322+ Free Tools & Resources to Start and Grow Your Business

Have you been dreaming of starting your own business? Does the thought of yet another “day at the office” make you want to curl up and cry?

Is your brain overflowing with half-formed ideas, but no concept on how to actually generate money from them? Boy, can I relate.

I honestly questioned my sanity before starting my own business. I had jobs on Wall Street and for Condè Nast. But no matter how lucky I looked on the outside, something felt wrong on the inside. I wanted more. A lot more.

We spend most of our lives working, and I wanted to wake up every day knowing I was using my gifts to do meaningful work. Work I felt called to do and would impact others.

After many years of self-doubt, I realized the only chance I had to live this dream was to create it myself. I had to escape the comfort of my 9-5 and start my own business.

Like most aspiring entrepreneurs, I had no clue where to start. Nor did I have any ‘extra money’ laying around to make it happen.

Sure, I was tens of thousands of dollars in debt, but if other people could figure out how to start a business with no money, so could I.

That risk—despite no clue and no money—was the best gamble of my life.

Fast forward 20+ years…

My name is Marie Forleo and I run a socially-conscious, globally-recognized Inc. 500 company. I’ve been called “a thought leader for the next generation” by Oprah herself (I know, my jaw hit the floor too), our site was named one of the 100 Best Websites for Entrepreneurs by Forbes.com and I’m the author of the instant #1 New York Times bestseller Everything is Figureoutable.

The path hasn’t been easy. Or fast. It’s still hard as hell. I’ve had plenty of “Oh sh*t” moments and even more priceless ones along the way. Today, I do my best to pass along those lessons on our podcast and award-winning show, MarieTV.

It’s been worth it—100X over! We’ve helped over 80,000 people start and grow meaningful, profitable businesses, too.

Which means I hear would-be business owners ask the same question again and again…

"How Do I Start a Business With No Money?”

Maybe you’re fresh out of school and in debt (like I was).

Maybe you’ve got 10,000 ideas, but no concrete plan on how to turn them into a profitable business.

Or maybe you’ve got little kids, a mortgage and a slew of unpaid medical bills.

There’s good news. There was for me and there is for you…

There has never been an easier—or more affordable—time in human history to start a business.

Gone are the days of exorbitant overhead costs. You don’t need a fancy website or expensive office. And for most businesses, you don’t need investors, funding or a year’s worth of savings.

Here’s what you do need:

Once you have this, most of the tools you need are available for free, right now. We’ve curated a list of the top technology, tools and resources that will help you start a business with no money today.

(And if you don’t yet have that clarity, we can help—guaranteed! Find out when B-School enrollment opens.)

Note: If a resource has an asterisk * by it, we're proud affiliates of that company. If you purchase that item, or join their paid plan or subscription, we may earn a small commission.

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Make A Plan

Free Business Plans

With hundreds of free business plans and sample business plans available online, you can have your own plan up and drafted in a single afternoon.

  • Bplans – The largest online collection of free sample business plans. Also provides helpful tools and guides to help you better manage your business.

  • Bplans’s Gallery of Samples – Over 500 examples of business plans.

  • Discover Your Winning Business Idea – Want to start a business, but have no clue what to start? Or have a million ideas, but don't know whether they’ll work? This simple tool will help you find your winning idea — one that’s highly profitable AND enjoyable.

  • Oprah.com’s One Page Template – Get one-page business plans for a small consulting business, a boutique clothing company and a nonprofit organization.

  • Score’s General Model Startup Template – Business plan template for a startup business, with instructions for each section and fillable worksheet.

  • Zen Business – A service to help anyone start, run, and grow their business while avoiding the common pitfalls that derail hopeful entrepreneurs.

Create A Website

Website Building Platforms

Note: With many free website builders, some company branding might be present on your site or in its URL as a subdomain www.yourwebsite.jimdo.com or www.yourwebsite.yola.com. If you’re able, invest in your own domain and inexpensive hosting.

  • Bootstrap One of the most popular front-end frameworks and open source projects in the world, designed to make front-end web development faster and easier.

  • Carrd – Simple, free, fully responsive one-page sites for pretty much anything.

  • Freenom The world’s only free domain provider with a mission to bring people online and help countries develop their digital economy.

  • Jimdo – Create a free website with responsive templates, 500MB of storage, unlimited bandwidth. Free plan comes with a Jimdo subdomain.

  • Optimal Workshop – Improve your user-experience and get quick feedback on designs with this free usability testing software.

  • Strikingly – Set up a beautiful, free website in under 30 minutes.

  • Weebly – Website builder, e-commerce platform and marketing tools—all in one place.

  • Wix – Website builder with unlimited pages, 500MB storage, secure hosting, drag ‘n’ drop editor and mobile site.

  • WordPress.org – WordPress is free and powers 27% of the web. You will need to buy your own domain name and pay for hosting—the latter can be found for as little as $3.95 per month.

  • Yola – Free website plan gives you up to 2 pages, 1GB storage, and a Yola subdomain.

E-Commerce Solutions

Sell stuff online by joining the most popular online marketplaces or go the DIY route and create your own e-commerce website and collect payments yourself.

  • Big Cartel Build a free online store, sell in-person and run your creative business from one platform.

  • Etsy Sell your handmade or vintage products on Etsy and reach millions of buyers around the world.

  • Loyverse – Turn your smartphone or tablet into a powerful POS by managing sales, inventory, and employees with ease.

  • PayPal A fast, safe way to send and receive money, make online payments and set up a merchant account.

  • Square – Sell online via Square’s website, your own site or with third party e-commerce sites. All options come with next day deposits, accepts all major credit cards and integrates your reporting and inventory with your offline sales.

  • WooCommerce Customizable e-commerce platform for building your online business. Integrates seamlessly with WordPress.

Teach & Sell Online Courses

Online courses are flexible, customizable and infinitely profitable. These online learning platforms help take all the organizational elements off your plate.

  • Skillshare – A global learning community. Create your class and share your skills with millions of Skillshare members.

  • Teachable – Build a beautiful course website and control your branding, student data, and pricing in one place.

  • Udemy – Udemy helps with distribution, customer service and payment processing.

Website Building Tools and Resources

You don’t need a degree in computer science to customize your website, but it does help to have some semblance of control. These tools make it easy to change things on the fly.

  • Builtwith – Find out what servers, widgets and platforms were used to build any website. Individual site lookups are free forever.

  • Cody House – A free library of HTML, CSS and JS resources. Includes the free course, Learn HTML and CSS: An introduction to front-end design.

  • intoDNS – Checks the health and configuration of DNS and mail servers.

  • Loader – Free load testing service that lets you stress test your apps and APIs.

  • Moqups – Mockup, wireframe or collaborate on your website or app in seconds.

  • NameQL – A free tool to find a .com domain name by searching for any keyword or phrase.

  • One Page Love – Browse the best single-page websites, templates and design elements.

  • Uptime Robot – Reliable uptime monitoring warns you before any significant trouble and saves you money.

  • Visual Studio – Agile tools, Git, and continuous integration for any language and any OS.

  • WindowResizer – Emulate different screen sizes and resolutions to test your website layout.

A/B Testing Tools

From headlines to button color, simple A/B tests (where you can compare two versions of the same page and track for performance) can have big impact on your website’s success.

SEO and Website Analytics

When it comes to generating new traffic, you can’t beat good old fashioned SEO. And once those visitors have landed, the key to converting them is to understand how they interact with your website. These tools will help you tackle both.

  • Dead Link Checker – Crawls through your site to identify broken links for you to fix.

  • Free SEO Competitive Analysis Tool – Enter any domain, and you’ll get competitive intel such as top competitors, keyword gaps, and content opportunities.

  • Google Alerts – Set up alerts to track search terms like your name, business, products, etc.

  • Google Analytics – Web analytics service that tracks and reports website traffic, giving you valuable insights on your readers and customers.

  • ​Google Pagespeed Insights – Speed up your website by entering your URL for a free report, plus suggestions for improvement.

  • HotJar – All-in-one website analytics and feedback tool that shows you heatmaps, recordings, conversion funnels, and form analysis.

  • Keen.io – Developer-friendly APIs that make it easy to collect, explore, and visualize data.

  • Keywordtool.io – Keyword tool that generates up to 750+ free long tail keyword suggestions.

  • MozBar – The industry's leading SEO toolbar and Chrome extension, MozBar gives you instant metrics while viewing any page or SERP.

  • Moz Keyword Explorer – A tool to discover and prioritize which keywords to target.

  • Nibbler – Website testing and free report that scores your site based on accessibility, SEO, social media and technology.

  • Screaming Frog SEO Spider – A website crawler that helps you improve onsite SEO, by extracting data & auditing for common SEO issues.

  • SEO Site Checkup – Comprehensive search engine optimization tools for your site, plus a free diagnostic test.

  • SimilarWeb – Discover your competitors’ website traffic statistics, sources and even their online marketing strategies. They also have a Chrome Extension you can use to monitor any site.

  • Tableau Public – Free software that can allow anyone to connect to a spreadsheet or file and create interactive data visualizations for the web.

  • UserTesting – User testing that lets you watch and listen to a 5-minute video of a real person using your website.

  • WordPress SEO by Yoast – A tool to discover and prioritize which keywords to target.

Design Your Website, Logo & More

Graphic Design Resources

From PSD templates to mockups, there are thousands of design resources available for anyone to access.

  • 0 to 255 – Find variations of any color.

  • Canva – Amazingly simple graphic design software that helps even non-designers create stunning layouts and graphics.

  • Color Picker – Chrome extension that lets you identify any color's hex code on any website.

  • Coloors – Create a strong brand color identity with this easy-to-use 5-color palette generator. Or browse thousands of already-made color schemes.

  • Craft – A free UI design plugin designed to speed up your workflow with Sketch and Photoshop.

  • Designinspiration – Pinterest made exclusively for designers—a resource to help you discover, share and save your favorite designs from around the web.

  • Endless Icons – Free icon library.

  • Eye Dropper – A Chrome Extension that allows you to pick a color from any web page or from an advanced color picker.

  • Figma – A collaborative design platform for teams who build products and websites together.

  • Free Logo Creator – Create a business logo in minutes.

  • GIPHY – Find, share or create your own gifs.

  • InVision – Web and mobile prototyping tool and UI mockup tool. Perfect for collaborating on web designs and working through feedback.

  • Khroma – Discover, search, and save color combinations you’ll love.

  • Marvel – Mobile and web prototyping for designers.

  • MockFlow – Online wireframe tool and design cloud for software and websites.

  • MoodBoard – Build beautiful moodboards for sharing designs, inspiration and ideas.

  • Niice – Private moodboards where you can gather, share and discuss ideas with your team.

  • Placeit – Place your app or website directly into one of these free iPhone, iPad, iMac and Macbook mockups (no Photoshop required!). They offer thousands of photo and video templates.

  • Remove.bg – This free web-based tool allows you to remove image backgrounds.

  • Signature Maker – Create a handwritten digital signature. Great for signing documents, contracts, emails and blog posts.

  • Squarespace Logo – Free logo building tool for Squarespace users.

  • VistaCreate – Professionally designed templates to easily create inspirational designs for any occasion. Just choose a template, sign up and get designing.

Design Freebies and Templates

There’s no need to design everything from scratch. From icons to PSD templates to pre-made infographics, even non-designers can create gorgeous designs using free assets from around the web.

  • Copy Paste Character – Amazing variety of free icons you can just copy and paste into your designs or documents. Include emojis, symbols, shapes, characters, arrows and more.

  • Creative Market – Weekly free design goodies — graphics, vectors, illustrations, etc — available for download.

  • Freepik – Free graphic resources including vectors, psds, icons and photos with hundreds of free vectors added every day.

  • GraphicBurger – Beautiful design assets like script bundles and watercolor textures.

  • ​Infogram – Create captivating visuals and infographics with animations and interactive charts and maps.

  • Piktochart – Easy-to-use infographic maker with over 500 professionally-designed templates.

  • ​Pixel Buddha – A database of resources and assets for the professional design community.

  • TETHR – $80 worth of free Photoshop and Sketch templates for creating beautiful iOS designs.

  • Venngage – Make professional infographics, or any other visuals you can think of in just a few steps.

  • Visme – Simple free tool with 1000’s of templates & graphics for making professional presentations and infographics.

Free Fonts and Typography

With so many free fonts available at the click of a button, you can have ultimate flexibility in your designs.

  • 1001 Free Fonts – Massive database of free fonts, sortable by style, popularity and featured fonts.

  • Adobe Fonts – Explore thousands of fonts to use for your brand. Included in an Adobe plan, but you can sign up for a free Adobe ID and try their basic library of over 1,000 fonts.

  • Canva’s Ultimate Guide to Font Pairing – A detailed article on how to choose the right font combinations for your brand.

  • DaFont – Great archive of downloadable fonts in every style.

  • FontBase – Font manager built by designers, for designers.

  • Fonts Ninja – Browser extension to help you discover what fonts were used on a website.

  • Font Squirrel – Collection of hand-selected fonts already licensed for commercial use.

  • Google Fonts – Directory of open source designer web fonts.

  • Modular Scale – Generates a classical type hierarchy from a body text/base font with ability to scale up and down.

  • Type Scale – Inspired by Modular Scale, but with the ability to choose the proper scale.

  • WhatTheFont – See a font on someone else’s website and want to know what it is? Submit an image to WhatTheFont to find the closest matches in their database.

  • Wordmark.it – Helps you choose the right font by previewing a word of your choice with fonts already installed on your computer.

Social Media Graphics

Creating social media graphics—like blog headers and Instagram quote cards—helps your content get shared.

  • GoDaddy Studio – Create stand-out social posts, Instagram stories, logos, Link in Bio sites and so much more — no design skills necessary!

  • Pablo – Create beautiful social media images in seconds.

Stock Photography

Customize your design without hiring a personal photographer. Our favorite stock photography resources are all free and will help bring your brand to life.

  • Burst – Free stock photos for websites and commercial use.

  • Free Nature Stock – Royalty-free nature photos, updated daily.

  • Gratisography – Unique high-resolution photos in a range of categories.

  • Life Of Pix – Free high resolution stock photography.

  • Magdeleine – Get one free, hand-picked, high-resolution photo every day.

  • Pixabay – Over 1.4 million royalty free stock photos and videos shared by our generous community.

  • The Stocks – A collection of the best “non-stocky” stock photo websites, curated in one place.

  • Unsplash – Beautiful, free images gifted by the world’s most generous community of photographers.

Photo Editing Software

We can’t all be Photoshop masters, but with these powerful, easy-to-use editing tools we’ll have your photos looking fancy and polished in no time.

  • A Color Story – Instead of filtering your photos so they look all the same, this free app enhances the color you’ve chosen in your composition, making for bright and vibrant imagery.

  • Adobe Photoshop Express – A mobile app made for all-in-one photo editing and sharing.

  • GIMP – The internet’s favorite open source, cross-platform image editor.

  • Paint.NET – Free image and photo editing software for PCs.

  • Pixlr – Free Photoshop-esque photo editor.

  • Sumo Apps – A free comprehensive suite to unleash your creativity. Draw images, create music, edit videos, enhance photos, develop new apps and build 3D models all for free.

Photo Compression

Before you upload any images to your website, run them through one of these free photo compressors. Smaller file size helps keep your website fast while saving money on bandwidth and storage space.

  • Compressor.io – Drastically reduce the size of your images and photos while maintaining a high quality with almost no difference before and after compression.

  • ShortPixel – Free online image compressor.

  • TinyJPG – JPEG and PNG photo compression.

Support Your Customers

Help Desk Software and Live Chat

Provide awesome, personal support with simple help desk software and streamlined ticketing systems.

  • ​FreshDesk – Intuitive, feature-rich, affordable customer support software.

  • Spiceworks - A community of IT pros, plus an app with network monitoring, help desk, active directory, and more.

  • Tawk.to – Free messaging app that lets you monitor and chat with visitors on your website.

Customer Service Resources

The customer experience is more than just answering daily support tickets. These resources combine everything from social media to push notifications to best practices to help you provide the best ever experience for your customers.

  • Databox – Mix and match metrics from different sources in one dashboard and get a more complete view of your performance.

  • HelpScout Blog – Articles on customer loyalty best practices, with tons of actionable tips.

  • HubSpot – CRM, contact management, marketing, sales, and service tools all in one platform.

Online Surveys

Use surveys to validate your business idea and collect real-time feedback, demographic information or measure customer happiness.

  • Cognito Forms – With this easy-to-use form builder, collect data, accept payments, and create powerful workflows to automate your business and work more efficiently.

  • Google Forms – Create beautiful online forms and surveys for free.

  • Jotform – Create professional-looking forms or browse hundreds of ready-to-use templates. Integrates with various apps and even accepts online payments.

  • Survey Monkey – Online surveys and questionnaires.

  • Typeform – Beautiful form creator so you can more easily collect registrations, onboard new clients or survey your visitors.

  • Wufoo – Online forms and surveys.

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Market Your Business

Email Marketing

Email Marketing Platforms

Get more subscribers, send better emails, and track your results. Most good email marketing solutions will integrate with other programs, letting you unify all the moving pieces of your marketing strategy.

  • Benchmark – Powerful and simple web-based email marketing tools to send, track and manage newsletters, surveys and online polls.

  • MailChimp – Send emails, and track results. Offers the most integrations with other programs.

  • Sender – Create and send beautiful, branded emails. Choose from a library of professionally designed templates or build your own unique design in minutes with no coding required.

Landing Pages and Lead Capture Pages

A single landing page or lead capture page is a simple way to build a beautiful sales page, launch countdown or opt-in offer. The following free landing page creators are designed to highlight your best offers and generate more leads.

  • About.me – A one-page personal website you can set up in just minutes.

  • Landing Page Analyzer – How effective is your landing page? This free tool will tell you where and how to improve so it performs better.

List Building Tools

List building should be your Number One Priority. The good news is that there are many tools to help you supercharge your efforts–converting more visitors without needing to generate any more traffic.

  • Attract.io​ – Create a share-worthy lead magnet with this free easy-to-setup platform to boost that email list.

  • ​ConvertHub – A quick tool to build your list and increase your sales via social proof widgets, opt-in forms, and clear calls to action.

  • Gleam.io– Suite of marketing apps that help you run competitions, capture emails, and showcase user-generated content.

  • Opinion Stage– Create viral polls, quizzes and surveys to dramatically increase time spent on your website.

  • SumoMe List Builder – A lightbox that helps convert visitors right before they’re about to leave your website.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Tools

You don’t need to be on social media 24/7 to be effective. These tools can help you increase your followers, encourage shares and actually track results, all without the dreaded social media hangover.

  • Adobe Express – Thousands of unique templates, design assets, for social media content, logos, and more. Available on web and mobile.

  • Bitly – Create, share, and track shortened or custom links.

  • Buffer Stories Creator – Free web-based tool to create Instagram Stories.

  • Buffer's Blog – In-depth tutorials, studies, and resources on how to make the most of your social media presence.

  • ​Friends+Me – A social media management platform and link in bio tool for every social network. Plan, analyze, and publish content in advance — so you can save time & grow your business.

  • ManyChat – Create a Facebook Messenger bot for marketing and sales support.

  • Remix by Buffer – An app used to transform any link, tweet, or product into beautiful Instagram content.

  • TalkWalker – Talkwalker’s free social search monitors every conversation about your brand, hashtags and competition on social media.

  • Tunes To Tube – Upload MP3s to YouTube.

Social Media Buttons and Plugins

Encourage social media sharing straight from your blog or website.

  • Click To Tweet – Increase social media shares by pre-writing what you want readers to say. Add integrate a simple “click to tweet” button anywhere on your site.

  • Disqus – The world’s most popular comment system for your blog.

  • ShareThis – Free social sharing buttons for your website or blog.

Social Media Publishing Platforms

Schedule, manage, post and plan all from one platform.

  • Buffer – Share what you’re reading and schedule social media posts.

  • Crowdfire – Discover and schedule content, plus manage all your social accounts from one place.

  • Dlvr.It – Social media automation toolkit.

  • Later – Schedule and manage your Instagram posts.

  • SocialOomph – Boost your social media productivity by scheduling updates, finding new people to follow and track your activity.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing Resources

Sure, content may be king but only truly great content leads to long-term business growth. These free apps, tools, resources and programs will help you create the best content for your business.

  • Copyscape – Plagiarism checker that searches for duplicates of your content.

  • CoSchedule Headline Analyzer – This free blog post headline analyzer will score your overall headline quality and rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value.

  • CreateSpace – Self publish and distribute your books, DVDs, CDs, and video downloads via Amazon.com.

  • Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer – Free tool will analyze your headline to determine the Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score.

  • Free Summarizer– Summarizes any text in just a few seconds, then sends you the summary via email.

  • Growth Hackers Community – A community of over 150,000 members who share tips and articles on growth hacking, marketing, user acquisition, engagement, product launches and more.

  • Pages – A word processing platform to create stunning docs and books. Features drag-and-drop templates and support for movies, audio, and widgets — making it a great option for a multi-sensory and interactive experience.

  • Portent’s Content Idea Generator – Enter any keyword and get a catchy blog post headline (plus the resources on SEO, PPC and Content Marketing) to help turn that headline into a killer content strategy.

  • The Copy Cure – Get our 7-day free writing class: How to Write Words That Sell (And Sound Like You).

  • The Most Dangerous Writing App – The perfect cure for writer’s block—this web-based tool will delete your progress if you stop typing for more than five seconds.

  • World Data Email Resources – Exclusive, free marketing content and tools including insightful tips, tricks and industry statistics.

Automatic Editing Tools

Like anything, writing is a skill (and practice makes perfect). Use these online proofreaders and automatic editing tools to improve your writing in a snap.

  • After the Deadline – Uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology to find your writing errors and offer smart suggestions.

  • Grammarly – Instantly fixes over 250 types of errors in your copy, most of which Microsoft Word can’t find.

  • Hemingway – Web-based app that makes your writing bold and clear. Enter any text to see where you can simplify your prose.

  • Paper Rater – Grammar and plagiarism checker.

  • ProWritingAid – Analyzes your writing and produces reports on overused words, writing style, sentence length, grammar and repeated words and phrases.

  • ​WebFX Readability Test –  Readability Test Tool provides a quick and easy way to test the readability of your work.

  • Writefull – App that provides feedback on your writing by checking your text against databases of correct language usage.

Writing Software

Gone are the days of sending Microsoft Word files back and forth. These writing platforms let you write, collaborate and publish all with one tool.

  • Etherpad – A free, customizable and open-source document online document collaboration tool. Write articles, press releases, to-do lists, etc. with colleagues, while all working on the same document at the same time.

  • Nimbus Note + Clipper – Grab all kinds of content from web pages and delete irrelevant parts.

  • Writesonic – Create SEO-optimized and plagiarism-free content for your blogs, ads, emails, and website.

  • ZenPen – Distraction-free writing zone.

Audio and Video Creation

Audio and video content is a the perfect way to provide value while showcasing your personality and expertise.

  • Animoto – Drag and drop video editor with templates.

  • Audacity – Multitrack audio recorder and editor.

  • Descript – All-in-one audio & video editing platform that includes podcasting, screen recording, video editing and transcription abilities.

  • ElevenLabs – Generate top-quality spoken audio in any voice and style with the most advanced and multipurpose AI speech tool.

  • Frame.io – A cloud-based collaboration platform that enables you to collaborate, organize, approve, and quickly share videos files, images, and more.

  • GarageBand – Music creation studio available for Mac and iOS.

  • iMovie – Free video editing software that comes with Mac computers.

  • Mazwai – Free high-quality video clips and footage.

  • SoundCloud – Upload audio content for direct streaming or embed it on your website.

  • Windows Movie Maker– Free video editing software for PC.

Video Hosting

While YouTube is still the world’s biggest search engine (after plain ole Google, of course), there are some incredible alternatives that host your videos while offering more robust storage and analytics features.

  • Vidyard – Online video platform features hosting, sharing, and using personalized videos to connect with your customers.

  • Vimeo – High-quality tools for hosting, sharing, and streaming videos in gorgeous HD and 4K with no ads.

  • Wistia – Professional video hosting with viewer analytics, HD video delivery, and marketing tools so you can understand your visitors.

  • YouTube – The world’s largest video sharing website.

Networking

Business Networking Tools

Networking doesn’t need to be that dreaded small talk around the punch bowl at your local rec center. The internet has made networking easier than ever.

  • 4Over4 – 200 free full-color glossy business cards.

  • Hunter – Find emails listed on a particular website or search for professional email addresses to grow and connect your network.

  • LinkedIn – The best social media platform for professionals. Make connections, send messages, join groups and publish content.

  • Luma – All-in one platform to foster meaningful relationships with your audience with events, newsletters, and community analytics.

  • Meetup – Online networking site that helps you organize or attend local groups that get together for face-to-face events.

  • Norbert – Find anyone’s email address.

  • QR Code Monkey – Generates custom QR codes for your website, virtual business cards and social media.

  • ​Writecream’s Cold Email Generator – Start generating cold emails for free with the help of AI.

Collaborate With Your Team

Project Management

Productive people put their priorities first and never blow themselves off. Easier said than done of course, but these tools go a long way in helping you identify what’s important, track your time and delegate tasks.

  • Airtable – All-in-one collaboration platform designed to connect apps, data, workflows and teams.

  • Asana – Organize everything from the most immediate detail to the biggest picture.

  • ​Bitrix24 – A collaboration platform providing a suite of social collaboration, communication and management tools.

  • Capsule – A simple online CRM to build stronger customer relationships, make more sales and save time.

  • ClickUp* – Plan, track, and manage any type of work with project management that flexes to your team's needs.

  • ​KanbanFlow – App used to assign tasks, upload documents and file attachments, schedule due dates and visualize overall workflow.

  • Make – From tasks and workflows to apps and systems, build and automate anything in one powerful visual platform without knowing code.

  • Monday – Boost your alignment, efficiency, and productivity by customizing any workflow to fit your needs.

  • ​Smartsheet – Work management software that allows you to manage your projects, programs, and processes - all in one place.

  • Todoist – To-do list software. Manage tasks and projects from anywhere.

  • Trello – Visual project management that utilizes boards, lists, and cards so you can have fun organizing and prioritizing your projects.

Collaboration Tools

Why do something yourself when you can delegate it to software? These tools help you get more done by taking things like contracts, scheduling and to-do lists off your plate.

  • Coggle – Real-time collaboration with creative online flow charts.

  • Loom – A work communication tool that helps you get your message across through instantly shareable videos.

  • ​​MindMeister – Online mapping tool for collaborating and creating visual maps.

  • Miro – Online whiteboard that helps you organize your team’s work in a simple and visual way.

  • Notion – All-in-one workspace for team collaboration.

  • Pumble – Messaging app for teams.

  • Slack – Messaging app for teams.

  • Streak – Manage customers directly inside your email.

  • TripIt – Consolidates travel plans into a single, master itinerary that can be accessed any time and on any device, regardless of the website used to buy the ticket.

Online Conference Tools

Gone are the days of choppy phone calls (“Can you hear me now?”). With these online conference tools you can collaborate with anyone, anywhere. Share your screen, schedule meetings and host group chats.

  • Facebook Live – Live video streaming that’s great for webinars, especially within Facebook groups.

  • Free Conference Call – Free international conference calling.

  • Google Meet – Easily schedule and join video conference calls or make instant video calls with a person or group.

  • Skype – Free video calls, voice calls and messaging.

  • Switchboard – Remote collaboration to bring the tools your team uses into a digital workspace where you can work on any project, with any application.

  • Zoom – Video conferencing, web conferencing, webinars and screen sharing.

Meeting Scheduler Apps

Schedule appointments without all the email back and forth. These tools simplify the process and ultimately save you time, keep track of prospects and keep customers happy.

  • Calendly – Eliminate email and phone tag by allowing anyone to schedule a meeting by picking an available time in your calendar.

  • FreeBusy – An AI assistant that schedules meetings for you.

  • Livestorm – A video engagement platform to manage every stage of your event in a single place.

  • NeedToMeet – Creates a meeting event page to share with invitees, where they can register for any of your open slots. Great for seeing everyone else’s availability.

  • Undock – A scheduling tool that uses autocomplete to suggest meeting times based on your availability and preferences.

  • Vyte.in – Hands-off Google Calendar scheduling.

  • World Time Buddy – A world clock, a time zone converter, and an online meeting scheduler.

Be More Productive

To-Do List Software

There’s nothing I love more than tweaking my productivity habits. Whether it’s bulk-scheduling email or tracking personal goals, there are SO many tools that make getting things done actually fun.

  • 24me – A personal assistant in your pocket. Unites your calendar and tasks and uses artificial intelligence to tell you what to do and how to do it.

  • Any.do – Tasks and to-do lists synced across all devices.

  • Boomerang – Reclaim your time with powerful email and meeting scheduling tools in your browse or mobile apps.

  • Bordio – Visually pleasing yet simple online software for effective time management, week planning, task tracking and scheduling.

  • FollowUpThen – A simple, flexible email address that can be used with any email system on any device to send your reminders to you when you need them.

  • IFTTT – Create chains of simple conditional statements to create automations for specific devices or services.

  • Zapier – Automate tasks between web apps (i.e. create Trello cards out of emails or PayPal payments into to-do lists).

Time Tracking

Whether you’re charging by the hour, managing a team or aiming for personal accountability, these free time tracking apps can help you make the most of your working hours.

  • Clockify – Time tracker and timesheet app that lets you track work hours across projects.

  • ​Homebase – Create timesheets & time clocks plus create schedules with ease for an unlimited number of employees.

  • Timecamp – Increase project profitability with easy time tracking by measuring which activities you spend time while working.

  • Toggl – Simple time tracking via mobile app or Chrome extension. Just hit a button and start tracking.

  • Tomato Timer – An online timer inspired by the popular Pomodoro Technique productivity system.

Focus-Boosting Apps

Eliminate the distractions of technology (yes, with more technology).

  • 5-Minute Stress Relief Log – Stress got you spinning? This exercise will help you get out of your head and into action mode so you can focus on what matters — and feel better, fast.

  • ​ClipboardExtension – Google Chrome extension that keeps your text Clipboard History and allows you to rollback any item.

  • Coffitivity – Recreates the ambient sounds of a cafe to boost your creativity and help you work better.

  • LastPass – LastPass remembers all your passwords, so you don’t have to.

  • Magical – A text expander and autofill Chrome extension to speed up typing, messaging, data entry, sourcing and prospecting workflows, and more.

  • Momentum Dash – When you open a new tab in Chrome, this pretty personal dashboard pop-up to help you minimize distractions and increase focus.

  • Noisli – Plays different sounds to calm your nerves and inspire you to write. Comes with a minimalist text editor so you can write while you listen.

  • NordPass – Organize and save passwords and credit cards with ease.

  • SelfControl – Free Mac app that lets you block access to distracting websites for a set period of time.

  • Text Blaze – Accelerate your typing by replacing abbreviations with frequently used phrases you define.

  • Unroll.me – Instantly see a list of all your subscription emails. Unsubscribe easily from whatever you don’t want.

Note-Taking Apps

With all the inspiration out there on the web, you want to bookmark your favorite site designs, highlight a headline you love or dictate all those course ideas you had at 2am last night.

  • Diigo – Bookmark and tag web pages, or highlight any part of a site and attach sticky notes.

  • Evernote – Capture, nurture, and share your ideas across any device.

  • Google Keep – Quickly capture what’s on your mind and get a reminder later at the right place or time. Speak a voice memo on the go and have it automatically transcribed.

  • Milanote – Easy-to-use tool to organize your ideas and projects into visual boards. Included is a web clipper to collect inspiration from around the web by instantly saving text, images, links, video & more. The Evernote for creatives!

  • Pocket – Put articles and videos (or pretty much anything) into Pocket. Save directly from your browser or apps like Twitter, Flipboard and Pulse.

Save This For Later

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Manage Your Business

Bookkeeping and Accounting Software

Managing your business’s finances doesn’t have to feel horrible. These free bookkeeping and accounting tools help you manage invoices, scan receipts and track your income goals over time.

  • Bankrate Small Business Calculators – Use Bankrate's small business calculators to fine tune your small business financial resources.

  • Catch – Benefits finder for freelancers, contractors and small business owners.

  • Expensify – One-click expense reports in real time.

  • Harvest – Time tracking and invoicing.

  • Wave – Send invoices and manage your accounting and bookkeeping.

Online Contracts

Save the paper, but keep your business safe with these legally-binding online contracts and signature tools.

  • DocuSign – Send, sign and approve documents from anywhere.

  • SignWell – Simplify the document signing process and spend less time chasing signatures with SignWell’s legally-binding e-signature solution.

File Sharing and Storage

Even with so many online storage options, sharing large files can be a pain. The good news is, the following file sharing and storage tools are simple, reliable and free.

  • Box – Secure file sharing, storage and collaboration.

  • CamScanner – Turn your phone in a scanner.

  • Dropbox – File sharing with up to 2GB of free storage.

  • Google Drive– Cloud storage and file backup for photos, docs, and more - plus real-time document and spreadsheet sharing and editing.

  • Hightail –  File transfer service. Free plan gives you unlimited spaces with a 100MB file upload limit.

  • ​Internxt – User-friendly encrypted storage with military-grade encryption and file sharing, so only you have control over your files and data.

  • WeTransfer – Transfer files for free up to 2GB.

Learn New Things

Inspirational Websites

Online, you can learn how to do anything, meet anyone and be someone. These inspirational websites let you browse gorgeous designs, join a niche community or just be plain ole’ inspired by the world around you.

  • 1 Million Cups – National program designed to educate, engage, and connect entrepreneurs. Developed by the Kauffman Foundation, 1MC is based on the idea that entrepreneurs network over a million cups of coffee.

  • 99U – Webby Award-winning blog with insights on productivity, organization, and leadership to help creatives push ideas forward.

  • AppSumo – Daily deals for entrepreneurs.

  • Awwwards – Website awards that recognize the best web designers, developers and agencies.

  • Crayon – Ideation and inspiration for marketers. Browse thousands of real examples to help you get great ideas and build better stuff.

  • Litmus – The latest email news, trends, and new ways to improve your subscriber’s experience.

  • Marie Forleo – A blog, podcast and YouTube show chock full of ideas, tools and resources that will help you create anything.

  • Mashable – Multi-platform media and entertainment site that covers the latest in technology, social media, gadgets and more.

  • Medium – Online publishing platform with content spanning entrepreneurship, creativity, productivity and personal growth.

  • Moz SEO Learning Center – Learn everything you need to know about SEO fundamentals to grow your business and advance your career.

  • Now I Know – Free daily newsletter that teaches you something new every day. (Did you know Abraham Lincoln created the secret service – on the day he was shot?)

  • Project Gutenberg – Over 53,000 free ebooks that were previously published by legitimate publishers. The project digitizes and proofreads them with the help of thousands of volunteers.

  • Really Good Emails – A look at some of the best marketing emails from top businesses.

  • Seth Godin – Blog featuring daily short posts with riffs on marketing, respect, and how ideas spread.

Books

Check out one (or all) of our all-time favorite books on business, leadership and creativity.

*While new books obviously aren’t free, the links below support past MarieTV guests.

Online Magazines

There is so much incredible content available online for burgeoning entrepreneurs, it’s hard to just pick a few (but at least you’ll never have to pay another cent at the magazine stand!).

  • Entrepreneur.com – News for entrepreneur covering how to start, run and grow your business.

  • Fast Company.com – Inspiration for the most innovative and creative thought leaders who are reinventing the future of business.

  • Forbes – Original articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing.

  • Forbes Women – Inspiration and tools for entrepreneurial and ambitious women.

  • Inc.com – Small business ideas and resources for entrepreneurs.

Videos, Podcasts & TV Shows

We’re suckers for anything multimedia, and these shows have been inspiring us for years.

  • Buffer’s CultureLab Podcast – Explores the culture of work and how all of us might make work happier and more human.

  • How To Start A Startup – A series of videos lectures featuring some of the world’s experts on starting a business.

  • MarieTV – Our award-winning weekly show designed to help you create a business and a life you love.

  • Seth Godin’s Startup School – Godin guides 30 entrepreneurs through building and running their dream business.

  • Shark Tank – Aspiring entrepreneur-contestants make business presentations to a panel of “shark” investors, who then choose whether or not to invest.

  • Stanford University’s eCorner – Around 2,000 free podcasts and videos covering marketing, sales, finance, leadership and social entrepreneurship.

  • StartUp Podcast – The podcast about what it’s really like to start a business.

  • TED – Influential videos from expert speakers covering a range of topics, from parenting to technology to procrastination.

  • The GaryVee Audio Experience – Entrepreneur and bestselling author Gary Vaynerchuk answers questions about marketing, social media, and entrepreneurship.

  • The Pitch – A podcast where early-stage startups pitch their company and three investors give real feedback.

Online Courses & Continuing Education

Whether it’s for business or pleasure, being a lifelong learner is one of the most powerful, motivating, inspiring things you can do with your time. Luckily, everyone from Harvard to internet entrepreneurs provide free courses, no matter your interests.

  • Acumen – Global learning community for social change leaders with nearly 20 free online courses.

  • Coursera – Online courses from top universities.

  • Google for Startups – Whether you’re starting out, or scaling to meet demand, connect startups with the right people, products, and best practices to help your startup grow.

  • Grow your Business with Google – Digital training courses and tools to help your small business adapt, grow, and better serve your community.

  • Harvard – Free online courses from Harvard University.

  • Kauffman Founders School – Lectures aimed at giving entrepreneurs the skills and tools to build their ideas into something big.

  • Khan Academy – Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more.

  • MIT OpenCourseWare – Online courses featuring nearly all MIT course content.

  • Udacity – Online courses and nanodegree tech programs, including communication, app development, design and more.

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Get Your Dream Business Started

Are you finally ready to start a profitable and purposeful business you love?

LET ME HELP YOU:
  • Leverage your unique strengths

  • Define your business vision

  • Take consistent, strategic action

  • ​Turn your business dream into a profitable reality

Learn more

And there you have it!

There is a lot of information here and while it can feel overwhelming to see everything laid out this way, we recommend downloading the spreadsheet of this guide so you can refer to it anytime.

Remember: Building a business is a marathon, not a sprint.

P.S. If you’re ready to make your dream business a reality, click here to learn about B-School—a 6-week program for big-hearted creatives who want to start and grow a meaningful profitable business online.