When it comes to software for entrepreneurs and small business, there are a million applications out there. Some are excellent and some will actually do more harm than good. With so much technology available today, it can be difficult to figure out what is good or even worth paying for. I’ve discovered some of the best ways to calculate sales funnels, set up a lasting affiliate marketing campaign, and how to automate your social media pages. The biggest issue however is finding the right software that will work with our needs.
When it comes to running a small business, having the right tool for the job can make a huge difference in both your workday and your business performance. That’s why now is a great time to be an entrepreneur — you still need to wear a lot of hats, but there have never been more business tools available to help you fit into those hats a little better.
The key is finding the right tool, right when your small business needs it. That’s why we created this giant list of software and other resources — from accounting software to small business marketing tools and everything in between. We’ve even included some of our picks for the best options within the category.
Go ahead — jump to whichever section you need a solution for:
What does a green star mean?
Tools marked with a green star are ones that the Grasshopper team uses ourselves.
Looking for a solution that’s not on the list?
Send an email to blog@grasshopper.com, and we’ll work to get some options added.
Accounting & Bookkeeping
1. Wave Apps
Totally free solution that includes accounting, invoicing, payroll, and more.
2. QuickBooks
All-inclusive accounting software with packages designed specifically for small businesses and contractors.
3. FreshBooks
Comprehensive accounting solution tailored to service-based small businesses.
4. Xero
Robust and complete software that’s hosted in the cloud, so no downloads or installations.Compare These Tools →
OUR PICK: Wave
Price: Free
Wave is a great accounting software especially for small [businesses] or startups… The invoicing and billing systems are easy to use and even better should you have any accounting knowledge.
Website Building
5. Squarespace
An all-in-one website building solution that make it super easy to create a stunning, professional-looking website for your business.
6. WordPress
Choose from thousands of free and premium themes to get your small business’ website or blog up and running in no time.
7. Wix
Drag-and-drop web building tool lets you choose from thousands of themes and customize individual pages.Compare These Tools →
OUR PICK: WordPress
Price: Free – $25/month
I use it for all of my personal and client sites. It’s easy to use and easy to set up. Not to mention, the opportunities for customization are endless.
Online Payment Tools
8. PayPal
Accept credit cards and PayPal payments on your online store — PayPal handles the processing, security, and mobile compatibility.
9. Square
You can create an ecommerce store through Square and accept online payments or use the Square payments app with 3rd party web platforms.
10. Stripe
Add Stripe Checkout to your small business’ website to utilize their pre-designed and customizable payment forms.
11. Shopify
Build your entire online store through Shopify and they’ll take care of everything from marketing to payments & shipping.
12. Amazon Payments
Make checkout easier and faster for customers by integrating Amazon accounts and checkout.Compare These Tools →
Marketing
13. HubSpot
Choose from CRM, sales, or full-fledged marketing software to help you automate your marketing process.
14. Marketo
End-to-end marketing automation covers everything from lead management and consumer marketing to email and customer base marketing.
15. Hatchbuck
All-in-one small business marketing tool and CRM solution helps you plan, automate and monitor marketing activities.
16. InfusionSoft
Inclusive sales and marketing automation software that handles lead capture and conversion and some CRM tasks.
Email Marketing
17. MailChimp ✸
Fully customizable email campaigns and automation that integrate seamlessly with ecommerce solutions like Shopify.
18. Campaign Monitor
Simple drag-and-drop function allows you to design unique and engaging email marketing campaigns.
19. Emma
Create results-oriented email campaigns and leverage insightful reporting to meet your goals faster.
20. AWeber
At the forefront of email automation, they offer powerful integrations with sites like PayPal and WordPress and boast A+ customer support.
21. Constant Contact
Customizable drag-and-drop templates, powerful automation, and real-time reporting make it easy to see success.
OUR PICK: MailChimp
Price: They offer a Forever Free plan and prices go up based on number of subscribers. For 10,000 subscribers, you’d pay $75 a month.
Rigorous list management, fantastic email templates, the best web interface out there, incredible analytics, a robust workflow process, powerful segmentation, and a free starting plan with reasonable rates as your list size increases.
Social Media Marketing
22. Buffer
Create and schedule engaging social posts on all of the big social media sites — from Twitter and LinkedIn to Pinterest and Instagram.
23. TweetDeck ✸
Keep track of everything that’s happening on Twitter by creating searches and hashtags, and get alerts when new content is posted.
24. Hootsuite
The all-in-one social media scheduling, listening, and reporting tool helps you do more with your social presence.Compare These Tools →
Paid Advertising
25. AdWords ✸
Create text-based searches, set your budget, and choose keywords to bid on to decide where your ads show up in Google searches.
26. Bing Ads
Advertise your small business in Bing search results, where you’ll get more value for your marketing dollar.
27. Outbrain
Help you content reach more eyeballs by creating pay-per-click campaigns and advertising on huge sites like People and CNN.
OUR PICK: AdWords
Price: Pay per click (PPC)
You can see what keywords are converting. You can see which ads are effective in driving traffic to the site. AdWords is an indispensable product for any commerce strategy.
Content Marketing & SEO
28. Contently
A platform for all your content marketing needs from topic generation to execution by a huge network of talented freelancers.
29. Uberflip
Tailor your content to your customer’s journey and integrate your content platform with automation solutions like HubSpot and Marketo.
30. SumoMe
A web analytics tools to help you build email lists, optimize landing page conversion, and increase social shares.
31. Moz ✸
A tool for small business marketers to simplify the complicated worlds of search marketing and online paid advertising.
OUR PICK: Moz
Price: $84/year for Moz Local and $50 and up per month for Moz Pro (depending on features)
We use Moz a lot to research new keywords that may result in SEM/SEO opportunities for the organization. It has proven to be a very useful tool monitoring our competitors.
Print Marketing
32. Moo
A tool for all paper collateral — especially adept at helping you design unique and eye-catching business cards.
33. Vistaprint
Known for their high-quality business cards and reasonable pricing, they also offer additional marketing collateral.
34. Printfection
The home of all things merchandise and company swag — choose from a huge variety of apparel, drinkware, and other products.
35. Startup Threads
You can design custom branded apparel for your small business and automatically send to loyal customers without holding any inventory.
Public Relations
36. Help a Reporter Out (HARO) ✸
Get mentioned in publications small and large by using your expert knowledge to become a source for journalists.
37. Buzzstream ✸
Keep track of outreach efforts including prospects, their contact info, and a full history of communication.
38. Mention
Monitor billions of sources in real-time for any keywords you want, and reply to engage with key influencers.
39. Google Alerts ✸
Create weekly or daily alerts for key topics surrounding your brand and get an email roundup of the most popular content.
OUR PICK:
HARO and Google Alerts
Price: Both are free to use
Since we started using HARO in 2012, we’ve found over 200 queries that were a perfect fit for us. Voices.com has used the platform mainly for media relations, but also to help us with successfully locating expert sources for our own content creation initiatives.
Customer Service & Helpdesk
40. HelpScout
Manage email at scale with features designed to maintain an organized team and happy customers.
41. Groove
Collaborate across your team on everything from emails to social media posts to phone calls all with one system.
42. Zendesk
Almost like a CRM for support, you get a help desk solution, self-service tool, and insightful data on engagement.
43. Desk.com
Robust, out-of-the-box support with self-service options and easy scalability as your team grows.Compare These Tools →
OUR PICK:
Price: $5 – $99 per agent per month
It gives our associates a more complete view of the customer and integrates well with a number of other platforms that we use for both customer contact management and internal reporting.
Communication
44. Slack ✸
Create a channel for your team and groups within to focus in on specific projects or departments.
45. Skype
All-inclusive audio/video calls and messaging for your team to keep in touch from mobile, landline, or VoIP.
46. Grasshopper ✸
Keep in touch with the office while you work from anywhere in the world with a toll free or local number that forwards to your mobile phone.Compare These Tools →
OUR PICK:
Slack (and Grasshopper, of course!)
Price: Free – $12.50/month
Literally transformed the way my agency communicates. Great tool for teams who do not want to rely on emails to communicate. We’ll continue using for years to come.
Project Management
47. Trello ✸
Create team boards with individual or project-based lists and cards with a deadline for every step of the way.
48. Basecamp
A productivity app taken to the team level includes messaging, to-do lists, and document & file sharing.
49. Asana
Projects are easy to track from beginning to end with clear-cut responsibilities and next steps outlined.
50. Teamwork
Easily keep track of every team project in one place and collaborate with messaging and file sharing.Compare These Tools →
OUR PICK:
Price: Free – $20.83 per user per month
I use it to keep all my ‘things to do’ in one place, and find it especially useful for those ‘background tasks’ – ones that don’t have a defined timescale (although Trello helps with those, too) but that you need to do when you have a spare 5 minutes.
Productivity
51. Evernote
Everything you need to get done or remember, all in one place and organized into notebooks — it’s as close as you can get to paper note-taking.
52. Todoist
It combines the accessibility of native apps with tools for collaboration and design that fosters productivity.
53. Any.do
Task management for both your work and home life that syncs seamlessly across simple mobile, desktop, and web apps.
54. Boomerang ✸
Maintain inbox zen without losing track of important messages — send them away and Boomerang will return them whenever they’re needed.
55. Unroll.me
Keep your email subscriptions in check with the quickest and easiest way to unsubscribe from marketing emails at scale.Compare These Tools →
OUR PICK:
Price: Free – $2.99 per user per month
I tried many apps to keep track of all my tasks but Any.do is the one I have enjoyed the most. It has a very easy interface and organizes my tasks in a very simple and organized manner.
Focus
56. StayFocusd
Stay on track by using this plugin to limit your time on distracting websites (like Facebook) or block them all together.
57. RescueTime
Find out where all your time going by tracking the time you spend on different apps and websites so you can maximize your workday.
58. RainyMood ✸
Block it out, block it all out with the ambient sound of a rainstorm — you can even set it to music.
59. Spotify Focus Playlists ✸
Listen to tracks expertly selected to enhance focus and keep you on-task.
Hiring & Human Resources
60. Workable
Recruiting software that combines job posting, candidate organization, and team collaboration to streamline the hiring process.
61. BambooHR
HR software targeted at small and medium sized businesses ticks off hiring tools with an employee database and reporting.
62. Workday ✸
Recruiting, time-tracking, and payroll (among other features) all rolled up into one, scalable solution.
63. Insperity
Choose from a full-service, outsourced HR team or an individual solution tailored to your human resources needs.
Document Management
64. Google Drive ✸
Create and store word documents, slide presentations, and spreadsheets in the cloud that are accessible from anywhere.
65. Office 365
Get access to the full Microsoft suite of products and 1 terabyte of cloud storage that you can access from up to 5 of your devices.
66. Box
Share files securely with team members and even create, edit, and review documents in real-time.
67. Dropbox
Collaborate, store, share, and backup documents, photos, and videos that automatically sync across all your devices.Compare These Tools →
OUR PICK:
Price: Free – $10 per user per month
Unlike other cloud storage services, Google Drive is the one that packed with the most features. Without subscription, it already offers online and offline file storage, syncing, access as well as an office suite all in one package.
Tax Software
68. TurboTax
Tax returns made easy with straightforward questions customized to you and live, on-screen help.
69. H&R Block
All your forms and information in one, secure place and step-by-step guidance to help you get the most refund possible.
70. TaxAct
Access to over 300 available deductions and credits and a price-match guarantee to get the best value.
71. Jackson Hewitt Online
Simple, online filing with affordable pricing for small businesses and a maximum refund guarantee.
Conclusion
Are you familiar with the top software apps for entrepreneurs and small business owners? Today, we’re going to review four of the top software products on the market. There are many apps on the market today that can help an entrepreneur start a small business to manage their daily tasks and streamline workflow. Here are my recommendations for the best apps to help your startup succeed.