Have you heard of the 2020 forecast? There’s a big boom predicted in internet entrepreneurship. In order to get on the bandwagon you need the startup tools. We’ve been tracking tools used by entrepreneurs from 2016-2019 and can tell you which startups are going to be important in the next 2 years.
This list includes the most useful and innovative tools for entrepreneurs in 2020. Each tool is carefully chosen and described in detail to help you better understand it and pick the best solution for your business. If you’re reading this in 2021 and would like to suggest a tool for this year, please let us know!
Canva
Canva is another great help for businesses that need design solutions. They can share your graphic design ideas on social media. The tool gives you many templates, fonts, styles, and background images to create designs.
Behance
Behance is a popular site where businesses and individuals from different interests and sectors come for inspiration. So, if you are a professional graphic designer who is looking for some great works from other designers to get new ideas, this is an ideal site you should visit. The site covers many other business categories.
Stripe
Stripe helps businesses for accepting payments through the Internet. This site is known for helping entrepreneurs that are involved in selling digital products online such as online courses.
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The Name App
To have a unique and easy to remember business name is important for brand recall.This particular tool saves you the struggle of finding the right domain name for your startup. What’s more, it also helps you in checking the availability of the username and in deciding social media profile names that resonate with your business. Simply login to The Name App’s official website or download it on your Apple device’s App Store (Sorry, Android Users, you’ll need to make do with the website for now).
GrowthHacker.tv
GrowthHacker.tv is a place where you can watch interviews of successful growth hackers and entrepreneurs who have made a mark in the digital world. The interview videos keep on playing on the website in a loop, which is accessible to visitors for free. But if you want to access a past video recording, then you would need to signup, which is paid. But wait, that’s not all. If you are visiting the website for the first time, you might get a promo code to access site’s content as a premium member for a week.
Moosend
Creating email campaigns can be easy. Delivering them at the right time, though, can be hard. That’s why you need an email marketing automation platform like Moosend to get started. Moosend will give you access to automation features to create, schedule and track the performance of your email campaigns. You can get to know Moosend through their free forever plan, offering unlimited emails for up to 1,000 subscribers. The paid plans will give you access to advanced features starting at $10 per month.
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services, commonly known as AWS, is a web hosting service offered by the ecommerce mogul Amazon. Probably, one of the most dependable web hosting service available presently, AWS is scalable, flexible and currently offers over 90 services including database storage, content delivery, and other features & functionalities.
BrandCrowd
There’s nothing more important in starting a business than your logo. Logos provide that unique brand that customers will come to recognize. That’s why Logo design should take center stage in startup planning. Often, however, logos get very little thought and even less budget. If that’s the case for your business, you can turn to an online logo maker tool like BrandCrowd. With a minimal investment and a little time and effort, you’ll get a logo perfect for you. You can customize the colors, layout, fonts, and more. Then you can download your logo instantly and start sharing it with the world.
BrandCrowd also offers thousands of social media design templates that you can customize. If you’re a budding business, chances are you will need to post on social media regularly & BrandCrowd provides designs you can easily tweak to suit your brand message. It’s also cool that the templates are automatically customized with the colors from your logo – meaning you get a consistent brand message across all platforms.
MailChimp
To run a successful email marketing campaign and to keep your audience updated about offers, you need an efficient newsletter service. This is where MailChimp comes into the picture. MailChimp is a name that probably needs no introduction to the tech world. The good news, MailChimp offers a free startup package with all the basics features. Paid services begin from $10 per month. Alternatively, you can also take a look at ActiveCampaign and see which one of these suits you prefer.
Aytm
There are plenty of survey tools available in the market today. What sets Aytm apart from all those tools is the fact that it not only helps you in creating a survey form, but also helps you in reaching out to the right audience that will be interested in taking these surveys. A Quick tip: keep your questions open ended to get better insights.
Glasshat
Glasshat comes across as a super-efficient SEO tool that helps startup owners in planning their SEO and other digital marketing activities. This tool prepares a list of activities and also educates new entrepreneurs why a particular activity is important for their startup. While using Glasshat, it would be a good idea to add the Yoast SEO Plugin to your WordPress website so that you can mend your web content as per SEO guidelines.
Asana
Asana is a web & mobile based project management tool that was built for improving workflow at Facebook. Eventually, and inevitably, the efficiency of Asana made it a prominent name among almost all startup owners across the world. This project management software allows users to assign tasks as per their status, add assignees & get activity feed, view log reports, and a lot more. If you want explore further, we recommend Trello, an equally efficient project management system
StockSnap.io
A picture is worth a thousand words, and this is why all businesses know the importance of using high quality images to create better engagement. StockSnap, as the name suggests, is a website from where you can get high resolution stock images. The website offers all these images absolutely free of cost. However, if you are looking for more options to get stock images and don’t mind paying a reasonable amount for the same, ShutterStock is the name you can always trust.
Wave
Wave is a free online accounting tool for startups and small businesses. The website helps you track all your expenses and incomes, and also helps you with your taxes when the time comes – thus, can help you save a lot of time & effort, usually involved in these procedures. As the screenshot above depicts, this resource is quite reliable for having received media coverage from prominent players such as Forbes, CNBC, Bloomberg, PCMag.com and Inc. You can even set up a separate personal account to keep track of your various passive income sources and personal finances.
InvoiceBerry
Create and send invoices with ease thanks to InvoiceBerry. InvoiceBerry is an online invoicing software designed with small businesses in mind. The software allows you to create professional-looking, customizable invoices as well as keep track of your finances and generate various reports. Thanks to InvoiceBerry, you can automate and streamline your invoicing workflows, save your precious time, and focus on growing your business.
Xtensio
Xtensio is a collaboration tool every startup needs to create stunning presentations, pitches, reports, case studies, agendas. Its drag and drop functionality makes it easy to add images and videos, resize, change backgrounds and more. Any changes automatically save and sync across all device for all users. More importantly, it promotes brand consistency as users work under a customized dashboard.
Freshdesk
Freshdesk is the answer to all your questions pertaining to customer support. From ticketing to tracking to FAQs, Freshdesk can help you sail through the ocean of customer support without breaking a sweat. Freshdesk offers startups a 30-day free trial, without having to enter the credit details. It’s other top features include multichannel helpdesk, automation, reports & analytics and a bunch of team specific products, such as for sales, admin, etc.
Hootsuite
This list wouldn’t be complete without Hootsuite, the most popular social media marketing management tool among startups. This nifty tool can help you manage over 35 most popular social media networks from just one dashboard. With Hootsuite included in your social media marketing mix, there’s no more clutter and missed out opportunities from social networks. Hootsuite saves the day, everyday
Optimizely
Conversion Rate is one aspect that each and every business depends on. We all know how important A/B testing is to ensure your ecommerce startup (or any business for that matter) is able to covert efficiently, and hence, Optimizely. The name is synonymous to A/B testing in the business world and helps you in fine tuning your webpages to ensure high conversion rate.
BetaList
Beta List is a prelaunch traction system that lets you list your startup before launching it, absolutely free of cost. Free submission entails a waiting period of two months after submission, while getting listed within a couple of days simply needs a nominal fee of $99. The prime benefit of this platform is that you get to showcase your startup idea in the community of business enthusiasts and get valuable feedback from them.
SemRush
SemRush is an all in one marketing toolkit that helps startup owners in carrying out their competitor research easily and effectively. SemRush’s other prominent services include technical SEO audit of your website, semantic core collection, ideas for generating organic traffic, and so on. From ecommerce moguls like Amazon to the Entertainment Conglomerates like Disney, many prominent names have trust in SemRush.
AngelList
AngelList is a platform that every startup must know about. Not only does it help startups connecting with potential investors, but also helps them find experienced professionals who would be interested in working for them. Unlike other job portals, on AngelList, professionals & startups require no middle man to connect. On the other end, it is also a good platform for investors to explore potential startups they would be interested back financially.
Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/Forms
A Free alternative to the MS Office suite, the office tools offered by Google help startup owners to create and share word documents, excel sheets, presentations and forms, and share them with their team members without having to send the edited files again and again. Its accessibility options further ensure only selected people can view the files, and you can also see who made what change to the file, as well as the entire edit history.
Conclusion
To be successful in online business, you need to know what tools do small business owners recommend for managing the digital aspects of their startup. Here are the best tools for online businesses. You will find essential tools to help you run your business, including top apps, website builders, ecommerce platforms, social media management, technology to run an effective online market research campaign and more.