14 Best Small Business Apps

It’s Monday morning.

You’ve barely taken a sip of your coffee (or tea or smoothie) and are already buried under a mountain of emails, customer inquiries, and countless to-do lists. As a small business owner, you wear many hats — balancing bookkeeping, sales, marketing, and all other business needs.

Time is a luxury you may’t afford to waste.

Luckily, there are a selection of inexpensive and free small business apps on the market you should use to assist with day-to-day operations so you may deal with developing strategies, boosting conversions, and increasing revenue.

Let’s get into the very best small business apps you want to learn about and explore the way to use them in your online business.

Why Small Businesses Need Apps

While you can keep using pencil and paper to run your online business, you’ll likely hit a wall sooner or later.

A US Chamber of Commerce study from 2022 found that 94% of small business owners find that using the precise tech and tools helps them run their businesses more efficiently. 84% of householders that adopted six or more tools and apps reported a better increase in profits, 82% saw a rise in sales, and 74% needed to grow their team to maintain up with growing demands.

While there are some tasks you’re just higher off outsourcing, the precise apps massively cut down the time you spend on boring stuff like invoicing, payroll, and scheduling. Saving time means you may deal with growing your online business (and even clocking out early for once.)

Must invoice a client? There’s an app for that. Need to step up your social media game? There’s an app for that, too. Need time tracking for yourself or your employees? Well, sadly, there’s no app for that.

Totally kidding. There are several apps for that.

Incorporating these tools into your workflows and processes saves money and time. The secret is streamlining. Apps can contribute to a rise in sales, improve customer retention, and showcase areas where your online business is siphoning money so you may make operational adjustments.

You spend a bit of (or nothing) to save lots of rather a lot.

So, when you’re still on the fence, consider this your nudge to get with the times and make your life easier.

How To Select The Right Apps For Your Business

A typical trap entrepreneurs and small business owners fall into is “shiny object syndrome.” You begin researching different small business apps, and now you would like to download all of the things with all of the neat features .

Don’t do this just yet.

If you happen to’re a wise, savvy small business owner, you may discover what your online business needs, which variety of app will meet those needs, after which learn what is obtainable and which apps are compatible with each other.

Listed here are some belongings you’ll need to take into consideration when choosing the very best apps in your small business:

• Budget: Your bottom line matters at the tip of the day. Consider the upfront costs and the continued monthly or annual subscription fees when using a brand new small business app. Will it’s value your return on investment?
• Scalability: As your small business grows, will your apps grow with you? Search for scalable solutions that supply different plans or features so you may upgrade relatively than seek for a complete latest platform when the time comes.
• User-friendliness: Few small business owners have the time to fiddle with an app that’s overly complicated or hard to make use of. Once you’re an entrepreneur, your time is value money. Go for apps which have intuitive features, a strong knowledge base to discuss with as you get used to its interface, and responsive customer support.
• Integration: It should be incredibly frustrating to seek out out you’ve invested money and time right into a standalone tool that doesn’t play well with the others you employ day by day. Check if the app can integrate with other tools you’re already using, like your customer relationship management tool or your payment processing system.

Many subscription-based apps have a free version or a limited free trial period. Use this to check the app’s basic features and see if it suits your small business and wishes. You may upgrade to a professional or version when you determine it’s a superb fit. Take your time, do your homework, and select a collection of small business apps best for you.

Accounting And Bookkeeping Apps

At first, let’s take a look at a few small business apps essential for financial health: your accounting apps. While accounting might not be everyone’s passion, it’s definitely an important a part of running a successful business. It lays the inspiration for long-term operations and provides much-needed visibility in your financial health.

1. QuickBooks

QuickBooks has been within the accounting software game for a very long time (since 1983!) and offers a wide selection of plans that help you customize to your needs. It’s versatile, reliable, and bundled with neat features to prepare your online business funds.

While QuickBooks continues to be available as a desktop app (used on a single computer), their cloud-based platform, QuickBooks Online, is good for small or medium-sized businesses. It’s accessible from anywhere, offers payroll and inventory options, a simplified user interface, and even allows your accountant to plug directly into the platform.

Features

• Expense tracking: No more piles of receipts, no more inboxes filled with invoices. QuickBooks robotically sorts through your transactions and categorizes your expenses for you.
• Invoicing: Behind on invoicing clients? Create custom, branded, and professional-looking invoices with just a couple of clicks. Save customer information to make future invoicing even easier.
• Payroll: Ensure that your people receives a commission on time and schedule (and also you, too!) with an automatic payroll system that features tax calculations. You may opt so as to add payroll to any plan type.

Tip: Scan Your Receipts

Use the QuickBooks mobile app for Apple iOS or Android to scan your receipts along with your mobile device and digitally store them for safekeeping so that you’ll now not need that one drawer full of random receipts.

QuickBooks pricing starts at $30 per thirty days. Each plan features a free 30-day trial.

2. FreshBooks

FreshBooks is good for freelancers, consultants, solopreneurs, or small business owners within the early stages of growth, particularly those that offer services relatively than products.

FreshBooks is a fantastic option if your online business revolves around client projects and tracking billable hours. It’s an answer for those needing more project management and time-tracking visibility.

Features

• Time-tracking: Know exactly what you’re doing along with your time and the way long it takes to get things done. Log your billable hours directly within the app and simply add them to an invoice.
• Client portal: Give your clients and customers a transparent space to view their invoices and pay you your money.
• Financial reports: Get a top-level view of your money flow. Generate profit and loss statements, expense reports, and other business financial documents with a couple of button clicks.

Tip: Communicate With Your Clients

Use the FreshBooks client portal to streamline communication along with your clients, keep them completely satisfied, and receives a commission.

Pricing starts at $8.50 per thirty days, or you may try it for free for 30 days.

Project Management

As a small business owner, you want to know that things are getting done on time and the way they’re presupposed to. You may’t remember all the pieces you could complete in a day, irrespective of what number of checklists you’ve got in your notebook.

That’s the reason you wish a project management app.

Project management (PM) gets especially tricky when you may have multiple team members and various projects with looming deadlines. Coordinating tasks or projects can change into a full-time job once they involve multiple people at different times.

Let’s take a look at some inexpensive PM options to attenuate the stress.

3. Asana

Asana is a preferred project management app designed to show you how to plan, organize, and track your projects. It’s great for businesses that cope with complex projects and want a centralized place where their team members can collaborate. You may organize projects with multiple steps and stakeholders or add items to a do-to list.

Features

• Task management: Assign and track tasks for multiple team members and groups. That way, everyone knows their responsibilities, and when their tasks are due, so all the pieces runs easily.
• List, board, and calendar views: Visualize your project using different views and understand how much time and work it’ll take to get it done. That is great for projects with multiple steps or with hard-and-fast deadlines.
• Collaboration: Comment on tasks and connect files, in order that all your team members have visibility on the status of a given project. There’s even a built-in “chat” feature to message anyone involved in a project that needs a running dialogue.

Tip: Set Goals

Use Asana’s Goals feature to make sure your tasks and projects align along with your company’s objectives.

The Basic plan is free. Paid plans begin at $10.99 and open up features like dependencies, which permit tasks to be blocked until a previous task is marked complete.

4. Trello

Trello often is the solution to go when you’re more of a big-picture thinker and also you are likely to organize information visually. Trello’s Kanban board layout is easy and intuitive.

Features

• Kanban boards: Organize your tasks into cards and boards and organize them in columns based on status or linear workflow steps.
• Automation: The built-in automation can robotically create tasks, which is very handy for ensuring you or your team complete routine tasks.
• Integration: Trello syncs seamlessly with other common small business apps like Google Drive and Slack, which may make for a more consistent workflow

Tip: Create A “Done” List

Moving your accomplished tasks to a ‘done list‘ can provide you with a way of accomplishment and the satisfaction of a job well done. It also helps you retain track of what you’ve already accomplished.

Trello has a free plan suitable for people, or you may upgrade to the usual plan for small teams for $5/user per thirty days.

Payment Processing Apps

In today’s fast-paced world, customers expect quick and hassle-free payment options, whether or not they’re shopping online or in-store. Whether you’re an appliance repair company otherwise you run a web based boutique, you wish a reliable payment processing app.

Why?

It’s not nearly making your life easier relating to collecting payments; it’s also about offering your customers a smooth and efficient checkout experience. Before you decide an app, consider what payment methods you’ll accept: bank cards, mobile wallets, and even cryptocurrencies. Do you want to process payments each online and at a physical location?

A very good payment processing app can show you how to cover all these bases, making transactions seamless for everybody involved.

5. Square

Square is a multi-functional payment processing app that gives a point-of-sale system, online invoicing, and analytics tracking. It’s a comprehensive solution ideal for handling each online and in-person payments.

Features

• Point-of-Sale (POS): Accept in-person payments with a mobile card reader or POS dock or in your website.
• Invoicing: Send digital invoices and accept payments online — a lifesaver for any service-based business.
• Inventory management: Do you retain physical goods or have e-commerce retail goods? You may keep track of your inventory in real-time inside the app itself.

Tip: Track Your Analytics

Use Square’s analytics features to take a look at your sales trends and optimize your payment processing with data-driven decisions.

Square has a free plan but does charge processing fees.

6. PayPal

PayPal is the favored alternative for businesses that focus on online payments. It’s great for e-commerce businesses that take international transactions since it means that you can accept payments in multiple currencies.

If your online business is primarily online, PayPal could also be a wise alternative.

Features

• Online payments: You may easily accept payments via your website or online store by allowing customers to pay using their debit or bank cards, bank accounts, or their very own PayPal accounts.
• PayPal Zettle: Did you realize you should use PayPal for in-person payments? PayPal Zettle (formerly PayPal Here) is a mobile app POS and card reader. It allows in-person customers to pay using their PayPal accounts.
• International payments: Accept payments in multiple currencies and open your online business to a worldwide customer base.

Tip: Use OneTouch At Checkout

Use PayPal’s handy OneTouch feature to simplify the checkout process. Your customers can click one button, and money is coming.

PayPal doesn’t have a monthly subscription and just charges processing fees.

Social Media Apps

Social media platforms have change into the fashionable billboards and airwaves for businesses to advertise their services. It’s higher even because you may solid a large net or goal specific customers in your area of interest.

Social media means that you can connect directly along with your audience, construct your brand, and even offer real-time customer support. If you happen to still need to include social media into your marketing strategy, now’s the time to start out.

If you happen to’ve been trying and want help optimizing your efforts, let’s take a look at a few apps.

7. HootSuite

HootSuite is a strong tool designed for serious social media management. It allows you to pre-schedule posts, monitor real-time engagement metrics like likes, comments, and shares, and even allows seamless collaboration between your social media and content teams.

If data-driven decision-making and teamwork are crucial to your social media strategy, then HootSuite is the app you’ll want to ascertain out.

Features

• Scheduling: Plan and schedule your posts across multiple popular platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube.
• Analytics: Track your engagement and performance metrics, corresponding to likes, shares, and follower growth, so you may see what’s working and what isn’t.
• Team collaboration: You may arrange approval workflows to review posts before they go live.

Tip: Routinely Schedule Posts

Use HootSuite’s AutoSchedule feature to robotically post content at the very best times for optimal reach and engagement.

The usual Hootsuite plan is one in all the costlier on our list, starting at $99 a month, nevertheless it does include a 30-day free trial.

8. Buffer

Buffer focuses on delivering a streamlined, user-friendly experience in social media management. Unlike the feature-rich HootSuite, Buffer emphasizes simplicity, making it a really perfect alternative for freelancers, small business owners, and solopreneurs who need straightforward solutions without the educational curve.

Features

• Content calendar: Visualize your posting schedule in a calendar, and know exactly what’s going out and when.
• Engagement analytics: Measure your likes, shares, and comments and determine whether your posts are striking a chord along with your audience.
• Multi-account management: Manage and schedule the content for multiple social media accounts and channels on one dashboard.

Tip: Pause Your Posts

Make the most of Buffer’s Pause Posts feature when launching latest products or entering busy seasons. Pausing posts gives you the flexibleness to regulate your social media strategy on the fly, ensuring you’re sending out essentially the most relevant and timely messages.

Buffer’s basic features are free, limiting what number of channels you may connect (three) and what number of posts you may schedule (10 per channel). Upgrade to Essentials for $6/month to get publishing and analytics tools. You may try any of the paid plans free for 14 days.

Marketing Automation Apps

As a small business owner, managing your marketing can feel overwhelming. Marketing automation apps can dramatically simplify your workflow, turning an extended list of tasks into just a couple of automated steps.

For those exploring marketing automation solutions, Mailchimp and HubSpot are noteworthy contenders. Mailchimp’s user-friendly approach is superb for those looking for a dedicated and economically efficient marketing automation solution.

In contrast, HubSpot is a flexible platform not limited to advanced marketing automation capabilities but extends to sales, customer support, and operations.

Let’s take a look at each more closely.

9. Mailchimp

Mailchimp just isn’t only for sending emails. It’s an all-in-one marketing platform offering many features to show you how to expand your online business. Its data-driven marketing approach makes it unique; the platform employs artificial intelligence to show you how to craft campaigns in your unique audience.

If you would like to get your online business online and improve your marketing, Mailchimp has the sensible tools you want to make it occur.

Features

• Email marketing: Create and send bulk emails to your most engaged customers and allow them to know when you may have a sale or latest blog post.
• Landing pages: Create specialized landing pages to draw latest leads. You may integrate these pages into your website or share them on social media.
• Customer segmentation: Understand your audience higher and segment them based on behavior, consumer preferences, and buy history.

Tip: Split-test Your Email Campaigns

You may optimize your email campaigns to get well engagement with Mailchimp’s A/B testing feature. Test out different subject lines, sending times, and content to extend your click-through rates.

Mailchimp offers a free plan with limited features. In addition they provide a 14-day free trial with the Essentials ($13/month) or Standard ($20/month) plans.

10. Hubspot

HubSpot is greater than a marketing automation tool: it’s a group of tools designed to streamline various marketing activities, making it a standout amongst apps for small business owners wanting to expand their outreach as their business grows.

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub facilitates personalized and timely interactions along with your audience through a mix of automation features so you may refine your marketing strategies and achieve improved results.

Features

• Automated workflows: Utilize a visible editor to create targeted workflows, allowing you to craft easy follow-up campaigns and sophisticated customer journeys in real time.
• Advanced segmentation and personalization: Implement sophisticated segmentation to enroll the precise contacts in your workflows and individualize emails using data integrated out of your CRM.
• Chatbots and tailored email triggers: Leverage chatbots and customised email triggers to attach effectively along with your audience and offer timely, relevant communications.

Tip: Enhance Engagement Through Workflows

Optimize engagement by exploiting HubSpot’s automated workflows. Experiment with various segments and personalize follow-up campaigns to make sure effective nurturing of every contact, enhancing your overall marketing strategies.

Hubspot has a free plan to take a tour and try it out. The Starter plan starts at $18/month if you would like to open up some more features and expand your limits.

Time Tracking And Worker Management Apps

Time is probably the most priceless resources. Efficiently managing and allocating time can significantly impact productivity, cost management, and, ultimately, the success of your online business.

Time-tracking tools provide insights into time spent and highlight enhanced efficiency and resource allocation opportunities. These tools are invaluable whether you aim to optimize your schedule or oversee team members’ productivity. The information from time tracking platforms provides a transparent perspective on work dynamics and helps to align efforts with your online business objectives.

11. Toggl

Toggl is great when you need straight-forward features with an intuitive interface. It’s ideal for freelancers and small consultancies who have to track their billable time and invoice clients.

Features

• Easy time tracking: Keep track of your time on tasks with a single click. It’s essential to bill clients accurately.
• Reporting: You may export report details and summaries and look at historical billable rates, which may show you how to find ways to spend your time higher and allocate your energy to where it has essentially the most impact.
• Team management: Toggl means that you can monitor your team’s performance when you manage a small team. You may ensure everyone works efficiently and understands what must be done.

Tip: Take Breaks In Your Workflow

Toggl has a built-in Pomodoro timer, reminding you to take breaks every 25 minutes of deep work. You may change these settings to accommodate whatever work/break schedule is smart for you.

You may start with Toggl for free.

12. After I Work

After I Work is a scheduling platform with time tracking and worker management features. It’s a superb option when you’re a small business owner who manages a team. The platform also integrates with small business tools like QuickBooks, Square, and Zapier.

Features

• Worker scheduling: Create your worker’s schedules and manage them online. Remove the necessity for paper schedules and reduce the prospect of messy scheduling conflicts.
• Time tracking: Monitor your worker’s billable hours for payroll purposes.
• Communication: Quick, in-app communication between you and your employees helps coordinate your online business management in order that your online business seems like a team.

Tip: Let Employees Manage Their Own Schedules

You may allow your employees to administer their workday with the Swap feature. It takes work off your plate and provides your employees more flexibility, which might help keep them completely satisfied.

The Essentials plan starts at just $2.50 per user.

Communication And Workspace Collaboration Apps

Over a 3rd of the US workforce works from home as of 2023, so distant communication is paramount to effective collaboration.

The rise of asynchronous communication is a response to the varied work schedules and locations, allowing for interaction that doesn’t require immediate response, thereby accommodating various time zones and work hours.

Implementing a strong cloud-based collaboration app fosters effective communication, whether your team is fully distant, in-office, or embraces a hybrid model. It ensures that each member is aligned and informed.

13. Slack

Slack is effectively an excellent chat room. You may organize different “channels” by project, client, interest, etc. You too can direct message team members either individually or in groups. You may create user tags to ping certain departments or roles and use collaboration tools inside the platform, like checklists or video calls.

Features

• Real-time messaging: Slack allows for quick messaging between team members without talking to someone’s desk or waiting for an email reply. It also means that you can set reminders to revisit messages or pin vital announcements in order that they don’t wander away.
• File sharing: Share documents, files, and pictures directly within the chat. To seek out all files ever shared in a channel, check its settings. (Note: The free Slack plan periodically clears file shares and message histories).
• Integration: Slack seamlessly integrates with cloud-based tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Asana so you may create more unified workflows and processes.

Tip: Organize Channels For Projects And Fun

Create just-for-fun channels for memes, affirmations, and photos of your pets to encourage team bonding. You too can add teambuilding apps like HeyTaco to let team members know they’re appreciated.

The app is free to start out or upgrade to the Pro Slack version for $7.25/user per thirty days.

14. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a more robust collaboration tool and could be a really perfect alternative for businesses that need a more comprehensive set of features and plan to adopt other Microsoft Office products.

Features

• Video conferencing: Microsoft Teams gives you best-in-class high-quality video calls if you may have frequent team meetings.
• Real-time collaboration: Teams robotically syncs with other Office 365 apps so you may edit your Microsoft Word or Excel files in real-time with other project members.
• Slash commands: Use command shortcuts to work faster and more efficiently. You may save messages or let someone know you wish help.

Tip: Plan Your Tasks Inside Your Team

Microsoft Teams also has neat project management features like their Planner tab. Set your tasks and your deadlines from inside the app.

The Microsoft Teams starts at $4/month for the Marketing strategy, but you can too try the free Home plan.

Use Apps to Bring Out The Best In Your Business

Identifying the precise apps in your small business could be a game changer. It won’t magically make all the pieces effortless, but it will probably significantly unlock your time to deal with crucial features like customer engagement and team constructing.

By pinpointing the apps that actually align along with your needs, you’re not only acquiring tools but creating opportunities for sustainable growth, enhanced customer relations, and potentially increased revenue.

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