Most small businesses aren’t going to be using a single software for each of their important business functions. For example, you might need accounting software to handle the books, but a different system for managing your customer relationships. For that reason, we’re taking a look at the best business management software for a number of common and important processes running your business. First, you’ll find our overall best picks and some explanation of why they’re our favorite software selections. Each section below that then breaks down into individual business functions so you can find the right software for your needs.
It never hurts to have one of the top business management solutions at your disposal and that too at zero dollars. 😀
No matter how many hats you are wearing as a CEO or as a Manager; you have so many options at your disposal that you literally spoilt for choice.
But the key is…
Finding the right software for your business.
Here is a list of 5 Top free Business management software solutions of 2022:
- Mailerlite: Best free software for email marketing
- Profitbooks: Top Free Accounting App
- Canva: Best Free Image Editor
- Calendly: Free tool for scheduling meetings
- Hubspot: Best Free Customer Relationship Management Software
What is Business Management Software?
Business management software is a solution that supports automating the business process.
It will help you manage the different areas of business-like finance, people and operations, etc.
Different types of Business Management Software solutions include:
- Asset Management
- CRM
- Word Processing Programs
- Invoicing
- Database software
- Project Management Software
The features you will need in your business management software solution:
- Project Management
- Task Management
- Time Management
- Calendars
- Collaboration
- Document Sharing
- CRM
- Sales
- Budget Management
- Business Intelligence
- Resource Management
With so many requirements and functionalities needed; how will you hone down on the right applications? The answer is you need an end-to-end solution.
Which software do you use for your business management? Is there any tool that you would like to add to this list? Let us know in the comments below.
To serve distinct business needs, there are dedicated business management tools present in the market. But these tools can be really deal-breakers if they start failing you at any point. Therefore, it’s important to understand what you want to do with the tool.
To help you navigate through the endless ocean of business management software, we’ve compiled and categorized a list of the best ones among them according to the purpose they serve.
To make the research easy for you we have compiled a list of the 20 best business management software solutions available in the market.
1. Best Project Management Software – nTask
Forget about effective business management without using a dedicated project management tool. That’s why we’re starting off the list with nTask. A project management software coming with a multitude of features to help you complete your business projects successfully.
nTask comes with powerful native modules that provide a multi-dimensional solution to all your project needs. A single platform to plan, collaborate and monitor your project performance without switching applications. With nTask, you can get a holistic view of what lies ahead in your project lifecycle.
Through beautiful Gantt charts and built-in timesheets, the tool also allows you to track your project performance seamlessly.
Let’s see what you can accomplish through nTask:
Top Features
- Create and manage your projects through systematic workflow which allows you to add things as you move along with the project
- Use it as a to-do list app and assign tasks instantly to your team members and make roles transparent
- Automatically repeat tasks by setting task recurrence according to a frequency of your choice
- Execute successful team meetings through a powerful native meeting management solution which lets you take control of your meeting details with more precision
- Create and associate issues with your respective projects and resolve them proactively through smart issue metrics, like issue severity and issue priority
- Safeguard your project from potential hazards by documenting risks earlier in the project lifecycle
- Monitor your project performance through built-in Gantt charts and auto-generating timesheets
- Communicate with your team members and provide timely feedback through comments within tasks
- Create your own CRM with nTask Custom Fields
Pricing Plans
nTask comes with three plans:
- Free plan: unlimited tasks, unlimited meetings, timesheet reporting, and unlimited workspaces
- Premium plan: starting at $3 – unlimited projects and Gantt Charts.
- Business plan: starting at $8 – unlimited Risk management, and Custom Fields.
- Looking for a complete Business Management Software? See for yourself why teams trust nTask for end-to-end business and project management. Create unlimited, tasks, meetings & more.
- Get Started for Free
2. Best Team Communication Software – Slack
Slack is where team collaboration is. No matter at what stage your business might be, the chances of information slipping through the cracks is real. Save yourself the horror of miscommunication and choose Slack as a professional team collaboration tool.
Whether you’re onboarding a new employee, sharing critical files, planning your next meeting, or simply exchanging routine messages, Slack has you covered! With distinct channels for multiple teams, Slack not only makes team communication easier but better.
Not only this, but Slack also comes with hundreds of integrations to serve your respective project needs. Through these integrations, the software makes sure you don’t have to constantly switch applications for executing basic business functions.
Key Features
- Specific channels for teams, projects, or topics
- Hundreds of third-party application integrations
- Search option for instant access to desired messages
- Customized availability statuses
- In-app notifications
Pricing Plans
- Free and paid plans. Paid plans start from $6.67
3. Best Financial Management Software – FreshBooks
Quite a popular tool for invoicing and accounting, FreshBooks is one of the best small business management software when it comes to financial management. Coming with a complete suite of accounting features, FreshBooks provides a fast and reliable solution for creating quick invoices, tracking expenses, and much more.
Through native time tracking, you can easily monitor the time your team is spending on tasks and bill your clients accordingly.
Not only this, but the tool also facilitates project management through an elaborate feature set for effectively handling project-related activities. Few prominent features include centralized file location, team chat, and project assignment.
Key Features
- Expense tracking
- Time tracking
- Invoicing
- Cost estimates
- Accounting reports
- Dashboards
- Customized team permissions
- Team chat
Pricing Plans
- The tool comes with paid plans which start from $15 per month. All plans come with a free trial of 30 days.
4. Best Business Team Collaboration Software – Chanty
Chanty is aimed to boost team collaboration and productivity in all business segments. Chanty lets you stay in touch with your team in private, public, group and one-on-one conversations. The Teambook keeps all your messages, tasks, files, and links in order. Chanty offers audio calling and video conferencing functionality with screen sharing. It has a built-in task manager with the Kanban board, that allows you to turn messages into tasks, assign a teammate to perform the task, set a due date and priority.
Voice messaging lets you instantly communicate with your team in audio format. Chanty integrates with Trello, Asana, Zapier, Google Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive, Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket, Mailchimp, Giphy, and other apps.
Key Features
- Unlimited message history
- Private, public, group and one-on-one conversations
- Integrations
- Audio/video calls
- Voice messaging
- Built-in task management
- Kanban board
Pricing Plans
- Free basic plan
- Business plan starts at $3/user per month
5. Best Email Service – Gmail
Email serves as a critical component of a robust business management system, which is why the 4th tool in our roundup of best business management software is Gmail. Powered by Google, Gmail is one of the most widely used email platforms around.
An easy to use application, coming with an array of free features, Gmail is a go-to option for most individuals for personal and professional communication alike.
With powerful spam filtering, the application automatically detects junk and keeps it out of your inbox. Furthermore, the program organizes emails into designated folders according to their type and categorizes them as primary, social, promotions, and others.
Key Features
- Spam filtering
- Email categorization
- Free storage
- Conversation threads
- Instant messaging
- Video chat
- Virus and malware scanning
- Search bar
- Language support
- Offline access
- Powerful sync with other applications
Pricing Plans
- Gmail is free for personal use. The business account plans start from $5 per user/month, with a free trial of 14 days.
6. Best CRM Software – Bitrix24
If you’re looking for a CRM software that doubles as a task management tool, Bitrix24 might be your answer! Bitrix24 provides a unified platform for CRM, task management, documents management, and team collaboration.
The tool provides basic client management and marketing automation capabilities to small and mid-sized businesses in its Free version. But, add in a few bucks and you’ll get access to some solid customer relationship management features, along with integrations for email marketing.
Furthermore, Bitrix24 comes with distinct CRM solutions for different teams enabling them to track their sales pipeline, automate marketing, and provide customer support through multiple communication channels.
Key Features
- Lead management
- Sales reports
- Email marketing
- CRM pipeline management
- Customer contact center (chat, email, phone, etc.)
- Invoicing
- Task management
- Multiple third-party application integrations
Pricing Plans
- Bitrix24 comes with Free and paid plans. The paid plans start from $35, but you can also get a full-featured CRM software for $69 per month.
7. Best Cloud Storage – Dropbox
With great businesses, come great storage requirements. We just made this quote up, but hey, it fits 😉! For any business, safe file storage and collaboration is one of the most sensitive matters. If you’re not properly utilizing any tool, good luck storing and retrieving your files.
This is where Dropbox comes into play.
It is one of the most popular cloud storage tools available in the market. Easy to set up, this business management software helps teams keep all their data in one centralized location for quick and instant access.
The software comes with multiple built-in tools to streamline other business operations too. For instance; Dropbox Paper allows for quick note-taking and to-do list management.
Key Features
- Files storage
- Files sharing
- Custom access controls
- Integrations with other applications
Pricing Plans
- Dropbox is a paid tool and the plans start from $8.25 per month for individuals and $12.50 per user/month for teams.
8. Best Customer Support Software – Intercom
Customer support is one of the most important things to run successful business operations, which is why the 7th tool we have in this collection of best business management software is Intercom.
Combining artificial intelligence with user-insights, Intercom allows you to automate the way you communicate with your customers. The tool facilitates this through customer segmentation and customer profiles.
It also enables you to manage and track customer requests using a single platform through features of live chat, and targeted personalized messages.
Key Features
- Live user data
- Real-time performance tracking
- Live Chat
- Instant messages
- Email campaign creation
- Behavior triggered messages
- Customer segmentation
- Customer profiles
- Third-party application integrations
Pricing Plans
- Intercom is a paid tool and the plans start at $136 per month. The plans come with a free trial of 14 days.
9. Best Business Recruitment Software – BambooHR
BambooHR not only works as a nifty business management software for guys at the HR department, but it also serves as a great asset to professional head hunters. The in-house capabilities of this program can be surmised as a fully functional employee profile management tool.
You get to manage your “assets” according to their performance metrics, most recent peer reviews, employee onboarding, and off-boarding activities and vice versa.
It is safe to say that salient features of this software are to manage employee profiles through a centralized, constantly updated, cloud database alongside the added benefit of being able to update individual’s photos, certifications, etc.
With BambooHR, human resource managers no longer have to rely on storing important employee and organizational data in conventional cupboards anymore. Everything is consolidated, managed, and can be retrieved from the convenience of a few clicks.
Managers can further set permission levels, employee permissions such as; when they can take vacations off, benefits, enrollment programs etc.
Key Features
- The latest version comes with a bundle of reporting metrics
- Standard equal employment opportunity reports
- Ability to add multiple permission levels to employee cards for privileged peer review
- 3rd party benefits, medical plans, offboarding plans and much more
- Ability to track and consolidate individual employee performance reports
- A new applicant tracking system
- Employee absence and activity summary
Pricing Plans
- The basic plan starts at $99/month. Depending on the size of your organization’s needs, you can send a personal email to BambooHR representatives for a custom quote.
10. Best Business Sales Management Software – Pipedrive
Pipedrive has secured multiple user choice awards during the last two years as being a resourceful asset for CRM software end-users. Although the extensive list of features has a narrow-to-wide scope, we can sum up Pipedrive’s remarkable usefulness as a highly responsive sales management system for sole proprietors and small businesses alike.
When Pipedrive was still in its infancy, they had to consult with professional sales market respondents to make the final version of the software more user-friendly and professional. For a majority of users, this program is more of a ‘dream come true’ sort of thing because of a sleek, straightforward, and easy to retrieve functionality.
Setting up accounts for first-time users only takes a few minutes. You can fill in all your individual sales-oriented project requirements as you go along. Top it all off with an automated integration with Google Calendars for pop-up reminders at appropriate dates – and you are looking at a fully-fledged third party business solutions system.
Key Features
- Compatibility with portable mobile devices for uninterrupted sales project management
- Ability to set up company and individual goals
- Monthly, weekly or custom time scale milestone settings
- Google Contacts and Google Calendar integration
- To some degree, the API can be configured, depending on your sales portal
- Excellent customer service alongside 24/7 multi-language support
Pricing Plans
- Pipedrive is a paid program, which means that the modules are broken up into different tiers. You can go for a basic silver plan at $12 per user/month.
- For advanced features that offer added storage capacity, multi-user support on the same license and vice versa, the Gold & Platinum plans are worth checking out at $24 and $50 per month.
11. Best Inventory Management Software – Inflow
As the name suggests, Inflow primarily serves the needs of inventory managers who wish to get by with a quick response tool that can store and retrieve warehousing related information on the go. Having said that, we believe that Inflow is an ideal addition to medium and small business owners who are, or have been, on the lookout for inventory tracking solutions.
Inventory management is also deemed as an “art” because of the several complications involved as the business expands. If you are a small startup owner who has a handful of product batches stored up in your warehouse, you might be relying on committing things to your memory. It is a good habit, but what if the product demands spikes and you have to deal with only a handful of resources and tons of inventory management hassles that are bound to hit the sales anytime soon.
Inflow functions as a desktop installer application, but it does have a backup system for easy information retrieval in case the computer hard drive suffers storage loss or vice versa.
Key Features
- Ability to manage individual inventory items through RFID tracking
- Complete integration with different bar code styles
- Inventory optimization according to sales and demand charts
- Order management, entry, exit, and delivery reports for customized client experience
- Sales vs. break-even point analysis
- Single customer purchase history, and order tracking. Inflow can also be used for monitoring multiple customers for the same inventory sales
Pricing Plans
- Since it is a desktop application, Inflow is offered at a one-time price of $399 per license.
- The premium edition scales up to $799 for medium to large-sized businesses.
12. Best Business Process Management Software – Nintex Promapp
Nintex Promapp is a business process management software that helps organizations share process knowledge through a central repository. The tool is designed in a way that it facilitates the development of simple visual tools out of complex process maps, documents, and Visio charts – making it easy for your team to track changes in the process
Suitable for teams belonging to any industry and of any size, Promapp allows teams to collaborate together in real-time through a dashboard and easily monitor progress. By applying the ‘processes I’m in’ filter, you can gain access to only particular processes and then move forward along the way. You can also bookmark your favorite processes to further improve accuracy.
This business management software provides a comprehensive solution covering a broad range of processes ranging from basic document management to more elaborate workflow automation and built-in risk and compliance management, to name a few.
Key Features
- Personalized dashboards
- Configurable tags for identifying processes
- Risk and compliance management
- Automated workflow management
- Documents management
- Process variation management, along with cost changes
- One-click process feedback
- Integration with third-party apps
Pricing Plans
- Nintex Promapp’s pricing works on grounds of the number of processes added. The license starts from $950/month.
13. Best Business Resource Planning Software – TeamGantt
Nothing beats a classic Gantt chart software for resource planning of a project. This next business management software serves a similar purpose. TeamGantt allows you to use a simple Gantt chart for your project scheduling and resource planning.
Assign as many resources to a task as you want, along with their working hours to make resource planning effective. The details about resources working on a particular task can be viewed by applying a filter and identifying the individual resource workload, so that you can allocate tasks according to the capacity, avoiding burnouts.
The easy drag and drop interface of the tool lets you quickly make changes according to the schedule, without causing any unnecessary delays.
Key Features
- Drag and drop functionality
- Gantt charts, along with filters
- Multiple customizable task views
- Planned timeline vs. Actual timeline viewer
- Task assignment to multiple team members
- Workload view by task or hours
- Actual vs. estimated hours for time tracking
- Task dependencies
- Resource availability tab
Pricing Plans
- TeamGantt provides Free and paid subscription plans.
- The paid plans start from $49.75 per month for a team of up to 5 members. The price changes with the number of team members.
14. Best Business Marketing Software – HubSpot
Hubspot is the next one of the best business management software you can use for marketing and sales automation. The software offers a wide variety of tools to cater to each and every aspect of your inbound marketing. It goes without saying that Hubspot is one of the powerful marketing solutions one can go for.
From your website traffic and leads management, to more elaborate CRM and sales management, Hubspot seems to manage it all. Specifically designed to improve your time when it comes to sales management, Hubspot tracks every customer interaction down to the most basic details.
With features like email sequencing, email tracking, and prospect profiles, the software provides a single platform for automating the tasks faster than ever. Through content strategy and SEO management tools, Hubspot makes sure your content reaches the right audience at the most optimum time.
Key Features
- Leads management
- Website traffic management
- Email tracking
- Sequential emails
- Templates and canned emails
- Live chat on the website
- Pipeline management
- SEO and content strategy tools
- Third-party access
Pricing Plans
- The Marketing plan of Hubspot offers a Free plan, along with paid ones.
- The paid plans start from $50 per month.
15. Best Business Resource Planning Software – ProductPlan
ProductPlan is one of the best business management tools that can help you create and manage your product or project map. This tool is preferred by project managers to create a visual roadmap that their projects will follow. From product development, software testing, to project completion, this roadmapping tool can be used to manage your projects from start to finish.
Moreover, you can collaborate with your team to create the visual roadmap of your product, apply estimates, building work in the process to let your team know the complete picture of your plan. It has an easy drag and drop interface that can help you make the product timeline, and remove the obstacle in the development phase.
To give your roadmaps a fun activity to create you can use different color codes for the progress bar, set milestones, and make a connection with dependent items with many other amazing features to nail your project.
Key Features:
- Timeline and list view for roadmap based on dates
- Create multiple roadmaps in your master plan for an entire product portfolio
- Make use of planning board to manage backlog items
- Create milestones and set the connections between taskbars
- Easy drag and drop functionality
- Create a private link and share it with stakeholders
Pricing:
- Business plan at $39/month per user when paid annually
- Enterprise plan at $69/month per user
- Enterprise Plus plan at $99/month per user
CONCLUSION
Nowadays, businesses span across the country and even the globe. Even though the market has become more globalized with the advent of technology, maintaining your business far away from the office can pose challenges in terms of communication and workflow. This is why businesses are now using business management software that helps them conduct their operations smoother.
Let me guess, your business has grown and you are now managing multiple departments like sales, marketing, support. If it’s anything like mine, I was starting to lose control of my company. Emails piling up in my inbox because nobody knows who is supposed to do them. People getting hired for jobs that were never clearly defined. The list goes on.
Not too long ago, businesses were run manually and the idea of cloud-based business management software was not even a thing. Technology was still new and businesses needed to brainstorm ways to make their operations smoother. Today though, technology has changed how we interact with software. As you can see, these tips are quite simple and straightforward. Now that you’re equipped with the ultimate resources on what to write in blog post introduction, it’s your turn to put them into practice. Here’s some key takeaway points to help you do so.