Running or being a part of a small and growing business is a balancing act. It’s important to keep overhead low, yet still providing and using resources that help keep productivity high. Here at Get Online NOLA, we’ve tried many apps to help with our productivity, abandoned some, modified others to suit our needs, and found some that we can’t live without. We are always on the hunt for new apps and software that make our jobs easier but don’t break the bank.
Here are some apps/programs that we use to keep everything running smoothly:
Free for a company/group with less than 15 members and $50/month for teams of 15 or more (prices increase with more members).
Asana is a great project management tool. It serves as a great digital to-do list that all members can see, comment on, and mark as complete. Every member can see what needs to be done and who is doing what. We started using Asana in this way, but it slowly became a sort of digital notebook for us, where we put notes, and other important information about a task that other members can access at any time.
Free for the first 15GB and $5/month for another 100 GB.
I’m writing this blog post on a Google document that I shared with the rest of the team. They can see what I wrote and write comments about it in the margins. I can see their comments and edits in real-time, and the documents save automatically to the cloud. Which means I can access these documents anywhere with an internet connection. You can also do this with spreadsheets, forms, and presentations. All you need is a Google account.
Free for the first 2GB and $10/month for another 100 GB.
I access my Dropbox at least 10 times a day. All of the work I do for Get Online NOLA, I put in the Dropbox, and share it with the team. Regardless of location and time, they can see what I’ve done, download the files, make edits, and share them with other members and clients. Since it’s in the cloud, I can access everything, even when I’m not at my computer, and it also frees up a ton of space on my local hard drive.
Free member-to-member calling and mobile/landline calling starting at $3/month.
I’m currently working 1500 miles away from the rest of the GON team :(. While there’s no substitute for face-to-face collaboration, being able to video call is essential to stay in the loop, brainstorm, and manage projects. We Skype twice a week, and when the internet is behaving, it works perfectly. Facetime is another alternative that works for us, and because we all have iPhones, we can do it anywhere. Skype is a mobile app that works very well. I use it when I have wifi, but little to no cell phone coverage. We’ve had little success with Skype’s screen share feature. Does anyone use a screen-sharing app that has worked well for them?
Free for individuals with the option to upgrade to teams with 3 or more at $99/year per person.
Making graphics for your brand was revolutionized with Canva. As an alternative to heavy-duty software like Photoshop or Figma, which we use for logo and website design, Canva is a great option for the day-to-day designs most businesses need. With lots of great free templates that you can update with your brand colors and information, making social posts is easy peasy with Canva.
Free with the option to upgrade to retain messages for a longer period of time, and create automated workflows to increase productivity.
Staying in touch with your team via email? It’s not for us. We like to keep our lines of communication clear so we can see what is important correspondence from clients. We use Slack for the regular messages that we need to send to each other every day. From quick questions to chatting about what we did on the weekend, Slack is a great way to keep in touch and stay organized with group and department channels.
Starter plans start at $50 per month and include 1,000 marketing contacts, and access to their Service, Sales, CMS, and Operation hubs.
Our favorite CRM software is Hubspot. Keeping our prospects, clients, and referral partner’s information organized is key as our business continues to grow. Hubspot is a robust sales and marketing tool for many types of businesses. We primarily use their CRM function but they also have integrated email marketing, customer service, operations software, and more.
Free for 1 user, and $4 a month for teams of 50 users or less!
Keeping your business safe online requires much more thought than it did just a few years ago. Updating your passwords regularly is key, as is using difficult passwords, and different passwords for each website. Now that most of us have more passwords than it is possible to remember, LastPass is how we keep these passwords saved and safe. With double authentication and LastPass, you really can’t go wrong with your sign-in safety!
Free with grammar corrections included, upgrade to Premium at $12 a month for writing suggestions and more.
When writing anything online it’s important that you’re representing your business in a professional light. Using tools like Grammarly to check your spelling and grammar is helpful to ensure you’re not missing the simple writing mistakes we all make. Just make sure you always read important social posts, emails, or other text out loud before sending – Grammarly is a huge help, but it shouldn’t be relied upon as your only check before going live.
Free including up to 10 collaborators and 5MB file size uploads, options to upgrade to Plus for $10 a month with unlimited file uploads, 100 collaborators, etc
Think of Notion as your digital notebook. It’s a highly customizable and sharable resource that can be used as a planning tool, handbook, or in our case a resource directory. We use Notion to save tutorials for many of our business processes. This allows our whole team to be able to take care of any issues that may arise.