What are the Best Apps for Small Businesses? 11 Top Picks

Running a small business is challenging.
It’s not just the bootstrapped budget and limited manpower — or the fact that a single logistical mistake can bring about ruin. It’s all these factors combined, along with a foreboding sense that your business only has so much time before you have to either turn a profit or make some hard decisions to cut costs.
Thankfully, all of these issues can be solved by freeing up your time with the right software.
With the right apps streamlining your business operations, you can focus your time on other aspects of growing your business. Instead of wrangling your limited teams to fill out a schedule, you can click a button and have scheduling automated. Instead of having to calculate payroll by hand, you can use built-in processing functions to ensure accuracy and speed.
All of this adds up to more free time to focus on strategic work — and less paperwork.
The 11 best apps for small businesses
In this guide, we break down the 11 best apps for small businesses:
- Buddy Punch – Best workforce management app
- Asana – Best project management app
- QuickBooks – Best financial management app
- Mailchimp – Best email marketing app
- Slack – Best team communication app
- Zoho CRM – Best customer relationship management app
- Square – Best ecommerce app
- Dropbox – Best file sharing app
- HubSpot – Best marketing automation app
- Notion – Best internal knowledge management app
- Intercom – Best customer support app
Each of these apps will help you optimize your workflow, eliminate administrative burdens, and reduce your labor costs — all while giving you time back in your week.
Note: The apps we’ve selected are based on a mix of their ease of use for newcomers, small business owner testimonials, and evaluation of their functions based on feedback from clients over the years.
1. Buddy Punch – Best workforce management app
A limited budget means you want apps that can fulfill multiple roles and maximize value. Between the features offered, low cost, ease-of-use, and client testimonials, Buddy Punch meets and exceeds this requirement. Here’s why:
- Buddy Punch includes a wide variety of automatic employee monitoring and time-tracking options to guarantee accuracy, whether teammates are on-site, remote, or both.
- It comes with staff scheduling features such as drag-and-drop scheduling, shift trades, and employee self-service features.
- Buddy Punch has an optional built-in payroll processing function you can use replace an external third-party processor.
All of this coupled with low costs, simplicity of use, and consistently high customer ratings make Buddy Punch a strong addition to any small business owner’s toolset.
Don’t just take our word for it. Capterra shows that Buddy Punch has an overall score of 4.8 out of 5 stars based on 1,000+ customer reviews.
“Buddy Punch has been very helpful, and I am glad my organization made the switch from our previous tracker to Buddy Punch. As mentioned earlier, the ease of use of Buddy Punch is what separates it from a lot of competitors.”
“Overall, this platform has been a time saver and wonderful addition to our payroll and time management. Staff can clearly see their hours and submit for approval after they review. It allows for accuracy and transparency.”
Buddy Punch’s platform functions on Windows and Apple Desktops, iOS and Android smartphones via the web or as a mobile app, and tablets such as iPads. That means that any device with an internet connection can make use of Buddy Punch’s intuitive features, while we’ll review below.
GPS tracking
Use Buddy Punch’s real-time GPS tracking to monitor where your employees are throughout the workday. Whether you’re in the office or on the move, you can quickly see where your staff is. Enable or disable on a per-employee basis at will.
Geofencing
Buddy Punch lets you establish a radius on an interactive map, known as a geofence. If employees attempt to clock in or out while not within that radius, they’ll receive an error notification. Set the radius size to anything from 150 feet to 5000 feet for greater flexibility over where your employees are allowed to work.
Facial recognition
Reduce time theft and buddy punching with Buddy Punch’s automatic facial recognition feature. Buddy Punch works with FaceID to ensure that employees clocking in and out are who they claim to be.
Drag-and-drop scheduling
Use the drag-and-drop schedule maker to create work schedules for your team in minutes. Easily shift employees around depending on availability, and they’ll be automatically notified of any changes to their schedules.
Shift trades and covers
Enable employees to trade shifts or request someone to cover for them. Then send those requests to managers for approval.
PTO management
Create custom PTO accrual rules. Buddy Punch also lets you enable self-service so employees can input vacation time, sick time, or personal time on their own time cards. Once you receive a PTO request notification, you can approve or deny it. Alternatively, automate PTO management by enabling auto-approval for time off.
Built-in payroll
Turn Buddy Punch into your all-in-one solution for all things employee management. Use Buddy Punch’s Payroll to run payroll from anywhere at any time. It includes automatic payroll tax filings, in-depth data and insights, automated payroll payments, and more. Learn more about Buddy Punch payroll here.
We’ve still only scratched the surface of what Buddy Punch can do for you. See the full list of features here.
Pricing
Buddy Punch is one of the lowest-cost apps on our list when you take into consideration the breadth of features offered. Pricing starts at $4.49 per user per month plus a $19 base fee.
Want to learn more about Buddy Punch? Start a free trial, take an interactive tour of the product, or request a personalized demo.
2. Asana – Best project management app
Proper project management is key for small business owners to make the most of their existing resources. With effective delegation, real-time coordination, and optimization of your team members’ or freelancers’ skills, an improvement in project management can drastically boost your business’s productivity and profitability.
When it comes to project management apps for small business owners, you can’t get much better than Asana.
Asana is a powerful project management platform that was built to scale, with features such as setting company-wide goals, managing strategic plans, and coordinating tasks on a single platform. Using this app to track your projects means all your team members will be able to stay in sync and on schedule to meet goals and milestones.
One of the key benefits of using Asana is the increased visibility of your workload. Asana’s clean and simple user interface allows entire teams to view the steps required to complete a complex assignment.
For small business owners, the idea of you and your team members learning your way around a new app can be daunting. But in Asana’s case, there’s a very good chance that this is a long-term investment. This is a project management app that a business owner can continue to use from the start of their journey all the way to its height, as demonstrated by 85% of Fortune 100 companies using it.
Key features
- Project sections and layouts
- Templates and automation
- Virtual AI assistant
- Status updates
- Reporting dashboard
- Resource management
- Goal tracking
Notable integrations
- Microsoft Teams
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Google Drive
- Salesforce
- Slack Workflows
- Mailchimp
Pricing
Asana’s pricing is completely free for small business owners with less than 10 teammates, which is a fantastic deal. Once you’ve expanded across this threshold, you can manage unlimited tasks, projects, messages, and more for $10.99 per user/month.
Runner up: Trello
Trello is another popular project management app that’s especially useful if you like its customizable Kanban board design. It includes project management options such as to-do lists, pending tasks, and a calendar.
It has a decent free plan allowing up to 10 boards per workspace before increasing to $5 per user per month for small teams that need to manage work and scale collaboration.
3. QuickBooks – Best financial management app
With limited cash flow, mastering financial management is a critical component of success for any small business owner. This means understanding and optimizing processes such as bookkeeping, cash flow, budget projecting, and more. Thankfully, QuickBooks is a powerful tool that simplifies all these steps.
Intuit QuickBooks is a financial management app that drastically simplifies all things accounting. This tool has allowed many small business owners to switch over from manual bookkeeping and spreadsheets to utilizing a one-stop shop for all their financial needs.
What makes QuickBooks such a powerful tool is its numerous accounting and finance solutions. Small business owners can pick, choose, and combine features as required depending on what they need. For example, look at:
- QuickBooks Desktop: This traditional accounting software offers the main features of QuickBooks (bookkeeping, accounting, invoicing) as a download that you install on relevant computers. The downside is that it’ll only work on those dedicated machines. QuickBooks Desktop has several add-ons you can purchase, such as Online Plus, Online Plus & Payroll Core, or Online Plus & Payroll Premium.
- QuickBooks Online: In contrast with QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online is the cloud-based version of QuickBooks’ main features. This digital accounting app version of QuickBooks can be used from anywhere and on any device. It comes with multiple different plans such as Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced.
- QuickBooks Payroll: For business owners whose largest issue is payroll, you can use QuickBooks Payroll to replace and streamline your typical bookkeeping tools. It includes full-service payroll, auto payroll, and more on higher-level plans.
- QuickBooks Capital: This service allows small business owners with QuickBooks accounts to apply for business loans. Funding is offered by either directly underwriting loans or providing a marketplace for you to explore and match with curated money lenders. Funding options include term loans, lines of credit, invoice financing, SBA loans, and more.
Key features
- Invoicing
- Expense tracking
- Bill management
- Tax deductions
- Banking management
Notable integrations
- PayPal
- Square
- Etsy
- Shopify Connector
- Buddy Punch
Pricing
Pricing is hugely variable depending on which version of QuickBooks you’re using. One of the cheapest options, QuickBooks Accounting, is available for $17.50 per month for the first three months, then $35 per month after that.
Runner up: FreshBooks
FreshBooks is accounting and invoicing software that comes with features such as expenses and receipts, reports, mileage tracking, bookkeeping, and more.
Its cheapest plan is $9.50 per month and allows sending unlimited invoices to up to five clients, tracking unlimited expenses, and sending unlimited estimates.
4. Mailchimp – Best email marketing app
Small businesses thrive on their ability to convert curious visitors into repeat customers. However, just because you might fail to convert a potential customer doesn’t mean you should accept that sale as lost. Through email marketing, small business owners can continue to provide value to customers until they eventually win them over.
To aid in this goal, we’re recommending the email marketing app Mailchimp to help in a small business’s efforts to reach new customers or upsell existing ones on additional services and products.
Mailchimp is one of the premier email marketing platforms used by small businesses to handle their marketing and commerce. Its simple user interface and tools like multichannel campaigns, audience management, and analytics make it easy to optimize your marketing efforts.
Email marketing campaigns can be set up to work on autopilot in the background as your business functions normally. With this in mind, it’s worth you getting your first email campaign started sooner rather than later.
Key features
- Email marketing
- SMS marketing
- Social media management
- Audience management
- AI marketing assistant
Notable integrations
- Zapier
- Stripe
- Shopify
- Square
Pricing
Mailchimp has a limited free plan for 500 contacts that comes with email support for the first 30 days, though the Mailchimp logo will be included in your emails. The highlighted standard plan is $20 per month for 500 contacts. This feature comes with forms, landing pages, A/B testing, and no Mailchimp branding.
Runner up: GetResponse
GetResponse is a one-stop shop for emailing, automated marketing, and monetizing content. Features include autoresponders, web push notifications, popup creators, and more.
Its cheapest plan costs $15.60 per month if you’re sending out unlimited newsletters and autoresponder emails to a list of a maximum of 1,000 contacts. The more contacts you want to email, the more GetResponse’s plans cost.
5. Slack – Best team communication app
Proper communication between team members can be the difference between wasting time and money on redundant tasks versus delegating to achieve maximum efficiency despite having a smaller workforce. That’s why using a strong team communication app should be a top priority for any business owner who wants to make sure they make the most of limited resources. Enter Slack.
Slack is a team messaging app that business owners can use to coordinate their team members, allowing them to organize tasks, projects, budgeting, and more. The user interface allows you to segment your workforce into different channels for team members to divide and conquer assignments.
Slack allows its users to communicate in either channels or direct messages. Any messages and files sent can be saved for later usage, which can be critical for a business owner looking to evaluate communications.
Slack also allows pinning important messages to make sure all of your team members are notified, bookmarking important links that are relevant to work, mentioning team members specifically to grab their attention, and more.
Using an app like Slack for team communication allows for a far greater degree of control and delegation than simply relying on emails or text messages for team communication. This clear and effective communication can be the difference between team members that (ironically) slack off, versus team members that perform at their best.
Key features
- Channels
- External connections
- Team messaging
- Audio and video huddles
- Recorded clips
Notable integrations
- Google Drive
- Outlook Calendar
- Notion
- Asana
- Zoom
Pricing
The free version is somewhat limited but keeps up to 90 days of message history, which can be great for testing out if Slack is a useful addition to your team. The Pro version is a strong option for small teams at $8.75 USD per month, including unlimited message history, unlimited workflows, and group audio and video meetings.
Runner up: Campsite
Campsite is a team communication app that includes direct messages, quick calls, and everything in between. It includes features such as custom integrations, call recording, and even a one-click smart summary of conversations. Keep communication strong across desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.
Pricing starts at $10 per member per month, including unlimited posts, direct messages, and integrations for up to 10 guests.
6. Zoho CRM – Best customer relationship management app
Customers are the most important part of any business’s longevity, but many companies completely lack the means to optimize how they interact with them. For some, securing the sale is as far as customer relationships go. Other, more savvy business owners treat each sale more as a lead — something that needs to be nurtured and maintained over time to create a positive relationship for both business and consumer.
This is where CRM systems come into play. While this category of app can take a lot of different forms, any software in this category will focus on improving interactions between current and potential customers and your company. For a stellar example of the power of this kind of management tool for small business owners, look no further than Zoho.
This award-winning CRM system focuses all your sales, marketing, and customer support activities into one easy-to-use platform. Zoho is built to scale alongside your business, even if you go from startup to sprawling enterprise. It works well across a variety of niches, from real estate to healthcare or restaurants.
The core benefit of a tool like Zoho CRM is its effect on nurturing leads and boosting sales. CRM systems work to streamline business processes, provide an overview of business flow to enable tactical decision-making, and improve customer satisfaction through either automatic features or data breakdowns you can use to improve the customer-facing aspects of your business.
Key features
- Lead management
- Workflow automation
- Contact management
- Analytics
- Sales forecasting
- Business card scanner
Notable integrations
- Google Workspace
- Microsoft 365
- Slack
- Shopify
- MailChimp
- Other Zoho products
Pricing
Pricing starts at $20 per user/month, including all the essentials of Zoho CRM (basic modules, sales forecasting, lead scoring, and more). There’s also a 15-day free trial for you to get a feel for the program and how it can improve your customer relationships before committing.
Runner up: Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a cloud-based CRM that allows you to streamline operations. Map your sales pipeline more effectively and utilize CRM analysis and reporting tools to identify customer trends and assess your team’s sales performance.
Get the Pipedrive essential plan at $14 per seat per month and make use of lead, calendar, and pipeline management, as well as personalized onboarding.
7. Square – Best ecommerce app
Ecommerce businesses have unique challenges that separate them from brick-and-mortar stores:
- Cybersecurity becomes a major concern of potential customers when it comes to sharing personal data to finalize a sale.
- Order fulfillment should be as automated as possible to ensure a smooth experience on both the business owner and consumer side.
- Design, speed, and reliability during order checkout become critical to avoid any last-minute lost sales.
Accounting for these unique challenges is an intimidating prospect — unless you make use of a powerful ecommerce app like Square to simplify the process.
Square is its own operating system allowing small business owners to sell products and services across the world. This app includes options for managing inventory, communicating with customers, booking appointments, online order fulfillment, and more.
Square’s point-of-sale software and suite of tools (software, hardware, and resources) puts the power in business owners’ hands. You can track customer preferences, implement physical and digital gift cards, and use streamlined credit card payment processing.
Key features
- Secure payments
- Pickup, delivery, and shipment options
- Buy now, pay later payment options
- Inventory management
- Customer data and insights
Notable integrations
- QuickBooks Online
- WooCommerce
- Thrive Inventory
- ActiveCampaign
- Wix
Pricing
One of the biggest benefits of Square is that it’s free in its most basic form, other than processing fees for taking payments. From there, they have different pricing plans for restaurants, retail businesses, or small businesses that take appointments, starting at $29 per month.
Runner up: Shopify
Shopify is a popular alternative to Square thanks to its sell-everywhere model and ability to get started for free. For businesses making use of point-of-sale systems, Shopify comes with a POS app, iPad POS, and Android POS.
For users aiming to sell in person, Shopify POS costs $5 per month. Meanwhile, the sell-everywhere option costs $39 per month and comes with unlimited POS logins and an online store.
8. Dropbox – Best file sharing app
Though there are many free file-sharing options on the market, small business owners often run into limitations when using them. Being able to keep a record and backup files is crucial. This is why you need to find a reliable file-sharing and storage service that lets you quickly transfer between team members without worrying about stability.
We think Dropbox edges out the competition.
Dropbox uses cloud storage to allow files to be stored and shared between team members securely and effortlessly in real time. Additionally, managers have the freedom to control who can view and edit shared files at will. There are no file size limits with this service, allowing you to share anything from zipped folders to large multimedia files, as long as you have storage space.
Key features
- File and folder sharing
- Password protection
- File permissions
- File transfer
- Digital watermarking
Notable integrations
- Google Workspace
- Microsoft
- Adobe
- HubSpot
- Canva
Pricing
Dropbox’s cheapest business plan costs $15 per user per month, starting each team member off with 9 TB of file space, file transfers of up to 100 GB, 180 days to restore any deleted items, and more.
Runner up: Google Drive
Google Drive is a strong, trusted alternative to Dropbox. It comes with robust storage options, allows for participation in video meetings, and naturally integrates effectively with Gmail, Google Meet, Google Docs, and more.
Pricing for the Business Start plan is $6 per user per month under a one-year commitment. This plan allows for 100-participant video meetings, a custom business email, and standard Google support.
9. HubSpot – Best marketing automation app
There are many common marketing challenges that are exacerbated when you’re running a small business. A lack of resources becomes stifling when you’re working with less time and a smaller budget. You have little time or resources to spend running A/B tests to optimize your marketing efforts. There’s also the difficulty of trying to keep up with marketing trends and market research when you’re focused on staying afloat.
Because marketing is its own skill set, small business owners would be helped by finding an expert to handle the hard work for them. Luckily, in today’s digital age, marketing automation software like HubSpot can fill that role easily.
HubSpot’s Marketing Hub allows you to set and optimize marketing campaigns on autopilot, making use of CRM data. This makes it much easier to see where your marketing efforts are succeeding, where they need improvement, and what in-app tools you can use to get your desired results.
Key features
- AI for marketers
- Marketing analytics
- SMS marketing
- Social media management
- Advanced reporting
Notable integrations
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Zapier
- Facebook Ads
- Google Ads
Pricing
HubSpot has a generous free plan that includes email marketing, forms, and ad management, but has the drawback of including HubSpot branding. Otherwise, its Starter plan starts at $20 per month per seat and adds on calls-to-action and email health insights, as well as removing HubSpot branding.
Runner up: ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign offers effortless email and marketing automation through features like an AI-powered automation builder, site and event tracking, split testing, and more.
The cheapest plan starts at $15 per month and allows you to send marketing materials to up to 1000 contacts, but it only allows A/B testing via email.
10. Notion – Best internal knowledge management app
Internal knowledge management is the process of small businesses improving organization efficiency through creating databases, files, and records critical to their company. Examples include team directories or proprietary processes for handling aspects of the company. The loss of such information can drastically set back your company.
The best knowledge management apps make it simple and painless to create and access stored data. Additionally, team collaboration should be seamless, and the app itself must be reliable and stable for anytime, anywhere usage. Bonus points if they have built-in accessibility tools allowing for data analysis or deeper insights.
Notion is one such app that fulfills all these requirements.
Notion offers flexibility and customization for storing important company data, which allows you to establish your own preferred style. It’s easy to search through workspaces to find relevant pieces of data, meaning you and your team members can easily navigate to important files.
Notion also lets you share meeting notes, create a content calendar for all team members, or even allow your staff to create their own individual knowledge management system. With this, your employees can create their own personalized tools, processes, and guides to complete work for you more efficiently.
Key features
- Collaborative workspace
- Page analytics
- Page history
- Synced databases
- Custom websites and automation
- Charts and dashboards
Notable integrations
- Slack
- GitHub
- Asana
- Canva
- Google Drive
- Okta
Pricing
Notion is free for collaborating with up to 10 guests, increasing to $10 per seat per month for small teams that want features such as unlimited file uploads, custom websites and automation, charts and dashboards, and more.
Runner up: Nuclino
Nuclino bills itself as “your team’s collective brain” and makes a strong case for being just that with features like a collaboration tool, simplified user interface, and speed functions integrated from the ground up.
Nuclino is free for up to 50 items and three canvases to work in. Otherwise, the starting plan costs $6 per user per month and comes with unlimited items and canvases, admin tools, 30-day version history, and 10GB of storage per user.
11. Intercom – Best customer support app
Unfortunately for all of us, no business is bulletproof. When a customer has an issue or a question about your company, how are they going to reach out to you? The answer to this question can make the difference between impressing a customer with your support or losing them forever. Speed and effectiveness are the name of the game.
This is why Intercom is our pick for the best customer support app. We’re even using it right now.
A report held by G2 showed that Intercom outranked many other popular customer support tools in 79 different categories, from ease of use to live support and more. Intercom allows you to maximize productivity through the use of an AI-enhanced inbox for customer concerns.
Additionally, Intercom provides AI support for your customer service agents through AI copilot, which makes it easier for the real humans on your team to address a customer’s concerns. When it comes to helping customers swiftly and effectively, you can’t do much better than this.
Key features
- AI insights and reporting
- Workflows
- Outbound messaging
Notable integrations
- Stripe
- Zapier
- WooCommerce
Pricing
Pricing for Intercom starts at $29 per seat per month. You can try it out with a 14-day free trial — no credit card is required.
Runner up: Zendesk
Zendesk has also embraced the power of AI to facilitate customer service agents providing the best service possible. It comes with messaging, live chat, AI tools, data privacy, and more.
Zendesk for Customer Service costs $55 per agent per month and comes with features including, but not limited to, a ticketing system, a vast array of messaging options, and AI agents.
Choosing the best apps for your small business
There’s no getting around the fact that the singular best app for your company is ultimately going to depend on your unique business needs.
This list we’ve provided is an excellent starting point since it highlights apps you may not have realized existed, but we’re not saying you should download each and every one of them. Instead, you should take into account your business’s day-to-day operations and decide which apps would result in the biggest improvement in the most important aspects of your workflow.
Want to get started collecting emails so you can market to your audience over time? MailChimp will set you on that path.
Satisfied with your team members but think their workflow could use some optimization? A time tracker and scheduler like Buddy Punch fills that role.
Not great with numbers and want accounting to be as simple as possible to maximize profits? QuickBooks is probably right for you.
That said, many of the tools we included in this list come with free trials, so you’re always able to get a real feel for how they’d improve your business before you commit to them. The only issue is when you’ll have time to actually try out these various tools. If you’re limited in time, you can’t go wrong with asking your team members and using customer reviews of each software to make an informed decision.