REPLY-ALL’s FAVOURITE
FREE OR LOW-COST
TECH TOOLS ⚒️
It is an opportunity and a challenge that we are building our businesses in an era where we have so many thousands of apps to choose from.
But who has time to test them all? No one. Except us. We've tested a lot, so here's our top recommendations for business operations, finances, marketing and sales, and more. Our criteria:
Free or low-cost per month
Easy-to-use and learn with ample online resources
Tried and tested by us
Integrates with other apps
Note: a few of the apps are marked with an (*), that means we've shared an affiliate link below and may receive a discount or a commission if you sign up. But also note: these bonuses are so small that they do not bias our selections.
No. of small businesses investing in tech
4 of 5
11
% who said tech helped their business grow
AVG. No. of apps a
small biz uses
1%
89%
*Recommended by our respected peer Sara Loretta at systms.club
*According to this 2023 study by Intuit Quickbooks & Wakefield Research
HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU SPEND ON TECHNOLOGY?
IF YOU’RE JUST STARTING OUT:
☁️ Access your everything, everywhere: Google Workspace for your gmail, calendar, cloud storage, files, slides at $15/month for business account
🔖 Register your business in Canada with: Ownr* starts at $40 for sole proprietorship
🔒 Get business insurance: Zensurance starting at $19/mo
🕸️ Build your first website on: Wix or Squarespace starting at $16/month
🌊 Manage your business finances and invoicing clients with WaveApps $0-20/mo + payment processing fees
💸 Accept almost any payment type with Stripe for $0, but 2.9% + $0.30 fees on each transaction
YOU PROBABLY NEED TO MANAGE PROJECTS AND OR CLIENTS INFO:
Project management tools almost always start with a free plan, so don’t pay until you need to!
🧠 Notion* my favourite second brain - dump all ideas and plans into Notion.
📮 Monday* my favourite for managing clients, projects, payments, and more in one place.
🧘♀️Asana: less for client data, more for projects, processes, collaboration.
🆙 Clickup: another one that goes deeply into planning projects and collaborating with others on them.
Client relationship management tools cost a bit $ and work best when you integrate it with other tools so you don’t waste time on manual data entry
😃Folk*: if you love Notion but know it's CRM abilities are limited, meet folk. Looks like Notion, operates like butter, can pull contact info from gmail, Linkedin, and any browser. $0-24/mo.
💊 Capsule*: if you're just getting started, Capsule is a great option. Clean, simple, easy to learn. $0-21/mo.
📮 Monday*: it's rare for a CRM to actually do project management well and vice versa. Monday does it the best. $63/mo but free plan coming soon?!
Examples of tools you could integrate with your CRM:
🗓️ Any forms on your site and any booking app like Calendly
🚀 Fireflies: your AI assistant to summarize client meetings for you. $0-18/mo
✍🏾 Send contracts via e-signature.io at $1.39 per document
WHEN YOU WANT TO STREAMLINE YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS:
🖼️ Canva: for all of your creative and branded assets. $0-18.99 and I have to say the upgraded plan is worth it for the AI features, easy resizing, and free stock photos, videos and audio.
💬 ChatGPT if you're not a writer and want to generate some ideas for blog content, website content. Have ChatGPT write it for you, then you review, edit, and make it your own. $0-20/mo
Buffer ($0-6mo) to schedule your social media content and get ideas, inspiration and analytics.
✉️ Mailerlite* ($0-9/mo) for email marketing and automation to nurture your leads.
CURIOUS ABOUT
OUR TECH?
We use most tools on the free plan.
We pay for 10 tools monthly for a total of about $175 CAD per month.
We spend about 5% of our annual revenue on systems and tools.
We change things around quite often and update this list quarterly but here’s how we power REPLY-ALL right now:
Second brain/data centre/psuedo-CRM: Notion*
Accounting & Payments: Xero + Stripe
Project Management: {currently exploring new tools}
Where I integrate/automate things: relay.app
Forms: Fillout*
My AI meeting assistant: Supernormal