Best business tools for startups

Introduction

Having the right tools in place early makes a real difference to how a startup operates. At the beginning, it’s often possible to get by with emails, notes, and informal systems. Before long, though, keeping track of work takes more effort than it should – and founders usually start looking for better ways to stay on top of things. This guide focuses on the tools that help early-stage businesses run more smoothly, from managing finances and customer relations to keeping work and communication efficient.

Accounting tools that keep finances under control

Finance is usually the first area where a business’ lack of structure becomes noticeable. In the early days, records of invoices, spending, and tax are often spread across spreadsheets, bank apps, and email threads. That works for a while – but as activity picks up, it becomes harder to see how the business is actually performing.

Accounting tools like Xero and QuickBooks exist to solve that specific problem. They consolidate income, spending, and VAT into a single view, allowing founders to quickly verify figures without manually piecing them together. For new businesses in the UK, features like bank feeds and VAT reporting are often what make these platforms worth adopting early.

Once invoices start going out regularly, the day-to-day handling starts to add up. Features like recurring invoices, automatic expense categorisation, and bank reconciliation reduce repetitive admin and lower the chance of mistakes. Shared access also enables accountants to work directly within the system, simplifying collaboration and making ongoing support more efficient.

Website and ecommerce builders for getting online quickly

Once the basics are in place, most startups need somewhere public to explain what they do. A website provides potential customers, partners, and suppliers with a reference point, even if sales are still occurring offline or through direct outreach.

Website builders such as Squarespace, Wix, and Shopify remove much of the technical work involved. Hosting, templates, security, and updates are handled in the background, which allows founders to focus on messaging and presentation rather than setup.

For ecommerce businesses, Shopify also brings payments, stock tracking, and order management into the same system. For service-based startups, simpler builders still cover the essentials. In both cases, the benefits are simplicity and speed: a usable site can be published quickly and evolve later as the business grows.

Market research tools for early-stage decision-making

Once a business is up and running, founders often have to make calls about who they’re targeting and how they explain what they do, without much to go on beyond early signals.

Tools like Google Trends, Statista, and SparkToro help fill in some of the gaps. They surface patterns around search behaviour, interest over time, and where potential customers spend attention online. And while they don’t replace direct customer feedback, they can help founders sense-check assumptions before committing further time or money.

Survey tools such as SurveyMonkey can add another layer of research. Short surveys can be helpful for testing messages, gauging interest, or validating early ideas without slowing progress.

CRM software for managing customers and enquiries

As enquiries increase, keeping track of conversations becomes harder to do informally. Emails, forms, calls, and messages start to overlap, and it becomes easier to lose context or forget follow-ups.

Simple CRM tools, such as HubSpot CRM and Zoho CRM, bring those interactions together. They provide a shared record of leads, conversations, and next steps, which helps founders stay organised even when juggling multiple prospects.

This is even more important when freelancers and employees join the firm. A CRM reduces reliance on memory and makes it easier to hand over conversations or review what has already been promised.

Project and task management tools that create visibility

Once work starts coming in regularly, keeping execution organised takes more effort. Tasks and information are handled in different places, making it harder to see what needs to be done next, who’s responsible, and what has already been decided.

Tools like Trello and Asana address this by providing a visible structure for work. Tasks are laid out in one place, ownership is clear, and upcoming work is easier to plan around. That shared view helps founders respond to urgent requests without losing sight of longer-term work.

The same problem applies to information. Notes, documents, plans, and decisions accumulate quickly, and without a central home, they end up scattered across folders, inboxes, and personal systems. Notion is often used to bring that material together. Startups use it as a shared workspace for documentation, planning, and reference information, gradually adding structure as the business grows.

AI and automation tools that support everyday tasks

As day-to-day work increases, a lot of time goes into tasks that aren’t difficult but are repetitive. Writing drafts, reworking notes, summarising information, or moving the same details between tools can quietly eat into a founder’s attention.

Tools like ChatGPT and Notion AI are often used to speed up that kind of work. Founders use them to get first drafts down, reorganise notes, or reshape content, then take over to review and refine the result. Used this way, AI helps clear the backlog without replacing judgement.

The same pressure is evident when information must be transferred between systems. When enquiries, forms, or updates are copied by hand from one tool to another, it quickly becomes tedious. Platforms like Zapier are commonly used at that point to pass information between tools automatically – for example, sending form submissions into a CRM or creating tasks from new enquiries – so routine admin doesn’t have to be done twice.

Communication and collaboration tools for small teams

Once more than one person is involved, a lot of day-to-day work happens through quick questions, updates, and clarifications. When those exchanges are spread across emails and private messages, it becomes more challenging to maintain a shared understanding of what has been discussed or decided.

Tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams provide teams with a shared space for these conversations. Grouping messages by topic or function makes it easier to follow ongoing discussions and pick up on new information without needing everything to be restated. Over time, this shared record reduces the need for check-ins and keeps work moving forward without relying on lengthy email threads.

And for remote teams or external collaborators, having that continuity in one place also makes it easier to stay aligned without adding more meetings.

Choosing tools without overloading your business

In practice, founders usually add tools in response to specific pressure points. Something becomes harder to keep track of, takes longer than it should, or starts relying too heavily on memory, and software gets introduced to steady that part of the work.

By the time a startup reaches that point, a pattern has usually formed. A handful of tools handle finances and accounting, while another few support delivery and customer service, and the rest help people stay aligned day-to-day. Taken together, that’s what allows the business to keep moving – without everything depending on fallible, informal systems.