If you’re a startup entrepreneur, one of the biggest challenges is managing a team and ensuring that productivity remains top notch.
For a growth-stage startup, tapping ideas of team members and executing them efficiently is key to a successful business.
Many entrepreneurs often wonder: What are the best productivity apps that could help in the growth of my startup? Often, start-ups do not have the financial resources of large companies and have to depend on free or affordable tools.
Well, look no further! Below, we’ve put together a list and infographic of over 80 amazing tools that will help you manage and grow your business efficiently.
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Idea Generation & Naming Tools
- Milanote: This app allows you and your team to create little notes where creative ideas and pitches can be written down. You can then view them side-by-side for an easy and quick comparison.
- Curator: Designed for visual thinkers, Curator allows you to collate your ideas in the form of images and even create virtual stories out of them to generate inspirational ideas.
- Xmind: Xmind is a mind-mapping tool which allows you and your team to conduct efficient brainstorms for generating ideas.
- MindMeister: By connecting ideas visually and creating a mind-map out of them, MindMeister helps your creative team in their brainstorming process
- Point: Point allows you to share links from the internet along with your comment/quote without ever leaving the website you’re on.
Market Research Websites & Tools 
- Google Trends: Ever been curious about what the world is searching for and what’s popular in a particular area? Using Google Trends, you can access all of this information along with real-time analytics and visualizations
- Crunchbase: Crunchbase is a one-stop shop for getting in-depth information on companies and startups around the world. This site specializes in providing up-to-date data on funding rounds across the globe and keeps you updated on the latest industry trends.
- Statista: Statista is a portal that provides in-depth market research and statistics from sources including research firms and government agencies.
- Proved: Proved gives entrepreneurs and researchers instant market validation and feedback on their ideas or products. All you need to do is submit your idea and Proved it present it to a focus group that matches your target audience and provide you with in-depth feedback.
- BetaList: BetaList provides you an early glimpse into the hot emerging startups around the world. Moreover, it also allows entrepreneurs to showcase their start-up ideas and exchange feedback with their counterparts.
Mockups & Wireframing Tools 
- Balsamiq: Balsamiq helps web designers in creating instant mockups of wireframes which can be shared online for quick feedback.
- Moqups: Moqups makes it easy and convenient for your design team to collaborate on wireframes and generate website prototypes.
- Flinto: Flinto is a tool that helps app designers create interactive prototypes of their ideas using animations and gestures.
- Gliffy: Gliffy is an excellent productivity tool that allows you to create flow charts, network diagrams, organizational charts, and mind maps.
- Omnigraffle: OmniGraffle is a Mac and iOS-based design tool that allows you to create graphics such as website wireframes, structural diagrams, and flow charts.
Designing Tools 
- Freebbble: Frebbble provides users with free access to premium design and mockup templates from the Dribbble repository.
- Typekit: Typekit, owned by Adobe, provides designers with access to some of the best curated fonts in the world
- UICloud: UICloud is a boon for UI/UX designers as this tool provides a search engine for discovering new and unique user interface designs from around the web
- Invision: Invision helps you upload your designs, add animations and effects, and turn them into high-quality interactive prototypes.
- Polarr: Polarr is a professional online photo-editing tool which is compatible across platforms including Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS
Top In-use Development Tools 
- Gitlab: GitLab is an online Git repository tool which is wiki-based and helps programmers in testing as well as deploying their code efficiently.
- ForestAdmin: ForestAdmin is an admin interface that helps in creating autonomy for your internal teams
- PublicAPIs: PublicAPIs is a large directory of APIs which allows administrators to grant access to other consumers like developers for the purpose of collaboration and development.
- MessageBird: MessageBird allows users to send text and voice messages to over 7 billion phones around the globe
- W3C Markup Validation: In order to ensure technical efficiency of webpages, W3C Markup Validation allows users to check whether the markup on the HTML/XHTML pages is valid and correct.
- StackoverFlow: StackOverflow allows web developers and app developers to exchange knowledge and tips with each other while providing them access to a massive repository of information.
Product Demo / Presentations & Launching 
- VideoScribe: VideoScribe allows you to create your own personalized whiteboard-based animations with HD quality
- Explainify: This tool allows you to illustrate your concept, product, or idea by creating an interesting explainer video
- Slidebean: Slidebean is an automated presentation-making tool which allows you to create a slideshow by merely typing in your content and selecting a suitable template
- PRX: PRX is a tool that lets you measure the impact of your public relations or outreach activity and also provides you with access to experts and industry professionals.
- Publicize: Publicize allows you to post your website’s content on multiple social media platforms immediately after you publish it.
Collaboration & Project Management 
- Asana: Keeping a tab on the progress of a task can be complicated when theres multiple teams involved. Asana allows you to manage and track the progress of all your teams on a collaborative project and evaluate how close you are to achieving your objective
- TeamGantt : By helping in project scheduling and management, TeamGantt allows you to plan out your projects efficiently in a hassle-free manner
- Trello : With a mobile app and a clutter-free UI, Trello allows you to set goals and tasks for teams on a collaborative project and also track their progress
- Basecamp : BaseCamp is a leading team-management software that allows your internal teams to collaborate and track progress on a certain project
Socialize 
- Sprout Social : With compatibility across platforms, Sprout Social helps social media teams in optimizing their efforts and collaborating on content publishing
- BuzzSumo : By connecting you with influencers and tracking the success of your campaigns, BuzzSumo greatly helps your social media efforts and helps you stay up-to-date with the latest trending content.
- Woobox : With over 4 million customers, Woobox is a social media campaign management tool that lets you design and execute your entire online marketing efforts.
- Mention : Mention is a leading social media analytics tool that lets you track conversations, connect with influencers, and grow your business by boosting your digital marketing campaign
- Quuu: Quuu provides targeted and curated social media content recommendations to help your business connect with the right target audience and boost sales
Marketing 
- AeroLeads– AeroLeads is a lead generation and leads mining tool. With AeroLeads, you can build your b2b mailing lists and find potential sales leads. It offers transfer to salesforce, mailchimp, hubspot, pipedrive, zapier, freshsales too.
- Viral Loops – Viral Loops is a templatized social media solution that allows you to achieve vitality for your content through referrals and contests
- Sumo – Sumo provides you with all the necessary tools that help increase relevant traffic to your website
- Mailchimp – Mailchimp is an automated email marketing service that helps you get your email campaigns to a targeted audience in a systematic and efficient manner
- GrowthHackers: This tool allows entrepreneurs to learn new and ethical ways of hacking the secret of growing your business
- Petithacks: PetitHacks provides users with access to a customized and curated repository of marketing tricks.
- Omnisend: This tool provides omnichannel marketing automation that helps you send relevant messages and boost your sales.
Analytics & Conversions 
- CrazyEgg: CrazyEgg generates heat maps that help you understand the behavior of visitors to your website and how they’re interacting with your content
- Qualaroo: Qualaroo runs online surveys on your website to track visitor preferences and to provide you with an in-depth qualitative feedback that explains the behavior of your consumers
- ConversionXL: ConversionXL uses excellent articles and workshops to help you learn about the best ways of increasing the conversion ratio of visitors to your website
- Optimizely: Optimizely is a website optimization tools which helps you improve the experience of your potential customers on your online assets.
Productivity 
- Evernote: Evernote is a note-taking tool which allows you to easily manage your professional as well as personal commitments and keep track of them
- fm : brain.fm features musical tracks that are designed to help you relax, meditate and to improve your overall productivity
- Pocket: Pocket is an app that lets you bookmark and save articles online which you can later read at leisure even if you aren’t connected to the internet
- Sanebox : Sanebox is an inbox management solution which helps you keep track of important emails and also to stay on top of pending replies and other tasks.
- Forest : Forest is an interesting app that lets you plant trees which only grow when you keep your smartphone away. Basically, this tool improves your productivity by helping you reduce your smartphone usage in an innovative manner
- Tomighty : Tomighty is a desktop-based time management tool that allows you to effectively allocate your time to various tasks and to ensure that you complete them within the deadline.
Hiring 
- BetterTeam : BetterTeam is a human resource tool which lets you post your job vacancy posting to over 100 job sites
- Linkedin : LinkedIn is the world’s top professional networking social media platform. On LinkedIn, you can connect with the right people in the industry, share content with your followers and network, and also find available job postings
- Glassdoor : Glassdoor is an online HR solution which allows employees to anonymously rate and review their employers thus providing an unbiased opinion. This website also features benchmark salaries at specific organizations based on the numbers reported by employees
- Indeed: Indeed is an online recruitment portal with a presence across several countries around the world
- Ladder: Ladder provides you access to the CVs and profiles of millions of talented candidates who are looking for new professional opportunities
Outsource 
- Fiverr – Fiverr is a marketplace website where professionals such as writers, editors, developers, and designers can offer several services starting as low as $5
- Upwork: Upwork is one of the world’s largest freelance jobs website which allows companies to hire talented freelancers in areas such as writing, editing, and digital communications
- Folyo: Folyo provides you access to a large online community of experienced freelance designers who can be hired to work on a project
- Gigster: Do you have any web or app development work that needs to get done immediately? On Gigster, you can access an entire community of freelance developers and hire the right candidate to work on your prohect.
- Envato Studio: Envato Studio is among the world’s largest marketplace communities for those that wish to hire talented designers, visual artists, and other creative workers
Raising Capital 
- Angellist: Angellist is possibly the world’s largest startup community where you can connect with other entrepreneurs, angel investor, and even potential partners
- Foundersuite: This tool allows you to leverage the power of online communities to raise funding for your startup and to also help scale your business.
- SeedInvest: SeedInvest allows entrepreneurs to crowd-fund their startups by raising equity funding from an online community.
- Sharewave: Sharewave enabled companies to present information and figures in an effective manner to their shareholders
- Dealroom: Dealroom is one of the world’s largest network of private equity and seed funders which you can tap in order to raise capital for your business
Sales & Finance 
- Invoice to me: Invoice to me is a free and simple online invoice generating tool.
- GrowSumo: GrowSumo provides you with an access to a community of influencers across business categories in order to help optimize your social media efforts.
- Freshbooks : FreshBooks is a cloud-based accounting program which helps small business in generating invoices, managing finances and receipts, and calculating expenses
- BallPark : BallPark is a web-based invoicing and customer relationship management tool
- Expensify : Expensify allows you to easily generate company-wide expense reports which help save your employees a lot of time and hassle.
Legal 
- TermsFeed : This tool helps you generate contracts, disclaimers, and terms and conditions that can be used by your business
- Startup Documents : This tool allows entrepreneurs in early-stage startups to generate essential documents for their business and also store them safely
- DocuSign : DocuSign is an online tool which provides an easy, safe, and encrypted digital signature service
- FormSwift : FormSwift offers access to several templates of legal documents which can be downloaded and modified to suit your business needs
- Contractually: Contractually helps you generate business contracts which can be customized for your particular requirement
Other Helpful Tools 
- Quora: Quora is a knowledge-based online community which works with a question and answer format
- Product Hunt : This is a curation platform which showcases the top products such as websites, apps, and programs from around the web right at your fingertips
- Udemy : Udemy is a customized online learning platform which allows you to learn about your favorite topics at your own convenience
- Canva : Canva is a simplistic online design tool that lets you create brochures, banners, posters, presentation, flyers etc. with much ease
- Gyazo : Gyazo is a tool which provides a one-click solution for saving websites, images, screenshots, and GIFs
- StartupStash: Startup Stash is specifically targeted towards new and upcoming entrepreneurs. This website provides you with all the necessary information and resources thats invaluable for those building their own start-up
- KickStarter: Kickstarter is the world’s largest crowdfunding platform which allows backers to support interesting projects and for entrepreneurs to showcase their ideas and raise funds for them.
- Type Form: This is a form generation website that allows you to create forms for surveys, quizzes, and market research.
Using these awesome tools efficiently will not only help you attract more business but also help you build a creative and productive team.
Moreover, unlike corporate solutions, most of these tools are free or really cheap which helps you save money while making greater profits.