A website is only one of many tasks that small business owners or self-employed people must do in order to build a successful online brand. You will likely integrate with many plugins. You can add additional functionality to your website, but you also need to manage other aspects of your business, such as customer service, lead generation, and marketing.
You will need to, for example, find a way:
- Enhance the customer experience by streamlining and streamlining
- Answer customer questions
- Reach out to new leads
- Video content edited
- Schedule social media posts
To name a few, here are some of the tasks you have to complete.
We’re sharing some of the best software options for small businesses today. We have a lot to cover so let’s get right into it!
Movavi Editor
If you want to create and edit informational and marketing videos, the Movavi video editor is one of our favorite software. It is free to download and allows users to quickly edit and fine-tune engaging video content. There are effects such as slow-motion or reverse. You can also use pre-made intros or animated titles to easily insert into your projects.
Movavi comes with chroma key technology that can detect the background of your video and let you change it. To ensure that your content matches your brand’s aesthetic, you can add transitions and filters.
Movavi has a drag-and-drop interface that allows you to start editing immediately without having to learn.
Movavi’s Pros
- Versions are available for Windows and Mac.
- To complement your website and social media content, you can convert videos into any format.
- Screen recording allows you to easily create demonstrations and tutorials.
- Movavi is extremely user-friendly for those just beginning video editing.
- A wide range of effects and titles are available
Movavi’s Cons
- Movavi’s professional effects can be purchased from the effects shop or upgraded to a subscription.
- Movavi is a great starter editor, but it doesn’t scale well when you need professional video editing software.
- Movavi’s text editor options are very limited
- You can’t control audio meters
Pricing
Movavi Video Editor can be downloaded and used for free. There is also an effects store. You can also purchase professionally designed transitions, stickers, and other content.
Movavi offers a $129.95 alternative that includes unlimited licenses and additional editing tools.
LiveChat
LiveChat, as the name suggests, is a live chat software for your website. It makes it easy to communicate with customers in real time. This software can be used by both small and large businesses. Its customers include Adobe, McDonald’s and PayPal. !
LiveChat can be connected to:
Facebook Messenger
SMS campaigns
Your website
Shopify (and other eCommerce platforms).
Stripe
…and third-party apps that make it easy for customers reach you from anywhere.
Chats from all of your comms channels will be rerouted to one inbox. This allows you and your support staff to quickly respond and manage all messages.
In your chats, you can include product cards that link to your shop. This allows you to cross-sell, upsell, or refer customers to certain items.
LiveChat comes with AI. This allows you to automatically segment customers based upon their needs and route them towards the best agent for smoother customer service.
LiveChat’s Pros
LiveChat allows you to connect with more than 200 tools
It is easy to consolidate chats across multiple channels and manage them.
It is easy to sell with your messages.
By routing customers to the right support agents, you can make your team more productive.
Change the appearance of your chat widget.
LiveChat API allows you to create custom integrations.
LiveChat Cons
LiveChat does not include a chatbot. As such, it is impossible to set up automatic responses.
It is not the most affordable software for small businesses, and it can be expensive.
After signing up, you can buy additional tools on your own. This could increase the cost.
Images cannot be uploaded to chat by customers.
It is not very customizable.
Reporting functionality is very basic.
Pricing
LiveChat is available for free for 14-days.
Prices shown below are based upon annual billing.
Starter: $16 per agent per calendar month (for small offices or home offices).
For full-time support teams, team: $33 per agent per monthly
Business: $50 per agent per month (for customer service departments)
Enterprise: Call us to request a quote (for Fortune 500 companies).
HubSpot
Hubspot is another tool that you can use to better engage customers, regardless of your business size.
This provider offers complete feature hubs to support various inbound marketing strategies including CRM (customer relationship management), marketing tools and sales, as well as customer service.
We will be focusing on its helpdesk functionality (also known as the ‘Service Hub’). This section contains all the advanced features that you will need to track every customer’s journey and provide assistance at each stage.
It is possible to efficiently build pipelines and manage queries from one central inbox. You can also build your own knowledge base, allow live chat and route your conversations to the best agents.
Hubspot allows you to conduct customer feedback surveys. You can also collect valuable insights that you can view from the reporting dashboard.
Hubspot’s Pros
Access to a comprehensive set of customer services features that includes reporting, live chat, and a simplified inbox.
Hubspot seamlessly integrates with Hubspot’s CRM and marketing portal, allowing you access features such as email marketing and social media marketing from one location.
The team inbox makes it simple to manage conversations, especially if you run omnichannel operations.
It is easy to create an online knowledge base that your customers can access.
Hubspot Cons
The Service Hub, the newest toolkit from Hubspot, is still the most basic. It isn’t as feature rich as the other tools.
Hubspot’s Service Hub is not necessary if you have a CRM.
You won’t find the CSS or HTML editor necessary to create your knowledge base.
You need to sign up for the Professional plan in order to access key features such as ticket routing. Hubspot can be expensive, so it is not the best software for small businesses.
Pricing
Hubspot provides many of its core features free of charge. Hubspot offers freemium versions for its CRM (with unlimited user), marketing and service hub.
Note: Prices shown below assume a reduced annual billing.
Starter: $45 per Month, starting with two paid users
Starting at five paid users, professional: $360 per monthly
Enterprise: You can start at 10 paid users. To get a quote, talk to Hubspot’s Sales team.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue offers email marketing automation at a low price and is a great choice for freelancers and small businesses. You can also use it for SMS marketing, live chat, and a simplified inbox. Its most notable features include email marketing, automation and segmentation.
SendinBlue lets you send targeted messages to specific segments of your email list. To generate leads, you can create landing pages with signup forms. You can also send transactional email.
SendinBlue, like most email marketing tools offers basic reporting. You can check the deliverability of your emails and monitor their click- and open rates.
Sendinblue’s Pros
A free plan is available
SendinBlue’s premium package are very affordable
Automating your email campaigns is easy
SendinBlue boasts good deliverability
SendinBlue offers SMS marketing and customer service features.
Sendinblue’s Cons
The email templates offered by SendinBlue aren’t the most popular on the market. They are a little outdated and there isn’t much choice.
The web application can be slow to load.
SendinBlue’s reporting can be a bit basic.
Pricing
Sendinblue provides a free plan that allows unlimited contacts and allows you to send up to 300 emails per day.
After you have exhausted the freemium plan, you will need to upgrade to one or more of these paid-for plans.
Lite: Start at $25 per Month for 10,000 Emails
Premium: From $65 per Month for 20,000 emails, this premium option also unlocks marketing automation
Sendinblue’s Sales Team can provide a quote for your enterprise.
Asana
Asana helps you manage your project more efficiently by connecting and collaborating with colleagues from one dashboard. This dashboard allows you to see the tasks and responsibilities of everyone in your team so that everyone is on the same page.
There are many views you can choose from for your to-do list, including boards, timelines, traditional lists and boards. Asana allows you to automate repetitive tasks such as assigning work and setting due dates.
Asana has over 50 templates that will help you get started.
Asana’s Pros
You can get a free plan.
Asana assists businesses to prioritize important and time-sensitive tasks.
Collaboration tools are available to help team members follow their interests and ensure that they don’t miss a beat.
Asana’s intuitive workflow features allow you to simplify repetitive tasks.
Cons of Asana
Asana can seem overwhelming to new users. With all the features and interfaces available, it can be confusing and overwhelming.
Asana is a time-tracking tool that allows you to lose track of the moment.
It is not possible to assign more than one task.
Asana’s exporting capabilities are limited.
Pricing
Asana’s free plan works best for small groups or individuals who are just starting to learn project management. You can create unlimited tasks or projects with the freemium plan. It doesn’t include Asana’s automation capabilities.
Asana’s pricing is displayed in euros. The following prices are an approximate estimate:
Premium: $13.30 per month per user, payable annually
Businesses: $30 per user per Month, billed annually
Enterprise: Contact the sales team for a quote.
SiteGround
SiteGround is a popular web hosting provider for small businesses. SiteGround hosts more than 2 million domains as of this writing. It offers both managed WordPress and WooCommerce web hosting. It offers a variety of services that make it suitable for many businesses.
SiteGround comes with a website builder, and provides automated WordPress website transfers for free. Google Cloud powers the platform and provides an extremely fast network, access to their CDN storage and SSD storage. Their customer satisfaction rating is high and they offer 24/7 support for all plans. Siteground packages include daily backups and unlimited traffic.
SiteGround’s Pros
You can get 24/7 support with highly-rated customer service
You get a high uptime guarantee and a fast performance speed
SiteGround has very affordable pricing options for small businesses
Daily backups available for free
You can migrate WordPress free of charge
SiteGround Cons
Once you renew, the monthly cost is much higher. Most hosting companies use this sales strategy today.
Your storage space is limited by the plans. The cheapest plan has a storage limit of 10GB.
Your website has a maximum number of monthly visits. Your site may be put on hold if it exceeds the traffic limit. Shared hosting is not recommended if you expect high traffic.
Pricing
These are Siteground’s main web hosting packages.
Starter Price: $6.99 per Month for One Website
GrowBig: $9.99/month for up to five websites
GoGeek: $14.99/month, up to ten sites
Semrush
Let’s say you are looking for a tool that will optimize your SEO and improve your content marketing strategy. Semrush could be the right tool for you.
Semrush can help you find keywords that are relevant to your content marketing and SEO. You can also analyze the backlink profile of your domain and run technical SEO audits for your site.
Find out what topics are most popular for your blog or social media posts and receive tips to help you create more SEO-friendly content. You can audit your content and track brand mentions.
Semrush allows you to analyse any website’s traffic. This will give you a better understanding of the success of your competition. Finally, Semrush offers social media management tools. You can post and schedule content to your social media accounts and keep track of your competitors’ accounts.
Semrush’s Pros
It is generally simple to use and beginners-friendly.
It provides many metrics and insights in an easy-to-understand layout.
You can use this link building tool to increase your outreach.
Support is available by phone, email, or chat.
Semrush offers simple steps to improve your SEO
Semrush’s Cons
It provides data only for Google.
Only one account can be created.
Semrush requires that you enter your credit card information in order to receive a free trial.
Both iOS and Android have a mobile app.
Semrush can be quite expensive, so it is not suitable for individuals or start-ups on a tight budget.
Pricing
Semrush has both monthly and annual pricing. We’ve provided the following information: The annual pricing offers a 16% savings. For 14 days, you can also try Semrush free of charge:
Pro: $99.95 per month
Guru: $191.62 per Month
Business: $374.95 per month
HootSuite
Hootsuite can be used to manage social media. You can use this tool to synchronize multiple social media accounts and plan your content ahead of time. Hootsuite offers a variety of useful features that make social media marketing easy.
The publishing calendar is the most important. Here you can:
You can decide when posts will be automatically uploaded.
Here are descriptions for your content.
Choose the right time to post
Hootsuite can also be used to boost your posts using Facebook Ad Credit or Linkedin Sponsored Posts.
Hootsuite allows you to consolidate all of your social media activity in one place. No matter where your followers are commenting or engaging, Hootsuite allows you to quickly respond and continue the conversation.
You can create multiple feeds for different social media platforms. Hoosuite premium plans also allow you to enable social listening. This could be used to create a feed that monitors social media posts that mention you, or a competitor.
Hootsuite’s Pros
This gives you a complete overview of all your social media accounts.
It is a time saver to schedule posts ahead of time for social accounts, especially if you have to transfer media to your phone (like Instagram).
This gives you a better understanding of your customers’ interactions with social media.
Hootsuite can be used to research competitors and find inspiration for your social media campaigns.
Hootsuite’s browser extension lets you grab content from any web page and populate your social media quickly.
A limited number of free plans are available.
Cons of Hootsuite
The free plan is too limited to suit business needs. You can only schedule five posts per day and link up two social media accounts.
Hootsuite is a premium platform that integrates with apps. This can be very costly.
They offer support only via social media and self-help material.
Pricing
Hootsuite offers a free version that has limited features, as we have just mentioned. You can connect up to two social media accounts and schedule up five posts ahead of time.
You will need to upgrade by purchasing one of Hootsuite’s premium packages. The prices are based upon an annual billing.
Professional: $49 per month
Team: $129 per month
Business: $599 per month
Our Last Thoughts
It takes many tools to successfully run an online business. The best software for small businesses depends on what you want to accomplish and where you source customers. There are many small business software options available. Many of these tools can be combined to provide essential functionality without having to search for dozens of tools.
We haven’t even touched the bottom of the best accounting software, invoicing, bookkeeping, payroll services, or invoicing. Unfortunately, this review didn’t allow us to explore that topic. We recommend Gusto, Intuit and Quickbooks as a starting point.
We hope that you enjoyed our list of the top tools for business websites, and feel inspired to keep looking for the right software. Your business could benefit from adding SEO platforms, live chat, social media marketing and live chat to its toolkit as you grow.
Comment below to let us know which one you believe is the best for small businesses. Talk soon.
