Are you a startup or small business owner? If that’s the case, then almost certainly you are looking for great free online tools to help your business run smoothly. There are many free startup apps that can help improve your productivity, help with hiring and marketing, and reduce costs. Some of them are only available to businesses with less than 5 employees; others are free for all comers.
Hotjar.
Understand how visitors interact with your site without having them fill out a form or get on a call. Leverage heat maps and visitor recordings to see what people do and care about on your site — and where you need to improve.
How you can use it: Understand visitor behavior on your most important site pages to improve important conversion points. See how your site performs and use engagement data to help with your site structure.
“We love how easy it is with HotJar to visualize the data with their site heat map and overlay. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words – or in this case data points.” – Sarnen Steinbarth, Founder/CEO at TurboTenant
Eventbrite.
Create, manage, and market free events. Bonus: use Eventbrite to search for events in your industry for inspiration.
How you could use it: Set up a regional prospect event. See how your contacts have engaged with your company in the past, and use it to make an impact in person. After the event, create lists and workflows based on information synced from Eventbrite to re-engage no shows and turn attendees into customers.
“The integration with Eventbrite is smooth and simple, and great for follow-up and lead nurturing after events. I can highly recommend it.” – Chris Schack Noesgaard, CCO at Adapto Technologies
Mailchimp.
Sync HubSpot contacts into Mailchimp lists for easy follow up. Engage with contacts and segment based on conversion.
How you could use it: Use email to provide relevant content to drive value to your contacts at every stage of the buying process. Email your existing customer base to drive more value by leveraging evangelists or helping them become repeat buyers.
Create beautiful mobile-friendly quizzes, polls, and forms. Leverage popular expert approved templates or customize and build them from scratch.
How you could use it: Leverage a quiz or poll template to collect data on users and automatically sync responses into HubSpot properties to segment follow up.
Automate Notifications and Tasks with Slack.
Slack is a digital workplace that increases efficiency by connecting you to the people, tools, and information you need to get work done and drive communication effectively.
How you could use it:Leverage Slack for organized conversations, searchable histories, and over 1,000 apps to connect your workplaces. Divide channels by teams or projects. Share files, create tasks, and receive notifications directly within Slack to stay up-to-date on all of your contacts.
Survey Customers with Surveymonkey.
Create and send surveys to gauge customer sentiment and action responses at scale. Don’t know where to start? Leverage popular survey templates with survey scientist approved questions.
How you could use it: Create a survey to understand customer satisfaction by leveraging a template for Net Promoter Score or a Customer Satisfaction Survey. Action auto-synced survey responses in HubSpot by setting up a workflow to evangelize promoters and re-engage or follow up with detractors.
“We use SurveyMonkey to send automated client satisfaction surveys. Each response is tied to the client’s contact record in HubSpot, making it extremely easy to track, analyze, and trigger different marketing workflows depending on the survey results.” Ricardo Garcia-Amaya,Co-founder & CEO at VOIQ
Databox
Access all of your business key performance indicators on one shareable dashboard automatically delivered to any device. Eliminate the collection process of compiling reports and formatting charts from multiple systems and data sources by creating an all-in-one dashboard. Leverage one of Databox’s 100 reporting templates to deliver meaningful insights to your team.
How you could use it: Get a daily scorecard on how your business is performing with topline metrics delivered in a beautifully customized report to your mobile, desktop, TV display, Apple Watch or Slack channels. Schedule weekly reports for your team for a quick health-check on their key performance indicators.
“With Databox, we’ve been able to pull together our most important metrics from disparate sources into one place, quickly and easily. This gave us real-time performance insights that allowed us to focus on the right activities on our journey to profitability. Being able to pull data from places like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Mixpanel (and more) has been a game changer for us.” – Nelson Joyce, Cofounder at Tettra
Eventbrite
Create, manage, and market free events. Bonus: use Eventbrite to search for events in your industry for inspiration.
How you could use it: Set up a regional prospect event. See how your contacts have engaged with your company in the past, and use it to make an impact in person. After the event, create lists and workflows based on information synced from Eventbrite to re-engage no shows and turn attendees into customers.
“The integration with Eventbrite is smooth and simple, and great for follow-up and lead nurturing after events. I can highly recommend it.” – Chris Schack Noesgaard, CCO at Adapto Technologies
HelloSign.
Easily create and manage contracts from one place to close deals faster. Request signatures, autofill contact information, and track status. View signature status and last view to know when to follow up with leads.
How you can use it: Sign, sync, and deliver contract with an average turnaround time of 44 minutes. Manage all of your contracts easily from one place. Sort documents by signature status or last view in order to time reach-out.
Want to kickstart growth? Arm yourself with the right tools. Start by adding these 16 apps for startups to your repertoire — it might be the difference from moving from a startup to a scaleup. If you’re a startup looking to leverage all these great integrations while using HubSpot at a fraction of the cost, apply to HubSpot for Startups.
What are your go-to tools?
Surveymonkey
Create and send surveys to gauge customer sentiment and action responses at scale. Don’t know where to start? Leverage popular survey templates with survey scientist approved questions.
How you could use it: Create a survey to understand customer satisfaction by leveraging a template for Net Promoter Score or a Customer Satisfaction Survey. Action auto-synced survey responses in HubSpot by setting up a workflow to evangelize promoters and re-engage or follow up with detractors.
“We use SurveyMonkey to send automated client satisfaction surveys. Each response is tied to the client’s contact record in HubSpot, making it extremely easy to track, analyze, and trigger different marketing workflows depending on the survey results.” Ricardo Garcia-Amaya,Co-founder & CEO at VOIQ
Databox.
Access all of your business key performance indicators on one shareable dashboard automatically delivered to any device. Eliminate the collection process of compiling reports and formatting charts from multiple systems and data sources by creating an all-in-one dashboard. Leverage one of Databox’s 100 reporting templates to deliver meaningful insights to your team.
How you could use it: Get a daily scorecard on how your business is performing with topline metrics delivered in a beautifully customized report to your mobile, desktop, TV display, Apple Watch or Slack channels. Schedule weekly reports for your team for a quick health-check on their key performance indicators.
“With Databox, we’ve been able to pull together our most important metrics from disparate sources into one place, quickly and easily. This gave us real-time performance insights that allowed us to focus on the right activities on our journey to profitability. Being able to pull data from places like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Mixpanel (and more) has been a game changer for us.” – Nelson Joyce, Cofounder at Tettra
Hotjar
Understand how visitors interact with your site without having them fill out a form or get on a call. Leverage heat maps and visitor recordings to see what people do and care about on your site — and where you need to improve.
How you can use it: Understand visitor behavior on your most important site pages to improve important conversion points. See how your site performs and use engagement data to help with your site structure.
“We love how easy it is with HotJar to visualize the data with their site heat map and overlay. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words – or in this case data points.” – Sarnen Steinbarth, Founder/CEO at TurboTenant
Expand Social Reach with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Manage your social presence across LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter — all in one consolidated place.
How you could use it: Schedule social posts from HubSpot and track performance. Leverage multiple social channels to promote a marketing campaign or event.
HelloSign.
Easily create and manage contracts from one place to close deals faster. Request signatures, autofill contact information, and track status. View signature status and last view to know when to follow up with leads.
How you can use it: Sign, sync, and deliver contract with an average turnaround time of 44 minutes. Manage all of your contracts easily from one place. Sort documents by signature status or last view in order to time reach-out.
Conclusion
Want to kickstart growth? Arm yourself with the right tools.
We have curated this list after a thorough research, and each name in this list has been selected after much care and consideration. All these tools & resources are beneficial for startups and small businesses in keeping their operations seamless, easy and more efficient. Use them wisely, and you can easily propel your business to better prospects and better sustainability for years. Good luck!