75 Startup Tools And Apps
From IdeaSpotter.com
So you have a new business or startup idea and based on your analysis
and research you have conducted, your confident that there is a market
for it. Ok, now what?
You need to possibly find a cofounder and team to start planning,
seek funding and successfully execute the plan for a pilot or full
launch.
There are so many resources and tools out there that can assist you
in managing and excuting your startup or new business idea more
eficiently and effectively.
As a result, I have produced a list of my favourite tools and
applications covering the various disciplines you will need to undertake
in order to successfully execute and launch your startup or new
business.
Here are just a few tools and applications that I have used over the
years in managing and delivering small to large projects. I hope you
find them useful for your business and startup.
Brainstorming Ideas |
Simple online application that helps you create colorful mind maps that you can print and share with others and it's FREE.
Mindmanager is a software application that helps you create mind
maps, tasks, process flows, site maps etc. Great for scoping out
projects at high level.
Creately, another great online application for creating flow charts, wireframes and mind maps.
Springpad is an online application that lets you easily save ideas, information and organise and share. It's FREE.
Evernote is a extremely versatile online application for capturing,
collating, organising, saving ideas and notes. Great collaboration tool
and best of all its FREE for single user license. If you wish to share
your notebooks with others you will need to go to the premium plan which
costs USD$5 per month.
Branding |
99designs is a crowdsourcing market place for getting your graphic
design work done, from logo and branding through to business cards and
website design.
You create a contest, freelance graphic designers from around the globe create their designs and pitch for the job.
Designs are presented to you on the site, you nominate the winning
design and pay the designer. Very cost effective way in getting your
design work completed.
User Experience (UX) & User Interface (UI) Design |
Great online tool for assisting UI designers in obtaining client feedback on designs.
Avoid paying for licensed fonts, your designer can choose similar
open source web friendly fonts from Google Web Fonts, it's FREE.
CheckDog is an online application that checks your copy text for spelling errors.
Mokk.me is a web based application that helps you create simple
mobile application mockups. Once created, you can share it with your
team and provides the ability for them to edit and provide feedback. The
application is optimised for iPhone but you can also test Android and
WebOS. Its currently in beta and best of all the online version is FREE.
Cacoo is an online tool for creating site maps, wireframes and
network charts. It also allows for several users to collaborate in the
process.
Mocksup is an online application for creating desktop, smartphone and
tablet prototypes and also allows others to provide feedback on your
prototype designs.
Mockflow is a online application for creating, designing and
collaborating on user interface mockups for web sites and software
applications. Very clean and minimalist interface. Basic plan is FREE
but has some limitations.
In order to get you startup and business up and running quickly and
hopefully cut some corners with the UI and site development, I highly
recommend finding and purchasing existing themed templates that are
close to your design and functionality you require.
You then have a great base to customise the site to your design and requirements. Themeforest which is owned by Melbourne's Envato, is
a marketplace that allows you to buy premium and stylish WordPress
designed theme templates that are not you average stock standard design.
Obviously this option and solution does not work for all startups and
businesses, hence total bespoke design and development is required in
these situations.
Mock Is an iPad and iPhone application that allows non technically
types to create and design actual graphical mockups and prototypes for
iPad and iPhone applications. There was an online web application
version previously but this is no longer available. iPhone application
version coming soon.
Keynotopia allows you to turn your favourite presentation
applications such as Keynote or Powerpoint into a UI prototyping tool.
Keynotopia provides a library of UI templates for web and mobiles to
enable you to create fully interactive prototypes without any coding.
Similar to Keynotopia, Keynote Kung-Fu provides a library of Keynote
UI wireframe templates for web or mobile application UI prototyping. It
supports hyperplinks, hence you can build an interactive UI prototype in
minutes.
Platform and Content Management System (CMS) |
Once you have created your UI design and finalised your requirements
for your site on paper, you need to decide what platform will support
your website.
There are many platforms out there. Call me biased but I am a great fan of WordPress for a number of reasons.
Firstly its an open source platform hence is FREE and it has
thousands of plugins and themes on the web at your disposal. it's very
stable and customisable with a great CMS and anyone can update and
customise with its intuitive admin and content management system (CMS) panel.
For simple sites that also require a
CMS, you can't go passed WordPress. For more complex and larger
websites, bespoke development will be more appropriate using other
platforms such as ASP.NET or PHP etc.
Pitching |
Slideshare is the worlds largest online community for presentation
sharing. Great resource for sampling best presentations, information and
ideas. If you search on "pitch", you will find hundreds of pitch
samples form varies businesses and startups to assist you with creating
your pitch. It's FREE
Visual.ly is a great site and tool for creating and presenting data in a visually appealing way, via Infographics. It's FREE!
Microsoft Powerpoint has been around for years. It has a very
intuitive user interface and easy to use for creating your pitch or
presentations.
Keynote is Apple's version of Powerpoint, very intuitive and easy to use application for creating a pitch or presentation.
Surveys |
SurveyMonkey is a very easy to use online web application that enables you to create online surveys. Basic plan is FREE
Quipol is an online social voting tool which enables you to insert
"one question" polls into your blog or website. Quick and easy way to
determine where your audience stands on virtually any topic.
Domain Names and Hosting |
Panabee is an online web tool that checks domain names with a twist.
it helps to brainstorm new ideas based on URL availability. It's FREE.
I find these guys very reasonably priced for both domain names and
web hosting. If your site is complex, very content media rich and it
holds sensitive customer information, I would strongly recommend going
with a local ISP with more secure and higher performance infrastructure.
Hostgator is one of the cheapest web hosting ISPs. As per GoDaddy, same hosting recommendation applies.
Business Planning |
This very simple online tool is fantastic for creating a basic "no
frills" business plan and model for your new business or startup. it
allows you to capture your business model all on one page. Ideal for
lean and agile projects that need to hit the ground running. It's FREE
for one user.
Project Management & Collaboration |
Basecamp is an online project management and collaboration tool Eg:
File sharing, milestone tracking, tasks, resource management and
messaging.
Redmine is an online open source project management tool and it's FREE
Online project management and collaboration tool for software development.
Jira is popular online collaboration tool for tracking stories,
tasks, bugs, resource allocation, file sharing, Ideal for lean and agile
development.
Goplan is another online project management and collaboration tool.
Mavenlink is another online project management, collaboration and file sharing tool with a nice user interface.
Mingle application is an agile project management online application
which replicates the physical card walls and scrum task boards. It
provides great views of the various agile disciplines in an intuitive
and well presented user interface.
LeanKit Kanban is a simple and very visual process management and
collaborative tool for managing lean projects. It allows you to create
virtual Kanban boards, add color, dates and more.
Microsoft Project is one of the most sophisticated project management
desktop applications on the market. It is used extensively by major
medium to corporate size organisations for tracking, scheduling and
resourcing. Not as intuitive as some of the previous mentioned project
management tools, but is the industry standard tool for project
management scheduling and tracking.
Workflowy is an simple no frills online to do list for managing tasks, brainstorming etc and it's FREE.
Communication |
Establish a private chat service and forum for your team using HipChat.
I think Skype needs no introduction here, but those that are not
aware of its full capability, it provides VOIP, video calling, IM, text
messaging, sending of files and its FREE. VOIP to fixed line and mobiles
is not free.
Zipcast is a great web online meeting tool by Slideshare which allows
you to present slides and presentations, at the same time communicate
with your audience via chat and video all in one browser. It also allows
you to schedule and invite unlimited attendees to the meeting and it
works in any browser. Best of all this great online application is
FREE.
GoToMeeting is a web conferencing and meeting tool that is great for
startups and businesses where you have teams spread over multiple sites
and you need to collaborate together.
Viber is a great application for iPhone and Android phones that lets
you make free phone calls and send text messages to anyone who has the
application installed on their iPhone or Android mobile. it also
utilises your existing address book and tags your contacts who also has
Viber application installed on their smart phones. Best of all it's
FREE.
Jing is a great online web application that allows you to capture
screenshots, record up to 5 mins of onscreen video from your computer
and provide narration. Our UI designers and developers use it to show UI
functionality and designs to remote teams. Allows you to record the
screen shot or video and save the file for sharing. Best of all It's
FREE.
File sharing, storage and backup |
Great online site for storing your files, sharing and backing up to the cloud. Basic plan is FREE for up to 2GB of storage.
Box is a great online site for storing your files, sharing and
backing up to the cloud. it integrates with Salesforce, Google and Okta
and provides sync between your various desktop and devices. The personal
plan is FREE but limits to one user, 50GB of storage with file size
limits up to 1GB.
Testing |
Bugherd is an online application for tracking issues and defects
especially with UI designs. You can tag, describe and assign issues on
the actual designs via the application..
Full page online test tool to help you test the loading speed and
performance of your site or webpage. Its so simple and quick, you just
type in the URL of the page you want to test and the tool basically
initiates the test and returns the results of the performance test. Its
fantastic and it's FREE.
Great open source vulnerability scan application to determine any
security holes within your web site (web application and
infrastructure). To be treated as a first pass option to determine any
obvious security risks. If your serious about security, I highly
recommend engaging a security architect or company who specialise in the
area of security vulnerability. Skipfish is a great tool for self
assessment and it's FREE.
Crowdsource your test team, dedicated to testing web sites and applications.
Mantis is a web based open source tool for capturing and managing bugs and defects and its FREE
Bugtracker is a web based tool for capturing and managing your test defects. Its FREE for 2 users
Sifter is ideal for startups that just need a simple online
application or tool to manage and track there there defects and issues
during testing. Nice and clean UI.
PlayNicely is another simple bug tracker online tool that is easy to use and with an intuitive UI.
Great resource site for all things "software and web testing" with references and links to over 500 test tools. It's FREE.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) |
Great simple and intuitive CRM online application which also provides
a Hootsuite like social media management dashboard. Not as
sophisticated as Salesforce or Zoho CRM especially in the sales
opportunities and reporting area but still does a great job and has a
nice user interface. Personal plan is free but is limited to one user
along with a few other limitations.
ZohoCRM online contact management application is a little more
sophisticated than Nimble. Easy to use with also a great user interface.
It lacks a little with marketing side of things compared to it's direct
competitor Salesforce, but still does a great job. The other added
bonus is that it integrates well with Google. Monthly cost is $12 per
month per user license for the "Professional" plan but they do have a
FREE edition for 3 users. Much more cost effective than Salesforce
especially for startups and new businesses where every cent counts at
the initial stages.
Financial and Accounting |
Saasu, is a fully featured online accounting application with great
integration and user interface. It supports 50 countries along with
their tax accounting systems. Here at Ideasspotter, we use it as our key
accounting solution.
Online accounting application solution for small businesses and
startups It provides excellent online billing, invoicing, payment
processing and customer management features.
Online accounting application specifically designed for small
businesses and startups. Basic features include invoicing, reminders,
tax and expense tracking. Best of all it's FREE.
Social Media – Community And Marketing Management |
Great online web application that allows you to search globally for
the availability of social media usernames, domain names and trademark
databases to assists with creating your brand.
Online social media management tool that allows you to manage all your social sites from the one location.
Sproutsocial is a direct competitor to Hootsuite which also allows
you to manage all your social sites through the one online social media
management application.
Socmetrics is a web based tool that allows you to identify
influencers, understand who these people are, interact with them and
then monitor your campaign effectiveness. You can identify these
influencers by narrowing your search to keywords to truly identify the
influencers.
Socialmention is an online web tweeter listening application that
allows you to identify who is talking about you and provides great
statistical data about your keyword search. Best twitter listening
application that I have used.. Best of all it's FREE.
Tweetreach is a great online web application that allows you to determine how many people your tweet reached. It's FREE.
Google Alerts is a great tool for startups and businesses to use to
monitor their online reputaion. Each time Google finds a mention of you
startup or business, it sends you a email as it happens. You can also
use to it to monitor your competitors as well. It's FREE.
I love MailChimp!
MailChimp is an online email marketing application that allows you to
create newsletters, monitor the performance of your email marketing and
provides great integration APIs and plugins to social sites. The user
interface is fantastic and so intuitive. Currently its FREE for lists
under 2000 subscribers with no trial limit. At ideasspotter we use
MailChimp for our newsletter subscriptions and email campaigns.
Site Trail is an online web application that provides you a quick snapshot of any competitors website. It's FREE.
Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that provide you valuable
information about your website traffic such as the number of visits,
where users have come from, referral sites etc. It also provides you
great insight into the efectiveness of your marketing strategies and
campaigns. It has a simple user interface and its FREE. This is a must
have tool to measure your ROI as a result of your social media and
marketing execution.
Unilyzer is a social media analytic tool for measuring and monitoring
you social media channels, from one impressive looking dashboard. You
simply enter your social media account details (Twitter, Facebook, You
Tube etc) and Unilyzer will present you all the data on one screen.
Customer Helpdesk & Support |
Desk.com is a online customer support application for customer
queries and feedback from various incoming channels such as social media
sites, email, chat and normal fixed line.
Zendesk is a online customer help desk support application and is a direct competitor to Desk.com with very similar features.
UserVoice is a online customer feedback, helpdesk support, voting and
knowledge base application for customers. Basic plan is FREE for 1
agent.
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