Our customers are often looking for recommendations for software products and tools.
We would suggest SaaS (software as a service) products as they give a lean, quick to use model that can often start on a free tier and scale up or down as your business needs.
Here are some suggestion for good software tools:
GSuite: For email, documents and spreadsheets. It's cost effective and just works.
Google Analytics: It's free to use so as a default we add it to any website we work on unless we're asked not to.
Intercom: A feature rich product with live chat, a bot, product walkthrough's and marketing automation. We love the free tier which provides our startups with a great overview of who their users are and what they're doing on the platform.
Trello: Trello is great project management tool that has an excellent free tier. The best thing about it is that it is super simple and easy to use. Trello provides a user experience that requires no learning curve and our clients can use it immediately to track the development of their project. It's also a great tool for planning product roadmaps!
Jira: for internal projects. The latest version of Jira is simple to use and is perfect for agile project development.
Bitbucket: Store and manage code. If you're a first time founder and non-technical, know that your developers will most likely use Github or Bitbucket for their Git repository. Hint: If you are a solo founder and are outsourcing your application development be sure to own the repository so that you hold the keys to the kingdom.
AWS (Amazon Web Services): The biggest and most cost effective with deepest product set. They offer excellent packages for start-ups.
Campaign Monitor or Mailchimp: Both of these platforms are great for sending email marketing campaigns.
Twilio: For sending SMS triggered from actions made within an application. For example to alert users to certain actions (when SMS is preferred over email) or for verifying a mobile number. Twilio offers many services but we've mainly used their API for SMS.
Balsamiq: There are hundreds of wireframing tools on the market. Balsamiq was one of the originals. It's a no frills 'low-fi' approach to wireframes which we believe is the best approach.
Xero: One of the best accounting software solutions that will scale with your business.
Slack: The perfect tool for rapid internal communication between small teams.
Google Hangouts / Meet: Google Meet for calls, video calls and screen sharing. It's free to use and on a good internet connection is very stable. A great alternative that we find our larger clients using is Zoom. If you're already using GSuite and want a decent free product try Google Meet.
Loom: For screen recordings. It comes in very handy for bug reporting and for creating training videos when you need to record your screen. The free tier is excellent!
Miro: A collaborative white board tool for creating mind maps, user flows, website information architecture, product roadmaps and more.
There are plenty of products you can use and it is easy to have too many tools. It is always best to map out why you want to a tool and what you want it to solve first, then find the best tool for you. If you are looking for software that supports you cloud journey we are happy to make suggestions on some solutions that we recommend.
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