SaaS companies are a constant work in progress. But, as a founder, you can’t be the one doing everything. Not if you want to be successful. You need to focus on the big picture and inject energy and new ideas into your businesses.
And this is how these 18 must-have tools will help you. They will organize, automate, and delegate tasks while keeping you on the loop. And, to make it easier for you to select what is useful for you, we have divided them into categories.
Cold emailing is something you might still do. But you know it can only work if your messages can make your prospective customers feel special and unique. With Lemlist, you can personalize emails in a way you haven’t seen before. For instance, you can add a custom image and video to your messages. It’s both a powerful and affordable tool, with a domain warmup feature that will keep your emails away from spam folders.
Their FB groups are very active and you get to learn a thing or two about cold emailing. Some great features include dynamic images as well as email warm ups. We don't want our cold emails to hit spam folders, the way this is handled by them is smart. I would buy a few domains and continuously keep them warm to improve email deliverability if I ware you.
More than an emailing software, Active Campaign uses the latest AI solutions to take CRM and sales automation to the next level. You will be able to create and track campaigns that go beyond to simply forwarding messages. Custom forms, advanced reporting, segmentation, plus 280+ app integrations are some of the features you get with it.
There's a lot of tools for emailing out there, but for campaign management ActiveCampaign is unmatched, you can set up custom flows, tag users based on actions and integrate your way to success. Also it's relatively cheaper than most of the email tools out ther
The robotic online chat is a thing of the past (and something that never worked well). Now, you can count on Intercom or Drift to create live chats and have genuine conversations with your costumers. But it doesn’t mean you will give up on automation and data analysis. These and other crucial features are included, so you and your team can learn and make the most of each interaction.
Sites who've installed Intercom and Drift have shown huge upticks in customer happiness and conversions. It wouldn't make sense to start a SaaS business without having a direct line of access to your customers
CRM is something to be taken seriously. And Snov will help you with it by giving you qualified filtered leads, along with a custom CRM system. Snov does email verification, tracking, and sending, plus building powerful drip campaigns. It can also be integrated into Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and many other applications your sales team might already be using.
Snov stands apart from traditional CRM tools due to their powerups. Use the product with caution because your sales can blow up
From time to time, you will need to create a sales page for your business. Or even an entirely new website. This when Webflow comes in handy. You can use it to build and launch websites within just a couple of hours using a visual canvas – in other words, no coding is required. Still, it’s fully customizable. It also comes with SEO and ecommerce features, and hosting by Amazon Web Services and Fastly.
Webflow puts other no-code web-builder tools to shame, the level of functionality and depth of access will make sure your website is unique and doesn't hold the usual "templatey" feel you get from traditional drag and drop sites. Their pricing is affordable and like I mentioned before - you won't need to depend upon your development team to make any updates across the website
Emails are a thing of the past when it comes to internal communication. As your team grows, solutions that can work together are the way to go. Slack and Microsoft Teams, for instance, are a great choice for your SaaS company. For example, you can start a Microsoft Call or set up a meeting on Outlook Calendar straight from Slack. Both will appear on your thread, keeping everything in one place.
Meeting are unavoidable, but they don’t need to be useless. RemoteWorkly creates agendas and automates your follow-up process while keeping meeting notes in a searchable and centralized platform. You can also add video updates, generate tasks from your notes, and set reminders to keep everyone on track. And it can be integrated into Slack, Google Calendar, Outlook, and Trello.
Grammar errors and convoluted sentences can ruin your interaction with customers and collaborators. A simple misinterpretation can be enough to send an important project out of track. But tools like Grammarly and Outwrite can check your writing in real-time and offer improvement suggestions. And both can be integrated into Microsoft Word and to your browser.
In the day of copywriting where sales is not an inperson thing but an online thing, the way you carry yourself using words needs to be spectacular. Don't depend upon second guesses, use a tool like Outwrite or Grammarly and become a professional copy writer within secons
Create whiteboards collaboratively with Miro by using an infinite canvas, widgets, and pre-built templates. You will be able to embed video, chat, and comments as you share your screen and create with your team. It can be used to brainstorm or design journey maps, wireframes, and roadmaps. And you will be able to track what each person is doing just by checking their cursors on the whiteboard.
Canvas has made it easier to create social media posts, banners, ads, printouts, and other graphic materials. Even the free account gives you a large number of professional templates you can customize and publish within minutes. You can also create from scratch, using free images, illustrations, fonts, and more. Alternatively, try Crello. Not as famous as Canva, but also a great option and with a better file manager.
Become a professional designer for $12 a month with Canva, I'm definitely not a designer but with canva around I know I can whip up some great Instagram posts in seconds
Video can be the best way to engage your customers, so check Veed. This application can help you to create all kinds of videos: social media, memes, ads, and more. You will be able to add text, subtitles, edit, and also include effects, trim, filter, using an intuitive tool. Story Creator is another option, coming with templates and tools to add subtitles, text, and editing (trim, audio, crop video).
70% of all videos are heard on mute, you can use these tools to easily add subtitles without needing expensive and process heavy apps. Think of Veed as the Canva for videos, extremely easy and simple to use
Code seems to have a mind of its own. You must keep it in check, monitoring its performance 24/7, and ready to fix or optimize it. How do you do it efficiently? With Sentry. This app analyses your code in real-time, provides you with a list of issues, and suggests what action to take. You can also set up Slack notifications for major issues. All errors encountered are also classified (recurring errors, first-time errors, etc.).
We use Sentry along with Fullstory to give us complete access of how customers interact with the product, find and fix bugs without all the front and back
Improved user experience, anyone? Fullstory will let you know any common drop off or rage click areas, so you can revert them and increase user retention. Private data never leaves your user device, meaning you will get the information you need responsibly. Alternatively, try Hotjar. Their heatmap, survey, and recording tools are some of the reasons you will find it worthwhile.
Imagine seeing what your users experience every time they use your application without being there in person. These tools are very powerful in understanding user drop offs and how users interact with your product
Amplitude is a product manager’s dream. It creates detailed analytical roadmaps and analyzes what you must do to make your product better for your users. How? It evaluates how each person experiences it, plus track your KPIs and the impact of new features, among other indicators. All gathered and analyzed information can be shared with your team so you can discuss and implement an action plan.
Best known for automating LinkedIn outreach, Alfred can do the same for your emails. This application does everything you would normally expect, but it’s the advanced tools that justify the extra cost. The LinkedIn CRM, for instance, gives you detailed information about your contacts, including tagging and notes capabilities. And the Email Campaign Sequences can create complete workflows from social to email.
LinkedIn hates chrome extensions so Alfred comes as its own app so you don't need to worry as much with LinkedIn blocks. Use any automation tool with caution though. We've found the app to be helpful with general LinkedIn CRM and manual outreach which can take alot of effort and money
Scrape any website under the sun in the easiest way possible. No coding is required (meaning you can delegate this task to anyone in your team), and you can create an API within seconds or scrape in the cloud. Also, extract data from thousands of pages with one-click, develop workflows and schedules, export results to Google Sheets, and set the tool to ignore duplicate results.
Figma makes it easy to share your designs across your team, keeping files up to date. It comes with animated prototypes and the ability to test concepts, get insights from users, and receive feedback in context. Saving and exporting happens automatically. The build is intuitive, and you can define interactions, such as on click and hovering. Figma is mobile-optimized and can create multiple layers of interactive content overlays.
Figma in recent years has taken over the design market with an easy to use UI on a product that is web based vs being a desktop application. This allows for real time collaboration between designers - probably one of their best features
If what you are looking for is a no-code tool, so all members of your team can join the prototyping, Adalo is a solution to check. With it, you can create your app interface using drag and drop building blocks. Lists, login, buttons, navbars, notifications payment (Stripe) are all at your disposal. Another option is Bubble, which can allocate more server resources as your user base grows. And it comes with free automatic SSL certificates and multi-factor authentication.
These are the perfect tools to test and validate your MVP with sinking a lot of money into your product. If you're afraid of their DB services you can also look into Glide Apps that leverage google sheets as their DB making the entire experience even more beginner friendly
The good thing about the tools above is that they either have a free starter pack or a free trial option. This way, you can test them before making a long-term commitment. On the content side of things I'd encourage you to checkout this great post by Tom Hunt on all the tools he uses to grow his podcast if thats the route you're looking to take.
You can only tell what works for you and your team by using it on real tasks. So, take your time checking the tools. Some of them are bound to give you the support you need to continue expanding your business.
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