10 Best Online Tools To Help You Grow Your Small Business

Starting a small business has never been easy, but entrepreneurs who do so today have one big advantage over their past compatriots. There is a wealth of online tools available to help them. From building a website to managing your accounting, it used to be that you’d either have to learn how to do it yourself or farm it out to a costly professional.

Today, there are many tasks you can do yourself with the right tools. These tools can help you grow your business more effectively and double your productivity. Here, we have reviewed the ten best tools for small businesses.

1. QuickBooks For Finance

Many businesses start managing their money on home-grown spreadsheets, but soon find they need something that provides more capabilities and takes less time. QuickBooks is the leading financial tracker for small and even medium-sized businesses.

It can track money coming in and going out. QuickBooks can show you your revenue, your expenses, and your profit. You can structure your financials to simplify your life at tax time. You can use it to accept payments online or in person from the customer. There’s a payroll functionality available.

QuickBooks integrates with many popular business software. If you’re starting out, you can get a bookkeeping system up and running with minimal accounting skills.

2. Slack For Communication

If there are only two or three people in your company, you can communicate with emails, texts, or even Post-it notes. As your team grows, however, you need a tool like Slack for clear and easy communication.

Slack organizes communication threads into “channels.” The topic is clear every time you see a message. Private messages can be sent within teams.

The tool is designed for mobile and workstation devices and automatically syncs across them. No matter where your employees are, they can readily chat, share files, save, and search messages.

3. Zoom For Video Calls

Slack lets people communicate on various topics, but doesn’t allow them to work face-to-face. Zoom does. It’s the leading tool for virtual meetings.

You’ve probably used Zoom in your personal life, but it may be time to deploy it in your business if you haven’t yet. Zoom offers a suite of products, from the free version you may be familiar with to offerings that provide cloud storage, support webinars, and supply features for cooperative workspaces.

Zoom works on multiple devices and lets you meet with employees, customers, and/or suppliers anytime, anywhere.

4. Google Workspace For Digital Needs

Google is known for its search engine, its email products, and its marketing prowess. It has expanded its product line by building Google Workspace, previously known as Google Suite (G Suite).

Google Workspace comprises numerous well-known Google tools, including email, calendaring, document management, cloud storage, and workplace collaboration solutions. It supports a branded business email address and integrates with other popular office tools such as Zoom and Trello.

Google Suite is available at several price points depending on which functions you need and how many users you plan to support. A free trial period is available.

5. Google Analytics For Tracking Performance

How well is your website doing? You cannot tell if you are not tracking visitor statistics.

Google Analytics tracks and reports website traffic. It will tell you how many visitors your site has, where they’re coming from, how much time they spend on your site, and what percentage actually make a purchase. It will show you which of your pages are most popular and how often visitors leave after viewing only one page.

With tracking in place, you can tell whether ad campaigns or other marketing efforts drive traffic to your site and increase sales. Services like 4LegalLeads help convert that traffic into real business by delivering high-quality leads tailored to your practice. By combining analytics with effective lead generation, you can maximize your marketing efforts and grow your client base.

6. Calendy To Manage Your Meetings

Calendy is a tool that manages your scheduling process. It replaces the back-and-forth between two individuals trying to find a standard time and simplifies life for the admin booking meetings for an entire team.

You can use it within your employee team or with customers or suppliers. You can standardize meeting parameters and make changes across multiple meetings.

With Calendy in place, you can view your business’s meetings overall. You can identify who’s overbooked and who’s available.

Note: You can now use this feature for free in Google Calendar as well.

7. Trello For Project Management

If you have only a few people handling a few tasks, you may not see the need for a project management tool like Trello. However, if you expect to grow, it’s smart to implement and use a tool.

This tool starts with a Trello board that tells you what’s in progress, what’s on tap, and what’s complete. As you continue to use it, you can develop detailed task lists across projects. You can assign staff, set due dates, and track progress.

The more irons you have in the fire, the more you need a tool like Trello to keep your thumb on the progress of all projects and workflows.

8. Open VPN For Securing Your Online Presence

OpenVPN protects your online access by creating an encrypted channel between your devices or routers and OpenVPN’s servers. It protects your online anonymity by attaching its information to internet traffic and hiding that it came from you.

If your employees ever work remotely and access the internet via a public Wi-Fi router, a VPN on their devices will protect them from the notoriously lax security those routers often lack.

Open VPN is a virtual private network designed for businesses. It can be used to build a secure network even as your computing capability grows.

9. Zoho CRM For Customer Relationships

Who are your customers? What are their demographics? If you have something new to offer, what group will you target? Zoho CRM is a customer relationship management system that helps find these answers.

A CRM enables you to identify and follow up on the most promising leads. It also helps you understand how to retain your existing customers and make more sales to them.

If you don’t have a tool like Zolo CRM, you’re missing a top opportunity to acquire new customers and do more with the ones you already have.

10. ClickSend for Business SMS Texting

ClickSend allows you to use text messaging to improve communication across the board. You can talk to customers, partners, suppliers, employees – even whole departments. You can send all sorts of messages, whether promotional, informative, or conversational.

Business text messaging is quick, inexpensive, and incredibly effective. The humble SMS text lets you send and receive vital information almost instantly. The best part is that text messages have a 98% open rate, making them the best way to reach clients immediately.

So, instead of reaching customers in overflowing inboxes, why not connect directly via their cell phones?

More Useful Tools

Here are some more valuable tools to help you grow your online brand with impact:

• 🧠 ChatGPT: Your 24/7 business consultant, content creator, idea machine, and productivity hacker. From emails to product names to automating workflows, this thing does it all.
• 💪🏻 ProofHub: is a project management and team collaboration tool designed to streamline workflows for teams of all sizes.
• 📣 Canva: Design pro-looking graphics, social posts, pitch decks, and even logos. No designer? No problem.
• 🤖 Zapier: Connect apps and automate tedious tasks. Want new email signups to auto-add to Mailchimp and ping you on Slack? Zapier makes it happen like magic (no code).
• 🧩 Notion: All-in-one workspace to plan, organize, and manage your business. Think docs, tasks, calendars, wikis, all customizable, all in one place.
• 💌 Mailchimp: Email marketing without the migraine. Build audiences, send newsletters, and automate campaigns with built-in analytics that even your grandma could understand.
• 🐻 Pressbear: Smart marketplace that helps amplify your online visibility through Digital PR and link building, so your brand gets noticed, ranked, and remembered.
• 🔍 Semrush: If SEO were a battlefield, Semrush would be your war machine. Track keywords, spy on competitors, and rank higher on Google without spending years learning SEO.

Final Thoughts

We hope you found these tools helpful for your small business. Other online tools can help new businesses get off the ground and stay afloat.

Depending on your line of business, the size of your workforce, and whether they work remotely, a slightly different combination of tools might be most critical for you. Moving your work to these tools might seem daunting initially, but you will reap the benefits in the coming years.