100 free online tools for business: planning, SEO, content, social media

Do you like posts with lists of free useful tools? Our analytics says that you do 🙂 That’s why we collected links dispersed in a couple of our posts and add 30 new ones.
So here it is: an updated list of free online tools for planning, communication, content marketing, research, SEO and competition monitoring, customer relationship management, social media and presentations.

10 Commandments of Email Marketing. Download Free Ebook

Of course, we’re looking forward to learning your favorite apps and tools. Don’t forget to mention them in comments!

Planning and communication

Asana: a wonderful tool allowing you to plan, assign tasks, and watch the progress.
Trello: helps organize work by breaking big tasks into smaller pieces. Great for monitoring individual work.
Producteev: great tools for collaboration. You set projects, goals and deadlines, then assign tasks.
Google Calendar+ Google Drive: Have your office always with you. Tasks and documents in cloud, available on all
Dropbox: documents shared, co-edited and safe in cloud.
Slack: whatever you use (Skype, Google Talk, etc.), drop it and try Slack. Everything is easy to tag and find, mobile app available, and you have a separate tool for communication at work.
Rapportive: shows you social media profiles of given person in your inbox. That way you instantly get useful information, like where the person lives. It makes contact building much easier.

Free CRM

Most of them are either freemium (free, but for some extra options you must pay) or free only to a limited amount of contacts.

SuiteCRM: open source, free, based on SugarCRM
ZohoCRM: free for 3 users and 5000 records
Bitrix 24: free to 12 users and 5 GB, flexible payment plan
Streak: operated from your inbox
Odoo: open source, free, GNU license. It offers also ERP, CMS and more.

Automation

Zapier: integrates applications you use. It automatizes responses to defined events. It can start writing an email for you, add a task to Asana or Trello, and post something in social media.
IFTTT: works like Zapier. Allows you to make simple automation rules to improve your workflow.
Boomerang: a tool for Gmail that allows you to schedule emails. Write your message now and decide when it should be sent.
Email Marketing Automation: send dynamic emails, match time of sending to user’s activity and personalize. For free!

Content marketing: inspiration, resources

Feedly: RSS reader.
Flipboard: will help you find interesting stories.
Buzzsumo: check what people talk about in social media! Top stories in the rating are free, more require buying a premium plan.
Instapaper: for those who like to focus on reading. Instapaper collects and displays chosen content in simple, distraction-free mode. It can also send articles to your
Pocket: organize your internet! You collect and tag links to important content on the web.
Google Alerts: monitors mentioning of given phrase on the internet.
Blinkist: don’t have time to read books? Consume them in a blink of an eye. Blinkist offers you concentrated insights from a book to be absorbed in less than 15 minutes. Can bring a lot of inspirations.
Quora: a place where people ask each other questions. A great source of content inspiration.
Content Forest: type a keyword and find trending posts on the topic.
ContentGems: sends you most interesting posts on the declared topic in an email.
Blog topics generators: Blog About i Portent
oTranscribe: will help you transcribe audio files into text. Useful if you prefer to speak and record yur voice instead of writing.

Content marketing: text editors

Evernote: your notes available on various devices, including mobile and online. Best for keeping your rough ideas.
Google Keep: simple virtual notebook.
FocusWriter: s imple distraction-free editor. Try also WriteMonkey (for Windows only) or beautiful OmmWriter.

Proofreading

Hemingway: great app which will teach you to write simply and clearly.
PaperRater: simple proofreading tool.
Headline analyzers: AMI i CoSchedule.
Word2CleanHTML: converts your text from doc. or notes to html.

Free photos

Unsplash (minimalist)
Death to the Stock Photo (you don’t browse pictures, but subscribe and get a portion of photos each week; you might upgrade free account and get access to all pictures)
Gratisography
Everystockphoto
Raumrot
StartUp Stock Photos (pictures showing real life of an entrepreneur)
Pixabay
Public Domain Archieve
1001 Free Downloads
Magdeleine (nature mostly)
Picjumbo
New Old Stock (retro style)
Superfamous
Kaboompics

Microcontent, infographic, image editors

Pablo: allows to create micro-content in less than 30 seconds (really!). It limits itself to simple images with text, you can upload your own photos or use their base. Extremely user-friendly and fast.
Canva: for more advanced tasks. Choose from wide array of templates and images or upload your own. There are many materials to use there, many possibilities to explore, so you can use it on regular basis. Requires registration.
Quozio: insert a quote and its author, and then pick the style. Not too many options, but it’s easy and nice. Use it when you want to serve something slightly different to your audience.
Skitch: app developed by Evernote team, it makes a printscreen and allows to edit it conveniently – add text, arrows, etc. Great for creating educational micro-content. Download required.
Picmonkey: for picture editing
Wordle: to make word clouds
PiktoChart: create your own infographics
Snappa: free templates and intuitive image editor.
Lunapic: put filters, including animation, on you image. It help change a boring picture into a funny one.
Imgflip: turn movie into gif.
Audacity: a tool for audio edition.

Time management and focus

Rescue Time: feeling like your creative time can easily turn into time waste? Track website you visit and programs/apps you use and time you spent on each of them.
I Done This: each day you get an email asking about what have you done today, and you fill in and online diary. Simple yet powerful.
Toggl: tracks websites you visit and apps you use, helps to plan and organize your time.
Noisli: white noise generator and online text editor.
Tomato Timer: do you use Pomodoro technique? It means dividing your work into short spans of time (25 minutes mostly) in which you focus maximally. Use the timer to measure these periods.
Keybr: learn how to type faster and save time.

Social media

Knowem: see if your user/ profile name is original BEFORE you register
Buffer: manage and plan content distribution in all your social media channels.
Social mention: find mentions on topic you are interested in in social media.
Hootsuite: manage social media
MavSocial: helps you manage virtual content (access to free pictures, infographics creator), includes post calendar and reports. Involves Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr
Topsy: monitors trending content on Twitter
Buzzsumo: monitors which posts get most buzz in social media.

Competition tracking, research SEO

Ubersuggest, SEObook: find keywords
Similarweb: estimates traffic and keywords for given website
SimilarSites, SimilarSitesSearch: find similar websites
Manta: finds companies operating in given branch
Browseo: how browsers see your website?
Copyscape: finds content copied from your website.
Soovle: type in a keyword and see which words are connected to it at the biggest websites, such as Amazon or Wikipedia
Live Keyword Analysis: see how many keywords your text contains.

Presentations

Go beyond Prezi, Powerpoint or Keynote!

Open Office Impress: simple alternative to PowerPoint
Haiku Deck: for iPad, designed for short, minimalistic presentations.
SlideDog: if you like combining various types of content (text, music, video, image)
PowToon: for animated presentations.
Wink: great for tutorials. In use similar to Powerpoint and multilingual.
Projeqt: for slides based on photos, with artistic taste.
BrainShark: you can record your voice and add to presentation. Wonderful for making tutorials.
Emaze: great templates.