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If you plan to start a small business (or already manage one), you need more than just an idea and capital. You need the software to run your operations, get your product out into the world, and keep all of your employees on track. PCMag has been reviewing small business software for several decades, everything from accounting and payroll apps on the financial side to email marketing platforms for reaching and retaining customers.
Here, we collect the top apps across six key categories and explain why you should use them for your small business. Our focus is on those apps that enable your team (no matter its size) to stay current with the latest technologies without blowing up the budget. Some of these products do multiple things, too, so you might not even need to pay for separate software in every category.
Gabriel Zamora, Jeffrey Wilson, and Jordan Minor also contributed to this article.
Best Web Hosting Services and Website Builders
Everyone and everything is online, so your business needs a website to reach all the customers it can. Practically speaking, that means you must pick a hosting service and then build your web page. The best web hosts provide a reliable foundation for your site, giving you the servers and service you need to ensure it's always available. Then, with the right website builder, you can create beautiful and functional web pages that highlight your business's offerings and leave customers with a positive first impression.
Best Web Hosting Service
Hostwinds Web Hosting
We recommend Hostwinds to small businesses seeking affordable, reliable, and user-friendly hosting with strong customer support. It's an excellent service with many server configurations, including shared and dedicated hosting, though its virtual private server (VPS) hosting is particularly outstanding. Hostwinds offers a great selection of fully managed and self-managed VPS servers in both linux and Windows formats, providing small businesses with tremendous flexibility.
Best Website Builder
Wix Website Builder
Wix is ideal for building a website for your business. Its intuitive and robust design tools empower you to create sites that truly capture your vision. Hundreds of templates and numerous widgets provide visual variety and extra functionality, too. The free tier lets you safely sample its offerings, and then you can scale up into a service your company can rely on.
Best Small Business Accounting and Payroll Software
You can't run a small business without having a handle on its finances. So accounting and payroll software should be a priority. Accounting software helps you stay on top of all the aspects of your budget, from paying bills to tracking incoming revenue. Most use the tried-and-true double-entry accounting system. Payroll software makes paying your employees and contractors as easy as possible. The best ones also handle all your tax submission obligations and help you administer benefits.
Best Accounting Software
FreshBooks
FreshBooks stands out for its exceptional user interface on mobile and web. If you are trying to keep costs down for your business, you should explore its Lite plan. This tier supports a maximum of five clients but lets you accept ACH and credit card payments, keep tabs on time and expenses, pull in and manage your bank account transactions, and spin up an unlimited number of invoices and estimates. Reports are flexible and attractive, and you can easily export them to Excel. Just keep in mind that FreshBooks works best for service-based businesses rather than product-based ones; QuickBooks Online is what you should choose in the latter case.
Best Payroll Software
OnPay
When it comes to payroll services, OnPay is a superb value. It offers exceptional depth across its employee profiles and payroll run pages, while plenty of customization options are available for the main dashboard and reports. Its mobile and web experiences are top-notch thanks to snappy performance and effective use of attractive, colorful graphics. We also appreciate the extent of OnPay's HR components; a centralized page includes links to company resources and onboarding workflows, and an especially effective tool helps employees sign up for health insurance.
Best E-Commerce and Payment Software
Businesses exist to create products and services, (ideally) keep customers happy, and make mountains of money. That cash won't appear out of thin air, however. You have to establish a payment system for eager shoppers to make purchases. On top of that, you need a dependable, easy-to-use e-commerce service that lets you build an online store or simply collect money.
Best E-Commerce Software
Shopify
Whether you're an e-commerce novice or a seasoned vet, you'll want to use Shopify, a flexible and powerful tool for setting up an online shop. With it, you can build a website, enjoy unlimited inventory and storage, explore store-enhancing plug-ins, and, most importantly, accept payments from major credit cards. The super-basic Starter plan ($5 per month) lets you sell wares via social media, while the high-end Plus plan supports 200 physical inventory locations (for a hefty $2,300 per month, with a three-year commitment).
Best Payment Software
PayPal
PayPal might suffice if your small business doesn't need a robust online store. With a PayPal Business account, you can create and send invoices, enjoy seller protection benefits, and set up recurring subscriptions, as well as accept digital payments from the more than 400 million active accounts (as of Q4 2024). That's a lot of potential customers, hopefully ready to fork over their money for your products or services, already in the ecosystem.
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Best Project Management and Task Management Software
Your business will flounder if you and your employees don't know what to do on a daily or long-term basis. Project management apps enable you to figure out exactly what needs to happen before the deadline for a deliverable. You simply write down all the specific related tasks of a project and assign those to members of your team. With all of this information in one place, you can monitor progress, get ahead of potential delays, and learn how to optimize future processes. If your projects don't have precise start and end dates, however, you might be better off with task management software.
Best Project Management Software
GanttPro
GanttPro is an especially beginner-friendly project management solution with a competitive price. As its name suggests, it helps you create Gantt Charts, which include key details such as what tasks you need to complete and by when, how long you should expect each one to take, which tasks you can't start until a previous item is complete, and who is responsible for each task. It doesn't overwhelm you with features, but it does let you create custom fields for tasks and switch to a board, calendar, or list view. The critical path feature is especially helpful because it quickly lets you determine which items absolutely can't slip so that others can stay on track.
Best Task Management App
Asana
Asana is a superb, flexible collaboration app that falls somewhere between the project management and task management categories. At its core, it helps you keep track of what tasks you and your team members need to do and when. But it doesn't put many restrictions on how you go about organizing everything or force you to follow certain workflows. As such, you need to dedicate time to figure out how it works most effectively within your business. The good news is that the free version is robust enough for a small team to use long-term. We like its slick, user-friendly interface, too.
Best Email Marketing and CRM Software
To reach and maintain your customer base, you need both email marketing and customer relationship (CRM) software. The former allows businesses to communicate with their audience directly and economically. A top-notch email marketing tool is a powerful asset that drives traffic, fosters customer relationships, promotes brand awareness, and can ultimately increase sales. CRM software helps you centralize information about customers, clients, leads, and opportunities. The two types of apps go hand-in-hand, and many have overlapping features.
Best Email Marketing Software
Brevo
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a comprehensive marketing hub that includes email and SMS marketing features. It also offers advanced automation functions and built-in CRM capabilities. Plus, it has excellent third-party integration options, including e-commerce staples like Shopify and WooCommerce, other CRMs from Hubspot, Salesforce, and Zoho, and SEO tools like Google Analytics. Its reasonable pricing, streamlined marketing features, and user-friendly interface make it fantastic for small to midsize businesses.
Best CRM Software
Bigin by Zoho CRM
Even if you have never used CRM software before, Bigin by Zoho CRM is highly accessible because of its straightforward user experience and affordable price (it even offers a completely free version for sole proprietors). It provides clear formatting instructions for importing contacts, customizable profile pages for customers, and effective sections for managing leads. You can build workflow automations with Bigin, though you need to pay for the full Zoho CRM product if you want advanced AI tools for tracking client sentiment and predicting sales. A streamlined analytics section and generous support for integrations round out the experience.
Best Video Conferencing and VoIP Software
Your business simply can't function without internal and external communication tools. That's why you need to add both video conferencing and voice over IP (VoIP) services to your software arsenal. Video conferencing services help you brainstorm, collaborate, and generally keep in touch with a local and remote workforce, and many include transcription capabilities. VoIP platforms, meanwhile, provide softphone apps for conducting calls on whatever device you prefer and often integrate team messaging capabilities. Many services can even handle both tasks.
Best Video Conferencing Software
Webex by Cisco
Webex by Cisco's generous free tier lets you conduct 40-minute video meetings with up to 100 people. Within meetings, the breakout room, captioning (including sign language interpretation), messaging, Reactions (it recognizes gestures you make and displays the corresponding emoji), and screen-sharing features all work smoothly. We especially like that it lets you create an unlimited number of whiteboards for collaboration, while the VidCast tool is extremely useful for creating short video tutorials for internal use. Upgrading to a paid tier unlocks 10 GB of cloud storage for meeting recordings, AI tools for drafting messages and summarizing what's transpired, live polling and Q&A features via Slido, and more generous meeting length and participant limits.
Best VoIP Software
RingCentral RingEX
RingCentral RingEX's full-featured base plan supports unlimited domestic calling, text messaging, and video chats for up to 100 people. You also get some advanced AI features at this level, including real-time call transcriptions and summaries of video meetings. The software is easy to set up and administer, thanks to its sophisticated interface across all platforms and an abundance of customization settings. We also appreciate its reliable performance and class-leading support for third-party integrations. If you don't want to pay extra for international calling, however, go with Intermedia Unite, which stands out for many of the same reasons.
