Over our years of help­ing small web­sites and com­pa­nies grow and com­pete with the big guys, we’ve learned that the right busi­ness tools can make a huge dif­fer­ence in their success. 

Whether you are look­ing for some­thing to help you with email mar­ket­ing, cus­tomer sup­port, cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment, or some­thing else, there are plen­ty of plu­g­ins and soft­ware options that can fit the bill.

That’s why we’ve done the research and put togeth­er a huge list of the best busi­ness tools for small busi­ness­es. We’ve bro­ken down every­thing into dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories so that you can find the best options for your needs.

Quick Pick: The Best Business Tools for Small Business

Tool	Cat­e­go­ry	Price	Free Tri­al
Con­stant Contact	Email Mar­ket­ing	$12 per month	Yes
Nex­ti­va	Busi­ness Phone	$14.95 per month per user	Yes
Groove	Live Chat & Support	$16 per per­son per month	Yes
Gus­to	HR & Payroll	$40 per month, plus $6 per month per addi­tion­al user	No
Hub­Spot CRM	CRM	$90 per month per seat	Yes

How We Test and Review Business Tools

Here’s how we reviewed dif­fer­ent small busi­ness tools for this guide: 

1. Real-World Expe­ri­ence: At WPBe­gin­ner, we active­ly run small busi­ness­es of our own. We’re involved in start­ing new projects and man­ag­ing exist­ing web­sites, so we’ve used and test­ed these tools exten­sive­ly our­selves. We ensure that they meet our high stan­dards of reli­a­bil­i­ty and ease of use. 
2. Com­pre­hen­sive Research: We per­form our own ded­i­cat­ed research to stay up-to-date on the lat­est devel­op­ments in each cat­e­go­ry. We reg­u­lar­ly update our rec­om­men­da­tions accord­ing­ly, hold­ing each tool to a high standard. 
3. User Feed­back: We’ve combed through var­i­ous third-par­ty sites and even per­formed polls for users to see how they enjoy using these tools. 

Why Trust WPBeginner?

Why Do You Need the Best Small Business Tools? 

Run­ning a busi­ness is no small feat. Luck­i­ly, there’s a wealth of online tools avail­able to stream­line your work­flow and ease your bur­den. Choos­ing the right ones can feel over­whelm­ing, though.

At WPBe­gin­ner, we’ve been test­ing and refin­ing our top picks for years, keep­ing pace with the ever-evolv­ing mar­ket. We’ve nar­rowed down our favorites to a curat­ed list across var­i­ous categories.

How­ev­er, it can be a chore to fig­ure out which is the right tool for your business. 

Here are just a few rea­sons to add some of these small busi­ness tools to your repertoire. 

• Increased Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty: The right tools stream­line busi­ness process­es, auto­mate repet­i­tive tasks, and enhance over­all effi­cien­cy. This leads to increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty among your team mem­bers, allow­ing them to focus on more strate­gic and val­ue-added activities.
• Improved Col­lab­o­ra­tion: Many small busi­ness tools come with col­lab­o­ra­tion fea­tures that facil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion and team­work. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant in mod­ern work envi­ron­ments where remote or dis­persed teams are com­mon. Col­lab­o­ra­tion tools enhance com­mu­ni­ca­tion, file shar­ing, and task man­age­ment.
• Enhanced Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence: Tools such as a CRM (Cus­tomer Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment) sys­tem help busi­ness­es man­age cus­tomer inter­ac­tions, track leads, and pro­vide per­son­al­ized services. 
• Data-Dri­ven Deci­sion Mak­ing: Soft­ware with ana­lyt­ics and report­ing capa­bil­i­ties pro­vides valu­able insights into busi­ness per­for­mance and cus­tomer jour­ney. With accu­rate data at your fin­ger­tips, you can make informed deci­sions, iden­ti­fy trends, and adjust strate­gies to align with your busi­ness goals.
• Time and Cost Sav­ings: Automa­tion tools can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the time spent on man­u­al tasks, sav­ing both time and mon­ey. You may have lim­it­ed resources, so soft­ware that auto­mates activ­i­ties allows you to allo­cate resources more efficiently. 

That said, it’s time to cov­er the best busi­ness tools for small busi­ness­es. Feel free to use the links below to jump to any sec­tion you need a solu­tion for: 

Email Marketing

Every busi­ness needs to build an email list. Sure, you could keep in touch with your cus­tomers via social media, but you don’t own the audi­ence there. 

An email list is some­thing you own and can con­tin­u­al­ly con­tact cus­tomers or leads anytime. 

That’s why you need an email mar­ket­ing ser­vice. These ser­vices allow you to send bulk auto­mat­ed emails to your sub­scribers. Not only that, you can seg­ment users into groups, track their per­for­mance, and cre­ate mar­ket­ing workflows. 

1. Constant Contact 

Con­stant Con­tact is the most begin­ner-friend­ly and fastest-grow­ing email mar­ket­ing ser­vice out there. It boasts an impres­sive 97% deliv­er­abil­i­ty rate and offers a hand­ful of time-sav­ing automa­tion that every small busi­ness could use. 

Out of the many email ser­vice providers we’ve tried, we real­ly like the user inter­face. From the moment you make your account, Con­stant Con­tact guides you through their sim­ple process. You can cre­ate email newslet­ters, social media posts, land­ing pages, and events in minutes. 

One of Con­stant Contact’s most unique aspects is its abil­i­ty to seg­ment the audi­ence based on engage­ment lev­el. Sure, it’s got all the stan­dard seg­men­ta­tions, such as divid­ing con­tacts by loca­tion, mem­ber­ship, sales, email activ­i­ty, and more. 

That said, Con­stant Con­tact lets you seg­ment your audi­ence into four cat­e­gories: most engaged, some­what engaged, least engaged, and every­one else. For exam­ple, your most engaged cus­tomers could be your most loy­al sub­scribers, to whom you can send upsell or cross-sell promotions.

Pric­ing: Plans start at $12 per month. If you need more stor­age, users, and advanced fea­tures, there are also high­er-tiered plans.

Pros:

• Very afford­able pricing 
• It offers pow­er­ful inte­gra­tions such as Face­book ads and eCom­merce platforms. 
• Con­stant Con­tact offers 200+ tem­plates to fit your needs. 

Cons:

• No advanced dynam­ic tags.

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Con­stant Con­tact: You can’t go wrong with Con­stant Con­tact as it’s good at just about every­thing. We espe­cial­ly like that they offer real­ly out­stand­ing cus­tomer sup­port via live chat, email, phone calls, and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, along with a large library of help­ful resources. That way, you’ll always get your ques­tions answered. 

2. Brevo

Bre­vo, for­mer­ly known as Send­in­blue, is an email and SMS mar­ket­ing soft­ware per­fect for small businesses. 

One of the best things about Bre­vo is that you receive unlim­it­ed email lists and con­tacts no mat­ter which plan you choose. With con­tact seg­men­ta­tion, you can eas­i­ly tar­get small­er groups and engage them with rel­e­vant content. 

Their advanced plans go well beyond just email mar­ket­ing. They offer a sales CRM, live chat, land­ing page builder, and Face­book Ads inte­gra­tion. That means that for the price you are pay­ing, you’re get­ting a lot more val­ue than most email mar­ket­ing ser­vices can offer. 

Bre­vo is also known for high deliv­er­abil­i­ty, guar­an­tee­ing up to 97%. That’s because they sup­port many set­up options, includ­ing email API, SMTP relay, web­hook, and plu­g­in. This means you can send bulk emails and have more con­trol over your batch sends. 

Pric­ing: Bre­vo is free to get start­ed. How­ev­er, their Starter plan begins at $25 per month and has unlim­it­ed contacts. 

Pros:

• You will receive access to an unlim­it­ed num­ber of con­tacts on any plan.
• A built-in CRM app is included. 
• You can send advanced automa­tion cam­paigns based on list-based behaviors. 

Cons:

• You have to pay for a high­er-tiered plan to get access to more advanced report­ing features. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Bre­vo: We like Bre­vo as an all-in-one mar­ket­ing automa­tion soft­ware that can do a lit­tle bit of every­thing. For instance, you can send time­ly SMS mes­sages to pro­mote your prod­ucts and per­son­al­ize them accordingly. 

3. Drip

Drip is the best email mar­ket­ing ser­vice for advanced users, espe­cial­ly for busi­ness­es look­ing to deliv­er hyper-per­son­al­ized cam­paigns to their audience. 

One of Drip’s stand­out fea­tures is its abil­i­ty to cre­ate seam­less work­flow automa­tion. The visu­al work­flow builder makes it easy to visu­al­ize and cus­tomize user journeys. 

When build­ing your work­flows, there are intu­itive trig­ger options based on page vis­i­tors, tags, and oth­er on-site behav­iors that start the flow. Then, choose from dozens of actions to build the desired automa­tion sequence. 

If you’re run­ning an online store, Drip offers inte­gra­tions for WooCom­merce, Big­Com­merce, and Shopi­fy. That allows you to send strate­gi­cal­ly seg­ment­ed cam­paigns to vis­i­tors and cus­tomers. For exam­ple, there are tem­plates for just about every­thing, includ­ing cart aban­don­ment emails and workflows. 

Pric­ing: Pric­ing starts at $39 per month for up to 2,500 peo­ple on your email list. The price increas­es the more sub­scribers you have. All plans come with a 14-day free trial. 

Pros:

• Drip has plen­ty of merge tags that dynam­i­cal­ly replace con­tent with­in an email based on the info you’ve col­lect­ed in your con­tact or lead forms.
• You can A/B split test automa­tion work­flows to see which one per­forms bet­ter and ulti­mate­ly pro­vides the best con­ver­sion rates. 
• It offers an eCom­merce rev­enue attri­bu­tion fea­ture, so you know exact­ly how much rev­enue is gen­er­at­ed from your email mar­ket­ing campaigns. 

Cons:

• Some learn­ing curve is involved. For exam­ple, there are count­less Liq­uid tags to learn about, which can be a lot of infor­ma­tion if you’re used to using sim­pler email mar­ket­ing services. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Drip: At WPBe­gin­ner, we switched from MailChimp to Drip large­ly because of its more advanced seg­men­ta­tion and per­son­al­iza­tion fea­tures. That allows us to send more rel­e­vant and tar­get­ed cam­paigns to our readers. 

For a more in-depth list of our favorite providers, check out our blog on the best email mar­ket­ing ser­vices for small busi­ness­es.

Business Phone

While adding your mobile num­ber to your Word­Press site might seem con­ve­nient, it’s unpro­fes­sion­al and expos­es your per­son­al privacy.

That’s why you want to get a vir­tu­al busi­ness phone num­ber and use a ded­i­cat­ed busi­ness phone ser­vice. This is a secure and pro­fes­sion­al solu­tion. It allows you to:

• Make calls over the inter­net: Elim­i­nate expen­sive phone bills.
• Use call for­ward­ing, rout­ing, and record­ing: Enhance team col­lab­o­ra­tion and cap­ture valu­able cus­tomer interactions.
• Track call met­rics: Gain insights into wait times, hold times, and call dura­tion to opti­mize your cus­tomer ser­vice strategy.

In essence, a busi­ness phone ser­vice is essen­tial for any busi­ness that wants to improve cus­tomer ser­vice and effec­tive­ly man­age inbound and out­bound calls.

4. Nextiva

Nex­ti­va is the best busi­ness phone ser­vice, and it makes it easy to man­age com­mu­ni­ca­tion between you and your customers. 

The phone ser­vice is high­ly effi­cient and reli­able, and you get help­ful fea­tures beyond voice call­ing. There are plen­ty of fea­tures your call team can take advan­tage of, such as advanced call rout­ing, voice­mail to email and text, unlim­it­ed free domes­tic call­ing, text mes­sages, and more. 

Nex­ti­va offers a trea­sure trove of data to help sup­port your deci­sion-mak­ing. You get crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion such as talk time, net pro­mote score, first-time res­o­lu­tion rate, etc. Call cen­ter and sales team man­agers can eas­i­ly inter­pret the data and come up with solu­tions to bet­ter improve performance. 

If you’re using a tra­di­tion­al land­line office phone sys­tem, Nex­ti­va makes it easy to tran­si­tion to a VoIP sys­tem. That means you can run your calls over the inter­net rather than com­plex land­lines. They work with a vari­ety of VoIP phones, head­sets, and oth­er call devices. 

Pric­ing: Nex­ti­va pric­ing starts at $14.95 per month per user for unlim­it­ed voice calling. 

Pros:

• Nex­ti­va pro­vides 99.99% uptime for excel­lent reliability. 
• They offer 24/7 cus­tomer sup­port, so you always get the help you need.
• It’s an all-in-one phone sys­tem with a wide range of fea­tures to han­dle both out­bound, inbound, and inter­nal team communication. 

Cons:

• Some­what pri­cy, but the val­ue is def­i­nite­ly there for what you pay for. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Nex­ti­va: Nex­ti­va gives you every­thing you need to han­dle com­mu­ni­ca­tion in your busi­ness. They offer a com­pre­hen­sive set of VoIP ser­vice fea­tures that help you take your cus­tomer ser­vice to the next lev­el. That way, your agents can work effi­cient­ly, and your cus­tomers can get their issues resolved quickly. 

5. RingCentral

Ring­Cen­tral is an afford­able alter­na­tive to Ring­Cen­tral that offers high-qual­i­ty busi­ness phone ser­vices. Despite its cost-effec­tive price, it doesn’t skimp out on quality. 

With the entry plan, you get unlim­it­ed calls and texts, team mes­sag­ing, file shar­ing, and oth­er basic fea­tures you need. For small­er teams of 20 peo­ple or less, the $20 per user per month price point is a great deal. 

We like the call rout­ing capa­bil­i­ties, which allow you to direct callers to var­i­ous depart­ments and exten­sions. You can cre­ate and man­age cus­tom answer­ing rules to ensure you get callers to the right peo­ple. You can even route the most impor­tant calls direct­ly to your mobile device. 

Pric­ing: Plans start at $20 per user per month, billed annu­al­ly. Pric­ing varies depend­ing on num­ber of users and fea­tures available. 

Pros:

• Ring­Cen­tral comes with video meet­ings, team mes­sag­ing, and screen sharing. 
• It inte­grates with use­ful tools like Google Work­space and Microsoft, so you can eas­i­ly con­nect data across platforms. 
• You can enjoy a user-friend­ly inter­face that allows you to eas­i­ly under­stand where and how to use all of its features. 

Cons:

• You need to pay for the high­er-priced tiers to get access to Inter­ac­tive Voice Response (IVR) menu options. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Ring­Cen­tral: Ring­Cen­tral is a good begin­ner-friend­ly option for small busi­ness­es just get­ting start­ed with phone ser­vices. It lacks a few advanced capa­bil­i­ties that Nex­ti­va has but gives you all the essen­tial fea­tures need­ed for any busi­ness phone service. 

6. Ooma

Ooma is one of the top VoIP providers for small busi­ness­es. It offers vir­tu­al num­bers, col­lab­o­ra­tion tools, call for­ward­ing, voice mail, and more. It’s great for small busi­ness­es with­out IT teams because it pro­vides every­thing you need in an easy-to-use way. 

Ooma fea­tures a vir­tu­al recep­tion­ist fea­ture, which is great for direct­ing calls for your small busi­ness. You can eas­i­ly set up a cus­tom greet­ing, pro­vide a menu of options that guides callers to the right depart­ments, and send them to var­i­ous exten­sions. It also helps to reduce the call load and aver­age wait times, which your cus­tomers will appreciate. 

Every Ooma plan has a mobile app so that your agents can eas­i­ly answer or make calls while on the go. You can do all the impor­tant tasks, such as check­ing your voice­mail, review­ing stats, and more. 

That said, when com­par­ing Nex­ti­va vs. Ring­Cen­tral and Ooma, this ser­vice isn’t ide­al for call cen­ters since it doesn’t sup­port desk and con­fer­ence phones. 

Pric­ing: Plans begin at $19.95 per month per user. No con­tract is nec­es­sary, so you won’t be tied to a year-long commitment. 

Pros:

• Ooma offers unlim­it­ed domes­tic call­ing in the US, Puer­to Rico, Mex­i­co, and Canada. 
• Pric­ing is rel­a­tive­ly affordable. 
• Easy to use mobile app. 

Cons:

• Miss­ing a few advanced fea­tures unless you upgrade to the high­er plans. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Ooma: We like Ooma because it’s ready to use out-of-the-box. It requires zero tech­ni­cal instal­la­tion, and just about every­thing is already con­fig­ured when installed. They use an auto-con­fig­u­ra­tion tech­nol­o­gy that auto­mat­i­cal­ly detects all the set­tings need­ed for your sys­tem to work. 

You may want to also check out our full list of the best busi­ness phone ser­vices for small busi­ness­es.

Live Chat & Support 

Live chat soft­ware is a tool that helps con­nect cus­tomers to an actu­al human sup­port rep­re­sen­ta­tive so that you can resolve their issues in real time. That way, your cus­tomers can get the answers they’re look­ing for quickly. 

They’ll spend less time sift­ing through your knowl­edge base and wait­ing to find a solution. 

This goes hand-in-hand with your busi­ness phone ser­vices. By offer­ing live chats on your web­site, you pro­vide a more omnichan­nel cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, reduc­ing your call load and aver­age han­dling time. 

7. Groove

Groove is a pop­u­lar help desk soft­ware used by big brands like Hub­Spot, App­Sumo, AT&T, and CloudApp. 

It offers all the essen­tial fea­tures a small busi­ness needs to deliv­er fast and respon­sive cus­tomer ser­vice. These include a knowl­edge base builder, shared inbox, col­lab­o­ra­tion and report­ing tools, and live chat support. 

Using Groove, we quick­ly real­ized how acces­si­ble the soft­ware feels. Think of it like a sim­ple inbox that man­ages all cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tion in one place. Each con­ver­sa­tion can be assigned to spe­cif­ic team mem­bers, so it’s clear who’s respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing each con­ver­sion. Even bet­ter, you can label and assign agents to con­ver­sa­tions based on cer­tain con­di­tions, such as depart­ment or type of inquiry. 

Stick­ing to the theme of sim­plic­i­ty, Groove makes report­ing as easy to under­stand as pos­si­ble. Rather than giv­ing you a ton of ana­lyt­ics that may con­fuse small busi­ness­es, they stick to the most impor­tant options. 

For exam­ple, some of the met­rics include response time, agent per­for­mance, busiest times, cus­tomer feed­back, num­ber of cus­tomers helped, and num­ber of resolutions. 

Pric­ing: Starts at $16 per user per month, billed annu­al­ly. There is also a free tri­al available. 

Pros:

• Groove inte­gra­tions with the most pop­u­lar busi­ness tools like Shopi­fy, Slack, and Mailchimp. 
• The knowl­edge base builder is cus­tomiz­able, and there are time-sav­ing AI writ­ing tools to help you quick­ly cre­ate sup­port articles. 
• Live chat lets you deliv­er fast ser­vice to customers

Cons:

• Groove isn’t the most cus­tomiz­able in terms of lay­outs and themes. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Groove: Groove ranks as our top choice based on its val­ue and ease of use. The entire sys­tem is easy to adopt, so you can bet­ter man­age your sup­port reps with­out hav­ing to spend a lot of time train­ing them on how to use the software. 

8. Heroic Inbox 

Hero­ic Inbox is the best Word­Press-pow­ered help desk and cus­tomer sup­port mar­ket in the mar­ket. It allows you to eas­i­ly man­age cus­tomer emails and sup­port tick­ets right with­in your Word­Press site. 

This can stream­line work­flow by keep­ing all sup­port-relat­ed tasks in one place so you can respond to cus­tomer inquiries faster. 

After test­ing the inbox, we found that it comes with all the fea­tures you’ll need to man­age sup­port emails. For instance, you can cre­ate canned respons­es, add notes to con­ver­sa­tions, track your tick­et his­to­ry, and assign mes­sages to team members. 

Best of all, it pulls mul­ti­ple inbox­es into one place. Chances are, you may have var­i­ous inbox­es to respond to, such as sales, sup­port, cus­tomer ser­vice, and part­ner­ships. This allows you to ensure that an impor­tant mes­sage is nev­er missed. 

If you want to add knowl­edge base capa­bil­i­ties, then you’ll sim­ply need to down­load Hero­ic KB, which gives you the abil­i­ty to add a search­able knowl­edge base to your website. 

Pric­ing: Starts at $199.50 per year. 

Pros:

• Man­ages cus­tomer ser­vice inquiries direct­ly in WordPress. 
• You can con­nect mul­ti­ple inbox­es in one place. 
• It offers the abil­i­ty to add notes and assign tick­ets to users. 

Cons:

• It doesn’t have live chat capabilities. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Hero­ic Inbox: Jug­gling a lot of soft­ware can be a prob­lem for a lot of small busi­ness­es. With Hero­ic Inbox, you can man­age all inquiries in your Word­Press dash­board. Since it lives with­in the Word­Press ecosys­tem, it also seam­less­ly con­nects with oth­er plu­g­ins, such as WooCommerce. 

9. LiveChat

LiveChat is an all-in-one cus­tomer ser­vice soft­ware that works seam­less­ly for Word­Press web­site own­ers. With over 35,000+ busi­ness­es that trust LiveChat, it’s a very pop­u­lar tool for build­ing live chatbots. 

You can cre­ate a chat­bot that asks the user ques­tions before they’re auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­ferred to the right agent. Dur­ing the chat, the agent is able to share files back and forth with the cus­tomer, send cal­en­dar links, or com­plete a pur­chase. On top of that, you can set up canned fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions type of respons­es to save time. 

Beyond that, you can add pre-chat sur­vey forms before and after each live chat ses­sion. That way, you’re able to eval­u­ate your sales reps and cus­tomer sup­port agents and how they’re performing. 

It even inte­grates with pop­u­lar tools like Hub­Spot, Zen­desk, and Google Ana­lyt­ics, so you can bet­ter under­stand where your cus­tomers are com­ing from and who they are. 

Pric­ing: LiveChat starts at $20 per per­son, billed annu­al­ly, with high­er-priced plans that track more users and bet­ter fea­tures. There’s also a free plu­g­in available. 

Pros:

• Plen­ty of inte­gra­tions to seam­less­ly con­nect data across platforms.
• You can ini­ti­ate a chat with a vis­i­tor as they are brows­ing on your site. 
• There are lots of cus­tomiza­tion options to help users find a solution. 

Cons:

• Price can quick­ly add up for large teams. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using LiveChat: LiveChat is an AI-pow­ered help desk soft­ware that has a lot of advanced tools to help you sell more. For exam­ple, their cus­tom forms, prod­uct cards, and AI automa­tion can help turn inquiries into actu­al sales. 

10. HubSpot Chat

Hub­Spot Chat is an all-in-one mar­ket­ing plat­form that also offers a chat­bot builder and live chat feature. 

You’re able to cus­tomize the live chat design to help route leads and cus­tomers to the right per­son on your team. The live chat wid­get can be edit­ed to match the look and feel of your brand. You can even send tar­get­ed wel­come mes­sages on your live chat wid­get based on seg­ments of your audi­ence or dif­fer­ent web pages. 

The rout­ing fea­ture works dur­ing a chat, where your ser­vices team pass­es a lead to a sales rep. In addi­tion, it pro­vides use­ful automa­tion fea­tures so you can deliv­er canned respons­es for faster response times.

Since Hub­Spot is an all-in-one tool, all chats are auto­mat­i­cal­ly stored in the CRM. That means your team will have a clear view of each cus­tomer interaction. 

Pric­ing: It’s free to get start­ed. But if you want the suite of mar­ket­ing tools or CRM, you’ll need to buy the entire pack­age. Prices vary based on what suite you choose.

Pros:

• Hub­Spot Chat is free to use. 
• You can con­nect the tool to Slack so your team gets imme­di­ate noti­fi­ca­tions when a vis­i­tor requests to speak with your sup­port team. 
• You’re able to route leads to any­one on your team. 

Cons:

• It’s miss­ing advanced fea­tures such as post-chat sur­vey forms. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Hub­Spot Chat: We like Hub­Spot Chat because it offers all the essen­tial fea­tures of live chat soft­ware and is absolute­ly free to use. That said, if you want more advanced automa­tion or more sales-relat­ed fea­tures like prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions, then you may want to con­sid­er LiveChat or Chat­Bot instead. 

11. ChatBot

Chat­Bot is the best helpdesk soft­ware for cre­at­ing AI-gen­er­at­ed answers to cus­tomer questions. 

Where Chat­Bot stands out is its abil­i­ty to build visu­al work­flows that help cus­tomers get their ques­tions answered and guide them to a sale. It comes with pre-built tem­plates so that you can use them out of the box. For exam­ple, after a cus­tomer asks a ques­tion about a spe­cif­ic prod­uct cat­e­go­ry, you can imme­di­ate­ly offer a lim­it­ed-time dis­count to incen­tivize vis­i­tors to take action. 

If site vis­i­tors want to chat with a real per­son, you can eas­i­ly for­ward them to a live cus­tomer sup­port rep­re­sen­ta­tive. That said, the cus­tomiza­tion options are quite lim­it­ed com­pared to LiveChat. 

But, when it comes to AI automa­tion, Chat­Bot can make your life eas­i­er. For exam­ple, depend­ing on how users inter­act with your site and chat­bot, you can add them to a seg­men­ta­tion and then import them to a CRM or email mar­ket­ing ser­vice. This is great for nur­tur­ing leads and send­ing fol­low-up emails. 

Pric­ing: Chat­bot starts at $52 per month, billed annu­al­ly or $65 month-to-month. How­ev­er, there is a 14-day free tri­al, with no cred­it card required. 

Pros:

• Chat­Bot saves time with its pow­er­ful and expan­sive automa­tion features. 
• It allows you to seg­ment lists and trig­ger actions based on vis­i­tor behavior. 
• It inte­grates with WooCom­merce and WordPress.

Cons:

• Chat­Bot lacks high-lev­el live chat features. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Chat­Bot: If you want to auto­mate your helpdesk and chat sup­port, Chat­Bot is the way to go. It has many tem­plates that help guide users into a sale. 

Also, check out our expert picks of the best Word­Press chat plu­g­ins.

HR & Payroll 

Man­ag­ing your team mem­bers is arguably one of the most impor­tant func­tions of a busi­ness. No mat­ter what type of busi­ness you run, you’ll need to pay your employ­ees and man­age their hours. 

With HR pay­roll soft­ware, you can auto­mat­i­cal­ly send out pay­checks through bank direct deposit, man­age PTO and bonus­es, stream­line employ­ee onboard­ing, with­hold a per­cent­age for tax­es, and more. 

When your HR and pay­roll are orga­nized, employ­ees know what to expect, and you don’t have to wor­ry about run­ning into tax com­pli­ance issues. 

Best of all, HR soft­ware stream­lines all the tedious admin tasks that you would oth­er­wise have to do by yourself. 

12. Gusto

Gus­to is the best pay­roll and HR soft­ware that helps you auto­mate both basic and advanced pay­roll tasks for employ­ees and con­trac­tors. With its begin­ner-friend­ly approach to pay­roll man­age­ment, it’s def­i­nite­ly a tool to have in your cor­ner to ensure every­thing runs smoothly. 

Even if you’re a small busi­ness with­out a full account­ing team, Gus­to makes it easy to han­dle pay­roll. It auto­mat­i­cal­ly runs pay­roll for you as many times a month as you need, and tax­es are filed auto­mat­i­cal­ly. In addi­tion, it auto­mat­i­cal­ly syncs health insur­ance, work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion, time track­ing, 401K, PTO, and more. 

Besides pay­roll, Gus­to makes hir­ing and onboard­ing a breeze. There are fea­tures like cus­tom offer let­ters, onboard­ing check­lists, doc­u­ment sign­ing, and even soft­ware account creation.

Pric­ing: Gus­to starts at $40 per month, plus $6 per month per addi­tion­al user you add. 

Pros:

• Rel­a­tive­ly afford­able to use.
• Very begin­ner-friend­ly for both busi­ness own­ers and employees.
• Gus­to is a self-ser­vice tool for employ­ees where they can hop online to check their pay stubs and impor­tant doc­u­ments and request time off with­out the need for HR to intervene. 

Cons:

• Gus­to is only avail­able in the Unit­ed States. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Gus­to: Gus­to is an all-encom­pass­ing tool for pay­roll and HR tasks. You don’t have to wor­ry about the nit­ty-grit­ty tasks like fil­ing pay­roll and track­ing all the tax­es with­held. Plus, its high­er plans offer next-day deposits, so employ­ees get paid faster. 

13. BambooHR

Bam­booHR is an excel­lent HR soft­ware and pay­roll solu­tion for small busi­ness­es. The pro­gram is bet­ter suit­ed for human resource tasks like com­pen­sa­tion, hir­ing, onboard­ing, and com­pa­ny culture. 

Inside, you get an appli­ca­tion track­ing sys­tem (ATS) that helps you speed up the hir­ing process and weed out poten­tial appli­cants who don’t meet the job role require­ments. Its auto­mat­ed alert fea­tures ensure you stay on sched­ule and keep can­di­dates in the loop dur­ing the hir­ing process. 

Once you’ve made your deci­sion, you can use one of the many offer let­ter tem­plates that come with auto-fill fea­tures so the new hire can sign and accept every­thing digitally. 

That said, Bam­boo HR also does all of the essen­tial pay­roll tasks. It auto­mates tax fil­ing, so you don’t have to do it man­u­al­ly. As a result, you’ll avoid tax penal­ties and ensure you accu­rate­ly report your employ­ee earn­ings and tax­es withheld. 

Pric­ing: Bam­booHR offers free pric­ing quotes. To receive cus­tomized pric­ing, you will need to com­plete their con­tact form. 

Pros:

• Bam­booHR offers self-ser­vice tools so employ­ees can access infor­ma­tion such as tax forms and pay stubs online. 
• It auto­mates the pay­roll process to avoid mistakes. 
• The ATS makes hir­ing much eas­i­er and faster. 

Cons:

• Bam­booHR is not as con­trac­tor-friend­ly as Gus­to since it doesn’t have many fea­tures that cater to freelancers. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Bam­booHR: Bam­booHR is a great choice if you have a remote team based inter­na­tion­al­ly (out­side of the U.S.). It makes it easy to man­age your hir­ing and pay­roll across mul­ti­ple countries. 

14. QuickBooks

Quick­Books is a pay­roll soft­ware designed to make life eas­i­er for small busi­ness own­ers. It’s pri­mar­i­ly used for account­ing tasks, allow­ing you to cal­cu­late all your bal­ance sheets and per­form payroll. 

One key area where Quick­Books shines is that it offers same-day or next-day direct deposit pro­cess­ing, depend­ing on the plan you choose. You also get use­ful fea­tures such as auto­mat­ed tax cal­cu­la­tions and pay­roll, busi­ness receipt cap­ture, pay­check cre­ation, and more. 

There’s a ded­i­cat­ed mobile app, so employ­ees can eas­i­ly access their PTO and health infor­ma­tion and even look into their paystubs on the go. For admin­is­tra­tors, you can man­age pay­roll from any­where, ensur­ing your team nev­er miss­es payday. 

Pric­ing: Price starts at $37.50 per month, plus an addi­tion­al $6 per addi­tion­al employ­ee per month. 

Pros:

• Quick­books offers a 30-day free trial. 
• For Elite users, Quick­Books Pay­roll pro­vides a tax penal­ty pro­tec­tion of up to $25,000 per year. 
• Quick­Books Pay­roll inte­grates with Quick­Books Online, mean­ing you get a pay­roll and account­ing sys­tem in one. 

Cons:

• There are lim­it­ed third-par­ty integrations. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Quick­Books: If you’re focused on get­ting your account­ing and pay­roll right, then Quick­Books is the way to go. With the tax penal­ty pro­tec­tion, you’re get­ting great cov­er­age. That means if you make an error, they’ll not only help you to fix the issue but also cov­er any penal­ty and inter­est fines along with it. 

For a more com­pre­hen­sive list, read our blog post on the best pay­roll soft­ware for small busi­ness­es.

CRM

Jug­gling cus­tomer data across scat­tered Excel sheets can be chaos. You may deal with missed fol­low-ups, for­got­ten birth­days, unsent emails, mixed sig­nals, and frus­trat­ed teams and customers.

CRM apps elim­i­nate this night­mare. They con­sol­i­date all cus­tomer data into a sin­gle, acces­si­ble plat­form. This empow­ers your sales, mar­ket­ing, and cus­tomer sup­port teams to:

• Effort­less­ly access infor­ma­tion: No more scram­bling for details.
• Per­son­al­ize the cus­tomer jour­ney: Deliv­er tar­get­ed expe­ri­ences based on cus­tomer history.
• Boost effi­cien­cy: Auto­mate tasks and free up time for strate­gic work.

Sales reps can pri­or­i­tize high-val­ue oppor­tu­ni­ties and close deals faster. Plus, mar­keters can lever­age cus­tomer insights to craft impact­ful cam­paigns. Cus­tomer sup­port gains a com­plete view of each inter­ac­tion, pro­vid­ing excep­tion­al ser­vice every time.

15. HubSpot CRM

Hub­Spot CRM is the most pop­u­lar CRM soft­ware on the mar­ket. It is cost-effec­tive and offers a wide range of fea­tures, mak­ing it a great choice for most small busi­ness­es. You can get start­ed with the free plan, which already gives you access to unlim­it­ed users and contacts. 

Where Hub­Spot excels is its all-in-one capa­bil­i­ties. Since it com­bines sales, mar­ket­ing, cus­tomer ser­vice, CMS, and oper­a­tion hubs, you can eas­i­ly con­nect data between depart­ments. For exam­ple, you can eas­i­ly pass con­tacts from your mar­ket­ing team to the sales depart­ment with­out hav­ing to sync infor­ma­tion to anoth­er system. 

Hub­Spot is also real­ly easy to nav­i­gate. It pro­vides a full pic­ture of cus­tomer inter­ac­tions and comes with cus­tomiz­able report­ing dash­boards so that you can see how your team is per­form­ing. By look­ing at the oppor­tu­ni­ties and deal stages, you can quick­ly see what’s cur­rent­ly in the pipeline and focus on high-lever­age prospects who are ready to buy. 

Pric­ing: Hub­spot CRM is free to get start­ed. If you want the entire mar­ket­ing suite, it’s $800 per month for 3 seats, billed annu­al­ly, and an extra $45 per month per addi­tion­al user. Hub­Spot Sales suite costs $90 per month per seat. 

Pros:

• Hub­Spot has an easy-to-use interface. 
• There are tons of fea­tures and even apps that you can down­load to make your expe­ri­ence better. 
• Visu­al dash­boards and report­ing make it very easy to track team per­for­mance and spot oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth. 

Cons:

• While Hub­Spot has a very gen­er­ous free plan, its pric­ing gets steep quick­ly if you wish to upgrade. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Hub­Spot: Hub­Spot is one of those can’t‑miss tools for begin­ners. Sure, it could be more cus­tomiz­able or offer more afford­able plans. But with that said, its free plan is enough to get small teams started. 

16. FunnelKit Automations

Fun­nelK­it Automa­tions is the best CRM and mar­ket­ing automa­tion engine for WooCom­merce. It’s filled with a wide range of fea­tures to help get your online more repeat sales and high­er order values. 

Geared towards e‑commerce busi­ness own­ers, you have a com­plete 360-degree con­tact view of your cus­tomers. You’ll be able to see their name, gen­der, email, tags, lists, geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion, and cus­tom field data. 

In addi­tion to the CRM tool, you can build high-con­vert­ing check­out pages and flows. The drag-and-drop builder con­nects with oth­er major page builders, such as Divi, Ele­men­tor, Oxy­gen, and Gutenberg. 

Once cus­tomers com­plete the pur­chase, you can cre­ate upsell pages to show­case high­er-tier prod­ucts, increas­ing your total order value. 

Pric­ing: Fun­nelK­it starts at $99.50 per year. That said, there is a free ver­sion as well. 

Pros:

• You get plen­ty of automa­tion tem­plates and work­flows to increase conversions. 
• You can view the customer’s com­plete pro­file, includ­ing pur­chase his­to­ry, order placed, etc. 
• Every­thing can be tracked, includ­ing what pages and work­flows led to revenue. 

Cons:

• You’ll need a mail­er plu­g­in, such as WP Mail SMTP, since Word­Press isn’t built for high-vol­ume email. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Fun­nelK­it Automa­tion: If you’re run­ning an online store, adding Fun­nelK­it Automa­tion is a no-brain­er. Keep your opt-in leads and cus­tomers orga­nized so that you can send them more rel­e­vant prod­uct recommendations. 

17. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM app for small busi­ness­es. It’s an all-in-one sales plat­form to boost rev­enue and track all of your leads and customers. 

What we like about Pipedrive is its smart, in-plat­form tips. It comes with a sales assis­tant that pro­vides per­for­mance tips and rec­om­mend­ed fea­tures to help your team get accli­mat­ed to the soft­ware. For exam­ple, if you’re not send­ing fol­low-up emails after demo calls, it might send reminders to your reps. 

Pipedrive goes beyond sim­ple CRM with pow­er­ful automa­tion fea­tures. Imag­ine auto­mat­i­cal­ly nur­tur­ing leads with time­ly emails, assign­ing tasks, and mov­ing deals through your pipeline.

These auto­mat­ed work­flows free up your sales reps to focus on clos­ing high-val­ue deals, not repet­i­tive tasks.

Pric­ing: Pipedrive begins at $14 per seat per month, billed annu­al­ly. But there’s a free 14-day tri­al you can get start­ed with. 

Pros:

• Fair­ly afford­able to use. 
• The smart assis­tant fea­ture helps you improve your team performance. 
• It has a lead enrich­ment fea­ture, which scrapes data online to find infor­ma­tion about your prospects based on the email you’ve collected. 

Cons:

• It lacks phone support. 

Why We Rec­om­mend Using Pipedrive: If you want a com­pre­hen­sive sales tool to help man­age your leads and dri­ve home more rev­enue, Pipedrive is a sol­id choice. They offer many AI-pow­ered fea­tures to make your life eas­i­er and save a lot of time. 

If you want to learn about oth­er options, check out our list of the best CRM apps for small busi­ness­es.

Bonus Small Business Tools 

Aside from these top busi­ness tools that we men­tioned above, we also use and rec­om­mend the fol­low­ing plu­g­ins to bet­ter man­age our Word­Press sites. 

18. WPForms is the most begin­ner-friend­ly con­tact form plu­g­in used by over 6,000,000 sites. It fea­tures an intu­itive drag-and-drop form builder, allow­ing you to build beau­ti­ful con­tact forms, pay­ment forms, user reg­is­tra­tion forms, mul­ti-page forms, and more. 
19. All in One SEO is a Word­Press SEO plu­g­in that helps you improve your Word­Press SEO. It pro­vides pow­er­ful on-page SEO opti­miza­tion tools to help search engines bet­ter crawl and index your site, among many oth­er capabilities. 
20. Seed­Prod is the ulti­mate drag-and-drop page builder plu­g­in for Word­Press. With this soft­ware, you can design high-con­vert­ing and beau­ti­ful pages that con­vert vis­i­tors into leads and leads into cus­tomers. You can cre­ate every­thing from land­ing pages and cus­tom home pages to 404 pages and more. 
21. Mon­sterIn­sights is the best Google Ana­lyt­ics plu­g­in for Word­Press. It brings the pow­er of Google Ana­lyt­ics right to your Word­Press dash­board, so you can get detailed reports of impor­tant met­rics to see what’s work­ing and what could be improved. 
22. Opt­in­Mon­ster is the best lead gen­er­a­tion and pop­up plu­g­in that helps you con­vert web­site vis­i­tors into sub­scribers and cus­tomers. With this tool, you can cre­ate a wide range of cam­paigns, includ­ing pop­ups, scroll box­es, float­ing bars, and fullscreen wel­come mats. 
23. Mem­ber­Press is a pop­u­lar Word­Press mem­ber­ship plu­g­in for build­ing mem­ber­ship web­sites. It has advanced mem­ber­ship fea­tures, includ­ing the abil­i­ty to cre­ate gat­ed con­tent, add mem­ber lev­els, accept pay­ments, cre­ate mem­bers-only forums, and more. 
24. PushEn­gage is a web push noti­fi­ca­tion soft­ware that helps you engage and retain vis­i­tors once they’ve left your site. When users leave, you can send them all types of reminders, such as prod­uct announce­ments, blog post noti­fi­ca­tions, cart aban­don­ment reminders, and more. 
25. Raf­flePress is a Word­Press give­away and con­test plu­g­in that lets you run all sorts of com­pe­ti­tions. For exam­ple, you can run a give­away to grow your email list. 
26. WP Mail SMTP is the best Word­Press SMTP plu­g­in for improv­ing the deliv­er­abil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty of your emails.
27. WP Sim­ple Pay is the best Stripe pay­ments plu­g­in for Word­Press. It allows you to eas­i­ly cre­ate pay­ment forms or but­tons that accept 13+ pay­ment meth­ods and col­lect recur­ring payments. 
28. Smash Bal­loon is a social media feeds plu­g­in for Word­Press web­sites. It allows you to dis­play cus­tom Face­book, Insta­gram, Twit­ter, and YouTube feeds on your site to boost fol­low­ers and engagement. 
29. WooCom­merce is the world’s most pop­u­lar eCom­merce plat­form. It is cost-effec­tive, super-flex­i­ble, and easy to use for begin­ners. You can eas­i­ly cre­ate prod­uct pages, accept pay­ments, man­age orders, and much more. Basi­cal­ly, you can cre­ate your entire online store from scratch. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Business Tools

What should you look for in a busi­ness tool? 

The most impor­tant fac­tors to con­sid­er when select­ing a busi­ness tool are:

• Inte­gra­tion with Word­Press: If you own a Word­Press site or WooCom­merce store, you’ll want a busi­ness tool that eas­i­ly con­nects the plat­forms. That way, no cru­cial infor­ma­tion is lost in translation. 
• Ease of Use: The tool should be user-friend­ly and have an intu­itive inter­face. Small busi­ness­es often have lim­it­ed resources and may not have ded­i­cat­ed IT per­son­nel, so it’s essen­tial that the tool is easy for any­one on the team to use.
• Scal­a­bil­i­ty: Will it be able to grow with your busi­ness? Make sure the soft­ware can accom­mo­date increas­ing data, users, and busi­ness complexity.
• Cost-effec­tive­ness: Eval­u­ate the cost of the soft­ware pric­ing and its val­ue for your busi­ness. Con­sid­er both upfront costs and ongo­ing fees. Some tools offer scal­able pric­ing plans, which can be ben­e­fi­cial for small businesses.
• Fea­ture Set: Iden­ti­fy the spe­cif­ic fea­tures that are essen­tial for your busi­ness. Whether it’s task man­age­ment, CRM, eCom­merce capa­bil­i­ties, or con­tent mar­ket­ing, make sure the ser­vice aligns with your busi­ness needs.
• Cus­tomiza­tion: Look for a tool that allows some lev­el of cus­tomiza­tion. This ensures that the tool can be adapt­ed to meet your business’s unique requirements.
• Cus­tomer Sup­port: Reli­able cus­tomer sup­port is cru­cial. Check the avail­abil­i­ty, response times, and lev­el of sup­port pro­vid­ed. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant when tech­ni­cal issues arise.
• Secu­ri­ty: Secu­ri­ty is vital, espe­cial­ly when deal­ing with cus­tomer data. The tool should adhere to indus­try secu­ri­ty stan­dards and have mea­sures in place to pro­tect your busi­ness and cus­tomer information.
• Mobile Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty: With an increas­ing num­ber of users access­ing web­sites through dif­fer­ent devices, the soft­ware should be mobile-friend­ly.
• Com­mu­ni­ty and Reviews: Check for tes­ti­mo­ni­als and user feed­back to gain insights into the expe­ri­ences of oth­er small busi­ness­es using the tool.
• Data Back­up and Recov­ery: Make sure the soft­ware has reli­able data back­up and recov­ery mech­a­nisms to pre­vent data loss in case of unex­pect­ed events. That said, if you don’t already have a Word­Press back­up plu­g­in, Dupli­ca­tor is our go-to recommendation. 

Do busi­ness tools inte­grate with your Word­Press site? 

Yes, the best Word­Press plu­g­ins should seam­less­ly inte­grate with the most pop­u­lar third-par­ty busi­ness tools. How­ev­er, if there isn’t an inte­gra­tion, we rec­om­mend using Uncan­ny Automa­tor.

It is the best automa­tion plu­g­in, allow­ing you to cre­ate unlim­it­ed auto­mat­ed work­flows in Word­Press. That means you can con­nect your web­site to a spe­cif­ic tool to com­plete an action. 

Let’s say every time some­one com­pletes your con­tact form, you want to auto­mat­i­cal­ly add those con­tacts to your prospects list to your CRM tool. You can cre­ate an auto­mat­ed work­flow through Uncan­ny Automa­tor that will eas­i­ly exe­cute that action for you. 

Are there any free busi­ness tools available? 

Yes, many of these tools offer a free ver­sion with lim­it­ed fea­tures. That means you can test the prod­uct and see if it meets your needs. That said, you can also check out our list of the best free busi­ness tools for small busi­ness­es.

We hope this arti­cle helped you find the best busi­ness tools for small busi­ness­es. You can also check out our list of the must-have Word­Press plu­g­ins for busi­ness web­sites or our guide on the proven ways to make mon­ey online blog­ging with Word­Press.

If you liked this arti­cle, then please sub­scribe to our YouTube Chan­nel for Word­Press video tuto­ri­als. You can also find us on Twit­ter and Face­book.

The post 29 Best Busi­ness Tools for Small Busi­ness (Expert Pick for 2024) first appeared on WPBe­gin­ner.