If you’re reading this article, then you’re probably either about to start a business or you’ve just started one. It’s also likely that you’ll be starting it on the cheap, which means you probably won’t have a big budget for software (unless of course, your business is selling software). On top of not having loads of cash to throw around, any money you do spend should go towards things that will make your life easier.
The last thing you want to do at the beginning of your venture is spend time learning something new. Nothing will set you back quicker than fighting with your technology . With that said, here are some free tools essential for your business.
Trello for Project Management
Team communication, collaboration, and management are the three magic pillars holding every successful startup you see today. With Trello, you get all these things and even more.
Trello is a free, flexible, simple, and easy-to-use project management software. This web-based software offers you a visual representation of all your tasks and how to effectively manage them with your team.
As a result, every member of your team knows what others are up to, and how far they’ve come. This ensures everyone is on the same page, which in turn removes miscommunication from the team.
Kanban boards are a popular choice for project management because of their streamlined and visual design. You can, however, mix and match them with online Gantt charts for a more comprehensive project overview. Find out how in our article on mixing Kanban boards with Gantt charts for better project management.
Zoom for Video Conferencing
Gone are the days where you can’t have a good business network without being there in person to either create it or manage it.
Video calls and conferencing have bridged the gap with networking in such a way where you can actively meet, and engage with your customers just as if you’re there in person.
There are a lot of web-based applications out there that can help you with your video calls, but none like Zoom.
Zoom is the number one service of choice for video conferencing and currently has over 300 million+ users all around the world, with an A+ rating on trusted websites like Trust Radius, G2, and Gartner.
As a startup, Zoom helps you connect better with your audience as it is built to support businesses of all kinds —including yours.
The free plan on Zoom allows you to host up to 100 participants at a time, plus you get unlimited one-on-one meetings which are quite okay for a new business.
Hootsuite for Social Media Management
As a new business, it’s okay to want to dream big, stay up-to-date, and want to get up on everyone’s social feed as soon as you launch.
But perhaps you think it’ll be costly, stressful, and difficult to manage.
Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not.
With just a simple dashboard, friendly interface, plus an easy onboarding process, you’re good and ready to start managing your social media with Hootsuite.
And yeah, it’s free!
Hootsuite is a social media management tool that allows you to manage multiple social media profiles across different networks of choice. You also get to schedule your posts, track engagements, and keep track of useful analytics that contribute to your business’ growth.
The free version of Hootsuite allows only a single user and social media accounts. That’s more than enough to get you started on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin or perhaps Instagram — pick your favorite three.
Read on: See a few more tips on how to boost your content marketing team’s productivity.
WordPress
WordPress is free to use for startups that are interested in building a powerful, customizable website to showcase products and increase their digital audience. It goes without saying that you can’t successfully compete in 2019 if you’re not optimizing a digital strategy. WordPress offers free website templates, integrations with third-party applications, and is where you’ll create a content management strategy.
Mozbar
A successful content strategy often involves guest blog posts from other websites to build your own website’s ranking on Google. The higher your ranking, the easier it is for people to find your website.
With MozBar, users can target high-ranking websites for free simply by downloading the plugin and visiting a website they wish to work with. This powerful SEO tool is great for entrepreneurs because it shows which websites are within their reach and which ones will help them gain much needed publicity.
Hunter
Once you determine which websites you’d like to target in your content marketing strategy, you should start to gather email addresses of the professional contacts you’d like to reach out to.
Hunter is a free business tool for marketing teams who wish to acquire and connect with those accessible contacts. With the free version of the tool, you can filter your searches based on organization, find patterns in emails to verify their legitimacy, and make up to 100 requests at a time.
ote workers stay connected.
Slack
Slack is an internal communication software for businesses that want to stay connected with each other throughout the work day. Sometimes it isn’t enough to see what others are doing on Asana, and a simple Slack message can be enough to understand how to proceed with a specific task.
Slack also uses chatbots for reminders, which can integrate with Asana. Slack is an essential for staying connected with remote workers who won’t always be available to take a phone call or respond to emails.
SurveyMonkey is an online survey tool that allows you to easily create and distribute any kind of form for your startup: NPS surveys, user tests, new hire documents — it’s all here, made simple.
SurveyMonkey is integrated natively with over 100 apps, so you can push form data back to your CRM, email marketing tool, or cloud spreadsheet.
The tool offers four different plans — starting at $36 — which make it possible for startups to create surveys and polls to collect feedback and validate product ideas without overspending.
You know those surveys that block a page’s content? This tool is probably responsible!
Survata is a brand intelligence app you can use to distribute these SurveyWalls across Survata’s network of partner sites, effectively deploying market research surveys at scale in a few clicks.
Your Survata survey could be anything from a usability test to an opinion poll, but the data you get back comes at a price: “basic” lead responses cost around $1, whereas B2B data is $17 a pop.
Put simply, this is a targeting tool. Facebook Insights enables users to draw on a variety of different demographic data points to build a laser targeted audience for advertising.
Startups can build a marketing audience by targeting region, gender, age, like, interests and much more. The best part about Audience Insights for startups, however, is that it’s completely free!
This tool gathers data from around the globe from two major sources: the core Consumer Barometer questionnaire and the Connected Consumer Study. The data supplied from these two studies allows you to get insight from a vast bank of knowledge enriched by Google’s own sources.
For example, you could build a report that tells you no one in Norway is going to care about your coupons if you open up a fitness business over there… Or find out a demographic’s willingness to pay for international shipping… Or discover which markets will adopt your mobile app the fastest by checking a segment’s ‘mobile-centricity’!
The Consumer Barometer is a solid starting point to understand browsing and purchasing habits that could influence the way you market.
Calendly for Schedule Management
Nothing kills a business faster than missed, or late appointments with prospects.
It doesn’t matter if it’s scheduling work shifts, events, conference calls, or meetings, without the proper management, it all falls apart.
And yeah, it’s never easy keeping track of everything especially if you don’t have an assistant to help you out.
This is where Calendly comes in to streamline the whole process while taking the load off your back so you can use your time for something better.
Calendly is a free, and easy-to-use, online appointment scheduling software. It pretty much takes care of scheduling your appointments, events, and meetings based on your availability.
It doesn’t matter if the person booking time with you doesn’t use Calendly, you’re still good to go.
Calendly also comes with simple integration to your favorite apps such as Zoom, Gmail, Salesforce, Hubspot, Stripe, intercom, PayPal, Zapier, and so much more.
Many of us are dependent upon our GCals and Outlook Calendars to remember all our appointments and plans. If you find it hard to tear yourself away from your online calendars, you can instead try integrating it with your other startup tools.
Read on to see to how to sync Outlook and Google with Ganttic’s resource planner. Or find out how to tun your Google Calendar into a Gantt chart.
Mailchimp for Email Marketing
New business? new to the email marketing game? Mailchimp’s got you covered.
One of the big questions on the lips of most startups is “how do we keep our businesses in the minds of our customers/audience?”.
With over 100+ answers to the question, email marketing is in the top 3 —and no better way to do email marketing than with Mailchimp.
Mailchimp comes packed as an all-in-one email marketing platform for every business you may find yourself in.
With the free version allowing you to send 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers, you’ve got yourself and your brand a good newsletter to keep your audience glued.
Some of its best features include beautiful templates, easy personalization, advanced analytics, retargeting, built-in photo editing, and so much more.
Conclusion
As a startup company owner, you have to focus your attention on many different tasks. You’re tasked with building a business from the ground up, which is challenging by itself. Then, on top of that, you have to figure out how to use all of the different tools that come with startup ownership.