Small businesses are often leaner than most since the most minute expense can make a difference to survival. As competition grows and costs creep up, maximizing value is at the top of everyone’s focus list.
Just because we’re smaller in scale doesn’t mean we need to cover fewer areas than larger businesses. Small businesses have similar needs from web hosting to invoicing to email marketing, with a fraction of the budget available at multi-billion dollar conglomerates.
To help address this uneven footing, increase your competitive power and not your expense, here are some of the best tools that help grow your small business.
Best Tools for Small Online Businesses
1. Omnisend
If you’re looking for a platform that will cover more than traditional email marketing, then Omnisend is a ripe candidate. It breaks past the barrier and extends your reach towards alternative channels, including SMS and even web push notifications.
Best of all, it keeps workflow simplified thanks to automation. Once you have the process set up and customized the way you want, Omnisend takes care of itself. You even get access to comprehensive testing and reporting tools to help fine-tune the process.
Omnisend is email marketing with a twist yet omits none of the performance enhancements that have this tools segment so hot.
2. Grammarly: More Than Just A Grammar Checker
We can’t all be language experts, but our customers expect us to be professionals at everything. Imagine the scorn that typos would cause in marketing materials. That’s where Grammarly comes in handy for those who need someone looking over your shoulder as you type.
It gently guides, prods, or straight out marks your documents in bold red underline if you make mistakes. Grammarly even tells you what went wrong and suggests corrections if you sign up for a paid plan.
Grammarly ties in seamlessly wherever you go. It works with Microsoft Word, online text editors like Chrome, and even in your email applications.
3. SE Ranking
Take a peek at SE Ranking for those who know how important SEO is but have no idea what to do. It’s an all-in-one solution designed to simplify the intricacies of this complex and extensive art. SE Ranking is meant to guide the uninitiated through unchartered waters.
Don’t worry though, the tool is very complete. It can handle everything from basic keyword research to offering comprehensive site audits to help you find out what’s happening behind the scenes. If you need help with SEO, SE Ranking can help.
4. FreshBooks
FreshBooks is something I use as well, and it makes a big difference. I’m an accounting moron, but FreshBooks keeps me in line and brings everything I need together into one convenient space. Expense entries, for instance, allow you to attached digital receipts.
FreshBooks is something that will let you handle your accounts from A to Z. No more mistakes, no more outsourcing your bookkeeping, and you can even invite your auditors or accountant to look over your books online.
5. Canva
Canva is one of the design tools that I love the most since I’m hopeless at art. With access to a whole stable of templates, images, and elements, anyone can use Canva to create professional, quirky, or otherwise customized designs.
Create images and videos quickly from any of their templates or start from scratch and let your imagination go wild. Aside from creating images and presentations, they’ve also launched their video editor tool that’s packed with thousands of royalty-free video and music tracks.
Canva is so easy to use you’ll wonder how you survived before getting on board with them. Much of it is free, but I strongly recommend a Pro plan since it offers you a brand kit experience that will simply blow your mind.
6. SocialBee
SocialBee is a social media management tool that allows you to easily schedule your posts in a calendar-like view and customize them for each social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Google My Business, and TikTok).
You can also analyze the performance of your accounts and export the analytics easily for better tracking of your results. Besides, you are able to customize your creative posts for every social media platform, recycle evergreen posts or expire time-sensitive content and curate content through RSS feeds.
One of SocialBee's best features is the Canva integration inside the post editor which allows you to create beautiful and unique designs for social media posts.
7. TimeCamp
TimeCamp is a free employee monitoring software that satisfies the needs of businesses no matter the size. It tracks time automatically in the background, assigns the time entries to particular tasks and projects, and allows you to copy entries from previous days with just a few clicks.
Except for multiple time tracking ways, it supports teams with features like robust reporting (both built-in and custom reports are available; perfect for performance monitoring), attendance management with timesheet approvals, and various data sources for productivity analysis.
What’s more, TimeCamp integrates with 30+ tools like Trello, Jira, Asana, or Monday. Once you create an integration, you’ll be able to import your project structure or track the time directly from the app you use.
8. Replug
Replug is not only a URL shortener but also a robust URL tracking tool. The all-in-one link management and analytics tools have a user-friendly interface that gives you the freedom to create customized URL slugs, bio links, add custom domains, set retargeting campaigns and much more.
Sharing shortened links increase the visibility of your business and content. Besides, utilise the metrics collected by Replug like number of clicks on your links, referral sources, locations and etc to improve and boost your business performance.
9. Apploye
Apploye is a user-friendly time tracking software that lets business monitor and optimizes employee productivity. The time tracking and employee monitoring versatility makes it become a great corporate option.
You can create teams, assign roles, add organizations and manage different tasks at the same time. It also offers advanced features like screenshots, app tracking, location tracking and URL usage to monitor your employee. With Apploye, you able to create a fair recognition and reward work culture because it is easy to generate comprehensive report of every employee through the intuitive dashboard.
10. Veed.io
Veed.io is a simple yet powerful video editing tool. Create videos directly from your browser, add subtitles, transcribe audio, add video filters, add video effects, and create visual elements with your video sounds – Veed.io has the full package for social media managers and marketers.
Veed.io is free for project under 10 minutes and 250MB (with watermark) and starts at $12 per month for longer videos and additional video features.
11. TrackingTime
TrackingTime is a simple project tracking software for freelancers and teams. You can use it to keep track of work progress, organize your team's work and get customized business reports to share with your clients.
You can overview your weekly tasks through the designed calendar view and use Drag&Drop to schedule your work easily. For team leads, you can easily manage the billable hours because you can calculate the amount of time spent on certain projects like creating proposals or meeting with clients. Important to improve the profitability right?
Track time anywhere you work from any device or use one of the 30+ integrations like syncing your project deadline to Google Calendar. Besides, the feature to prioritize the tasks helps to grow work efficiency according to the time urgency.
12. InVideo
For those looking to take creative content to the next level, InVideo helps you design, edit, format, or otherwise embellish video content. They’re constantly refreshing and updating content, so you have access to a growing library of enhancements.
This Cloud-based service will take the strain off your devices and let you render everything online. You can add intros, outros, build on templates, and much more. It even helps you custom modify videos to maximize potential on popular platforms like YouTube.
Need a meme to liven up the day? Not sure what video will work for a Facebook Audience? Want to turn a messy, complex shoot into a simple slideshow? Just use InVideo.
13. ManyPixels
If you’re tired of looking at hundreds of tools and wondering if they’re usable in your case, why bother? Go for ManyPixels instead, a full-blown designer-as-a-service provider that lets you get real people to do the work for a fraction of the price.
It may cost a bit more than your average tool, but it’s the next best thing to taking a full-time designer on board. Their pricing also includes incidental image assets for your designs, and the most basic plan assures you of one full-time designer assigned to your project each day.
14. Appointy
If you’re looking for a single tool that automates scheduling and your admin tasks, consider Appointy. It is an easy-to-use, intuitive online scheduling software that lets you accept bookings 24×7.
Being a cloud-based software, you can access it on any device – desktop, tablet, or mobile. Appointy’s Zoom integration is also worth mentioning as it automatically creates video conferencing links and shares them with the clients as soon as their appointment is confirmed.
Appointy allows your customers to book appointments with you through some of their favorite channels like Facebook, Instagram, Google, and more. It saves you from continuous back and forth communication and also helps you minimize no-shows with automated SMS and email reminders. The best part? You can test it out for your business for free in their 14-day trial!
15. Paperform
Feel bored of normal online form? Use Paperform to create stylish forms with interactive elements. Whether you want to create menus, booking, payment forms, surveys or a lead magnet, Paperform is made with versatility in mind.
The thing I love the most is no coding skills required. You can easily create a form from scratch or choose any design from more than 600 Paperform's templates. Images and videos are able to be added in the form as well. It can be easily integrated with a wide range of apps including Zapier, Asana, Mailchimp, Notion and etc. Try it and you will love it.
16. Promo
Promo.com is one of the most popular online video makers that you can boost your advertising efforts with small businesses. It provides the tools to build high-performing videos that can help grow your business.
Use their ready video templates to get a quick start and focus on capturing your audience's attention. Instead of struggling with videos, spend more time encouraging customers to utilize your offerings or services. Small business ads are a proven tactic to increase awareness and grow your presence online.
17. FlexClip
For those who want to make a professional marketing video tool but without any editing experience and skills, FlexClip is the solution. You can play around with images, music, animated texts, transitions and elements to make your own style video.
There are thousands of templates designed by professionals for all media and sectors: from business plan presentations to promotional videos on Facebook. Always start with customizable templates if you run out of video ideas. It is possible to make a video with just a few clicks.
18. Appy Pie Connect
Tired of repetitive tasks and manually re-entering data across applications? Then check out Appy Pie Connect, where anyone can quickly build bi-directional workflow automation between applications and have them interact with each other so that you do not have to switch between platforms and manually enter data.
Being a no-code application, Appy Pie Connect allows users without technical or coding expertise to develop these workflows and integrate their regularly used applications conveniently. Connect’s Mindbody integrations are a great example, where users can integrate it with a host of popular apps and automate tasks to save time and effort.
19. Motionbox
Remote work is so common today that we need to find new and interesting ways to collaborate. Now you can do so with video content, thanks to Motionbox. Think of it as the far more advanced version of a collaborative word processing tool like Google Docs.
You can create videos, add aminated text, slide in headings and subtitles, cut and adjust them, and do so much more. It’s an ideal all-in-one solution for those needing a cost-effective media manipulator for your marketing materials.
20. Xtensio
If you’re sick of being pointed towards Microsoft Word or Google Docs, there are many alternatives to creating better documents. Xtensio is one of the best, and it blends some of the most advanced characteristics of top applications into one neat package.
Take advantage of better document access with a Cloud-based editing system. Gain access to beautiful templates so that you don’t shock customers with lame design skills. Work together with your small team to build something that is the contribution of multiple areas of expertise.
Xtensio offers all these advantages and more. Stop worrying about how document workflow will be handled and focus on the content itself.
21. Plerdy
Getting traffic to your website is a significant challenge, but even if you do, there’s no guarantee of converting visitors to paying customers. That’s where Plerdy Tools come in; to track, analyze, and help you convert traffic into dollars more effectively.
Plerdy can work with any website, and installation is effortless. It’s light enough not to slow down your website but brings so much to the table. Plerdy can inspect the traffic from every element on your site and offer the best suggestions on tweaking things for better conversion.
Need to track an event? How about carrying out a design audit? Perhaps you need to boost sales performance; regardless of where you need conversions to happen, Plerdy has you covered.
22. Qwilr
If you need to customize each sale, then you know how big a difference your proposal makes. Living in the digital age means not staying bound by tedious paperwork and boring two-dimensional text content.
Convert your proposals into living, breathing excitement that will have your potential buyers stunned and impressed. Qwilr offers the exact things you’ll need to do this. It helps you turn proposals into jaw-dropping, interactive website format to deliver more information without boring your buyers.
Why settle for couriers and paperwork when you can remove those costs while upping your sales potential? Take Qwilr's Document Generator for a free spin today and see how much it can do for you.
23. Moosend
Email marketing can help increase your reach significantly, but you’ll be aware of the challenges if you’ve done it before. It can be awkward for small business owners to grasp the intricacies of building the perfect marketing email without help.
That’s where Moosend steps in and offers extensive email marketing assistance with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, lots of design tools, and a comprehensive analytics system to ensure you get the correct information to improve your marketing game.
It’s packaged neatly into a single integrated system you won’t even need to run on your own devices. Sign up, start building, then improve your email marketing quickly with Moosend.
24. Buddy Punch
Keeping track of employees is more critical than ever, thanks to a growing penchant for remote work. Using Buddy Punch, you can easily assign, schedule, and otherwise manage tasks to your workers worldwide.
Sure, you can use it to clock them in so that you know who’s at work or not. Yet Buddy Punch is so much more that it would be neanderthal to use it simply for that. It also works across various devices, so there’s no excuse not to be up to speed – from anywhere.
25. Automizy
Email marketing may be an established industry, but in all honesty, there’s no one-size-fits-all. For those who aren’t happy with what you’ve seen so far, check out Automizy. They sell hard on effectiveness, and that’s always a good thing in email marketing.
Automize gives you the platform to create attractive emails, automate the sending process, and analyze your results. From there, you can optimize performance for better open rates. It’s not rocket science, but Automizy’s focus on automation is a solid reason to choose them.
26. Time Doctor
If you need to manage a small team of workers and want to do it efficiently, then take a look at Time Doctor. Aptly named since those who constantly find themselves short on time often need a cure for the disease.
Time Doctor lets you track, control, and improve productivity by making sure time isn’t getting wasted. As an employer, you know what should take how long, on average, so why let things stretch on without a cause?
It also offers distraction control pop-ups, payroll capabilities and works well with numerous integration with third-party apps.
27. Outgrow
Outgrow is an exciting proposition and addresses the change in times. Audiences today are far more demanding and have dynamic needs. Because of that, traditional marketing can be a formidable challenge.
Moving past that restriction, Outgrow helps you build interactive content that works to captivate your audience. Since it’s so difficult to keep their attention, get them involved, and they won’t be able to get away.
You can build calculators, quizzes, surveys, and more, plus retain the benefits of traditional marketing analytics and reports.
28. Fastreel
Fastreel is an option for those who lack the hardware capable of rendering video. This entirely Cloud-based service takes on the heavy lifting. Simply provide it with the video files and use the provided tools to merge, compress, create, cut, or otherwise modify your content.
The platform even provides a considerable stable of templates to help you with the creation process. Build video intros, generate online ad scenes, or even use their wedding slideshow template for creative flair.
29. Surfshark
I haven’t addressed this sufficiently in this list, but I believe online privacy and security go way past mere antivirus solutions. Enter the world of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) with Surfshark, one of the most cost-effective solutions in the market.
Connecting to one of their secure serves ensures that your private data doesn’t get lost (or stolen) somewhere in between. It’s the new age of confidentiality and an absolute must if you connect to remote business servers.
Why take the risk when you can blanket protect your entire Internet connection anywhere, anytime.
