By audience

Best tools for Startups

Tools we recommend specifically for Startups, ranked by editorial score.

14 tools

  4.7

AI Tools

ChatGPT

Freemium

A general-purpose AI assistant for writing, analysis and everyday questions.

Best for: Broad, everyday assistance across writing, summarising and analysis.

  • Free plan

Score 94/100

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  4.6

Business & Productivity

Notion

Freemium

A flexible workspace for notes, docs and team knowledge.

Best for: Teams that want documents, wikis and light databases in one place.

  • Free plan

Score 92/100

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  4.6

E-commerce

Shopify

Subscription

A hosted platform for building and running an online store.

Best for: Selling online without maintaining your own hosting, payments or checkout.

  • Free trial

Score 91/100

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  4.6

Development & Coding

Linear

Freemium

Issue tracking and planning built for software teams.

Best for: Engineering teams that want fast, opinionated issue tracking.

  • Free plan

Score 90/100

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  4.6

Cybersecurity & Privacy

1Password

Subscription

A password manager for individuals and teams, with shared vaults and secrets.

Best for: Teams that need shared credentials without passwords living in chat or docs.

  • Free trial

Score 90/100

See if it fits
  4.4

AI Tools

Perplexity

Freemium

An answer engine that cites its sources as you research.

Best for: Research questions where you want to check the sources behind an answer.

  • Free plan

Score 88/100

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  4.4

Website & Hosting

Cloudways

Subscription

Managed cloud hosting that sits on top of providers like DigitalOcean and AWS.

Best for: Agencies and developers who want managed cloud servers without doing sysadmin work.

  • Free trial

Score 87/100

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  4.4

Business & Productivity

Airtable

Freemium

A spreadsheet-database hybrid for structured team workflows.

Best for: Structured, record-based work that a spreadsheet has outgrown.

  • Free plan

Score 86/100

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  4.4

Remote Work

Miro

Freemium

A collaborative whiteboard for workshops, planning and diagramming.

Best for: Workshops and planning sessions where a distributed team needs a shared canvas.

  • Free plan

Score 86/100

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  4.4

Remote Work

Loom

Freemium

Async screen and camera recording for updates that do not need a meeting.

Best for: Replacing status meetings and long written explanations with a short recording.

  • Free plan

Score 85/100

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  4.4

Business & Productivity

Slack

Freemium

Channel-based messaging and integrations for teams.

Best for: Day-to-day team communication with a deep integration ecosystem.

  • Free plan

Score 85/100

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  4.3

Remote Work

Zoom

Freemium

Video meetings, webinars and phone for distributed teams.

Best for: Reliable video meetings with people outside your organisation.

  • Free plan

Score 84/100

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  4.3

Design & Creative

Framer

Freemium

Design and publish production websites from a visual canvas.

Best for: Designers shipping a marketing site without a separate build step.

  • Free plan

Score 83/100

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  4.1

Marketing & SEO

Mailchimp

Freemium

Email marketing and automation for growing audiences.

Best for: Running newsletters and basic lifecycle email without a developer.

  • Free plan

Score 80/100

See if it fits

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Best tools for Startups | TopToolsPick