Menu
Menu
If you’re just getting started as a small business owner, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the tools available to help you run your business effectively. While there are plenty of free tools available, how do you know which tools are worth investing in?
As business owners ourselves, we have tried tons of different options! The tools I’m sharing today are our most used and most loved. We use all of these tools daily in our own business. While many of them have free trials or free plans, we do invest in the paid versions of many of them because they are truly invaluable to effectively managing our business!
These are our top business tools to have if you are just starting out as a small business owner.
Disclosure: Wave Social is part of the affiliate network for some of these online tools, so we may receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase through any of our links.
You’ll be shocked at how many features are available to you with their free account! We could write an entire post about the incredible power Canva can have on your business.
Canva’s best features are dependent on your niche. My favorite feature is the ability to create your graphics based on the type of social media post you want to make. Simply choose which platform your graphic will get posted to and it will automatically size it correctly for you.
To make things even better, they share hundreds of free templates that you can use to create graphics in a snap while still using your brand colors, logos, etc. They even have templates for Pinterest Idea Pins!
Canva comes with plenty of stock photos, designs, fonts, and templates, so there is no reason not to try it for free!
Though the free plan is unmatched in the available content, Canva pro increases your options for stock photos, fonts, and designs immensely!
Canva Pro also allows you to create a brand kit, so making creating branded images even faster. You get the option to store a lot more content with Canva Pro as well, which keeps your content organized.
Some other features of Canva Pro that we love:
The most important investment we made when we started our business was developing a process for everything we needed to do to run it successfully. We learned quickly that even simple tasks can be truly complicated once you start to think about every piece of the puzzle.
Airtable was integral to keeping our most complicated tasks organized. We currently use it to organize content, posts, and Pins for all of our Wave partners.
You’ll love Airtable because it’s intuitive and user-friendly. If you’ve ever used Google Sheets or Excel, you’ll be able to navigate its basic functions with no problem. It has a lot of the same functionality as Sheets, but it’s a lot more high-tech and colorful. Bonus, unlike Google Sheets you can actually create an incredibly laid out and organized table and do it without having to know any formulas!
There is plenty to help you stay organized with the free plan. Each “base”, which is similar to a project), can have up to 1,200 table entries. Unless you’re managing a lot of content or products, you can probably get by with the free plan.
If you want to use Airtable for storing attachments, we would recommend upgrading. The other great options when you upgrade are the creation of powerful forms you can share with clients, page creation, integration of apps, and automated workflows. If you’re managing a team, upgrading is a great idea.
We could go on and on about how much we love Tailwind (in fact, we already have!). We love that Tailwind recently changed its pricing structure to let everyone have a free account forever. You can unlock all the power of automating your Instagram, Pinterest, and very soon Facebook posts in one place for free.
The biggest limitation of the free plan is the number of allowed posts per month. We strongly recommend posting daily on all forms of social media, especially Pinterest. Once you have enough content to be doing that consistently, you’ll probably find that you’re running out of your monthly post allotments quickly. To keep up the momentum you’ve built with the free plan, we recommend upgrading to a higher tier.
If you post to Instagram, using hashtags is an important way to find new followers. But how do you know which ones to use? Hashtag Stack makes it really easy.
Type one word into the search bar, then get hundreds of related hashtags to use! You can even let the AI choose for you. The tool will copy the hashtags in the perfect format. All you have to do is paste it into your description.
It’s kind of hard to believe this one is completely free because it’s so incredible!
No need! Hashtag Stack is totally free to use. If you want to save your hashtag collection for later, just make a free account.
Try Hashtag Stack for free here!
As a social media agency that creates with a Pinterest First mindset, we are obviously smitten with Pinterest. We’ve covered this at length here. If you are a creator, small business, or brand, there isn’t a better place to do it than on Pinterest!
While Pinterest is completely free, you might eventually want to run an ad campaign or promote a Pin. There are plenty of reasons why doing so on Pinterest might be an investment that yields a return, but we don’t personally recommend doing this until you’re already getting great traffic from the app.
If that’s something you’re still struggling with, check out the next tool.
Check out Pinterest for Business here!
There is a huge difference between using Pinterest as a user and as a business. Marketing yourself with Pinterest is a game-changer, but it isn’t a quick fix. You can’t expect overnight success. There are however many specific steps you can take to set yourself up for success with Pinterest. Doing so will help you increase traffic to your website so you are consistently getting new leads without having to work so hard.
Pin Potential is very different from other Pinterest training because owner and creator, Meagan Williamson, understands using Pinterest from a marketing perspective. Not only will she teach you how to market your business with Pinterest, but she will also give you personal feedback and coaching to ensure that you find growth.
Although Pin Potential is a paid membership, Meagan runs free Pinterest challenges a few times each year. Even without investing in Pin Potential, she still offers plenty of amazing content to help you grow your business online with Pinterest marketing through the challenge.
Sign up for the next free Pinterest Challenge here!
While the free challenge WILL help you grow your audience, there is no match for the Pin Potential program! It is simply the best way to learn how to market yourself online if you’re unable to hire a Pinterest manager.
When you become a member at Pin Potential, you get access to:
Get on the waitlist for the next Pin Potential opening here!
The reasons we love Google Workspace and the same reasons you are probably already using Google for your email and calendar: everything you need is in one place with one sign-on. In fact, by being logged into your Google account, you can sign in to just about anything without having to remember a million passwords. Hello, time-saver.
Google accounts are completely free with limited storage, so for a new business owner, there might be no reason to upgrade to the paid version at first.
The decision to upgrade was a no-brainer for us. The investment is relatively small and upgrading to a paid plan gives you access to more storage and more options for managing your organization.
Most importantly, upgrading gives you the ability to have an organization-specific email address which is really important if you’re trying to build an email list or just bring a sense of legitimacy to your business.
The ability to work on documents or have group calendars is another great feature. This is an extremely helpful organizational tool to make sure that even remote workers are on the same page. This is a one-stop shop that combines employee information, document storage, productivity tools, calendars, online meeting tools, and so much more.
Lastly, Google Workspace will help you create a free website if you don’t have one already.
Learn more about Google Workspace here.
According to dictionary.com, roughly 65% of people are bothered by misspellings or grammar errors. Grammarly will help keep your typos at bay.
Grammarly gives you spellcheck on every page of the internet. You can have peace of mind knowing that the very important email you sent or the sales page on your website is free from errors.
One of our favorite features: The app even gives you feedback about your tone so you can avoid sounding too casual when responding to an important email.
While the free version is plenty powerful, some amazing features are unlocked by upgrading to the paid plan. If you want advanced feedback on your writing, do a lot of writing in your business, or just don’t feel confident in your writing abilities, Grammarly‘s paid version might be valuable.
With the paid plan, you get suggestions about:
The online version of small business Quickbooks was built for small business owners. If you have an accounting need, Quickbooks definitely has a feature for it!
For service-based businesses, we love the ability to send invoices based on hourly rates. You can also set up recurring invoices with plenty of payment options so you’ll never miss a payday again. If you’re a product-based business, you can manage inventory too.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a free version of Quickbooks, but they do offer a 30-day free trial! We promise it’s worth the investment!
Get your free 30-day free trial here.
There are thousands of incredible online tools to support your growing business available for small business owners. We’re sure we missed some good ones! What tool are you using that you can’t live without? Let us know in the comments.
👋 whitney + allie, wave co-founders
disclosure: wave social is part of the affiliate network for some of these online tools and products, so we may receive a small commission if you purchase through any of our links.
7 Responses
Love Canva Pro, Pin Potential and Airtable! Is Google workspace the same with G Suites?
Great questions! They actually changed the name of GSuite to be more consistent with what it was used for. It’s the same thing, just rebranded 🙂
Very interesting post! Thank you.
Great tips! I used 5 out of the 7 you recommended! Need to find out about Hashtag stack!
You’ll love it! It’s really easy to use and super helpful. Really cuts down time on Instagram caption writing.
OMG so much good information here!!! Saving this!
So glad you learned something new. Let us know if you have any questions. We are super familiar with all mentioned platforms.