Are you looking for small business software? You know, software that is affordable and essential for your small business. A good business software boosts your work efficiency tremendously.
To make your search easier (and save you some time), I’ve gathered top software programs for small businesses to help you make the right choice compared to the thousands of options available on the market.
Google Docs – Best Free Office Suite
Google Docs is an online word processing program by Google.
Google Docs brings your documents to life with smart editing and styling tools to help you easily format text and paragraphs. You can choose from hundreds of fonts, add links, images, and drawings.
Google Docs also enables collaboration between colleagues. As the document is saved in the cloud, the creator can share the link to the file for editing to other people.
With Google Docs, users also do not have to worry about hitting the save button every time they make changes. The application automatically saves the document at regular intervals so even when the internet connection is lost, users can still find their additions and modifications.
Some key features of Google Docs:
- Editing
- Comments
- Styling
- Fonts
- Linking
- Images
- Drawings
- Templates
- Built-In Google Search
- Add-Ons
Canva – Best Free Image Editor
Canva is a multimedia design platform that allows users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content.
Canva gives businesses, organizations, and even individual professionals with a very simple design platform that enables them to create amazing and professional quality graphic designs. This online design solution offers a throng of powerful features, including a simple drag-and-drop design tool and a vast collection of over 1 million photographs, graphics, and fonts.
Some key features of Canva:
- Adding text to photos
- Speech bubble maker
- Image Transparency Tool
- Photo Enhancer
- 8,000 Templates
- Photo Blur
- Photo vignette
- Design grids
- Free icons
- Photo frames
- Stickers
Buffer – Top Free Social Media Manager
Buffer is an internet-based app intended for managing social media content. Its primary function is for sharing content across today’s well-known social media sites. It offers the ability to spread content via a simple approach. The app has the ability to connect to all social media accounts while making it easier to create and schedule posts.
Instead of traditionally logging in on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and other social media sites, Buffer will do it all at once. It also makes it convenient for users to create posts and have them uploaded with a single click. The app contains a browser extension for seamless integration with WordPress, Chrome, RSS readers, and other important tools for sniffing out content.
Some key features of Buffer:
- Multiple posts and tweets
- Social profile sharing
- Profile management
- Multi-media format sharing
- Agency/business planning
- Analytics and insights
- Stats comparison
- iOS and Android support
- Team collaboration (via administrator rights)
- 2-step account login
- Customized scheduling
- Standard buffering
Calendly – Best Free Tool For Scheduling Meetings
Calendly is a simple, easy-to-use scheduling software, which aims to save time, accelerate sales, and improve service quality.
It eliminates the old-school way of using email and phone tags for scheduling appointments, calls, interviews, demos, and more. It allows hot prospects to connect right away, and ensures staff doesn’t lose them to phone and email tags.All you need to do is to set your availability preference, share the link with clients, colleagues, etc. and let them pick a time for the event, which is automatically added to your calendar. It’s more efficient and simplified compared to traditional appoint scheduling solutions, and it makes it easy for users to setup, use, and manage scheduling of appointments and more.Some key feaures of Calendly:
- Open API
- Simple and modern interface
- Calendar integration
- Fully optimized for all devices
- Automatic/custom notifications
- Enhanced privacy and controls
- Team scheduling
- Group events
- Invitee calendar integration
- Can be embedded with websites
- Metrics and reporting
- APIs and Webhooks
Hubspot – Best Free CRM Software
HubSpot CRM is built to be a platform that allows sales teams to get started quickly without making much of a change in their existing workflow. It is a solution ideal for companies that are still starting to recognize the value of CRM and want to try it out or for enterprises that are not using their existing CRM systems to their fullest potential.
HubSpot CRM is a smart and easy option that carries all the necessary basic features but without the often confusing complexity, many other CRM platforms have.
HubSpot will help you easily create beautiful contact and company profiles, as it can neatly organize every single detail from your customers’ communication with you. It effectively assigns and tracks your deals, controls the performance of your agents, and offers a single, detailed dashboard where all team members can keep track of the company’s activities.
Some of the key features of Hubspot CRM:
- Customize views
- Deal and Task Board
- Drag and Drop Communicator
- Email Integration
- Phone Integration
- Website Integration
- Enrichment
- Social Media
- Company Database
- Website Visitors
- Email Connections
Microsoft Teams
Once upon a time, Skype for Business might have held this “top 10” spot. Instead, Skype has given way to Microsoft Teams.
Where Skype was, for the most part, a business version of MSN (if you’re old enough to remember Microsoft’s early chat model), Teams is so much more. With Teams you can still chat with colleagues, both individually and in a group. However, where the app really shines is its conferencing abilities. Users can switch an audio-only call to a video-and-audio call with the click of a button. Teams is compatible with Microsoft Planner and can host files, which are accessible to teammates.
In March 2019, Microsoft rolled out Teams Live Events, making the app a truly all-encompassing communication solution. Through live events, it’s possible to host online presentations. This release came just in time for COVID, offering companies a way to continue hosting events with clients and prospects, despite the world being on lockdown.
Slack
Slack is another of the most common business communication platforms. The app offers the ability to create channels for your teams. For example, the marketing team would have a Marketing channel they’d use to keep everyone up to date and informed. The app also offers one-on-one chats, group chats, audio and video meetings, and more.
With Slack, you can add apps to the app. They have a mouth-watering collection of apps that help users work from home apps, offer daily tools, support productivity, and more.
Time tracking: Timely
Good time management is essential to every successful small business. Aside from improving productivity and self-management, it ensures you bill clients accurately for all your work. But no one likes time tracking – it’s fiddly, time intensive and interrupts your flow. Thankfully, there’s a new way of tracking time, and it’s completely automated.
AI-powered apps like Timely can now capture everything for you while you work; you don’t have to consciously think about time tracking at all. By tracking every detail, they help business owners unlock valuable insights: you can identify struggling processes, see how long project phases take, estimate and price work for a guaranteed profitable return and optimize workflows. It also means all your business efforts are accounted for – both billable and non-billable – allowing you to stay in control of how your time is spent.
Google Workspace or Google Drive
In many “top email provider” lists, Gmail is actually listed as the best email provider offered today. Companies tend to gravitate toward using whichever cloud-based storage comes with their email provider.
Google Drive has become an incredible, intuitive, multi-platform storage tool for team collaboration. Within Google Drive, you can add and organize documents. When editing text documents, you can see where in a document your teammates are, what changes they made, comments they left, and more in real-time. Changes are saved automatically so no teammate ever works on an outdated version.
Collaboration: GoogleSuite
While collaboration is key to every successful business, it can be one of the hardest features to nail. Client feedback, individual tasks and group projects all depend on effortless coordination, but it’s an unwieldy mixture of competing inputs. The answer? Invest in a robust single platform for all file sharing and task communication.
If you’re able to streamline all forms of task communication – be it email, instant messaging, phone, or via the site itself – through a single system then you’re winning. Any decent communication app should allow you to create different channels for projects to easily share documents, files and notes with members of that team. GoogleSuite offers a comprehensive cloud-based package for business, allowing colleagues to communicate and collaborate in real-time from anywhere in the world. It’s also highly secure, with two-factor authentication and encryption at rest and during transfers.
Zoom
Zoom is the most popular conferencing tool in this list. With Zoom you can have your usual one-on-one and team chats, both audio and video. There are also a ton of apps you can add to your Zoom experience, helping with collaboration, learning and development, productivity, and more.
One way Zoom shines is that it offers a cloud phone solution. Instead of downloading a softphone to your computer, Zoom offers cloud capabilities, making your work phone calls as mobile as a cellphone.
Customer support: Intercom
Realistically, if you’re going to succeed as a business, your customers will be at the centre of everything you do. You need to be able to respond quickly and meaningfully to all your customers’ needs, from requests and suggestions, to complaints and praise – and act proactively to anticipate needs before they occur. As before, a single flow for all of this customer support makes your life much easier.
Intercom is leading the field when it comes to customer connectivity, acting as an all-in-one lead acquisition, sales, marketing, customer support and CRM solution. It’s three-part platform lets you set up automated email flows to manage different user segments, systematically respond to in-app or in-web customer support queries, and create resources to educate and inform customers. As your user base grows, you can use helpful automation to keep customers happy without overwhelming your staff.
Project management: Trello
Now for that unending list of projects and tasks. It’s easy for small buisnesses to lose sight of the bigger picture by becoming fixated on the tiny details – so project management tools are a must. One of the most popular is the “digital whiteboard” Trello, which lets you brainstorm ideas, store “to-dos” in one accessible location, and arrange tasks according to priority.
Simplicity is definitely Trello’s winning feature, but dig a little deeper and you’ll soon appreciate just how powerful and versatile the tool can be. Beyond color-coded task lists, you can leave notes, amend briefs and deadlines, collaborate with other team members and ensure that all project revisions are observed and acknowledged. As a highly visual app, Trello is an easy yet effective way to handle project management.
Accounting: Quickbooks
Keeping on-track of budgets, invoices and payments can be exhausting – particularly if you haven’t had much experience with bookkeeping before. If you’re someone who struggles with numbers, meticulously tracking figures – let alone understanding the differences between personal and business taxes – can be overwhelming. But the cleaner your financial processes are from the start, the simpler they’ll be to manage down the line.
Happily, there is a ton of small business accounting software. QuickBooks Online is one of the most popular, enabling you to track expenses, send out invoices on time and (very importantly!) pay your taxes. Tracking all finances – even that cup of coffee you expensed during a business meeting – is essential if you want to ensure every transaction is accounted for. From financial reports tailored to your business’ requirements to payroll processing and getting paid online, QuickBooks is one of the most comprehensive accounting tools around.
Asana
Asana has been picking up steam, becoming one of the best planning applications out there. The app is a cloud-based solution that can be synced with your browser, computer, and phone.
Team and individual projects can be shown in multiple views that help teams stay on track such as list view, timeline, and project boards. Updating a task’s progress or timeline can be as easy as clicking and dragging. Notifications can be configured for upcoming or late assignments. Also, teammates can leave comments and notes, keeping everyone in the loop.
Trello
In the words of Trello, the app “keeps track of everything.” The app offers a kanban-style solution where users can view, move, and edit their tasks as needed. Teammates can be invited or assigned to each task and can comment updates as the tasks progress.
Trello was founded on the notion of turning sticky notes digital. The platform is a highly-visual tool for organizing and keeping track of to dos. Files can be uploaded, notes can be made, and users can be tagged. Trello also offers alerts for due dates, late projects, user mentions, and more.
One great feature of this app is that users outside of your organization can be invited. Therefore, contractors and freelance workers can join teams and boards, staying up to date.
Wix – Best Free Software For Creating Websites
With Wix, you can design and build your own high-quality websites. Whether you’re promoting your business, showcasing your work, opening your store or starting a blog, Wix can help you do it all.
Wix also offers an excellent drag-and-drop site builder to create small websites. There are 100s of free templates available. Wix provides its own web hosting as well as domain names (free and paid). The App Market makes it easy to add extra functionality such as photo galleries or e-commerce.
Some key features of Wix software include:
- Landing page templates
- Mobile-ready
- Website builder
- Drag-and-drop capability
- Web hosting
- One-pager website
- Custom domain
- App market
- Image editor
- 40+ galleries
- Stock images
Mailerlite – Best Free Software For Email Marketing
MailerLite is an email marketing directed towards small businesses, giving them a robust and powerful platform that is easy to use and easily complements existing content marketing platforms and strategies. This simple and straightforward application comes with all features professional email marketers look for in an email marketing software.
Some of Mailerlite’s key features include:
- Drag-and-drop Editor
- Custom HTML Editor
- Rich Text Editor
- Free Newsletter Design Templates
- Built-in Photo Editing Feature
- File Manager
- Subscriber Management
- Popups
- Landing Pages
ProfitBooks – Top Free Accounting Software
ProfitBooks is a fast-growing and amazingly simple to use free accounting software. It lets you create beautiful invoices, track expenses and manage inventory without any accounting knowledge.
With ProfitBooks accounting software, you can create professional estimates or invoices and track outstanding payments due with few clicks.
Whether you are manufacturing, distributing, selling, servicing, or just managing the inventory, ProfitBooks can handle all your business processes with ease.You can easily share the transaction data with your accountant and know what’s going on with your business with just a few clicks and take better decisions.Some of the key features of Profitbooks:
- Create beautiful invoices
- Receive online payments using payment gateway
- Record advance payments
- Track accounts receivables with sales reports
- Simplify purchase workflow with POs
- Track manufacturing processes
- Maintain product batches
- Track inventory flow at multiple warehouses
- Easily find low stock using powerful reports
- Generate detailed tax reports
- Collaborate with your accountant online
- Record manual journals
- Track business expenses
Todoist
We’ve all tried numerous ways of setting up to-do lists: Apple’s Reminders app doesn’t have the sophistication the workplace needs, Outlook’s reminders feature isn’t user friendly, notepads aren’t cloud-based…
Todoist is a much-needed solution for mobile to-do lists that is powerful enough to keep up with our jobs. In fact, Todoist’s user interface is set up much like Gmail’s user interface, with the ability to categorize your todos with folders, labels, colors, icons, prioritization, and more.
As a side note, Todoist is compatible with Microsoft Teams as an in-software app.
Evernote
Evernote makes it to the top ten of nearly every top-workplace-apps lists. Why? Because it’s the “best note-taking app.”
Evernote is a well-organized cloud tool that keeps your notes in the same place. One main flaw with note-taking is that, once they’re written, our notes usually get buried; never to be looked at again. Being cloud-based, users can use Evernote to take notes on a computer and read them over on their mobile devices.
Notes are stored offline so users can access and edit them even when they’re offline. Users can add notes, images, and even audio recordings to their notes, enhancing the power of note-taking.
Fishbowl
Fishbowl fills a need that the working community didn’t even know it had. The social networking tool is for business-oriented users. Yes, we have LinkedIn, but LinkedIn is a place where professionals still have to act… professional.
Fishbowl offers professionals a solution where they can connect anonymously with other professionals in the same industry or situation. They can ask questions, bring up concerns, or touch on topics that would likely be taboo on LinkedIn.
On the more casual side, Fishbowl is a great place to have regular, non-sensitive chats too.
Jira Software
Jira is one of the most popular apps for project and issue tracking for software teams. It’s mostly loved by tech people and oftentimes seen as an alternative to Asana or Trello.
It offers many integrations and interesting features for continuous integration and deployment, and automatic update of issues when code is committed in BitBucket. It’s also perfect for agile development – planning sprints and distributing tasks across teams.
Joan Desk Booking app
Transitioning between work from home and your office building has never been easier. With Joan Desk Booking app, employees can book desks in advance, find where their teammates are seated while office managers can track office presence and contact tracing.
Joan’s desk scheduling app offers a user-friendly user interface for employees to check the availability and book a desk. Joan’s booking app is available on both desktops and mobile devices, helping users book on-the-go.
Joan currently offers a 30-day free trial and has a demo version. If you’re still in search of the perfect solution, try it out. No credit card and commitment-free. We are sure you’ll love it!
Try Joan Desk Booking app and create a safe and organized workplace.
Conclusion
To be productive as a small business owner, you need specialized software that can make your life easier. However, it is not always clear what kind of software you should be using or how to get started. Software can easily become expensive if you use the wrong tools. That’s where this guide comes in. This guide reviews some of the essential software for small business owners and also reviews some free options that will save you money!