Running a small business can be the perfect mix of exhilarating, humbling, and terrifying. While fast growth is exciting, it comes with its own set of challenges.
When your business is increasing faster than you can manage on your own, important things can fall through the cracks. It starts with an unsent invoice, then a missed appointment with an important client. If you’re not on top of things, the day to day business operations can start to look and feel like organized chaos — or in some cases, pure chaos.
You need workflows. You need automation. You need sleep and a shower.
While there are hundreds of tools and platforms out there to help burgeoning business owners and freelancers, that is part of the problem. There. Are. Hundreds.
Sifting through the mountain of apps, websites, and softwares to find the few that are a perfect fit for your business and budget is daunting. Here are a few that we love to keep your business organized and looking professional.
CRM Software
Dubsado is a comprehensive tool for the productive business owner. This client management system:
- Sends and manages contracts
- Sends invoices (including auto-reminders and a tipping option)
- Handles questionnaires and forms (clients can save drafts to finish later)
- Is known for superb customer service
PRICE: $30/month or $300/year
BEST FOR: Creatives
If you think Dubsado is right for you, and you’d like to take it for a spin to make sure, sign up for the free trial.
Bitrix24 is a free client relationship manager. It calls itself a collaboration software with a complete set of tools for managing a business, collaborating with team members, and communicating with clients. Bitrix24 unifies all of your communication channels with clients, including phone calls. (It automatically connects them with an assigned manager.) Share files, plan meetings by syncing calendars, set up dedicated discussion threads; this software really does it all, and did we mention it’s FREE?
PRICE: Free
BEST FOR: Larger companies with many customers
HoneyBook This platform boasts the ability to become mission control for your business by streamlining everything: invoices, contracts, payments, and more. HoneyBook takes long, complicated client communication processes and links them together into easy workflows. The thing that makes Honeybook shine is its functionality. It integrates with software such as Quickbooks and Stripe and delivers killer analytics.
Try Honeybook for Free
PRICE: $40/month or $400/year
BEST FOR: Creatives entrepreneurs who need to look professional
Time Tracking/Invoicing
Freshbooks This software allows the user to enter their time worked manually or by using a timer. Your recorded work time is easily transferred to an invoice and sent out to clients. Freshbooks accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Stripe, and Paypal payments. You can even see when your client opens your invoice and views it! Need to set up recurring payments? Freshbooks makes it a breeze.
Try Freshbooks Free for 30 Days
PRICE: Starts at $15/month
BEST FOR: Freelancers who keep track of time or need to send recurring invoices
17hats is an invoicing and timekeeping organizational software that combines all the apps you’re using to run your business on a single interface. It offers automation that allows you to become more hands free. (For example, it can automatically send payment reminders if invoices aren’t paid within a specified amount of time.) It accepts credit card payments for a small fee, sends and organizes contracts, and captures leads.
PRICE: $45/month or $295/annually
BEST FOR: The solopreneur who is wearing all the hats
Collaboration/Project Management
Basecamp is a shared online space where teams can collaborate and share tools. It includes 6 main tools: group chats, message boards, to do lists, schedules, check-ins, and docs/file storage. Basecamp offers short video tutorials for the interface as well as customer service support during normal business hours.
PRICE: $99/month
BEST FOR: A team needing advanced collaboration tools
Trello is the post-it board of the online space. The interface is set up like a board full of cards that represent a specific task or project. Trello is incredibly adaptable and customizable. Users can create boards to flow how they see fit. Trello integrates with several interfaces, including Slack and Google Drive. It’s set up so a business owner can see a project through from start to finish.
PRICE: Free for its core features or upgrade to Business Class for 9.99/month
BEST FOR: The business owner who needs an organization tool for his own projects or to collaborate with a team
Slack is known in the biz as the email killer. It’s a real-time messaging app (mobile and desktop) where you can not only send quick messages, but share images, Google Docs, pdfs, and even emojis with your team. Slack has a slick, modern interface, is searchable, and is extremely user friendly. If you constantly find yourself using email or another bulky messaging tool to ask simple questions, get slack and let go of the messaging clutter for good!
PRICE: Free for the first 10 third-party integrations
BEST FOR: Anyone needing to streamline team communications
Marketing and Sales
Hubspot is a small business growth tool that encompasses so many features, it’s hard to narrow them down into a compact description. Once just a CRM, Hubspot has grown to include three distinct hubs that work together seamlessly:
- An all-in-one marketing platform that grows traffic, converts visitors, nurtures leads and organizes every interaction.
- A service hub focused on creating a better customer experience, including a content rich universal inbox for better client engagement, ticket creation to stay organized, options for collecting customer feedback, and collecting real data on customer decisions to better tailor your response.
- A sales hub that automates tasks, schedules meetings, and includes robust email marketing tools with analytics.
PRICE: Hubspot’s CRM is free, and so are the basic versions of the marketing, sales, and service hubs. More advanced features are available in each of the hubs for an additional fee
BEST FOR: The company, whether large or small, that wants to focus on inbound marketing
ConvertKit is an email marketing platform known for its ability to tag and segment subscribers and create automated email sequences. Email creation in ConvertKit is simple and easy, and it offers several extra features including seamless integrations.
Sign up for Convert Kit’s 14 Day Trial
PRICE: Plans start at $29/month
BEST FOR: ConvertKit boasts that it was made for creators, by creators
MailerLite is a great, free option for small business email marketing. Its interface and many of its features are similar to MailChimp, but it is a little less bulky and more user friendly. Mailerlite lets you categorize subscribers based on several variables. While there are more expensive options available for those looking for more features, Mailerlite’s affordability has made it one of the most popular email marketing platforms among new entrepreneurs.
PRICE: Free for up to 1,000 subscribers
BEST FOR: Entrepreneurs just getting started with email marketing or those with a smaller list
The end of the fourth quarter is an excellent time to evaluate your processes and figure out how to streamline and automate your biz. Grab a cup of tea, locate your most frustrating pain point, and start there. Once you’ve addressed that issue, tackle another, and then another.
What business management platforms do you swear by? Share them with us in the comments!
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