15+ Tried and Tested Small Business Tools that will Transform your Business in 2023

Small businesses require automation tools to transform their businesses, and this article discusses 10 small business tools that can help your business stand out.

In today’s world, the number of businesses is well over 200 million.

90% of them represent Small & Medium Businesses (SMB’s).

According to Fundera, 20% of these businesses will fail in the first year of operation, and another 30% will fail in the second year. At the end of the fifth year, half of them will get wiped out of operation.

Do you really think you can withstand the heat of this competition without the touch of automation, business tools, and software?

While employees are still an indispensable part of the businesses, tools related to business process automation can do more than what you perceive them to do!

This article discussed 30+ tried and tested small business tools that can help you transform your business to the next levels without the risk of getting wiped out.

Go through the article to see these small business tools, their attributes, pricing plans, etc. 

1. Google Drive – Personal Cloud Storage & File Sharing Platform

For any business, no matter how small it is, Google Drive is a necessary tool to be maintained. The cloud storage offered by Google ensures secured data preservation and usage from anywhere in the world.

Google Drive offers 15 GB of data storage free, but you need to pay for it once choosing to go bigger. Data is the language of today’s business world, and you can’t ignore the impact of big data on your organization. While security breaches and information theft are not rare, Google Drive ensures you store the data safely for further usage. So, it’s a wonderful tool to transform your small business into a large one.

Key Features

  • Team Collaboration & Sharing
  • Drag and Drop uploads
  • Advanced Search
  • Mobile Application with uploading facilities
  • Automatic conversion of the uploaded files into Google Docs’ editor format

Pricing

  • Free: 15 GB Storage
  • Basic: 100 GB Storage at $1.99 per month
  • Standard: 200GB Storage at $2.99 per month
  • Premium: 2TB Storage at $9.99 per month

2. EasySendy – Email Marketing platform

EasySendy is the most satisfactory option for marketers to send marketing emails and drive better results.

EasySendy is an all-in-one email marketing plugin that allows you to carry all your various marketing channels together and accelerate traffic, a higher conversion rate, and better ROI for online geeks, marketers, small businesses, and startups. In addition, you can easily design email templates for your campaigns.

Key Features 

  • Create and embed an email list form
  • Create customizable email list pages
  • Design email template with drag and drop editor
  • Deliver Emails automatically on your Subscriber Anniversary
  • Sync your Email Subscribers with Facebook and Get High Email RoI
  • Send Next Email Automatically to those who Open & UnOpen Email

Pricing

  • Free:- upto 2000 subscribers for a lifetime
  • Basic:- $19/month
  • Standard:-$89/month
  • Premium:- $349/ month

3. Zoom – Communication through Video Conferencing

Video conferencing with the team members and clients is now a common practice, especially after the Covid-19 hit the planet. Zoom can be a good choice if your small business depends on video conferencing now and then.

Zoom is an elegant product that helps you arrange video conferencing with your teammates and clients. You can share your screen, record the video and divide the participants into multiple breakout rooms as per necessity. Arranging webinars with upto 500 participants, social media streaming, and receiving recording transcripts are other amenities you should consider while choosing Zoom as the video conferencing platform for your business. 

Key Features

  • Creating and Scheduling Meetings
  • Live Streaming Meetings or webinars on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook
  • Host and Co-Host control during meeting
  • Scheduling recurring meeting
  • Chatting during meeting

Pricing

  • Basic for personal meeting: Free
  • Pro for small teams at $149.90 per license per year
  • Business solution for small business at $199.90 per license per year
  • Enterprise for large organizations at $240 per license per year

4. Zoho Mail – Secure Email Communication Platform

Businesses need to have a consistent platform for sending and receiving mails form the partners, customers, and clients. Zoho Mail can help you get the job done with zero security concerns in exchange for a little money.

The spam filtering option in Zoho mail is a necessary solution for every business. It offers iOS and android versions to use your mail from the cellphone. Customizing the user experience in such a budget friendly way would be an amazing thing for any small business. Again, Zoho offers 100 GB storage for the professional pricing page subscribers.  

Key Features

  • Filters to automate the tiresome work
  • Advanced Search option
  • Scrub to clean up the inbox quickly
  • Folder specific notification
  • Global search and scheduling

Pricing

  • Mail Lite at $1 per user per month (Billed annually)
  • Mail Premium at $4 per user per month (Billed annually)
  • Workplace at $3 per user per month (Billed annually)

5. LiveBoard – Digital Whiteboard For Effective Employee Training

LiveBoard is an online whiteboard that can be used for small business purposes. It allows you to share your ideas and thoughts with others visually and create captivating sales presentations. At first glance, you might associate the LiveBoard with only an educational tool; however, it’s widely used by companies worldwide.

On top of that, LiveBoard is an excellent tool for team collaboration. You can use it to brainstorm, collaborate on projects, and even give presentations. It also allows company managers to keep track of their team’s progress by sharing boards with each department separately.

Key features

  • Collaborative board
  • Voice Call
  • Zoom Integration
  • Group & Folder Management
  • Export PDF

Pricing

  • Free 0$ per month, includes 1 member per board
  • Standard $7.49 per month, 1 member per board + Zoom integration
  • Pro $14.99 per month, up to 4 members per board + Standard features
  • Advanced $22.49 per month, up to 10 members per board + Pro features

6. ProProfs Survey Maker – Customized Online Survey and Form Maker 

ProProfs Survey Maker is the ideal choice for small-scale firms when it comes to conducting surveys for collecting customer feedback. The tools offer 100+ survey templates to help capture real-time insights from your audience.

Using this tool, you can create engaging and customized surveys, forms, polls, and even quizzes. It also has a centralized analytical dashboard where you can see who filled the survey, when and how they filled it, etc.

Key Features

  • 100k+ ready-to-use survey questions 
  • Integration with popular tools like Zendesk, Salesforce, and WordPress
  • Multiple survey sharing options
  • Real-time notifications
  • Availability of various question types
  • Automatic response grading
  • Branching and skip logic 

Pricing

  • Free: $0/month
  • Essentials: $0.05/response/month
  • Premium Plan: $0.10/response/month

7. Groupboss – Raining Sales From Your Facebook Group Like a Boss

Groupboss can be the ultimate game-changer for your small business entity. It helps you avoid the menial tasks of copying and pasting the answers from the new Facebook group members within seconds. Groupboss promises to save you valuable time, effort, and money; in return, it helps you grow a long list of leads that can be converted into customers who will generate the revenues for your business.

This fantastic piece of Google Chrome extension requires just a few seconds to be downloaded and installed. You can connect to multiple Facebook groups and get the information of the requesting members once it is set up and operated properly. Integrations with 18 autoresponders such as Moosend, SendGrid, ActiveCampaign, GoHighLevel, etc., help you use those leads for email marketing campaigns. The pricing is very affordable, and the operation with Groupboss is as smooth as you will ever experience!

Key Features

  • Exporting data from both CSV and Excel file
  • 1 Click Custom & Lookalike Audience
  • Integrations with 18 different autoresponders
  • Transfer of data and leads to Google sheet and Groupboss Dashboard
  • Exclusive chat support and videoconferencing if needed
  • 7-day trial for free

Pricing

  • Groupboss Monthly at $19 per user per month
  • Groupboss Yearly at $99 per user per year
  • Groupboss Yearly (Unlimited) at $189 per user per year

8. Slack – Instant Team Messaging and Collaboration Platform

Instant communication is part and parcel of a startup or a small business member. Slack is a tool that helps you have your teammates interconnected to run operations smoothly. It is a friendly app that enables the team to share news in shared rooms and go for 1-on-1 communication wherever necessary.

Slack helps you join various productive communities in the pursuit of building networks to thrive together at business. It provides you the amenity of file sharing, audio and video recording, and sending and integrating with some useful software for smoother and faster performance at work. Moreover, the accessibilities, emoji customization, and Dark mode feature made Slack a reliable platform for instant communication for small businesses.

Key Features

  • Access to multiple communities with Unlimited lightweight, voice-first huddles
  • Asynchronous collaboration across teams and time zones
  • More than 2,400 apps available to integrate with Slack
  • Smooth search in conversation to get back to any previous thread
  • HIPAA-compliant file collaboration

Pricing

  • Pro at $8 per user per month
  • Business+ at $15 per user per month
  • Enterprise Grid (Contact Sellers)

9. Ringblaze – Phone System For Teams

Ringblaze specifically aims at small and medium businesses that have a strong need for phone support. It enables your team to interact with customers from all over the world in real time as well as communicate with each other through a shared dashboard. One of its most prominent features is a call us now button that allows customers to call you directly and for free and can be easily implemented on your website or put into your email signature. No additional hardware is needed, you can explore Ringblaze features after just 15 minutes of setup, available both for desktop and mobile.

Key Features

  • Collaboration dashboard
  • Custom phone numbers
  • Website call widget
  • Call recording
  • Multiple users with shared call inbox and contacts
  • Customized voicemail greeting and hold music/message

Pricing

  • $19 per user/month if billed monthly
  •  $15 per user/month if billed annually
  •  A free 7-day trial

 

10. Crisp – Live Chat & Chatbots for Startups & SMB’s

Being a small business, you can’t afford to lose even a single customer who has no easy way to communicate with you or send queries. Crisp is one such platform that helps you give your top-notch customer service within seconds. It is a cloud-based helpdesk platform that can be a direct doorway to your customer’s pain point.

Small businesses can take advantage of Crisp as it is a smart chatbot that is both lightweight and user-friendly. Once subscribed to any of the paid plans, you will be able to reply to your customer’s queries directly to the Facebook Messenger or Twitter DM. Moreover, you will see which country your customer is based on and every other related information.

Key Features

  • Automated Live chat messages
  • Shared inbox benefits with related information
  • Sending Canned responses (Saved Replies)
  • Qualifying and segmenting customers into leads.
  • Automating customer relationships by creating ‘tracking’ plans

Pricing

  • Basic: Free forever
  • Pro at $25 per user per inbox
  • Unlimited at $95 per user per inbox
  • Enterprise (Ask the vendors)

11. Apploye – Ultimate Time Tracker for in Office, Mobile & Remote Teams

Tracking the time of the employees working remotely and controlling the workflow by bringing discipline to the overall task management are uphill battles for small businesses. Apploye is a time tracking software that can be used as a remote employee monitoring tool to help you win the battle against both time wastage and unproductivity! It is a handy employee monitoring software with screenshots that helps build a solid organization where every dollar’s value is being realized.

Apploye’s dashboard is unique in performance comparison, live feed update, and productivity management. You will be able to manage multiple tasks under various projects, manage clients and send them invoices, pay your employees as per their work hours and keep records of the employee performance by exporting reports. Moreover, it offers Pomodoro timer, idle time tracking, URL tracking, App usage, and 100+ more features to stay productive at your workplace.

Key Features

  • Automatic timer, Adding manual time, Customized Timesheet view, Clock-in, Clock-out.
  • Graphical and Tabular view in Reports, Performance-based comparison.
  • Screenshot monitoring, Apps and URL usage, Billable hours calculation.
  • Payroll management, Setting employee pay rates, payroll history.
  • Intuitive Dashboard, Live feed, Project & member-wise view.

Pricing

  • Solo at $4 per user per month
  • Standard at $5 per user per month
  • Premium at $6 per user per month
  • Elite at $7 per user per month

(50% discount on yearly plan)

12. LeadSquared – Sales CRM and Marketing Automation Suite

LeadSquared is one of the fastest-growing software in the sales CRM category. It provides sales execution and marketing automation solutions for both inside sales and field sales (Mobile CRM). 

Unlike many other CRMs out there, LeadSquared is built keeping the sales routine in mind and has everything a salesperson may need in their day-to-day chores. For instance, reminders for follow-ups along with the context of the conversation. 

Key Features

  • Complete lead management 
  • Opportunity management to identify upselling and cross-selling signals.
  • Mobile CRM for field sales users that comes with route guidance and geo-fencing
  • Ability to access accounts, leads, opportunities, activities, and tasks in one place
  • Drag and drop automation workflows

Pricing

LeadSquared’s basic plan starts at $25 per user per month.

13. Receiptmakerly – Best Receipt Maker and Online Receipt Generator

If you are a small business and need to generate frequent receipts, you must need an online receipt generator. Receiptmakerly is an outstanding receipt maker that helps you generate online receipts within a few clicks. Online custom receipts are now commonplace, but you can rely on Receiptsmakerly for a smoother generation of customized online receipts. You can download and print the receipts in the process.

With the help of this intelligent app, you will be able to generate Amazon-style receipts, Lyft-style receipts, Walmart-style receipts, Uber-style receipts and more. Three steps yield receipts with the touch of Receiptsmakerly. Choose a stylish receipt template. Change logo, fonts, text, bill amount, taxes, and other features to personalize the receipt. Save the receipt after that. The receipt is downloadable and printable, and you can send it via email.                                                                                             

Key Features

  • Generic Simple Receipts with Sales Receipts templates
  • Receipts are downloadable and printable
  • Customized fonts with no watermark
  • 50+ pre-made templates
  • Access to all major currencies around the world

Pricing

  • Weekly at $4.90
  • Monthly at $8.90
  • Yearly at $47

14. Mailbutler.io – Email Productivity for Outlook, Apple Mail and Gmail

Mailbutler is designed for freelancers, team leaders, and professionals of all kinds, Mailbutler offers a full suite of tools to make your inbox smarter.

How Does Features in Mailbutler work?

Mailbutler’s features are added directly into your native inbox application, providing additional functionality. Offering everything from Send Later and Undo Send, to Optimized Scheduling, Email Tracking, and even an inbuilt CRM option.

Key features

Mailbutler makes progress tracking easier while also providing team members with numerous key features, which are:

  • Email Tracking
  • Send Later
  • Notes & Tasks
  • Follow-Up Reminders
  • Contacts Management
  • Email Templates
  • Email Signatures
  • Much More…

Pricing

  • Essential – Free plan
  • Professional – $ 9.95 per user per month
  • Professional+ – $ 15.95 per user per month
  • Business – $ 37.95 per user per month

(There is a 14 day Free Trial (to try all the features), and if you pay yearly you have 16% savings.)

15. Mailchimp – Email Marketing and Automation Platform

Running email marketing campaigns to the leads you collect from different platforms helps you win some customers and convert them into your revenue-generating sources. Mailchimp is a great email marketing and automation platform that can transform your small business by fetching valuable customers in the incipient days.

Mailchimp helps you compose customized messages that may include media files and infographics to capture the reader’s interest. The bulk email campaign that you can run with the help of Mailchimp can be based on behavioral analytics and targeting. Again, you can track the conversion rate and see the campaign analytics once it is done.

Key Features

  • Audience Targeting, A-B Testing
  • Send time optimization and Behavioral Targeting
  • Custom branding and Customer journey builder
  • Marketing CRM, forms and Landing pages.
  • Integration with more than 300 useful apps and software.

Pricing

  • Free: $4/user/month
  • Essential at $11 per month per 500 contacts
  • Standard at $17 per month per 500 contacts
  • Premium at $299 per month per 500 contacts

16. Chisel – #1 Agile Product Management Software

Chisel is a product management startup. It caters to product managers’ needs to manage and align the team whenever required. Chisel is your all-in-one solution for product management.

With Chisel, your product managers duties such as prioritization, team alignment, and customer feedback are taken care of. Try Chisel’s free version today!

Key features

  • Timeline view
  • Prioritization Matrix
  • Customer Feedback
  • Team Alignment
  • Product Roadmap
  • Kanban Board
  • Jira integration

Pricing

  • Essential: $0
  • Premium: $79

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