software for small business

Tools and Software for Small Business – a Must-have Package for Every Online Entrepreneur

Strategies, strategies, you have to have those to know where you’re going with your work and actually accomplish something meaningful. But you also have to have another element of the puzzle, one that’s completely different…

You see the headline of this post so you know what it is – tools and software for small business … no matter if your online business is actually small or not, there’s nothing like a big, nice set of tools, presumably free, or at least so brilliant that you don’t mind paying.

The following list consists of various tools I use every day (i.e. very often). All of them have been tested by me, so I’m not advising you to use anything uncertain. I hope you’ll enjoy the list.

Tools and software for small business and online entrepreneurs

1. The Captain Obvious Package

First up is a set of tools that I call the Captain Obvious Package. I didn’t want to include them separately on the list because their presence would probably get you to leave the page.

Anyway, these are tools everyone knows and everyone uses, and I’m only including them to make the whole message complete.

The Captain Obvious Package consists of:

  • WordPress – the ultimate solution for your website, free, lots of plugins, massive community.
  • Google Analytics – free and powerful site analytics software.
  • Dropbox – a cloud service for keeping your files in an online space that can be accessed from anywhere.

Of course, there are some alternatives to all of these tools, but for me, this is the most basic package of software for small business.

2. MailChimp

This is my favorite email delivery service, or email newsletter service like some people like to call it.

All the essential features are included. You can create a number of campaigns, generate reports, send out both HTML and text emails, set up autoresponders, and lots of other stuff.

Now the best part is that at MailChimp they have a free plan as long as you don’t have more than 2,000 subscribers and don’t send more than 12,000 emails per month.

This makes it possible to get off the ground without spending a dime. I’m sure switching to a paid plan won’t be a problem once you grow your list of subscribers and actually make some money.

3. Market Samurai

Note; since been discontinued.

Market Samurai is a complete, all-purpose platform for an online entrepreneur, and a superb example of software for small business. There are tons of features, and the software is organized around 8 separate modules, each taking care of a different element:

  • Rank tracker.
  • Keyword Research.
  • SEO Competition.
  • Domains.
  • Monetization.
  • Find Content.
  • Publish Content.
  • Promotion.

Check out the review (Market Samurai review) I’ve written just lately. It covers all the most important aspects of Market Samurai and explains why it’s so valuable for every online entrepreneur.

4. Fiverr

Fiverr is a great site to get some serious work done for as little as $5. In fact, every gig you can order there is $5, hence the name.

I have some really good experience with Fiverr, mostly when it comes to link building and writing services. Once I even had my personal signature designed.

The scope of possible gigs is very big, the list of main categories includes things like: graphics, video, social marketing, writing, advertising, business, technology, programming, and more.

Payments are done by PayPal so it’s safe too. Depending on the gig and the person providing it you can expect results within hours or a week.

5. Remember The Milk

I simply love this tool and I’m using it every day to keep up with my personal to-do lists of tasks. It’s very easy to use and neatly fits within the GTD methodology.

The tool provides some very cool features like: tasks, due dates, multiple task lists, priorities, easy keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys), and more. Feel free to check out their tour and getting started guide.

One more thing worth noticing is that Remember The Milk also provides apps for major mobile platforms. It runs on the iPhone (it’s integrated with Siri, by the way), iPad, and Android.

(Note. Make sure to check out the alternatives as well.)

6. Buffer

In essence, Buffer is a scheduling tool for Twitter. Which means you can schedule your tweets to be published later.

Why? Well, this gives you the opportunity to set a scheduling calendar for your promotional tweets or/and other special-purposes postings. Also, you get some basic analytics, so you can see how many retweets and clicks your tweets have received.

Buffer integrates with all the major browsers and mobile platforms. There’s a handful of different plans, and the free one provides good enough indication of what the software is like, so you can make the decision whether it’s worth to upgrade or not.

… There’s one main problem with different lists of tools like the one you’re reading right now. They can go on and on, and it’s very difficult to choose the few items worth including into a “top 5” or a “top 10” list. So I’m not trying to convince you that you absolutely have to use everything from this list.

Remember that these are just tools, they don’t matter. How you use them is what matters.

Feel free to share your own experiences with various tools and software for small business. Did you notice any issues worth sharing with others? Or maybe any tricks that make using these tools a lot easier?

Karol K
Karol K

Karol K is a writer, content strategist, Notion aficionado, and WordPress figure-outer with over 20 years of experience around websites, content creation, and optimizing personal productivity processes. With his expertise underpinned by a master's degree in computer science, he authored "WordPress Complete" - the ultimate WordPress handbook for newbies. His work has been published across numerous industry websites.

4 Comments

  1. Jan

    Jan

    Quite interesting: buffer seems to be a 2-man show (http://bufferapp.com/about/#the-team) and already on Alexa page rank 6000 (http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bufferapp.com#)

  2. Karol K

    Karol K.

    Impressive. Some ideas just seem to work. Buffer is surely one of them. :)

  3. Spatch Merlin - How to Blog

    Spatch Merlin - How to Blog

    Dropbox, Google Analytics are WordPress are great tools. Matter of fact, they are popular when it comes to blogging. However, even if you buy all of these items in end what matters is how you use them (as you said above) to achieve success in your business.

  4. Karol K

    Karol K.

    This is always the case with every tool. :)

Comments are closed.