Kick starting your new business is incredibly exciting and there are plenty of free tools for entrepreneurs that can help make things a whole lot easier. From organization to client communication, these tools will give you cost-effective ways to manage your new business.
While it may be tempting to splurge for the paid version for some of these, remember that scaling early is usually something to avoid. Use what you can for free for as long as you can! If you find yourself using a tool a lot or your business is growing, it may make sense to upgrade. Just make sure you absolutely need it!
Trello
Trello is usually the first entry in many lists of this nature. However, there’s a good reason for that: it’s pretty awesome for entrepreneurs!
An amazing organizational tool, the first tier of Trello includes a ton of features:
- Unlimited cards
- Up to 10 boards per workspace
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited activity log
- Assignee and due dates
- iOS and Android mobile apps
- 2-factor authentication
- And even more!
The best part is you get all this for free! Fantastic for solo or business with a very small team.
Mailchimp
If you want to stay in contact with your database or integrate forms and landing pages into your website, Mailchimp is the best way to do it.
If you have a relatively small audience (between 500 and 1500) the free version of Mailchimp has plenty of features for you to utilize. While it is missing some key things (such as customer journey builders and A/B testing), it’s hard to pass up such a useful tool when it will cost you nothing at all!
Pexels
If you’re writing blogs or creating social media posts for your brand (both of which you really should be), chances are you’re going to need some royalty free images.
Pexels is possibly the best free stock photo library on the internet. There are thousands of images, and you can search for any of them using keywords. They are all royalty free, but you can always give the artists some love when you use it!
As a bonus, Pexels also has a sizable library of stock videos too!
Check Out Another Blog: Money Saving Tips for Entrepreneurs
TweetDeck
While you’re likely already on Twitter, you may not know about TweetDeck.
TweetDeck organizes your Twitter feed to give a glance at what’s happening right now. You can customize it to include any channel, person, or hashtag you want to stay up to date on.
One of the best panels to include is a “trends” panel, showing you the top trending hashtags at any given time. This is an awesome free tool to stay reactive, especially for social media content.
If you’re an entrepreneur, you can’t afford to not be on LinkedIn. Period.
Whether you’re looking for potential new clients for a B2B business or hoping to find your next part-time employee, LinkedIn is one of the most powerful business tools available, disguised as a social media platform.
Post regularly, make sure your profile is set up nicely, and thanks to being able to message outside your network, this is one of the rare occasions where the premium might actually be worth it, especially for B2B businesses.
Networking
Not all tools are technological.
Creating connections within your business community is an amazing way to learn more about running a successful business and even give you opportunities for useful contra deals (fantastic when money is tight).
There are tons of business centres out there, or keep an eye out for networking events at co-working spaces and even local colleges and universities!