As a solopreneur, your business may have unlimited potential — but you don’t have unlimited capacity.
The truth is, there’s only so much you can do in a 24-hour day. And until your business grows enough to hire your first team member, you’re the only one who’s there to get it all done.
That’s why smart solopreneurs turn to tech tools that enable them to accomplish more in less time. With the right set of tools, you’ll simplify your business operations and stimulate growth.
We’ve collected seven types of tools that solopreneurs need to succeed, plus our top recommendations and alternates in each category.
Let’s jump in!
Customer relationship management (CRM) software is the modern way to keep track of customers and nurture customer relationships. A massive upgrade to the Rolodexes and index card boxes of yesteryear, a CRM cuts down on manual work and helps you stay more active with your customers.
As a solopreneur, time and brain space are both at a premium. A CRM helps you reach and manage customers at scale, and it keeps track of all those individual details so you don’t have to.
For example, you might use a CRM to automate an intake process so that when a customer fills out your “contact me” form on your website, it isn’t on you to manually craft a reply every time. Or you might use a CRM to automatically reach out to customers who haven’t purchased in a while.
Bigin by Zoho CRM is a CRM platform that’s lightweight and easy to use. Most CRMs target larger businesses with dozens if not hundreds of seats, which can mean feature overkill for the solopreneur.
Bigin by Zoho keeps things relatively simple, so it works well even if you’re a CRM newbie. It’s perfect for real estate agents, startups, insurance agents, car salespeople, and more — including solopreneurs like you!
Key features:
Bigin streamlines the process of getting started with a CRM as a solopreneur, with a full free version that includes a single pipeline, up to 500 records, and up to three automations. If the platform serves you well, the Express plan costs just $7 per month.
Be aware that the Express plan limits you to three team pipelines and 30 automations; power users might need more.
Bigin isn’t the only option for solopreneurs who need a CRM. You might consider these alternatives:
Communication software allows solopreneurs to interact with clients, prospects, subcontractors, and others digitally — no matter where either party is located. Many solopreneurs interact with clients and prospects using video meeting tools, either as a sales tool or an onboarding tool.
And chat-focused communication tools can help you as you grow: Maybe you work with an occasional subcontractor right now, but as your business thrives, your team might expand to include a few employees and a handful of freelancers. A chat app like Slack could help you as a solopreneur communicate with the freelancers you use now — and the employees you hire later.
Our top pick in this category is Zoom. It’s best known as a video conferencing platform, but the platform includes much more than that, including team chat, mail and calendar, a scheduler, and even productivity and employee engagement tools.
(And to set your mind at ease: you might hear about Zoom fatigue. While it’s definitely a real thing, it isn’t actually a Zoom thing. It happens on every video meeting platform.)
Key features:
We chose Zoom over the competition because of its wide-ranging feature set and its existing popularity and adoption rate. No one is confused when you say “Let’s schedule a Zoom call!”, and the other person doesn’t even need an account to jump on the meeting.
Zoom’s free plan is fully functional but caps meeting length at 40 minutes. To remove that cap and add Zoom AI Companion (and more), you’ll need the Pro plan ($15.99/month or $160 annually).
When was the last time you got a marketing campaign email that was just bare text? Audiences expect marketing campaigns to have graphics, and someone has to make them.
When you’re a solopreneur, chances are that someone’s you.
If “graphic designer” isn’t a hat you feel comfortable wearing, we get it. Thankfully a new generation of graphic design tools is here to make graphic design possible for the rest of us, not just the pros.
These tools come with tons of premade elements that you can drag and drop to create graphics customized for your venture.
Canva is the best design platform for people without a graphic design background. It’s easy to use and intuitive, so you’ll be creating graphics in no time, which you can use to bolster your online presence. We chose this tool because it’s so much simpler to use than pro tools but gives you more control than other beginner-friendly tools.
Key features:
You can use and learn Canva for free, but for the best design elements and branding kits, you’ll need Canva Pro ($120/year).
We’ve all heard that time is money, and that is especially true for solopreneurs. Time you’re spending not making money is time you can’t spend making money.
In other words: if you aren’t productive, you don’t get paid.
Many business tools include time management functionality, like a scheduling tool for clients or task planning tools for your day-to-day work.
Calendly is a great tool for solopreneurs. Manually emailing back and forth with clients and prospects about meeting times is time-consuming and might give off an unprofessional vibe.
Calendly solves this problem in seconds: With Calendly, you set your available hours, and then you can send a custom Calendly link to your clients using automated templates that keep your messaging consistent. Using this link, your clients can choose the time that works best for them, and the meeting will automatically populate on the calendar you choose (Google Calendar, Outlook, etc.).
If you only need to schedule one type of meeting, Calendly’s free tier is likely all you need. If your scheduling needs are a little more complicated, the cheapest paid plan is just $10/month.
Key features:
If you’ve ever started the workday staring at your laptop and wondering what the heck you’re supposed to start with, then you might need project management software.
As a solopreneur, it’s easy to feel like you’re losing control of your work or your business is running you rather than the other way around. Project management software is one solution: it can act like a supercharged planner, helping you straighten out the tangled web of what to do, and in which order.
Trello is one of the easiest task management platforms to pick up and start using. Built on agile principles, Trello defaults to a board or card view, where you can create tasks as cards and then move those cards through various phases as the work progresses.
Trello has added more views and deeper project management capabilities, but it remains one of the most user-friendly interfaces on the market. For many solopreneurs, that’s a good thing.
Key features:
We chose Trello because of how simple it is. It has limits, no question. But you probably won’t crash into those limits until you start to scale. And it’s way better than running projects in spreadsheets (Excel or Sheets). Plus, many small business owners and solopreneurs will find everything they need in Trello’s free plan.
If you need more, the standard $5/month plan should be sufficient.
Ditching your 9-to-5 to become a solopreneur is exciting: you’ve traded fighting your way up the corporate ladder for a world of unlimited potential — and unlimited risk.
But it’s also hard work. Before, someone else crunched the numbers while you focused on your specialized role. Now you have to do it all. You have to worry about paying vendors, when business taxes are due, and staying profitable.
Accounting and payment software helps take the hassle out of invoicing and billing. For example, if you’re receiving payments directly from clients, these tools will help you do so with minimal overhead.
Stripe is a leading payment processing tool, allowing you to accept payments in all kinds of formats: payment links, in-person terminals, on-site checkout, recurring subscriptions, and more. It also has tools for tax and accounting, and it’s optimized for ecommerce.
Key features:
We chose Stripe because of how easy it is to get started and because it goes beyond just accepting payments, helping solopreneurs with tax and accounting as well.
Standard pricing on Stripe is 2.9% + 30 cents for successful charges.
Many solopreneurs operate out of coffee shops, coworking spaces, or even their living room couch. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it can create some tricky situations, like what to do about a business address.
Virtual mail service gives you access to a real address typically in a business area (not on the residential-sounding street where you live). The service scans and sends you all the mail you receive at that address digitally. A virtual mail service can help bolster a professional image for your budding business, and it’s also a great way to declutter your office by removing most physical mail from the picture.
The best virtual mailbox services include mail scanning, forwarding, storage, and shredding, along with other services like check depositing and even registered agent services.
Stable is the ideal virtual mail service for solopreneurs. It simplifies the virtual address process, offering change of address guidance, registered agent service, and optional check-cashing services in addition to high-quality mail handling. Stable offers addresses in prestigious business districts in major U.S. cities (plus Dover, Delaware — key for LLCs looking for tax benefits) and manages its own mail handling centers so it can maintain high standards of quality.
Key features:
Stable’s Grow plan costs just $49/month — and early-stage companies (less than $1 million annual revenue) get 50% off ($24.50/month).
As a solopreneur, you need all the time and focus you can get to keep driving your business forward. The right tools can give you back more time and focus, helping you achieve more with less.
Stable’s virtual mail service is one of those indispensable tools: by solving the physical mail and business address questions, Stable helps you present a more professional image and better manage your mail no matter where you do business.
