The primary concern of every aspiring entrepreneur is to keep their startup costs as low as possible. Although there are several unavoidable costs an online business have to pay for, you can minimize some operational costs with the assistance of the best tools.
There are a number of startup tools and resources available that not only help in minimizing the startup costs, but they also assist in saving precious time of savvy businessmen.
Imagine if you could enhance your efficiency with just a few tools. What if you can get your hands on 30 best tools for startups? Fortunately, that’s exactly what I’m going to share with you today. Let’s take a look!
1. 1. Ideation Tools
MVP Tools
Launch Tools
Marketing Tools
Finance & Fundraising Tools
CRM Tools
Design & Development Tools
I’ve divided these startup tools into seven different categories. Each of them casts a strong impact on the overall performance of your business and allows you to become more efficient with your business operations.
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#1 Startup Ideation Tools
It’s a fact that the first step is always the toughest. The ideation phase of any startup is crucial but once you know what industry you wish to work with, and what type of product you’re going to sell, things get clear, and with the assistance of the following startup tools, you will have a clearer direction of how to proceed further.
1. Squad Help
Squad Help assists you in finding an ideal name for your business. However, they do not limit their services to just business names. Instead, it also assists in finding the perfect name for your app, book, product or service, etc.
You can start a naming competition and engage thousands of experts as you’re guided through their agency-level naming process. You can also explore their hand-picked compilation of premium names that are available for immediate purchase.
Pricing: For as low as $199 per contest.
2. Clarity
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a fresh entrepreneur or an experienced businessman. Every entrepreneur needs actionable advice at one point or the other during their entrepreneurial journey. Clarity ensures ambitious entrepreneurs receive valuable pieces of advice from industry experts.
It helps you connect with industry leaders from all across the globe. These Clarity experts can help you overcome any challenge that you might be facing at any stage of your entrepreneurial journey. Whether it’s scaling your business, raising funds, researching market trends, or sharpening your skills, this tool for entrepreneurs has got you covered with the best business advice.
Pricing: For as low as $1 per minute on phone calls.
3. Germ.io
This tool for startup helps you better manage your business concepts and ideas. You will never lose the big picture of your startup idea with this resource. You can validate your concepts and share your vision by flaunting your big picture.
Germ.io helps you evolve your business idea by providing the ‘next steps’. Consequently, you will be able to shape up your business idea with ease. It lets you create actionable strategies by helping you with your how’s, what’s and why’s.
Pricing: Free version available
4. Mindmeister
This web-based mind-mapping tool lets you collaborate and brainstorm with experts in real-time. Besides ideation and project planning, you can use this startup tool for creating presentations. Mindmeister allows you to turn mind-maps into dynamic slideshows.
Moreover, it integrates with MeisterTask – a task management tool – allowing you to turn your ideas into actionable tasks.
Basic: Free
Personal: $4.99
Pro: $8.25
Business: $12.49
5. Javelin
To keep it simple, this is a one-stop solution for lean startups when it comes to customer development. A platform for innovators, Javelin can help you identify customer needs and validate new products. You can measure your product’s market fit with the assistance of their pre-designed surveys. It allows you to save time as the speed of workflow increases.
Pricing: Free to Signup
#2 Startup MVP Tools
For entrepreneurs who create web or mobile apps, it is significant to understand how their Minimum Value Product (MVP) affects their business. It also helps you experiment with your ideas in your preferred industry or market, before you complete your product. There are three MVP tools for startups worth highlighting. They include:
6. QuickMVP
QuickMVP is an amazing tool. It allows you to validate your startup, your business ideas, new projects, and features without wasting your precious time or money.
It helps you in documenting and quantifying the needs of your customers with customer interviews. You can build a website or a landing page and test the demand for your ideas. You can also calculate key business metrics such as profit margins or market size and identify promising opportunities with Quick MVP.
Pricing: $29.99/month
7. Just In Mind
Here’s one amongst the best startup tools that’s an all-in-one prototyping solution for web and mobile apps. From wireframes to highly interactive prototypes, Just In Mind has it all. You can apply design fully-interactive prototypes from scratch and bring them to life with a click.
It offers a complete range of web interactions and mobile gestures so that you can concentrate on building a delightful user experience. You can create wireframes that adapt to multiple screen resolutions for desktop as well as mobile devices.
Professional $19/month (Billed Annually)
Enterprise $39/month (Billed Annually)
8. Balsamiq
Their mission is to rid the world of bad user interface and help people to build websites and software that are easy to use. Balsamiq is a low-fidelity wireframing software accessible to entrepreneurs, managers, analysts, developers, agencies and anyone who’s into UX.
They provide extensive docs, assist in improving the software with the latest releases and provide support through multiple channels. You can find beginner-to-expert level tutorials and documentation on their support page for your convenience.
2 projects $9 per month or $90 per year
20 projects $49 per month or $490 per year
200 projects $199 per month or $1990 per year
#3 Startup Launch Tools
Launching a startup is never easy. From its ideation to execution, there are multiple factors that play a significant role in determining a successful launch. Nonetheless, there are multiple tried and tested startup tools that can help you launch your startup successfully. They include:
9. Product Hunt
This is the ideal go-to launch platform for startups. Product Hunt showcases amazing new products every day. It’s a brilliant platform for product-loving enthusiasts. They can share, discuss and geek about all the new products, websites, mobile apps, and tech other creations.
It can conveniently assist you to launch your product or more importantly, your startup successfully. The website operates on a system for user comments as well as a voting system which is similar to Reddit. With its pre-existing community of testers who are willing to try out new products, launching your startup had never been easier.
Pricing: Sign up for Free
10. Beta List
Beta List is a pre-launch system that helps your startup gain the traction it needs for a successful launch. The best advantage of this platform is that you can put your startup idea in front of an exceptional community of savvy business enthusiasts, and garner valuable feedback from them.
Beta List has helped over 3,000 startup founders to better understand their customers with the help of qualitative and quantitative research to ensure they are creating the right product for their right audience.
Hobby Free
Startup $129
Funded $299
11. Press Kite
The story of your startup lives here! Press Kite allows you to create a press kit for your startup. It’s so convenient that now you don’t have any excuse to not have a press kit ready to send a journalist whenever need be. Your startup can now enjoy the press coverage it needs so that even the masses can see you. A tool worth checking out!
3 Plans (Free, Founder for $9, Startup)
12. Cloudways
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that offers sustainable growth and lets you focus on growing your business while it takes care of your website hosting. Cloudways provides excellent feature set helping you scale your startup with ease.
Exclusively for Startups: Cloudways offers mentorship, growth tools, and discount on Cloudways platform through the Cloudways Startup Program.
Pricing: For as low as $10 per month
Get Your Basics Right
Select the Best Hosting Platform for Your Startup
#4 Startup Marketing Tools
A solid marketing strategy demands a flawless implementation of processes so that startups can get the best bang for their buck. Proper implementation of a startup marketing strategy requires tools to monitor, analyze, and evaluate any marketing campaign. Hence, the following marketing tools for startups are a must-have in order to ensure effective implementation of processes.
13. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the best social media marketing tools for startups which is used across the globe by well-known startups, mainly due to its easy UI and affordable pricing plans.
You can schedule up to 30 posts across any social media platform with its free plan. It will help you to measure the ROI (Return On Investment) of your social media campaign, and keep track of the impact that is being created, all under one umbrella. Moreover, you can also link two RSS feeds and different apps such as MailChimp, Youtube, Dropbox, and other startup tools.
Individual (1 user 3 social media profiles) Free
Professional (1 user 10 social media profiles) $19 per month
Team (3 users 20 social media profiles) $99 per month
Business (5-10 users 35 social media profiles) $599 per month
14. MailChimp
Email marketing is a time-tested strategy that has done wonders for many startups. In order to run a successful email marketing campaign, you need an email marketing tool for your startup that is nothing but exemplary. This is where MailChimp comes in – a tool for startups that requires no introduction.
Approximately 205 billion emails were sent in a day during 2015 which means 2.4 million emails in a second. Isn’t this number just mind-boggling? This email marketing tool for startups allows digital marketers to utilize a reliable emailing service to deliver emails directly to any user’s inbox. It’s one of the many highly recommended tools for startups.
Free Plan
Essentials $9.99 per month
Standard $14.99 per month
Premium $299 per month
15. Mangools
Mangools is a set of five Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools for startups like KWFinder, SerpChecker, SerpWatcher, LinkMiner, Nexea and SiteProfiler. It helps startups to create effective SEO workflows.
With Mangools, you can find all the right keywords, analyze the search results in any location, compare yourself with competitors, track your keyword positions and boost them all with powerful backlinks.
Basic $29.90
Premium $39.90
Agency $79.90
16. Google Analytics
Google Analytics helps you to track the traffic coming on to your website. It allows you to identify what’s working and what’s not. When you know what isn’t working, you can fix it to enhance your customer engagement and user experience.
Moreover, it helps you create much better digital marketing campaigns and ultimately, increase your conversion rate. You must use Google Analytics in order to achieve greater results for your startup with continuous evaluation of data and monitoring online marketing strategies.
Pricing: Free as long as you do not exceed 5 million impressions per month.
17. Hunter.io
Hunter.io assists you in finding business emails within seconds. By simply searching any domain, it will provide you with all the email addresses that are connected to it. With 200+ million email addresses indexed, it’s one of the most powerful tools for finding email addresses in order to connect with the relevant experts for your business.
Starter $49 per month
Growth $99 per month
Pro $199 per month
Enterprise $399 per month
#5 Finance & Fundraising Tools
Focusing on financial balances is crucial for startups. It is important to understand and record where the revenue is coming from, where it is going, and how will the startup perform in the upcoming months.
Investors admire entrepreneurs who incorporate calculated numbers in their pitch deck. However, you cannot do everything with just a pen and paper. You will require one of the following financial startup tools in order to accomplish your goals.
18. Foundersuite
Foundersuite is an amazing tool to raise capital for your startup. It brings structure, speed, and efficiency in fundraising and investor relationships. It offers CRM tool for managing your investor funnel, a searchable venture capitalist database, and an Investor Updater tool that helps in creating monthly progress reports.
It also includes Startup Docs – a comprehensive set of templates and spreadsheets like pitch decks, founders’ agreements; as well as FoundersMarket which is a set of curated deals on popular products.
Silver $44 per month
Gold $62 per month
Agent $150 per month
19. Crunchbase
A leading startup platform for entrepreneurs to explore innovative organizations. It lets you connect with experts and pursue new opportunities together. More than 50 million entrepreneurs, investors, market researchers, and sales professionals trust this tool for startup to make their business decisions. Many startups from all across the world rely on Crunchbase to power their applications.
Crunchbase Pro lets you access any startup, investor, or funding data through their web interface. It offers features like advanced searching, customized lists, personalized alerts, and CSV (Comma-Separated Values) exports. Some big names amongst their customers are Samsung, Honda, Nvidia, Shell, MixPanel and Harvard. It is truly a great tool for entrepreneurs.
Essential Free
Pro $29 per month
Enterprise Custom
20. Gust
If you want to try out startup tools and resources, Gust is an excellent platform to start, grow, or fund your startup. They help entrepreneurs build investable startups with the assistance of mission-critical business tools, powerful performance benchmarks, and trusted fundraising recommendations.
It provides support during every stage of your startup evolution. When it’s time to raise funds for startup, Gust provides you with the best shot at investment. With over 650,000+ startup owners and 80,000+ investing professionals, they’ll connect you to a startup ecosystem unlike any other.
Start $175 per year*
Accelerate $875 per year*
Raise $4,775 per year*
21. inDinero
It lets you gear up for growth with scalable accounting software and on-demand CFOs (Chief Financial Officers). Their cloud-based solution allows you to scale your startup with the right accounting, tax management, and CFO support whenever you need it.
inDinero combines accounting, taxes, and CFO consultation so that you can enjoy proactive assistance along with real-time visibility of your startup’s performance. You can talk to your on-demand CFO any time you want, access financial data on the cloud, enjoy real-time accounting insights, and maximize your tax savings with ease.
The Basics $310 per month
The Essentials $525 per month
The Next Steps $1300 per month
22. Fresh Books
It is an all-In-one startup invoicing and accounting solution. Fresh Books makes your startup bookkeeping fast, convenient, and secure. It automates your financial tasks such as organizing expenses, invoicing, tracking payments and following up with the clientele in just a few clicks.
You can view your financial statuses via Profit and Loss Statements (PLS), taxation summaries and expenditure reports. It can categorize the fees of your credit card transactions and provide a summary against all deposits on its dashboard. You can also integrate it with MailChimp, Paypal, Basecamp, and Zenpayroll.
Lite $15 per month
Plus $25 per month
Premium $50 per month
Custom pricing for 500+ billable clients
#6 Startup CRM Tools
As soon as you’ve your first few loyal customers, it is the perfect time for your startup to invest in the best CRM tools for a startup. A CRM tool can prove to be a great help for your startup as it frees up so much time which you can spend productively on converting new leads. Some of the best CRM tools for startups are:
23. CRM by Hubspot for Startups
Hubspot CRM is a great pick for startup owners. Honestly, you don’t need the frills, but you can use assistance with the data entries of your business. HubSpot centralizes your contact list. It helps you by automatically logging customer interactions, and extracting the data from the web to generate information about your potential customers.
Some salient features include:
- Customize Views
- Deal and Task Board
- Hubspot Marketing Synchronization
- Drag and Drop Communicator
- Social Media
- Company Database
- Email Connections
- Sidekick Integration
- CRM Details
- Templates, Tracking, and Scheduling
You can begin by using their free version, which is simple yet powerful. However, if your startup demands additional features, you can always opt for their paid versions. It’s one of the best startup tools available online for entrepreneurs who care about their customers.
FREE
STARTER $50 per month
BASIC $200 per month
PROFESSIONAL $800 per month
ENTERPRISE $2,400 per month
24. Intercom Early Stage
Intercom can help you scale your early-stage startup with ease. Its user-friendly products let you acquire, onboard, engage or support your customers in a personalized manner.
You can improve your website conversions with targeted visitor messages and live chat. You can also send behavior-based push and email messages to onboard new clients. It lets you track and segmentize your prospects based on their personas, and the actions they take on your website or the product page.
You can announce new features through personalized in-app messages. By using email and messaging, you’ll get quicker responses, faster resolutions and more satisfied customers.
Essential $87 per month
Pro $153 per month
Premium Custom pricing
#7 Startup Design & Development Tools
For someone who’s about to start a startup, things become difficult to a breakdown in terms of design and development. If you take the wrong first step, things may become complicated in the future and it’s difficult to turn back. To refrain from putting yourself in such circumstances, here’s a list of the best design and development tools for startups.
25. Unsplash
Unsplash is one of those startup tools that offer high-resolution stock images so that you can create visually appealing promotions and campaigns for your startup. The world’s most generous community of photographers contributes actively to this platform.
Their huge library of over 1 million stock HD images – and hundreds more being added every day – will certainly let you find the perfect images. You can find inspiration from the new images they hand-pick each day or use their search feature to download precisely what you’re looking for.
26. Canva
Canva is an online graphic designing tool. It is widely used by many individuals and startups to design social media posts, blog graphics, Twitter headers, Facebook ads, Instagram posts and much more. With a library of more than a million fonts, images,and icons, you can come up with an array of visually appealing content.
Its user interface is quite easy to use. You can select a template, or you can create your own from scratch by using their drag-and-drop features. Graphics or images uploaded by global designers are also available for a small amount of fee.
Pro $12.95 per month
27. Visme
Visme is a powerful design tool for startups that lets you showcase amazing visual stories in presentations, infographics, and other forms of visual content. You can easily translate boring content into stunning visual formats in your web browser.
Standard: $19 per month
Single/Complete: $39 per month
Team: $117 per month
28. Github
Github is one of the best development software for startups. It’s a great space for development engineers to collaborate and host / review their codes together. They manage a number of projects without compromising on quality while ensuring maximum efficiency. Github is a community of more than 35 million people who share, work and learn together to build better software.
Free $0 per month
Pro $7 per month
Team $9 per month
Enterprise Custom Pricing
29. WordPress
One of the most popular CMS that requires no introduction is WordPress. This free, open-source content management system is based on PHP and MySQL. Its primary features include a plugin architecture and a template system to build attractive websites.
It offers responsive designing, social sharing, multiple page styles, auto upgrades, and support, a vast variety of widgets and plugins, theme customization, SEO and much more. It is an ideal platform for fresh startups to build their websites and generate online traffic with ease.
Basic Free
Personal $5 per month
Premium $8 per month
Business $25 per month
Ecommerce $45 per month
30. Bootstrap Zero
Bootstrap Zero is an array of responsive web templates that help developers make the most out of Bootstrap’s CSS, powerful grid, and other components. Their primary focus is to curate free-to-use templates that can adhere to the best practices to use Bootstrap’s baseline as much as possible. You can find resources that are logically grouped by collection, or you can always browse by popularity, ranked on the judgment of other Bootstrap developers.
Pricing:
Free to use
By and large,
There you have it! A list of the best startup tools curated after thorough research and consideration. Each of the resources in this list is beneficial for startups in keeping their business operations quick, convenient, and efficient. They hold the power to maximize your potential and increase your ROI.
If you use them wisely, you can conveniently flourish your business with better prospects and experience sustainable growth for the many years to come. Just in case if you think I have missed out on any helpful tool or resource, feel free to mention it in the comments section below and help us in making this blog post more resourceful for other curious startup owners.
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Reza Merchant
Reza Merchant is a Foodie by passion and a Digital Marketer by profession. He enjoys creating digital content for various platforms and aspires to be the change he wants to see in this world.
