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Best Online Tools for New Business Owners

Updated on October 8, 2023 by Tim Donahue

Boost your efforts with these amazing tools for every part of your business

Accounting and Finance

This category includes tools for tracking expenses, managing invoices, and generating financial reports.

  • QuickBooks: A comprehensive accounting solution that offers a variety of features like tracking expenses, managing invoices, and generating financial reports. While typically not free, it often provides a free trial.
  • Wave: A versatile financial software platform designed for small businesses, providing free features including accounting, invoicing, and receipt scanning. Free Version Available.
  • Xero: A cloud-based accounting software that offers detailed financial tracking and reporting features. No free version, but a free trial is available.

Communication, Video Conferencing

This category includes tools for staying in touch with customers, team members, and other stakeholders.

  • Slack: A communication tool that provides channels for team collaboration. It offers a free version with limited features. Free Version Available.
  • Zoom: A popular video conferencing tool that is extensively used for virtual meetings, webinars, and team collaboration. Free Version Available, but with some limitations.
  • Google Meet: A robust video-communication service developed by Google. It provides secure, easy-to-join online meetings. Free Version Available.

Design Tools

This category includes tools for creating graphics, logos, and websites.

  • Canva: A graphic design tool that comes with many pre-designed templates for various types of visual content. It offers a free version with a good set of features. Free Version Available.
  • Figma: A web-based UI and UX design application, with tools for creating, prototyping, and collaborating on designs. Figma offers a free version with limited collaborative features. Free Version Available.
  • Adobe Creative Cloud: A collection of applications and services from Adobe Inc. that provides subscribers access to a suite of software for graphic design, video editing, web development, and more. No free version, but a free trial is available.
  • Affinity Serif: A competitor to Adobe, but much cheaper and instead of annual subscription, it’s a one-time fee to own the software. A suite of software for graphic design, photo retouching, web development, and more. No free version, but a free trial is available.

Royalty Free Photos

This category includes tools that provide access to royalty-free photos for commercial and non-commercial use.

  • Unsplash: An online resource for high-resolution images. Photographers from around the world upload images to this platform that you can use for free in your projects. Free Version Available.
  • Pixabay: Provides over 1 million high-quality photos, vectors, and music that you can use without attribution, even for commercial purposes. Free Version Available.
  • Pexels: Offers a large collection of free stock photos and videos created by talented creators worldwide. Free Version Available.

Marketing and SEO

This category includes tools for driving traffic to your website, generating leads, and converting visitors into customers.

  • HubSpot: A comprehensive platform that offers software for marketing, sales, and customer service, with a focus on inbound marketing strategies. While its main offerings are paid, it does offer a limited free version of its CRM tool. Free Version Available.
  • Mailchimp: An all-in-one marketing platform that allows you to manage and talk to your clients, customers, and other interested parties. Mailchimp offers a free version for up to 2,000 subscribers. Free Version Available.
  • Google Analytics: A service that provides statistics and basic analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes. Free Version Available.

Project Management

This category includes tools for organizing and tracking your projects.

  • Trello: A project management app that uses Kanban boards for organizing tasks and tracking progress. It offers a free version with limited features. Free Version Available.
  • Asana: A web and mobile application designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. Asana provides a free version for teams of up to 15 people. Free Version Available.
  • Jira: A proprietary issue tracking product developed by Atlassian, designed for agile teams to plan, track, and release software. Jira does not offer a free version.

Sales and CRM

This category includes tools for managing your sales pipeline, tracking leads, and closing deals.

  • Salesforce: A comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) platform that brings all your customer information together in one integrated platform. Salesforce doesn’t offer a free version but has a free trial available.
  • Pipedrive: A sales-focused customer relationship management tool that teams of all sizes love using. Pipedrive doesn’t offer a free version but has a free trial available.
  • HubSpot CRM: A completely free implementation of a customer relationship management platform noted for its powerful features that enable customers to relate stronger with their customers, boost conversations, and improve revenues. Free Version Available.

Website Building

This category includes tools for creating and managing your website.

  • WordPress: A robust, open-source content management system (CMS) powering over 30% of the internet. WordPress offers a free version, but hosting and additional features might come at a cost. Free Version Available.
  • Wix: A cloud-based service that allows you to design and build your own website or online store without needing to code. Wix provides a free version with basic features. Free Version Available.
  • Squarespace: A website builder, blogging platform, and hosting service that empowers people with creative ideas to succeed. Squarespace doesn’t offer a free version but does provide a free trial.
  • Shopify: The premier ecommerce website builder platform,. offers everything needed to run an ecommerce store. Offers support. No free version but does provide a free trial.

Writing and Editing

This category includes tools for writing content, editing your work, and proofreading your writing.

  • Grammarly: An AI-powered tool that helps to eliminate writing errors and encourages better, clearer writing. Grammarly provides a free version with basic grammar and spelling checks. Free Version Available.
  • ProWritingAid: A grammar checker, style editor, and writing mentor in one software. It offers a free version with limited features. Free Version Available.
  • Hemingway Editor: A simple tool that highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common errors to help you write in a clear, effective manner. It’s a free tool that works in your web browser. Free Version Available.

No-Code Programming

This category includes tools that allow you to create software without having to write code.

  • Bubble: Bubble is a visual programming language platform that allows you to build sophisticated web applications without needing to write code. Bubble doesn’t offer a completely free version, but there’s a free tier with limited capabilities. Free Version Available.
  • Webflow: Webflow empowers designers to build professional, custom websites in a completely visual canvas. Webflow offers a free version, but it comes with some limitations. Free Version Available.
  • Adalo: Adalo makes creating apps as easy as putting together a slide deck. It provides a free version with limited capabilities. Free Version Available.

AI Content Creation

This category includes tools that can help you create content, such as blog posts, articles, and social media posts.

  • Bard: Bard is a writing assistant that uses AI to help generate new content. Free Version Available.
  • ChatGPT: ChatGPT by OpenAI is a language model trained to provide human-like text based on the prompts given to it. Free Version Available.
  • Reword: Reword helps you make your content plagiarism-free using AI technology. Free Version Available.
  • Jasper: Jasper (formerly Jarvis) is an AI tool that helps create engaging content and stories. Jasper doesn’t offer a free version currently.

AI Customer Service

This category includes tools that can help you provide customer service, such as chatbots and live chat.

  • Tidio: Tidio is a communicator for businesses that keeps live chat, Messenger, and Email in one place. Tidio offers a free version with basic features. Free Version Available.
  • Drift: Drift is a conversational marketing platform that combines chat, email, video, and automation to remove the friction from business buying. It doesn’t have a completely free version.
  • LivePerson: LivePerson makes life easier by transforming how people communicate with brands. It doesn’t offer a free version currently.

AI Marketing

This category includes tools that can help you with marketing tasks, such as email marketing, social media marketing, and lead generation.

  • Smartly.io: Smartly.io automates every step of social advertising to unlock greater performance. It doesn’t have a free version currently.
  • Optimove: Optimove is the Science-first Relationship Marketing Hub, used by over 500 customer-centric businesses to drive measurable growth. It does not offer a free version.
  • HubSpot Marketing Hub: HubSpot’s Marketing Hub is an all-in-one inbound marketing engine that includes tools for email marketing, SEO, marketing automation, lead management, and analytics. HubSpot does offer a free version of their Marketing Hub. Free Version Available.

AI Sales

This category includes tools that can help you with sales tasks, such as lead scoring, pipeline management, and customer relationship management (CRM).

  • Salesforce: Salesforce provides a variety of software solutions and a platform for users and developers to develop and distribute custom software. Salesforce doesn’t offer a free version.
  • Pipedrive: Pipedrive is a CRM & pipeline management tool that helps you focus on actions that matter. It doesn’t offer a free version.
  • HubSpot CRM: HubSpot CRM has free tools for everyone on your team, and it’s 100% free — forever. Free Version Available.

AI Productivity

This category includes tools that can help you be more productive, such as task management, time tracking, and project management.

  • Todoist: Todoist is a productivity app that helps you manage all your tasks and projects in one place. Todoist offers a free version with basic functionalities. Free Version Available.
  • Clockify: Clockify is a simple and free time tracking tool. It’s the only 100% free time tracker and timesheet for teams. Free Version Available.
  • Asana: Asana is a web and mobile application designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. Asana offers a free version with limited capabilities. Free Version Available.

tim donahue

Published by:
Tim Donahue
StartABusiness.Center
Updated on October 8, 2023