Best 25 Business Software Tools and Business Software for IT Professionals

The best small business software helps you to run your business smoothly and efficiently. Many tools are available as monthly or yearly subscriptions, and those can add up fast. Should you decide to try out a tool, pay attention to how much of its features are available in the trial. Also, check how long the trial runs and when it starts. You want to be sure the clock doesn’t start ticking until you’re ready to test it.
The following list tells you about 25 such business software tools for your daily use:

Zoho Books

It is ideal for very small business owners and entrepreneurs like freelancers. The main usp of this software is its ease of use, free from the often added complexity of accounting software for bigger companies. Use Zoho to create invoices, track your expenses, and even create financial reports. Its smooth navigable dashboard is one of the main reasons for its popularity.

Zoho CRM

Customer relationship management, or CRM, software for tracking your company’s interactions with clients and prospects. In the free version, you have access to sales force automation leads, contacts, accounts, tasks and opportunities. Team collaboration features like status updates, direct messages and follow up rules. The marketing component provides 10 email templates, email opt-out and website visitor tracking system.

Basecamp

This tool is basically known for its usability with reliable and far-reaching mobile access to give small businesses the reassurance they need when moving through a project from beginning to end. With this tool, the entire team can be spread out all over the world and coordinate remotely. Its ability to be accessed from any smartphone or tablet makes this a cinch.

Evernote

The tagline “Remember Everything” sums up Evernote’s power succinctly. This productivity app belongs on this monster list of the best software for small business because it’s an endless filing cabinet that lives in the cloud and syncs across all of your devices. Information that you you put in their can be easily fetched by a basic keyword or tag search. It’s the perfect place for small business documents, receipts, PDFs, plans, graphics, images and virtually everything else.

Google Drive/Docs

A free cloud storage service that allows you to pay for extra space, Google Drive/Docs is the base maker of organization. It helps small businesses to get quick access across all of their devices to their documents, files, images, videos and so much more. It can even be used as a backup system.

Dropbox

With this, users can backup and access company critical files from anywhere. What about concerns with storing important files in the cloud? Dropbox offers two main security features as two-step verification and remote wipe. Sometimes the problem isn’t the service, but the user. You can take extra steps to add security by asking all employees to verify their uploaded files don’t have a public URL. (Free for 2 GB of space. $9.99 per month for 1k GB.)

Gmail

Featuring integration with Google’s host of other highly usable online software products and services, Gmail is the choice of many small businesses when it comes to email. Its layout is always being redesigned to ensure a better user experience, is intuitive, with labels providing a smart way of quick and easy in-app organization. Interestingly, 92% of small companies and start-ups host their email with Gmail.

Microsoft Outlook

One of Gmail’s biggest direct competitors, Microsoft’s Outlook is actually a bit more than just email. It’s a personal information manager with a calendar, contact manager, task manager, journal, and note and web-browsing capabilities. Alike Gmail, it’s available on both iOS and Android for email processing on the go.

McAfee

One of the oldest and best-known security and virus tools available, McAfee is available for your computers, tablets and smartphones, providing protection to small business owners no matter where they are. It must be mentioned that this app’s Virus Protection Pledge, which states that you get a full refund should one of its supported devices get a virus, if McAfee still fails to remove said virus from your system.

Skype

Skype allows professionals to collaborate through screen sharing, instant messages, video conferencing, and audio conferencing and file sharing. Up to 25 people can join group audio and video calls on the free plan. Skype works with many computer and mobile platforms. The price factors in when you want to use the service for calling overseas or landline and mobile phones.

WordPress

If your business still doesn’t have a blog–one of the best ways around to provide up-to-date company and product news–you’re only about three years behind the curve. WordPress installs in minutes and the platform is dazzlingly easy to use It is so simple, that your team will be begging to contribute to the blog instead of whining that it’s too laborious.

Salesforce.com

Customer relationship management isn’t just for the Fortune 500. Even single shops can benefit from a more ordered approach to managing the sales process, tracking leads, and ensuring that follow-ups are done in a timely fashion. Salesforce.com requires some training and patience due to its vastness, but its exhaustive feature set and affordable pricing options make it a business must-have.

Mozy

You can (and should) regularly back up files to an external hard drive or NAS (network-attached storage) device in your office–but what if the whole place goes up in smoke? Hedge your bet with an online backup service like Mozy, which automatically archives whatever you’d like across the Internet, safe and sound. Simply select what you want to be backed up, and Mozy does the rest, either in bulk while you sleep, or in real time, as files are changed.

HotSpot Shield

HotSpot Shield is available for Mac, PC, iOS and Android, which makes it a source of encryption and protection across all devices for complete security. This app is presently being used by more than 400 million people in 200 countries, which speaks to its credibility.

Kaspersky

Kaspersky makes a range of security and protection products, ranging from anti-spyware and anti-virus to anti-spam and firewall products. Many of its products have won awards for effectiveness. Free trials are there in-build, so that small business owners can check if a certain Kaspersky product is right for their business or not.

SCORE

SCORE is a non-profit organization that provides resources and advice for small businesses, most of it free. The website also offers many business and legal templates and tools for small business owners with planning, finance, sales, marketing and management.

Draw.io

Your version of Microsoft Office may not come with Visio as you may not need it much. Still, you might want to document business processes, mind maps, org charts and other documents. It is a free web drawing app that comes with free templates for engineering, mind maps, network diagrams, software design, Venn diagrams and wireframes. Main advantage of using draw.io is that it does not make your drawings public. Beware that some competitors do make files public.

PicMonkey

It is a web photo editor for retouching, designing images and creating collages in a simple, uncluttered interface. Editing features include in this photo editor which can crop, rotate, exposure, sharpen, auto adjust, effects, overlays, textures and themes. The service supports add, but offers a paid plan for making ads disappear.

TinyScan

TinyScan capture pictures of documents and finally converts them into searchable PDF files. It also lets you rearrange pages within a file, email files and protect it with a password. To improve a document’s visibility, use brightness and contrast. It is compatible with Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. The app works with the following paper sizes: A4, B5 and letter.

Chrometa

It may require you’re starting and stopping the clock every time you change a task, project or client. Then there are times when you forget to stop the clock. That’s why Chrometa makes this list. It does passive time tracking. If you leave for a meeting, it’ll ask you to record your away time on your return.

Trello

This tool looks like a billboard filled with sticky notes. To organize and share your projects, just add notes and drag them around. Its billboard provides a snapshot of the current projects, who’s working on what and you can also check progress. Although a web-based app, Trello has an app available for iOS, Android and Kindle Fire HD.

AkrutoSync

If you are using Outlook Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Notes, you’ll want to use AkrutoSync too, to sync your Outlook PC data with your mobile devices. This way you always have your most updated appointments and information with you wherever you go. It is compatible with devices include iPhone, iPad, Surface, Windows Phone, and Android phones and tablets.

MailChimp

Email marketing is still one of the more effective marketing channels. It’s that simple and it keeps your company top of mind. It is forever Free plan comes with A/B testing, custom forms, segmentation and reports. The service also has subscriber profiles in which you can learn about a subscriber’s engagement and website activity.

Wave

It is a free tool that support ads and web-based accounting and invoicing service. Its highly developed software and tools for small businesses also consists of payroll, payments and personal finance. Its basic features include expense tracking, direct bank data imports, receipt management, recurring invoicing and credit card processing.

Hootsuite

This is an extremely popular social media tool that offers powerful social media control from one interface. It allows you to do things like social listening, where you’re able to monitor what people are saying about your small business on the web. Plus, Hootsuite works with approximately 35 different social networks, making it very expansive.