Part of the challenge of running a small business is finding the right tools and resources for your needs. Unfortunately, the ideal ones can become expensive, especially if you’re working with a limited budget.
The key is to find the right tools at the appropriate price. Fortunately, dozens of resources are out there for small businesses to use at no charge, and if you find and use them, your firm will run more efficiently.
Ideally, they will free up your time so you can be more productive by focusing on the tasks that will generate more income, rather than the routine maintenance. Take a look at seven free tools currently available for small business owners.
- Google Calendar
Staying on top of your meetings, appointments, and other essential events means staying organized. If you use Google office calendar, you’ll have the option to streamline your workflow by placing a record of all your events in one place.
You can sync them to your other devices and set up the necessary reminders, which enables you to collaborate seamlessly with all the members of your team.
- Mailchimp
An email list can be a huge resource when you set out to build your client list. It will give you the ability to stay in direct contact with your customers and inform them of upcoming sales and product launches, as well as to create an email funnel that can generate more revenue for your business.
Mailchimp offers a free version of its platform. Anyone who signs up can send up to 10,000 emails per month to a maximum of 2,000 contacts.
If you’re just starting, this is more than enough. As your business and email list expand, Mailchimp’s pricing is comfortably affordable.
- Canva
Gone are the days when you needed extensive knowledge of Adobe Suite to create quality content. Canva offers free image and video content creation for your website, social media, and other print marketing activities.
Although the firm does offer a paid version that gives you more access to templates and graphics, the free version is typically more than sufficient for a small business owner. It’s also incredibly user-friendly, so you won’t have to possess much background in design to navigate the platform.
- Buffer
Small business owners wear a lot of hats, so they’re constantly looking for ways to save time. Social media can easily become a full-time undertaking for your business, but it doesn’t have to be.
With Buffer, you may schedule your content on a variety of platforms. After you’ve done that, you only have to spend a day or two per month creating the content and scheduling it.
The only thing you’ll have to do thereafter is check in on notifications and engage for a few minutes throughout the day with current and potential customers who comment on your materials.
- Google Docs
If you have a Gmail account, you already enjoy full access to dozens of Google’s amazing software programs. Google Docs is a free online office suite that provides access to documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and much more from almost anywhere.
All your documents will automatically save to the cloud within minutes through Google Drive. With your account, you’re guaranteed 15 GB of storage. Upgrading to 100 GB costs only $1.99 a month, so it’s incredibly affordable to upgrade if you need to.
- Google Meet
We might be a little biased, but Google once again comes in with a competitive option that’s free of charge. Since the pandemic, more companies have switched to working remotely, which means at least some of their meetings are being conducted virtually.
Through Google Meet, you can support up to 250 participants and 100,000 live-stream viewers. Zoom, the major competitor, can host only 100 participants on their basic free account for up to 40 minutes at a time.
- Slack
Staying in touch with your employees isn’t just about meeting remotely. It often requires ongoing communication as well: sharing documents and staying updated on the latest activities in real time.
Slack is by far the best free option for messaging, file sharing, and archiving data. It integrates with more than 1,500 external applications and services.
Summary
Starting your own business can be an expensive undertaking. You should get smart about where you can deploy free tools that improve your workflow. The seven cited above only skim the surface of all the free options that are available.
This is Rohan, I’m a Digital marketing Expert, Full time Content Writer and founder of BoxerTechnology.com I can help people across the world through my articles. I am sharing the latest stories from companies like Apple, Samsung, Google, and Amazon.