Maintaining a strong and healthy brand is much easier than it used to be. In days past, you’d have to spend every waking hour hustling to get sales, market your product or service and manage your employees. Not so much anymore. Here are the 4 essential free business applications to easily maintain a healthy business.
There are tons of free applications out there that help you run a business smoothly and efficiently, so choosing the right one is a little difficult.
1. Hootsuite – Social Media Management and Scheduling
Hootsuite is amazing. Simple amazing. Lots of people use Buffer to schedule and manage their social media accounts, but we’re partial to Hootsuite for a couple of reasons:
More Capability for Less – A paid Hootsuite account is only $9.99 for the Pro plan and offers up to 50 social profiles, social analytics, and optional marketing campaigns.
The freebie version of Hootsuite offers 3 social profiles, basic analytics and 2 marketing campaigns included. That’s a huge value for $0.
App Integrations – Hootsuite offers over 150 app integrations and extensions that boost the overall capabilities and experience of the scheduling platform.
Users – The Hootsuite Pro plan starts with 2 users (you + 1 team member)
The free Hootsuite account is an amazing option for any business starting out, but if you manage more than 3 different social media accounts you may want to consider the paid Pro plan for $9.99/mo.
2. WordPress – Total Website Solution
What more can we possibly say about WordPress that hasn’t been said? Probably not much, other than the fact that we use it for our website and all of our clients websites.
It’s an amazing website platform that offers a wide range of capabilities and is extremely easy to use. Enough said.
We are writing an article on what’s hot about WordPress and 10 Simple Ways WordPress Helps You Build A Strong Business. Check it out on February 17th right here on our blog!
3. NutCache – Time Tracking, Invoicing, Project Management
If your business tracks hourly time, it is extremely important to keep accurate records for your own accounting and for your clients. Plus, you want to bill the correct amount, right?
The free application NutCache is a hard-working app that offers a robust business suite including time tracking, invoicing, expense tracking and project management. This particular free application is the least expensive and most robust considering the other options out there.
You get an unlimited amount of projects, invoices, or expenses and attachments, up to 2 organizations and 2 team members. If you need more client organizations or team members, the paid option is ridiculously inexpensive for the amount of flexibility and functionality you get. Honestly, $14/mo is a small price to pay for an all-in-one software like this.
4. Hubspot CRM – Customer Relationship Management
There are SO many CRM options out there and they’re all very, very different. With that said, it’s a little hard to highlight the top free CRM application out there.
The all new Hubspot CRM is a really solid free application for small businesses just starting out or those that have never used a CRM before. The only thing about Hubspot is that it is primarily used as a lead-in for the Hubspot marketing automation software, which is a pretty pricey option.
If you’re an Apple user, Salesbox is also a phenomenal option. Salesbox is a beautiful, robust CRM platform that only runs on Apple products. Honestly, we’re a little sad that we don’t use Apple…
The Bare Essentials
Well, there you have it! These are the 4 essential free application options to help you maintain a healthy brand from top to bottom.
Do you have any other free applications that you use for your business? We’d love to hear about your favorite free app and how it helps you run a successful and healthy business. Leave us a comment below!