Every aspiring entrepreneur's top priority is to keep their launch costs as low as possible. Although an online business must pay for a number of unavoidable charges, you can reduce some of your operational costs by using the best technologies.
There are a variety of startup tools and services available that not only help to reduce startup costs, but also help clever businesspeople save valuable time.
Consider how much more efficient you could be with just a few tools. What if you could get your hands on the top 5 start-up tools? It would make your start-up business easy and cost-effective.
These tools will not only help you start your business cost-effectively, it will also make your work more productive and there would be overall growth in your company.
8 Easy To Use Small Business Tools
1. Invoicing and Accounting - Refrens
Refrens is one of the best tools that can be used by a start-up or a freelancer. It's a one-stop solution for invoicing and accounting software. It makes bookkeeping for your startup easy, convenient, and safe. In only a few clicks, it automates financial chores such as proforma invoices, quotation format, invoicing, payment tracking, GST bill, client follow-up, hiring a freelancer, and many more.
All its services are free of cost they only charge when you accept international payments. Moreover, they also have a premium feature that gives you access to different types of benefits like email scheduling, recurring invoices, adding team members, inventory management, premium templates, email tracking, and much more.
Furthermore, when your startup diversifies and you need freelancers, Refrens platform will help you find the best-skilled freelancers, who will assist you in the needed specialized skill.
2. Web Design for Small Business Startups - Wix
Few companies have the financial resources to engage expert web developers to construct a website from the bottom up, but an amateurish-looking or not user-friendly site may deter visitors and drive away potential customers. Wix makes it simple to construct your own website or online store without having to know how to code.
It will not cost you anything to create a fantastic website using Wix. You'll have to pay $4.08 per month if you wish to utilize your own domain. From there, the plans tier upwards; for example, if you want an online store, you'll need either the e-commerce ($16.17 per month) or VIP ($24.92 per month) plan.
3. Marketing tool - Moz
Every company with a website requires solid analytics. The Moz Open Site Explorer is a free tool that can reveal a lot about your or a competitor's website, including:
- Examine your domain authority and page authority rankings.
- Learn which sites rank highest and where inbound links are originating from so you can fine-tune your SEO approach.
- Check out your Facebook and Twitter likes/shares/tweets.
You can use the Moz Open Site Explorer for free, but if you require more comprehensive statistics, you'll need to upgrade to Moz Pro, which costs $99 per month.
4. Email Marketing - Mailchimp
We're certain that, regardless of how many other excellent technologies are available, e-mail is here to stay – and is used by almost everyone – thus e-mail marketing is a must for today's companies.
Mailchimp is an e-mail marketing platform that does far more than just send out newsletters. This free service includes a number of useful tools, including:
- Forms for collecting email addresses that you can post on social media or on your website
- Automated messages, pre-made e-mail and newsletter templates, and mobile-friendly designs
- Snap is a feature of MailChimp that allows you to send photo-based e-mails to individual subscribers (handy for alerting them that an out-of-stock item is available)
- Campaigns that are specifically targeted, as well as extensive statistics to track their success
You can upgrade from the free Starting Up service to the Growing Business or Pro Marketer plans, all of which start at $20 per monthS if your email list grows beyond 2,000 subscribers or you find that you require more in-depth features – such as A/B testing or more extensive subscriber data.
5. Social Media Management - Hootsuite
Managing many social media accounts becomes a balancing act without the necessary tools, according to most businesses. That's why, for brand guidance and growth, you'll need HootSuite, a social media management solution. You may use Hootsuite to:
From a single dashboard, you can keep track of all of your accounts, including:
- Foursquare
- Pages on Google+ (not personal profiles)
- Monitor and reply to comments on social media, as well as plan future postings.
- Not only can you see if another team member has replied to a comment or planned an update, but you can also assign different responsibilities to different persons using this tool.
- Weekly report of your per day clicks, geographical location, most popular links and top referring sites.
The basic service is free, but you can only schedule one post at a time and you can only use three social network accounts. Hootsuite Pro is the best solution for most startups. You may connect up to 50 profiles and schedule 350 posts for $9.99 each month.
6. Collaboration - Dropbox
Dropbox is what you need if you want a well-organized environment where everyone in your office or virtual office can share data. This personal cloud storage service provides you with the following features:
- Backup and storage of data
- All of your images, documents, films, and other things may be shared easily.
- All of your devices are automatically synchronised and accessible (computers, tablets, smartphones)
- Because of the integration with Office 365, you can modify your Word documents and spreadsheets immediately in Dropbox and notify other team members of your changes
- File recovery for 30 days
Dropbox's basic service is free, however it has a lot of limits. To begin with, you'll only have two gigabytes of storage. The Pro ($10 per month, per user) plan includes a terabyte of storage, while the Business ($15 per month, per user) plan has limitless storage. The Business package also includes a number of additional collaboration tools as well as e-mail and phone support.
7. Customer Relationship Management - HubSpot CRM
There are several CRM apps for startups, but HubSpot CRM (a new tool from marketing leader HubSpot) is one of the greatest free solutions for improving customer service, as well as your own business strategy. You'll get access to a variety of features, including:
- Email discussions, companies, contacts, deals, and tasks are all tracked.
- Allowing you to invite additional team members for free (due to the lack of a per-user fee) when you sign up for a new account
- A simple dashboard that shows you any active deals, recent tasks, and critical emails.
- All of your platforms, such as your website, emails, and social media, are automatically synced.
- There's no need to log emails or phone calls because it's always running in the background.
- To find contacts, create custom fields and use filters.
HubSpot CRM's free edition provides for unlimited users and contacts, as well as a rich set of capabilities; but, you can always subscribe to the Premium version, which allows you to link it with HubSpot's entire marketing services (beginning at $200 per month).
8. Legal - Legal zoom
Legal services are costly, but LegalZoom provides a terrific solution for entrepreneurs to cut costs. LegalZoom provides the following services:
- A free Knowledge Center with a wealth of legal information.
- Contractor agreements, incorporation forms, and trademark registration are just a few of the legal documents available.
- Personalized legal counsel from licensed attorneys
The majority of LegalZoom's services include a fee, but it's significantly lower than you'd expect from a traditional lawyer. LegalZoom's monthly subscription packages start at $7.99 per month and provide you access to all of the company's forms. Individual documents can also be purchased - a contractor agreement, for example, costs $14.95. In addition, if you require legal counsel, a $23.99 monthly charge gives you access to LegalZoom lawyers whenever you want.
Conclusion
These resources will assist you in getting started in all aspects of your start-up without breaking the bank. They would also help your company's general growth and efficiency.
Author Bio
Sakshi Baid works as a Product Associate at Refrens.com - Quotation Form & India's most powerful platform for freelancer growth. She has worked for some renowned companies as a Brand and Digital marketing associate. You can follow Refrens.com on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
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