10 Startup Tools to Kickstart your Business

More than for others, time and money are an entrepreneurs’ biggest concerns. We're no different than you. Coming from a small team of hard-working entrepreneurs we have built our way up. However, we didn’t do it alone! Over the years we have discovered many great startup tools to help us out. Today we'd like to share with you some of these startup tools, hoping they will give you hand in growing your business:

Website Building Tools

The first thing your startup needs is a website. As the face of your business it deserves a little thought and constant optimisation. There are zillion of website building options out there to host your project. The major advantage of using a “ready-to-use” solution is that you can start earning revenues today without all the hassle and concerns you will have if you are setting up your online store independently such as safety issues, backups, servers, and so on.

The following platforms give you different customisation tools to attract your clientele and improve your conversion.

Prestashop

Prestashop is a simple solution to design and launch your online store. One of the very first words that comes to our minds when describing this solution is flexibility. As an open-source solution, Prestashop has available hundreds of add-ons to enhance your online store experience. In fact, it's this liberal concept that makes this such an interesting startup tool for entrepreneurs. When developing your online store you can easily create channels to sell on platforms such as Amazon, eBay or even highlight your cross-selling functionalities.

Drupal

Drupal is an open-source content management solution for hosting and publishing your website. This startup tool has thousands of add-on modules and designs available. Even though great companies (e.g. the Examiner.com or The Economist) use Drupal, it's still an excellent tool for small entrepreneurs as well. The bigger advantage of using Drupal is the access to a close, generous and helpful community of developers, marketers and managers.

Unbounce

Unbounce is a landing page builder that can be used by anyone without any special IT background. The major goal of developing a landing page is to redirect your visitors into a certain action, such as signing up for your newsletter or registering on your platform. This tool is useful for startups who need to add an extra push to their on-site engagement. The best thing about Unbounce is its ease in applying A/B tests and seeing what works the best.

Communication Tools

Once your website is up and running it will lead to contacts, queries and questions from visitors. It’s important to think ahead about the way you want your website visitors to reach you, in order not to miss out on any big opportunities.

We’ve dedicated an article to this topic, in which we listed some of the best omnichannel support tools we could find out there.

Userlike

Once people reach your website many different questions might come across their mind for which they cannot find an appropriate answer. Having a live chat software tool is a great way to take away these worries from your potential customers.

Live chat software is a personal way to reach your website visitors, providing them support on the moments when they need you the most (for example during checkout). The main reason for listing ourselves here is that Live Chat is a great way to get in close contact with, and get feedback from, your early visitors and adaptors. Also, to promote ourselves as a Startup Tool we offer a special “Startup Deal”. Check this page for more information about how you can use a paid plan for free.

Socialcast

Socialcast is a corporate social network that gathers and connects knowledge, ideas and documents needed for collaborative working. This startup tool can be compared to a "Facebook for companies", and joins everyone from your company into an open forum where you can solve problems or develop new solutions together. It can be used by anyone from any device no matter where you are.

Dozeo

Dozeo is a social video chat which can be used both for team meetings or to contact your potential customers. To meet up using this startup you are not required to do any downloads or installations. Also, Dozeo is a straightforward, easy-to-use service which fits all your needs. It offers a wide set of features to boost your team meetings’ productivity, such as the interactive blackboard, video sharing, collaborative editing and general online co-working.

Asana

“Getting things done” is what really matters for small companies. In the midst of tasks, to-do lists, e-mails and ringing phones it's easy to get lost here and there. Asana is our favourite tool to get things done in an organised, time-bound way.

Asana is a workplace for teams to share, add, edit, schedule, assign and complete tasks. Also, this is a great way for managers to take a closer look at what others are doing and how well have they been evolving in their projects. It is almost unbelievable that such a powerful tool works for free, so take advantage.

Customer Relationship Management

Having a website, attracting customers and communicating with them means nothing for your business if you cannot keep track of all the interactions and customer information. A nice CRM tool is as essential to a startup as a block of ice to a polar bear. Even though some highly advanced systems bring great insights to big corporations, startups can easily be found lost in the midst of useless features. Not likely what you will find in the following tools.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a word-leading CRM tool that brings all your customer interactions to a single place. Categorised as tickets, you can easily manage all your e-mails and support queries in no-time.

Similar to Userlike, Zendesk is keen on having all startups on their side. They offer what is called the Zendesk Startup Pack and its designed for all the bootstrapping Startups out there that need to offer top notch service to their early users.

Zoho CRM

With a free version for entrepreneurs, Zoho is a web based CRM software especially designed to increase your real-time knowledge about your business. Especially powerful is its forecasting feature, which allows you to understand the behaviour of different tracked elements and forecast sales.

Help Scout

Help Scout is a helpdesk solution that is sure to improve the quality of your customer interactions. With Help Scout help you can allocate to a single place all your conversations from different sources such as Live Chat, e-mail, etc. Also, Help Scout provides nice reports on your customer engagement to make sure you are developing the right type of relationship your customers are looking for.

We hope you found this listing of different startup tools useful! If there’s a specific software that you really love and wish to share with the community feel free to do it on the comment section below.

About Userlike

Userlike is live chat software for websites, allowing companies to chat with their (potential) customers directly over the website. Look here for more information.