20 Tools to Run a Small E-Commerce Business
A small e-commerce business owner can assume many functions — from marketing, sales, human resources, information technology, and research and development. Fortunately, there are some terrific online tools to help you perform just about any company task.
Below, we’ve compiled a list of online tools to help you run a small e-commerce business. There are tools to schedule customers, collaborate with a team, manage social conversations, distribute content, build and analyze websites, and more. All of these tools are relatively inexpensive, and several are even free. If your favorite tool isn’t listed, be sure to include it in our comments below.
Slack
Slack is an internal messaging app for your team. Slack features real-time messaging, file sharing, one-to-one and group conversations, online images and video, rich link summaries and integration with services you use every day.
What’s the Cost?
Free account for 5 integrations and 10k message searchable archive. Paid plans start at $6.67 per usual per month.
Asana
Asana is a tool for team tasks and conversations. Organize your tasks into shared projects for your initiatives, meetings, and lists. Keep conversation with tasks, instead of scattered across email. Get automatic updates about tasks that matter to you. Visualize your team’s goals and milestones with calendars and dashboards.
What’s the Cost?
Get started for free. Paid plans start at $21 per month for 5 users.
Wave
Wave offers a platform of financial applications, for small e-commerce businesses with nine employees or less. The tools include invoicing, accounting, payroll, payments, and more.
What’s the Cost?
Accounting, invoicing, receipts, and personal finance applications are free. Payroll application starts at $9 per month, payments application is 30 cents plus 2.9 percent per transaction.
Insightly
Insightly is a customer-relationship management system for small e-commerce businesses. It helps you manage contacts, organizations, partners, vendors, and suppliers. The tool allows you to see everything about your contacts, including their background, email history, important dates, and projects in which they’ve participated.
Insightly also incorporates project management features, such as creating tasks and milestones, automated reminders, project views, and event reports.
What’s the Cost?
Free up to three users. Standard plan is $7 per user per month.
Trello
Trello is a collaboration tool to organize projects. Trello uses boards, lists, and cards to create projects and develop your workflow. Create lists filled with cards, used with a team or by you. Drag and drop cards, and reorder as needed. Follow your project as the board updates in real time.
What’s the Cost?
Free. Premium plan is $5 per user per month.
