What is the best software for startups? The first question I have to ask myself is what is a startup? My first thought is it’s a small business or new organization that quickly grows. It certainly fits the layman’s description. Others may describe startups differently. Regardless of how you think about this, there are some things needed for any startup.
The road to building a successful startup is challenging. It requires effort, talent, innovation, and also the right digital tools. The right tools help drive productivity and growth.
Digital technologies are here to stay for good and for good reasons. They are practical, efficient, and cost-saving. They help startups solve problems by automating time-consuming daily processes and focusing on other essential aspects of your startups, like strategic planning and innovation.
With the Covid-19 outbreak, such digital applications have further proven their effectiveness in difficult times like this, such as supporting remote working, maintaining work collaboration, and ensure your business process runs smoothly.
Here are the top 15 software applications, organized according to their function, that will significantly benefit your startup in 2020.
Project Management
- Trello
With remote working becoming more prominent, it is vital to ensure that you and your team are working on maintaining task clarity and focus. Trello is a useful tool when it comes to project management. In a single dashboard, you can get a complete overview of what your team is working on. You and your team can simply add in new tasks and also highlight to the team on what is completed. You can also include file attachment to share your finished work to your team quickly. The interface is straightforward and easy to use. You and your team can pick it up in no time!
Some of their best features:
- Apps integration
- Easy and straightforward dashboard
- Customizable
- Always in sync with your mobile and desktop
Pricing:
- Basic Plan – Free
- Business Plan – $9.99 per user/month
- Enterprise Plane – $20.83 per user/month
Find out more about Trello: https://trello.com/home
2. Asana
Another great project management tool – Asana. While Trello is a great and straightforward tool to get a good overview of what you and your teams are working on, respectively, Asana focuses on incorporating more features on team project-collaboration. It allows you to plan the project agenda together as a team and assigned roles. Create project timelines and to-dos list to stay ahead of schedule and get things done more efficiently as a team.
Some of their best features:
- Customizable work templates
- Chat
- App integration
- Portfolios
Pricing:
- Basic – Free
- Premium – $10.99 per user/month
- Business – $24.99 per user/month
Find out about Asana: https://asana.com/
Communication
3. Slack
As the saying goes, communication is key. It is important to establish a good communication platform, especially when everyone is working from home. Having a transparent communication system ensures that everyone is in the loop and figure out what their main priorities are and, most importantly, to clarify doubts and gain clarification whenever possible. This is where Slack comes in. Slack is an online communication tool that is designed for collaboration in mind. It allows you to instantly communicate with your teammates and create channels according to the projects you are working on to drive productivity. Not to mention, Slack interface is user-friendly as well!
Some of their best features:
- Channels
- Searchable history
- App integration
- High data security
Pricing:
- Small Team – Free
- Standard Plan – $6.67 per user/month (suitable for startup!)
- Plus Plan – $12.50 per user/month
Find out more about Slack: www.slack.com
4. Zoom
Holding virtual meetings would be the new norm. I believe even when COVID-19 goes away, we cannot deny the rise of the gig economy. There will be more freelancers out there, and businesses would have to carry out virtual meetings more frequently than ever. Zoom is a great tool when it comes to virtual meetings. Simply schedule a meeting via zoom, the meeting URL will be generated, and you can just send the URL to the person that you are going to have meetings with, and you are done!
Some of their best features:
- Built-in collaboration tool (e.g., screen sharing)
- Streamlined calendaring
- Meeting recording and transcripts
Pricing:
- Basic Plan – Free
- Pro Plan – $14.99 per user/month
- Business or Enterprise Plan – $19.99 per user/month
Find out more about Zoom: https://zoom.us/
Meeting calendars & scheduling
5. Calendly
With more virtual meetings, you might face challenges in keeping tabs on all your upcoming meetings, and this is where Calendly can help! In a way, Calendly works like your virtual PA. You can share your calendar URL with anyone you are meeting with and allow the person to fix a time with you in your calendar. Calendly will help you to keep track and avoid conflicting meetings and send you email reminders at your next meeting. Calendly is a great tool to help you stay organized!
Some of their best features:
- Calendar Integration
- Time zone intelligence
- Real-time notifications
Pricing:
- Basic – Free
- Premium – $8 per user/month
- Pro – $12 per user/month
Find out more about Calendly: https://calendly.com/
File Storage
6. Google Drive
Google Drive might be a familiar application for everyone. As long as you own a personal Google account, you will be introduced to a trove of useful applications such as Gmail, Hangout, Google Docs, and of course, Google Drive for free. Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization platform that allows you to upload all relevant documents and synchronize files across all devices. In drive, you can store, share, and collaborate your files with your team. Accessing files and download necessary work materials has never been this straightforward!
Some of their best features:
- Always in sync with your mobile and desktop
- Cloud-native collaboration apps (Google Docs, Sheets, Slides)
- Search technology
Pricing:
- Personal – Free
- G Suite Basic – $6 per user/month
- G Suite Business – $12 per user/month
- G Suite Enterprise – $25 per user/month
Find out more about Google Drive: https://www.google.com/drive/
Creatives
7. Canva
Canva is a digital graphic designing platform and is also my personal favorite. The main reason is that it allows people with no designing background to easily create and design marketing collaterals or any graphics like a pro. Its interfaces are user-friendly and well-organized. They have tons of design templates in different sizing to meet your startup needs. I guess there are no more excuses for not working on pleasing aesthetic collaterals without having a designer in your team.
Some of their best features:
- Tons of templates
- Millions of stock photos
- Enable team collaboration
Pricing:
- Canva Basic – Free
- Canva Pro – $9.87 per user/month
- Canva Enterprise – $28.23 per user/month
Find out more about Canva: https://www.canva.com/
Marketing Automation
8. Mailchimp
Email marketing is essential to most businesses as it helps to share your product and services to qualified customers. Hence, having a smart email marketing tool is vital to send and track the performance of how your email campaigns are doing. Mailchimp is one of the best marketing automation tools out there. Its intuitive interface allows email campaigns to be created in a matter of minutes and not forgetting their intelligent built-in analytics to track campaign performance such as response rate, open rate, and clicks.
Some of their best features:
- Campaign creation
- Automated email campaigns
- Built-in analytics
- A/B Testing
Pricing:
- Basic – Free
- Essentials – $9.99 per month
- Standard – $14.99 per month
- Premium – $299 per month
Find out more about Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/
9. Buffer
Buffer is another excellent marketing automation tool that helps you to handle social media marketing. Buffer’s main selling point is its feature on post scheduling. This feature helps you to save tons of time doing manual social posting on all your platforms. In Buffer, you can simply pre-plan and set your content and post it according to the day you want on any social platforms. With this tool, you do not have to worry about missing a day’s post, and you can use the time saved to work on creating quality content.
Some of their best features:
- Post scheduling
- Social media performance analytics
- Collaboration
Pricing:
- Pro – $15 per user/month
- Premium – $65 per user/month
- Business – $99 per user/month
Find out more about Buffer: https://buffer.com/
Website Creation
10. Wix
Wix is a digital platform for you to design and create a website from scratch. Like Canva, you do not need to have experience with coding or technical knowledge on website building. On Wix, you can design high-quality webpages with hundreds of templates for you to play around with. They also have user-friendly interface and features such as the drag and drop builder to set up a website in minutes. Wix allows you to freely customize your site and the best part; You don’t have to worry about SEO and mobile optimization! Wix got it covered for you!
Some of their best features:
- 500+ Designer-made templates
- Innovative Drag-and-drop feature
- SEO and mobile optimization feature
- Apps integration
Pricing:
- Business Basic – $17 per month
- Business Unlimited – $25 per month
- Business VIP – $35 per month
Find out more about Wix: https://www.wix.com/
Blogging Platform
11. Medium
Are you thinking of having a platform to share your business content and product information? Medium is a free publishing platform that allows you to do so! The platform has a simple and easy to use interface with not much setup required. On Medium, you can simply focus on content writing and not worry about coding or designing issues.
Some of their best features:
- User-friendly interface
- Helps your business to reach out to people of similar interests
- No coding or designing required
Pricing: Free
Find out more about Medium: https://medium.com/
Website Analytics
12. Google Analytics
After you have a website, it is crucial to understand how your website is performing, and this is what Google Analytics is all about. This tool is designed to inform you and allow you to know which area of your website is not doing so well, and you can make the necessary improvements in such areas. This is a tool that is important to keep you informed on your website performance!
Some of their best features:
- Traffic reporting
- Keyword referrals
- Conversion tracking
Pricing: Free
Find out more about Google Analytics: https://analytics.google.com/
SEO Analytics
13. SEMrush
SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that is essential for every business with an online presence. The tool provides thorough research for your websites, such as keywords and backlinks analysis. Like Google Analytics, it also helps to analyze your overall website performance and understand how your competitors are performing.
Some of their best features:
- Keyword research
- Backlinks analysis
- Analytics reporting
- Traffic analysis
Pricing:
- Pro – $99.95 per month
- Guru – $199.95 per month
- Business – $399.95 per month
Find out more about SEMrush: https://www.semrush.com/
Sales & Customer Management (CRM)
14. HubSpot CRM
Establishing a positive relationship with your customers is crucial for your business, and having an efficient sales process aids in a higher conversion rate. Hence, this is where HubSpot CRM comes in. The tool offers a range of great features for startups such as sales pipeline automation tracking, sales activity report, and contact assignment. With the tool, you will be able to stay in the loop and understand how your sales team is performing.
Some of their best features:
- Contact Management
- Contact Website Activity
- Track deals, tasks, and activities
Pricing: Free
Find out more about HubSpot CRM: https://www.hubspot.com/products/crm
Accounting, Inventory, Finance
15. Deskera Books
Running a startup is not as simple as it seems. Daily, there is a lot of backend processes running behind it, such as inventory, accounting, and maintaining healthy cash flow. All these daily tasks take up a lot of time, and it is prone to human error. And, this is where Deskera Books can help. Deskera Books is an all-in-one business cloud solution that helps to automate all the mentioned tedious tasks. It drives overall business efficiency and helps to keep track of all the backend processes in an intelligent and organized manner.
Some of the best features:
- Smart selling and buying interface
- Inventory management
- Bank integration
- Accounting management
Pricing:
- Individual – Free
- Startup – $39 per month for three users
- Essential – $99 per month for five users
- Professional – $239 per month for ten users
Find out more about Deskera : https://www.deskera.com/
The road to building a successful startup is challenging. It requires efforts, talents, innovation, and also the right software applications. I hope the 15 software applications we shared give you some great ideas on what you might need to overcome the challenges faced in this pandemic and in the long-term.
#1 Startup Ideation Tools
It’s a fact that the first step is always the toughest. The ideation phase of any startup is crucial but once you know what industry you wish to work with, and what type of product you’re going to sell, things get clear, and with the assistance of the following startup tools, you will have a clearer direction of how to proceed further.
1. Squad Help
Squad Help assists you in finding an ideal name for your business. However, they do not limit their services to just business names. Instead, it also assists in finding the perfect name for your app, book, product or service, etc.
You can start a naming competition and engage thousands of experts as you’re guided through their agency-level naming process. You can also explore their hand-picked compilation of premium names that are available for immediate purchase.
Pricing: For as low as $199 per contest.
2. Clarity
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a fresh entrepreneur or an experienced businessman. Every entrepreneur needs actionable advice at one point or the other during their entrepreneurial journey. Clarity ensures ambitious entrepreneurs receive valuable pieces of advice from industry experts.
It helps you connect with industry leaders from all across the globe. These Clarity experts can help you overcome any challenge that you might be facing at any stage of your entrepreneurial journey. Whether it’s scaling your business, raising funds, researching market trends, or sharpening your skills, this tool for entrepreneurs has got you covered with the best business advice.
Pricing: For as low as $1 per minute on phone calls.
3. Germ.io
This tool for startup helps you better manage your business concepts and ideas. You will never lose the big picture of your startup idea with this resource. You can validate your concepts and share your vision by flaunting your big picture.
Germ.io helps you evolve your business idea by providing the ‘next steps’. Consequently, you will be able to shape up your business idea with ease. It lets you create actionable strategies by helping you with your how’s, what’s and why’s.
Pricing: Free version available
4. Mindmeister
This web-based mind-mapping tool lets you collaborate and brainstorm with experts in real-time. Besides ideation and project planning, you can use this startup tool for creating presentations. Mindmeister allows you to turn mind-maps into dynamic slideshows.
Moreover, it integrates with MeisterTask – a task management tool – allowing you to turn your ideas into actionable tasks.
Pricing:
Basic: Free
Personal: $4.99
Pro: $8.25
Business: $12.49
5. Javelin
To keep it simple, this is a one-stop solution for lean startups when it comes to customer development. A platform for innovators, Javelin can help you identify customer needs and validate new products. You can measure your product’s market fit with the assistance of their pre-designed surveys. It allows you to save time as the speed of workflow increases.
Pricing: Free to Signup
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#2 Startup MVP Tools
For entrepreneurs who create web or mobile apps, it is significant to understand how their Minimum Value Product (MVP) affects their business. It also helps you experiment with your ideas in your preferred industry or market, before you complete your product. There are three MVP tools for startups worth highlighting. They include:
6. Just In Mind
Here’s one amongst the best startup tools that’s an all-in-one prototyping solution for web and mobile apps. From wireframes to highly interactive prototypes, Just In Mind has it all. You can apply design fully-interactive prototypes from scratch and bring them to life with a click.
It offers a complete range of web interactions and mobile gestures so that you can concentrate on building a delightful user experience. You can create wireframes that adapt to multiple screen resolutions for desktop as well as mobile devices.
Pricing:
Professional $19/month (Billed Annually)
Enterprise $39/month (Billed Annually)
7. Balsamiq
Their mission is to rid the world of bad user interface and help people to build websites and software that are easy to use. Balsamiq is a low-fidelity wireframing software accessible to entrepreneurs, managers, analysts, developers, agencies and anyone who’s into UX.
They provide extensive docs, assist in improving the software with the latest releases and provide support through multiple channels. You can find beginner-to-expert level tutorials and documentation on their support page for your convenience.
Pricing:
2 projects $9 per month or $90 per year
20 projects $49 per month or $490 per year
200 projects $199 per month or $1990 per year
#3 Startup Launch Tools
Launching a startup is never easy. From its ideation to execution, there are multiple factors that play a significant role in determining a successful launch. Nonetheless, there are multiple tried and tested startup tools that can help you launch your startup successfully. They include:
8. Product Hunt
This is the ideal go-to launch platform for startups. Product Hunt showcases amazing new products every day. It’s a brilliant platform for product-loving enthusiasts. They can share, discuss and geek about all the new products, websites, mobile apps, and tech other creations.
It can conveniently assist you to launch your product or more importantly, your startup successfully. The website operates on a system for user comments as well as a voting system which is similar to Reddit. With its pre-existing community of testers who are willing to try out new products, launching your startup had never been easier.
Pricing: Sign up for Free
9. Beta List
Beta List is a pre-launch system that helps your startup gain the traction it needs for a successful launch. The best advantage of this platform is that you can put your startup idea in front of an exceptional community of savvy business enthusiasts, and garner valuable feedback from them.
Beta List has helped over 3,000 startup founders to better understand their customers with the help of qualitative and quantitative research to ensure they are creating the right product for their right audience.
Pricing:
Hobby Free
Startup $129
Funded $299
10. Press Kite
The story of your startup lives here! Press Kite allows you to create a press kit for your startup. It’s so convenient that now you don’t have any excuse to not have a press kit ready to send a journalist whenever need be. Your startup can now enjoy the press coverage it needs so that even the masses can see you. A tool worth checking out!
Pricing:
3 Plans (Free, Founder for $9, Startup)
11. Cloudways
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that offers sustainable growth and lets you focus on growing your business while it takes care of your website hosting. Cloudways provides excellent feature set helping you scale your startup with ease.
Exclusively for Startups: Cloudways offers mentorship, growth tools, and discount on Cloudways platform through the Cloudways Startup Program.
Pricing: For as low as $10 per month
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#4 Startup Marketing Tools
A solid marketing strategy demands a flawless implementation of processes so that startups can get the best bang for their buck. Proper implementation of a startup marketing strategy requires tools to monitor, analyze, and evaluate any marketing campaign. Hence, the following marketing tools for startups are a must-have in order to ensure effective implementation of processes.
12. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the best social media marketing tools for startups which is used across the globe by well-known startups, mainly due to its easy UI and affordable pricing plans.
You can schedule up to 30 posts across any social media platform with its free plan. It will help you to measure the ROI (Return On Investment) of your social media campaign, and keep track of the impact that is being created, all under one umbrella. Moreover, you can also link two RSS feeds and different apps such as MailChimp, YouTube, Dropbox, and other startup tools.
Pricing:
Individual (1 user 3 social media profiles) Free
Professional (1 user 10 social media profiles) $19 per month
Team (3 users 20 social media profiles) $99 per month
Business (5-10 users 35 social media profiles) $599 per month
13. MailChimp
Email marketing is a time-tested strategy that has done wonders for many startups. In order to run a successful email marketing campaign, you need an email marketing tool for your startup that is nothing but exemplary. This is where MailChimp comes in – a tool for startups that requires no introduction.
Approximately 205 billion emails were sent in a day during 2015 which means 2.4 million emails in a second. Isn’t this number just mind-boggling? This email marketing tool for startups allows digital marketers to utilize a reliable emailing service to deliver emails directly to any user’s inbox. It’s one of the many highly recommended tools for startups.
Pricing:
Free Plan
Essentials $9.99 per month
Standard $14.99 per month
Premium $299 per month
14. Mangools
Mangools is a set of five Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools for startups like KWFinder, SerpChecker, SerpWatcher, LinkMiner, and SiteProfiler. It helps startups to create effective SEO workflows.
With Mangools, you can find all the right keywords, analyze the search results in any location, compare yourself with competitors, track your keyword positions and boost them all with powerful backlinks.
Pricing:
Basic $29.90
Premium $39.90
Agency $79.90
15. Google Analytics
Google Analytics helps you to track the traffic coming on to your website. It allows you to identify what’s working and what’s not. When you know what isn’t working, you can fix it to enhance your customer engagement and user experience.
Moreover, it helps you create much better digital marketing campaigns and ultimately, increase your conversion rate. You must use Google Analytics in order to achieve greater results for your startup with continuous evaluation of data and monitoring online marketing strategies.
Pricing: Free as long as you do not exceed 5 million impressions per month.
16. Hunter.io
Hunter.io assists you in finding business emails within seconds. By simply searching any domain, it will provide you with all the email addresses that are connected to it. With 200+ million email addresses indexed, it’s one of the most powerful tools for finding email addresses in order to connect with the relevant experts for your business.
Pricing:
Free
Starter $49 per month
Growth $99 per month
Pro $199 per month
Enterprise $399 per month
17. CallHippo
A powerful Voice-over-Internet-Protocol(VoIP) service provider, CallHippo is a market leader in providing business phone numbers. A great tool for start-ups and mid-sized businesses, CallHippo has a wide array of innovative features that improve sales capabilities and agent performance. It enables managers to monitor calls, track key performance indicators, and provide real-time feedback to increase bottom-line results. With third-party integrations, a user-friendly interface, and high-level customization.
Pricing:
Bronze : $20 Per Month – (For Startups)
Silver : $35 Per Month – (Ideal For Small Team)
Platinum : $55 Per Month – (Preferred For SMB Sales, Support & Marketing Teams)
#5 Finance & Fundraising Tools
Focusing on financial balances is crucial for startups. It is important to understand and record where the revenue is coming from, where it is going, and how will the startup perform in the upcoming months.
Investors admire entrepreneurs who incorporate calculated numbers in their pitch deck. However, you cannot do everything with just a pen and paper. You will require one of the following financial startup tools in order to accomplish your goals.
18. Foundersuite
Foundersuite is an amazing tool to raise capital for your startup. It brings structure, speed, and efficiency in fundraising and investor relationships. It offers CRM tool for managing your investor funnel, a searchable venture capitalist database, and an Investor Updater tool that helps in creating monthly progress reports.
It also includes Startup Docs – a comprehensive set of templates and spreadsheets like pitch decks, founders’ agreements; as well as FoundersMarket which is a set of curated deals on popular products.
Pricing:
Basic Free
Silver $44 per month
Gold $62 per month
Agent $150 per month
19. Crunchbase
A leading startup platform for entrepreneurs to explore innovative organizations. It lets you connect with experts and pursue new opportunities together. More than 50 million entrepreneurs, investors, market researchers, and sales professionals trust this tool for startup to make their business decisions. Many startups from all across the world rely on Crunchbase to power their applications.
Crunchbase Pro lets you access any startup, investor, or funding data through their web interface. It offers features like advanced searching, customized lists, personalized alerts, and CSV (Comma-Separated Values) exports. Some big names amongst their customers are Samsung, Honda, Nvidia, Shell, MixPanel and Harvard. It is truly a great tool for entrepreneurs.
Pricing:
Essential Free
Pro $29 per month
Enterprise Custom
20. Gust
If you want to try out startup tools and resources, Gust is an excellent platform to start, grow, or fund your startup. They help entrepreneurs build investable startups with the assistance of mission-critical business tools, powerful performance benchmarks, and trusted fundraising recommendations.
It provides support during every stage of your startup evolution. When it’s time to raise funds for startup, Gust provides you with the best shot at investment. With over 650,000+ startup owners and 80,000+ investing professionals, they’ll connect you to a startup ecosystem unlike any other.
Pricing:
Start $175 per year*
Accelerate $875 per year*
Raise $4,775 per year*
21. inDinero
It lets you gear up for growth with scalable accounting software and on-demand CFOs (Chief Financial Officers). Their cloud-based solution allows you to scale your startup with the right accounting, tax management, and CFO support whenever you need it.
inDinero combines accounting, taxes, and CFO consultation so that you can enjoy proactive assistance along with real-time visibility of your startup’s performance. You can talk to your on-demand CFO any time you want, access financial data on the cloud, enjoy real-time accounting insights, and maximize your tax savings with ease.
Pricing:
The Basics $310 per month
The Essentials $525 per month
The Next Steps $1300 per month
22. Fresh Books
It is an all-In-one startup invoicing and accounting software solution. Fresh Books makes your startup bookkeeping fast, convenient, and secure. It automates your financial tasks such as organizing expenses, invoicing, tracking payments and following up with the clientele in just a few clicks.
You can view your financial statuses via Profit and Loss Statements (PLS), taxation summaries and expenditure reports. It can categorize the fees of your credit card transactions and provide a summary against all deposits on its dashboard. You can also integrate it with MailChimp, Paypal, Basecamp, and Zenpayroll.
Pricing:
Lite $15 per month
Plus $25 per month
Premium $50 per month
Custom pricing for 500+ billable clients
#6 Startup CRM Tools
As soon as you’ve your first few loyal customers, it is the perfect time for your startup to invest in the best CRM tools for a startup. A CRM tool can prove to be a great help for your startup as it frees up so much time which you can spend productively on converting new leads. Some of the best CRM tools for startups are:
23. CRM by Hubspot for Startups
Hubspot CRM is a great pick for startup owners. Honestly, you don’t need the frills, but you can use assistance with the data entries of your business. HubSpot centralizes your contact list. It helps you by automatically logging customer interactions, and extracting the data from the web to generate information about your potential customers.
Some salient features include:
- Customize Views
- Deal and Task Board
- Hubspot Marketing Synchronization
- Drag and Drop Communicator
- Social Media
- Company Database
- Email Connections
- Sidekick Integration
- CRM Details
- Templates, Tracking, and Scheduling
You can begin by using their free version, which is simple yet powerful. However, if your startup demands additional features, you can always opt for their paid versions. It’s one of the best startup tools available online for entrepreneurs who care about their customers.
Pricing:
FREE
STARTER $50 per month
BASIC $200 per month
PROFESSIONAL $800 per month
ENTERPRISE $2,400 per month
24. Intercom Early Stage
Intercom can help you scale your early-stage startup with ease. Its user-friendly products let you acquire, onboard, engage or support your customers in a personalized manner.
You can improve your website conversions with targeted visitor messages and live chat. You can also send behavior-based push and email messages to onboard new clients. It lets you track and segmentize your prospects based on their personas, and the actions they take on your website or the product page.
You can announce new features through personalized in-app messages. By using email and messaging, you’ll get quicker responses, faster resolutions and more satisfied customers.
Pricing:
Essential $87 per month
Pro $153 per month
Premium Custom pricing
25. Salesflare
Salesflare has an amazing integration with both Gmail (including Workspace) and Office 365, gathering a ton of information from your inbox and meetings, tracking email opens and clicks, powering email templates, and offering a handy sidebar that allows you to use Salesflare 100% from your inbox.
Some of our favorite features of Salesflare are:
- Visual, drag-and-drop sales pipelines
- Email and website tracking
- Email signature sync
- Automatically enriched company and contact data
- Email templates and sequences/workflows
- Relationships strength indicators
- Automated reminders to follow up, answer emails,
- Business card scanner
- Out-of-the-box and customizable dashboards
Salesflare’s pricing is simple and fair for startups. Unlike some other CRMs, it won’t cost you an arm and a leg if you want to use all its functionality.
And if you’re an early-stage startup they even offer a big discount, which you can ask for on their live support chat.
Pricing:
GROWTH $29 per month
PRO $49 per month
ENTERPRISE $99 per month
#7 Startup Design & Development Tools
For someone who’s about to start a startup, things become difficult to a breakdown in terms of design and development. If you take the wrong first step, things may become complicated in the future and it’s difficult to turn back. To refrain from putting yourself in such circumstances, here’s a list of the best design and development tools for startups.
26. Mockplus
Mockplus is a web-based collaborative design tool. With Mockplus, you can create responsive wireframes & prototypes with your team in real-time, using drag-and-drop capabilities.
The application comes with hundreds of ready-to-use components & icons. Using its pencil and pen tools for vector drawing, you can easily create & customize your own components.
Mockplus combines the entire product design workflow process – This app doesn’t just cover design, but also includes team collaboration, handoff & management within an organized system, all you need to use Mockplus is an internet browser.
Pricing:
Basic: FREE, up to 10 users and 10 projects
Pro: $7.95/mo, up to 30 users and unlimited projects
Ultimate: $17.95/mo, unlimited users and projects
27. Logo Design
Logo design is an online logo maker tool to give your new startup a compelling visual identity. The program hosts an extensive gallery of unique logo templates for a huge array of industries. The designs are visually-appealing, fit for varying style tastes, and easily customizable. You don’t have to be a graphic designer to be able to work this tool. By simply clicking on different design features, you can change the logo icon, edit the colors, choose another font, or make tons of other changes available on the customization panel.
In addition to the company name, you can also add your tagline to the logo.
While each template on this tool is designed by a team of professional graphic artists, the tool also allows you to go for custom/premium designs. You can get in touch with their design team and ask for an exclusive logo design.
The website also offers business card designs and printing services for maximum brand exposure.
Pricing:
Currently, the website offers discounted prices on all logo design packages, so we are going to include both rates for your ease.
Logo Design Templates:
Basic:
Offers only logo design: $78, currently $39
Standard:
Logo design plus business card design: $114, currently $57
Pro:
Logo design + business card design + Letterhead + Envelope + T Shirt: $195, currently $97
Custom Logo Design:
Professional: $97
Startup: $167
Enterprise: $297
Small Business: $697
28. Unsplash
Unsplash is one of those startup tools that offer high-resolution stock images so that you can create visually appealing promotions and campaigns for your startup. The world’s most generous community of photographers contributes actively to this platform.
Their huge library of over 1 million stock HD images – and hundreds more being added every day – will certainly let you find the perfect images. You can find inspiration from the new images they hand-pick each day or use their search feature to download precisely what you’re looking for.
Pricing:
Free to use
29. Canva
Canva is an online graphic designing tool. It is widely used by many individuals and startups to design social media posts, blog graphics, Twitter headers, Facebook ads, Instagram posts and much more. With a library of more than a million fonts, images,and icons, you can come up with an array of visually appealing content.
Its user interface is quite easy to use. You can select a template, or you can create your own from scratch by using their drag-and-drop features. Graphics or images uploaded by global designers are also available for a small amount of fee.
Pricing:
Basic Free
Pro $12.95 per month
30. Visme
Visme is a powerful design tool for startups that lets you showcase amazing visual stories in presentations, infographics, and other forms of visual content. You can easily translate boring content into stunning visual formats in your web browser.
Pricing:
Basic Free
Standard: $19 per month
Single/Complete: $39 per month
Team: $117 per month
31. Github
Github is one of the best development software for startups. It’s a great space for development engineers to collaborate and host / review their codes together. They manage a number of projects without compromising on quality while ensuring maximum efficiency. Github is a community of more than 35 million people who share, work and learn together to build better software.
Pricing:
Free $0 per month
Pro $7 per month
Team $9 per month
Enterprise Custom Pricing
32. WordPress
One of the most popular CMS that requires no introduction is WordPress. This free, open-source content management system is based on PHP and MySQL. Its primary features include a plugin architecture and a template system to build attractive websites.
It offers responsive designing, social sharing, multiple page styles, auto upgrades, and support, a vast variety of widgets and plugins, theme customization, SEO and much more. It is an ideal platform for fresh startups to build their websites and generate online traffic with ease.
Conclusion
If you’re a startup and in search of some good software for your team, look no further. I’ve tested and tried many different types of software in the past and have come up with an ultimate list for you to consider when choosing your platform.