Published : February 6, 2024Overwhelmed managing numerous business operations single-handedly? Tools for small businesses are here to save you.
Surprisingly, around 8 out of 10 small businesses do not have any employees. Handling financial documents, managing employees, building an online presence, and more alone is chaotic and time-consuming for a small business owner.
To avoid this, we have curated this buyer’s guide on the top 16 software for small businesses with features, advantages and disadvantages, and pricing. Let’s get started!
Let’s dive deep into other benefits of using small business software –
1. Improves overall performance and workplace productivity by delegating tasks, creating digital workflows, and automating recurring processes.
2. Ensures you don’t miss out on any customer or employee updates by creating a network of shareable knowledge and an ecosystem of shared resources.
3. Offers valuable insights about customers that aid in producing qualified sales leads.
4. Helps you track revenue and expenses, create custom reports, handle taxes and payroll, and analyze finances without any expert guidance.
5. Enables you to improve employee onboarding, engagement, and satisfaction, enhancing quality control.
List of 16 Best Software and Tools for Small Businesses
Building a tool stack for your business can be overwhelming and confusing. If done wrong, it can lead to financial losses and operational disruptions. This buyer’s guide of the 16 best tools for small businesses is to save you from such losses.
After extensive research and analysis, we have curated a list of tools for small business. These software are carefully selected based on usability and satisfaction scores, including features, ease of use, customer support, ratings, and reviews from SoftwareSuggest, G2, and Capterra. Our aim is to assist businesses in identifying the most suitable software to streamline their operations.
Let’s dive in –
Accounting Software
60% of small business owners aren’t confident about their accounting or financial knowledge, leading to bookkeeping errors.
Accounting software helps businesses efficiently create, manage, and monitor payable and receivable accounts. With this tool, you can eliminate accounting errors and potential issues.
As a small and growing business, you cannot afford data inaccuracies, inefficient processes, and technological stagnation. Avoid this by adopting relevant, trusted, and affordable software for all critical business processes.
Implementing such software streamlines operations, collaboration, and data management, bringing long-term sustainability and business growth.
1. FreshBooks
FreshBooks is an intelligent and scalable accounting software that helps you make data-driven decisions, ensure accuracy, and create financial reports. How? With its comprehensive features.
Features
- Auto bill capture
- Recurring invoice
- Expense tracking
- Vendor relationship management
Pros
- Create reports covering critical financial data to make data-backed future plans.
- Update accounts and file taxes on the tool with no cost or separate personnel involved.
- Track prepayments/overpayments and credit notes to avoid any errors in future invoices.
Cons
- Offers fewer advanced features that you may find in other software.
- Has unsatisfactory customer support.
Pricing
Light: $7.6/month
Plus: $13.20/month
Premium: $24.00/month
Select: Contact sales
2. QuickBooks
QuickBooks is an accounting software that helps small and growing businesses control their finances. It makes organizing financial information and automating accounting tasks easy and accessible.
Features
- Custom invoices and quotes
- Receipt capture
- Project profitability tracking
- Progress invoicing
Pros
- Track and calculate your sales tax automatically, saving you hours per month.
- Capture receipts and expenses on the go with the mobile app, eliminating tax time hassles.
- Automatically log transactions by connecting your bank account, reducing accounting time and errors.
Cons
- Has multiple reported bugs.
- Can be difficult to navigate at the start.
Pricing
Simple start: $15/month
Essentials: $30/month
Plus: $45/month
Advanced: $100/month
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM software manages your business’s interaction points with customers. It helps you optimize operations and establish strong customer relationships, improving overall productivity.
1. HubSpot CRM
HubSpot Customer Relationship Management (CRM) centralizes sales, marketing, and customer service tools and unifies features like analytics and automation. Create a marketing campaign or share critical insights with HubSpot.
Features
- Contact management
- Prospect tracking
- Team email
- Pipeline management
Pros
- Create and send bulk personalized emails to customers to strengthen relationships easily.
- Track team performance and sales activity to spot and leverage growth opportunities.
- Get notified for every website visit and email opening, ensuring accurate follow-ups.
Cons
- Doesn’t support selective data extraction.
- Offers limited customizations.
Pricing
Professional: $1600/month
Enterprise: $5000/month
2. Salesforce
Salesforce is a centralized, easy-to-use solution that offers service, sales, and email outreach in one place. Efficiently manage business processes with its relevant automation features.
Features
- AI-powered automation
- Case management
- Workflow management
- Auto responses
Pros
- Get a 360-degree view of your customers to deliver personalization, enhancing customer experience.
- Create and send custom quotes to your customers from the CRM, accelerating the deal.
- Forecast and identify pipeline’s trends and gaps to create a profitable sales cycle, driving revenue and profit.
Cons
- Advanced features are available as add-ons, making it a costly choice for small businesses.
- Sometimes, it captures the same data multiple times, leading to data duplicity.
Pricing
Starter: $25/user/month
Professional: $80/user/month
Enterprise: $165/user/month
Unlimited: $330/user/month
Project Management Software
Project management software centralizes project planning, execution, and completion, promoting teamwork tracking and productivity optimization. This makes organization easy for small businesses.
1. Asana
Asana is one of the best project management tools that helps you efficiently complete your work and achieve the desired results. How? By allowing you to manage, track, and communicate about your projects using its features. This is one of the popular agile methodologies for project management.
Features
- Dashboard
- Portfolio
- Status updates
- Project views
Pros
- Set rules to automatically assign work and adjust due dates, saving the team’s time.
- Update changes to all projects at once with multi-homing, reducing manual labor.
- View inbox notifications and project tasks on the go with the mobile app to always stay updated.
Cons
- Has a steep learning curve.
- Tends to be costlier than project management software.
Pricing
Starter: $10.99/user/month
Advanced: $24.99/user/month
2. Trello
Trello is a flexible small business tool that offers lists, boards, and cards to give you a clear understanding of current and future tasks. Best part? You get a calendar overview also.
Features
- Advanced checklists
- Cards
- Workspace-level templates
- Public board management
Pros
- Link Google Docs with a card to seamlessly share files with teams, enhancing collaboration.
- Create to-do lists and plan your week, streamlining tasks and enhancing productivity.
- View all resources, to-dos, and progress in one place, ensuring seamless project onboarding for new comers.
Cons
- Searching for cards can be a long, slow process.
- This project and task management software has a confusing interface, as you have to sort multiple cards.
Pricing
Standard: $5/user/month
Premium: $10/user/month
Enterprise: $17.5/user/month
Communication and Collaboration Tools
50% of employees believe that ineffective workplace communication has impacted their job satisfaction. Robust communication tools can change this.
Internal communication software enables teams to communicate via direct and group messaging. Collaboration software helps you track tasks and share files, enhancing productivity.
1. Slack
Slack is a team collaboration tool that offers individual and group messaging, facilitating seamless communication. It offers 2400+ integrations to view and manage your software data without toggling between windows.
Features
- Workflow builder
- Integrated file sharing
- Enterprise key management
- Huddles
Pros
- Take control of your chats and enhance security by choosing the time from when new users can see the chat.
- Has an easy file-sharing process, making it a seamless collaboration experience.
- Instantly integrates with all your devices and ensures that you are up to date on all the critical information.
Cons
- Offers limited integrations with other tools in the free plan.
- Doesn’t work well on Android.
Pricing
Pro: $7.25/month
Business+: $12.50/month
Enterprise Grid: Contact Sales
2. Zoom for Business
Zoom is the best collaboration software that facilitates meaningful conversations with whiteboards, meetings, and team chat. Its AI helps you draft emails, summarize meetings, and brainstorm faster.
Features
- AI Companion
- Online whiteboard
- Appointment scheduler
- VoIP phone system
Pros
- The user-friendly navigation makes it easy for new users to get acquainted.
- Share your screen or window with meeting participants, ensuring clear collaboration.
- Bridge the communication gap by explaining critical or complex points on the whiteboard.
Cons
- Audio and video quality degrades when the internet is unstable.
- The basic plan offers limited meeting minutes.
Pricing
Pro: $149.90/user/month
Business: $219/user/month
Business Plus and Enterprise: Contact sales
Social Media Management
Social media management tools empower you to stay on top of all your social media posts and messages. It enables you to efficiently handle your social media presence across all platforms.
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media marketing and management platform that enables online store(s) to monitor trends, customer reviews, and competitors’ actions. Boost sales by creating a customer-centric strategy using Hootsuite insights.
Features
- OwlyWriter AI for email marketing
- Bulk post scheduling
- Automated tagging and assignments
- Auto-responder
Pros
- Suggests the appropriate time to post based on your target audience, maximizing engagement.
- Auto-create posts or writeups to eliminate creative block and regularize content flow.
- Address customer queries quickly from the dashboard, safeguarding reputation and enhancing customer happiness.
Cons
- The tag feature doesn’t work properly sometimes.
- Doesn’t offer post-performance comparison across different channels simultaneously.
Pricing
Starts at $1,118/year
2. Buffer
Buffer is a value-driven and affordable social media management tool that enables you to build an organic audience with its marketing tools. It suggests when and what to publish and on which platform.
Features
- Draft collaboration tools
- Planning & publishing tools
- Landing page builder
- AI Assistant
Pros
- View and respond to messages from all social media handles in one place, enhancing responsiveness.
- Schedule and automatically publish your content to ensure a consistent online presence.
- Assign approval flows and user permissions so you don’t have to micro-manage your team, saving time.
Cons
- Doesn’t seamlessly integrate with Pinterest.
- Offers fewer customization options than other social media management tools.
Pricing
Essentials: $6/month/channel
Team: $12/month/channel
Agency: $120/month/10 channels
Human Resources Software
HR software helps small businesses create streamlined HR operations, automate administrative tasks, and manage employee lifecycle (from the hiring process to retirement). Enhance employee collaboration and digitize employee data with this tool.
1. Keka
Keka is the best software for small businesses that enables your team to spend less time on operational tasks and transform data into intelligent decisions and experiences for customers.
Features
- Project timesheet
- Payroll tracking
- Expense monitoring
- Employee profiles
Pros
- Track all arrears due to salary changes and pending amounts to compensate appropriately without much effort.
- Offers a customizable leave system to manage all kinds of employee leaves for easy leave management.
- Access all employee-related information in a centralized intuitive inbox, enhancing operational efficiency.
Cons
- The live chat support is unavailable on weekends.
- Real-time activities aren’t updated until you refresh the page.
Pricing
Foundation: $5/employee/month
Strength: $6/employee/month
Growth: $7/employee/month
2. BambooHR
Bamboo is another best software for small businesses that eliminates manual approvals, wipes out double data entry, and creates a positive candidate experience. How? With its comprehensive HR features.
Features
- Employee self-service
- Time-off management
- Applicant tracking system
- Customizable reports
Pros
- Checks calendar and approves time-off requests quickly, saving human hours and effort.
- Gain insights into factors affecting employee engagement and happiness to increase retention by developing relevant strategies.
- Track employee training with just a few clicks to ensure successful employee development and compliance.
Cons
- Pages load slowly during filtered searches.
- The reports include limited payroll data.
Pricing
Essentials and Advantage: Contact sales
Analytics and Reporting
Analytics software and reporting tools help small businesses analyze and visualize a set of critical data. They also come in handy when you want to track the true progress of an activity or performance. Whatever platform you use, be sure that it is Google certified CMP.
1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the leading analytics tools that allows you to improve marketing ROI and understand customer journeys. Optimize marketing strategies and customer actions with this free small business tool.
Features
- Predictive capabilities
- Proactive insights
- Real-time reporting
- Advertising snapshots
Pros
- Analyze your data and forecast customers’ next steps to develop strategies that drive conversions and high retention.
- Use your natural language to search for valuable insights, metrics, or reports, fastening the data retrieval process.
- Spot highly engaging and converting content on your site to develop relevant strategies.
Cons
- Has a complex interface.
- Offers limited historic data storage, making it difficult to work on long-term projects.
Pricing
Free for small businesses
2. Power BI
PowerBI is a unique analytics tool that lets you develop interactive data reports and visualizations. Analyze your data, place visualizations wherever you want, and share your content with the world with Power BI. PowerBI is a unique analytics tool that lets you develop interactive data reports and visualizations. Analyze your data, place visualizations wherever you want, and share your content with the world with Power BI. Power BI is easy to learn and widely supported by Microsoft’s partner network.
Features
- Shareable reports
- Advanced AI
- Data security and encryption
- Dashboards
Pros
- Create reports, compile summaries, and get answers in conversational language, speeding up answers and insights.
- Create and unify datasets from various sources into centralized OneLake, forming a trustworthy source of data.
- Explore data in an intuitive interface and get free training resources, promoting data literacy.
Cons
- Offers limited customization options for data visualization.
- Managing heaps of data can lead to performance issues sometimes.
Pricing
PowerBI Pro: $10/user/month
PowerBI Premium: $20/user/month
3. Whatagraph
Whatagraph is a sophisticated marketing data platform enabling you to seamlessly connect, organize, visualize, and share your marketing data. Easily amalgamate cross-channel data from diverse marketing sources, integrate, organize it and communicate the insights through breathtaking marketing reports and dashboards.
Features
- Over 45 marketing data sources through native integrations
- Custom API, Google Sheets, or BigQuery for unique data
- Pre-made report or dashboard templates
- Drag-and-drop builder
- Automated report sharing via scheduled emails or live link
Pros
- Aggregating data from multiple platforms is easy and time-saving.
- The drag-and-drop builder allows you to customize your reports and dashboards swiftly.
- Automated report sharing helps ensure all stakeholders receive timely updates.
Cons
- Customization can be a bit challenging for non-technical users.
- IIt might require a learning curve, especially for beginners to get used to it.
Pricing
Whatagraph offers three pricing plans based on the number of users and credits for source operations: connecting new sources, setting up data transfers, or performing source blends. Prices are available upon request.
Help Desk for Customer Support
Help Desk Software helps businesses address customer support complaints, requests, and inquiries. They have an automated chatbot or ticket system to streamline problem-solving and communication.
1. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a useful helpdesk software that lets you tailor conversations and resolve issues in a unified workspace. It lets you eliminate chaos from support procedures and avoid missing a conversation.
Features
- Custom ticket status
- Canned responses
- Event-triggered automation
- Linked tickets
Pros
- Categorize, prioritize, and route inbound support tickets with auto-ticket suggestions for efficient issue resolution.
- Link inter-related support tickets to track common issues and deliver quality, consistent responses, enhancing customer satisfaction.
- Transform customer emails into trackable tickets, easing management and resolution.
Cons
- Huge data reports take a long to download.
- Doesn’t support retrieving deleted tickets.
Pricing
Growth: $15/agent/month
Pro: $49/agent/month
Enterprise: $79/user/month
2. Zendesk
Zendesk is a trusted help desk software that enables businesses to create amazing customer experiences. How? By allowing you to have natural conversations with customers on any channel while logging interactions in one place.
Features
- Integrated voice software
- Live chat and messaging
- Automated routing
- Omnichannel Support
Pros
- Collaborate on issues with support teams using private comments, enhancing issue resolution.
- Provide customers with portals and a custom help center, ensuring fast and efficient self-service.
- Know customer satisfaction scores and team performance, ensuring data-driven decisions.
Cons
- Doesn’t offer a free trial.
- Requires a 60-day prior notice to downgrade a plan or remove a user.
Pricing
Team: $55/agent/month Growth: $89/agent/month
Professional: $115/user/month
Enterprise: Contact sales
Wrapping Up
Managing all business operations single-handedly is time-consuming, confusing, and exhausting. Robust tools for small businesses like accounting software, CRM tools, and project management tools can help you efficiently manage all operations digitally, monitor critical data, and automate repetitive tasks.
Find and explore other tools for small businesses in our buyer’s guide. Now that you know all the essential tools for small businesses, explore and adopt those that align with your business needs and budget.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What factors should small businesses consider when choosing software?
Some major factors that small businesses must consider when choosing software are cost, customer support quality, usage difficulty levels, customization options, and security levels.
2. Why business tools are important in every business company?
Business tools are important for all businesses because they help them conduct operations efficiently and gain a competitive edge.
3. Why do you need small business tools and software?
Best Small business tools and software help small business owners achieve efficiency, boost productivity, make informed decisions, and manage data with its comprehensive feature stack.
4. Can you use free software for small businesses?
Yes, small business owners can use free tools for small businesses. However, they offer limited capabilities and wouldn’t be able to accommodate small business’s growing needs. That’s why adopting software from our buyer’s guide is a wise choice.
Updated : December 12, 2024
Akarsh is a B2B & SaaS content writer having experience in the industry. His expertise lies in creating targeted content for Telephony, VoIP, and CRM domains. His proficiency also includes fine-tuning content, guaranteeing enhanced visibility and engagement. Akarsh is committed to remaining at the forefront of emerging SaaS trends to ensure the creation of relevant and relatable content that adds value.
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