Even though the last few years have seen an incredible growth in the small business sector, with tens of thousands of startups emerging all around the world – it’s actually never been harder to start a business.

While the resources are plenty and the tools are available to anyone, the sheer amount of competition out there makes it hard for businesses to get through the first few steps and lose the training wheels.

A lack of financial resources and a lack of manpower are the two main problems small businesses face when they start, often finding themselves in a continual loop of struggling.

We appreciate small business owners and know how hard it can be when the only thing fueling a company is a vision backed up by nothing else but passion. That’s why we’ve come up with a comprehensive list of all the online tools you’d ever need to grow your company, without the need to hire more people or break the bank.

So, without further ado, here are the 10 essential online tools that will help you grow your small business.

1.SITE123

None of your future business endeavors wouldn’t make any sense if you don’t have a solid base for them. All of the customers you attract will have to end up somewhere, and that somewhere should be an incredibly useful and responsive website.

SITE123 is an incredible website builder we just can’t get enough of. The platform allows you to create incredible, fuss free websites and have them published in minutes. Its easy to use features and intuitive interface, as well as the dozens of pre made layouts make it a favorite among small business owners.

Follow in the footsteps of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs that have put the future of their business in the hands of SITE123, and create a completely free website with them.

2.Hotjar

The website you create with SITE123 is bound to get tons of traffic, and that traffic contains incredibly important data you wouldn’t want to overlook.

Hotjar is an analytics app that lets you analyze the traffic on your website and get to know how your visitors spend their time on your website. Get to know their age, their habits, where they click, why they click there, and what do they want to get from those clicks.

Any info you can get about how your visitors spend time on your website will help you optimize your website and your business to fit their specific needs and wants.

3.Intercom

The main reason people keep coming back to small businesses is the incredible customer service they provide.

Setting up a full blow call centre to answer all of your customers needs is out of the question, and answering all of the calls in real time yourself is genuinely impossible.

Live chat apps such as Intercom allow you have a direct and open communication with your customers and instantly answer all of the questions and inquiries they might have. Adding a live chat to your website is as easy as adding any other widget, and you can easily find Intercom, along with a couple of other live chat apps, in SITE123’s newest addition – the App Market.

4.Privy

Customized newsletters should always find its place in your company’s marketing strategy. In order to grow your email list and have a specific audience to cater you, you need a high quality, reliable tool.

Privy is an email marketing tool that helps you collect emails from your website’s visitors. Add it straigt from the App Market and start designing the pop up windows that open when somebody lands on your website.

5.Ecwid

If you’ve got a great product to sell, you should also have a great place to sell it from. Ecwid is an online ecommerce solution provider that lets you create incredibly simple yet incredibly gorgeous online stores.

Adding your Ecwid store to your website is as simple as adding any other widget, and it offers an impressive set of extremely useful features.

Ecwid provides its users with extensive inventory management, both online and offline, as well as the ability to customize the languages and shipping fees according to your customer’s IP address.

6.Hootsuite

Everybody keeps telling you how important it is to establish a strong online presence for your business. However, what people almost always fail to tell you is how hard it can be to manage all those social media profiles and keep track of your activity and engagement.

Hootsuite is an incredibly useful social media management tool that allows you to run all of your social media profiles from a single platform. Apart from being a all-in-one posting and management solution, Hootsuite also offers its clients in depth analysis of their social media performance.

7.Donately

Whether you run a charity, a tech startup or a manufacturing business, reaching financial stability is the hardest part of any business.

Getting big bank investments or support from larger charity organizations can be hard for a company that’s just emerged. Donately is an online tool that allows its users to give and accept donations on their website.

Adding the Donately widget to your website is as easy as adding any other widget from the App Market, and setting up an account there is the same as on any other social networks.

While this was originally created with charities in mind, Donately is an incredibly useful tool that lets your customers donate directly to your business, skipping the middleman altogether.

8.Simplybook.me

Most of the online tools and third party apps you’ll find are designed to fit the needs of business that have a physical product to sell. But what about service-focused businesses that have little use from an online store or a donation app?

That’s where Simplybook.me steps in. This online booking tool can also be found in SITE123’s App Market and just as easily added to your website.

Simplybook.me allows its users a simple, fuss free way to book appointments and helps them keep track by sending out reminders. So, whether you own a hair salon, a tattoo parlor, or have just opened a restaurant, offering your clients the opportunity to book appointments directly on your website will help you grow your business.

9.Cincopa

If a single image speaks louder than a thousand words, imagine all the stories you could tell with an incredible gallery filled to the brim with beautiful imagery based around your brand.

Cincopa is an online image and gallery management tool that helps its users create and curate incredible sets of images that tell a visual story about a company.

10.123 Contact Form

Sometimes you want your website’s visitors to answer a couple of straightforward questions about your company. Sometimes you just want to collect general information on your customers.

Whatever you intentions are, chances are 123 Contact Form will have a solution for it. This online form builder lets you create custom forms and add them to your website. All of the collected data is easy to access and analyze, making this form builder a must have tool if you want to grow you business.

Conclusion

These 10 incredible online tools makes managing and growing a company much easier and much more accessible to everyone. With all of them being free and easy to use, no need to break the budget or hire additional team members to manage them all.

Ready to grow your business? Start by creating a free website and adding these amazing tools to your pages.