Do you want to make running your business easier? Are you unsure what software and tools can help you business?
The best small business softwares empower you to run an efficient business!
It takes the headache out of everything from organizing your projects to time management.
When you stay on top of your operations, you can thrive in the business world. This will help you earn more in the long run. This article features the best small business software tools and business apps available. These tools can be integral to your success.
All the way from accounting, to project and email management, and more.
By implementing these tools in your business, you can run a more productive business.
40 Best Online software tools for 2024
Let's cover the top 40 small business software tools and apps to enhance productivity. These tools can help you achieve success and growth in today's competitive market.
Best Online Small Business Accounting Software
Online small business accounting software takes the hassle out of keeping track the following:
- what your clients owe you
- which of your clients has yet to pay
- the number of invoices you’ve sent out
Since many people use this software, your accountant will likely appreciate that you chose QuickBooks. It makes integration easier.
1. Xero
Xero is a comprehensive online accounting software designed for small businesses. It offers a range of features including payment processing, expense tracking, and financial reporting. These are all accessible from any computer or mobile device.
One of Xero’s standout features is its ability to connect with over 21,000 financial institutions globally. This allows users to get their bank data into Xero easily.
Xero also offers tools for project tracking, payroll management, and inventory tracking. Its multi-currency accounting feature simplifies international business accounting. It also offers up-to-date exchange rates and instant currency conversions.
2. Intuit QuickBooks Online
On this list of the best small business softwares, none puts a premium on saving time as much as QuickBooks.
This business software task automation allows you to focus on important parts of your business. With great customer support, you won't be left without help if a problem comes up.
This online small business accounting software for small business is so widely used. Chances are your accountant will be happy you chose QuickBooks for easier integration.
3. FreshBooks
Looking for an online accounting software for small business? If you're a small business owner who travels a lot, FreshBooks has a solution for you. Their amazing mobile apps for iOS and Android let you create invoices and track clients easily while on the move.
This sofrware for business is helpful for small business owners. It has features that save time and track records reliably. They include on-the-go invoicing, PayPal and credit-card processing of invoices, and expense logging.
4. Zoho Books
Zoho is a online small business software ideal for very small business owners and entrepreneurs like freelancers. The beauty of this software is its ease of use, free from the complexity of accounting software for bigger companies.
Use this online business software to create invoices, track your expenses. You can even create financial reports. Its easy to navigate dashboard is one of the main reasons for its great usability.
Small Business Project Management Software
There’s nothing like having to handle several projects at the same time. This will test your organizational skills as a small business owner.
Managing many tasks at once will leave you drained and feeling swamped. By relying on the following project management tools, you can keep your project on target, and please your clients.
5. Basecamp
Looking for project management softwares for businesses? This project management tool is easy to use and offers dependable mobile access. It gives small businesses the confidence they need to complete a project from start to finish.
With Basecamp, your entire team can be spread out all over the world and coordinate remotely. Basecamp’s ability to be accessed from most any smartphone or tablet makes this a cinch. This is a must have software for businesses
6. Trello
Trello uses cards to help small business owners manage teams easily. It puts project and task management together in a simple interface.
This software for business app is great for people who like visual tools. Each project becomes a task with cards. You move the cards through stages as you complete the task. It's one of the best management softwares for businesses. We use Trello to simplify our editorial process here at Envato Tuts+.
7. Asana
Extremely popular and well-known, Asana is adaptable to businesses of all sizes. This scalability is a great help when planning projects of varying sizes.
Asana helps small business owners monitor every part of a project. It covers daily details and tracks information and workflows for larger projects.
Best Small Business Productivity Apps
Often, it’s the secret ingredient that can take a small business from doing just okay to exceeding all expectations.
When you know how to get things done successfully in a shorter period of time—you simply achieve more. These productivity apps are integral to small business success.
8. Clickup
ClickUp is a comprehensive platform that offers a multitude of features to streamline your workflow. Its unique hierarchy allows you to structure your work in a way that scales with your needs. This provides flexibility and control to organize everything from small teams to enterprise companies.
The platform offers over 35 ClickApps to customize your task management. Included are task automations, sprint points, and custom field data.
ClickUp integrates with over 1,000 of your favorite tools, keeping all your resources in one place. With its powerful reporting features, you can set goals, track progress, and manage resources more effectively. This makes it a valuable tool for any small business.
9. Todoist
Todoist is productivity’s answer to small businesses wanting to accomplish more each day. This best organizing app has a simple interface that is easy to learn. It uses tags and filters to help you prioritize tasks. You don't need that much time to learn this great tool. This online small business software is one of the best organizing apps online.
Get more done at your small business with helpful features. These include project responsibilities, reminders and location, and syncing across multiple platforms.
10. Evernote
The tagline “Remember Everything” sums up Evernote’s power succinctly. This is one of the best small business apps. It's like a cloud filing cabinet for small businesses. It syncs with all devices, making it very helpful.
Information you put in their can be easily retrieved by a basic keyword or tag search. This is an ideal spot for small business files like documents, receipts, PDFs, plans, graphics, images, and more. This is also a free business software as it has a free plan.
Small Business Collaboration and Document Software
Filing cabinets are outdated, and having paper clutter can make a business disorganized. Luckily, many collaboration and document apps help small business owners easily find information. They can access it from the cloud on all their devices.
11. Confluence
Confluence by Atlassian is a workspace designed to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration. It serves as a single source of truth for organizations. This allows teams to create, capture, and collaborate on any project or idea.
The platform offers unlimited spaces and pages, enabling teams to create and organize content as needed. It also features third-party app integration and macros for added functionality and dynamic content.
One of the standout features is the structured content tree. It simplifies project organization and discovery. Additionally, Confluence provides best practice templates, page versioning, and advanced search capabilities. All that makes it an invaluable tool for small businesses.
12. Google Drive/Docs
An initially free cloud storage service that allows you to pay for extra space. Google Drive/Docs is the epitome of organization. This business software empowers small businesses to get instant access across all of their devices. Get access to their documents, files, images, videos and so much more. It can even be used as a backup system.
This business computer program currently boasts more than 200 million users although it was only launched four years ago. Familiarize yourself with Google Drive/Docs checking out our video tutorial.
13. Dropbox
Dropbox is another great cloud storage service with millions and millions of users. This software for businesses enables small business owners to get their files, documents, pictures and videos instantly and from any device they have. Not only is this content safe, but collaboration, sharing and creating is simplified and more accessible.
Founded in 2007, it was one of the first cloud storage softwares for business services that helped to popularize the use of the cloud for collaboration and storage.
14. Slack
The new kid on the block, Slack is a cloud based tool as well, but it’s more of a collaboration enabler for teams all over the globe. This makes it the perfect choice for small businesses whose teams are scattered across various time zones.
This service offers real-time chat, search, and archiving on one server. This way, your communication stays effective.
Email Online Software for Small Business
Even with new tools like social media and cloud software, email remains important due to its usefulness. Here are our top choices for the best email services for small businesses.
15. Apple Mail
Apple Mail is a robust email client that comes pre-installed on all Apple devices. It supports a wide range of email providers and allows for seamless integration with other Apple apps.
The application offers an intuitive interface, making it easy for users to manage their emails. It includes features like smart mailboxes, which automatically categorize emails based on user-defined rules.
Apple Mail also supports rich text formatting, allowing users to customize their emails with different fonts, colors, and graphics. It provides powerful search capabilities, enabling users to quickly find specific emails or attachments.
16. Gmail
Gmail is a popular choice for small businesses because it integrates well with other Google products and services.
The Gmail interface is always improving. This software for business easy to use with labels for quick organization.
Learn how to use Gmail in our ultimate beginner guide or get started with this tutorial:
17. Microsoft Outlook
One of Gmail’s biggest direct competitors, Microsoft’s Outlook is actually a bit more than just email. It's a full personal information manager. Includes a calendar, contact manager, task manager, journal, note-taking, and web browsing features.
Still, most people use this online small businss software mainly for the email app. As with Gmail, it’s available on both iOS and Android for email processing on the go.
18. Zoho Mail
Zoho Mail is an ad-free webmail that features a minimalist user interface for added simplicity and an easy learning curve.
This is one of the best small business apps. It's designed for business and professional use. It starts as a free business software service, and then offers different pricing tiers for up to 25 GB of mail capacity.
A point of interest here is the integration with Zoho Docs. Zoho Docs is Zoho’s answer to Google’s Docs, where you and your team can collaborate, create and edit text and files.
Best Small Business Email Marketing Tools
Email marketing is still a force to be reckoned with, even though it was one of the first forms of digital marketing to take off.
Email marketing is still effective despite social media and texting. It helps businesses get good results. Three services are great for small businesses:
19. Active Campaign
ActiveCampaign is a comprehensive platform that prioritizes customer experience. It integrates world-class machine learning with your existing tools to provide a seamless user experience.
The platform offers a variety of core features. Included are email and marketing automation, sales CRM, and sales engagement. It also provides services like accelerated onboarding, contact migration, customer enablement workshops, video tutorials, chat, and ticket support.
One of the standout features of ActiveCampaign is its drag-and-drop email editor. It allows you to test your email across different clients and devices. This ensures responsive design and optimum format delivery.
20. MailChimp
Virtually everyone’s heard of MailChimp, and with good reason. It’s a free business software for up to 500 subscribers and includes basic marketing features.
A basic MailChimp subscription includes many marketing integrations. This means it connects with Twitter and Facebook. Also big ecommerce platforms like Shopify, and signup form apps like OptinMonster.
Check out our authoritative guide on templates for MailChimp:
21. Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is another big email marketing softwares for business. This business software gives small businesses from all industries professional and automated features. These features help achieve strong results.
Whether it’s personalized campaigns or delighting customers. This online business software has you covered.
Sending out email marketing campaigns means nothing without a demonstrable return on investment. That’s why Campaign Monitor features tools to track your email campaigns’ performances.
22. Converkit
ConvertKit is a creator marketing platform with powerful features. It can help small businesses optimize their most important asset, their audience.
ConvertKit offers email automation and sequencing, subscriber segmentation and tagging. Also offers customizable email templates and designs. Other features include a builder for campaigns and eye catching landing pages.
Backup and Recovery Software for Small Business
Yet so many small business owners do exactly that.
Every small business needs to back up its business and financial records. All your sensitive information that resides there. Don’t leave things to chance. Here are the best backup and recovery services to make use of.
23. Acronis Cyber Protect
Acronis Cyber Protect is a comprehensive cyber protection solution. It integrates data protection and cybersecurity. It offers market-leading backup and recovery, eliminating gaps in defenses with integrated backup and anti-ransomware technologies.
The software provides advanced security to ensure peace of mind. It offers informed detection and response required for investigations to avoid costly downtime. It also streamlines endpoint protection with integrated and automated URL filtering, vulnerability assessments, and patch management.
Acronis Cyber Protect is designed to deliver easy, efficient, and secure cyber protection. It is ideal for today’s mobile and remote work environments.
24. Crashplan
This backup recovery service lets you save and back up anything from your small business into the cloud, where it’s sure to be safe and protected. Crashplan helps small business owners feel secure. They can trust that their trade secrets and private information will be safe.
It doesn’t matter what size of business you have. Small and large companies alike can benefit when their respective data is being protected the way it should be.
25. IDrive
With IDrive, you’re able to do an online backup for all of your devices on PC and Mac, as well as on Android, iOS and other mobile devices. IDrive won’t cost you an arm and a leg; in fact, a basic 5 GB of backup space is totally free.
This is one of the best small business apps. It also features a small business plan where you’re able to keep data safe on all of your business servers, computers, NAS, SQL and Exchange.
26. BackBlaze
Backblaze is a cloud backup solution that offers an affordable backup service for small businesses. It's one of the best backup softwares for business.
This software for businesses provides unlimited storage, scheduled and automated backups, and continuous backups. If you need a hard drive of you backup, they can provide that as well.
Backblaze secures stored data with client-side encryption for security of your backups. The software's ease of use makes it a preferable cloud backup for most small businesses.
Top Small Business Security and Virus Protection
Small business owners don't want their devices infected by harmful programs. This can disrupt their work. Security and anti-virus apps keep them safe by providing protection and peace of mind.
27. McAfee
This business software is one of the oldest and best-known security and virus tools available. McAfee is available for your computers, tablets and smartphones. It provides protection to small business owners no matter where they are.
Notable also is this app’s Virus Protection Pledge. The pledge states that you get a full refund should one of its supported devices get a virus or it fails to remove a virus.
28. Norton
Another big name in the security and protection industry is Norton. Norton offers widespread protection across PC, Mac, and mobile devices. Depending on the plan you choose, you can obtain protection for as many as 10 computers and devices, all on just one subscription.
This online small business software has a similar pledge to McAfee’s, which is that this app will keep your devices virus-free, or else you’re entitled to a refund.
29. Kaspersky
Kaspersky makes a range of security and protection products. It ranges from anti-spyware and anti-virus to anti-spam and firewall products. Many of its products have won awards for effectiveness.
Free trials are included. Small business owners can see if a certain Kaspersky product is right for their business or not.
Small Business Social Media Marketing
Social media lets you connect with leads and customers at a lower cost than traditional ads. This makes it very effective.
When you consider that so many people use social media, it is also where your customers are—and that means your brand should be there, too. Here are the best marketing tools for social media.
30. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular social media tool. It provides great control over social media from one easy-to-use interface. Hootsuite allows you to do a bit more, like social listening, where you’re able to monitor what people are saying about your small business on the web.
Plus, Hootsuite works with approximately 35 different social networks, making it very expansive.
31. Buffer
Looking for social media accounts software for small business? Among online business apps, Buffer is a very popular social media tool. It offers free and premium plans. This tool allows small business owners to schedule, publish and then analyze all of their social activity from one dashboard.
Buffer allows you to manage all your social media accounts software for small business. Manage Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn from one place. You don't need to sign in separately. It's simple and quick to work with.
32. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a powerful social media management tool for small business owners. It helps find potential leads, analyze your return on investment, and schedule content. All across different platforms.
This also improves customer service. Business owners can respond to customer issues and solve problems across different networks.
For more on social media marketing, from our beginning's guide to social media for small business.
Online VPN Software for Small Business
It's a server and connecting network that’s really a gateway between your computer and the web.
Your computer doesn't connect directly to a website. Instead, it connects through another computer first. This provides a safer and more private internet connection, increasing security.
33. ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN is a comprehensive security solution that offers more than just a VPN service. It comes with additional features such as a password manager, tracker blocker, and ad blocker. All these will enhance your online experience.
The core function of ExpressVPN is to encrypt your internet traffic. Makes it unreadable to anyone except the intended recipient. This includes your internet service provider, government monitors, and potential hackers.
ExpressVPN also changes your IP address. Making it difficult for websites to track your activity and link it back to you. This feature also allows you to access sites and services that may be blocked or censored in your location, perfect for small business.
34. NordVPN
This is one of the best apps for business VPN software solutions. It allows for online privacy as well as access to media content without any regional limitations. It features strong encryption for security with more than 700 servers in more than 50 countries around the world.
35. Keep Solid VPN Unlimited
This VPN app offers complete security no matter what WiFi network you’re on or what kind of data you end up sharing online. It encrypts all of your web traffic as well as sensitive information, shielding it from both hackers and prying third parties.
This VPN also has fast internet speeds. It's important because some VPN servers can slow down your connection in exchange for providing extra security.
36. HotSpot Shield
HotSpot Shield works on Mac, PC, iOS, and Android. It provides encryption and protection on all devices, ensuring complete security.
There’s a free version and an Elite version that’s available in various pricing tiers. This VPN app is currently being used by more than 400 million people in 200 countries, which speaks to its credibility.
Contact Management Software for Small Businesses
Contact management software is designed to streamline these processes. It consolidates customer and prospect information into one centralized platform.
The following contact management tools and business apps are great for small businesses:
37. Hubspot CRM
HubSpot CRM is a cloud-based customer relationship management platform. It assists businesses of all types and sizes in tracking and nurturing leads, and analyzing business metrics.
It enables sales and marketing teams to manage contacts, track deals and view the sales pipeline in real time. It can also identify high-quality leads, and automate email marketing.
For small businesses, it offers a suite of powerful features at no cost. Includes contact management, lead scoring, real-time insights into customer behavior. Plus, you'll get automation features like email tracking, engagement notifications, and live chat.
38. Engage Bay
EngageBay is a perfect fit for small businesses, providing an all-in-one marketing, sales, support, and CRM solution.
It offers tools to attract website visitors and convert them into customers. Engage Bay offers a free trial and a free version. Key features include live chat and help desk support, a ticketing system, landing page templates, and email marketing.
39. Monday
Monday is primarily a project management software that also includes CRM and CMS features.
Its strength lies in its extensive integration with other apps. Notable features include data visualizations, drag-and-drop functionality for Kanban boards and timelines. Also includes unlimited automation recipes. It's one of the best organizing apps for projects.
40. Freshsales
Freshsales is a sales and marketing software. It is great for small and medium-sized businesses. It helps them plan a smart approach for their prospects.
Its user-friendly interface is great for those new to contact management software. It may not offer big CRM platforms. But it offers key features such as converting emails into contacts, prioritizing prospects, and setting internal alerts.
Let's now have a look at even more tools that you can check out for your small business.
Learn More About Online Apps and Software Tools
Looking for more apps for business and software that can be used in your business? The following resources cover even more useful tools that you can take advantage of.
13 Best Task Management Software Apps to Get Things Done in 2023
13 Best Language-Learning Software Tools for 2023
15+ Best Mind Mapping Software Tools for Better Brainstorming in 2024 (+AI Options)
12 Best Contact Management Software (Free + Paid Apps for 2022)
10 Best Password Manager Apps for 2023
15+ Top Spreadsheet Alternatives to Excel for Better Data
8 Best AI Detection Tools for 2023
16 Best Time Tracking Software Apps to Boost Your Productivity
12+ Best Money-Making Apps to Use in 2022
12+ Best Free + Paid Online Spreadsheet Software Apps for 2022
Gain Access to High-Quality Creative Assets (With Unlimited Use)
Regardless of the type of business you're working for or running, you'll need professional creative assets. These assets can be anything from documents, images, and fonts. Using professional creative assets in your projects is necessary to save time and deliver a high-quality product. Envato Elements has just what you need to supercharge your next project and save time.
Envato Elements gives you access to all types of creative tools. Included are unlimited downloads of PowerPoint templates, photos, fonts, videos, and much more for a low monthly fee. Use all these resources in your next project.
Elements offers the best values out there for creatives today. With unlimited downloads, you'll be able to try out all types of options in your upcoming projects.
Here's how you benefit from using Envato Elements:
- save money by not having to hire professionals
- save time by starting with already professional designs
- generate new ideas with all the fresh creative assets
- focus on other parts of your project
Also, check out our new feature. Try out AI-search tool on Envato Elements to find the best resources for you.
Envato Elements' AI-search tool efficiently finds tailored, human-made assets to match your project's specific needs, simply by describing what you're working on.
From editing a vibrant skateboarding video to creating social media graphics. This AI-powered tool streamlines your search across a vast range of quality assets. Find the perfect fit for your creative vision.
Be More Successful at Your Small Business With These Apps
Running a small business is challenging. Many don’t survive past the first, few years.
Choosing the right business apps to help small business owners overcome common challenges. Get organized, streamline your workflows, and get more done. It'a all about efficiency. That's why sometimes is best no to go with free organization apps.
Discover how useful these apps are and which one can help your business the most. Review a small selection that have the features you need at the right price point. Test them out with a trial run before investing.
