The Best Tools for Running a Small Business
Succeed as a small business with a tech stack designed to help you thrive. Discover the best small-business tools for scheduling, accounting, graphic design, email marketing and more.
The business landscape is rapidly changing. That’s why it’s never been a better time for small business owners and teams to use work software and tools that can help you match the pace of modern business, connect your team remotely, and keep your business priorities in order.
Starting and growing a small business is an exciting endeavour. The right software and tools can help you effectively streamline responsibilities like meeting scheduling, payment processing, internal communication, and marketing your business. Whether you’ve been in business for a while or are just starting, a solid small business tech stack can keep you agile and focused, even when you’re juggling an abundance of responsibilities.
Focus on your most meaningful work by making the most of work tools designed to help small businesses thrive.
In this post, we’ll review:
CalendarHero for meeting scheduling
Microsoft Teams for team communication
Canva for graphic design
ActiveCampaign for email marketing
Wave for small-business accounting
Hootsuite for social media management
Google Analytics for website performance
Asana for project management
1. CalendarHero for Meeting & Appointment Scheduling
Meeting and appointment scheduling software is essential for any small business that wants to maximize productivity. From booking clients to managing your schedule, CalendarHero automates your scheduling process, so you can focus less on meeting logistics and more on your business. With CalendarHero, you can book meetings on autopilot, find meeting-related documents, customize your calendar availability, and manage your schedule all in one place.
Key Benefits
Connect unlimited calendars from Google and Microsoft (ex. work, personal, side hustle)
Integrates directly in Gmail, Outlook, Slack, and Microsoft Teams
Flexible scheduling options, including personal scheduling links, web scheduler, meeting directory pages, and a website embed
Supports one-on-one, group, and video meetings
Auto-populates video conferencing links in your calendar events
Process payments with bookings simultaneously
Unique Features
Group Algorithm: Skip surveying for everyone’s availability. CalendarHero automatically finds the best time to meet for your group meetings.
Shared Availability: Share real-time availability with your team so that you can book internal meetings instantly.
Powered by AI: When added to your chat platform or inbox, you can chat with CalendarHero as if it were a human assistant to request meetings, check your calendar, and more.
60+ Direct Integrations: CalendarHero fits seamlessly with tools like Mailchimp, Zoom, Google Drive, and HubSpot.
Pricing
CalendarHero offers three plans: Basic, Professional, and Team. Each plan also includes a 14-day free trial!
Basic: free forever
Professional: $8 per month
Team: $12 per person, per month
2. Microsoft Teams for Team Communication
If you’re used to living in your inbox for everything business-related, then it will take some adjusting to shift your team-related communication to Microsoft Teams, but it’s worth it. In Microsoft Teams, you can instantly message one-to-one or with a group, jump on a video call, and share your screen for easy remote collaboration. Best of all, you’ll be able to declutter your inbox and provide a dedicated digital space for you and your team to work together.
Key Benefits
Dedicated team communication and collaboration space
Instant messaging to specific team members or groups
Use mentions and post types to organize conversations with different team members and topics
Direct integrations with tools like CalendarHero, Trello, Polly, and Microsoft Office 365
Unique Features
Chat translation: Support collaboration in multiple languages with inline message translation.
GIFs & Stickers: Microsoft Teams helps you add a personal touch to online communication with GIFs, stickers, and emojis in messages.
Priority Notifications: You can mark messages as important, set recurring reminders, and alert specific team members.
Pricing
Microsoft Teams has a free plan as well as monthly and annual options.
Microsoft Teams (free): free!
Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $5 per user, per month
Microsoft 365 Business Standard: $12.50 per user, per month
Office 365 E3: $20 per person, per month
3. ActiveCampaign for Email Marketing
Email is one of the most important channels for reaching and communicating with your leads and customers. However, it can be time-consuming to write, plan, and monitor emails. That’s time you don’t have to spare as a small business. ActiveCampaign is a great platform that can help you automate all your marketing and sales communication. With ActiveCampaign, you can create email newsletters, email triggers, targeted emails, and email funnels to nurture your customer base effectively.
Key Benefits
Create, send, and automate marketing and sales emails
Personalize emails based on contact activity, such as a recent purchase
Generate reports and tests to increase your opens, clicks, and conversions
Direct integrations with tools like CalendarHero, Unbounce, Zapier, and Facebook
Unique Features
Machine Learning: ActiveCampaign can help you predict which of your contacts are likely to become customers and when to send nurture emails.
Omni-Channel: Beyond email, ActiveCampaign can help you engage customers through SMS, Facebook, and website messages.
Pricing
ActiveCampaign’s plan pricing is determined by number of contacts
4. Canva for Graphic Design
As a small business, branding and marketing are crucial in standing out and reaching your ideal customers. Traditional graphic design programs can take a lot of time and usually require advanced skills and knowledge. However, thanks to Canva, anyone can create engaging, on-brand designs for social media posts, presentations, posters, business cards, and more.
Key Benefits
Create quality graphics with ready-to-use templates and simple design tools
Download Canva for Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS
Database of hundreds of free photos and illustrations to use in your designs
Unique Features
Teams: You can invite your team for easy collaboration and communication within Canva.
Social Media: Some plans allow you to schedule social media content directly from Canva.
Pricing
Canva has three plans with monthly and annual options.
Free plan
Pro: $12.95 per month
Enterprise: $30 per person, per month
5. Wave for Accounting
For many small business owners, accounting is one of the most time-consuming and least enjoyable parts of running a business. The best accounting software will ensure you can meet all your invoicing, payroll, and bookkeeping needs without all the usual manual steps involved. With Wave, you can send invoices, process payments, track your income and expenses, scan receipts and pay employees in one place.
Key Benefits
Easily create, send, and track invoices
Track and manage your business income with bank and credit card connections
Keep track of expenses and scan receipts from your phone
Accept online payments, pay your employees, and generate tax forms
Unique Features
Support: Receive personalized bookkeeping and payroll support from Wave Advisors.
Templates: Generate professional templates for invoices and receipts that include your branding.
Pricing
Wave offers free accounting, invoicing, and receipts.
6. Hootsuite for Social Media Management
As a small business, social media is a powerful tool to raise your brand awareness and connect with future customers. Hootsuite is an enterprise-level social media management platform that also works great for small businesses. With Hootsuite, you can organize your social media accounts, automate posting, track your progress, collaborate as a team, and simplify engagement with your followers.
Key Benefits
Schedule posts in advance across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest
Manage up to 20 social media accounts
Manage organic and paid content
Integrates with other social listening tools like Brandwatch and Talkwalker
Unique Features
Streams: You can create Hootsuite streams to monitor keywords, brands, conversations, influencers, and more.
Data Analysis: Hootsuite provides an in-depth analysis of your social media performance as well as benchmark-setting and post-optimization.
Pricing
Hootsuite offers several plans. We’ve included the ones best suited for small businesses and teams.
Free: free
Professional: $49 per month
Team: $129 per month
7. Google Analytics for Website Performance
Keeping track of your website analytics is vital to understanding your traffic and measuring the ROI of your business activities such as email campaigns and paid advertisements. With Google Analytics, you can measure traffic sources, popular content, visitor funnels, and more.
Key Benefits
Understand and measure your website traffic and visitor activity
See your most (and least) effective business-generating activities
Track the performance of your marketing and sales campaigns
Unique Features
Flow Visualization: Track what visitors do when they arrive on your website.
Audience Reports: Get to know your website visitors with reports that include demographic information like country, language, age, and more.
Pricing
It’s free!
8. Asana for Project Management
Even as a small business, moving your project planning and tasks to a dedicated workspace can prove to be invaluable. With Asana, you can create one shared space for work tasks, map out your goals, create a timeline, and organize your work processes. Using a project management system like Asana can help you and your team tackle tasks faster, stay on track, and monitor progress.
Key Benefits
Dedicated workspace for business goals, tasks, and deliverables
Flexible structure for organizing your tasks, including boards, timelines, calendar, and lists
Collaborate with your team, assign tasks, and monitor progress
Unique Features
Templates: Asana provides several project templates to make it easy to start planning
Integrations: Asana works with your other work tools like Microsoft Teams and Google Calendar, so you can see task reminders and make project updates quickly
Pricing
Asana has a free plan as well as monthly and annual plans. We've included the ones best suited for small businesses.
Basic: Free
Premium: $10.99 per user, per month billed annually
Business: $24.99 per user, per month billed annually
Start Working Faster
There are tons of software solutions out there, so it’s critical to find tools that are built to help you save time and collaborate better in a dynamic business landscape. We hope these recommended work tools can help you improve your small business workflow, so you can focus less on admin tasks and more on building a successful business.
Simplify meeting scheduling with CalendarHero
Book faster, manage your time, and track your meetings with powerful scheduling software.
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