Paying for business software can be costly, particularly if you are a startup with limited funds. These limited funds may even prohibit you from buying quality business management software.
This is why there are so many alternatives to expensive software you can try for free. Here are five of the most popular free business management software available on the market today.
Slack
Whatever your industry, effective communication between your team members is almost certainly vital to the smooth running of your company.
Online communication tool Slack enables you to try its services for free for an unlimited period of time. If you choose this software, you can group your team messages according to channels, which enables those working on a particular project to communicate more effectively.
Under the terms of the free plan, you’ll have access to 10,000 of your team’s most recent messages. Other benefits include unlimited one-to-one voice and video calls for individuals, as well as 10 integrations with other apps such as Google Drive and Microsoft 365.
If you’d like access to a wider range of features, you can upgrade to one of the company’s paid plans, which offer services such as group video and voice calls.
Trello
If you’re juggling numerous projects across your company, you could improve your efficiency with project management software Trello. Based on the Japanese model of Kanban management, Trello uses virtual boards that enable you to visualize your progress on key projects and then decide on your next steps. The most common analogy used to describe the software is a whiteboard covered in Post-It notes.
You can also assign tasks, establish timelines, create calendars, and view metrics. Once you’ve created a new task, every aspect of the task can be managed, tracked, and shared with other members of your team.
Another point in Trello’s favor is that the software has integrations with apps such as Confluence, Slack, Dropbox, and Evernote.
Wave
For many small business owners, invoicing can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of the accounting process, Using the free version of Wave’s customizable software, you can create an unlimited number of invoices in any currency.
You can also view your transaction history with your customers, set up invoices reminders to email your customers when payment is due, and track sales tax. Another of the software’s most attractive features is the ability to set up recurring billing for repeat customers, which could drastically reduce the amount of time you spend chasing payments.
Skype
With the rise of remote working, it’s essential that you choose the right video conferencing platform for your business’s needs. While a number of rivals have emerged in recent years, Skype’s free plan remains one of the most attractive on the market. As well as supporting one-to-one chats, the app enables you to hold group video calls with up to 100 participants.
A major advantage here is that you don’t need to download an app in order to use the service, and can do so through your browser.
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.
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
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.
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
Best Business Live Chat Software – ProProfs Chat
ProProfs Chat is a cloud-based customer support software that enables business owners to build delightful experiences to visitors with instant help. It even helps your support teams to connect faster with visitors in real-time and become more proactive with features like visitor monitoring and chat greetings.
Its detailed reports section helps you capture useful insights that assist your support team members identify the problem areas faster and work towards improving future support experiences.
Key Features:
- Use predefined messages reduce response time
- Reduce tickets by up to 80% with knowledge base integration
- Share chat sessions with other operators in real-time
- Announce sales, discounts, upcoming updates
- Set up automated greetings based on visitor behavior
- Provide chat support in 70+ languages
- Create a support bundle with 50+ integration options
- Monitor chat operators closely and view reports
Pricing Plans:
- Offers both free and paid plans to users.
- Paid plan starts at $10/user/month.
- You can try premium features with their 15 days free trial.
Best Business Work Management Software – Scoro
Next up on our best business management software roundup is Scoro. It is an all-in-one business management software that reduces shuffling between apps and help improve your team productivity.
Scoro helps you to track your business team’s progress and share results in automated reports and dashboards. It empowers teams to collaborate effectively on a digital workspace. It’s robust metrics and KPIs help managers to make data-driven decisions.
The app offers CRM, resource allocation, financial summary, budgeting, and project management features to bring the whole organization in one place.
Key Features:
- High-level customized projects overview
- Project timeline, priority assignment and reduce overlaps
- Timesheets and time tracker
- Planner and Kanban task board
- Contact details, files, quotes, and invoices
- Identify the sales process
- Tracking goals and performance
Pricing:
- Free Trial
- Essential plan at $26/month
- Standard plan starting at $37/month
- Pro plan at $49/month
Business Planning from EquityNet
If your company is still looking to lure investors, EquityNet ($58.50 for Two Year Plan + Two Months Free at CyberGhost VPN) offers a free crowdfunding platform that will help you plan, analyze, and share your business plan with investors. You’ll create your plan using EquityNet’s plan and analysis software, and you’ll publish it onto the website and share it with anyone who is willing to read your pitch.
Although this is more of a funding tool than a planning tool, the software is good enough to get you through the initial ideation stages (and, who knows, you might even get lucky and find a deep-pocketed investor).
Social Media Listening from HootSuite
Most small businesses don’t need a mega social listening platform. A free, easy-to-use dashboard that lets you stay up-to-date on what your customers are saying should be enough. Fortunately, Hootsuite ($58.50 for Two Year Plan + Two Months Free at CyberGhost VPN) offers a free version of its software that’s good enough to do the trick.
With HootSuite Free, you’ll be able to manage multiple social networks, schedule posts, and interact with your followers. You’ll also be able to track how many followers you have on each of your social networks and monitor which posts are generating the most clicks. If your business grows, you can move up to one of three premium plans, which give you access to additional profiles, analytics, and multiple users.
Email Marketing from MailChimp
MailChimp ($58.50 for Two Year Plan + Two Months Free at CyberGhost VPN) is one of the best and most popular email marketing platforms on the market. Service tiers are priced depending on how many emails you send per month. If your company sends fewer than 12,000 email messages per month to fewer than 2,000 subscribers, you’ll absolutely love MailChimp’s Forever Free plan.
This steal of a deal lets you use built-in signup forms to gather subscribers from across the web. You can use MailChimp’s drag-and-drop designer and email templates to craft the perfect message. You won’t get robust reporting on the Forever Free plan, but you’ll be able to check open rates and compare them to the average company in your industry. Not bad for zero dollars.
Data Visualization from Tableau Public
If you need a data visualization tool but you don’t have the coin to spend on Tableau Desktop ($58.50 for Two Year Plan + Two Months Free at CyberGhost VPN) , then you should try Tableau Public. Public is essentially the same as the full Tableau Desktop product, except you won’t be able to pull information from as many data sources as the paid version, and anything you create will be saved to a public version of Tableau’s cloud.
This product gives you access to live dashboards, responsive visuals that can be created and seen on mobile devices, and access to Google and Microsoft document managers. You can even share your visuals on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Conclusion
It is hard to run a company without business management software. The role of business management software is to make sure your business runs better and more effectively. But sometimes you are overwhelmed by the sheer number of software available out there. Which one should you choose? There are lots of free business management software available to download online. I have collected them all for you here so that you can compare each one easily.