Operating a digital business doesn\u2019t require multi-thousand-dollar enterprise solutions. For businesses both small and large, there are plenty of tools to choose from that help manage, automate, market, and secure your operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This list of business tools encompasses some of the internet\u2019s top choices for daily tasks you\u2019ll be faced with when running a business. The tools on this list are aimed at smaller businesses that are looking for workflow solutions with lower or affordable price points. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Notion<\/a> is a productivity tool that goes beyond what most people expect from a project management solution. It can be used by individuals or businesses, as it\u2019s designed to track tasks, to-dos, meetings, and more. If you have a team that you delegate tasks to, even if it\u2019s small, Notion can be a great tool to work with.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of its newest features is AI meeting summaries and note-taking that saves time while keeping records of what\u2019s discussed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ClickUp<\/a> is a project management tool aiming to be an all-in-one solution for managing tasks, communicating with co-workers, and documenting work. ClickUp runs in your web browser but has plenty of tools depending on your organization structure, including a board that can be used for Kanban or Scrum, Gantt charts, and even a video call platform entirely within ClickUp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their goal is to centralize your communication within your organization, rather than splitting it among intra-office chat, email, and other platforms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Slack<\/a> is primarily known as a team messaging platform where you and your company can stay up to date on different topics and subtopics, depending on how you organize your business. For example, you can create a channel all about email marketing and add users relevant to that area. Slack also integrates with other programs like Google Drive and Salesforce.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monday<\/a> is a platform that offers both enterprise and small business solutions for its suite of management tools. It\u2019s popular with marketing and agile teams, as it organizes tasks into larger campaigns with members and associated sub-tasks.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond the project management tools you\u2019d expect, Monday also stores contacts and lead information, which can keep your marketing team\u2019s work in a central hub. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Google Workspace<\/a> is a popular suite of tools that includes Docs for document editing, Sheets for spreadsheets, Slides for presentations, and more. The main benefit of using Google Workspace is its collaborative nature: All documents, spreadsheets, and files are stored in the cloud, which means your team can work on the same files simultaneously without version control headaches (though there are settings that allow you to access files while offline).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This means that files can be updated, altered, or edited freely without any fear of not having the most recent version. You can also ensure that certain members of your organization have access to folders that will always contain the files that they need. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Gemini is Google’s AI assistant built directly into Google Workspace. It can summarize documents, answer questions about your files, draft content in Docs, analyze data in Sheets, and help generate presentations in Slides, all without leaving your workspace. Since Gemini is native to Google Workspace, it has seamless access to your files and can work across your entire suite of tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although Google Drive is part of the Google Workspace, we\u2019d like to highlight the functionality of Drive for storing and sharing files. A Google Drive account allows you to upload files for storage in the Google cloud. You can then access those files from any device that\u2019s logged into a Google account that has access to the file you uploaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegate access to files, update or remove them, and Google Drive will have a history of what changed and when. It offers organization as well as redundancy and works well with some of the project management tools we listed before. You can also use Gemini to search across your Drive files, extract insights from documents, or get quick answers about your stored content without manually opening each file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An alternative to Google Drive, Dropbox<\/a> is another cloud storage solution that offers a similar solution without being tied to a Google account. Dropbox is a popular solution for organizations that deal with larger files, such as videos.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dropbox is also expanding its capabilities beyond just cloud storage, as it now offers task scheduling and even AI integration, allowing you to have AI assistants review Dropbox files. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The PDF is a popular file format<\/a> because it preserves formatting settings across devices and programs. However, PDFs can be tricky to edit and work with once created. PDF.Live has a host of editing and management tools so you can easily alter and modify PDFs that you\u2019ve created or received, without needing the native program that created the original. <\/p>\n\n\n\n PDF.Live allows you to sign documents, convert PDFs to other formats, merge multiple PDFs, create fillable forms, and more. It also has a cloud storage dashboard<\/a> that stores PDFs that you\u2019ve edited before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most flexible AI assistants to date, ChatGPT<\/a> is a generative AI tool that can automate tasks that would otherwise take you lots of extra time. Like Claude, it can read and review information from Google Workspace and Slack. ChatGPT can also quickly summarize documents, emails, images, and videos, and create basic reports based on data that you give it. ChatGPT is continually evolving with more capabilities like image and presentation generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ChatGPT also integrates with many other tools and can easily decipher information in multiple data formats. This thumbnail description of ChatGPT doesn\u2019t do it justice \u2014 it is continually evolving with more capabilities like image and presentation generation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n An alternative AI assistant, Claude’s<\/a> main selling point is its integration with some of the other tools we listed. Claude can read and review information from Google Workspace and Slack, search the web for current information, and present findings directly within those platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Claude’s integrations are powerful, so you should definitely check them out if you plan on using some of the other tools on this list. There’s a good chance that Claude can save time on routine tasks across any connected software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Canva<\/a> is a suite of visual tools designed for small businesses that may not have dedicated graphic designers for improving their social media or video content. Canva can be used to create brochures, website graphics, email marketing templates, and any other visual content that you need.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Canva is especially popular for creating marketing material, as it gives suggestions on templating outreach as well as helps design clothing and brand merchandise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Small business websites can look generic or unappealing (usually because of a lack of resources), and Wix<\/a> is designed to assist in creating a personalized website that fits the needs of your business. Beyond templates for website layouts, Wix also helps you set up functionality in areas like eCommerce, blogging, restaurant menu\/reservations, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking of eCommerce, many B2C small businesses use Shopify<\/a> as a platform for selling their products. Shopify allows businesses to build pages to host their inventories and then connect to other popular marketplaces for selling. It also integrates product pages with other sites so that you can post and advertise direct links to your inventory.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ahrefs<\/a> is an SEO tool that acknowledges that the future of organic search is intertwined with AI. Their platform is designed to help your business understand what kinds of keywords your website content is ranking for in search engines like Google as well as generative AI. Ahrefs provides insights into how visible your content is to LLMs, provides analytics on how your website is crawled, and helps you build new content with AI tools.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n SEMrush<\/a> is the classic SEO tool that\u2019s still worth mentioning today. It was originally designed for researching keywords. In the nearly 20 years since then, SEMrush has evolved to analyze competitors, analyze the market, analyze links, create content and track AI visibility. It tracks how your brand appears across AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, classifying mentions as positive or general and monitoring how sentiment changes over time. The tool also lets you see which topics competitors are mentioned for and optimize your content to earn more AI visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\nClickUp<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Slack<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Monday<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Core Operations<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Google Workspace<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Document Sharing\/Management<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Google Drive<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Dropbox<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
PDF.Live<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
AI Tools<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
ChatGPT<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Claude<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Marketing<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Canva<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Wix <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Shopify<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
SEO<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ahrefs<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
SEMrush<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Security<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1Password<\/h3>\n\n\n\n