The Best Online Business Tools Part 2
Welcome to part 2 of this blog series where I am sharing my favorite online business tools. If you haven’t read part 1, you can click here.
Slack
Slack is an instant messaging tool that you can use to communicate and collaborate with your team. I love it because it allows for quick communication and helps cut down on emails. If you have a remote team, I highly recommend this tool, it's a great way to easily stay in touch.
Honeybook
Honeybook is a client management software where you can create contracts, send invoices, and even communicate with your clients about a given project all in one place. This is great for service based businesses owners because you can have your clients sign their contracts (you should always have a contract) and pay all on the same platform. Easy for the client, easy for you.
Teachable
Teachable is an online course hosting software. Now this tool won’t apply to all business owners but if you are interested in creating an online course (which is an excellent revenue stream to add to your online business), Teachable is the best platform out there in my opinion. I love how user-friendly it is and it truly has everything you need to manage your online course. The customer support is great as well.
Flodesk and Mailchimp
Flodesk and Mailchimp are both email marketing service providers. I am listing them together because I have used both in the past and think they are both great. It really just depends on your business needs. I think that Flodesk is a little more user friendly especially for beginners. However, if you want a high level of customization options and know how to code or plan to hire someone that does, then you might prefer Mailchimp. However, they both have great pre-created templates to choose from. In my experience when it comes to email marketing tools, you just have to try a couple and see what you like best. Luckily its fairly easy to migrate between platforms if you change your mind and there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube on how to do this.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a website builder. I actually built this website through Squarespace. If you are not a coder or don’t plan to hire one, I highly recommend you create your website with Squarespace. They have so many templates for you to choose from and integrate with a lot of different other providers such Acuity (scheduling software that Squarepace actually acquired) and Stripe (payment processing software) so it makes it really easy to run your business online. The most common alternative to Squarespace is Wordpress which I have used in the past and I personally don’t find it very user friendly although it does offer more customization abilities. However, I’ve found most people can do what they need to run their business with Squarespace.
This wraps up my favorite online business tools series. I am constantly on the hunt for new tools so as I discover more, I will add them here. If you have tools that you love that I didn’t list, please comment them down below.