65 Free Business Tools For 2018

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know how important it is to be up to date with relevant business tools that will help you boost your business’ growth, or with tools that can help you manage communication, social media or your website.

That’s why we created a list of 65 free business tools that can help you achieve your business goals and give you more time to focus on your strategic planning and creative processes.

Productivity Tools

Organization & Communication Tools

1.TaskQue

TaskQue is a web-based task management software that can help you simplify complex business processes.

For example, marketing and sales teams can have several on-going projects and TaskQue can help them track the progress of each task and resource.

Your teams can stay organized, focused and effective while making a great impact on business growth.

2.Evernote

Evernote allows you to write down all of your important ideas from various devices so that you can easily find and search them.

Evernote add-ons like Web Clipper allow you to capture articles, photos and different type of content from the web and store it in a variety of formats.

You can also connect Evernote with your Slack account.

3.Milanote

Milanote is very similar to Evernote, but you’d want to use it if you work within a creative industry.

Millanote allows you add images, notes, draw mind maps, task lists or doodles in an infinite workspace — everything a creative individual might need for finishing up a creative task.

4.Doodle

Scheduling meetings doesn’t have to be such a draining job anymore.

Doodle simplifies the scheduling process by allowing you to offer time slots to your meeting attendees so they can easily choose what time works best.

You can see if there’s a time that suits everyone and plan accordingly.

5.Slack

Collaborating with many different teams or people on different projects at the same time can be a huge challenge.

Slack is a great tool that can effectively solve that issue. You can create a private channel for different teams, subjects and strategies.

Furthermore, you can index communication with hashtags so that your team can easily search content.

6.Bplans

If you’re not a fan of writing business plans, than you should check out Bplans.com. You can access some sample business plans representing nearly every industry out there!

7.Enloop

Enloop is one more tool that can help you easily create a professional looking business plan complete with 3-year financial forecast reporting and even get a free business plan score to help take your plan from good to great.

8.Harvest

Do you use an hourly rate to bill your clients? With Harvest, you can easily track time your employees spend working with each client, easily create online invoices and create relevant reports.

9.Google Drive

Google Drive offers you almost all the same benefits of Microsoft Office, but it’s accessible from anywhere online. It also allows you to collaborate on documents with your colleagues, track spreadsheet changes as you edit, and share with clients quickly without waiting for uploads.

10.Producteev

Producteev is a great tool that allows you to manage projects between multiple users, set recurring events, and track both large scale projects and the smaller steps that will make the big tasks possible. It’s ideal for keeping up with your own tasks and work, as well as for assigning tasks to employees.

11.LastPass

Are you a marketer in a company? Or maybe an entrepreneur? Than you know the struggles of remembering all those passwords! LastPass can memorize all the passwords for all the tools that you’re using, and you can share those passwords with your team members easily.

12.Google Keep

If you like creating simple lists or keeping notes on meetings, Google Keep is a very simple tool that allows you to do that. No more sticky notes, please!

13.Down For Everyone Or Just Me?

How many times per day someone asks that exact question? Next time you’re not sure whether a website is not working on your computed or just in general, try a tool Down For Everyone Or Just Me to find out.

14.When I work

Do you have shift workers of any kind, some freelancers or you’re a really cool flexible company? Instead of endless email threads and messages to organize your shift calendar, When I Work can help you keep track of employee availability, create a balanced shift schedule, notify employees when they work and let them trade shifts with team members. You just have to set your requirements and approve the final schedule!

15.iDone This

Instead of asking people around or starting email threads about finished tasks, just use a tool iDone This.

16.RescueTime

There are so many distractions online. With RescueTime, you’ll be able to understand your daily habits and focus on being more productive. You can set alerts that will tell you that you spent way too much time on a certain webste, you can block those websites for a few hours, and more.

Email Tools

17.Boomerang

You’re going to be busy in the morning, but you really need to send those emails then? Or do you need to follow up on an email in a week, but need a reminder to do so? Boomerang is a Gmail add-on for that!

18.FollowUp.cc

Remembering to follow up with someone is very important, but you can easily forget to do that. Manage your follow ups with FollowUp.cc — just add the address 2weeks@followup.cc to any email and get a reminder at that time.

CRM Tools

19.HubSpot CRM

Finding the right CRM software for your business can be difficult, especially if you’re an entrepreneur with limited resources and budget. But as you already know, it’s impossible for every business to grow without a proper CRM tool. HubSpot CRM is a great foundation of growth where all your business operations are organized — this tool tracks every interaction your sales team has with your customers, stores all your marketing leads and customer data and improves communication across the whole company.

20.Kayako

Kayako is an amazing CRM tool that allows you to have all your channels in one place. It unifies your email, social and live chat conversations together in one tidy place, and you’ll end up having both happy customers and happy sales team.

Marketing Tools

Advertising & SEO Tools

21.Google Keyword Planner

Search engine optimization is very important if you want to increase traffic to your website, which is a big driver of business growth in this competitive era. To get more visitors to your website, you’ll need a keyword tool to help you prioritize which keywords to focus on, and one of the best tools on the market is Google Keyword Planner. It can help you narrow down the right keywords, determine competition around every keyword and find out how many people are searching for the particular keyword.

22.Google Analytics

If you want to know how well your marketing efforts are successful at converting leads, you need to know how and from where your audience is accessing your website. Google Analytics can help you determine what’s working in your marketing plan and gain insights about your web traffic.

23.Hubspot Marketing Grader

Do you want to know if all the time and money you invest into your digital marketing is working? Use Hubspot Marketing Grader tool to find out how well your blog, social media and other digital efforts are generating leads.

Social Media Tools

24.Buffer

If your business is present on all major social media channels, Buffer is probably one of the best options for your business. It connects all your social media accounts in a single platform and allows you to share text, links, photos and videos — and the best thing is that you can schedule everything for later.

25.Later

In case you need a tool to manage only your Instagram account, you should definitely try using Later. It allows you to schedule your Instagram posts, to upload media and use it any time in the future, to save your long lists of hashtags and to arrange your grid to make it visually appealing.

26.Social Puzzle

Organizing contests is a must-have activity if you want to engage your fans and get some user-generated content. With Social Puzzle, you can easily create photo contests, runner games, giveaways, quizzes, voters, coupons, forms, social shops, Instatabs and Tweettabs.

Promo Emails & Newsletters Tools

27.MailChimp

MailChimp is an email marketing tool that can connect your business with current and potential customers by simply sending visually appealing emails. With personalized templates, your emails will depict a good picture of your brand, and you’ll love how simple the tool is. Furthermore, the analytics report show how well your email performed, what worked best and what did not.

Other Marketing Tools

28.CoSchedule

If you have multiple team members writing, editing and publishing content, CoSchedule is a great WordPress add-on for your business. It allows you to plan content in advance, notify writers of upcoming posts an collaborate seamlessly in the writing, editing and social sharing process — all from a single platform.

29.BuzzSumo

If you want to find out what type of content is popular in your industry at the moment, or in the past few weeks or months, try out BuzzSumo. It helps you find the top-performing content for a particular website or subject area, which makes it a great tool for SEO optimization and generating content ideas for social media.

30.Hemingway

If you’re a marketer specialized in content marketing, you’re probably doing a lot of writing. Use Hemingway to check and analyze your writing and to give you hints on how to make it more clear and powerful.

31.Grammarly

If you need to make sure that your English is mistake-free, try using Grammarly. The tool allows you to check whether your messages, documents and social media posts are clear and correct.

32.SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is probably one of the most popular free online survey tools. Surveys are a good way to collect consumer information, discover trends and obtain tangible insights on your business. SurveyMonkey allows you to design, create and publish surveys in just a few minutes.

33.MediaToolkit

It’s important to know where your business or brand is being mentioned online. MediaToolkit monitors online mentions of your brand, company and competitors in real-time, so you can gain deeper insight into your online reputation.

34.Blog Ideas Generator

Running out of ideas for your blog? HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator is here to save your day! Just type in your top 3 keywords and it will generate 5 topics that you can use!

35.Sniply

Sharing other influencer’s content will help you build trust with your audience, supplement your content and help build rapport with those relevant industry experts. Sniply allows you to attach a call-to-action on every piece of content you share. Because the content you are sharing is on a website that you don’t control, there’s a very little chance that the user will visit your site after reading the article. With Sniply, you can put an inbound button or CTA into a frame of the article.

Design Tools

Image Design Tools

36.Canva

We all know that tools that make creating visual content easier are very important for your business, especially if you don’t have a graphic designer in your team. Canva can help you create stunning images easily for your website, social media posts, emails and all other marketing assets.

37.Pablo

Pablo is a tool by Buffer that can make your social media stand out with beautiful images created from your text, all in under 30 seconds. Yes, it is that simple.

38.Piktochart

Creating stunning infographics is not that hard! Piktochart offers beautiful templates and easy-to-use tools for creating professional infographics. Hint: you don’t even have to be a designer!

39.PicMonkey

PicMonkey is a tool very similar to Canva. Crop your images, change the colors, rotate, adjust exposure, sharpen, add frames, icons, text and many other things.

40.Adobe Spark

Besides stunning social graphics and website landing pages, Adobe Spark has one additional feature — it allows you to create videos easily, with no designer skills whatsoever.

Free Stock Images

41.Unsplash

This one is our personal favorite! The selection of images on Unsplash is large, and you will find many stock images that don’t look like stock images. Warning: you may spend hours going through some really cool images!

42.FreePik

If you need some stock images that look like stock images, or maybe free editable vectors that you’ll get as an .AI file, use FreePik. They have a huge image base (maybe one of the biggest out there), you will find everything that you’re looking for and it will never disappoint you!

43.Pixabay

Do you need some images that are a bit hippie and indie? Go to Pixabay and enjoy!

44.Pexels

Say “no” to corny and expensive stock images! Find high-quality photos with Pexels — all images look very natural, but still very professional.

45.Snapstock.io

Looking out for some Instagram-able photos? Snapstock.io is a great choice!

46.Infogr.am

Do you need a chart, a graph, a map, or an interactive graphic? Try out Infogr.am, because it’s much easier to use than Excel. It allows you to change colors, input data and publish your graphic online within minutes.

47.FlatIcon

Do you need good vector icons that can come in handy in your company’s website or marketing materials? FlatIcon offers a hige database of free vector icons that you can edit directly online and downlaod as a .PNG file.

Project Management Tools

48.Trello

Looking for the best free alternative to Basecamp? Then try using Trello! It’s great for organizing and prioritizing tasks with your team, track the progress of your tasks and projects and easily collaborate with all your team memebers.

49.Asana

Asana is another project management tool that let’s you track your projects from start to finish. Use it for agile project management, task management, reporting and work tracking!

50.Aha

Road mapping your business is one of the critical tasks that most entrepreneurs overlook. Aha is an amazing tool that helps businesses check out the visual representation of their plans, goals, vision and direction. The tool helps entrepreneurs to store out all the important elements of their business, competitors and vision, while getting everything done on time. Aha offers some useful features such as strategy, ideas and releases.

Finance & Legal Tools

51.Docracy

Docracy has an open source collection of legal documents that can save you thousands of dollars on attorney’s fees. Moreover, they also offer free digital signing of legal documents, replacing expensive subscription services for getting client contracts signed.

52.Expensify

Use Expensify to simplify the process of expense reporting with smart scanning of receipts, easy mobile tracking of expenses, and one-click reimbursement options.

53.TSheets

Are you hiring hourly employees? To pay them what they worked for, use TSheets, a GPS monitored app that lets employees track time right from their cell phones and aggregates timecard reports from every member of your team.

54.Wave

Maintaining your expense record on excel sheets is not a very good idea, so opting for Wave is a worthwhile choice for small businesses. Link your bank accounts and automate your invoicing, transactions and more. The billing and reporting features are very intuitive, ensuring your business runs smoothly.

55.Hiveage

Use Hiveage for all your invoicing needs — unlimited invoices and unlimited clients, all for free. The thing we love most about Hiveage? It’s incredibly easy to create invoices and learn how to use the software!

56.HelloSign

No matter what you do in a company, someone is going to ask you to sign something. Instead of using the print-sign-scan-upload-send option, try out a tool called HelloSign, which lets you sign and send legally-binding signatures.

Website Management Tools

57.Wix

You don’t need a web developer to create a beautiful and professional website anymore. Wix is a free, drag and drop website builder that makes it easy for anyone to create their own website, without needing to know code. Wix offers specialized tools, apps and templates tailored for every industry out there.

58.Weebly

Do you need a simple and beautiful website? Use Weebly to create one for free, in no time and with no coding skills!

Education Tools

59.Coursera

Constantly improving your knowledge and skills is paramount if you want to stay competitive in the market. You don’t have to spend tons of money on platforms such as Lynda to get quality knowledge. Coursera has a huge base of courses from many renovated colleges from all over the world, and you can learn about many things — from business to arts, and from coding to physics.

60.Duo Lingo

Do you want to learn another language? Or maybe just improve your knowledge about some language? Try Duo Lingo, a game-based and scientific tool that will help you learn any language you want (including High Valyrian, because one must be ready for the final season of Game of Thrones).

61.Google Primer

We’re all used to spending some time during the day on our phones, but instead of reading numerous articles that you may or may not care about, spend time on Primer. This tool will help you learn many things about business and marketing in a simple and very entertaining way.

Tools To Help You Through The Day

62.Spotify

Music can boost your mood and productivity and provide a sense of well being. Is that a workspace that you want to create? Spotify offers you many playlists that can help you achieve just that, and you can create your customized playlists, too.

63.Charity Miles

Developing some healthy habits during the day is important, and Charity Miles can motivate you to do exactly that. Do you want to walk or run more during the day? Now you have a reason to. For every mile that you walk or run, different organizations will pay a certain amount of money to charity organizations.

64.Tone It Up

Are you a person that wants to stay fit and healthy, but is way too busy during the day to commit to that? You should try out Tone It Up. It’s a huge online fitness community, and sticking up to their lifestyle is so easy! There are many simple recipes on their website and many free, short and effective workouts. You should give it a try!

65.Calm

And lastly, it’s important to stay calm during the day and to get rid of the stress. Use Calm for guided meditation both at work or at home!

We hope that this list would help you stay focused and organized! Let us know which of the tools you tried!