Every year I like to take an inventory of the tools and products we use on a regular basis within our startups. Most products stay the same from year to year, but there are always a few new break-out products that catch on quickly.
Here’s what we use day-to-day:
- General
Google Apps – Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Sheets
Apple – Mac laptops everywhere
Geckoboard – Dashboards - Communication
Gmail – Email
Google Voice – Phone
Flowdock – Group chat
Grasshopper – Automated attendant and voicemail - Engineering
Amazon Web Services – EC2, RDS, ElastiCache, OpsWorks, and more to run the application
WPEngine – WordPress hosting
Rigor – Web performance management
Airbrake – Application error logging
Loggly – General product logging
GitHub – Source code management and issue tracking
Codeship – Automated testing and deployment - Marketing
Pardot – B2B marketing automation platform
Datanyze – Data scraping of sites to determine what companies use what products
Google Analytics – Web analytics
Wistia – Video hosting - Sales
Salesforce.com – Customer relationship management
SalesLoft – List building and prospecting
Rivalry – Sales coaching
Voxa – Salesforce.com email syncing
Calendly – Self-service appointment scheduling
EchoSign – E-signature
GoToMeeting – Online meeting and screen sharing - Accounting
QuickBooks Online – Accounting software
Stripe – Credit card processing
Chargify – Subscription revenue management - Support
Zendesk – Help desk software
This list applications shows the rise of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). My prediction is that three years from now we’ll be using 50% more applications.
What else? What are some other business apps you use on a regular basis?
David Cummings on Startups 
I’ll add two useful tools that we like to use: Kato.im for team messaging, and Trello for team to-do list
Thanks for this post – gave me some things to think about. We have been using slack for communication and asana for project management.
We are startup which makes software products..Some of the tools used by us include:
Slack – Internal Communication
Asana – Project and Task Management
Chargify – Accounting and Payments
PipeDrive – Sales and CRM
SEMrush – SEO and Marketing
Happyfox – Internal Help Desk for Staff and External Customer Support