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Table Of Contents:
- Email & Sales:
- Email Platform:
- Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
- Carts To Collect Money:
- Graphic Design Platform:
- Email Platform:
- Content Creation:
Trying to find the best tools for starting your own business can often be overwhelming. A lot of times, when looking for the best startup tools, the hardest part is finding a place to start. With information flooding our view at every turn, it’s difficult to know where to begin. This is why we create this guide through the best business tools for starting your own growing business!
Finding What Tools Will Work Best For You
Because each business is unique and the needs of that business will differ depending on the person, it’s important to narrow down what works best for you. I’ve found that the best first step on your ever-changing to-do list is finding and solidifying your goals. Once you do that, you will be able to prioritize the best tools for your business, creating a unique flow that will benefit both you and your audience.
If you’re tired of looking at the overwhelming list of options, this post shows where we landed in our choices. The following tools work well for us, and, yep, I recommend them for the reasons listed below.
12 Amazing Tools For Starting Your Own Business
Email Platform:
1. Kit (formerly ConvertKit)
What Is It?
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is an email marketing tool designed to help creators and business owners grow their reach. Kit uses email marketing software that is easy to use and understand. This software works to grow and monetize your audience, while also automating your marketing.
Click here to check it out!
Why We Use This Tool
Kit is an amazing platform to grow with. The ease of segmenting your list with tags and setting up simple automations is a total win. Kit also allows you to create classy landing pages, embed forms in a website, and more. Their customer service is great. This is a platform that can grow with you. While there are cheaper email platforms we could have started with, I knew eventually we would want all the bells and whistles and I did not want the hassle of switching platforms later. So happy we chose Kit. I was happy with it when I had 200 subscribers. Even happier now we are over 25,000.
Laurie Acker
Price/ Plan Options
- Free Plan: starting at $0/mo
- Includes unlimited landing pages, unlimited forms, unlimited broadcasts, audience tagging, and segmentation, selling digital products & subscriptions, and community support.
- Creator Plan: starting at $25/mo
- Includes all of the above, live chat & email support, free recommendations, paid recommendations, free migration from another tool, visual automation builders, third-party integrations, and one additional team member.
- Creator Pro Plan: starting at $50/mo
- Includes all of the above, unlimited team members, newsletter referral system, subscriber scoring, deliverability reporting, insights dashboard.
Key Features
1. Grow Your Audience And Reach
With Kit, you can easily and quickly grow an organic audience. You can build a specialized hub for your content while growing your reach faster with recommendations.
2. Stay Connected With Your Audience
With Kit’s audience management system, you are able to tag, segment, and organize your audience based on their specific interest. This system is a great way to maintain consistency, personalize your campaigns, and keep your emails out of recipient’s spam folders.
3. Put Your Funnels On Autopilot
This is a great way to automatically organize your audience based on the following: entry, interaction, and interests. This feature is a great way to ensure the personalization of your content. You’re able to start off with a template and create a path for your unique customers. Another great thing about Kit funnels is that you only have to set it up once!
Pros:
- Great Customer Support – Kit offers a wide variety of customer support options ranging from personal help to a Creator Community to reach out to, along with tons of articles to help you learn and get started.
- Incentivizes Sales – Kit prioritizes incentives, giving potential customers the motivation they need to buy your products.
Cons:
- Limited Statistics – Kit does provide its users with basic stats. However, I wish there was more in-depth recorded data to work with.
- Personalization Can Be Confusing/ Difficult – Despite the fact that the majority of Kits tools are easy to use and work with, as someone who isn’t super techy, I know some of the personalization aspects can be hard to navigate.
Carts To Collect Money:
2. SendOwl
What Is It?
Send Owl is eCommerce software designed for people to sell digital products online. They do this by creating a sales page for each individual product, making it easy for your audience to purchase.
Check out Send Owl!
Why Others Use This Tool
We don’t use this since we have a more powerful course platform for hosting video courses, but if you’re gonna sell PDFs, SendOwl is a favorite of my friends.
Laurie Acker
Price/ Plan Options
*All Plans Are $1/month For 2 Months And Include A 7 Day Free Trial
- Starter: $18/mo
- Fee Per Order – 5% (minimum $0.89 per order fee)
- Storage – 10GB
- Payment – Stript, PayPal
- Growth: $37/mo
- Fee Per Order – $0.47
- Storage – 100GB
- Payment – Stripe, PayPal
- Pro: $89/mo
- Fee Per Order – $0.28
- Storage – 200GB
- Payment – Stipe, PayPal
Key Features
1. Make Money
With embeddable products, recurring subscriptions, stripe payments to optimize conversion, and pay-what-you-want pricing features, there are multiple different ways to make money. Each option creates a customizable experience for your unique customer niche.
2. Sell Anywhere
SendOwl allows you to sell products anywhere on the internet in order to make the most of your sales.
3. Secure Your Content
SendOwl has special features like: PDF stamping, time-restricted download links, download limits, 2-factor authentication, and access & permission management. With these features and more, you can boost the safety of your content.
Pros:
- Affordable – The standard plan is pretty affordable, especially considering you can do a free trial for 7 days while only paying $1/mo for your first two months.
- Easy To Use – This tool is easy to learn and use. You can start getting things set up right away!
Cons:
- Plain/ Common – The themes are very common and basic. This makes it hard to draw people’s attention.
- Lacks Options – There isn’t a lot of personalization that you can do because the options are very limited. This makes it hard to create things that are unique and current.
3. ThriveCart
What Is It?
ThriveCart is a shopping cart platform that makes it easy for business owners to sell both digital and physical products in an online store. It is specifically designed to cater to your audience, prioritizing the ease of use for customers.
Click here to learn more about ThriveCart!
Why We Use This Tool
A feature that I love is how easy it is to make check-out carts and that they still look super professional! I am a stats girl and love the stats they provide as well as the ability to download our stats into a CSV.
Maggie Dupree
Price/ Plan Options
- Standard Plan: $495 one-time payment for lifetime access
- Includes access to the Learn platform (online course creation tool), unlimited carts/ checkout pages, conversion-tested checkout templates, one-click upsells & bump offers, and more!
- Pro Plan: $690 one-time payment for lifetime access
- Includes everything in the standard plan plus an affiliate management center, automatic sales tax calculation, intelligent business projections, custom domain name functionality, and more!
1. Intricate Design
ThriveCart is designed to boost conversions, reduce cart abandonment, and maximize your profit. It’s the only cart that is specifically designed to increase profits for each customer.
You can sell more by using the funnels they offer. With these funnels, you can increase your conversions, easily customize them to match your website’s theme, and more!
1. A++ Customer Support
ThriveCart has a team of professionals ready to help you with anything you might need!
3. Ready For Any Device
No matter what device your customers are using, the carts look great. Each cart can be converted to specific devices.
Pros:
- Funnels – ThriveCart has created business funnels that are designed to increase conversions. These funnels are easily customizable. You can include a page, embeddable popup carts, and more, creating a variety of ways to guide your customers through the upsells and downsells of your content.
- Resources – ThriveCart’s resources have guided me through this extensive learning process. They have a variety of articles, video tutorials, and even ThriveCart experts that you can get in contact with to help you learn what you need to get started.
Cons:
- Limited Templates – The biggest con I’ve found since using ThriveCart is their limited options for templates and landing pages. They have a great selection to work with, but if you are looking for more than they offer, you’ll have to integrate different tools.
Graphic Design Platform:
4. Canva
What Is It?
Canva is a digital design platform that allows you to easily create designs that match any tone ranging from fun Birthday parties to professional feature images.
Check out Canva!
Why We Use This Tool
Canva is my ride-or-die. I’m not sure where we would be without it. I use it daily and to pick one feature that I love the most is so hard. But as a recovering perfectionist who still has perfectionist tendencies, I love the tools that Canva provides that help me make lines straight or elements centered and how easy it is to use the tools! You don’t have to have any design experience to make an incredible design in Canva. Also, the fact that so many of Canva’s features you can get for free is incredible.
Maggie Dupree
Price/ Plan Options
- Canva Free: $0/mo for one person
- Includes an easy drag-and-drop editor, 1M+ professionally designed templates, 1000+ designed types (social posts and more), 3M+ stock photos and graphics, AI-generated writing and designs, design printing and delivery, and more.
- Canva Pro: $15/mo for one person
- Includes everything in the free option, plus unlimited premium templates, 100M+ photos, videos, graphics, and audio, 1000 brand kits to manage your brand, remove backgrounds in a click, plan and schedule social content, boost creativity with 20+ AI tools, and more.
Key Features
1. The Perfect Graphic Design Tool
Canva is great for businesses. It’s easy to use, affordable, and complete with a wide variety of templates. With Canva, businesses can quickly create professional designs for social media platforms without having any design experience!
2. Built-In Content Planner
This planner opens in a new tab, allowing you to plan ahead and schedule your posts out from the platform.
3. Additional Features
Other key features include a curved text generator, photo effects, an image enhancer, add text to photos, an online video recorder, a video trimmer, and the ability to convert videos to MP4.
Pros:
- User-Friendly And Accessible – No matter what kind of experience you have, whether you are an expert or are new to the whole process, you can start creating with ease. Even if you’ve never designed a single thing, you can become a regular designer with Canva.
- Large Template Library – Canva has an extensive template library to choose from. The template themes range from cute and fun to classy and professional!
Cons:
- Can Become Costly– Unfortunately, the free version of Canva has a lot of limitations, meaning you may need to pay for Canva Pro in order to utilize Canva’s potential.
Website:
5. WordPress
*This resource is WordPress.org, not WordPress.com. Unlike WordPress.com, WordPress.org is self-hosted, meaning that you have full control over the site and your customization options aren’t limited.
What Is It?
WordPress is an open-source software designed to power millions of websites. It allows users to create, design, and maintain their websites.
Click here to check out WordPress!
Why We Use This Tool
If you want to create a blog website, WordPress is one of the best out there. It is easy to use but also allows you to customize your website to your liking.
Maggie Dupree
Price/ Plan Options
- WordPress.org is free!
- While the resource itself is free, there are some additional costs like a website host that would require additional fees.
Key Features
1. Extensibility
WordPress allows you to install over 50,000 plugins and themes.
2. Simplicity
You can get online and begin publishing content very quickly. It’s designed to remove obstacles that normally make it hard to get started.
3. Flexibility
You are able to create whatever type of website you want, whether that be a personal blog or website, a photoblog, a business website, etc. You can build unique websites with intricate themes, extending them with plugins.
Pros:
- User Friendly – WordPress has an extremely user-friendly interface. They have avenues for tech-savvy people as well as people learning how to do this for the first time, making it a great tool for everyone.
- Flexibility/ Customization – Great options that are basically limitless when it comes to creating, designing, and building your website.
Cons:
- Updates – WordPress updates very frequently. If you don’t keep up with them, they can damage your site speed and user satisfaction.
- Speed – Because there are so many options when it comes to plugins, themes, etc., there’s a chance your site speed will slow down significantly.
6. Lyrical Host
*get 10% off your first hosting plan by using our coupon code SCMBIZ10
What Is It?
Lyrical Host is an independent website host who works with small businesses.
Check out Lyrical Host here!
Why We Use This Tool
Lyrical is great. Fabulous customer service, good price, and great reputation. Lyrical is a great host. Also love that our domains are secured through them.
Laurie Acker
Price/ Plan Options
- Tiny: $13.99/mo
- Host 1 WordPress website
- SSD Web Space: 60 GB
- Monthly Bandwidth: 100 GB
- Email Accounts: 6 (10GB each)
- Subdomains: Unlimited
- Includes a free website and email list migration, pre-optimized for speed, free theme installation, easy staging environment, simple control panel, active Facebook community, and more!
- Mighty: $21.99/mo
- Host up to 3 WordPress websites
- SSD Web Space: 80GB per site
- Monthly Bandwidth: 130GB per site
- Email Accounts: Unlimited (10GB each)
- Subdomains: Unlimited
- Includes everything in the Tiny Plan.
Key Features
1. Friendly Community
Lyrical Host provides its users with the help and support of bloggers and business owners worldwide.
2. Premium Resources
The Lyrical Host Resource Library has over 120 different downloads with everything from social media templates to worksheets to must-read guides. This library is updated and added to every month!
3. Help Beyond Hosting
There is an in-house support team equipped with web developers to help you with WordPress-specific questions/issues, ad networks, email marketing, e-commerce, SEO, and more.
Pros:
- Resources – Lyrical Host provides a vast amount of resources including blogging tips and courses to help you get started.
- Daily backups – Because Lyrical Host does daily backups, you can rest easy knowing all your content will be there the next day.
Cons:
- Cost – The Tiny Plan has a lot of limitations causing the costs to add up quickly.
- Shared Hosting – Because Lyrical Host shares hosts, the speed of your site isn’t as fast as it could be.
Digital Courses:
7. MemberVault
What Is It?
MemberVault is an online course and membership site where you can provide offers, courses, downloads, and other content to your audience.
Learn more here!
Why We Use This Tool
MemberVault is a fabulous course platform that features gamification and customer experience. Ease of customer use is great. Integrates well with email platforms too. I also love their company values and their commitment to excellence. They are always making improvements and adding great features.
Laurie Acker
Price/ Plan Options
*Each plan includes a free 14-day trial
- 5 Product Plan: $19/mo
- Includes 5 available products, 1 community, unlimited members, unlimited pages and costs, 0% transaction fees, and 100% ownership of content.
- 15 Product Plan: $49/mo
- Includes 15 available products, 3 communities, unlimited members, unlimited pages and posts, 0% transaction fees, and 100% ownership of content.
- Unlimited Plan: $99/mo
- Includes everything from 15 product plan, plus unlimited available products, unlimited communities, priority support, access to all strategy action labs, and an all-access membership.
Key Features
1. Unlimited Product Types
With the flexible product builder, you can create anything you can imagine.
2. Grow Your List Easily
Member Vault integrates directly with the most popular email tools like ConvertKit.
3. Embed Friendly
Member Vault pairs well with a lot of the right tools people use regularly!
Pros:
- Cost-Effective – MemberVault is reasonably priced, making it a great option for small business owners.
- Convenience – With MemberVault features, you can display all of your products on one page.
Cons:
- Ownership – Because MemberVault is a third party, you don’t own the platform.
8. Vimeo
*email maggie@smallchurchministry.com if you want 25% off a new, self-serve annual plan
Check out Vimeo here!
What Is It?
Vimeo is a video-sharing platform equipped with tools for video creation, editing, and sharing.
Why We Use This Tool
The organization in Vimeo is fantastic! Again, as a recovering perfectionist, this is my favorite part of Vimeo. If you are going to be creating a lot of videos, you need to easily find them later, and Vimeo knocks that out of the park.
Maggie Dupree
Price/ Plan Options
- Starter: $12/mo billed annually or $20 billed monthly
- Includes privacy controls, custom video player, custom URLs, review and collaboration tools, and auto-closed captioning.
- Standard (recommended): $20/mo billed annually or $33 billed monthly
- Includes everything in the Starter Plan plus a teleprompter, text-based video editing, AI script generator, and engagement and social analytics.
- Advanced: $65/mo billed annually or $108 billed monthly
- Includes everything in the Standard Plan plus AI-generated chapters and text summaries, enable creators to ask questions on videos, host live broadcasts and webinars, and more!
Key Features
1. Hosting And Player
You can host videos with their HD, ad-free player. Wherever you embed or share them, your custom player design and branding will go with it.
2. Creation And Editing
With Vimeo, you can create and edit your videos easily with their tools. You can add effects, text, and more to make your videos stand out.
3. Livestream And Events
If you want, you can stream your events live or host them on-demand. Vimeo’s tools allow you to share your content easily.
Pros:
- User Friendly – It’s easy to edit and work on content making it very user-friendly for people just getting started.
- Organization – Vimeo makes it really easy to stay organized and find past content. This is great for time efficiency and organization.
Cons:
- Cost – If you plan on creating and posting a lot of videos consistently, the price of Vimeo can start to add up quickly because users only get 1 free GB of storage.
Podcasts:
9. GarageBand (Mac Users)
What Is It?
GarageBand is a music creation software equipped with features and tools to play, record, and share music and other audio.
Why We Use This Tool
For Mac users, this is the best program to use for editing as well as recording your podcast! It is super easy to use, and the great thing is if you already have an Apple computer, you don’t need to make any additional editing program purchases.
Maggie Dupree
Price/ Plan Options
- Garageband is free!
Key Features
1. Create With Or Without An Instrument
No matter what instruments you have, you can start making music right away. All you have to do is plug in your guitar or mic and choose from an array of amps and effects. There are even human-sounding tracks to add to any genre of music.
2. Record. Mix. Master
There are so many helpful features for recording and editing that make it easy to use. You can edit your content down to the decibel. There are tons of tools that help you create the piece you want.
3. Share With A Click
You can share your finished work with friends, family, or the whole internet community. GarageBand makes this process effortless.
Pros:
- User-Friendly – One of the best things about GarageBand is that regardless of your experience, you can efficiently and effectively use their program. It’s perfect for beginners!
Cons:
- Preferences – GarageBand doesn’t allow you to save any of your preferences on tracks, so you have to set it all up every time, even if you’re using all the same settings.
10. Audacity (Windows Users)
What Is It?
Audacity is an audio editing and recording software equipped with tools to edit, mix, and enhance audio tracks.
Why Others Use This Tool
For Windows users, this is the best program to use for editing as well as recording your podcast. Again, it is super easy to use and you would not need to put down any money for an editing program. As a Mac user, you can also use Audacity, but I highly recommend just using GarageBand.
Maggie Dupree
Price/ Plan Options
- Audacity is free!
Key Features
1. Record Anything
On Audacity, you can record anything from podcasts to voice-overs, memos, and more.
2. Cross-Platform
Audacity is available to run on all major operating systems including Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
3. Import, Export, Convert
Because this tool supports all major audio formats, you can convert your audio to MP3, FLAC, and much more.
Pros:
- Plugins – Audacity supports a variety of plugins which helps build unique tracks.
- Convert – It’s easy to convert audio files into podcasts, which helps save on time.
Cons:
- Speed – There are a lot of features on Audacity that take a lot of time to load.
- Customization – Limited multitrack capabilities making it hard/ impossible to create complex mixes.
11. Buzzsprout
What Is It?
Buzzsprout is a software designed for podcast hosting that provides its users with analytics and monetization. It helps businesses distribute their podcasts on desired streaming services.
Check out Buzzsprout here!
Why We Use This Tool
I researched many hosting sites and landed on Buzzsprout because of the stats they provide! As I said before, I am a stats girl and I love to see how our podcast has grown and what episodes are doing really well. Another feature I absolutely love is being able to create a video from one of our episodes. All you have to do is select a part of the episode you want on the video and the format of your post and Buzzsprout makes the video for you! We love to post it as a reel on Instagram but it would also be perfect for TikTok.
Maggie Dupree
Price/ Plan Options
- $0/mo:
- Plan Includes: The ability to upload 2 hours each month, have episodes hosted for 90 days (limited to 2 hours each month. No overages), use advanced stats, have unlimited team members, and limited storage.
- $12/mo:
- Plan Includes: The ability to upload 3 hours each month, have episodes hosted indefinitely (upload more content for $4/hr), use advanced stats, have unlimited team members and unlimited storage, import podcasts for free, and have a hosted website.
- 18/mo:
- Plan Includes: The ability to upload 12 hours each month, have episodes hosted indefinitely (upload more content for $3/hr), use advanced stats, have unlimited team members and unlimited storage, import podcasts for free, and have a hosted website.
Key Features
1. Advanced Podcast Statistics
You’ll be able to track your podcast’s stats and see things like: the total of downloads over time, what apps people are using to listen to your podcast, and where people are listening to your podcast.
2. Automatic Episode Optimization
All you have to do is upload your audio file, and Buzzsproud automatically optimizes your episodes. You’re also able to publish your episode immediately or schedule it out in advance.
3. Custom Embed Players
With Buzzsprout, you can easily copy and paste a snippet of code onto your site that will create a podcast player on your page. This allows people to play the podcast while on that page.
Pros:
- Customer Support – They have an amazing customer support team that helps you with any questions you might have in a timely manner.
- User-Friendly – Buzzsprout is simple and clearly laid out making it easy to use, but it also has great advanced features as you start to learn more!
Cons:
- Sharability – The only con I have is I wish there were better options to share your podcast on a wider variety of platforms.
12. Otter.ai
What Is It?
Otter.ai is an AI transcription software designed to transcribe audio from podcasts, interviews, meetings, etc.
Why We Use This Tool
Otter.ai is one of my favorite podcast tools to use. I love how easy it is to use, and I love the accuracy of the transcript. Otter.ai is also great because as you edit the transcription, it plays the podcast while highlighting each word, making it easy to follow along and look for typos. My favorite feature is the chat feature where I can ask Otter (the AI bot) questions and it will pull it from the episode, I specifically love asking it for good quotes that I can use elsewhere.
Maggie Dupree
Price/ Plan Options
- Basic: $0/mo
- Plan Includes: 300 monthly transcription minutes, 30 minutes per conversation, import and transcribe 3 audio or video files per user, AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, and summarizes in real-time, Otter AI Chat where you can chat live with someone to get answers to your questions, and the ability to add teammates to your workspace.
- Pro: $16.99/mo
- Plan Includes: Everything in the Basic Plan, 1200 monthly transcription minutes, 90 minutes per conversation, import and transcribe 10 audio or video files per month, enhanced team features (shared custom vocabulary, tag speakers, etc.), and advanced search, export, and playback.
- Business: $30/mo
- Plan Includes: Everything in the Pro Plan, 6000 monthly transcription minutes, 4 hours per conversation, import and transcribe unlimited audio or video files, and admin features like usage analytics and prioritized support.
Key Features
- Otter AI learns your custom vocabulary
- Playback Control – You can play meetings back with synced audio and text, and playback speed control
- Edit text, speakers, and time codes.
- Share via groups and links
- Speaker name identification
Pros:
- Versatile – You can use Otter.ai to transcribe both recorded and live audio.
- Ease Of Use – Otter.ai is easy to learn and even easier to use.
Cons:
- Inconsistent – Because it is AI-generated, you have to go through and edit the transcriptions after.
- Speed – There are a lot of times the software has issues, making it hard to work on things.
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