24 Best Small Business Apps

Owning a small business requires entrepreneurs to juggle a lot of tasks. From financial management to task delegation, small business owners do it all. Using business apps can help streamline your daily operations, keeping you and your team organized and productive. With so many business apps available, finding the best small business apps can be a challenge; read on to learn the best business apps for every aspect of your business.

Disclaimer: Pricing for each app is subject to change.

Business Tools and Guides

Small Business Apps

Why Use Business Apps?

Business apps can help business owners with a variety of tasks, including finance management, scheduling, and communication. Using these tools can also help increase productivity and organization — making your business run smoother and more efficiently.

Benefits of Business Apps

Increase Productivity: As a small business owner, you are responsible for many tasks and operations. Streamlining your tasks via business apps helps keep your to-do list organized so you can focus on getting things done.
Reduce Labor Costs: Hiring employees or professional services for your business can be costly. If you’re like most businesses, you’re on a tight budget. Business apps can save you the money of hiring marketers, bookkeepers, and more without sacrificing functionality.
Manage Your Business From Anywhere: The convenience of being able to manage your business’s operations or communicate with staff from your mobile phone helps ensure your business is still running smoothly, even when you’re gone.

Best Apps for Small Business

Skip Ahead To:

Brainstorming and Startup Apps
Business Planning Apps
Business Communication Apps
Payroll and Accounting Apps
Marketing Apps
Design Apps
Project Management Apps
Time Management/Productivity Apps
Networking Apps

Brainstorming and Startup Apps

1. Google Docs

Easily used on computers and mobile devices, Google Docs provides the tools you need to create word documents, spreadsheets, forms, and slideshows for free. Content created in Google Docs is easily accessible to team members without sacrificing important privacy features. Additionally, the app saves editing history and allows for live commenting for optimal communication between team members.

For a more feature-rich experience, third party add-ons are available to enhance your user experience and increase the app capabilities.

Pricing: Free

2. Coggle

Coggle allows you to easily create and share notes with your team members and develop exceptional flow charts individually or as a group. While sharing content is easily done with this app, it also allows users to create unlimited private diagrams that you can keep even if you cancel your subscription.

Since the company offers a free plan, you can try out Coggle for yourself before committing to ensure it's the right choice for your business’s needs.

Pricing: Free - $8/month

3. Popplet

An excellent app for visualizing ideas, Popplet is an easy-to-use app that allows business owners and colleagues to brainstorm collaboratively in real-time or individually. Users are able to organize ideas by color, add images or videos, and draw as well as rearrange and reshape ideas after they are added.

Popplet is compatible with tablets and computers, with an option to try the app for free before committing to ensure it meets your business’s brainstorming needs.

Pricing: Free - $1.99/month or $19.99/year

Business Planning Apps

4. LivePlan

Business planning is a breeze with this app that allows you to create a pitch, make a budget and business forecast, and compare your numbers with your competitors. Connect LivePlan with other business management apps such as QuickBooks, Xero or manually enter accounting information to manage business’s finances, oversee budgets, and keep your sales goals on track with the LivePlan dashboard.

Pricing: $15/month - $20/month

5. Enloop

Enloop is a business planning software that offers users a variety of management tools such as finance ratio analysis, real-time performance scores, and automatically generated financial reports. This app will even generate text for your business plan based on your business information. Enloop offers a seven-day free trial so that you can try their business planning management app risk for free.

Pricing: Free - $39.95/month

Business Communication Apps

6. Slack

Slack provides a platform for instant messaging between team members and the capability to organize users into public or private channels. This app makes communicating with your team faster and more convenient than email chains, saving you time and increasing your productivity.

Easily search and filter conversations to refer back to messages, photos, videos, or files that are automatically archived by the app. However, perhaps the best feature of the app is that business owners can add an unlimited number of users for free.

Pricing: Free - $12.50/user/month

7. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a business-friendly communication app that’s easily used on mobile devices and computers. Video conferencing, calls, and instant messaging are all possible with this app, as well as in-app document editing with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Business owners can try this app for free to ensure it fits their business needs and increase the app’s capabilities by doing a paid plan.

Pricing: Free - $20/user/month

Payroll and Accounting Apps

8. QuickBooks

QuickBooks is a popular and effective accounting software that provides tools to optimize the financial health of your company with sales and expenses tracking. Viewing profit and loss reports, paying employees and vendors, and examining financial statements is easily done with QuickBooks’s management tools. Moreover, all these impressive features are accessible via the app’s user-friendly dashboard.

Pricing: $7.50/month - $75/month

9. ADP

With plans created for different business sizes, ADP offers a variety of options to ensure your business’s needs are met. This app offers payroll services, recruiting tools, time management tools, HR services, and more. The best part is that you can choose the services that you need for your business and leave the rest.

Pricing: Varies depending on business needs

10. Gusto

Gusto provides not only payroll and HR features; you can also onboard and manage new employees with the app’s new-hire reporting. Additionally, filing and reporting payroll taxes is easily done through the app at both state and federal levels. This is a full-service app that offers users all the features they need to successfully manage their payroll and accounting on one platform.

Pricing: Starts at $39 plus $6 per person per month

Marketing Apps

11. Hootsuite

With social media as one of the most powerful tools available to small businesses, managing your business’s social network channels through an app like Hootsuite saves you valuable time and makes social media marketing a snap. This app keeps 5 to 35 of your social media platforms in one place (depending on the plan you choose), making monitoring and interacting customer interactions easy and fast.

Pricing: $25/month - $599/month

12. Mailchimp

With Mailchimp, businesses can create and manage mailing lists, view audience data, and review valuable insights about the effectiveness of marketing campaigns - all in one place. The app also allows you to create custom email templates to give your email marketing campaigns a personalized touch.

Pricing: Free - $299/month

13. Yelp for Business

Adding or claiming your business on Yelp is the first step to taking advantage of all of the benefits this business app has to offer. With Yelp for Business, you can interact with customers, relay important information about your business, and review analytics to improve performance and reach new customers. Businesses can also advertise on the app to reach customers looking for related services.

Pricing: Free - Varied pricing depending on business needs

Design Apps

14. Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud is a hub of tools to design and create for your business that keeps all related apps in one, manageable setting. Businesses that use Adobe Creative Cloud have access to a plethora of features such as Adobe stock images, Typekit, and Behance, as well as the ability to sync and share files within the app. This app works well for managing creative projects and tools, leaving users free to create.

Pricing: For businesses, $33.99/month - $79.99/month

15. Canva

Canva is a design app that allows users to collaborate on custom templates and designs. With this app, you can easily share and print designs professionally, bringing your team’s ideas to life hassle-free. The best part is that with Canva’s free plan, you can access thousands of design tools and 250,000+ templates.

Pricing: Free - $30/month/person

Project Management Apps

16. Monday

Monday is a project management app that prioritizes communication while making organizing tasks super simple. Not only can you create projects within the app, but you can also add tasks and clear steps for each task to effectively communicate project needs to team members. Also, Monday makes it easy to share the status of each project. This app is available on desktop and mobile devices.

Pricing: Varies depending on business needs

17. Asana

Productivity is key with Asana, the project management app that prioritizes streamlining workflow. The app provides a platform for your entire team to organize projects and communicate their status to make accomplishing their goals easier. Additionally, you can create projects within the app, give concrete timelines, and outline steps for optimal communication among your team members.

Pricing: Free - $24.99/user/month

18. Trello

Trello provides a space to organize projects in terms of priority using boards, lists, and cards. The app also helps keep users on track with due dates and calendar commands. For businesses that use multiple business apps, Trello can be synced with additional apps such as Dropbox and Google Docs for a streamlined work experience.

Pricing: Free - Varied pricing depending on business needs

Time Management/Productivity Apps

19. Google Workspace

Google Workspace plans allow users to create a custom business email account and provide access to helpful tools such as Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, and more. This business app’s priority is to encourage productivity by compiling all your business tools on one platform that is optimal for team collaboration.

Pricing: $6/user/month - $18/user/month

20. OmniFocus

Create and organize projects into to-do lists with OmniFocus, the time management and productivity app that helps keep projects on track. To make organization even easier, this app also allows users to sync projects with Apple and PC products.

Pricing: Starts at $49.99

21. RescueTime

RescueTime helps users effectively manage their time by creating detailed reports on time spent on apps and websites. You can also set time limits for specific apps or websites and even restrict websites that distract you from important work tasks with the app. RescueTime is a great tool for anyone who has a habit of getting distracted during work hours by distractions like social media or news and would like help holding themselves accountable or setting limits.

Pricing: $78/year or $12/month

22. Todoist

Create to-do lists to organize all of the projects and tasks you’re juggling with Todoist, a productivity app that allows you to quickly and easily add tasks to your calendar so you can focus on getting things done. For teams, Todoist also offers collaborative tools that allow you to delegate tasks, discuss projects, and track project progress, all in one place.

Todoist is available on everything from smartwatches, mobile devices, and computers so that you can take your to-do list anywhere you are.

Pricing: Free - $5/user/month

Networking Apps

23. LinkedIn

Find qualified candidates for your team and network with business professionals with the popular business app, LinkedIn. This networking app also allows users to learn about various topics such as career development, marketing, and data science with courses offered on their platform. For new business owners, especially, LinkedIn is a great tool to build a network of experienced professionals to help you start and grow your business.

Pricing: Free or LinkedIn Premium Business: $59.99/month

24. Shapr

Shapr is a networking app created specifically for startups that helps entrepreneurs meet people at every stage of their business. With the Shapr app, business owners can network, find talented employees, raise funds, and find mentors that are experts in their field. This business app provides a platform for all of your startup’s outside communication needs on one, easy-to-use platform.

Pricing: Free - $99.99