~ by Haley Lynn Gray ~
There are excellent tools for running a business online, and new ones appear every week. The hard part isn’t finding them — it’s not leaping from one to the next every time something shiny appears.
I wrote a version of this years ago recommending ten specific products. Rereading it, half no longer exist, one I no longer use, and a couple recommended practices that I’d now actively advise against.
So here’s the version that doesn’t expire: what you actually need, and how to choose it.
What you actually need
Six categories cover almost everything. Most businesses need four of them.
Somewhere to keep client information. Who they are, how they found you, what you’ve discussed, what happens next. A spreadsheet is fine until it genuinely isn’t.
Email. Not your inbox — something that sends to a list, manages unsubscribes, and lets you see what’s opened. This is the one asset you own, so it’s worth having properly.
Scheduling. A link that shows your availability and lets people book. This removes the back-and-forth that eats an astonishing amount of time, and it makes you look organised for about the cost of a coffee a month.
Shared file storage. So documents live in one place, everyone has the current version, and nothing depends on one laptop.
Something to make graphics. Canva is the obvious answer and has a generous free tier. It also sidesteps image licensing problems, since you’re making your own.
And scheduling for social posts, if you’re posting regularly. Any of them will save you hours; the specific choice matters far less than having one.
How to choose
Solve a problem you actually have. Not one you might have at ten times the size. The best signal you need a tool is being repeatedly irritated by doing something manually.
Check you can leave. Can you export your data in a usable form? Software you can’t exit is software you’re stuck with when it’s acquired, declines, or triples its price. Ask before you sign, not after.
Try the free tier properly. Most have one. Use it for a month with real work before paying for anything.
Count the total, monthly. Individually these are all cheap. Eleven of them is a meaningful monthly cost that nobody ever adds up. Do it once a year and cancel what you’ve stopped using — there will be some.
And prefer fewer, used properly. Two tools you know well beat six you half-use, and every additional tool is another login, another integration that breaks, another thing to migrate later.
What I’d warn against now
This is the part I got wrong the first time, and it’s worth being direct about.
I previously recommended tools that automated following and unfollowing people to build a following, and tools that sent automatic messages to new followers.
Don’t. Platforms have become considerably less tolerant of both, and accounts get restricted for it. More importantly, it’s the exact behaviour I complain about receiving — and I was recommending it while finding it irritating in my own inbox.
Automation is excellent for things that don’t pretend to be personal: scheduling posts, sending an invoice reminder, backing things up. It’s poor for anything that impersonates a human being paying attention, because people work that out and it costs you more than it gains.
The test: would the recipient be annoyed to learn this was automated? If yes, don’t automate it.
What I actually did
I took my own advice, eventually, and rather further than I expected to.
I’d accumulated exactly the problem described above: a separate tool for email, another for scheduling, another for landing pages, another for social posting, another for calls. Each one reasonable on its own. Together, a stack of subscriptions, a pile of integrations that broke at inconvenient moments, and no single place where anything lived.
So I consolidated onto one platform that handles the lot — email and automations, calendar and booking, website and funnels, social scheduling, and AI including voice.
Fewer logins, one bill, and when something breaks it’s one company’s problem rather than an argument between three of them.
That platform is Build Beautiful, which is my own agency — so treat this as a disclosure rather than a neutral recommendation. I built it because I wanted the consolidated version for myself and couldn’t find one I liked at a price that made sense for small businesses.
You do not need to use mine. You should probably consolidate onto something, because the sprawl is a real and underestimated cost.
On affiliate links
While I’m being honest: the original version of this post contained affiliate links without saying so. That was normal practice at the time and I don’t think it should have been.
If I recommend something and I’d earn from it, you should be told plainly and in advance — as above. I’ve removed the undisclosed ones. Anything I point at on this site is because I think it’s useful, and where I have an interest, I’ll say so on the page.
The underlying point
The tools matter far less than people hope. No scheduler has ever fixed a business, and the time spent researching the perfect stack is almost always time better spent talking to customers.
Get the four you need, learn them properly, and stop looking.
More on what not to spend money on.
About the author
Haley Lynn Gray is the founder of Leadership Girl, of In2itive Biz Solutions, and of the Women’s Entrepreneur Network — a community of more than 77,000 women in business.
She writes here about what happens when running a business starts demanding that you lead one. More about Haley →
