No matter what stage you’re at in your biz right now, figuring out which tools to use is often one of the most overwhelming parts of your business journey. To save you the headache, I’ve compiled a list of the tools and software I love and recommend to simplify, accelerate and automate parts of your biz (and I’m also sharing exactly WHY I love them!)
Quick Disclosure: Some of these links happen to be affiliate links which means when you click the link to purchase something on this page, it won’t cost you more but I may receive a commission for sharing this with you. Which is great, because I was going to share it with you anyway!
Teachable is a course platform known for its beautiful interface, it is super user-friendly, it integrates with literarily everything. And for the ones of you who are coaches,
Teachable is a special coach function, which allows you to set milestones, share assignments, house any videos that are included in the video program, … etc.
With their completely FREE plan, you can create unlimited courses, and have an unlimited amount of students. You also get access to their Integrated payment processing and instant payouts!
What’s the catch, you might ask. Well, there is no catch. There is a transaction cost of 10% of every sale you make, but this is still so generous, taking into account that most course platforms costs you hundreds of dollars every month, without having the guarantee that you will actually make any sale.
Especially when you are starting out and you don’t really have a lot of sales yet and you don’t want to purchase an expensive course platform, then the free Teachable Plan is perfect for you!
02 NEW ZENLER
New Zenler is a platform that does it all, comparable with Kajabi but for half the price. It’s really impressive how versatile and flexible it is.
With the Pro version, you can create up to 3 different sites (!) with your own custom domain if you have one, whereas with Kajabi you only have 1 site.
So with only one paid plan, you could, for example,
- create a website that houses all your courses (unlimited amount of courses!)
- one membership platform
- and one shop where you sell digital or physical products.
And all of these can have a custom domain, a different lay-out if you want…
To give you an idea of all the features NEW Zenler has, here are a few:
- Email marketing (so you can send out automated emails and newsletters)
- They collaborate with Zoom so you can create webinars and coaching calls within the platform
- They have a communities feature which allows you to have discussions with your clients/students within the platform
- Such a powerful and flexible salespage builder with tons of premade templates
- In your course, you can house video trainings, audio files, quizzes , surveys, assignments (with the ability to correct and give feedback on these assignments), custom HTML, downloads, embed PDF’s, the options are literarily endless.
What convinced me to take the leap and try out New Zenler is the fact that they don’t charge any fees once you have the pro plan, so all the money you earn is just for you.
New Zenler is currently still in Beta (they extended their beta due to corona so that more people can profit from these amazing discounts) and if you join as the founding members, you lock in that crazy discount forever! I’m talking 50% off, it’s insane.
Onelattetoomany’s courses are currently hosted on New Zenler, by the way!
03 BLUEHOST
One Latte Too Many is hosted via BlueHost, which is an amazing and super affordable Hosting Provider.
Their 24/7 customer support is A-MAZING! I have never experienced any issues, I love they provide a free SSL certificate and features to secure your website!
And the most important thing is that their page load times are quite impressive for the low price you pay.
So, definitely would recommend Bluehost, especially when you are just starting out and you don’t want to pay tons of money for web hosting.
With Bluehost, you can get powerful web hosting for as little as $2.95/month.
04 FIVERR
Fiverr is a freelance platform that makes it super accessible and easy to outsource tasks and projects.
Fiverr is the place to go if you want to outsource a standardized project, called ‘gigs’. There are thousands of ‘gigs’ where freelancers offer a specific package with a fixed price that you can purchase. For example, for 10 dollars, someone will design 20 custom Instagram graphics for you, which honestly will save you so much time.
Starting from 5 dollars you can start outsourcing those annoying little tasks that you don’t enjoy.
Take a look at their platform and I guarantee you that you will be amazed by all these different things you can outsource!
01 GRAMMARLY
To avoid seeming unprofessional and having typos in your content, Grammarly is definitely a lifesaver!
Grammarly is a FREE Chrome extension or app that you can download so that it automatically screens and detects any autographic mistakes in your text and provides suggestions for the correction.
They also have a paid plan with even more advanced features, such as the function to rewrite your sentences in a clearer way, tone adjustments, plagiarism check, level of formality,… etc.
02 RYTR
Outsourcing your content is one thing, but just imagine having your own artificial intelligence writing assistant that creates really impressive content with just a few clicks.
Before trying Rytr, I was kind of skeptical and I didn’t really believe that it was going to work
I mean, I thought that writing blog posts and social media captions were just something that couldn’t be automated since it’s such a creative process and according to me, creativity was something that a computer isn’t capable of doing.
But because I was so curious about this tool and read soooo many amazing reviews, I couldn’t resist and decided to give it a try with honestly no expectations.
I couldn’t have been more wrong…
I am so impressed by how powerful Rytr actually is and how amazing the quality of the copy is it writes.
You just explain in a few sentences the topic of what you want to write about, choose the format of your copy (do you want to write a testimonial, blog post outline, copywriting frameworks, social media caption outlines, bio’s) and the tone of voice you would like to use (for example convincing, funny, compassionate, inspirational, enthusiastic,…) and the amount of versions you would like for it to create and voila, it generates the copy in seconds.
It makes the writing process so much easier (and fun!) since it gives you such a strong foundation to start with.
Just tweaking a little bit, adding a bit more content here and there, and your writing job is done!
Couldn’t recommend Rytr more to be honest. It’s like having a copywriter in your team.
They have a FREE plan, where you can generate up to 5,000 characters per month!
And with the premium plan, you can use Rytr every single day if you want, and generate an unlimited amount of characters!
03 EVERNOTE
I already talked a lot about Notion on my blog, but I find that Evernote is absolutely worth mentioning as well.
Evernote is an information management tool that already exists for a very long time.
At first sight, Evernote doesn’t seem that special, it just looks like yet another tool where you can save information, but guys, don’t underestimate Evernote, it’s incredibly robust and powerful!
- You have a custom Evernote e-mail adress so that you can quickly email yourself notes or documents and it will automatically save these in an Evernote notebook
- You can tag information so that with the super robust search function you can find everything in a few seconds
- Evernote integrates with tons of other tools, such as todoist (which I will talk about in a sec) and with automation tools such as IFTTT and Zapier, which allows you to do crazy stuff! For example by creating an IFTTT applet or Zapier zap between Evernote and Gmail, you are able to automatically save all invoices you receive in your mailbox into a certain Evernote Notebook, which will make things so much easier when you’re doing your taxes! Another example is connecting your phone to Evernote, so that voicemails get automatically transcribed with a link to the original audio.
- There is also an Evernote web clipper which makes it super easy to bookmark websites, screenshot them, adding notes, remarks, tag them,… and all of this just via the web clipper function.
Start your 14-day risk-free trial for the personal plan for FREE (or try out the Free Plan)
01 MEETEDGAR
Another area of your biz that is easy to automate is social media marketing.
It can be quite exhausting and overwhelming to manually post your content on social media consistently, especially when you have various different platforms to manage.
That’s why social media scheduling tools such as MeetEdgar can be such a bliss! It makes it super easy to batch create and schedule your social media posts across different platforms and manage it all from the same place.
Really recommend MeetEdgar if you want to plan a moment every month to just get all your social media content done for the whole month and have the peace of mind that is already taken care of.
Start your 7-day Trial for free!
02 TAILWIND
As bloggers, we all know how essential Pinterest is to drive traffic to our websites.
However, Pinterest is a tool that is very “demanding” in the sense that it requires almost constant attention.
According to the best practices of Pinterest, you should be publishing new, fresh pins on a daily basis and repin during various moments throughout the day, in order to favor the Pinterest algorithm.
I don’t know about you, but I simply don’t have the time to be active on Pinterest almost 24/7.
That’s why Tailwind is such a lifesaver…
Tailwind calculates with taking your specific audience into account, what are the best time slots to publish your pins and create a “queue”, so that you can just batch schedule your pins once every month, week, or every couple of days (whatever is most convenient for you) so that you get it done and forget about it.
You also have the option to create new fresh pins directly from the Tailwind App. You just choose your brand colors, mention the name of your pin, and then it will create hundreds of gorgeous pin designs for you in just one click.
And personally, the best part about Tailwind is the Tailwind Tribes, which are basically tailwind communities with a specific theme (for example there are fashion tailwind tribes, personal development tailwind tribes, parenting,…).
In these tribes, you can not only find tons of relevant pins that you can repin, but you can also publish your own pins. And by doing that you give your pins such a boost since hundreds or even thousands of people in the same niche see your pin in the tailwind tribe and repin it so that it appears in the newsfeed of all of their followers as well.
So, honestly, Tailwind has saved me so much time and makes Pinterest actually doable and manageable.
Tailwind has an amazing FREE plan (no credit card required) that allows you to test all their features risk-free.
03 CANVA
If there is one tool that I just can’t live without, it would be definitely the graphic design tool Canva.
As a content creator, it’s simply just essential.
Whether if you are designing lead magnets, pins, social media graphics, banners, gifs,… I just use one tool and that’s Canva.
Their features are INSANE!
With the Pro Account, you have access to their HUUUUUUGE library of elements, pictures, animations, templates, mockups, effects,…
I don’t think there is anything you can’t create in Canva to be totally honest.
And the cool thing is that when you have the Canva Pro Plan, you can invite up to 3 people in your team so they can have access to the pro features as well.
Try out Canva Pro 30 days for free!
Quizzes are trending lately. It’s fun, engaging, and interactive and such a cool and fun way to build your email list while getting to know your audience even better by analyzing their answers.
I love Interact because it makes quizzes SO easy to create. You can customize the design so that they match your branding.
Get your 14 day risk-free trial of the Interact Quiz Maker
02 CONVERTKIT
One of the areas of your biz that I would say is the most important to automate is email marketing.
If you want to build an email list and sell on autopilot, an email marketing tool is an absolute must.
I personally LOVE using the email service provider Convertkit. They specialize in amazing open rates, which is amazing since they do everything to avoid that the email you spend so much time creating, lands in someone’s spam.
They allow you to set up, design, and embed beautiful opt-in forms with tons of premade templates, create lots of triggers and automation rules, and I absolutely love that they have so many native integrations with other tools and software so that you can set up a whole sales funnel that works seamlessly.
And the good part is that you can set it up once, and forget about it, allowing you to build an email list and sell on autopilot.
Their completely FREE plan is INSANE, you can manage up to 1,000 subscribers, send them newsletters, sell them digital products, AND you can use their amazing landing page and opt-in form builder to grow your email list (you can create an unlimited amount of landing pages and forms!). And you even have access to their email support, if you need any help with setting something up.
So if you’re just starting out, the FREE Convertkit Plan will be more than enough for you.
Start your FREE plan (without having to enter your payment details)!
02 QUICKBOOKS
I don’t know about you, but everything accounting, taxes, and finance give me instant stress and anxiety. It’s so complicated and takes up so much time which I would honestly rather spend on activities I enjoy more. And especially, for a small business, hiring an accountant can be quite expensive.
That’s why I absolutely love Quickbooks: on one side, it isn’t as expensive as hiring an accountant, but it makes accounting so much more simple, manageable, and organized.
You’re able to stores all your accounting information in one place and automate a lot so it requires minimal effort from your side.
Some of Quickbooks amazing features:
- Quickbooks also helps with automatically generating invoices with just filling out a few things.
- You can also use custom reminders and tracking features, to make sure everyone pays on time
- You can generate financial reports and pay roll statements (if you have any employees)
- You can generate refund receipts
- You can connect your business bank accounts so that it automatically gives you an overview of all your transactions, so you can match these transactions with the right categories.
- Manage your stock in case you have any physical products
- … etc.
Try out Quickbooks 30 days for free!
01 TODOIST
For everyone that is into productivity, Todoist is such a dream. It allows you to collect all your to-do’s, projects, groceries, and errands in the same platform, and organize them however you want with colors, tags, projects, priorities, sections, and subtasks.
So, whatever structure works best for your task and project management, rest assured that you can create that into Todoist.
Whenever there pops up something that you can’t forget or a to-do in your mind, wherever you are, you can quickly jot it down with the Todoist App on your phone, desktop app, the chrome extension, or even by using Google Assistant Voice Commands.
And that’s so important so you can just get it out of your head and save everything in one single space.
Todoist also integrates natively with Gmail and Slack, so that with a single click you can add certain emails or Slack messages as a task in Todoist. Or you can even automate it so that automatically starred emails in gmails are added as a task in Todoist.
And this is only the beginning, I could write a whole blog post about the impressive range of apps and tools it integrates with and all the ways that Todoist can save you so much time.
For as little as $3/month, you can test Todoist Pro with advanced features such as the ability to create 300 active projects, reminders, Pro themes, and higher usage limits.
And since it’s possible to request a refund within 30 days of subscribing if you’re unhappy with your purchase, there’s no risk involved!
