Our Favorite Startup Tools
These come highly recommended by our partners and associates.
Evernote: Remember Everything, Evernote apps and products make modern life manageable, by letting you easily collect and find everything that matters.
DropBox: Dropbox for Business is the secure home for all your work. Anything your team adds to Dropbox will automatically sync to all their computers, mobile devices, and even the Dropbox website, so everyone can work together anywhere.
Paypal: The only free merchant account for startups. Why sink a grand or more into a merchant account before you have sales?
WordPress: A hosted version of Movable Type blog platform, for a corporate website.
Basecamp: project management over the web, with feed output of updates, so can be monitored with a web reader.
FogBugz: Email and bug management.
Paytrust: it’s mainly aimed at consumers, but give a Paytrust PO box as a billing address, link to a bank account, and never be late on a bill again.
Trumba: Looks like this could be the solution for shared calendars for any small company without an IT department, particularly if people are using a mix of Macs and Windows machines.
Server Beach: Web hosting at good prices.
Falk: Full-featured ad-serving, at a price way lower than DoubleClick.
House of Pretty: High-maintenance, headstrong, but supremely talented graphic designers, particularly strong in typography.
Patent Authority: Patent applications at $8k per, without the overhead and overbilling of a large firm.
37 Signals: User-interface overhauls, though they now only work on big projects, or their own apps.
Perspective: Because nothing is ever as good, or as bad, as it seems at the time.
VirtualPBX: Clunkier to set up than it needs to be, but the service gives extension numbers that redirect to distributed staff, and cellphones.
Skype: Alternative to Virtual PBX, a collection of Skype accounts, each with similar SkypeIn numbers, set to redirect to cellphones or PCs running the Skype software.
FreeConference: Easy conference-calling.
F1000 with Vonage: For truly portable phone, at VOIP prices.
Administaff: Web-based benefits administration.
Rent A Coder: Okay, so most outsourcing is a disaster, but it’s still worth trying out a few offshore coders, and building a team, because it’s only going to get harder to find great developers in the US.
Rankchecker: The best free tool for tracking how you rank in organic searches.
s2Member®: This is the best plugin for professional WordPress® membership management, integrating seamlessly with User Roles & Capabilities for WordPress®.
Gravity Forms: Advanced Forms for WordPress Websites Just Don’t Get Any Easier than Gravity Forms.
