Small business software and services provide business owners with everything they need to generate sales, track expenses, manage projects, make phone calls, create marketing materials, and hire talent. We evaluated hundreds of software and services and identified 35 of the best to help you run your business.
Below are the best small business software and services options for 2019.
1. Bluehost (Website Hosting)
Screenshot of Bluehost WordPress theme
Bluehost offers a variety of affordable hosting options, including WordPress hosting, dedicated hosting, and shared hosting. WordPress hosting is designed specifically to accommodate WordPress websites. Dedicated hosting offers dedicated space for your website only, and shared hosting offers cost savings by having your site share server space with others. Pricing starts at $2.95 per month for shared hosting. Sign up with a 30-day, money-back guarantee.
2. Trello (Task & Project Management)
Trello Board example
Trello is a highly visual project and task management tool that allows you to see the projects and tasks you’re working on and how you’re tracking to due dates. Its drag-and-drop features allow you to progress projects from one stage to the next. Trello is great for businesses with a number of projects or tasks needing an easy to use tool that centralizes them in one place that keeps them top of mind.
“Trello is a Kanban-style project management solution I didn’t even know I needed until I started using it. I previously used it to track my freelance projects and clients. The labels made it easy for me to see which project belonged to which client. Due dates on individual cards kept me on top of each deadline. Plus, I can drag and drop cards from list to list easily. Now, I use Trello in everyday management of projects at my full-time job.”
—Amy Smith, Editor, Fit Small Business
3. PayPal Business (Payment Processing)
Mobile screenshot of a PayPal transfer
PayPal Business is an online payment processing solution that allows you to accept payments, send invoices, and make payments for your business. Features include the ability to offer recurring billing or subscriptions, custom invoices, multicurrency transactions. PayPal also offers lending options, including credit, working capital, and loans.
4. Eventbrite (Online Ticketing Tool)
Screenshots of Eventbrite mobile app ticketing features
Eventbrite is an online ticketing service that allows you to sell tickets to events online easily. It’s great for businesses that sell events or use them as part of their marketing. You can create tickets that can be printed or accessed by phone. You can also create landing pages for your events. It’s free to use for free and paid events, prices start at 2% of ticket fees plus 79 cents per ticket.
5. Freshsales (Customer Relationship Management)
Screenshot of Freshsales dashboard
Freshsales helps small businesses develop prospect and customer relationships with features like contact management, a built-in phone, integrated email, and pipeline management. Phone features like call recording and entering notes allows you to have more contextual conversations. Pipeline tools help you track sales activities while email features let you track email campaign effectiveness. Sign up for a free trial here.
6. Slack (Collaboration Software)
Screenshot of the Slack Communication Interface
Slack allows you to quickly share information with your team and with customers depending on the type of business you have. You can send direct messages to individuals or group messages. Businesses that can use Slack to support customers include online courses or group coaching where collaboration is part of the offer. Slack offers free and paid plans starting at $6.67 per user, per month.
—Levi Boyd, Digital Marketing Strategist, Holiday Inn Resort Vanuatu
7. Tailor Brands (Logo & Branding Tool)
Tailor Brands logo & branding on business card & letterhead
When you’re starting out, and you need a professional looking brand, Tailor Brands is an affordable alternative to hiring a graphic artist. It works by typing in the name of your company or product and selecting typography, images, and colors. After making your selections, Tailor Brands generates a variety of logos. You choose one design variation and customize it to your liking. Pricing starts at $3.99 per month.
8. Freshchat (Live Chat for Websites)
Bot Configuration Example on Freshchat
Freshchat is live chat software that combines human interaction with automated customer support using bots. It can get basic visitor information like name, email address, and question before a support agent takes over. It offers skills-based routing to make sure visitors are directed to the right person. There’s a free plan, and paid plans start at $15 per month per user. Sign up for a free trial.
9. Pipedrive (Visual Pipeline CRM)
Screenshot of a pipeline in Pipedrive
Pipedrive is customer relationship management (CRM) software that offers features to help manage, organize, and visualize sales activities. It helps small businesses focus on critical selling activities while navigating long and complex sales processes. It’s great for business-to-business (B2B)-focused businesses that have long sales cycles and a variety of activities to complete and track. Pricing starts at $12.50 per month per user. Sign up for a free trial.
10. DesignBro (Freelance Design Service)
Sample DesignBro Logo
DesignBro is a branding and logo design service that allows small business owners to get a professionally designed logo, brand identity or packaging designed by a freelancer at an affordable price. It works by offering a limited design contest where freelancers compete, and you get to choose from three to 10 options.
11. RingCentral (VoIP Solution)
Screenshot of the RingCentral Contact Dashboard
RingCentral is a cloud-based voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) phone solution that allows you to set up a phone system for your business in minutes. You can even purchase physical phones and get phone numbers from them. If your business operates in a number of markets or you have employees working different shifts, RingCentral has features and phones that allow you to implement hot desking.
12. Grasshopper (Vanity Phone Numbers)
Screenshot of the Grasshopper dashboard
Grasshopper is a VoIP phone system that lets you choose a toll-free vanity number which will make it easy for your customers to remember. Features you get along with a vanity toll-free number include voicemail transcription, call forwarding, and the ability to send and receive text messages. Plans start at $26 per month and you can sign up here.
13. UpLead (B2B Contact Data Provider)
UpLead enriched contact profile
UpLead is a B2B lead or prospect enrichment tool that allows you to find prospects in your target companies along with information that can be important in building rapport like educational background, social media pages, and qualifying information like title, level, and function. With more than 30 million contacts from around the world, you’re able to build a robust B2B prospect list that reflects your target audience.
14. Square (Payment Processing)
Square stand for contactless & chip
Square offers payment processing solutions to small businesses that are affordable and allow just about anyone to accept credit card payments. With Square, many of the fees and rules traditional payment processors have are eliminated like being required to set up a merchant account or incurring statement and chargeback fees. It also handles any disputes, which frees up your time. Learn more or sign up for Square today.
15. Insightly (CRM Software)
Screenshot of business card scanner in Insightly mobile app
Insightly is a CRM with project management features that allows you to manage projects and tasks all while retaining presale information. It also offers a mobile app that allows you to scan business cards and convert them into contacts without having to enter them manually. This CRM helps you manage prospects more efficiently as well as customer relationships. Prices start at $29 per month, per user. Sign up for a free trial.
16. Hippo Video (Video-based Marketing)
HippoVideo personalized video landing page
Hippo Video is a video-based marketing platform offering email campaigns, marketing, and sales tools as well as video-based customer support and success features. With Hippo Video, you can email prospects custom videos or reduce cancellations with customer-centric video-based support. Pricing starts at $29 per month. Learn more about free trials plus features available with its free account.
17. Mailshake (Cold Email Outreach)
Screenshot of Mailshake’s email template features
Mailshake is a cold email outreach platform that allows you to send mass marketing emails in a personalized way. When you’ve received replies to your emails, they’re routed to Mailshake’s Lead Catcher, where you can respond. It offers feedback on your email copy with electronic tools or from its staff. Prices start at $22 per month user. Sign up today with a 30-day, money-back guarantee.
18. Canva (Design Software)
Screenshot of Canva Proposal Templates
Canva is an online design tool that allows everyday people with no design skills to make their own marketing materials with templates, drag and drop images and editable text boxes. Canva is free unless you select premium images and fonts while creating your marketing materials. Give Canva a try today by creating a proposal, business cards, ebooks or other content to promote your business.
19. Freshdesk (Customer Helpdesk Support)
Freshdesk Customer Support Helpdesk Analytics Dashboard
Freshdesk is a cloud-based, customer-facing helpdesk solution that allows businesses to answer their customers’ product or service-related questions. It helps business owners and operations managers keep track of support tickets and ensure customers’ issues are resolved in a timely manner. It’s priced starting at $15 per month, per agent. To see if a help desk is right for you, try its free plan.
20. ZohoCRM (CRM With Social Media)
ZohoCRM’s social media engagement platform
ZohoCRM lets you interact with prospects and contacts on a variety of channels including Twitter and Facebook. It is an ideal tool for businesses using social selling as part of their prospecting and sales strategy. Starting at $12 per month, per user, it’s affordably priced for most small businesses. Give its free trial a try to see if it complements your social-based sales and prospecting strategy.
21. Logojoy (Logo Maker)
Logo designed by the author using Logojoy
Logojoy is a logo generator that allows nondesigners to create logos. It works by typing in the name of your company or your type of business, then choosing five existing logos you like, the colors you’re thinking about, along with any symbols. It takes your entries and generates logos for you until you’ve picked one you like and want to customize. Pricing is per logo and starts at $20.
22. SurveyMonkey (Survey Tool)
Screenshot of SurveyMonkey survey on a mobile device
SurveyMonkey’s main product is cloud-based software that allows you to create surveys to send to customers, prospects, employees, and so on. It offers a basic survey free plan where you can create unlimited surveys capped at 10 questions. The paid plans allow for more questions and have additional tools like skip question logic and A/B testing. Paid plans start at $32 per month.
23. PromoRepublic (Social Media Management)
Screenshot of PromoRepublic’s social posting calendar and scheduler
PromoRepublic is social media management software that allows you to create professional looking social media posts. It also has a calendar scheduling tool that lets you plan and execute your promotional calendar. There are also reporting tools to see how your posts are performing. Pricing starts at $9 per month.
24. QuickBooks (Accounting Software)
Screenshot of QuickBooks Expense Tracking Dashboard
QuickBooks is accounting software that allows you to easily track your income and expenses. In addition to tracking income and receipts, it allows you to organize and capture receipts, invoice clients and accept payments, and run reports. Pricing starts at $20 per month. It often has specials where you get 50% monthly fees for the first three months.
25. Zoho Analytics (Analytics & Business Intelligence)
Zoho Analytics dashboard
Zoho Analytics is data analytics software that allows you to pull data from a variety of sources such as CRMs, customer support, accounting, and finance software to create reports and data visualizations that provide insights across all areas of your business. You can create reports and dashboards with drag-and-drop features and by asking questions. Prices start at $22.50 per month.
26. The Sales Pro (Sales Training)
Screenshot of popular SalesPro university courses
The Sales Pro emphasizes giving and adding value to leads and prospects as a way of nurturing them into becoming customers. It offers courses around its philosophy from online courses to live in-person training that can take place at your location. Click here for more information on its Sales Essentials Program that starts at $49.95, visit its course website.
27. Indeed (Talent Recruitment)
Screenshot of Indeed home page
Indeed is a job board where you can recruit talent for your business. The site has more than 200 million monthly visitors and it’s free to post a job. For better visibility, it allows you to place a sponsorship ad where you pay per click. There are also more than 100 million resumes on Indeed, which gives you many options when it comes to candidates.
28. Fiverr (Freelance Talent)
Gigs on Fiverr home page
Fiverr is a freelance marketplace where entrepreneurs can find affordable talent for things like graphic design, social media management, lead generation, and more. You select “gigs” and pay a fee for the service the freelancer is offering. Many services start at $5 but can be several hundred if they are Pro Verified or a verified professional. Check out Fiverr for freelance talent today.
29. Mailchimp (Email Marketing Software)
Example Mailchimp email
Mailchimp is a marketing tool that allows you to create and manage professional-looking email campaigns. It also offers other marketing tools like landing pages and social media ads. You can sign up for a free account for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 monthly emails, which is great for small businesses just starting. Paid plans start at $10 per month.
30. Nextiva (VoIP)
Screenshot of Nextiva VOIP Phone & Voice Options
Nextiva is a VoIP solution provider offering affordable phone solutions for small businesses. Features include unlimited domestic calling, fax capabilities, voicemail to text or email conversion, and more. Pricing starts at $19.95 per month. There are also no service fees. Learn more about Nextiva by signing up for a free demo.
31. GetProspect (Prospect Sourcing Tool)
GetProspect search criteria tool
GetProspect is a B2B prospecting tool that generates prospect details based on search criteria. Enter your target audience criteria into its search tool, and you’ll get a list of names, email addresses, titles, LinkedIn profile links, and so on. You get 50 leads per month with the free plan. Paid plans start at $29 per month for 1,000 emails. Give it a try today with a free account.
32. GetResponse (Marketing Tools)
GetResponse landing page template
GetResponse is a marketing tool that allows you to create professional emails and manage email marketing campaigns. It also allows you to create landing pages, autoresponders, and surveys and forms. There are tools to develop and promote webinars, and it also has a CRM for managing leads and deals. Pricing starts at $15 per month. Test drive these marketing tools with a free trial.
33. Xero (Accounting Software)
Xero expense claims processing
Xero is cloud-based software for accounting that makes it easy for small businesses to stay on top of their finances. Features include the ability to capture receipts and log expenses with a mobile app, create and send invoices, cash flow monitoring and more. Pricing starts at $5 per month. Give Xero a try by signing up for a 30-day free trial.
34. PicMonkey (Photo Editing Software)
PicMonkey image editor
PicMonkey is an online photo editing tool that allows you to edit photos, add text to them, and create special effects. It also allows you to create a collage from images. Pricing for PicMonkey starts at $7.99 per month. Start editing photos today by signing up for a seven-day free trial.
35. ConstantContact (Email Marketing Software)
Constant Contact email template on mobile device
Constant Contact allows you to create professional looking emails with templates as well as manage email campaigns. It has hundreds of email templates to choose from that you can customize with drag-and-drop functionality. There are also tools to track email effectiveness. Pricing starts at $20 per month for lists of up to 500. Learn more with a free trial.
Bottom Line ― Best Small Business Software for 2019
Small business software lets small business owners to affordably get more done in less time. Tools helping with tasks ranging from managing customer relationships to creating marketing materials to handing projects and expenses allow small business owners to compete with larger ones. Consider trying a few of these tools to see how they impact your business and let you compete.
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