The third, updated version of our SMB kit: the best free online tools for business, handpicked just for you! We divided the tools into the following categories:
- project management & communication
- CRM
- stock photos
- microcontent, infographics, image editors
- social media
- competition research & SEO
See previous versions here:
10 Ideas for Omnichannel Marketing: download free ebook
Project management & communication
Free project management tools, offers unlimited users and projects, apps for iPhone/iPad, give free users two integrations (with Dropbox, GitHub, Google Drive).
Implements Kanban methodology and is beautiful.
for time tracking, a great for resource-based project management and reporting. The fremium version allows one user, four clients, and two projects. Pricing from $12 a month for unlimited clients and projects.
Breaks down complex projects into easily manageable units, such as milestones, tasklists and tasks. Charts will help you visualize the progress. Reporting tools also available.
As many users as we’d like, storage, 1 project in the free version.
Open-source software, 3 programs: 2-plan desktop (project-management), 2-plan Team (web-based project management), work 2-gether (scrum-based task management board). Free but have to pay for additional extensions.
Open-source free project scheduling and management tool. Can generate Gantt and PERT charts, produce reports in HTML and PDF formats, offers versatie scheduling and time management tools.
Locally-hosted, free project management software for IT teams. Provides the groundwork for agile software development and resource management. Free on-premise version, but the cloud version starts at $9 a month.
Unlimited users, unlimited projects, gorgeous design, innumerable functions, optimized for communication, 200MB of storage – upgrade to 1GB for $2.49 a month.
Free for up to 10 users, allows unlimited projects and storage for those 10 users. Workflows, tasks, milestones, time tracking.
Supports numerous projects and is highly customisable. It offers feeds and notification system, issue tracking, time tracking and forums to discuss projects.
Project planning software with a team calendar.
Provides sustainable functionalities to effectively manage projects. Full access and display of project branches: team planning tools, project scheduling options, project reporting , dynamic collaboration tools, drag & drop scheduling, estimate cases.
Task management, file sharing, charts, spreadsheets, budgeting…
Free CRM
Free for up two users with 10 MB of storage, and 250 contacts. To upgrade, it’s $12/user/month.
Free for two users, 2,500 records, 200 megabytes of storage and ten custom fields.
For small businesses, offers a free two user system that includes 100 accounts, unlimited contacts within those accounts, tasks, and 100MB of storage, free full customer support. Flexible pricing for updates.
100 free users, 10,000 contacts and all the basic features in the free version.
Updates: $24.95/user/month for more features, storage, ad support.
Great for small businesses. Free for 2 users, includes unlimited lists, social integrations, and basic integrations. Upgrade price is £8/user/month
CRM that lets you learn more about the people who are most important to our business. Identification of potential customers who are most likely to buy.
CRM might be one of the most boring software ever. That’s why Zurmo team makes it more fun with gamification features. It’s open source.
It includes:
- Contact Management
- Contact Segmentation
- Tasks, Notes, Reminders
- Sales Funnels Management
- Sales People Performance Reports
- Sales Funnel Reports & Analytics
- Sales People eMails Tracking
Free for unlimited number of contacts, the full version of the software involves email marketing and Marketing Automaton: real time marketing actions in all channels available.
Free stock photos
When you invest in content marketing, you utilize tons of photos. On a tight budget, you can still use some of these:
Please note: always check individual artists’ credit terms.
Microcontent, infographic, image editors
Free online video creation tool, free themes.
Great tool for creating and publishing infographics because it’s so simple and easy to use. You can choose from templates, themes, and hundreds of charts and icons as well as uploading your own images and backgrounds, or customize a theme to suit your brand.
Create simple images with text, you can upload your own photos or use their base. Extremely user-friendly and fast.
Wide array of templates and images, you can also upload your own. There are many materials to use there, many possibilities to explore, so you can use it on regular basis. Requires registration.
Social media
Shows you detailed breakdowns of your followers and activity (for Twitter).
Pinterest tool, helps with much bezyond analytics ; schedule pins, promote pins, and gain new followers.
Instagram management tool; includes a user-friendly Instagram analytics section that shows big-picture views of posts, likes, comments, and followers, as well as breakdowns for the last seven days or last month, plus scores for love (the likes on your photos), talk (the comments on your photos), and reach (how many likes come from outside your followers).
Create a custom dashboard filled with stats from dozens of marketing tools. Their social media section lets you sync up all the major networks and pull overview reports or individual reports for the accounts you manage and the accounts you want to follow.
It lets you create and send social media messages with direct tracking on the dollars-and-cents ROI. Tell Beevolve how much it cost to create your content and how much you expect to receive per visitor, and Beevolve will handle the rest—sending the message, analyzing the response, and emailing you the report.
A wealth of statistics that can help you sort the popularity and success of a branded hashtag (or any other hashtag you choose). You can save a hashtag search so you can quickly and easily refer to it later on.
It puts together a score from 0 to 100 on your influence on social media. One interesting aspect to note about the score is how the contributions break down across your various connected networks. With this, you can see which networks are making the biggest impact for you.
Enter your brand name in the HowSocialble search box, and you’ll receive a social score for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn (more networks can be unlocked with a free or paid account). The score factors in activity around your brand name over the past seven days.
A fully-featured Twitter management tool, SocialBro offers a free plan for Twitter users with fewer than 5,000 contacts. With SocialBro insights, you can receive a report on the best time to tweet and community insights into the demographics of your followers. Paid plans offer further features like expanded analytics.
A fun tool built by the team behind the Wolfram Alpha search engine, the Wolfram Alpha Facebook Analyzer shows you all sorts of fun and useful demographic information for your Facebook profile.
Competition tracking, research, SEO
Tests the loading time and performance for desktop and for mobile, identify opportunities to improve.
Crunches data from more than 15 different sources to score your brick.
Enter a keyword, and the Keyword Tool provides a huge handful of long-tail keyword opportunities, organized alphabetically.
Searchmetrics Website Analyzer
Performance dashboard for search and social rankings
Discover errors on your site.
Shows you SEO insights from within Google search results pages and at any particular website.
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