When they sent out an email asking fellow Workbar members for their favorite web tools for business, Nick Taylor and Dimitar Goranov were promptly inundated with good advice. From these crowd-sourced replies they compiled a list of the all-stars, alphabetized by category, with some "upvotes" and "down votes" weighed in by contributors. Without further ado, here is a treasure trove of forty-four web tools for business:
Accounting
Freshbooks Simple bookkeeping for project-based work (not free though). A step up from spreadsheets without the complexities of Quickbooks, and much less expensive than an accountant (although not really a substitute for one - depends on your needs.
Billing
MoonClerk Very easy to use interface that allows you to start accepting recurrring revenue from your customers, and integrates with Stripe. No coding required. One of the easiest-to-use automated recurring billing system, used by many Boston-based startups.
Business Intelligence
Mattermark Quantifies signals of growth for startups. It's like card counting for determining whether a startup is worth investing in (or working for). Great way to get intel on businesses that interest you. Check out their iPhone app for a taste.
Contact management
Evercontact Updates contact info from emails in Google Apps. Nothing to think about- if I'm working with someone and they list their contact info, it gets where I need it.
Conversion Optimization
FastDial If your business needs more inbound phone calls, this is what you need. Local businesses live and die by inbound leads. This increases them.
CRM/MA
SharpSpring 90% of Hubspot for 1/20th the price Marketing Automation is powerful if used correctly - problem is most tools are overpriced. This one isn't.
Data / Analytics Dashboards
Cyfe Real time and archival information on analytics for google, social media, email, salesforce, pingdom, finance, e-commerce, etc. You can also create your own widgets. Very well priced and customer service is great. It's a huge time saver to have everything in the same place and the price is unbeatable.
Design
Gimp Open Source Photoshop = free advanced image editing. (Upvoted)
Sketch Modern design tool (like Photoshop and Fireworks) Super easy to use, really flexible, great artboard and page setup to make iterating on designs easy.
Canva Drag and drop design tool with templates that make it easy to create web and print graphics. Template sizing pre-set for a huge variety of channels: social posts and banners, documents, blogs, ads. If you follow their design templates, anyone can create good looking graphics. Does wonders for bootstrapped orgs to maintain consistent look and feel across (and within) channels. Many free options. (Upvoted)
Digital Marketing
Moz One of the best SEO and digital marketing tools out there, Moz lets you set up campaigns, track keywords, monitor competitors, crawls your website for errors and issues, and a whole bunch of other stuff that is really helpful to people who need these sorts of tools. I have used Moz for 5+ years, and always recommend it to new clients. We use it with each of our clients to make sure that we are tracking based on their goals.
Emailga.me Shows you a single email at a time, requiring you to act, delete, or defer action on it then and there. Helps me power through clearing out my inbox.
External Communication
Join.me For screensharing, it's really easy to use and the person you are sharing the screen with doesn't have to download any software. (Upvoted)
Internal Communication
Slack A messaging app for teams. Lets us create various conversations (we create a conversation for each client), create files within the app, and search through all conversations later on if we want to locate something. Also lets us be fun with gifs, emojis, hashtags, etc. (Two upvotes, one downvote)
Integration Between Tools
Zapier This tool is absolutely magic. It connects hundreds of webapps, allowing you to create truly powerful integrations between your favorite pieces of software. I use it for a number of things, including creating complex form systems that alert certain individuals based on responses, create complicated operations-necessary integrations between new sales, Google Calendar, and alerting clients about when deliveries are about to arrive. It's all with one single service. Whoa, right?
Marketing - Graphic Design
Canva Graphic design for web marketers. Made a really cool banner for an email newsletter within a few minutes for free. (Upvoted)
Marketing - SEO
SEOsourcemarket SEO Marketplace for hiring seo consultants
sistrix Online SEO Service
Mobile App
Mail-To-Self An iOS extension to mail notes to yourself from any app. When using my iPhone, I got really sick and tired of constantly sending emails to my self for websites I wanted to check out later, ex: share --> mail --> enter your email address --> send. This little app enables one-click email to yourself option via the "share" option in iOS.
Note-Taking
Evernote All-purpose note-taking app. I've been using it since day one, and still use it as my go-to to store & archive notes. (Two upvotes)
Personal Health
f.lux Changes the brightness and color of your screen as the day progresses (on iPhone/iPad, your device has to be jailbroken) Saves my eyes, have noticed that I am less wired when I stop working LIFESAVER! Note: it's not Mac only. (Three upvotes)
sleepyti.me Because sleep is precious - and waking up is challenging - this will make your morning easier. (Upvoted)
brain.fm Consistent background ambient noise - for when the guy next to you is loudly breathing through his mouth.
Work rave Interrupts you to take a break I have set Workrave to 55 min. Every 55 min it reminds me to stretch and take a break.
PR
HARO PR for your company It's an easy pitch to jourmalists who are looking for specific leads in various industries: tech/business/heathcare/lifestyle etc.. with publications from small to big.
Project Management
Asana An easy-to-use project management tool that can integrate with time tracking software like Harvest, and has a free version that is incredibly robust. I love that it's free for what I currently need it to do, I can easily collaborate with up to 5 users, and keep track of all of my projects in one place. Plus, with Zapier integration, I can connect it to other tools like Basecamp. (One upvote, one downvote who favored Trello)
Trello Project management using board. Automation, Intuitive UI. (Five upvotes)
Sales
Sidekick Schedule emails, track opens and clicks, automatically add your emails to CRMs. This is, by far, the best email assistance tool I have ever used. Not only does it give you an idea of how your sales prospects may be reacting to your content, it allows you to schedule emails for another time - helping you avoid others thinking that you are available 24x7, no matter what hours you actually work. (Upvoted)
Sales Prospecting Marketing - PPC
SpyFu Find websites that spend lots of money on PPC advertising and discover the keywords and landing pages strategies they use to acquire new customers Allows me to identify all the top websites for any given keyword phrase, figure out how much money they are spending per month, discover all the keywords they bid on, and what landing pages they send traffic to.
Sales Prospecting - gathering emails
Whoisology Reverse lookup any website domain, great for finding contact info on a company and all the other domains they own.
found.ly Find your prospects on Linked in then use Foundly to get their actual emails. Magical way to get straight to your intended audience's email box (currently in beta, but the best tool, and better pricing than others).
Sales - Tracking
Yesware Track email opens and clicks. Great for sales tracking; knowing who's opened your emails and who hasn't can allow you to identify who's engaged in conversation and who's not. (Upvoted)
Screen Capture
Clipular The fastest way to take screenshots of websites (including page scrolling) and saves it instantly to a private cloud folder for later browsing, tagging, commenting. As a web designer / marketer, it's awesome if you love to capture ideas you see from other websites. I take about 30 screenshots and this is by far the easiest way to save and organize my ideas.
Screen Recording / Video Editing
Camtasia Easily create screen recordings. Quick learning curve, takes about 30 minutes to be an expert using the software. Works great for product demos and product walk through videos. Great for SAAS companies that want to educate their users quickly on product features, getting started videos, and even sales or marketing videos.
SEO
ahrefs Best in class backlink research tool. This will show you why you're not #1 in google. 4X bigger index then the 2nd place competitor (Moz).
Site Tracking
Ghostery Chrome plug-in to see who's tracking you on a site. Good for competitive intelligence, and to see how whether your site is properly functioning. (Upvoted)
Task/Project Management
Podio Team member communication/tasks/project management/calendar It's SO easy and free up to 5 people.
Teleconference
Uberconference Free and awesome teleconference service. It just works. And it's free. And great hold music.
Time Tracking
Harvest Time tracking made simple (with invoicing, if that's your thing). Too often time tracking is bundled with bloated software. This takes it out, but integrates with all of my favorite tools (Asana, Basecamp, Zapier).
To Do / Project Management
ToDoist For "To-Do lists"- there are many out there, but this feels like the most intuitive.
Web conferencing
Zoom Simple to setup and use and also very simple for clients to join in with minimal footprint and install.
Web conferencing
appear.in Free multi-person video conferencing with no sign up required. You can also reserve a URL for your company for free. Also possible to share your screen easily. Free and works great.
Web Performance Tools
PageSpeed Insights Analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster. Nice, simple tool from Google.
Website
WordPress Its the free CMS that most everyone should be on. Amazing community + Nice price. (Two upvotes)
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