startup tools

6 free online tools every entrepreneur needs to know about

By using a plethora of free, online tools available, entrepreneur can make the best use of the limited finances and manage to make your business a raging success.

As an entrepreneur looking to set up his/her own venture, it is assumed that you are running low on budget. By using a plethora of free, online tools available, you can make the best use of the limited finances and manage to make your business a raging success.

1. Madmimi

Madmimi is exactly what you need if you’re planning to explore the email marketing option. It makes your job of sending and tracking emails easy. Up to a certain number of contacts, this tool is free and lets you send unlimited e-mails to those contacts.

2. Google Analytics

Google analytics has been a saviour and a brilliant guide to almost all businesses as it lets you track the traffic on your website along with their details. It always has very useful features like creation of custom goals and a/b testing for a new home page. Unless you are able to track analytics, you can’t be sure about what you need to work on.

3. Hiver

Hiver is a great tool which helps you organise by turning your Gmail into a helpdesk. It allows you to add three users for free and you can track and assign tasks to these users by adding them in a sidebar.

4. Evernote

Every one is aware of how useful notes can be when one needs to organise and prioritise. All one needs to do is save the notes and share them with whoever they want to. These notes are accessible from all devices are they are saved on the cloud.

5. Trello

This app can prove to be a game changer as it lets you organise projects of all sizes and types. You can organise the work on cards and assign your teammates tasks through Trello. Now there are many trello alternatives also available in the market that are equally efficient.

6. Survey Monkey

Research is very important in order to be able to target the right audience for your business, however, it can be a costly affair. SurveyMonkey is your saviour in case you need to do research and don’t have enough money as by using a simple interface, you can design and publish your surveys. The tool also helps in analysing the results for you.

8 apps every entrepreneur needs to download

To make your task slightly easier, we have come up with a list of 8 apps which will help you in different areas by taking some workload off you.

Being an entrepreneur isn’t an easy task with all the risks and pressure of decision making involved. However, to make your task slightly easier, we have come up with a list of 8 apps which will help you in different areas by taking some workload off you.

1. MobileDay

An entrepreneur becomes one because he wants to dictate his own terms. On some occasions when one just needs to be at home, MobileDay comes to rescue. It can co-ordinate all conference meetings and email with the participants. This app is a life saver as it can perform tasks like dial-in automatically and even offer to direct you to your meeting space if you decide to go for one last-minute.

2. Pocket

A true entrepreneur is always searching for more ideas and inspiration which can come from anywhere. This app is a great book-marking app which lets you save a variety of content ranging from lengthy articles to a point on a listicle. Pocket also allows you to bookmark videos which you think you might want to see later. The bookmarked content can be accessed offline on all electronic devices later. You can use the Bookmark app to manage your bookmarks.

3. Venmo

Venmo is a free digital app that makes all financial concerns in your life vanish away. It is a digital wallet which is linked to your bank account. You can easily make or share payments through this app. It solves the issue of carrying cash while treating employees or splitting food/cab fare. Venmo can also be used by entrepreneurs to make instant payments or wire salaries to the employees safely and efficiently.

4. Clicky

A company’s trends need to be monitored regularly to make future decisions. To monitor all stats related to a website or a social media page, an entrepreneur can download Clicky. It presents the analytics in a manner similar to Google Analytics but in a more understandable and simple manner which can then be studied.

5. SignEasy

Printing, signing, scanning and then e-mailing a document is a tedious and time-taking procedure to do on a daily basis. SignEasy is an easy and time saving app through which an entrepreneur can sign the required documents by opening them in the app and clicking on sign. You can also resend the documents from your phone. Hence, this app is very efficient and time-saving on the whole.

6. Streaks

Life of an entrepreneur is tiring and tedious and he isn’t very equipped to remember a list of tasks to complete amidst all the jobs. Hence, Streaks help and entrepreneur to turn some tasks into daily habits by simply feeding them into the app. The app finds a way to remind you of the task at a certain time of the day and also keeps a score of how many days you actually keep the streak alive. This app can automatically help you make sometime in your daily schedule for the things you need to do.

7. Skype

This app is a no-brainer for any entrepreneur. Skype offers video-calling and audio-calling with people from other countries free of cost. With increasing global investors, an entrepreneur can easily schedule Skype meetings and conferences to interact with them. Also, on the days an entrepreneur chooses not to go to office, he can send messages via Skype.

8. Expensify

All entrepreneurs want to maintain receipts of expenditure throughout a month for varied reasons. And, amidst all the pressure he’s under, it isn’t possible to physically maintain a log of all receipts. All you need to do is download Expensify and with your phone’s camera take pictures of your receipts as digital records stored in a chronological order. This app also lets you log mileage, meal expenses and other business-related travel costs.

Marketing Services: Free online start up tools for your new business

During the first fledgling stages of your business, you need to harness all of the (free) help and support that you can garner, and with this in mind here we present seven essential tools for the start-up business.

As a start-up business owner, your budget is tight and every penny and pound you make defines the difference between growth and becoming one of the notorious 50% of start-ups that fail in their first year. During the first fledgling stages of your business, you need to harness all of the (free) help and support that you can garner, and with this in mind here we present seven essential tools for the start-up business.

For harnessing social media: Hootsuite

Hootsuite leads the way within the social media marketing realm. It provides a singular place for you to conduct all of your (now seriously essential) social media marketing tasks, with features here including: Coverage of 3 social media profiles, basic analytics, basic message sending, access to Hootsuite’s core apps and 2 RSS feeds.

Of course, if after this tool has empowered your marketing campaign you find that you can afford the full version (with prices that start from £6.99 a month) you may want to unlock the further features, such as 50 social profiles, advanced analytics and up to two team members.

However, with that said the free version is more than sufficient for getting started!

For capturing those inspirational ideas: Evernote

Had a brainwave for a fresh advertising campaign whilst on the train? Perhaps you experience those lightbulb marketing moments whilst in the most unlikely of places with only your mobile to hand. If so, then you need Evernote and try IPQualityScore phone validation. This suite of tools truly helps you harness your ideas, with features including tapped notes, web articles, handwritten notes, and images found online and snapped whilst out and about.

For essential market research: Survey Monkey

Survey Monkey is the ultimate option for those who want to gather data about their target market. Not only can surveys here be put together quickly, easily and free from cost, but this online tool additionally features clean cut designs to guide your participants from question one onto survey completion.

As a member signing up for the free plan you’ll look forward to 10 questions for up to 100 responses as well as standard email support (you can always delete any current survey and replace it with another at a later date).

For super easy accounting: Wave Accounting

The Wave Accounting service is the rather impressive looking online app for easy accounting. It’s completely free, robustly secure and provides for unlimited invoicing, payroll administration and streamlined management of business receipts.

Perhaps most usefully of all, this online app also allows for plenty of analysis of your finances and can even be used to break down your sales to plan ahead for the upcoming months. These reports can be visually displayed within a variety of different charts, and provides an instant overview of your finances once you log in, including invoices that you’re owed in the next 30 days, as well as bills to be paid out – ideal for always staying one step ahead of any potential financial hiccups.

For business booming lead generation: suiteCRM

You may well have heard of the unstoppable force that is Salesforce – a platform that leads the way with lead generation. That said, priced at £45 per month and upwards this is also a platform that makes for too big of an investment for most SMEs in their first few months.

However, there is an alternative: suiteCRM, and whilst this is an all-round CRM system, it does have a dedicated sales pipeline area for you to manage, qualify and convert your leads.

For super star customer service: Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is the perfect choice for supporting your growth during the early stages of business and is free whilst you have 10 users or fewer. Features within this system include contact management, social media management, workflow automation and even lead gathering if you find that the suiteCRM doesn’t fulfil your needs, or if you simply want a CRM system with integrated lead generation.

For solid organisation: Google Suite – and the star of the show Google Calendar

This isn’t so much a singular tool as a whole suite of tools that work hand in hand. Because of the nature of them (and their clean integration with one another) it’s apt to put them into a singular entry upon our list.

Pivotal to the way in which they interact with one another is Google Calendar; this web app can provide for a schedule full of events where attachments can be attached, notifications can be set, videos calls can be made and fellow Google calendar users can be invited.

To finish it all off you can add the Google Calendar app to your phone (complete with alert system) to keep you organised even whilst on the go.