The 11 best software tools for teachers in 2023

If you're an educator, you know you're more than just a teacher. You're a cheerleader, a caretaker, and a mentor. As online teaching has become more popular, you've likely also had to become tech support, an online instructor, and a digital content creator.

You have enough on your plate. The last thing you should have to worry about is sorting through the heap of software options to find the best tools. That’s why we’ve made this list of ten tools that can help k-12 teachers working online, in person, or in a hybrid learning environment.

These software options are intended to make teachers' lives easier by streamlining everyday tasks, so you can focus on doing what you do best: making magic in the classroom.

What is teacher software?

Teacher software is any online app, tool, or service designed to support educators. There are five main types of teacher software.

• Learning management systems serve as a central hub for teachers to store and share documents with fellow teachers, families, or their educational institutions.
• Student information systems, or SIS tools, collect and store individual students’ data, so teachers can track student progress and measure student performance.
• Classroom management software helps teachers create lesson plans and boost classroom engagement.
• Assessment software allows teachers to create and grade exams online
• Worksheet makers give educators the tools they need to create custom homework assignments, handouts, or other worksheets online.

The 11 best online tools for teachers

There are a lot of software tools available to teachers, each with its own unique features and pricing. In this post, we’ll go over the best options in each category, with a key focus on affordability, versatility, and ease of use.

1. Paperform for creating self-grading quizzes, student intake forms, and scheduling sheets

Pricing: Essentials plan starts at $20/month

Paperform may have started as a form builder, but it’s grown into a whole lot more than that. Educators can use our digital suite of tools to create engaging quizzes that grade themselves, schedule meetings with students, parents, and fellow teachers, collect new student information, or poll their classes. With our intuitive and powerful no-code editor, your options are truly limitless.

To create a Paperform quiz, snag one of our 650+ unique templates or create your own in seconds. Click anywhere in your form to add one of our 25+ question types, including Matrix fields, Open Text, and Ranking.

Our vast array of field types makes it easy to diversify your assessment methods beyond the standard multiple-choice options. You could even create a virtual escape room to assess your class and keep them entertained at the same time.

Once you’ve created your quiz (and customised it to the nines) you can set your own scoring conditions right from the editor, or make use of our advanced calculations to grade entire quizzes in real time. Conditional logic makes it easy to direct students to unique success pages based on their scores or the answers they give.

Paperform integrates with over 3,000 of your favourite apps to automate everyday processes. You could connect your Paperform quizzes with your SIS tool of choice to automatically update student information, or integrate with your LMS to share overall class performance with your supervisors.

Need a way to schedule PTA meetings or 1:1 student sessions? Paperform has your back. With our dedicated calendar field, you can create scheduling forms that sync up with your calendar automatically.

No more double booking or getting stuck in an endless scheduling email chain. Just connect your form to Google Calendar, let respondents select a time that works for them, and have an automatic email sent to both parties confirming the meeting. Done and done.

2. Canva for making custom worksheets and homework assignments

Pricing: free (like, really free).

Canva is a free, no-code design tool that can be used as a worksheet maker. Canva offers a range of resources created specifically for teachers, including sample lesson plans, worksheets, homework assignments, and quizzes. To get access to these tools and templates for free, all you have to do is sign up for Canva for Educators using your school email address.

Whether you start with a template or create your own, making custom worksheets is easy with Canva’s easy-to-use drag-and-drop style editor. Add text boxes, images, charts and more, all in a few clicks.

Canva integrates with loads of other digital learning tools. Connect with Wizer to add interactive content to your digital worksheets, or integrate with your LMS of choice to keep all of your resources accessible and organised.

3. KutaWorks for creating custom math and science courses

Pricing: free to create a course, $1/student enrolled student.

KutaWorks is a course-building software designed specifically for math and science teachers. It’s ideal for teachers working primarily online who need a way to create engaging STEM courses at the middle and high school levels.

KutaWorks is a highly scalable digital tool—use it to create a few worksheets or to map out your entire course. Each online course has a unique key, which students use to access and work through their assignments from any device. Teachers can update and assign work at any time, so you can pace out course materials as you see fit.

KutaWorks desktop software gives STEM teachers the advanced features they need to create even high-level math and science worksheets, lesson plans, or homework assignments.

It also helps teachers stay connected with their students during remote learning. As they progress through the online courses, students can flag questions or problems that challenge them so teachers know how to help.

The best part? KutaWorks can help teachers work up to 60% faster with their unique auto-grading feature, which calculates individual grades and class averages.

→ Looking for a self-grading quiz for your class? This multiple choice template uses advanced calculations to grade exams for you.

4. Google Classroom for a collaborative central hub that plays nicely with the G-Suite

Pricing: free and available to anyone with a Google account. For more storage, paid plans start at $3/student/year.

Google Classroom is one of the most popular online tools for teachers, and for good reason. It’s free for anyone with a Google account, easy to use, and connects seamlessly with the G-suite.

Google Classroom isn’t a standalone LMS, nor is it a complete SIS or course management system. It’s more like a Google Drive made specifically for educators.

Google Classroom is a central hub where teachers and students can access shared resources and connect all of the Google tools they use every day (like Docs, Sheets, or Google Calendar). And because it’s a part of G-Suite, most people (parents, teachers, and students alike) will already be familiar with how to use it.

5. Classcraft for gamifying lesson plans

Pricing: free for individual teachers, premium plan is available for $120/year for larger institutions.

Classcraft is a classroom management tool designed by teachers, for teachers. The concept is simple and brilliant: encourage students to excel in the classroom using the motivational principles of games.

It’s an idea that works, especially for elementary and middle school teachers operating online or in a hybrid learning environment. After East Paulding Middle School started using Classcraft, they noticed an 80% drop in discipline referrals and a serious boost in student engagement.

With Classcraft, students progress through their lessons as if they were completing a quest in a video game. They can collect coins, EXP, and gems for completing tasks or demonstrating excellent behaviour. The better they do in school, the more features they unveil in the game, like developing unique avatars or gaining access to special side quests.

If you teach middle school, you already know how much your students love games like Roblox or Minecraft. With Classcraft, you can harness that interest and use it to motivate them about learning. Pretty cunning plan, if you ask us.

6. Schoology for PowerSchool users looking for a learning management system

Pricing: $10/month for educators using PowerSchool Unified Classroom

Schoology is the learning management system supported by PowerSchool, one of the most popular Student Information Systems around. Together, they offer a complete LMS and SIS system for educators to gather and store all necessary data.

PowerSchool Unified Classroom is a tool mostly purchased by educational institutions rather than individual teachers. But with 90/100 top school districts in North America already using PowerSchool, the chances are pretty high that your school already supports this software.

If that’s the case and you’re in search of a powerful LMS to work with it, Schoology is a fantastic option. It goes beyond standard LMS features like syncing grades and updating class rosters by integrating with PowerSchool’s SIS and analysis features. This means you can track student progress, engage with parents, and even offer professional development opportunities for fellow teachers using the same tool.

7. Kahoot! for making quizzes fun

Pricing: limited free plan is available, paid plans start at $3/teacher/month

Kahoot! is an assessment software that does the impossible: making tests fun. Teachers can create quizzes on any subject in any language and share them with students as a group or individually (though as the name implies, they’re much more fun as a team).

Kahoot! is a great tool for k-12 teachers looking for a way to connect their class and assess group understanding of a subject. Let’s say you’re teaching World History to middle schoolers. You could create a group Kahoot! quiz and let your students answer each question from their own device, either in class or via video conferencing.

After each question, Kahoot! reveals the correct answer and how many people selected it. Answers remain anonymous, so teachers can assess class comprehension without singling out individual students.

Thanks to its gamification features, like fun graphics, countdown timers, and sound effects, a Kahoot! quiz feels more like a team game than a test. It’s an excellent way to ease exam anxiety, boost classroom engagement, and review materials—all while bringing some more fun into the classroom.

8. Prezi for making stylish lecture presentations and visual aids

Pricing: limited free plan is available, but the more popular Educators Pro plan is $5/month.

Prezi is a no-code presentation software with video editing and design capabilities. It’s a great PowerPoint alternative for teachers who don’t use Microsoft Office, or for those looking for a cloud-based option.

Prezi is easy to use, without skimping on the customisation options you need to create engaging lecture presentations. And with its video and design features, you can record, edit, and embed instructional videos or create unique infographics for your presentations, all from one place.

Prezi is a great resource for students, too. Switch up the standard tests and essays by having students give a Prezi presentation on a subject, or work in small groups to teach sections to their fellow students. You’ll get a break from lecturing, and they’ll gain public speaking skills while they learn. After all, peer-to-peer instruction has been proven to be highly effective at encouraging a deeper level of comprehension of a given subject.

9. WeTransfer for sharing large files

Pricing: free for files up to 2GB a month, paid plans with more storage start at $12/month

WeTransfer isn’t specifically designed for educators, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable as teaching software. For sharing large documents and files, WeTransfer is hard to beat.

With countless homework assignments, class materials, and reports to keep track of, teachers need file-sharing software that can handle it all. WeTransfer is just the thing. It’s particularly helpful for educators looking to share materials amongst themselves, like lesson plans or activity sheets. It’s also great for teachers looking to share student work with parents in preparation for a PTA meeting.

10. Learnidy for educator-designed lesson planning

Pricing: join the Beta waitlist for free

Learnidy is another teacher software designed by teachers, for teachers. This lesson planning and sharing tool is still in the Beta development phase, which means you can sign up for a free trial at no charge.

Learnidy’s mission is to give educators the tools they need to create engaging lesson plans from anywhere and share those plans with a social network of fellow teachers. This lesson planner comes with a solid selection of premade templates, built-in teaching management and facilitation tools, and powerful data analysis baked in.

Learnidy prioritizes active learning in the classroom. Their lesson templates help teachers teach classes that are sequenced, active, focused and explicit, so students stay engaged and connected to the material.

Teachers know what tools they really need. That’s what makes Learnidy so unique: it’s not just another LMS or SIS tool. It’s a software being actively developed by the very people intending to use it.

11.  SendPulse Course Builder for creating, marketing and selling online courses

Pricing: free for 1 course with 1GB of file storage, $21 per month with 15GB storage and monetization option.

SendPulse’s course builder is designed as an extension to a marketing automation platform for businesses and entrepreneurs looking to monetize their expertise. Teachers and tutors can easily create their own online course incorporating various media formats like pictures, videos, infographics, quizzes etc.

The platform also provides a handy CRM that can help manage student data as well as templates for course completion certificates.

For tutors and teachers looking to monetize their knowledge there is a wide variety of tools for marketing an online course. Users can create landing pages for their online courses, generate leads with subscription forms and keep in touch with their students by means of email, SMS or their preferred messenger chatbot (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Telegram).

Supercharge your classroom with Paperform

Educators don’t just teach us— they help us understand our world, ourselves, and each other. They bring out the best in us. We think they deserve the best in return.

When it comes to choosing teacher software, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the vast array of classroom management, student information, and worksheet-making tools.

Instead of getting lost in the sea of options, dip your toe into online teaching software with an easy-to-use, versatile tool like Paperform. You can create beautiful self-grading quizzes, smart booking forms, classroom surveys and more, all from our intuitive, doc-style editor. Give it a go today with our 14-day free trial, and let Paperform bring some more ease into your classroom.