Nearly every week, we are asked about the different resources and tools our business cannot function without. Over the past couple of years, we’ve used over 100+ resources and tools to built and grown our businesses.
We thought it would be beneficial to you if we save you the time and money by giving you a list of our favorite tools, apps, software, and resources designed to work for every business.
Please note that this page contains affiliate links to products I use and trust myself. If you purchase a product using a link, I may get a small commission for referring you – at no extra cost to you. This helps me keep Blogging Explorer free for you and produce more helpful content for you guys. Please know that I only recommend products I have USED, and I trust 100%.
So with that being said…behold! The list of tools to end all lists of tools!
Let’s dive in…
GoDaddy: Whenever we look to register a new domain name, GoDaddy.com was our to-go place. Customer service is very important to us, and tha’ts why we prefer Namecheap account management system and customer support over GoDaddy.com. At $10.69 a year, you can register a new domain name with Namecheap.
Cloudways is one of the few companies that offer a great balance between affordability and great functionality. If you care about website security, not getting hack, and looking to give your website users the best experience, Cloudways promises no more slow loading sites and no more hosting headaches. We use Cloudways as our hosting provider for this website.
Clickfunnels is a powerful sales funnel builder that can help you market, sell, and deliver your products or service online. We use this standalone platform because it gives us access to other features like membership site builder, built-in email marketing, and eCommerce features. In case you didn’t know, landing pages & sales funnels have higher conversion rates than regular websites.
Sam Cart is 1-page funnel system, making it simple to sell online. If you’re marketing your own products online, you need an easy way to showcase and sell your products without worrying about technology. Sam Cart’s pre-designed templates convert at the highest level, so you can focus on your passion, not the tech.
Elegant Themes has multiple website themes to choose from, paired with the their visual page builder DIVI, you can build amazing websites with the right design without writing a single line of code.
WordPress is content management system (CMS), which is a platform or system that help you organize the contents for your website. Its the most widely used CMS, over 30% of websites in the world is powered by WordPress. In your WordPress dashboard, you can manage sections like pages, posts, plugins, themes, users and more. Although WordPress is free to used and open source, you can use a hosting platform like like Cloudways to easily start your WordPress site.
Shopify is one of the best shopping cart solution to sell, ship, and manage your products online. It’s super easy to use, and you can quickly get your store/website up and running in a matter of hours.
Themeforest has the biggest selection of premium themes in the world! It’s very easy to find the best WordPress themes for your website on ThemeForest. By using their filtering options, you can see which themes are the most popular and how to purchase a license right away!
Yoast SEO is a search engine optimization plugin for WordPress. Yoast SEO help you get more visitors from Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. It also help attract more visitors from social media and increase your readers engagement
Zoho – You can run your entire business with Zoho. It offers tons of tools for collecting leads, email marketing, social media management, and much more. For the past five years, this tool serves as our company CRM system, email marketing software, team management software, and pretty much everything our business needs to survive. If you’re looking for a great tool to run your entire business operation, we strongly recommend Zoho.
Grasshopper is virtual phone system for small business. Grasshopper can help you acquire a business phone number plus all of the features of a robust phone system without the expense of additional devices. Grasshopper can add a business line and virtual phone system to your personal phone, starting at $26/mo.
Fiverr is an online platform where you can find freelancers and independent contractors that can work on any project you need help with. You can Freelance services like logo design, web design, editors and much more. Don’t try to do it yourself when you can find someone else to do it for in much less time and money.
Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) helps businesses across various industries, automate their marketing processes, organize their efforts, manage emails, and sell online. It will help you deliver a great customer experience.
Google Workspace (formerly GSuite) is the business version of everything Google offers. Whether you’re a usiness, entrepreneur school, or nonprofit G Suite is a good fit for you. It gives you controls to create professional email addresses like yourname@example.com or sales@example.com. It lets you store and backup your files easily, Protect your company’s data with security options like 2-step verification and much more.
WebinarJam is a fantastic webinar hosting software trusted by over 50,000 customers. it’s one of the most effective webinar software on the market. With Webinarjam, you can increase your sales and attendance by scheduling a series of reminder notifications, via email and phone text, so your registrants never miss your events!
Google Ads can get you in front of your potential clients when they’re searching for businesses like yours on Google Search or watching a video on YouTube. Only pay for results, like clicks to your website or someone watching your videos.
ScheduleOnce is one of the best cloud-based scheduling solutions for business owners. Prospects can easily pick a time to meet for a product demo, discovery call, or any other meeting, and it Syncs with Google Calendar.
Google Slides is Google’s version online version of PowerPoint, its a presentation program. You can use Google Slides to create professional presentations with many styles and animations.
GetResponse is a marketing platform that offers more than just email marketing. It offers landing pages, CRM systems, and advanced automation. Why get multiple marketing tools when GetResponse offers it all.
Active Campaign is for those who are looking to take email marketing and automation to the next level. As your email list grows, you will want to start creating more in-depth marketing campaigns, and for that reason, there is no better option than Active Campaign.
ConvertKit is by far the best email marketing option for newbie digital entrepreneurs. They have incredible customer support, the pricing is the most competitive on the market, and most importantly, it’s simple to use.
HubSpot is a full-stack growth software that includes sales, marketing, and customer service tools to enhance all aspects of your business. Using HubSpot, you’ll have everything you need to grow your business and boost conversion rates.
Tailwind is an all-in-one automation marketing tool that will help you generate massive amounts of TRAFFIC to your blog from Pinterest and Instagram. It can take up to 3-12 months to start receiving traffic from the search engine like (google) with Pinterest combines with Tailwind, you can begin to generate some traction to your blog in weeks.
Outgrow Is our #1 lead generation tool. If you want to boost your marketing efforts with super appealing interactive content that works, then Outgrow is the perfect tool for you. We highly recommend it!
BuzzSumo analyzes hundreds of millions of content and provides business owners with all the insights. With Buzzsumo, you can find out what type of content people are engaging with on the internet and why they are popular. This tool is perfect for coming up with the best content ideas.
VidIQ is for creators, brands, and agencies who are interested in getting more views on YouTube.VidIQ provides all the tools you need as a YouTube creator to maximize your organic reach, build a large following, and reach your marketing goals.
Social Warfare This plugin is mind-blowing. It comes with a whole lot of great features. Along with new and appealing social buttons, it includes a Facebook counter, analytics to see who has clicked on your social buttons on any social platforms, and shortcodes to add buttons wherever you need them. We love Social Warefare.
IFTTT stands for IF This Then That, is one of my all-time favorite apps. It helps you connect all your different apps and devices, so they can do specific things you want them to do. For instance, “If you publish a new web post, it can automatically post it to Facebook.” It has lots of recipes you can choose from, or you can create your own. This is a tool we’ve been using for years, and I highly recommend it!
SEM Rush is an all-in-one tool suite for improving online visibility and discovering marketing insights. SEM Rush’s tools and reports are able to help marketers that work in the following services: SEO, PPC, SMM, Keyword Research, Competitive Research, PR, Content Marketing, Marketing Insights, Campaign Management.
Buzzsprout is the best podcast hosting company to get started in the world of podcasting. This tool will help you store your files and share them with all of the major platforms like iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, and Stitcher. By launching your own podcast, you get to produce your own show, discuss topics that are interesting to you, establish an audience, and get monetize with ads and sponsorships.
Grammarly is more advanced than most spellcheck tool on the internet. This free tool allows you to proofread your posts and check for errors. It even gives your article a reading score. Grammarly will check your spelling and grammar on Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and more.
Thinkific is an online course platform that helps you host and sell your online courses. With Thinkific, you can Design your courses to match your brand. Drag and drop curriculum., use rich multimedia content such as videos, type forms, quizzes, discussions, and more. We use Thinkific we host and sell all our online courses.
Canva is an incredible tool for creating graphics, text overlays, and even custom photo edit for Instagram. This tool will make you look like a professional graphic designer. It’s free to use with a paid upgrade option available, which we’re currently using for our business, it’s only $10 a month.
Go To Meeting is an online meeting, desktop sharing, and video conferencing software package that enables the user to meet with other computer users, customers, clients or colleagues via the Internet in real time. This video conferencing software allows your team to connect anytime no matter where team members are located.
Loom enables you to record your screen, voice, and face to create an instantly shareable video in less time than it would take to send out a text message.
Jotform helps us turn our paper forms into digital mobile forms in Seconds. We use Jotform tools to generate leads, distribute surveys, and send out questionnaires to qualified our potential leads without writing a line of code.
Ahrefs is one of the best tools to analyze your website performance, and also see how your competitors are performing online. We are obsessed with stats and how our business is doing on the web. Ahrefs helps us keep an eye on everything when it comes up to stats.
Google Analytics – A great free tool to get an in-depth look at where your website’s traffic comes from. It would be best if you had it installed, It’s an industry standard!
Google Search Console is a free SEO diagnostic and monitoring tool that provides information about your website and site visitors. Once your website is up and running, Google Search Console will help you understand how your website is being found on Google and what needs to change to get better results.
DocuSign Is a digital easy-to-use transaction platform that lets users send, sign and manage e-signing contracts securely in the cloud.
Wistia is great for hosting your webinar videos, or video presentations. The great thing about this tool is its comprehensive view of audience trends like rewatches, and drop-offs, those metrics are key to making improvements to your videos.
Zoom is one of the most popular tools for hosting or joining live meetings with instant screen sharing, cross-platform instant messaging, excellent quality video, and audio.
Stripe helps power millions of small businesses in more than 100 countries and across nearly every industry. We’ve been using Stripe for years, and we love it. Start collecting payments via card, ACH, or other popular payment methods instantly.
PayPal for business lets you accept all primary forms of payment. Start accepting PayPal payments, credit cards, or send invoices to your clients/customers online.