Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

When getting started with clients we always review what kind of business tools they are using. Here are the tools we use to keep going:

Web Hosting: Dreamhost

A lot of bang with little effect on your wallet. They also have a lot of tools that are easy to install. Support has for the most part been good to us.

Content Management: Wordpress

I can’t say enough great things about Wordpress. It is easy to use and has a lot of great plug-ins for features. I have used Joomla with other clients before. If you are doing anything beyond just posting information and having a blog, I would go with Joomla.

Email Mailing List: Intellicontact Pro

It is easy to manage the list and templates and it has autoresponders. The price and features are right where I need them.

Accounting: Quickbooks Online

Its not amazing yet, but it does the job and allows us and our accountant to access information form anywhere.

Phone: Virtual PBX

It was a pain to setup, but is easy to use. This virtual phone system allows us to transfer calls from anywhere and have the big fancy phone system without all the upfront cost.

Contact Managment: SugarCRM

We are still small enough to use the Open Source version of this great tool. Sugar manages all of our contacts on our shared hosting which is automatically backed up every hour in case something bad happens. We also use it for all of our group emails, so we have a history of contact with clients.

Project Management: Basecamp

The original easy web 2.0 tool. Basecamp allows us to organize all of the to-dos for a project and share them in real-time with our clients. This allows for easy communication. So everyone knows what is going on with any given project. I can’t wait till they come out with their Contact Relationship Managment App, Sunrise.

Payment Processing: Paypal

It is not amazing and I always worry about some of the bad experiences I have had with them in the past, but Paypal is still the best processor for a small business.

Web Stats: Google Analytics

I just recently switched to Analytics so I don’t have much of an opinion yet. For the starter blogger, I would go with MyBlogLog. MyBlogLog did seem to slow down my site by a second or two. Analytics doesn’t seem to slow things down as much.