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Finding the right tools can be demanding, especially with limited time, money, and resources. But, worry no more! That’s why we’re here to help you!
What Tools Do You Need to Grow a Startup?
We’re sure that you’re already aware of how necessary business tools for startups are. But, the tricky part is how to know what you exactly need? Where to start when you’re at the very beginning? How to define when to go for free tools, and how to define the cost-effectiveness of the ones that are paid?
These are all very important questions, and they might make the situation look a bit overwhelming. That’s when good organization and planning come in!
First and foremost, you need to create a good structure. Depending on the fact what your startup does, you should divide business tools into a couple of categories.
For instance:
- productivity tools
- marketing and designer tools
- data analytic tools
- A/B testing tools
Of course, your list doesn’t need to be structured in the same way, but this could be a useful example and a good starting point. You can also add automation tools for a better customer experience.
To help you even more, we prepared a list of business tools for startups (divided into the categories mentioned above). Let’s check it out!
Best Productivity Tools
The only way to build a strong and successful startup is by being productive. Raising the bar both for you and your employees is essential in order to reach goals. However, this can be tricky especially now when the majority of companies are working in a hybrid model. Some employees think that their productivity level is higher when they’re in the office, while others think that working from home helps them organize better. Either way, there are certain tools that can make your life easier.
Notion
If you’re looking for a platform that can organize all your working activities, then you should definitely check Notion. Notion helps you to blend all your workflow into an all-in-one workspace.
The team collaboration and scheduling becomes much easier, and what furthermore facilitates your organizational process are various templates. Of course, you can create your own workflows, complicated or simpler ones, but templates could be a good place to start.
Asana
Another great business tool for startups is Asana. This project management tool will help you to easily create and assign tasks so that everything goes according to the plan. It’s especially convenient for startups, so if you want to improve your team communication, make sure to check it out.
Another great news is that you can try it out completely free, because its Basic pricing plan is meant for individuals or small businesses that just started their journey. If you find it enough, you can forever stay on that model without the need to upgrade to a paid version!
Trello
One of the business tools for startups that you must have heard of is Trello. Trello is also a project management tool that powers both small and enterprise size teams. You can set deadlines, assign tasks, and create boards in order to break down each step of the process and communicate it better with your team members.
As well as Asana, Trello also has a free option, so you and your teammates can test it out.
Chisel
Another absolute must-have tool for start-ups is Chisel, as it is also one of the best software for overall product management. It is a tool that enables product managers to quickly and easily create beautiful roadmaps, manage features, and track overall progress. With this tool you can easily see what’s been delivered, worked on, and what’s coming up next.
Chisel is also great for keeping stakeholders up-to-date with the latest product developments and collaborating with other team members. The best part is that there is also a free version for you to get your hands on today and test out.
Brosix
Brosix is a team messaging platform that allows you to communicate with your team in a secure and private way. It is a powerful and easy to use instant messaging platform which supports features such as file sharing, video conferencing, instant messaging, and more. It is a chat and collaboration software that helps teams work together more effectively and share information in real-time. It’s the perfect way for teams to stay connected.
Resource Guru
Keeping the employees happy and productive is essential for any business, but it’s hard to keep tabs on workloads. Resource Guru makes resource management easy with its forecasting & scheduling tool. With drag-and-drop simplicity, you can easily make sure no one gets overloaded or burned out – giving everyone the chance to stay engaged and enjoy their work!
Apploye
Apploye is a time tracking software designed for small and medium-sized businesses. It allows managers and supervisors to easily track the work hours spent on tasks and projects by their employees, and provides insights into employee productivity and performance. With Apploye, you can monitor your team’s activity in real-time, set up automatic reminders to keep everyone on track, and create detailed reports that help identify areas for improvement. The software is user-friendly and easy to set up, and it supports a wide range of devices and platforms, including desktop and mobile devices. The data generated by Apploye can be used to make data-driven decisions, improve time management and increase overall productivity of the organization.
RingCentral
RingCentral is a unified enterprise phone system designed for modern businesses. It’s an all-in-one platform for messaging, video meetings, and phone calls. It allows you to work from anywhere on any device, be it a desktop app, mobile app, or browser of your choice.
This productivity tool allows you to stay on top of your projects and provide task visibility. You can create and assign tasks within group and private conversations. With RingCentral, you don’t need to toggle between different apps. It integrates with 200+ popular apps such as Google Workspace, Salesforce, Okta, Microsoft 365, and more to streamline workflows on a single platform.
Marketing and Design Business Tools for Startups
Building a great product is the first step, but if no one has heard about it, then what’s the point? That’s why marketing activities are so important.
Have you noticed that the bigger the company is, the more it invests in marketing?
Well, that’s because in the beginning, marketing activities have the task of creating engagement, but further down the road, they get to fulfill other check boxes as well. Creating the brand image, remaining the same or higher level of engagement, gaining referrals, attracting new, and retaining existing customers, etc.
The following marketing tools will help your startup to stand out and create a winning marketing strategy.
NotifyVisitors
NotifyVisitors is an email marketing tool that is perfectly tailored for small businesses. It offers everything a business needs for email campaigns and email list management, from email designs to targeted email lists. NotifyVisitors is easy to use- it automates email sending, mail testing, and even email tracking.
The dashboard allows users to monitor performance and reach, so they can quickly respond to customer needs while optimizing their email marketing efforts. With the help of NotifyVisitors’ powerful insights and user-friendly dashboard, small businesses can take their email campaigns to the next level.
SendPulse
Automation 360 by SendPulse is a great tool for startups to send out automated messages using multiple channels. One of the strongest points of the platform’s functionality is a chatbot builder. Users can create chatbots for Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram. Their integration with Open AI takes chatbot marketing to a whole new level. Sale pipeline automation tools and a full-featured CRM make the whole sales process easier, ensuring your start-up reaches the right audience at the right time.
Hubspot
Since you’re just starting, maybe HubSpot should be the first place to check. Besides the fact that this tool allows you to do basically everything – from creating landing pages, blogs, SEO, social media activities, etc. – it’s especially useful for beginners as well. It has its own knowledge base platform where you can learn tons about marketing and sales activities and improve your business performance.
Intercom
A very important part of your marketing activities is strong customer relationships. But that’s not so easy to build. However, one of the great business tools for startups could be Intercom. This platform can help you with meeting scheduling, chatbots, and personalized help. All of that is crucial for website visitors, which you tend to convert into customers.
More than 25000 companies around the world are using this platform in their day-to-day communication with clients, so there’s no reason not to check it out.
Beaconstac
QR codes have become a popular tool for businesses in recent years, and startups are no exception. These small, square barcodes can be scanned with a smartphone camera and provide a wide range of benefits for a growing company. And one of the best QR code generators out there that you can exploit for your startup is Beaconstac.
You can use Beaconstac’s QR code generator to create digital business cards with your personal and company information, QR codes for custom landing pages, advertisements, and many more. With enterprise-level SSO, GDPR compliance, and SOC2 Type 1 & Type 2 certification, the solution offers the best security features possible.
The use cases for QR codes are limitless, and by using this tool, you can reap the best benefits, including boosting engagement and sales. Beaconstac has different plans that you can choose from based on your requirements. If you want to check the product before purchasing it, sign up for their 14-day trial period.
Mailerlite
Another great way of communicating with your customers is by using newsletters. If you’ve never prepared a newsletter before, it could be useful to do it with the help of some tool such as Mailerlite. It will help you select the best suitable template for your topic and guide you through all the further steps.
Importing the subscribers’ list is also very easy, and what’s even better, you can use it for free! Mailerlite offers a free version if you have up to 1000 subscribers, which is more than enough when building a startup. As your business evolves, you can easily upgrade to a paid plan.
SlideModel
SlideModel is an online presentation tool that allows presenters to create captivating and professional-looking slides for their presentations quickly. With the help of 100% editable templates that are compatible with PowerPoint and Google Slides, you can customize the slides or start with a blank canvas, adding images, shapes, icons, and text to make your slides look unique and amazing. It contains a huge catalog of presentation templates for PowerPoint and slide designs, including dashboards, slide decks, and a variety of graphics for presentations.
The main advantage of using SlideModel is that it’s user-friendly and highly customizable as per the presentation designer’s needs. You can easily adjust the size of the shapes, colors, spacing, and orientation of any presentation template downloaded from the site. It also lets you save time by reusing pre-defined slides that are very easy to edit.
Presenters can use SlideModel to make visually appealing presentations that wow the audience with stunning visuals and engaging animation effects. By utilizing this efficient presentation tool which saves time & effort, presenters can boost productivity in creating a successful presentation that makes them stand out from the crowd.
Canva
You know that the attention span gets shorter and shorter. People are not so interested in reading if you can’t offer them anything additional. That’s why visuals are so important. Whether it’s on the website, landing page, blog, or video, visuals are what makes your content stand out.
But, not everyone is talented, skilled, or interested in doing designer tasks.
Therefore, Canva is one of the business tools for startups that can be very helpful. Mostly free, Canva offers a large set of elements, images and templates that can be adjusted for different marketing materials – thumbnail images, social media, newsletters, banners, posters, business cards, and many more.
FlippingBook
FlippingBook is professional software that converts PDFs into branded flipbooks in just a few clicks. With this tool, you can draw attention to your brand by turning static PDFs into interactive HTML5 publications with smart design, custom color palette, clickable logo, branded links, and more.
Branded flipbooks help create a consistent brand image and differentiate you from your competitors. You can make branded documents that will match your corporate style: from your own background and color palette to your company logo leading directly to your website. Thus, your content will be instantly recognizable on the web.
SketchBubble
Every startup understands the importance of engaging presentations in communicating their ideas effectively. SketchBubble offers a powerful solution to this need, providing over 200,000 professionally designed, fully editable slides compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, and Google Slides. The vast collection of pre-made templates saves you from manual design work, allowing you to focus on delivering your message.
SketchBubble stands out for its ease of use and customization, even for those with no prior experience in presentation creation or graphic design. You can effortlessly adjust the graphics, icons, maps, and charts to fit your requirements. The firm’s products are trusted across industries, including Fortune 500 companies, owing to the time, effort, and resources they save. Along with high-quality presentation templates, SketchBubble also guarantees excellent customer service, making it an ideal tool for startups eager to make a strong impact.
DocHipo
As a startup, you need to spread awareness about your business amongst your target audience.
Consistently creating attention-grabbing and unique marketing collaterals becomes overwhelming. In
DocHipo, you’ll find a wide range of templates to create stunning designs that speak for your business,
irrespective of your startup niche. You can design eye-catching social media posts, web banners,
advertisement graphics, posters, flyers, brochures, and more.
DocHipo’s premium design assets library, comprising appealing illustrations, animations, stickers, shapes,
and icons, help your design to be effortlessly memorable. You can edit any template’s text, images, and
graphics with its intuitive editor within minutes. Its Text to Image Generative AI, one-click background
removal, integration with third-party applications, real-time team collaboration, and other capabilities
make your design process productive and efficient. You can download your designs in multiple formats
without a watermark.
Data Analytics Tools that Every Startup Must Check Out
One of the key steps towards success is the constant measurement of achieved results. This is especially important for startups in order to know in time what needs to be changed and how to do it. That’s why data analytics and market research tools must not be neglected.
Here are some of the most useful ones.
Google Analytics
If we had to choose only one out of all the tools mentioned above, it would definitely be Google Analytics. This is one of the most powerful business tools for startups. Of course, companies of all sizes are using it, but for startups it should be a must-have. Why?
Well, Google Analytics will enable you to get to know your customers in depth. Their location, demographic, interests, online behaviors, and so much more. You will understand what their behavior looks like, what pages they mostly visit, how long they stay, do they convert.
But, Google Analytics is supported by another great tool – Google Search Console.
Google Search Console
This is definitely one of the best SEO tools. It enables you to track your website traffic, improve pages that need to be better, fix issues and do all the other SEO recommendations that Google might have for your site. You will get a full understanding of how well is your website ranked, for what keywords, and are there any technical issues. All this is presented in numerous dashboards.
SEMRush
Another great tool that helps you dive deeper into your SEO efforts is SEMRush. Besides checking the keywords, page and website performance, SEMRush also helps you to see the same stats for your competitors which can be more than useful. It offers many features, so it might be a bit too much for beginners, but they offer a great help center and tutorials so you can always find the needed help. SEMrush is a paid service, but more than worth it if you can afford it..
Conclusion
There you have it! A list of business tools for startups that can help you achieve your goals. There’s no one size fits all, but if you choose wisely, you can make a great impact on your business. For some of them you might need to pay in order to get the full scope of services, but we definitely think it’s worth it.
If you think that we’ve maybe missed something out, feel free to write to us in the comment section. Also, if there’s a tool that has greatly helped you in your beginnings, you’re more than welcome to mention it.
