Top 41 Free Small Business Resources and Tools to Use in 2022

There is a lot of noise on the Internet that can make it hard to find exactly what you need. If you’re a small business owner looking to leverage free resources and tools for growth and expansion, you’ve come to the right place.

We sifted through hundreds of articles and collated the top 40 free business resources and tools you can use in 2022, to help you grow and scale. In the next section, you will find resources for grants and loans, legal information, tax filing, and research. You will also find tools categorized based on the business functions they serve best.

Free Small Business Resources

For Grants and Loans

1. U.S. Small Business Administration

U.S. Small Business Administration provides resources so entrepreneurs can plan, launch, manage, and grow their own small businesses. Under the funding program section of their website, they discuss various types of grants and loans small businesses can apply for along with investment capital, disaster assistance, and surety bonds.

2. U.S. Department of Treasury

The U.S. Department of Treasury has FAQs and resources for those interested to apply to government programs for small businesses such as the Small Business Lending Fund, State Small Business Credit Initiative, and Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.

3. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR)

SBIR and STTR are programs that promote technological innovation among small businesses. Small business owners can look into participating in these awards-based competitive programs if they intend to invest in research and development. 

4. GovLoans.org

GovLoans.org helps small business owners to decide on a government funding program by allowing them to compare their interest rate, fees, loan length, loan amount, prepayment penalties, and payment frequency.

5. Grants.gov

Grants.gov connects grant applicants with federal agencies. According to the American Library Association, this grant community makes it possible for more than 900 grant programs to award more than $400 billion grants every year.

For Legal Information

6. Nolo.com

Nolo.com gives free legal information to small businesses. Some of their topics are domain names and trademarks, annual reporting and taxes, and small business insurance. With their resources, you can form and manage your business while staying legally compliant.

Other than the free articles, Nolo.com also offers books, legal forms, and software for various legal concerns. They also have a directory of lawyers which can be very helpful if you’re looking for one who specializes in a specific practice.

7. FindLaw

FindLaw has a comprehensive list of articles containing legal information for small businesses. Their articles cover almost everything, from employment law to legal structures to business liability and insurance. Another useful feature of the FindLaw website is its compilation of state law summaries. 

You can also search their directories for different attorneys, like contracts attorneys, business litigation lawyers, and more, to find an expert in your area to consult. They also offer form packages, individual forms, and other legal services specifically designed for small businesses. 

For Tax Filing

8. IRS Small Business Portal

IRS Small Business Portal is a great resource for preparing and filing small business taxes. They provide information on business tax credits, recordkeeping, employment taxes, tax calendar, and tax calculation, among others.

IRS Small Business Portal is also linked with other platforms that may be useful for small businesses. Some examples of this are SBA learning center, IRS video portal, and Tax.gov online calendar.

9. USA.gov

USA.gov guides small business owners in understanding their local, state, and federal tax responsibilities. Their list includes excise tax, property tax, sales and use tax, estimated tax, and more.

10. H&R Block

H&R Block offers software and services for online tax filing. It is also packed with features for bookkeeping and payroll. Two popular alternatives to their products are eFile.com and TurboTax.

For Research

11. Business USA

Business USA has a resource directory that includes guides and programs for government and commercial loans and grants, financial counseling and mentoring, and small business insurance providers.

12. SCORE

SCORE is a team of volunteers who work to educate small business owners on various business topics. They conduct mentoring sessions, webinars, and local events for this endeavor.

With SCORE, you can get a free live session with an expert to discuss your small business issues. Their mentors can help you build a business plan, optimize funding, and succeed through business setbacks.

13. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics can provide business owners an idea of how much they should be paying their employees and what qualifications they should be looking for. The website contains information about the median annual wage and duties of various occupations. 

14. FinancesOnline.com

FinancesOnline.com is a great website for finding the right tools to match your small business needs. They have hundreds of articles that outline the best software for different functions. They also have articles that give you insights into the trends and statistics in your field.

By using the search function on the website, you can find relevant reviews and articles for all your software needs. The good news is, many of these software are also available for free so you can learn about and test out as many products as you can until you find the right solution.

15. Leverage

Leverage is a Facebook community by Virtudesk where you can meet and converse with entrepreneurs and business owners and learn about their secrets to success. Here, you can partner or network with like-minded people to grow and succeed in your business goals. 

You can get not only social capital at Leverage but also free guides, ebooks, and advice that will help you scale your small business.

Free Small Business Tools

For Business Operations

16. Trello

Trello is a Kanban-style application that makes it easier to create, assign, and monitor tasks. You can use it to visualize your workflow, simplify processes, and foster collaboration among your staff members.

17. Striven

Striven is a cloud-based ERP solution that has all the features you need to manage the core aspects of your business, including accounting, CRM & sales, operations, and human resources.

For Human Capital

18. Virtudesk Blog

Virtudesk Blog is another awesome resource for small businesses. The articles in this blog are primarily focused on discussing how entrepreneurs and small business owners can leverage talent and technology to scale their businesses. It also gives insights on timely issues like The Great Resignation and Facebook’s metaverse.

By subscribing to Virtudesk Blog, you will be one step ahead of your competitors as you will regularly receive updates on what industry leaders and experts are saying about today’s workplace landscape. Further, you will learn about how virtual assistant services can help you grow your business.

Virtudesk can also act as a great resource if you have more room in your budget. We offer virtual assistant services in marketing, customer service, administration, prospecting, real estate, and more. You can hire a virtual assistant to offload tasks that are weighing you and your business growth down, and save up to 78% on your operating expenses.

19. Timedly

Timedly is a time-tracking software that comes free of charge when you hire a virtual assistant from Virtudesk. With this, you can monitor the activities of your virtual assistant during work hours.

Timedly has a lot of great features that hold your virtual assistant accountable for the work they do and give transparency to their workday. The software takes screenshots of your VA’s or employees' monitor every two minutes, so you can rest assured they are staying on track throughout the day. Plus, it acts as a great project management tool.

20. Freshteam

Freshteam is a cloud-based applicant tracking solution equipped with an employee self-service portal, a document management system, and a reporting system.

21. Bamboo HR

Bamboo HR has features that can help your human resources team throughout the entire employee lifecycle, from hiring to onboarding to compensation and more.

This product helps you centralize processes, gather, store, and analyze people's data. It also has features that make the hiring and onboarding process more efficient and effective.

For Sales and Marketing

22. HARO

HARO or Help a Reporter Out provides a way for journalists to gather expert advice from relevant sources. Not only can journalists use this free tool, but companies can too! If you’re a content manager or strategist looking to create original content, you can submit a query through their platform and gather quotes from expert sources to add to your blogs, ads, lead magnets, emails, and more.

It’s a free platform to use with varying paid plans. To get started, just sign up for their email newsletter to start receiving daily email alerts on new queries journalists and companies are submitting. Not can you use this to create content, but use it to show your expertise as a business owner and industry leader. By submitting your professional opinion on certain topics, you can establish thought leadership and build backlinks for your website.

23. Canva

Canva makes it easier to design PR and marketing materials like logos, infographics, presentations, social media posts, and the like.

Build your team on Canva so you can collaborate on design projects. Use their social media planner and scheduler feature so you can stay organized when planning content on social media. Canva also integrates with other platforms like MailChimp, so you can send finished graphics straight to your media library.

Canva offers a free plan that gives you a lot of flexibility and options when it comes to designing. Their paid “Pro” plan starts at $12.95/month.

24. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a WordPress Plugin that automates SEO and readability analysis. Yoast makes it easier to determine improvement points in an article and tells you exactly what to do to further optimize the on-page SEO for your article. For example, it might tell you to add more internal and external links, add alt text to images, and add more of your targeted keywords to the body of your article.

Most users use the free plan (that’s enough to optimize your articles), but the Premium Plan is as low as $8.25/month.

25. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a powerful email marketing tool complete with features for creating, executing, and measuring email marketing campaigns.

Send emails blasts and build out complicated email flows with this robust tool. You can also create graphics and website landing pages. Build out intricate segments and connect your eCommerce shop.

MailChimp offers a free plan for up to 5,000 contacts before they start charging.

26. Buffer

Buffer allows for a more efficient way to schedule posts across different social media platforms. It also has features for improving customer engagement and tracking social media performance.

You can use their free plan to manage up to three social media profiles. Buffer will start charging you a monthly fee to add more social media platforms.

27. Shopify

Shopify is an e-commerce platform for building and managing an online business. It’s one of the most popular and user-friendly eCommerce platforms on the market. With Shopify, you can customize your website, online store, and blog.

You can manage your inventory, analyze customer data, and have an all-in-one place for your order management and fulfillment. 

You can start with their 14-day free trial, but after that plans start at $29/month.

For Accounting and Finance

28. Zoho Invoice

Zoho Invoice boosts productivity by making it easier to create and send invoices. Not only that, but you can send payment reminders, keep track of your expenses, log your work hours, and more.

You can create customized templates for different customer groups, making your billing process a lot more personalized! Other personalization features include invoicing in different currencies and languages, depending on where you are located or if you serve international markets.

The best part about this tool is that it’s completely free! There are no paid plans. Every feature you get is free. This is Zoho’s way of helping business owners when they start out. Plus, they make up any lost income through other products they sell.

29. Wave

Wave combines bookkeeping, accounting, and invoicing solutions into one platform. You can also manage your payments, manage your payroll, and get detailed reports. You can start for free when you use the accounting and invoicing features. When you want to use other features like payments and payroll, that’s when they start charging.

31. Akaunting

Akaunting is a completely free, open-source accounting software, designed especially for small and midsize businesses. This software allows you to manage every aspect of your finance in one place. You can use it to monitor payments, expenses, and invoices, among others.

31. Sunrise

Sunrise empowers businesses to create the best financial decisions with its forecasting tool. It also has tools for categorizing expenses and handling taxes. They offer a free self-service plan, but if you want additional features like cash flow insights and alerts, auto-categorize expenses, and payment integrations, that all comes with Sunrise Plus ($19.99/month). 

32. ZipBooks

Zipbooks is complete with accounting, billing, expense tracking, and reporting capabilities. It includes a time-tracking feature that automatically translates time worked into a billable expense. The product is mobile-friendly so there’s no problem with managing your business while on the move. 

Zipbooks offers four plans, one of which is the free version. You can apply for an upgrade for as low as $15/month.

 33. Quickbooks

Quickbooks offers robust tools for accounting, inventory management, payroll, time-tracking, and more. Their product is available for a free trial for 30 days, after which you can choose to pay between $7.50 to $54 per month.

For Information Technology

34.  ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus

ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus can provide your IT team with automation capabilities for password resets and account unlock. Its features include password expiry notifies, password policy enforcer, password synchronizer and SSO, and conditional access policy. Some of these features are available only on the paid version that amounts to $595 to $1195 per 500 domain users.

35. Cloudflare

Cloudflare is a cloud network that protects and accelerates websites, APIs, and applications. With the free plan, you get free and easy-to-use DNS, unmetered DDOS Protection for Layers 3-7, CDN, and a universal SLN certificate. If you want to acquire additional features, you need to pay $20 per month (pro) or $200 per month (business). 

36. Vembu BDR

Vembu BDR is a backup solution designed to keep your data safe. With this product, you get flexible deployment options. You can deploy on-premise, via cloud, or hybrid. 

Vembu BDR offers a free solution. They also have paid plan options that range from $108 to $360 per CPU socket per annum.

For Customer Service

37. Zendesk

Zendesk is a highly scalable and customizable software that improves customer service and sales. It empowers your team to work more efficiently by providing them with a dynamic, centralized workspace. It also has automation capabilities.

38. Hubspot CRM

Hubspot CRM provides users with a reporting dashboard, company insights, deal tracking features, and pipeline management features, among others. It gives business owners visibility on real-time business operations. It also provides them with important insights for business decision-making.

39. Live Webinar

LiveWebinar makes live video streaming a breeze. It is a cloud-based solution that you can use for video events and webinars. Apart from its main function which is video streaming, you can also monitor audience engagement analytics and generate reports using this platform. What’s more, it integrates with other business tools such as Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, iContact, Freshmail, and Zapier.

40. Loom

Loom helps the support team provide visual guides to customers. With this platform, you can record and share videos with your customers instantly. You can also monitor who watched the videos and for how long. 

Loom works with email, chat, and other messaging platforms. The starter plan for this platform is free. If you wish to access more features, you have the option to upgrade to their business plan ($8/creator/month) or enterprise plan (contact vendor for the price). 

41. FreshDesk

FreshDesk automates repetitive tasks and makes customer service more efficient. It has features for collaboration, ticketing, reporting and analytics, security, and more. It also has a field service management module so remote agents and field teams can work efficiently on the go.

Spend Less on Tools and More on People

As a small business owner, you may not have the time and energy to implement all the solutions on this list. The good news is you can hire someone to do just that so that you don’t miss out on important opportunities to scale your business. You can delegate this task to virtual assistants who are already experts in certain business functions.

If you are interested in leveraging virtual assistants, fill out this form and one of our Consultants will get in touch with you.

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