There’s a lot of technology needed to run a small business smoothly and efficiently these days. The good news is that there are a lot of choices and most of them are remarkably inexpensive.
These are the tools I’ve come to rely on and recommend, based on first-hand, in-the-trenches experience. (Full disclosure: If you click one of these links and sign-up for the service, in some instances I get compensated by the company.)
Ever want to share a file with someone quickly and without worrying about “jamming” your email? Dropbox is your answer. With Dropbox you can create folders on your hard drive that not only allows you to share files with other Dropbox users, but you can access your folders from any computer, your iPad or your phone. And it’s free!
Need to store information in a searchable database and be able to retrieve it no matter where you are? Maybe not, but I do! Evernote to the rescue. I use it to store to-do lists, snippets of code for building websites, lists of books I want to read, anything I need to remember and use later. I can access my information on the web, on my iPhone, iPad or on my hard drive if I’m offline.
I’ve been working with MailChimp for more than 5 years now. All my newsletters and those I manage for clients are done on the MailChimp platform.
Great product, great tech support, nice people and they’re adding new features all the time. If you want a high quality, easy-to-use tool for your own e-mail marketing, this is it.
Pallyy has been a life-saver for me. Staying on top of social media management is not easy, especially when you have more platforms than you can remember. Pallyy makes posting easy by bringing them all into one place.
You can create and upload all of your social media posts, schedule the posting date/time, and it’s published everywhere.
Pallyy has great analytics and you can even reply to your message and comments from one inbox.
If you’re in a business where you need to track your time – check out Toggl. I can track billable and non-billable hours, different rates per client or project and keep all the details straight no matter where I am. And the reporting feature is awesome if you’re wondering where you’re spending your time.
I am a woman with a lot of passwords – my passwords, my clients’ passwords, and occasionally my husband’s passwords. So you can imagine why Bitwarden, an online password manager, is my new best friend.
Once Bitwarden is installed, it tracks your passwords as you login to online accounts and stores and categorizes them. And get this – I can log out of Bitwarden with one click, so, if I leave my computer, no one else can log into my accounts.
I use TidyCal and I love how it integrates with Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. This allows for smooth scheduling and automatic calendar updates when someone books a meeting through TidyCal.
It is has a very user-friendly setup. My clients like it too because they can schedule time with me without all the back and forth emails.