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💻 Online Business Tools: Everything You Need to Build, Run & Grow Your Business
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items Building an online business can feel overwhelming when there are hundreds of tools, platforms and apps telling you that you need them. 💻🌸 I created this list to make finding the right tools a whole lot easier. Inside, you’ll find AI tools, content ...
Sections
15
🤖 AI Tools for Business & Content Creation
📝 Planning, Productivity & Organization
🎨 Design, Content & Creative Tools
🎥 Video, Audio & Creator Tools
🛍️ Online Storefronts & Selling Platforms
💳 Payments, Invoicing & Getting Paid
🤖 AI Tools for Business & Content Creation
AI can feel like an extra set of hands when you're building a business solo. Explore tools for brainstorming, writing, research, content creation, images, presentations and simplifying everyday business tasks.
One of my go-to AI tools for brainstorming, writing, research, content ideas, planning and everyday business tasks. It’s especially helpful when you need a thought partner to help you get from “I have an idea” to an actual plan.
ChatGPT
A great option for thoughtful writing, brainstorming and working through longer or more detailed projects. I especially like it for refining ideas and helping turn messy thoughts into something clearer.
Claude
A versatile AI assistant that’s especially useful if you already live inside Google’s ecosystem. Great for brainstorming, writing, research and working alongside your everyday Google tools.
Google Gemini
One I’d reach for when research is the priority. It combines AI answers with web sources, making it useful when you want to explore a topic without opening a million tabs.
Perplexity AI
A helpful choice if you already use Microsoft products for work. It can assist with writing, brainstorming, research and productivity while fitting naturally into the Microsoft ecosystem.
Microsoft Copilot: Your AI companion
An AI assistant worth exploring if you want another perspective for brainstorming, research, writing and current-topic conversations. I like having multiple AI tools available rather than relying on just one.
Grok
One of my favorite names to know for AI-generated visuals. Great for creating creative concepts, moodboards, campaign imagery and unique visuals when you want to think beyond traditional stock photos.
Midjourney
Especially interesting for AI-generated graphics where text and typography matter. A useful tool to have in your creative toolbox when you're creating visual content with words built into the design.
Ideogram
A creative AI tool for generating and working with visual content and video. Definitely one to explore if you're interested in using AI to speed up your creative process.
Google Flow - AI Creative Studio for Video, Images & ...
Built with marketers and content teams in mind, making it a strong option for marketing copy, campaigns and brand content. Worth exploring if content marketing is a big part of your business.
Jasper
A handy way to turn ideas into polished presentations and visual documents without starting from a blank page. Great for pitches, guides, educational content and business presentations.
Gamma
A standout option for AI voice generation and audio. Great for voiceovers, narration, faceless content, videos and other projects where you need polished audio without recording everything yourself.
ElevenLabs
A strong option when you need to turn long documents, links, and research into something easier to understand and use. It’s especially helpful for creators and business owners who want AI grounded in the sources they provide.
NotebookLM
📝 Planning, Productivity & Organization
Keep the ideas, tasks and moving pieces of your business from living entirely in your head. These tools can help you plan projects, organize your workflow, manage tasks and create simple systems that make running your business feel more manageable.
One of my favorite all-in-one workspaces for keeping ideas, content plans, projects and business systems organized. Perfect if you want to build your own little digital command center.
Notion
A simple, visual way to organize projects and tasks using boards, lists and cards. Great if you like seeing exactly what's on your plate without an overly complicated system.
Trello
A solid project-management option for keeping tasks, deadlines and projects organized. Especially useful when your business starts involving multiple projects or people.
Asana
A powerful all-in-one productivity platform for managing projects, tasks, documents and workflows. Best for people who want a lot of flexibility and room to build customized systems.
ClickUp™
A practical business essential for email, documents, spreadsheets, calendars, storage and collaboration. If you're building an online business, there's a good chance you'll end up using at least a few of these tools.
Google Workspace: Secure Online Productivity ...
A flexible platform for managing projects, workflows and team collaboration. A good fit if you want your business systems to be highly visual and customizable.
The AI Work Platform for People & Agents
Think of it as a mix between a spreadsheet and a database. I love the possibilities for content calendars, business trackers, client information and organizing large amounts of information.
Airtable
A classic note-taking and organization tool for capturing ideas, notes, documents and information in one place. A simple option if you primarily want a digital space for your thoughts and reference material.
Best Note Taking App - Organize Your Notes with Evernote
A full productivity suite with familiar tools for documents, spreadsheets, email, storage and collaboration. A strong option for businesses already working within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Microsoft 365 Copilot - Sign in
Perfect for keeping your personal and business to-do lists from taking over your brain. Simple, clean and especially useful if you just need to know what needs to get done today.
Todoist
🎨 Design, Content & Creative Tools
You don't need to be a professional designer to create polished content for your business. These tools can help you create social graphics, videos, digital products, presentations, marketing materials and other visual content.
One of my favorite recommendations for creating polished content without needing professional design skills. Great for social posts, digital products, presentations, lead magnets and so much more.
Canva
A beginner-friendly video editor that's become a staple for short-form content. Great for Reels, TikToks, Shorts and quick edits when you don't want complicated editing software.
CapCut
A nice middle ground for creating graphics, videos and marketing content quickly. Especially worth exploring if you want Adobe tools without jumping straight into the full Creative Cloud experience.
Design Anything, Powered by AI, Guided by You | Adobe Express
A favorite for digital illustration and drawing, especially if you're an iPad user. Great for creating custom artwork, illustrations, graphics and digital products.
Procreate
The powerhouse option for serious creative work, with professional tools for design, photography, video, illustration and more. Best suited for creators and businesses that need more advanced capabilities.
Save 50% on Creative Cloud Pro.
A creative playground for generating unique AI visuals, concepts and imagery. Especially fun when you want visuals that feel more customized than traditional stock photography.
Midjourney
🎥 Video, Audio & Creator Tools
Creating high-quality content doesn't have to mean expensive equipment or complicated editing software. These tools can help you record, edit and repurpose content, create professional audio and voiceovers, livestream, record tutorials and turn long-...
One of the easiest places to start if you're creating short-form video. It gives you plenty of editing features without making you feel like you need a film degree. 😂
CapCut AI Video Editor: Smart Online Video Editing with ...
A really interesting option for editing video and audio through transcripts. Great for podcasts, interviews, tutorials and long-form content that you want to clean up or repurpose.
Descript
Super useful if you have long-form videos and want to turn them into shorter clips. A great time-saver for creators who don't want to manually hunt for every potential short-form moment.
OpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool
A strong option for recording podcasts, interviews and video content remotely. Especially useful when you're creating professional-looking content with guests who aren't in the same location.
AI Video Editor | Edit Video With AI
One of my favorite tools for quickly explaining something without typing a giant wall of instructions. Record your screen, camera or both and send the video instead.
Log into Loom
Great for polished AI voiceovers, narration and audio projects. Especially useful for faceless creators and businesses that need voice content without recording everything themselves.
ElevenLabs
A creator-friendly option for livestreaming, interviews and broadcasting across platforms. Great if live video is becoming part of your content strategy.
StreamYard
🛍️ Online Storefronts & Selling Platforms
Ready to actually sell something online? These platforms make it easier to create a storefront, sell digital or physical products and give your customers a place to shop—even if you don't have a full website yet.
A great all-in-one option if you want to combine your links, digital products, email collection and other creator tools in one place. Especially appealing when you're just getting started and don't want to build everything separately.
Mobile Websites for Creators
Designed with creators in mind, making it easy to sell digital products, services, courses and other offers from a simple storefront. Great for keeping your sales setup lightweight.
Stan - Your Creator Store
One of the biggest names in ecommerce for a reason. A strong choice if you're building a serious online store and want room to grow.
Shopify
A straightforward option for selling digital products, memberships and other creator offers. Great if you want to start selling without building a full ecommerce website.
Earn your first dollar online with Gumroad
A beginner-friendly platform for selling digital products, courses and memberships. Worth checking out if you want a simple way to start selling online.
Payhip
A popular ecommerce option for WordPress websites. Best for people who want more control and customization over their online store.
WooCommerce
A simple, recognizable way to bring all your important links into one shareable page. Great for creators and businesses that want an easy home base for their social profiles, products, offers and other online resources.
Link in bio tool: Everything you are, in one simple link | Linktree
💳 Payments, Invoicing & Getting Paid
Getting paid shouldn't be the complicated part. These tools can help you accept payments, send invoices, manage business transactions and create a smoother experience for you and your customers.
One of the biggest names in online payments and a favorite for businesses that need flexible payment processing. Especially useful as your business starts needing more advanced payment options.
Stripe
A familiar payment option that many customers already know and trust. Handy for accepting payments online and giving customers another way to pay.
PayPal
A versatile option for payments, invoicing and selling both online and in person. Especially useful if your business operates across multiple selling environments.
Power your entire business
A familiar peer-to-peer payment option that's widely used for everyday transactions. Useful in certain small-business and client situations where simplicity matters.
Venmo
A convenient way to send and receive money directly through participating banks. Worth knowing about, especially for straightforward business-to-business payments.
Zelle
Designed to make business bill payments and accounts payable easier to manage. A useful option when you're starting to have more vendors and business expenses to keep track of.
Melio
A more robust option for managing business payments and financial workflows. Better suited for growing businesses that need more structure around bills and payments.
BILL
A strong option for businesses working with international clients or receiving money across currencies. Particularly useful when traditional international transfers get expensive.
Wise
📦 Digital Product Marketplaces & Resources
Whether you're selling digital products or looking for creative assets to help you make them, these marketplaces can give you more ways to create, discover, sell and grow online.
A huge marketplace for selling digital and physical products directly to shoppers already looking to buy. A great place to explore if you're interested in testing a product without building your own audience from scratch.
Etsy
A massive resource for fonts, graphics, templates, crafts and other creative assets. Especially useful when you're creating digital products and need design resources to work with.
Creative Fabrica
A curated marketplace for fonts, graphics, templates, photos and other design assets. Great when you want your projects to look polished without designing every element from scratch.
Creative Market
A popular self-publishing platform that lets creators publish books, journals, workbooks and other print or digital content through Amazon. Worth exploring if publishing is part of your business model.
Self Publishing | Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
🎓 Courses, Communities & Membership Platforms
Your knowledge, resources or community can become an offer of its own. These platforms help creators and entrepreneurs host courses, memberships, educational content and paid or free communities in one place.
A popular all-in-one option for combining community, courses and memberships. I especially like the simplicity for creators who want their education and community experience in one place.
Sign up
A well-known platform for creating and selling online courses and digital education. A solid starting point if teaching is at the center of your business.
Teachable
An all-in-one platform built around courses, coaching, memberships, marketing and sales. Best for entrepreneurs who want many pieces of their online business under one roof.
Kajabi
A flexible platform for building online courses and learning experiences. Worth exploring if you want more control over how your educational content is structured.
Thinkific
A community-focused platform designed for memberships, discussions, courses and events. A great option if the community experience is just as important as the content.
Circle
Built around communities, memberships, courses and events. A strong option for creators who want to build a branded community experience around their audience.
Mighty Networks
💌 Email Marketing & Audience Building
Social media followers are great—but building an audience you can reach directly gives your business another layer of stability. These tools can help you collect emails, nurture your audience, send newsletters and eventually turn subscribers into cus...
A creator-focused email platform that's especially useful for newsletters, automations and digital-product businesses. A strong choice if email is becoming an important part of your creator business.
Kit
A beginner-friendly email marketing platform with the features many small businesses need without making everything feel overwhelming. Great for getting your email list started.
MailerLite
Known for beautiful, design-forward emails and a relatively simple user experience. A great fit if the visual presentation of your newsletters matters to you.
Flodesk
Beyond being a link-in-bio tool, Beacons can help creators collect emails and connect their audience to their offers. Convenient if you want several creator-business functions in one place.
Mobile Websites for Creators
One of the most recognizable names in email marketing and a solid option for businesses that want email campaigns, automation and audience management.
Mailchimp
A long-standing email marketing platform with tools for newsletters, campaigns and audience management. A straightforward option for small businesses that want established email-marketing features.
Constant Contact
A more advanced option for email marketing, automation and customer journeys. Worth exploring when your audience and marketing workflows become more sophisticated.
ActiveCampaign
A simple way to publish newsletters and build an audience around your writing or expertise. Especially interesting if you want your newsletter itself to become part of your content business.
Substack
📱 Social Media, Pinterest & Marketing Tools
Creating the content is only half the job—getting it in front of people matters too. These tools can help you plan, schedule, publish and analyze your content across Pinterest and social media without spending your entire day posting.
A particularly useful option for Pinterest scheduling and content planning. Great if Pinterest is an important part of your traffic strategy.
Tailwind CSS
One of my favorite all-around options for planning, scheduling and analyzing social media content. Especially helpful when you're managing multiple platforms and want your analytics in one place.
Metricool
A simple, clean social media scheduling tool that's easy to understand. Great if you want to schedule content without needing an overly complicated platform.
Buffer
A popular choice for visual content planning and social scheduling. Especially useful for creators who care about how their content looks as a feed or visual story.
Later
A long-standing social media management platform designed for businesses managing multiple social accounts. Better suited to more robust social-media workflows.
Hootsuite
A visual social media planner that's especially popular for Instagram and Pinterest-style content planning. Great if seeing your content visually helps you stay consistent.
Planoly
A Pinterest-focused tool for keyword research, Pin creation, scheduling, and tracking what’s working. This is worth exploring if you want a more organized, consistent Pinterest workflow without doing every step manually. 📌
Tailwind
⚙️ Automation & Business Systems
The goal isn't to do everything manually forever. These tools can connect parts of your business, automate repetitive tasks and create simple systems that give you more time to focus on the work that actually needs you.
One of my first recommendations when you're ready to stop doing repetitive tasks manually. It connects the apps you already use and lets them handle routine workflows for you.
Zapier
A popular client-management platform for forms, contracts, invoices, scheduling and workflows. Especially useful for service providers who want to automate more of the client journey.
Dubsado
A powerful automation platform that gives you more flexibility for building complex workflows. Great once you're ready to go beyond simple “if this happens, then do that” automations.
Make
An all-in-one client-management platform that brings together inquiries, contracts, invoices, payments and workflows. A great option for freelancers and service-based businesses.
HoneyBook
One of those tiny tools that can make a surprisingly big difference. It lets people book available times on your calendar without the endless “what day works for you?” back-and-forth.
Calendly
💰 Bookkeeping, Money & Business Finance
Making money is only one part of running a business—you also need to understand where it's going. These tools can help you organize business finances, track income and expenses, manage invoices and build better financial habits as your business grows...
One of the biggest names in small-business accounting and bookkeeping. A strong option if you want a more robust system for tracking income, expenses, invoices and financial reporting.
QuickBooks®
Built with small businesses and service providers in mind, with a strong focus on invoicing, expenses and client billing. A nice option if getting paid and tracking client work are major priorities.
FreshBooks
A popular option for small businesses looking for accessible bookkeeping and invoicing tools. Especially worth exploring when you're keeping your business lean.
Wave • Sign in
A well-known accounting platform with strong bookkeeping and financial-management capabilities. Worth comparing with QuickBooks if you're looking for a more robust accounting system.
Accounting Software for Small Businesses | Xero US
Part of the larger Zoho business ecosystem and designed to help businesses manage accounting, invoicing and finances. A good option if you're already using other Zoho tools.
Powerful Accounting Software for Your Business | Zoho Books
📊 Websites, Analytics & Business Growth
Once you've built the foundation, these tools can help you create your online presence, understand what's working and make smarter decisions about where to focus your time and energy next.
One of the most flexible options for building a website, blog or content-driven business. Best for people who want lots of customization and control.
WordPress.com
A polished, beginner-friendly website builder that's especially appealing if aesthetics matter to your brand. Great for portfolios, service businesses and simple online stores.
Squarespace
A flexible website builder with a relatively approachable drag-and-drop experience. Good for small businesses that want to build and customize their own website.
Wix.com: Website Builder - Create a Free Website In Minutes
A must-know analytics tool for understanding what's happening on your website. It can help you see where visitors come from, what they do and which content is performing.
Analytics Tools & Solutions for Your Business
A valuable free tool for understanding how your website appears in Google Search. Especially useful if you want to grow your website through organic traffic.
Google Search Console
A powerful marketing and SEO platform for researching keywords, competitors, search visibility and more. Best for businesses ready to get more serious about organic growth.
Semrush
A more advanced website-building platform that gives you a lot of creative control. Great for people who want a highly customized website without relying entirely on traditional coding.
Webflow
A modern website builder that's especially popular for sleek, design-forward websites. Worth exploring if you want your website to feel very polished and contemporary.
Framer
One of my favorite options for keeping things simple. Great for creating affordable, clean one-page websites, landing pages and simple business sites.
Carrd
A helpful tool for seeing how people actually interact with your website through features like session recordings and heatmaps. Great for spotting where visitors may be getting stuck.
Microsoft Clarity - Free Heatmaps & Session Recordings
Another useful option for understanding website behavior through heatmaps, recordings, feedback and other insights. Helpful when you want to improve the user experience instead of guessing what visitors are doing.
Contentsquare + Hotjar | powering better digital experiences
A well-known SEO and content research platform with powerful tools for backlinks, keywords and competitive research. Great for businesses that want to build a stronger search strategy.
Ahrefs—AI Marketing Platform Powered by Big Data
🧑🏽💻 Client Management & Business Operations
Running a service-based business means juggling clients, contracts, meetings and communication—but the right tools can make it all feel much more manageable. These resources can help freelancers, virtual assistants, consultants and service providers ...
A great option for bringing client inquiries, forms, contracts, invoices and workflows together. Especially helpful when you're tired of piecing your client process together manually.
Dubsado
A streamlined way to manage the business side of working with clients. It can help keep inquiries, contracts, invoices, payments and client communication connected.
HoneyBook
A simple way to let clients book meetings based on your availability. One of those tools that can instantly eliminate a lot of unnecessary scheduling emails.
Calendly
A widely recognized option for sending and signing documents electronically. Useful when contracts, agreements and other paperwork are part of your client workflow.
Docusign
📁 File Storage, Communication & Collaboration
Keep your files organized, conversations in one place and projects moving without digging through endless emails and folders. These tools can help you store and share files, communicate with clients or team members, host virtual meetings and collabor...
A simple, familiar place to store, organize and share business files. Especially useful when you're collaborating with clients or a team and want everything accessible from anywhere.
Google Drive: Share Files Online with Secure Cloud Storage
A reliable option for storing, sharing and organizing files across devices. Particularly handy when you're regularly sending larger files or collaborating with others.
Dropbox
Microsoft's cloud-storage option that works especially well if you're already using Microsoft 365. Convenient for keeping documents and business files connected to your existing workflow.
Personal File Sharing & Cloud Storage | Microsoft OneDrive
A popular communication platform for keeping work conversations organized by channels instead of letting everything get buried in email. Great for teams, communities and client collaboration.
Slack
A collaboration hub that combines chat, meetings, file sharing and teamwork. A natural fit for businesses already using Microsoft 365.
Sign In | Microsoft Teams
One of the most recognizable tools for virtual meetings, calls, webinars and online events. A reliable option when face-to-face communication is part of your business.
Zoom
Perfect for communicating visually when typing an explanation would take forever. Record your screen or camera and give clients, teammates or customers a quick walkthrough.
Log into Loom
A convenient video-meeting option that works naturally with Google Calendar and Google Workspace. Great for straightforward virtual meetings without adding another complicated system.
Google Meet - Online Video Calls, Meetings and Conferencing
Originally popular with gaming communities, but now used by all kinds of online communities and groups. Worth exploring if you're building a more casual, community-driven space.
Discord