Today, there are many great business software to choose from, but there is no one perfect solution for everyone. If you do a quick search for best business software or best business tools, you will definitely find a lot of lists and articles.
What is the best software to run a small business? What are the best free business tools for startups? This guide will show you how to pick between business software lists and business software for small companies.
Wix
Wix was founded in 2006 by three entrepreneurs frustrated with the difficulty and expense of creating a website. Today, the company has a staff of 5,000 employees worldwide and 200 million users in 190 countries. We chose it for the best website builder since it lets users create professional-looking websites with no coding knowledge for an affordable price.
Wix comes with hundreds of professional templates and a drag-and-drop editor, making it easy to create a professional business site in just minutes. Every website is designed to look great on mobile devices and features engaging effects including animation, video backgrounds, and scrolling.
Businesses that want to sell online can take advantage of Wix’s advanced e-commerce features. Users can set up an online store, manage inventory and orders, and get revenue and conversion rate reports using a simple, intuitive dashboard. Wix also lets store owners accept payments via Wix Payments, PayPal, and Stripe and integrates with Instagram and Facebook.
Although creating a basic website is free, upgrading to a paid plan is the only way to unlock Wix’s business and e-commerce features. All of Wix’s paid plans include a 14-day free trial, free hosting, Google Analytics, and the ability to link a custom domain.
Business Basic Plan
- $23 per month
- Accept online payments
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 20GB storage
- Connect your domain
- Remove Wix ads
- Five video hours
- Google Analytics
- Free domain for one year
- $300 ad vouchers
- Site Booster app
- Visitor Analytics app
Business Unlimited Plan
- $27 per month
- 35GB storage
- All Business Basic Plan features
- 10 video hours
- Professional logo
- Social media logo files
Business VIP Plan
- $49 per month
- Accept online payments
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 500GB storage
- All Business Unlimited Plan features
- Unlimited video hours
- Priority Response
- VIP Support
MailChimp
MailChimp was created in 2001 by web design agency owners Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius who wanted to create an affordable email marketing service for small businesses. It has grown into a full-fledged marketing platform offering landing pages, websites, postcards, and more. We chose it as the best email marketing software because it offers small businesses high-level email marketing with both free and affordable paid plans.
MailChimp’s free email software makes it easy for business owners new to email marketing to get started. The platform offers premade email templates, opt-in popups and signup forms, audience segmentation, and basic personalization. Users also get a mobile app that lets them view campaign performance and send emails with just a few clicks.
MailChimp’s drag-and-drop templates let users create professional, branded emails with no design skills. A built-in analytics tool also keeps track of open rates and clicks, and segments data to help show what’s working and what’s not. Users can automatically send out targeted emails based on user behaviors, like a welcome message for new signups or a related product recommendation for a recent buyer.
Most small businesses can get pretty far using MailChimp’s free plan. The paid plans add more subscribers and lists as well as more detailed automations:
Free Plan
- FREE
- 2,000 subscriber limit
- 10,000 emails per month
- Basic email templates
- Integrations with 250+ apps
- Landing pages and popup forms
- Google, Facebook, and Instagram retargeting ads
- Single-step automations
- Segmentation
- Basic reports
Essentials Plan
- $9.99 per month (based on the number of subscribers)*
- 500 subscriber limit
- 5,000 emails per month
- All Free Plan features
- Access to all email templates
- A/B testing
- Remove Mailchimp footer
- 24/7 email and chat support
Standard Plan
- $14.99 per month (based on the number of subscribers)*
- 500 subscriber limit
- 6,000 million emails per month
- All Essentials Plan features
- Behavior-based automations
- Multi-step automations
- Send time optimization
- Delivery by time zone
* Use the MailChimp calculator to determine pricing based on the size of the email list.
Trello
In 2011, a company called Fog Creek Software launched a prototype of a project management tool designed to solve high-level planning issues. Later named Trello, the software grew to over 500,000 users in just one year and 4.75 million by 2014. We chose it as the best project management software because it offers a free, flexible, and visual way to manage projects.
Trello uses Kanban-style boards for task and project tracking and makes it easy to manage both individual projects and ongoing workflows. Its simple and intuitive interface lets users create custom boards and lists with cards that can include images, files, links, checklists, due dates, and more.
Users can get started in seconds with a blank board or choose from hundreds of categorized templates created by other users that can be modified as needed. Trello offers integrations with Slack, Google Drive, Dropbox, and dozens of other third-party platforms as well as mobile apps to streamline collaboration and workflows.
Trello offers a lot with its free plan including unlimited personal boards, lists, and cards. The free plan is limited to 10MB per file attachment, 10 team boards, and one third-party integration (Power-Up) per board. The Business Class plan comes with expanded features and a 14-day free trial:
Free Plan
- FREE
- Unlimited personal boards
- Unlimited cards
- Unlimited lists
- 10MB per file attachment
- 10 team boards
- One Power-Up per board
Business Class Plan
- $10 per user per month
- All Free Plan features
- 250MB per file attachment
- Unlimited team boards
- Unlimited Power-Ups
Optimizely
An old blown startup mantra is iterate, iterate, and iterate. And a better way to experiment and run A/B testing for your websites that will help you to make market-driven decisions. Not just A/B Testing, you can do much more. 71% companies run A/B testing twice a month. Optimizely is a tool that allows you to test website copy, pricing, presentation, and other elements of your web presence both on mobile and desktop.
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
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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)
Conclusion
These are the best software to run a small business. Most of these business tools are free and can be used by any company, large or small. In recent years, the number of online business management software has dramatically increased, providing opportunities for startups and entrepreneurs to manage their businesses from anywhere.