were asking for, and took us quote a bit of development time to release!

When sending an email to multiple email addresses, or to one address with additional recipients in the Cc or Bcc lines, you can now track all of their email open activities.

Premium Version Available for Under $5/mo

Free Email Tracker is 100% free to use for anyone using Gmail.

By default, we’ll include a link at the bottom of all tracked emails that lets people know you’re using our tracker.

If you prefer to remove the notification, you can simply delete the link manually before sending your email.

Or for just $4.90/mo, you can upgrade to the premium version of the tool, and we’ll remove the link for you by default.

 

Footer

cloudHQ
Specializing in email organization and team workflows, cloudHQ is an easy cloud app synchronization service used for backup, app integrations, and implementation of team workflows. To date, we sync over 5 million files a day, and service clients like HP, Gartner, and Uber.
GET STARTED
Gmail Label Share & Chat
A free tool designed to help incoming emails get answered by teams. It is the only effective way to write comments about emails before any team member replies to the email sender. This is an excellent tool for sales, customer service, or project management.
GET STARTED
Categories
All Categories
Subscribe