The 30 Best Startup Tools & Resources to Grow Your Business

The primary concern of every aspiring entrepreneur is to keep their startup costs as low as possible. Although there are several unavoidable costs an online business have to pay for, you can minimize some operational costs with the assistance of the best tools.

There are a number of startup tools and resources available that not only help in minimizing the startup costs, but they also assist in saving precious time of savvy businessmen.

Imagine if you could enhance your efficiency with just a few tools. What if you can get your hands on 30 best tools for startups? Fortunately, that’s exactly what I’m going to share with you today. Let’s take a look!

I’ve divided these startup tools into seven different categories. Each of them casts a strong impact on the overall performance of your business and allows you to become more efficient with your business operations.

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#1 Startup Ideation Tools

It’s a fact that the first step is always the toughest. The ideation phase of any startup is crucial but once you know what industry you wish to work with, and what type of product you’re going to sell, things get clear, and with the assistance of the following startup tools, you will have a clearer direction of how to proceed further.

1. Squad Help 

Squad Help assists you in finding an ideal name for your business. However, they do not limit their services to just business names. Instead, it also assists in finding the perfect name for your app, book, product or service, etc.

You can start a naming competition and engage thousands of experts as you’re guided through their agency-level naming process. You can also explore their hand-picked compilation of premium names that are available for immediate purchase.

Pricing: For as low as $199 per contest.

2. Clarity 

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a fresh entrepreneur or an experienced businessman. Every entrepreneur needs actionable advice at one point or the other during their entrepreneurial journey. Clarity ensures ambitious entrepreneurs receive valuable pieces of advice from industry experts.

It helps you connect with industry leaders from all across the globe. These Clarity experts can help you overcome any challenge that you might be facing at any stage of your entrepreneurial journey. Whether it’s scaling your business, raising funds, researching market trends, or sharpening your skills, this tool for entrepreneurs has got you covered with the best business advice.

Pricing: For as low as $1 per minute on phone calls.

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3. Germ.io

This tool for startup helps you better manage your business concepts and ideas. You will never lose the big picture of your startup idea with this resource. You can validate your concepts and share your vision by flaunting your big picture.

Germ.io helps you evolve your business idea by providing the ‘next steps’. Consequently, you will be able to shape up your business idea with ease. It lets you create actionable strategies by helping you with your how’s, what’s and why’s.

Pricing: Free version available

4. Mindmeister 

This web-based mind-mapping tool lets you collaborate and brainstorm with experts in real-time. Besides ideation and project planning, you can use this startup tool for creating presentations. Mindmeister allows you to turn mind-maps into dynamic slideshows.

Moreover, it integrates with MeisterTask – a task management tool – allowing you to turn your ideas into actionable tasks.

Pricing:

• Basic: Free
• Personal: $4.99
• Pro: $8.25
• Business: $12.49

5. Javelin 

To keep it simple, this is a one-stop solution for lean startups when it comes to customer development. A platform for innovators, Javelin can help you identify customer needs and validate new products. You can measure your product’s market fit with the assistance of their pre-designed surveys. It allows you to save time as the speed of workflow increases.

Pricing: Free to Signup

#2 Startup MVP Tools

For entrepreneurs who create web or mobile apps, it is significant to understand how their Minimum Value Product (MVP) affects their business. It also helps you experiment with your ideas in your preferred industry or market, before you complete your product. There are three MVP tools for startups worth highlighting. They include:

6. Just In Mind 

Here’s one amongst the best startup tools that’s an all-in-one prototyping solution for web and mobile apps. From wireframes to highly interactive prototypes, Just In Mind has it all. You can apply design fully-interactive prototypes from scratch and bring them to life with a click.

It offers a complete range of web interactions and mobile gestures so that you can concentrate on building a delightful user experience. You can create wireframes that adapt to multiple screen resolutions for desktop as well as mobile devices.

Pricing:

• Professional $19/month (Billed Annually)
• Enterprise $39/month (Billed Annually)

7. Balsamiq

Their mission is to rid the world of bad user interface and help people to build websites and software that are easy to use. Balsamiq is a low-fidelity wireframing software accessible to entrepreneurs, managers, analysts, developers, agencies and anyone who’s into UX.

They provide extensive docs, assist in improving the software with the latest releases and provide support through multiple channels. You can find beginner-to-expert level tutorials and documentation on their support page for your convenience.

Pricing:

• 2 projects $9 per month or $90 per year
• 20 projects $49 per month or $490 per year
• 200 projects $199 per month or $1990 per year

#3 Startup Launch Tools

Launching a startup is never easy. From its ideation to execution, there are multiple factors that play a significant role in determining a successful launch. Nonetheless, there are multiple tried and tested startup tools that can help you launch your startup successfully. They include:

8. Product Hunt

This is the ideal go-to launch platform for startups. Product Hunt showcases amazing new products every day. It’s a brilliant platform for product-loving enthusiasts. They can share, discuss and geek about all the new products, websites, mobile apps, and tech other creations.

It can conveniently assist you to launch your product or more importantly, your startup successfully. The website operates on a system for user comments as well as a voting system which is similar to Reddit. With its pre-existing community of testers who are willing to try out new products, launching your startup had never been easier.

Pricing: Sign up for Free

9. Beta List

Beta List is a pre-launch system that helps your startup gain the traction it needs for a successful launch. The best advantage of this platform is that you can put your startup idea in front of an exceptional community of savvy business enthusiasts, and garner valuable feedback from them.

Beta List has helped over 3,000 startup founders to better understand their customers with the help of qualitative and quantitative research to ensure they are creating the right product for their right audience.

Pricing:

• Hobby Free
• Startup $129
• Funded $299

10. Press Kite

The story of your startup lives here! Press Kite allows you to create a press kit for your startup. It’s so convenient that now you don’t have any excuse to not have a press kit ready to send a journalist whenever need be. Your startup can now enjoy the press coverage it needs so that even the masses can see you. A tool worth checking out!

Pricing:

• 3 Plans (Free, Founder for $9, Startup)

11. Cloudways

Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that offers sustainable growth and lets you focus on growing your business while it takes care of your website hosting. Cloudways provides an excellent feature set helping you scale your startup with ease with its WordPress hosting for SMB.

Exclusively for Startups: Cloudways offers mentorship, growth tools, and discount on Cloudways platform through the Cloudways Startup Program.

Pricing: For as low as $10 per month

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#4 Startup Marketing Tools

A solid marketing strategy demands a flawless implementation of processes so that startups can get the best bang for their buck. Proper implementation of a startup marketing strategy requires tools to monitor, analyze, and evaluate any marketing campaign. Hence, the following marketing tools for startups are a must-have in order to ensure effective implementation of processes.

12. Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the best social media marketing tools for startups which is used across the globe by well-known startups, mainly due to its easy UI and affordable pricing plans.

You can schedule up to 30 posts across any social media platform with its free plan. It will help you to measure the ROI (Return On Investment) of your social media campaign, and keep track of the impact that is being created, all under one umbrella. Moreover, you can also link two RSS feeds and different apps such as MailChimp, YouTube, Dropbox, and other startup tools.

Pricing:

• Individual (1 user 3 social media profiles) Free
• Professional (1 user 10 social media profiles) $19 per month
• Team (3 users 20 social media profiles) $99 per month
• Business (5-10 users 35 social media profiles) $599 per month

13. MailChimp 

Email marketing is a time-tested strategy that has done wonders for many startups. In order to run a successful email marketing campaign, you need an email marketing tool for your startup that is nothing but exemplary. This is where MailChimp comes in – a tool for startups that requires no introduction.

Approximately 205 billion emails were sent in a day during 2015 which means 2.4 million emails in a second. Isn’t this number just mind-boggling? This email marketing tool for startups allows digital marketers to utilize a reliable emailing service to deliver emails directly to any user’s inbox. It’s one of the many highly recommended tools for startups.

Pricing:

• Free Plan
• Essentials $9.99 per month
• Standard $14.99 per month
• Premium $299 per month

14. Mangools

Mangools is a set of five Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools for startups like KWFinder, SerpChecker, SerpWatcher, LinkMiner, and SiteProfiler. It helps startups to create effective SEO workflows.

With Mangools, you can find all the right keywords, analyze the search results in any location, compare yourself with competitors, track your keyword positions and boost them all with powerful backlinks.

Pricing:

• Basic $29.90
• Premium $39.90
• Agency $79.90

15. Google Analytics 

Google Analytics helps you to track the traffic coming on to your website. It allows you to identify what’s working and what’s not. When you know what isn’t working, you can fix it to enhance your customer engagement and user experience.

Moreover, it helps you create much better digital marketing campaigns and ultimately, increase your conversion rate. You must use Google Analytics in order to achieve greater results for your startup with continuous evaluation of data and monitoring online marketing strategies.

Pricing: Free as long as you do not exceed 5 million impressions per month.

16. Hunter.io 

Hunter.io assists you in finding business emails within seconds. By simply searching any domain, it will provide you with all the email addresses that are connected to it.  With 200+ million email addresses indexed, it’s one of the most powerful tools for finding email addresses in order to connect with the relevant experts for your business.

Pricing:

• Free
• Starter $49 per month
• Growth $99 per month
• Pro $199 per month
• Enterprise $399 per month

17. CallHippo

A powerful Voice-over-Internet-Protocol(VoIP) service provider, CallHippo is a market leader in providing business phone numbers. A great tool for start-ups and mid-sized businesses, CallHippo has a wide array of innovative features that improve sales capabilities and agent performance. It enables managers to monitor calls, track key performance indicators, and provide real-time feedback to increase bottom-line results. With third-party integrations, a user-friendly interface, and high-level customization.

Pricing:

• Bronze : $20 Per Month – (For Startups)
• Silver : $35 Per Month – (Ideal For Small Team)
• Platinum : $55 Per Month – (Preferred For SMB Sales, Support & Marketing Teams)

18. Sender

Startups need affordable email marketing tools to connect with their audiences since they typically have limited budgets. Sender fits this bill perfectly as it offers powerful features at an affordable price.

With Sender’s Free Forever plan, startups can access all the main features, including email automation, advanced segmentation, and high-converting popups. With such features, you can capture leads and convert them into loyal customers using personalized email campaigns like welcome and abandoned carts.

The platform also integrates with popular software that startups might already be using, such as ecommerce platforms and CRM systems. This allows them to leverage their existing business tools for more effective marketing campaigns.

Pricing:

• Free Forever plan
• Standard $15 per month
• Professional $29 per month
• Enterprise (Custom Pricing)

19. SendPulse

Staying in touch with your customers is probably the most important objective for a startup for it to stay afloat and be successful. Some customers like good old email, others might prefer chatbots or an SMS with a discount coupon. SendPulse is all about multichannel marketing. Offering various lead generation tools and promotional channels like email, SMS, or social media and messenger chatbots, SendPulse has every base covered. There is even a free CRM tool within the platform. The platform is constantly evolving, adding new features. The latest addition is an Instagram chatbot that apart from usual things can react to subscribers’ stories that mention your brand.

Pricing:

• There is a free plan for almost all major features on the platform, with certain limitations in the functionality.
• Paid plans can be either monthly or with annual payment, usually with a 20% discount.
• Paid plans start at around $7 per month depending on the feature.

20. WiseStamp

WiseStamp is a popular email signature management tool that lets businesses run email-based employee advocacy campaigns on autopilot. With WiseStamp, businesses can centrally create one email signature that is automatically synced to the email addresses of all employees in the organization.

WiseStamp works seamlessly across all the popular email clients, including G Suite, Outlook, Mac Mail, and more. The service offers an easy drag-and-drop interface to create beautiful email signatures in minutes.

Pricing:

• WiseStamp Pro: $5.80/month billed annually
• WiseStamp Teams: $2/user/month billed annually

#5 Finance & Fundraising Tools

Focusing on financial balances is crucial for startups. It is important to understand and record where the revenue is coming from, where it is going, and how the startup will perform in the upcoming months.

Investors admire entrepreneurs who incorporate calculated numbers in their pitch decks. However, you cannot do everything with just a pen and paper. You will need one of the following financial startup tools to accomplish your goals.

21. FounderPass

FounderPass is an all-in-one startup tool designed to assist founders and startups with various aspects of building and managing a business. Whether you need help with legal and financial issues, fundraising, or business development, FounderPass has you covered.

It provides legal and financial tools to help startups save time and money. With FounderPass, you have an access to a library of legal documents and resources, while its financial tools help with budgeting, invoicing, payment processing, and expense tracking.

Also, you get a database of investors and funding sources, fundraising campaign management tools, as well as resources for marketing, sales, and customer development. It includes templates for creating a business plan, pitching investors, and building a customer base.

Pricing:

• Basic Free
• Full Membership at $99 per month

22. Foundersuite 

Foundersuite is an amazing tool to raise capital for your startup. It brings structure, speed, and efficiency in fundraising and investor relationships. It offers a CRM tool for managing your investor funnel, a searchable venture capitalist database, and an Investor Updater tool that helps create monthly progress reports.

It also includes Startup Docs – a comprehensive set of templates and spreadsheets like pitch decks, founders’ agreements; as well as FoundersMarket, which is a set of curated deals on popular products.

Pricing:

• Basic Free
• Silver $44 per month
• Gold $62 per month
• Agent $150 per month

23. Crunchbase 

A leading startup platform for entrepreneurs to explore innovative organizations. It lets you connect with experts and pursue new opportunities together. More than 50 million entrepreneurs, investors, market researchers, and sales professionals trust this tool for startup to make their business decisions. Many startups from all across the world rely on Crunchbase to power their applications.

Crunchbase Pro lets you access any startup, investor, or funding data through their web interface. It offers features like advanced searching, customized lists, personalized alerts, and CSV (Comma-Separated Values) exports. Some big names amongst their customers are Samsung, Honda, Nvidia, Shell, MixPanel and Harvard. It is truly a great tool for entrepreneurs.

Pricing:

• Essential Free
• Pro $29 per month
• Enterprise Custom

24. Gust 

If you want to try out startup tools and resources, Gust is an excellent platform to start, grow, or fund your startup. They help entrepreneurs build investable startups with the assistance of mission-critical business tools, powerful performance benchmarks, and trusted fundraising recommendations.

It provides support during every stage of your startup evolution. When it’s time to raise funds for startup, Gust provides you with the best shot at investment. With over 650,000+ startup owners and 80,000+ investing professionals, they’ll connect you to a startup ecosystem unlike any other.

Pricing:

• Start $175 per year*
• Accelerate $875 per year*
• Raise $4,775 per year*

25. inDinero

It lets you gear up for growth with scalable accounting software and on-demand CFOs (Chief Financial Officers). Their cloud-based solution allows you to scale your startup with the right accounting, tax management, and CFO support whenever you need it.

inDinero combines accounting, taxes, and CFO consultation so that you can enjoy proactive assistance along with real-time visibility of your startup’s performance. You can talk to your on-demand CFO any time you want, access financial data on the cloud, enjoy real-time accounting insights, and maximize your tax savings with ease.

Pricing:

• The Basics $310 per month
• The Essentials $525 per month
• The Next Steps $1300 per month

26. Fresh Books 

It is an all-In-one startup invoicing and accounting software solution. Fresh Books makes your startup bookkeeping fast, convenient, and secure. It automates your financial tasks such as organizing expenses, invoicing, tracking payments and following up with the clientele in just a few clicks.

You can view your financial statuses via Profit and Loss Statements (PLS), taxation summaries and expenditure reports. It can categorize the fees of your credit card transactions and provide a summary against all deposits on its dashboard. You can also integrate it with MailChimp, Paypal, Basecamp, and Zenpayroll.

Pricing:

• Lite $15 per month
• Plus $25 per month
• Premium $50 per month
• Custom pricing for 500+ billable clients

#6 Startup CRM Tools

As soon as you’ve your first few loyal customers, it is the perfect time for your startup to invest in the best CRM tools for a startup. A CRM tool can prove to be a great help for your startup as it frees up so much time which you can spend productively on converting new leads. Some of the best CRM tools for startups are:

27. CRM by Hubspot for Startups 

Hubspot CRM is a great pick for startup owners. Honestly, you don’t need the frills, but you can use assistance with the data entries of your business. HubSpot centralizes your contact list. It helps you by automatically logging customer interactions, and extracting the data from the web to generate information about your potential customers.

Some salient features include:

• Customize Views
• Deal and Task Board
• Hubspot Marketing Synchronization
• Drag and Drop Communicator
• Social Media
• Company Database
• Email Connections
• Sidekick Integration
• CRM Details
• Templates, Tracking, and Scheduling

You can begin by using their free version, which is simple yet powerful. However, if your startup demands additional features, you can always opt for their paid versions. It’s one of the best startup tools available online for entrepreneurs who care about their customers.

Pricing:

• FREE
• STARTER $50 per month
• BASIC $200 per month
• PROFESSIONAL $800 per month
• ENTERPRISE $2,400 per month

28. Intercom Early Stage

Intercom can help you scale your early-stage startup with ease. Its user-friendly products let you acquire, onboard, engage or support your customers in a personalized manner.

You can improve your website conversions with targeted visitor messages and live chat. You can also send behavior-based push and email messages to onboard new clients. It lets you track and segmentize your prospects based on their personas, and the actions they take on your website or the product page.

You can announce new features through personalized in-app messages. By using email and messaging, you’ll get quicker responses, faster resolutions and more satisfied customers.

Pricing:

• Essential $87 per month
• Pro $153 per month
• Premium Custom pricing

29. Salesflare

Salesflare has an amazing integration with both Gmail (including Workspace) and Office 365, gathering a ton of information from your inbox and meetings, tracking email opens and clicks, powering email templates, and offering a handy sidebar that allows you to use Salesflare 100% from your inbox.

Some of our favorite features of Salesflare are:

• Visual, drag-and-drop sales pipelines
• Email and website tracking
• Email signature sync
• Automatically enriched company and contact data
• Email templates and sequences/workflows
• Relationships strength indicators
• Automated reminders to follow up, answer emails,
• Business card scanner
• Out-of-the-box and customizable dashboards

Salesflare’s pricing is simple and fair for startups. Unlike some other CRMs, it won’t cost you an arm and a leg if you want to use all its functionality.

And if you’re an early-stage startup they even offer a big discount, which you can ask for on their live support chat.

Pricing:

• GROWTH $29 per month
• PRO $49 per month
• ENTERPRISE $99 per month

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#7 Startup Design & Development Tools

For someone who’s about to start a startup, things become difficult to a breakdown in terms of design and development. If you take the wrong first step, things may become complicated in the future and it’s difficult to turn back. To refrain from putting yourself in such circumstances, here’s a list of the best design and development tools for startups.

30. Mockplus

Mockplus is a web-based collaborative design tool. With Mockplus, you can create responsive wireframes & prototypes with your team in real-time, using drag-and-drop capabilities.

The application comes with hundreds of ready-to-use components & icons. Using its pencil and pen tools for vector drawing, you can easily create & customize your own components.

Mockplus combines the entire product design workflow process – This app doesn’t just cover design, but also includes team collaboration, handoff & management within an organized system, all you need to use Mockplus is an internet browser.

Pricing:

• Basic: FREE, up to 10 users and 10 projects
• Pro: $7.95/mo, up to 30 users and unlimited projects
• Ultimate: $17.95/mo, unlimited users and projects

31. Logo Design

Logo design is an online logo maker tool to give your new startup a compelling visual identity. The program hosts an extensive gallery of unique logo templates for a huge array of industries. The designs are visually-appealing, fit for varying style tastes, and easily customizable. You don’t have to be a graphic designer to be able to work this tool. By simply clicking on different design features, you can change the logo icon, edit the colors, choose another font, or make tons of other changes available on the customization panel.

In addition to the company name, you can also add your tagline to the logo.

While each template on this tool is designed by a team of professional graphic artists, the tool also allows you to go for custom/premium designs. You can get in touch with their design team and ask for an exclusive logo design.

The website also offers business card designs and printing services for maximum brand exposure.

Pricing:
Currently, the website offers discounted prices on all logo design packages, so we are going to include both rates for your ease.

Logo Design Templates:
Basic:

• Offers only logo design: $78, currently $39

Standard:

• Logo design plus business card design: $114, currently $57

Pro:

• Logo design + business card design + Letterhead + Envelope + T Shirt: $195, currently $97
• Custom Logo Design:
• Professional: $97
• Startup: $167
• Enterprise: $297
• Small Business: $697

32. Unsplash 

Unsplash is one of those startup tools that offer high-resolution stock images so that you can create visually appealing promotions and campaigns for your startup. The world’s most generous community of photographers contributes actively to this platform.

Their huge library of over 1 million stock HD images – and hundreds more being added every day – will certainly let you find the perfect images. You can find inspiration from the new images they hand-pick each day or use their search feature to download precisely what you’re looking for.

Pricing:

• Free to use

33. Canva 

Canva is an online graphic designing tool. It is widely used by many individuals and startups to design social media posts, blog graphics, Twitter headers, Facebook ads, Instagram posts and much more. With a library of more than a million fonts, images,and icons, you can come up with an array of visually appealing content.

Its user interface is quite easy to use. You can select a template, or you can create your own from scratch by using their drag-and-drop features. Graphics or images uploaded by global designers are also available for a small amount of fee.

Pricing:

• Basic Free
• Pro $12.95 per month

34. Visme 

Visme is a powerful design tool for startups that lets you showcase amazing visual stories in presentations, infographics, and other forms of visual content. You can easily translate boring content into stunning visual formats in your web browser.

Pricing:

• Basic Free
• Standard: $19 per month
• Single/Complete: $39 per month
• Team: $117 per month

35. Github

Github is one of the best development software for startups. It’s a great space for development engineers to collaborate and host / review their codes together. They manage a number of projects without compromising on quality while ensuring maximum efficiency. Github is a community of more than 35 million people who share, work and learn together to build better software.

Pricing:

• Free $0 per month
• Pro $7 per month
• Team $9 per month
• Enterprise Custom Pricing

36. WordPress

One of the most popular CMS that requires no introduction is WordPress. This free, open-source content management system is based on PHP and MySQL. Its primary features include a plugin architecture and a template system to build attractive websites.

It offers responsive designing, social sharing, multiple page styles, auto upgrades, and support, a vast variety of widgets and plugins, theme customization, SEO and much more. It is an ideal platform for fresh startups to build their websites and generate online traffic with ease.

Pricing:

• Basic Free
• Personal $5 per month
• Premium $8 per month
• Business $25 per month
• Ecommerce $45 per month

37. Bootstrap Zero

Bootstrap Zero is an array of responsive web templates that help developers make the most out of Bootstrap’s CSS, powerful grid, and other components. Their primary focus is to curate free-to-use templates that can adhere to the best practices to use Bootstrap’s baseline as much as possible. You can find resources that are logically grouped by collection, or you can always browse by popularity, ranked on the judgment of other Bootstrap developers.

Pricing:

• Free to use

38. Jotform Apps

Jotform Apps is a free no-code app builder that lets you add forms, widgets, and branding to a fully custom app that can be downloaded onto any smart device.

Use their intuitive drag and drop interface to add forms and elements to your app. When your app is ready, share it via a link, email, or QR code. Your users can directly download the app onto their devices. Jotform also offers tons of unique templates to help you get a jump start on your app.

Pricing:

• Bronze $24 per month
• Silver $29 per month
• Gold $79 per month

39. Icons8

Background Remover by Icons8 is an AI-based online tool that enables you to remove background from any photo. Unlike other similar products, it’s absolutely free. It won’t ask you to pay for the full-scale result. It will save your time with the bulk upload functionality, which is also free. Background Remover is as simple as a rock and as accurate as a scalpel. Exceptional quality. API for developers.

Pricing:

• Free to use

By and large,

There you have it! A list of the best startup tools curated after thorough research and consideration. Each of the resources in this list is beneficial for startups in keeping their business operations quick, convenient, and efficient. They hold the power to maximize your potential and increase your ROI. But, whichever tool you choose, do make sure that you also use high-speed ecommerce web hosting.

If you use them wisely, you can conveniently flourish your business with better prospects and experience sustainable growth for the many years to come. Just in case if you think I have missed out on any helpful tool or resource, feel free to mention it in the comments section below and help us in making this blog post more resourceful for other curious startup owners.