Free business software helps a company save money and be efficient. You can use free business tools to do tasks like send more emails, organize customer leads, build a website, and get more online reviews. To rank the software, we analyzed websites, free pricing options, online user reviews, and personal experience with the tools.
Top 10 Free Business Software in 2019
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Free Business Software |
Best For |
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Food-based businesses managing their invoicing, receipt scanning, and accounting in-house. |
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Small retail shop owners who need a simple point-of-sale system. |
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Residential maintenance businesses that use email marketing to stay in touch with customers. |
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Consultants or coaches who need to do video meetings with remote workers or clients. |
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Digitally-minded entrepreneurs who want to convert their website visitors into customers. |
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Restaurant, retail, and hair salon owners who need to schedule employee work hours. |
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Facebook and Instagram bloggers creating graphics for their posts and online content. |
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Software businesses receiving online support and help requests from customers. |
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Content-based businesses creating and sharing documents and photos with their team or customers. |
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Client-focused business consultants who need to organize their lead interactions and follow up. |
1. Wave: Free Accounting Software
Wave has an easy to use dashboard that allows you to manage sales, accounting, banking, and payroll from one account
Wave is an accounting, invoicing, and receipt tracking software for small businesses. Its free plan includes bank and credit card connections, unlimited income and expense tracking, and unlimited receipt scanning with Android and iOS apps. Wave’s invoices have professional templates you can customize based on your business needs. The accounting software is cloud-based, so you can access it on any device with internet access.
With its free software, Wave is missing payroll abilities. For an additional monthly cost you can do employee tasks like manage vacation time, benefit calculations, and pay your employees. Overall, Wave’s online user reviews indicate that users enjoy the software’s overall ease of use. User complaints center around tech issues and poor customer service.
“Wave is a completely free invoicing, expense and income tracking program you can download as an app or use on your desktop. It took me about 15 minutes to set it up so all my business accounts’ data ported over automatically to the app. Now I don’t have to manually track any expenses, receipts, payments, and so forth. I can also invoice clients (for free, I just pay Visa/MC/AMEX costs), add pictures of receipts, and get weekly reports emailed to me.”
—Bonny Albo, Owner, Bonny Adventures
2. Square: Free Point-of-sale Software for Small Retailers
The Square magstripe reader is available for both Android and Apple phones and tablets
Square is a free point-of-sale software (POS). A point-of-sale records and processes payments from customers. When you sign up for a new Square account you receive a free magstripe reader. Included with the Square software is analytics and reporting, inventory management, and a basic customer relationship (CRM) system. Additionally, you get a free Square online store that syncs your in-store and online inventory, so you know exactly how much product you have in stock.
The cost for Square comes when you process a payment. For every swipe, Square charges 2.75%. So for every $100 paid from customers, you have $97.25 deposited in your bank account. The 2.75% rate is competitive with other payment processors.
3. Mailchimp: Free Email Marketing Software
The Mailchimp dashboard provides easy to read analytics on recent analytics and overall email list growth
Mailchimp is a web-based email marketing software. You need an email marketing software, in addition to using an email provider like Gmail, so you can send an email out to hundreds or thousands of customers at once. Additionally, you can use Mailchimp tag customers based on certain behaviors like purchasing products and send emails to targeted customer lists. This is helpful when you want to send a specific message to a group of customers.
For example, if you operate a residential maintenance business, you can tag customers by certain services they received like gutter cleaning, pressure washing, landscaping, and snow shoveling. Once you tag customers according to their previous service, you can send a targeted email reminding them they can receive the service again. As a general marketing rule, the more targeted an email is, the more likely a recipient will open and respond to it.
There are a few downsides to Mailchimp’s free email marketing plan. You won’t be able to use custom branding on the emails. You also cannot A/B test different subject lines in the same email campaign; this determines which subject lines receive a higher open rate. Additionally, you don’t get access to all email templates.
“I often use Mailchimp to send email blasts to customers about sales and skin care tips. The free tier of this popular email marketing management service lets me send up to 12,000 emails per month to a list that’s no larger than 2,000 email addresses. In other words, I can’t blast the world, but the typical small business including Blu Skin Care, can email a significant portion of my customer base. The free version of Mailchimp is pretty much unrestricted. Also, I get access to Mailchimp’s free comprehensive reporting and A/B split testing.”
—Zondra Wilson, Owner, Blu Skin Care
4. Zoom: Free Video Conferencing Software
You can host and attend meetings on the go with Zoom’s mobile app, available for both Apple and Android
Zoom is a cloud-based platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars. Its free software provides unlimited one-to-one meetings. Group video conferences are limited to 40 minutes and 100 participants, and all video calls are fully secured with SSL and AES 256-bit encryption.
A unique feature with Zoom is active speaker view, which is a dynamic technology that shifts the video feed to the current speaker. With this feature, you don’t need active video management. Zoom’s free version is missing reporting features however, so you can’t see how many meetings are being held in your organization or how many people are attending the meetings.
If you’re a consultant or coach doing one-to-one meetings, the free version of Zoom is all you need to have successful video calls. During video meetings, you can teach and show examples by sharing your computer screen. You can also record your screen for the client to listen to the meeting at a later date. Additionally, during the meeting you can send links from Zoom’s chat feature.
5. Sumo: Free Website Tools to Automate Growth
Sumo provides free tools to grow your email list like a customizable pop-up to collect emails, which is optimized for both computer and mobile
Sumo provides a suite of free tools that help you turn your website visitors into customers. All tools come with free options that can be upgraded for additional customization, features, and analytics. One of the great aspects of Sumo is that it’s no-cost to integrate its tools with platforms like WordPress, Shopify, Bigcommerce, and Magento.
One of the most popular tools from Sumo is List Builder, which is a smart pop-up that uses smart technology. The technology tracks when website visitors are most likely to enter their email address and shows the form at that time. Another popular tool Sumo created is the Welcome Mat, which is a pop-up that fits the entire screen after a page is loaded. This is a great way to direct a website visitor’s attention to a discount or freebie.
“I have only been using it a couple of weeks, but I’m loving Sumo. My favorite tool and what enticed me to sign up, was the “Share” feature. It allows me to have social share buttons on every page, but in a custom and tasteful way. Before Sumo, I only had the ability to do this under my blog posts.”
—Kristi Porter, Consultant, Signify
6. Homebase: Free Employee Scheduling Software
The Homebase mobile app allows employees to see their upcoming shifts and schedule shifts in advance
Homebase is a software that helps you manage appointments or shift scheduling for your business. The free version of Homebase is for one location and an unlimited number of employees. It includes features like scheduling, time sheets, a time clock, reporting, and the mobile app. Restaurants, hair salons, retail stores, spas, and massage businesses all benefit from a scheduling software.
What the free version is missing is SMS messaging, and mobile GPS clock-in. If you have a business where you need to send reminders to customers about their upcoming appointment, you have to pay an additional cost. If you have off-site employees, and you want to use the GPS clock-in to confirm their location, you need to pay an additional cost for that as well.
7. Canva: Free Graphic Design Software
Canva has dozens of photo editing tools like cropping photos to get the perfect image for your business’s marketing
Canva is a free tool that helps you design graphic images such as logos, posters, flyers, and social media photos. Many small business owners use Canva to design social media images. Canva has preset sizes for social media images like the Facebook banner and YouTube thumbnail. One great part of Canva is its free educational tools. You can enroll in its free online design school to watch tutorials on color palettes, creating animated GIFs, and designing Instagram Highlights.
Canva’s free version is missing several features. With paid versions, you receive access to over 400,000 free photos, templates, and illustrations; you can also use branding features with the ability to upload custom fonts and color palettes. Additionally, the free version is missing downloadable designs with transparent backgrounds.
“Canva helps people create stunning graphics with almost zero design skills. They have stylish templates for just about anything (from social media to brochure and cards) and can save you both time and money by putting graphic design skills in anyone’s hands. I use it for everything from social media and infographics to pdf creation and it has literally saved me hours and thousands of dollars.”
—Ashley Faulkes, Founder, Mad Lemmings
8. Freshdesk: Customer Support Software
Freshdesk gives you the ability to track customer support tickets with an analytics dashboard
Freshdesk is a customer support help desk software that helps organize support request tickets in order of receipt and ticket communication with customers. This is helpful for businesses that have a product or service that customers may need assistance with. Many business owners use a support ticket software if they’re finding email to be too complicated to manage their customer support. A con to Freshdesk’s free version is the inability to automate tickets using time and event based triggers.
The Freshdesk software also helps you create a “knowledge base” to display on your website. A knowledge base is similar to an in-depth frequently asked questions (FAQs) section on a website. Customers use the knowledge base to answer their own questions and resolve their issues. Additionally, if you’re communicating with the customer through email, you can link to your article, answering the customer’s question without having to type out the full answer.
9. Google Docs: Free Document and File Storage
Google Docs allows users to edit a document at the same time from two different computers and locations
Google Docs is part of a suite of free cloud-based tools provided by Google. With Google Docs, you can create word processing documents and share them with team members. The team members can edit the documents at the same time. All the writing and edits are saved in real time. Google Docs is a great free alternative to Microsoft Word. A downside of the free version of Google Doc is its storage is capped at 15GB.
Many business owners struggle with figuring out how to share documents, photos, and videos with co-workers or remote workers. Something unique about Google Docs is the ability to upload photos and share a link with whoever needs to download the photos. This saves time because you don’t have to share the photos from a physical device like a USB flash drive. Additionally, your business documents, photos, and videos will never get lost or misplaced because they are stored in the cloud.
“I would have to say Google Docs is my favorite. I love the fact that I’ve got a word processor, spreadsheet, storage (for files), and more at my fingertips. No matter which computer I’m on (at the office, home, vacation laptop, and even my phone) I have access to all my forms, word docs, spreadsheets, PDFs that I’ve uploaded, and all my files. The free version is limited to 15GB of storage, but that is plenty of room for me. It also makes it convenient when I want to share documents and files. I just grab the ‘shareable link’ and send it off in an email to a client. Google Docs makes a lot of my day-to-day business activities convenient.”
—Richard Blount II, Global Director, Four Winds Agency
10. HubSpot CRM: Free Customer Relationship Management Software
Hubspot CRM has a user friendly dashboard that helps you visually see your upcoming pipeline of client related tasks
HubSpot customer relationship management (CRM) system helps organize communication with potential customers, current customers, and vendors. Connect the HubSpot CRM to Gmail or Outlook to automatically capture every call, email, and meeting. When you click on a customer’s profile in HubSpot CRM, you can view every interaction with them in an easy-to-read timeline. This feature removes the need to search inboxes or spreadsheets for customer information.
Online user reviews for HubSpot CRM are generally positive. Customers enjoy the ease of use for employees of different tech skill levels and how many native integrations there are, like Mailchimp and CallRail. Complaints centered around minor issues with the functionality of the CRM, like the inability to add a second email to a single contact record.
11. Hootsuite: Free Social Media Management
Hootsuite provides a content calendar so you can visually and easily see what type of social media content will be posted
Hootsuite is a social media management platform, which is where you can plan social media content in advance of posting. Manage posts and interact with comments from social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Hootsuite’s free plan is limited to one user, three social media profiles, and 30 scheduled posts. However, that is plenty of in-advance content for the average small business. Once you see results, you can upgrade to the professional plan with unlimited scheduling.
Something unique about Hootsuite is its mobile app. If you’re away from your computer, you can still schedule social media posts in advance through your phone. You can also reply to comments on any social platform and assign inbound messages to team members. Customers are becoming more and more comfortable asking questions through social media instead of a website, so you need to be prepared to answer questions quickly from social channels.
“HootSuite is hands down the best free social media management tool. It lets you schedule future posts, automatically sends them out to three social profiles, tracks all our growth analytics, and it offers tons of free courses on social media. We have been using it for years, for free, and it has greatly reduced the time burden having a social media presence can have on a small business owner.”
—Aaron Hockel, Partner, AltaVista Strategic Partners
12. WordPress.com: Free Website & Blog Builder
WordPress.com has dozens of free website templates for you to choose from
WordPress.com is a free website builder and content management system. This is different from WordPress.org, which is a more complicated (and robust) website platform. WordPress.com is a great free option for small businesses on a budget. If you start on the website builder, you can eventually transition your content to WordPress.org. With its free option, WordPress.com offers 3 gigabytes (GB) of storage, which is more than enough for the average small business.
Free hosting (space on a server where your website information is stored) is included with WordPress.com. The only required cost is purchasing a domain name, which is the www.(yourcompanyname).com or your web address, and costs around $12 a year. Additionally, you can choose to create a blog instead of a business website. A blog organizes content in chronological order whereas a website has more flexibility, but is less organized.
13. Trust Pilot: Get Online Reviews Free Tool
Get a profile page from Trust Pilot that showcases your business’s online reviews in one place
Trust Pilot’s free version comes feature rich to help you obtain and share online reviews from customers. You will be notified of every new review that comes through Trust Pilot’s review link. If there is a negative review, you have the ability to respond. Every month, you can send up to 100 verified invitations for customer reviews, which means customers are asked for documentation proving they bought your product or service.
Integrate product reviews on ecommerce websites such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. Additionally, you can embed Trust Pilot’s review form directly on your website and direct customers to visit your website to leave a review. There are sharing features included in Trust Pilot’s free software plan. Once your business gets a positive review, share it directly to Facebook, Google My Business, LinkedIn, or Twitter directly from the Trust Pilot dashboard.
“One of my favorite free software tools is Trustpilot. With its free version, businesses receive 100 invitations each month to collect feedback from their customers. It also allows those reviews to be displayed on one, highly-visible, impartial profile page that ranks independently in search engines. Trustpilot allows you to proactively engage with your customers, actively listen to their opinions and help build brand reputation.”
—Leon Rbibo, President, The Pearl Source
14. Nav: Free Business Credit Report
Nav has an easy to read dashboard for reviewing your business’s credit score
Nav provides free personal and business credit reports. Business credit can affect whether you qualify for loans and leases, get favorable terms from suppliers, or win bids on government contracts. You can establish business credit by opening a business bank account and getting a D-U-N-S Number with Dun & Bradstreet. You can also build business credit by using its credit cards and working with vendors that report payments.
In addition to the credit reports, Nav provides free fraud monitoring with 24/7 alerts. You also have access to a one-on-one consultation with a lending specialist. Nav provides this consultation because once you know your business credit and build it up, you can eventually purchase one of Nav’s business lending products like a loan, line of credit, or invoice financing. What you can get in Nav’s paid version that isn’t offered in the free software is $1 million in identity theft insurance protection.
15. Trello: Free Visual Project Management Software
Trello allows you to create project management cards containing information like to-dos, attached documents, labels, and messages
Trello is a Kanban-style project management solution, which focuses on a balance of work load. You can use it to organize several aspects of your business such as clients, projects, and to-do lists. You’re able to add due dates to Trello’s individual cards to keep on top of deadlines. The software can be used on the computer, Apple, and Android devices.
Online user reviews for Trello are generally positive. Users say they like the user-friendly and intuitive interface. They also enjoyed features like the card activity history, and third-party app integrations, like Slack and Jira. Negative user reviews centered around the software being too simple for more complicated project management and difficulties with finding a specific card on the activity board.
16. Evernote: Free Note Taking and Organizing App
Evernote provides note taking templates for business related tasks
Evernote is an app that allows you to record and organize notes, files, photos, and voice memos. It’s cloud-based, which means it can be accessed on any device. A unique feature that Evernote has is that it integrates with the Google and Siri digital assistant so you can record notes by voice and without having to open the app. Additionally, once you record a note in Evernote, you can send it to employees even if they don’t have the app.
“Evernote has probably been the single most important free software I have used over the past five years to help me in my small business. It allows me to store text, images, and videos on the cloud from my smartphone, tablet, and desktops. Since I started using Evernote, I have not had to grab a sticky pad and write a note down, and when my smartphone dies or my notebook dies, the information is not lost.”
—Dan Gudema, Chief Marketing Officer, Eight Arrows
17. Hunter: Free Email Address Finder
Hunter provides email addresses in an easy to read pop-up screen
Hunter is a software that searches for emails listed on a particular website. This tool saves you time by not having to search the website looking for available email addresses, which are sometimes hidden. When searching for emails, you can filter by the type of email, for example, “contact@ …”
Additionally, you can search by a person’s name, which can be a huge time saver if thousands of emails are available on the company’s website. Hunter’s features benefit anyone in public relations or business development who needs to get in contact with a specific person.
Something unique Hunter provides is the most common email structure the company uses. This helps you accurately guess an email address that isn’t publicly available. For example, Hunter will say “{first}@company.com” to indicate most emails at this company are simply the person’s first name. When Hunter does provide an email address, it indicates if the email is verified with a green check badge so you can email the recipient with confidence.
18. AND.CO: Free Proposal & Invoice Software
AND.CO has a desktop and mobile version so you can track time worked from your phone
AND.CO is an invoicing, proposal, and expense tracking software. In its free pricing plan, you are able to add one active client and only use AND.CO’s standard contracts. If you’re a startup or new to contracts, this is a great opportunity to learn more about important sections and clauses in business contract agreements.
There are several other tools you can take advantage of with AND.CO’s free plan. You can create invoices for your client and receive payments at a competitive payment processing rate in addition to managing and organizing your projects with its task management software. If you’re working for a client by the hour, you can use AND.CO to track your time and easily send invoices for the time your work was recorded. Something missing with AND.CO’s free plan is the ability to edit contracts.
“AND.CO is an incredible tool that allows you to create proposals and contracts. When I first started my digital marketing company, I was completely in the dark about what to include in my contracts, but I knew that having one was important. This tool pre-populates a ton of important details that many of us often forget including late fees, harassment clauses, and portfolio retention guidelines. They’re also customizable based on your needs, and they’re able to easily be sent and e-signed by both parties.”
—LaTasha James, Social Media Strategist, A Journey East
19. JotForm: Free Online Forms
JotForm has dozens of pre-made business related templates to use, like New Customer Registration
JotForm is an online form builder that can be used for generating leads, collecting payments, and distributing surveys. The forms are fully customizable to fit your brand, like adding colors and your logo. Additionally, you can use Jotform as a way to collect payments from clients. It integrates with over 30 payment processors. JotForm integrates with online apps, like Mailchimp, Salesforce, and Google Drive so you can automatically import information collected from the forms.
Online user reviews for JotForm are generally positive. Customers say that the form builder is easy to use, and they enjoy using the premade forms from JotForm. Other customers liked that they didn’t have to learn code to create the forms and were happy with the ability to add as many form conditions as they like. Complaints for JotForm were about how the collected information was unorganized and the low quality of PDF-based forms.
20. Mailtrack: Free Email Tracking For Gmail
Mailtrack has an easy to use dashboard interface that tells you what emails were opened or unopened
Mailtrack is a free software that integrates with Gmail. It tells you when an email was opened by a recipient and how many times it was opened. You can enable real-time notifications that tell you the moment that an email was opened. Mailtrack’s free option allows for unlimited email tracking.
If you are doing a lot of networking and pitching through email, Mailtrack is indispensable. Many business owners believe that a potential customer or client is not interested in their product or service because they did not receive an email response. Before a business owner makes that assumption, they need to know if the email was ever opened. Mailtrack gives you the ability to know that firsthand for free.
“I do a lot of cold outreach, and tracking email opens is crucial for measuring the performance of my campaigns. Using a tracking tool also helps me know when it’s time to send a follow-up to nudge someone to action. With Mailtrack, I can glance at my email inbox and know which of my emails have been opened, when, and from what type of device. I also get real-time notification popups, so I can keep close tabs on my email activity while I work at my laptop.”
—Chloe Brittain, Owner, Opal Transcription Calgary
21. Acuity: Free Personal Appointment Scheduling Software
Customize your services, prices, intake form, and availability with Acuity Scheduling
Acuity is a free software owned by Squarespace that helps users schedule appointments with clients. It has additional features that are helpful to retail businesses, but they are paid add-ons. As a free software, it is best for managing personal scheduling like coaching, consulting, and speaking engagements. The two main features Acuity provides with its free version are the ability for clients to self-schedule, and the ability to add an unlimited number of services and appointments within the calendar software.
Acuity user reviews are generally very positive. Users enjoy being able to control their calendar and update it live without having to update clients through email. Users don’t like the learning curve they have to overcome when first using the software and wish it had more functionality with its free version.
22. SurveyMonkey: Free Online Surveys
Survey Monkey comes mobile friendly
Before rolling out a new product, service, or feature, it’s common for businesses to survey their customers to get feedback. SurveyMonkey provides free online surveys that you can customize and send to customers. Its free plan is limited to 10 questions or elements per survey and is limited to 100 responses. This is still a great option for a startup to get feedback from early customers on their experience using its products or services.
Surveys on SurveyMonkey come fully customizable. You can also choose from the templated surveys like customer satisfaction, event surveys, job satisfaction, and employee engagement. SurveyMonkey user reviews are mixed. There have been complaints about the limited features with the free software. Other users enjoy the robust mobile app and numerous integrations it has with other software applications.
“Survey Monkey helps you build free surveys so you can serve your audience better. It also has free templates so that you can create nice looking surveys to send out to your customers. Getting feedback on your product or service is a great way to learn what you need to improve upon, and what is currently working.”
—Malisa Lieser, Owner, Malisa Lieser Planning
23. Pingboard: Free Org Chart Software
Pingboard is an interactive cloud-based organizational chart. What separates it from Visio, PowerPoint, or a PDF org chart is that the Pingboard org chart is updated live. The free version is for one user and up to 50 employees can be added, which is perfect for a growing startup. Pingboard’s free version allows you to print your org chart, create images for presentations, and embed it on your website.
Online user reviews for Pingboard are generally positive. Users like using the tool to get to know their co-workers better. They also like knowing that when they view the chart, it’s always the latest version of their company structure. User complaints are centered around tech issues and learning the software.
24. Evite: Free Online Invitation Software
Evite allows you to customize the content of your e-invitation like Title, Type, Host, Time, and Description
Evite is software that provides free online invitations and helps manage the guest list. There are pre-designed e-invitations that are customizable for occasions like networking events, retirements and farewells, fundraisers, real estate open house, and general meetings. Evite also has a mobile app available for both Apple and Android. You can use the app to create and manage your event.
With Evite, you can also encourage event attendees to take photos and upload them to the event’s private feed. This is a great way to gather social media content for future use. Evite has a unique feature that allows you to encourage event invitees to contribute to a crowdfunding campaign with a link in the e-invitation. This is an excellent option if you need to raise capital before opening your business.
“Whether it’s an open house for our newest listing, a company social mixer, or a sponsored marketing event, hosting events for our local community is one of the best ways to grow our contact list and raise awareness of our real estate brand. We love using Evite because its user friendly and offers a wide range of free design templates for a variety of event types and we can customize an invitation to suit our brand and event. Evite even offers a mobile app to help you manage your events on the go.”
—Brian Ma, Broker, Flushing Real Estate Group
Bottom Line
Free business software is a great way to save money and be more productive in your business. WordPress.com is a no-cost option to create a website. Wave can be used to do basic accounting for free. You can use Mailchimp to send emails to hundreds of customers at no-cost. The above free business tools are a low-risk test for your business. If you like them, keep them and possibly expand their features with a paid version. If you don’t like them, stop using the software with no-added costs to your business.
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