Free business software helps your company save money and become efficient. You can use free business tools to do accounting, accept payments, and pay employees. To evaluate and rank this kind of software, we analyzed features, overall quality, online user reviews, and our personal experience with the tools. Below is our list of 23 of the best free business software solutions available.
1. Wave: Free Accounting Software
Wave has an easy-to-use dashboard that allows you to manage sales, accounting, banking, and payroll from one account.
Wave is an accounting, invoicing, and receipt-tracking software for small businesses. We rank it as our best free accounting software available. Its free plan includes bank and credit card connections, key reports, unlimited income and expense tracking, and unlimited receipt scanning with Android and iOS apps.
Wave’s invoices have professional templates you can customize based on your business needs. The accounting software is cloud-based, so you can access it on any device with internet access.
With its free software, Wave is missing payroll abilities. For $16 per month, you can unlock the Pro subscription which gives you additional tools for invoices and banking, plus you can remove the Wave branding from footers. Payroll tools have their own pricing scheme; $20 to $40 depending on whether you are in a tax service or self service state. You can even hire a bookkeeper or get bookkeeping training from a team of in-house Wave advisors.
Overall, Wave’s online user reviews indicate that users enjoy the software’s overall ease of use. User complaints center around tech issues and poor customer service.
2. Square: Free Point-of-Sale Software for Small Retailers
The Square magstripe reader is available for both Android and Apple phones and tablets. You’ll get one free when you sign up for a Square account, and each additional reader is just $10. (Source: Square)
Square is a free point-of-sale (POS) software. A point-of-sale records and processes payments from customers. Overall, we consider Square the overall best free POS software.
When you sign up for a Square account, you receive a free magstripe reader. Included with the free Square software plan are sales and product reports, multilocation inventory management and low-stock alerts, pickup and delivery options, and a basic customer relationship management (CRM) system. Additionally, you get a free Square online store that syncs your in-store and online inventory, so you know exactly how much product you have in stock.
The costs of Square come when you process a payment. For every swipe, Square charges 2.6% + 10 cents (discounted to 2.5% + 10 cents with some of the paid upgrades). This rate is competitive compared to other payment processors.
3. Zoom: Free Video Conferencing Software
Zoom makes it easy to collaborate through a single app. (Source: Zoom)
Zoom is a cloud-based platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars. Its free accounts provide meetings up to 40 minutes long with up to 100 participants. All video calls are fully secured with SSL and AES 256-bit encryption.
A unique feature of Zoom is its active speaker view, which is a dynamic technology that shifts the video feed to the current speaker. With this, you don’t need active video management.
Zoom’s free version is missing reporting features. So, you can’t see how many meetings are being held in your organization or how many people are attending. Also, you can only save meeting recordings locally; if you want to save to the cloud, you’ll need to upgrade your plan.
If you’re a consultant or coach doing 1-on-1 meetings, the free version of Zoom is all you need to have successful video calls. During video meetings, you can teach and show examples by sharing your computer screen. You can also record your screen for the client to listen to or watch at a later date. Additionally, during the meeting, you can send links using Zoom’s chat feature.
4. Zoho CRM: Free Customer Relationship Management Software
Zoho CRM includes reports that track leads created and converted at different stages of your pipeline. (Source: Zoho)
A customer relationship management (CRM) system helps businesses and sales teams manage customer relationships. Zoho CRM is one of the most comprehensive free CRM solutions on the market; it is on our list of the best free CRM available.
Zoho’s free plan is available for up to three users and includes basic marketing automation tools—something that other free CRMs typically charge for. Along with 10 email marketing templates and marketing campaign tools, Zoho CRM includes a website visitor tracking system that tracks leads as they go through your sales pipeline. You can also create and send surveys to your customers.
5. Homebase: Free Employee Scheduling Software
The Homebase mobile app allows you to monitor employees’ working hours, locations, and other details. You can also publicly commend high-performing employees via shout-outs. (Source: Homebase)
Homebase is a software that helps you manage appointments or shift scheduling. It is our top-rated free employee scheduling software. Restaurants, hair salons, retail stores, spas, and massage businesses all benefit from using scheduling software.
The free version of Homebase is available for one location and up to 20 employees. It includes features like scheduling, timesheets, a time clock, team messaging, and a mobile app.
What the free version is missing are custom messenger channels, attendance tracking, and permissions. If you need to send reminders to customers about their upcoming appointments, you have to pay an additional cost. Employee onboarding, reports, and hiring tools also require a paid subscription.
6. Freshdesk: Free Customer Support Software
Freshdesk gives you the ability to track different metrics for customer support tickets with an analytics dashboard. (Source: Freshdesk)
Freshdesk is a customer support (help desk) software that helps organize support request tickets in order of receipt and ticket communication with customers. This is helpful for businesses that have a product or service that customers may need assistance with.
Many business owners use support ticket software if they find email to be too complicated to manage their customer support. A downside to Freshdesk’s free version is the inability to automate tickets using time and event-based triggers.
The Freshdesk software also helps you create a “knowledge base” to display on your website. A knowledge base is similar to an in-depth frequently asked questions (FAQs) section on a website.
Customers use the knowledge base to answer their own questions and resolve their issues; incorporating a knowledge base is essentially a way for you to provide customer service without maintaining an active phone or chat line for this purpose. Additionally, if you’re communicating with the customer through email, you can link to your article, answering the customer’s question without having to type out the full answer.
7. Mailchimp: Free Email Marketing Software
Mailchimp provides a number of default email templates, as well as tools for coding your own personalized template. (Source: Mailchimp)
Mailchimp is a popular web-based email marketing software. If you plan to send an email to hundreds or thousands of customers at once, you need email marketing software in addition to whatever email provider you use. Mailchimp is popular because it integrates with over 300 third-party apps, including virtually every email platform.
You can use Mailchimp to tag customers based on certain behaviors, like purchasing, and to send emails to targeted customer lists. This is helpful when you want to send a specific message to a group of customers.
For example, if you operate a residential maintenance business, you can tag customers by certain services they received, like gutter cleaning, pressure washing, landscaping, and snow shoveling. Once you tag customers according to their previous service, you can send a targeted email reminding them they can receive the service again.
As a general marketing rule, the more targeted an email is, the more likely a recipient will open and respond to it. With Mailchimp, you can also view and filter contacts by specific tags.
There are a few downsides to Mailchimp’s free email marketing plan. You won’t be able to use custom branding on the emails. You also cannot A/B test different subject lines in the same email campaign; this determines which subject lines receive a higher open rate. Additionally, you don’t get access to custom-coded HTML templates for email.
8. Square Appointments: Free Appointment-setting Software
Square Appointments has an intuitive and easy interface, plus lots of features to support setting appointments—even in its free plan. (Source: Square)
Square Appointments is a free appointment-setting software that is part of the beloved Square ecosystem. Square Appointments’ free subscription offers unlimited calendars, strong customizability for scheduling, text and email reminder notifications, a POS system for processing payments, and more. It’s a great choice of software for new, small, or solopreneur businesses that offer services in the beauty, fitness, or home repair industries.
As with all Square plan upgrades, Square Appointments lets you unlock additional features for an affordable monthly price: $69 per location for the highest tier. You’ll get access to discounted processing rates, multilocation management, class booking, advanced staff management, and service cost tracking.
9. Payroll4Free.com: Free Payroll Software
These features are all free if you have 10 or fewer employees or contractors. (Source: Payroll4Free)
Payroll4Free.com is a completely free payroll software—we rated it as one of the best free payroll software available for 10 or fewer employees. The program’s free features include tax calculations and forms, vacation time tracking, your choice of direct deposits or paper check payments, and reports on earnings, taxes, and more. Payroll4Free.com also includes QuickBooks integration.
What the software is missing is that it doesn’t file your taxes or provide year-end W-2s or 1099s. It also allows for only 10 employees in the free plan. Overall, the reviews for Payroll4Free.com are positive. However, there have been complaints regarding its slow customer service for free users of the software.
10. Canva: Free Graphic Design Software
Canva has dozens of photo editing tools like cropping photos to get the perfect image for your business’s marketing. (Source: Canva)
Canva is a free tool that helps you design graphic images, such as logos, posters, flyers, custom calendars, invitations, and social media photos. Many small business owners use Canva to design social media images. Canva has preset sizes for social media images like Facebook banners, Instagram image posts, and YouTube thumbnails. The software offers categorized, customizable templates with mix and match elements to craft your perfect image or graphic.
One great part of Canva is its free educational tools. You can enroll in its free online design school to watch tutorials on applying color palettes, creating animated GIFs, and designing Instagram Highlights. The Canva user interface itself is simple and intuitive enough that you can figure out most of the functionality just by exploring the system.
Canva’s free version is missing some features, like downloadable designs with transparent backgrounds. With paid versions, you receive access to over 400,000 free photos, premium templates, and illustrations; you can also use branding features with the ability to upload custom fonts and color palettes. Or, you can choose from 1,000 pre-made Brand Kits.
11. BDOW!: Free Website Tools to Automate Growth
BDOW! provides free tools to grow your email list like a customizable pop-up to collect emails, which is optimized for both computer and mobile. You can also view metrics and performance for each pop-up. (Source: BDOW!)
BDOW! (formerly Sumo) provides a suite of free tools that help you turn your website visitors into customers. All tools come with free options that can be upgraded for additional customization, features, and analytics. One of BDOW!’s appealing aspects is that it costs nothing to integrate its tools with platforms like WordPress, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Magento.
One of the most popular tools from BDOW! is List Builder, a pop-up that uses smart technology. The technology tracks when website visitors are most likely to enter their email addresses and shows the form at that time. Another popular tool BDOW! created is the Welcome Mat, which is a pop-up that fits the entire screen after a page is loaded. This is a great way to direct a website visitor’s attention to a discount or freebie.
12. WordPress.com: Free Website & Blog Builder
WordPress.com has dozens of free website templates for you to choose from. (Source: WordPress)
WordPress.com is a free website builder and content management system. This is different from WordPress.org, which allows large media sites (like Time and Rolling Stone) to use WordPress tools on self-hosted sites. WordPress.com is a great free option for a small business on a budget.
If you start with the WordPress.com website builder, you can eventually transition your content to self-hosting on WordPress.org as your business grows. With its free option, WordPress.com offers 1 GB of storage; visitor statistics; unlimited pages, posts, and users; plus protection from malware, spam, and brute-force cyberattacks.
Free hosting (space on a server where your website information is stored) is included with WordPress.com. The only required cost is purchasing a domain name, which is the www.(yourcompanyname).com or your web address, and this is around $12 a year. Additionally, you can choose to create a blog instead of a business website. A blog organizes content in chronological order, whereas a website has more flexibility but is less organized.
13. Trustpilot: Free Tool to Get Online Reviews
Get a profile page from Trust Pilot that showcases your business’s online reviews in one place.
Trustpilot’s free version is feature-rich to help you obtain and share online customer reviews. Trustpilot will notify you of every new review that comes through your Trustpilot review link. This dramatically reduces the time it takes to respond to customer feedback, especially negative reviews.
Every month, you can send up to 50 verified invitations for customer reviews, which means customers are asked for documentation proving they bought your product or service.
Integrate product reviews on ecommerce websites, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. Additionally, you can embed Trustpilot’s review form on your website and direct customers to visit your website to leave a review.
Trustpilot’s free software plan also includes sharing features. Once your business gets a positive review, share it to Facebook, Google My Business, LinkedIn, or X directly from the Trustpilot dashboard. You can embed Review Collector widgets on your website and encourage customers to leave Trustpilot reviews of your business.
14. Nav: Free Business Credit Reports
Nav has an easy-to-read dashboard for reviewing your business’s credit score. (Source: Nav)
Nav provides free personal and business credit reports. Business credit can affect whether you qualify for loans and leases, get favorable terms from suppliers, or win bids on government contracts. You can establish business credit by opening a business bank account and getting a D-U-N-S Number with Dun & Bradstreet. You can also build business credit by using its credit cards and working with vendors that report payments.
In addition to the credit reports, Nav provides free fraud monitoring with 24/7 alerts. You also have access to a 1-on-1 consultation with a lending specialist. Nav provides this consultation because once you know your business credit and build it up, you can eventually purchase one of Nav’s business lending products like a loan, line of credit, or invoice financing.
What you can get in Nav’s paid version is $1 million in identity theft insurance protection. You’ll also get a Nav Business Checking Account, automated bookkeeping tools, detailed credit reports updated every month, and more.
15. Square Invoices: Free Invoicing Software
Square Invoices shows you a summary of all your outstanding invoices, plus a timeline of payment details per customer.
Square Invoices lets you customize and send invoices, capture payment information, collect deposits, and send reminders to your customers. It’s a great way for small businesses on a budget to offer estimates and flexible payment options to customers. Square Invoices is a particularly good fit for businesses that have infrequent sales and would be happy with basic invoicing tools for free (or very cheap).
Square Invoices lets you offer flexible payment options to your customers: Buy Now Pay Later, automated clearing house processing, online payments, and more. More payment options mean more convenience for your customers, which of course means more satisfaction with your business.
A mere $20 monthly fee gives Square Invoices users access to features like late payment fees, payment schedules, batch invoices, and greater invoice customization to enhance your brand identity. You’ll also get discounted processing rates if you opt for the paid plan.
16. Trello: Free Visual Project Management Software
Trello allows you to create project management boards and cards containing information like to-dos, attached documents, labels, and messages. (Source: Trello)
Trello is a Kanban-style project management solution that focuses on the balance of workload. You can use it to organize several aspects of your business, such as clients, projects, and to-do lists. We consider Trello one of the best free project management software available.
You’re able to add start dates and due dates to Trello’s individual cards to keep on top of deadlines. The software can be used on web, mobile, and desktop. If you upgrade to Trello’s paid plans, you’ll unlock unlimited boards, workspace views and templates, advanced checklists, and larger file sizes for storage.
Online user reviews for Trello are generally positive. Users say they like the user-friendly and intuitive interface. They also enjoy features like the card activity history, and third-party app integrations, like Slack and Jira.
Negative user reviews centered around the software being too simple for more complicated project management and difficulties with finding a specific card on the activity board.
17. Evernote: Free Note-taking and Organizing App
Evernote provides note-taking templates for both personal and business-related tasks. (Source: Evernote)
Evernote is an app that allows you to record and organize notes, files, photos, and voice memos. It’s cloud-based, which means it can be accessed on any device. A unique feature of Evernote is that it integrates with the Google and Siri digital assistants, so you can record notes by voice without having to open the app. Additionally, once you record a note in Evernote, you can send it to employees even if they don’t have the app.
18. Hunter: Free Email Address Finder
Hunter indicates whether a discovered email address is valid, allowing you to be confident that the right person will receive your email. (Source: Hunter)
Hunter is a software that searches for emails listed on a particular website. This tool saves you time looking for available email addresses, which are sometimes hidden. When searching for emails, you can filter by the type of email, for example, “contact@…”.
Additionally, you can search by a person’s name, which can be a huge time saver if thousands of emails are available on the company’s website. Hunter’s features benefit anyone in public relations or business development who needs to get in contact with a specific person.
Something unique Hunter provides is the most common email structure the company uses. This helps you accurately guess an email address that isn’t publicly available. For example, Hunter will say “{first}@company.com” to indicate most emails at this company are simply the person’s first name. When Hunter does provide an email address, it indicates if the email is verified with a green check badge so that you can email the recipient with confidence.
Upgrading to Hunter’s paid plans gets you additional yearly searches and verifications, domain searches, email campaign tools, and priority support.
19. Fiverr Workspace: Free Proposal & Invoice Software
Fiverr Workspace provides templates you can use to create invoices. (Source: Fiverr Workspace)
Fiverr Workspace (formerly AND.CO) is an invoicing, proposal, and expense tracking software. In its free pricing plan, you are able to add one active client and only use Fiverr’s ready-to-use contracts. If you’re a startup or new to contracts, this is a great opportunity to learn more about important sections and clauses in business contract agreements. Upgrading your plan gets you unlimited client management and access to editable contracts.
There are several other tools you can take advantage of with Fiverr’s free plan. You can create invoices for your client and receive payments at a competitive payment processing rate, in addition to managing and organizing your projects with its task management software.
If you’re working for a client by the hour, you can use Fiverr to track your time and easily send invoices for the time your work was recorded. However, custom-branded documents and business analytics are missing from Fiverr’s free plan.
20. JotForm: Free Online Forms
JotForm has dozens of pre-made business-related templates to use, like New Customer Registration. (Source: JotForm)
JotForm is an online form builder that can generate leads, collect payments, and distribute surveys. The forms are fully customizable to fit your brand, so you can add colors and your logo.
Additionally, you can use JotForm as a way to collect payments from clients. It integrates with over 30 payment processors including Square, PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.Net. JotForm also integrates with online apps, like Mailchimp, Salesforce, and Google Drive, so you can automatically import information collected from the forms.
Online user reviews for JotForm are generally positive. Customers say that the form builder is easy to use and that they enjoy using the premade forms. Other customers liked that they didn’t have to learn code to create the forms, and were happy with the ability to add as many form conditions as they wanted. Complaints for JotForm were about how the collected information was unorganized, and the low quality of PDF-based forms.
21. Mailsuite: Free Email Tracking for Gmail
Mailsuite has an easy-to-use dashboard interface that tells you what emails were opened or unopened. (Source: Mailsuite)
Mailsuite (formerly Mailtrack) is a free software that integrates with Gmail. It tells you when an email was opened by a recipient and how many times it was opened. You can enable real-time notifications that tell you the moment that an email was opened. Mailsuite’s free option works on iPhone and Android phones and allows for unlimited email tracking, desktop notifications, and CRM features. A paid plan upgrade unlocks click tracking for links within emails; document analytics and sharing; and campaign tools.
If you are doing a lot of networking and pitching through email, Mailsuite is indispensable. Many business owners believe that a potential customer or client is not interested in their product or service because they did not receive an email response. Before a business owner makes that assumption, they need to know if the email was ever opened. Mailsuite gives you this insight for free.
22. SurveyMonkey: Free Online Surveys
Survey Monkey is mobile- and tablet-friendly. (Source: SurveyMonkey)
Before rolling out a new product, service, or feature, it’s common for businesses to survey their customers. SurveyMonkey provides free online surveys that you can customize and send to customers. Its free plan is limited to 10 questions or elements per survey and 25 responses per survey. This is still a great option for a startup to get feedback from early customers on their experience using its products or services.
Surveys on SurveyMonkey come fully customizable. You can also choose from templated surveys like customer satisfaction, event surveys, job satisfaction, and employee engagement. Upgrading to one of the paid plans will get you unlimited questions per survey, recurring surveys, and payment collection (via Stripe integration), and will allow customers to respond to your surveys via QR code and email.
SurveyMonkey has a mix of positive and negative user reviews. Some users complain about the limited features of the free software, while others enjoy the robust mobile app and numerous integrations with other software applications.
23. Evite: Free Online Invitation Software
Customize available templates or upload your own design on Evite.
Evite is software that provides free online invitations and helps manage the guest list. Its pre-designed e-invitations are customizable for occasions like networking events, retirements and farewells, fundraisers, real estate open houses, and general meetings. Evite also has a mobile app available for both Apple and Android. You can use the app to create and manage your event.
All of Evite’s plans, including the free one, give you customizable designs and invitations for up to 750 guests. Upgraded plans give you ad-free invites, shareable links, and your choice of stamps, backgrounds, and envelope designs.
With Evite, you can also encourage event attendees to take photos and upload them to the event’s private feed. This is a great way to gather social media content for future use. Evite has a unique feature that allows you to encourage event invitees to contribute to a crowdfunding campaign with a link in the e-invitation. This is an excellent option if you need to raise capital before opening your business.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Click through the sections below to learn more about which free business software to use for your own company.
A very small and new business should first take care of its graphic design and website-building needs. Then decide how you will accept payments for your products or services—via a point of sale, invoicing tool, or ecommerce sales. As your business grows, consider tools for CRM, online reviews, and email marketing. Free software systems are available for all of these.
Try Wave. Its free plan gives you tools for accounting, invoicing, and receipt tracking. You can generate reports, track expenses, and do your accounting via mobile app. A small additional monthly fee unlocks payroll and employee management features.
When your customer base has grown and your operations have become more complex than the features of free software can handle, it’s time to upgrade your plan. Upgrading often unlocks new tools for customization, additional accounts, priority support, and more.
Bottom Line
Free small business software is a great way to save money and be more productive in your business. If you’re starting a business, then the free business tools listed above are a low-risk test as you figure out the best systems and software for you. If you like them, keep them and possibly expand their features with a paid version. If you don’t like them, stop using the software with no added costs to your business.
