Nine handy tools you can use to run your startup

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So, you have come up with a brilliant idea to bring some big changes in the industry. Sounds exciting! That brings a start to your entrepreneurial journey. You would be struggling hard enough to get along with the latest technology to go further with your dreams and take your business to a new level. I personally feel that running a startup is a big challenge and managing it is a little tough.

But if every step is taken carefully and important things like marketing activities, product launch, finances, multiple projects, accounting and invoicing and much more are not overlooked, success is not far.

Many of you might be confused as to where to begin from?

With the help of right tools, you can get important things done for your business. Take a look at this amazing list of 9 handy startup tools for your business. I hope you find these helpful.

ProofHub (Project Management)

ProofHub is a cloud project management solution that has features to match the requirements of every business size. There is no need of having too many tools when you have ProofHub. It comes packed with powerful features like file sharing, Gantt charts, discussions, proofing and allows basic task management which you need when you are starting up. If you have to manage multiple client projects with multiple teams, ProofHub is a useful tool to synchronize your team and organize your tasks.

Hubspot (Inbound marketing and sales)

It has a full stack of features that can help businesses transform their marketing from outbound lead generation to inbound lead generation so that their potential customers can find them. For startups, it has designed its business model keeping in mind your budget and thus allows to add basic CRM and sales tools to marketing automation software at no extra cost. HubSpot includes tools for social media marketing, content management, landing pages and search engine optimization as well.

Canva (Graphic designing)

Canva is a tool you can use to create a graphic design to help you with your designing jobs without spending too much money and time. It has a library of more than 1 million stock photographs, graphic elements and fonts. As a startup, you can use Canva for your blog post, social media posts, flyers, business cards, menu, magazine pages and many more areas.

Hostt (Web hosting)

One of the important part of starting a business is having an attractive website. When it comes to starting off your website, the first main requirement is web hosting. A reliable site like Hostt is free for initial days and you can host your WordPress or Joomla site. Even if you are not sure how to setup your website, their support team will help 24X7 to do the same. It offers unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth. Hostt also provides domain registration, VPS hosting, shared hosting, SSL certificates and valuable services like transfer domain.

Searchmetrics (Search engine optimization)

Leading companies like eBay and SIEMENS use search metrics for SEO and are getting great results. As a startup, you need to have a strong SEO foundation to reap the rewards in the future. This is a platform that can boost your online visibility and make smarter marketing decisions. The soon you build your digital marketing experience better, the more profitable it will be.

PowToon (Create amazing videos)

In any startup business situation, grab the attention of your customers by creating amazing animated videos. PowToon offers countless styles, image, and effect combos. Now you can demonstrate your products in an impressive video to amplify the message. You can find easy to use templates that can be edited without the need of professional training or some technical expertise.

Docracy (Free legal documents)

As a startup founder, you will have to look after legal documents involved in the starting up of your company. You will have to sign and share legal documents, but you do not want to hire a lawyer because that can cost a lot. Docracy has a collection of legal contracts and has an online library of various templates for creating legal documents. It offers lease agreements, incorporation documents for startups and much more. By default the documents are private, but you can make the documents public or private according to your requirement.

Prezi (Presentation software)

Prezi is a cloud-based productivity app for creating presentations and presenting ideas on a virtual canvas. It is visual storytelling software that is suitable for use as a collaborative whiteboard. Prezi creates lively and graphic- rich presentations for people who are not designers. The presentation you make can be shared with others and you can give them permission to either view or edit the file.

Google Analytics (Analyze your site’s traffic)

This powerful analytic tool from Google can be used to track and report traffic reaching your website. For a startup, it is a must use tool to see where the users are coming from, what are the pages most visited,how much time being spend on their site and other such information. You can get to know all about it with Google Analytics. It is integrated with AdWords so that users can now review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions. It allows users to have 100 site profiles with each profile corresponding to one website. Other advanced options like event tracking and A/B testing are also possible with Google analytics.

These are some of the useful tools to launch your startup and solve all your pains. By using these tools it will become a bit easy for your startup to make an impact in the industry and you can find yourself with every weapon you may need.

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About Author

Vartika Kashyap is the Marketing Manager at ProofHub (https://www.proofhub.com/) — a project management software for your growing business needs. She is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016, and is also a contributor for The Next Web, Huffington Post & Your Story. She is also a top writer in Leadership & Productivity on Medium. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.

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