Best Apps for Small Business Owners | Productivity, Finance & Marketing Tools

Where can you market, manage, monitor, and mastermind every aspect of your business, all in one place? With a few of the best apps for small business owners, you can do it all from your smartphone.

From running a company to making it more accessible to customers, mobile apps are changing how we do business. If you want to streamline productivity, finance management, internal and external communications, marketing, and business management to keep up with the trend, we’ve compiled this list of must-have apps for small businesses that we think you’ll love.

The Best Scheduling and Productivity Apps for Service Providers

Make appointment scheduling, taking breaks, productivity improvement, and business management easier with these three apps:

Vagaro

If your business revolves around appointments, you need a scheduling app for small businesses that makes setting and managing those appointments easy.

Vagaro offers features for booking and managing classes, marketing tools, payment processing, data analysis, and more.

Todoist

Organization is key to productivity. The Todoist app lets you set and manage daily and weekly goals so you can visualize your business’s productivity in trends.

The app can be used on any device — and it can even connect with your email.

Wrike

Wrike is a mobile-by-design, one-stop-shop app for project management, communication, and collaboration.

With a paid account, the iOS app allows you to manage workflow, share reports, customize communication tools and access to projects and tasks, all from a dashboard on your mobile device.

You can use it on your own or in a team — perhaps a team of hairstylists or fitness instructors that work in the same studio.

Evernote

If you’re currently plotting a redesign for your brand or your studio space or business location…

If you’re considering launching a new marketing campaign…

If you’re considering expanding to multiple locations or opening a brick-and-mortar store for the first time…

Eve r note is saves you from keeping a million tabs open on your computer or iPhone. Use it to bookmark articles (like this one), images, meeting notes.

Better yet, use it to collaborate with other people at your company or other stylists at your studio. You can sync everything you save from your iPhone and your browser in one place.

Pro Tip: Are you a service provider just getting started? Vagaro has all the tools you need to run your small business — online scheduling, marketing, and payment processing — all under one roof. Sign up today!

#1 software & app for beauty, wellness and fitness

START FREE TRIAL

Best Finance Apps for Stylists, Fitness Professionals, and Other Small Business Owners

Simplify accounting and bookkeeping, financing, payroll, and more by utilizing one or more of these apps:

Your bank’s app

As a small business owner on the move, you need a bank that moves with you, which means one that has a smart, user-friendly banking app.

Most banking apps for small business finance management will allow you to process and track payments, deposit checks, apply for loans, and more while on the go.

Your credit card app

If you have a personal or small business credit card with a different company than your bank, you’ll want to download that app as well.

Use it to keep track of your purchases and spending — especially if you’re using your credit card for large purchases or to buy supplies on a regular basis.

Quickbooks Self-Employed

If you use Quickbooks already and haven’t downloaded their mobile app for self-employed and independent contractors, you’re missing out. It makes it easy to scan and save receipts when you’re on the go, so you never miss a write-off for your business.

Invoice by Wave

Maybe you need the ability to invoice but not all the bells and whistles that a lot of other accounting apps come with. Invoice by Wave could be the best solution; the free software offers easy-to-use, accounting-specific features that have made it one of the top apps for small business owners.

Communication Apps for Salons or Service Businesses

Keeping everyone in your organization on the same page means making communication easy, which these business communication apps are already well-known for:

Slack

With a variety of plans, including free unlimited usage plans and affordably priced team collaboration plans, Slack is a lot more than just a chat platform. You can also set reminders, customize bots to crunch numbers and automate administrative tasks, and collaborate with partners or teammates on live video calls.

Google Hangouts

We spent way too much time struggling with the Zoom mobile app in 2020 before realizing that the Google Hangouts app (for both Android and iOS) has a much better mobile experience. Ideal for calling into meetings on the go, we highly recommend using this when you want to communicate with your people and see their faces — which is important especially when we can’t work in the same room.

Flowdock

In the realm of chat-based communication and team management, Flowdock focuses on bringing all of your communication tools into a single, easily accessible space. For example, the advanced inbox allows you to save and organize all discussions by topic and context so you can continue any conversation with ease.

HeySpace

With more advanced features than Slack, HeySpace is designed to more directly improve communication. Its three-board dashboard displays chats, projects, and tasks simultaneously, and the intuitive interface can be customized to match your workflow.

Best Small Business Marketing Apps for Service Providers

Marketing in the digital age is mobile by nature, as more of it takes place within social media apps. Some of the top social media apps for business include:

Later

If you’re predominantly (or only) using Instagram for your business, Later is a great app to help you post regularly and often at the ideal times when your clients or customers are most likely to see it.

The Podium

The bigger your social media presence, the more challenging it can be to manage all of your interactions with consumers across each channel. The Podium makes monitoring, collecting, and managing online reviews easier. You can also respond on Google and Facebook directly from the Podium app.

The point of social media marketing is to interact with your followers wherever they are. Clarabridge makes it easier and more efficient to do that in real time across all major social media networks. You can also listen to your audience more closely by monitoring online conversations about your business.

HootSuite

In addition to centrally managing all of your social media profiles in one place, HootSuite also lets you plan and schedule posts for every profile weeks or even months in advance. The advanced reporting tools let you track which of your posts are most effective so you can tweak future posts for maximum engagement.

No matter what business you’re in, there’s an app for making nearly every aspect of managing and growing your brand easier and more efficient. Take time to find the ones that fit your workflow and invest in mastering them. It’ll be well worth the effort. To learn more about our scheduling app for small businesses, click here.