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The best software for online business. Pic by Guy Sie.

Top Business Tools & Services

Use the best business software and services to help start and grow your company quickly and efficiently - with the least cost.

Generate larger profits using the best technology & services to save time & money.

Business Tools & Services List

Give your business a boost by using the right tools and services to lower costs and improve returns. Work smarter; not harder.

Productivity (Google Workspace)

Google Workspace cloud based productivity tools

Chosen by millions of businesses, from small companies to the Fortune 500.

Google Workspace is virtually a non-negotiable business productivity tool in the post-pandemic world. Companies are rapidly adopting a work from home work/life model that requires cloud-based productivity tools to manage.

Get 20% off Google Workspace Basic & Business plans for an entire year.*
* Start a free 14 day Google Workspace trial using this link. Once you're ready to pay for a plan, request a discount code for either the basic or business plans (please specify which) and we'll email it to you. Note, the code we send will only work if you signed up for the trial using our link.

Regardless of whether you are a solopreneur who relies on access to your business information and communications wherever you are, or a large company managing teams spread across the globe, Google Workspace is the preferred productivity and management tool.

Here's what you get:

  • GMail - custom business email
  • Meet video and voice conferencing
  • Chat - messaging for teams
  • Calendar - shared calendars
  • Drive - cloud storage
  • Docs - word processing
  • Sheets - spreadsheets
  • Slides - presentation builder
  • Forms - survey builder
  • Sites - website builder
  • Currents - employee engagement
  • Keep - notes and lists
  • Apps Script - work optimization
  • Cloud Search - smart search across Google Workspace

Postage (Stamps)

Stamps postage and cheap office supplies

Get postage discounts you can’t even get at the Post Office.

No list of small business productivity tools would be complete without including the innovative and super useful Stamps. They do one thing, that all eCommerce enterprises (big or small) need, very well. They save time, money and effort on postage.

If part of your operations involve post, then Stamps is something you need to look at as a way to streamline post related tasks.

Here are some of the main features you can expect:

  • Domestic or International USPS postage
  • No trips to the post office required
  • Save up to 80%
  • One click package tracking
  • Eliminate by-hand form completion
  • Eliminate under-paying and over-paying

Business Plans (LivePlan)

LivePlan Business Plans

LivePlan has helped over 400 000 small businesses to start and grow up to 30% faster.

A study by Cranfield university showed that businesses that developed a plan and tracked their progress against that plan grew up to 30% faster than those that didn't. A business plan is obviously important for understanding and growing your startup, but it's also vital for attracting investment and funders.

While there are plenty of freely available business plan templates and outlines, if you're serious about putting your plan in front of important people, LivePlan can help to design, research, implement, format and layout the plan in a way that banks and funders expect from a serious investment prospect.

Loans (OnDeck)

onDeck SMB Loans

OnDeck is the largest small business lender in the U.S. and has loaned over $6 billion to 50 000 small businesses.

OnDeck can offer two types of funding:

  1. Term loans of up to $500 000 with interest rates as low as 5.9%
  2. Lines of credit of up to $100 000 with interest rates as low as 13.99%

It has thrived because of its competitive interest rates combined with quick and easy applications that can result in a decision in minutes and money in your account within 24 hours. You can use the money for almost anything too; from working capital to equipment, inventory, or general loans.

Business Cards (MOO)

Moo Custom Business Cards

MOO prints and delivers millions of business cards to hundreds of thousands of customers around the world every month.

A business card can be thought of as a brand ambassador for your company. MOO understands how great design can help shape people's opinions of your brand, and offers a fast, easy, online interface to create an attractive, functional business card and have it at your front door in no time at all.

As you'd expect from the leading business card print service, not only can you select from a huge range of design templates, card types, and materials, but each card in a batch order can be completely unique. Definitely worth looking into if you're looking for an edge at the next networking event.

Check out our business cards 101 guide to uncover tips and tricks to getting the perfect design.

Domains & Hosting (WordPress)

WordPress Domains & Hosting

WordPress powers nearly one third of all websites on the Internet.

While it may not seem too important at first glance, choosing the right domain name can have a huge impact on the success or failure of your business. Forget to research your new domain and it might lead to years of frustration. Google penalizes domains that are spammy, and, like the proverbial elephant, it doesn't forget.

How sure are you that the domain you want isn't dead in the water before you've even started? Learn more about how to choose the perfect business domain name.

Similarly, a good Web hosting service can also prevent premature ageing by offering reliability and great support. In general it is better to go with a hosting plan that allows room to expand and offers plenty of juicy support (you hope you'll never need it, but you're glad if when do).

eCommerce (Shopify)

Shopify eCommerce Website Builder

Shopify powers over 400 000 online stores and has facilitated over $34 billion in eCommerce transactions to date.

Designing a cutting edge, responsive website to sell stuff online is a lot easier than it sounds. That's because Shopify is a website builder that lets you choose a responsive theme (to support mobile devices), add products, integrate with 3rd party technologies to take payments, manage inventory, stock, accounting, tax, shipping, and just about everything else an online retail business needs, without needing to know a thing about how the Web works.

Shopify offers industry leading performance, reliability and support, but, for me, the real advantage it offers is a huge, vibrant developer community that create apps that offer virtualyl any possible functionality your business might need using a plug-n-play architecture.

Oh, and they also offer their own integrated PoS (Point of Sale) system - including hardware and software - that can help you run both a bricks and mortar store as well as an online store all in one.

You can start your own Shopify store in minutes, for free, by following our step-by-step setup guide.

Accounting (FreshBooks)

FreshBooks Small Business Cloud Accounting

Over 24 million people use FreshBooks with over $60 billion in invoices paid to date.

Because FreshBooks offers arguably the world's leading integration with 3rd party software and systems, combined with the fact that it is accessible via the cloud 24/7, it transcends the standard functionality of traditional accounting software and becomes the glue that binds different parts of your business together in a beautifully seamless manner.

Business owners using FreshBooks can expect a diverse range of features and functionality that will help them do everything from getting paid faster (with professional invoices and reminders) and understanding their cash flow (in real time) to running their business from their mobile.

Check out our comparison review of the 3 most popular online, cloud accounting solutions - with Xero, Freshbooks, and Quickbooks online - for small business.

Tax (H&R Block)

H&R Block Small Business Tax Solutions

H&R Block has completed over 680 million tax returns and has an office located within 5 miles of most Americans.

Tax. We've all got to do it. But there is often more than one way of doing things, and you, as a small business owner, won't necessarily have the experience and knowledge to ensure that you aren't overpaying the taxman. To put it into perspective, H&R Block helped their clients claim over $50 billion in tax refunds, credits and other government benefits in a single year.

On aggregate, any client of H&R Block will have access to a tax professional with around 10 years of experience and hundreds of hours of training. Not only that but they also offer a huge range of online tax & tax filing solutions, plus a peace of mind service plan that puts a federally authorised tax professional in your corner in the event you're audited.

Email Marketing (AWeber)

AWeber Email Marketing

AWeber facilitates over 100 000 small business email campaigns.

AWeber is an incredibly popular email marketing platform for SMBs because of it's slick, easy-to-use interface and wide range of integrations with 3rd party apps (such as your online store, blog, Facebook page, etc) that make growing a super valuable list relatively painless.

I like it particularly because they are ahead of the curve when it comes to sign-up form design - offering a range of responsive forms that can be integrated with a modern, responsive Web design without requiring custom development (as is the case with other leading email services).

Remember, if you're working online then you're going to need to build email marketing lists - as the saying goes, "the money's in the list". It's quick, free and easy to setup your own email campaign using AWeber, by following our email marketing setup guide.

Marketing (HubSpot)

Inbound marketing using HubSpot

64,500 customers in over 100 countries grow their businesses with HubSpot.

HubSpot offers a full suite of tools and services that integrate to make inbound marketing faster, cheaper and more effective.

Inbound marketing doesn't push advertising onto customers. Instead it draws in customers by providing engaging content using a number of techniques, from social media marketing to SEO and branding.

HubSpot's offerings are divided into 3 sections:

  • Marketing: Grow traffic, convert more visitors, and run complete inbound marketing campaigns at scale.
  • Sales: Deeper insights into prospects, automate the tasks you hate, and close more deals faster.
  • Service: Connect with customers, exceed expectations, and turn them into promoters that grow your business.

Their free plans offer fantastic tools and functionality to get your inbound marketing strategy up and running, and generating revenue. With over 7+ million monthly readers, you're joining a huge community of businesses benefiting from the inbound marketing methodology.

Graphics & Printing (Canva)

Visual marketing with Canva

Canva helps more than 4 million people create and share visuals online.

As the Internet's premiere visual creation tool, Canva is used by companies such as Amazon, Netflix, Disney, LinkedIn and many more.

Canva's popularity is due to the fact that there is virtually no learning curve to use it. Home based bloggers can create exactly the same quality branding and marketing visuals as large sophisticated marketing teams with huge budgets.

It has also evolved from a graphics design tool into an integrated marketing and branding tool. Whether you are a photographer wanting to edit pics and share them directly to Instagram, a small business designing business cards and flyers, or a blogger creating infographics for content promotions, creating, publishing, printing and promoting is a snap.

SEO & Competitor Research (SEMRush)

SEMRush SEO Analytics

SEMrush serves over 6 million users and provides competitive insights into 810 million domains and over 20 billion search keywords.

SEMRush does something that Google Analytics and Search console don't - provide analytical SEO data on competing websites. It's a vital tool in your armory if you intend to compete for organic search traffic from Google because it can shed light on what competitors are doing to get new backlinks, who's giving them backlinks and how well they are performing in the search results.

Knowing this information makes it a lot easier to work out what content to create, how and where to market and promote it, and who can help build valuable organic links to improve your own page rankings and visibility.

Analyze your own domain right now.

You can learn plenty more about SEO and how to use SEMRush to dominate search rankings in our comprehensive guide to optimizing for search.

Shipping (Shipstation)

Shipstation eCommerce Shipping

Shipstation automates and consolidates shipping (via any major delivery service) from over 40 different sales channels.

Building an eCommerce website is the easy part of selling online. Keeping track of stock and ensuring that fulfilment is managed in the most cost-effective and efficient way is a different story altogether. That's where Shipstation comes in. It allows you to import orders from any sales platform you're using and create shipping labels and deliver packages quickly and easily.

Shipstation's automation features mean that shipping mistakes are drastically reduced and you can quickly and easily monitor the state of your deliveries on a slick, online interface. The net effect is that you have more time to put into growing the business by adding more sales channels (since they're easier to manage with Shipstation).


Live Chat (LiveChat)

LiveChat

LiveChat supports over 27 million live chats in over 150 countries every month.

LiveChat and their chatbot are one of the few places where AI actually has a tangible impact for small businesses. Engage with customers faster and more effectively, in a way that drives conversions for a fraction of the cost of operating an entire support team.

Find the perfect balance between AI automation and the human touch when it comes to serving customers better. Integrate live chats into over 170+ tools throughout your business to ensure you never miss an important support query or lead.

The perfect way to radically improve the user experience (UX) on your website with minimal effort and cost.

Social (SocialPilot)

SocialPilot Social Media Management

115,000+ businesses trust SocialPilot to manage social media, schedule social media posts, improve engagement & analyze results.

Social media has quickly become part of the fabric of online business. Whether you are blogging or selling, the traffic and customers driving your profits can be grown using one or more of the major social networks. To run a social media campaign for business requires tools that help you understand the audience and create better engagement with them.

If you're looking to grow into the social media space then it's vital to have insights into how your engagements are performing, the ability to collaborate with other team members across social platforms, as well as planning and executing campaigns, from start to finish.

Office Supplies (Amazon)

Amazon Office Supplies

Amazon is an online retail marketplace and cloud services company with over $135 billion in annual revenue.

Amazon, as an online retailer, really needs no introduction. It's unlikely that anyone reading this isn't already a customer of Amazon. Given their sheer scale and infrastructure it's no surprise that they can sell and deliver virtually any product sold on the planet faster and cheaper than anyone else; and that goes for office supplies, furniture, equipment, hardware & software, and pretty much anything else you might need to start a business.

What you might not be aware of is a few important tips and tricks that you can use to save even more money by shopping and selling on this platform. Because Amazon is a marketplace with millions of 3rd party sellers competing to capture market share, prices can jump up and down like a yo-yo.

Knowing when the price is low is obviously a great way to save money buying necessities, and you can see one great trick to automating this process in our office supply store comparison list.

Office Software (Office 365)

Microsoft Office 365 Business Software

Office 365 is the most widely used cloud based business software, controlling over 25% of the market.

Microsoft's Office 365 takes the traditional office software products, like Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and bundles them together into an online cloud service that can be accessed from anywhere, at any time, from any device.

Obviously, they didn't stop there. They also added access to new technologies, like Skype, and a host of other collaborative and team based tools. Plus a healthy dose of cloudy goodness, like email hosting, 1TB of online storage, online calendars, and plenty more.

Remember, there are freely available software products that do a very good job for the small or home business user. However, there's a reason Office 365 has grown to dominate the business software market - bundling everything a business needs into one convenient cloud based package makes 365 hold greater value and use than the sum of its individual parts.

Jobs & Employment (Monster)

Jobs & Employment

Monster is a global online employment solution that handles around 8000 job searches every minute.

While Monster began life, some 20 years ago, as a simple job board, it is morphed into a sophisticated platform to connect employers and job seekers quickly and efficiently.

As recruitment becomes more complex and competitive, it is vital small businesses retain the ability to attract the right people. This is where Monster shines because it helps to deliver the right, qualified candidates in order to help you make better hiring decisions with less effort. Plus it makes prospecting for, and communicating with, potential candidates easy by virtue of the fact that it has a massive and diverse database on job seekers.

Security & Antivirus (Avast)

Avast Web Security & Antivirus

Avast uses cloud based machine learning to protect over 400 million users.

Avast casually points out that they prevent over 1 billion attacks every month. They use teams of highly talents security engineers and mathematicians from some of the leading educational institutes like Stanford, Oxford and MIT to take on the ever more sophisticated attacks from ever more organised and well-funded hackers.

Internet security is something everyone has to be mindful of right from the start. Hacks and attacks are not things that happen to other people, they are generally automated and random meaning that it's not a question of if you'll get hit, but when. It definitely pays to give your company a fighting chance of avoiding damaging cyber attacks.

Freelancers (Fiverr)

Hire cost-effective, proven freelancers from Fiverr to grow your business

Fiverr drives over 50 million freelance sales and transactions every month.

Fiverr is a massive online marketplace for freelancers, operating in 160 countries around the world in over 200 categories. This means you'll be able to quickly find someone qualified to do what you need, when you need it at an extremely affordable rate.

Everything a growing business could possibly need in the form of professional services can be delivered quickly and efficiently - from logo design and mobile apps, 3D modelling and social media influencers. Whatever your company needs, you'll find a professional offering to do it on Fiverr.


Travel (Expedia)

Expedia Small Business Travel

Expedia is a travel brand that facilitates approximately $81 billion in bookings, amounting to 275 million room nights each year.

Expedia excels at providing a quick and simple interface to book business travel (that generally requires a combination or bundle of flights, cars and accommodation) globally while leveraging big discounts from the world's leading travel and hospitality companies.

They also offer apps and memberships that can make finding and booking corporate travel cheaper and quicker with features like trip planning, a huge range of daily deals and rewards (especially with their Expedia+ business program).

So that's our dream team list of technologies, software and services that can help save time and money in virtually any aspect of your business, regardless of whether you are a one-person garage based startup, or a thriving medium size business looking to increase your competitiveness and capture more market share.

What other tools and services are vital to the health of your business? Share your recommendations in the comments and, if we like what we see, we'll update the list.

Content & Writing (Grammarly)

Grammarly writing assistant

Over 20 million people use Grammarly to improve their writing

Grammarly is an online writing assistant that helps you compose clear, mistake-free writing that makes the right impression.

You might be forgiven for thinking this is another WORD spellcheck type thing. It's not. Things have gotten a little more sophisticated. Grammarly can now check the tone of your message before you hit send so that you can be reassured that the reader will react the way you expect based on your intended tone.

So that's our dream team list of technologies, software and services that can help save time and money in virtually any aspect of your business, regardless of whether you are a one-person garage based startup, or a thriving medium size business looking to increase your competitiveness and capture more market share.

What other tools and services are vital to the health of your business? Share your recommendations in the comments and, if we like what we see, we'll update the list.

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