23 essential tools to operate an online business

Just a few years ago, a typical workday for a business owner was full of endless switching between browser tabs, copying data from one program to another, answering the same customer questions, wrestling with website copy, and constantly stressing over SEO. All this work was necessary, but overwhelming and didn't provide a lot of growth.  

Thankfully, recent advancements in artificial intelligence and automation have changed the game. Now, chatbots can hold meaningful conversations with customers in the middle of the night. AI assistants write compelling copy and set up ads. And apps can communicate with each other without human intervention. Running an online business today isn’t about heroic solo marathons — it’s about using smart tools that do the heavy lifting for you.

In this guide, we’ve compiled a collection of the best tools that genuinely transform the lives of online business owners.

The best tools to boost your online business

• The best tool for fast and simple website creation: SpreadSimple.
• The best SEO tools for online business owners: Google Keyword Planner, AlsoAsked.com, Ahrefs, Semrush, Free Keyword Research Tool.
• The best SEO writing and editing tools for business: Hemingway App, QuillBot, Frase, WriteSonic, Grammarly.
• The best chatbot building tools for business: Chatbase, Botpress, Botsonic, ManyChat.
• The best AI lead management assistants for business: Regie.ai, My AI Front Desk, Avoma, Clay, FastOutreach.ai.
• The best no-code automation tools: Zapier, Albato, Parabola.
  

Fast and simple website creation with SpreadSimple

If you need to kickstart your online business and create an effective and user-friendly website for it, then SpreadSimple is the tool to go. It allows you to build a website completely no-code, using Google Sheets as its content-management system.

Just choose from one of the many templates to get the website layout — and customize it for your business. Use add-ons for setting up payments, analytics, chatbots, automation, and more. In 30 minutes to a couple of hours you will have your website running and ready for orders!

The best SEO tools for online business

Unlike paid traffic, SEO is an investment that pays off over the long haul. But when you’re running a small business, SEO can often feel like that “last straw” that breaks the camel’s back. Especially when every minute of your day is spoken for: orders to pack, calls with suppliers, and social media content to create.

Fortunately, in recent years, SEO tool developers have adapted their products for “real, everyday people,” so there’s no need to decode tech jargon or spend hours setting things up.

We’ve gathered a selection of the best SEO tools that are simple, easy to use, and effective. With these tools, you can raise your site’s ranking—even if you don’t have technical expertise.

1. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a convenient keyword research tool that’s ideal for both SEO and running ad campaigns. The best thing about this tool is its simplicity: just enter a main query, and Keyword Planner will suggest dozens of relevant words along with search volume, competition levels, and recommended bids. It helps identify which terms can attract the right audience to your site and find long-tail keywords for more precise targeting.

For small businesses looking to save on costs, Keyword Planner is an excellent free option, as it’s accessible through a Google Ads account without requiring any additional payment.

Pricing: Free for Google Ads users.

2. AlsoAsked.com

AlsoAsked.com is a user-friendly tool for analyzing popular questions and finding niche keywords. In my opinion, its main advantage is the visual map of questions, which helps structure content to align perfectly with the audience’s search queries.

This tool is particularly useful for SEO specialists aiming to create thematic content that covers all facets of a given topic. AlsoAsked also offers unique long-tail keywords that are hard to find in other tools, allowing you to target less competitive queries and attract users genuinely interested in your niche.

Pricing: Basic plan — $12/month, Lite — $23/month, Pro — $47/month.

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the best tools for SEO, particularly powerful for backlink analysis, site auditing, and keyword research. If you’re looking to improve your business’s search visibility, Ahrefs offers valuable features for tracking rankings, analyzing competitors, and finding content ideas.

It’s especially popular among professionals for its data accuracy and the wealth of reports available, which help optimize a site for technical SEO, loading speed, SSL issues, and more. For instance, the Site Explorer feature gives you a complete view of competitors’ backlink profiles, while Backlink Checker shows how to strengthen your site through new backlinks.

Pricing: Lite — $129/month, Standard — $249/month, Advanced — $449/month, Enterprise — $14 999/month.

4. Semrush

Semrush is a powerful tool for comprehensive SEO and marketing, featuring competitor analysis, site audits, keyword research, and backlink analysis. It helps improve search engine rankings and optimize PPC campaigns.

The remarkable thing about Semrush isn’t just its detailed data — whether on competitor insights or keyword reports — but how user-friendly it is, making SEO tasks feel as familiar as any other part of your work.

Pricing: Pro — $139.95/month, Guru — $249.95/month, Business — $499.95/month.

5. Free Keyword Research Tool

Free Keyword Research Tool is a simple and accessible option, perfect if you’re a blogger or a small business owner looking to generate content ideas without incurring costs. It’s great for finding keywords and analyzing basic competitive queries, allowing you to quickly identify target areas for SEO.

This is the best SEO tool if you’re just starting out with keyword research and want to gauge interest in your content — this tool provides the necessary results and helps streamline your strategy without extra expenses.

Pricing: Free.

The best SEO writing and editing tools for business

Once you’ve completed your SEO audit, the next step is to optimize your titles and content for the keywords you uncovered. Have you ever read a product or service description and felt like dozing off by the second sentence? Now imagine you have to write that content yourself — and not just write it, but make sure Google is happy with it, too.

The ultimate goal is to make your content both keyword-rich and interesting for the readers. And that is no easy task!  

The good news is that there are plenty of tools on the market now, from basic grammar checkers to advanced AI content generators, that can help you tackle this task. No, they won’t replace your expertise or write everything from start to finish for you. But they will help polish your copy and spark some fresh ideas. Spoiler: some of these tools are so smart, it’s almost scary.

1. Hemingway App

Hemingway App is a simple and user-friendly tool designed to make your text clear and easy to read. If you need to improve readability, this app is an excellent helper: it highlights complex structures, long sentences, passive voice, and unnecessary adverbs, suggesting specific ways to simplify your writing. This approach is ideal for blogs, articles, and any content where clarity and effectiveness are key.

You can use the free online version for quick text analysis, and if you need offline access with additional features, a one-time purchase of the desktop version is available for $19.99 — a smart investment in the quality of your writing.

Pricing: One-time purchase for the desktop version at $19.99.

2. QuillBot

QuillBot is a versatile tool to enhance text quality with features like paraphrasing, grammar checking, summarization, and plagiarism detection. It's great for writers who often need to edit text for clarity and professionalism: QuillBot offers seven rephrasing modes, allowing you to select a style from creative to formal.

The tool especially useful for condensing content with the summarization mode and expanding text with the expand mode. The platform also includes a citation generator that supports APA, MLA, and Chicago styles and integrates with Chrome and Microsoft Word for added convenience.

Pricing: Basic version is free; premium plan costs $8.33 per month with annual billing and includes all rephrasing modes, unlimited grammar checks, and plagiarism detection.

3. Frase

Frase is an all-in-one tool for SEO content optimization that is helpful to those who want to streamline their article creation process and boost their chances of ranking high in search results. Frase helps you create content guided by popular keywords and topics, automates the writing process with AI, and provides clear content structures.

Frase quickly generates article outlines, analyzes competitors, and highlights key terms and questions worth including. You can even set custom queries and tailor topics to specific keywords.

Pricing: Solo plan at $15/month for 4 articles, Basic at $45/month for 30 articles, and Team at $115/month for teams handling high content volumes.

4. WriteSonic

WriteSonic is a multifunctional AI service that's great for website owners in e-commerce, affiliate marketing, or services and are short on resources for high-quality content creation.

This tool helps you quickly create a variety of marketing materials, including blog posts, ad copy, social media posts, and more. With over 70 templates for long-form articles, product descriptions, and even video scripts, you can save significant time on generating SEO-optimized content. You can also adjust the tone of the text—from professional to creative—to match your brand’s style. Integration with WordPress and other platforms through Zapier makes content management even easier.

Pricing: Free plan with a 10,000-word limit per month; paid plans start at $16/month for unlimited words.

5. Grammarly

Grammarly is a fantastic tool for grammar, punctuation, and style correction, providing real-time recommendations that are especially useful for writing articles, posts, and emails. Grammarly allows you to set the tone of your writing, choosing between formal, friendly, or confident styles.

Among it's features the underrated one is its plagiarism check and text generation capabilities powered by AI. The service integrates with a range of applications, including Google Docs and Gmail, so you can proofread directly where you write.

Pricing: The free version offers basic features, while advanced capabilities like improved readability checks and originality verification are available in the premium plan. The paid plan starts at $12/month when billed annually, and the business plan, which includes analytics and style customization for teams, starts at $12.50 per user per month.

The best chatbot builders for business

Customers want everything, anytime — even at three in the morning. Your phone might be buzzing with repetitive questions, or worse — you’re missing important orders because you can’t keep up.

Businesses have long been using chatbots to address this challenge. But today’s chatbots are more than just a “FAQ with buttons” and pre-set responses that might annoy customers. Now, chatbots don’t just answer according to a script — they carry on nearly live conversations. They’ve evolved into fully capable digital assistants, handling orders, answering frequently asked questions, collecting customer contacts, calculating service costs, and doing all of this 24/7 without breaks.

Creating a chatbot once felt like “launching a spaceship” — loads of code, developers, and stress. Now, it’s as simple as choosing the right bot builder and uploading answers to frequently asked questions. From there, artificial intelligence will learn to carry on conversations in your style.

1. Chatbase

Chatbase is an excellent choice if you need an easy-to-use chatbot that can be tailored to match your brand’s style and seamlessly integrated into your website. With Chatbase, you can upload data in the form of text, PDFs, or web pages, and it will create an interactive chat experience based on that content.

This tool is especially suited for small and medium-sized businesses looking to enhance customer interaction without large development investments. Chatbase supports automation of frequently asked questions, provides analytics, and can connect with CRM systems via Albato for lead collection and sales improvement.

Pricing: Free plan (1 bot, 20 messages per month); Hobby — $19/month for 2,000 messages and two bots; Standard — $99/month for 10,000 messages and five bots; Unlimited — $399/month for larger-scale needs.

2. Botpress

Botpress is a powerful and flexible chatbot builder. The impressive part is how its interface combines visual editing with API integration capabilities, allowing chatbots to be adapted to nearly any business process.

Botpress is ideal for enhancing customer service; for example, you can easily configure a chatbot for Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and even SMS, while maintaining a unified communication standard. A standout feature of this builder is the ability for continuous learning based on user interactions.

Pricing: Free plan includes 5 bots and 2,000 messages per month; the flexible "pay-as-you-go" plan allows you to add features as needed (e.g., $1 per month for each additional bot), while the "Team" plan is $495 per month for larger teams.

3. Botsonic

Botsonic is an easy-to-use chatbot designed for businesses aiming to improve customer interactions. The platform can quickly train AI on your website’s data, making it ideal for customer support. Botsonic uses ChatGPT and GPT-4, enabling nearly "live" conversations with customers. You can customize the chatbot, choose the design, integrate it with Telegram, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger, and track interactions through analytics.

Pricing: Free plan includes 100 messages per month, Starter plan is $16/month for 2,000 messages, and Enterprise plans with customized features are available upon request for larger companies.

4. ManyChat

ManyChat is a reliable, time-tested tool for engaging with customers on social media by setting up automated responses to comments or messages on Facebook and Instagram. You simply create a flow in a visual editor, and the bot handles customer interactions. The interface is intuitive, so no coding experience is required. Integration with Google Sheets and Albato makes organizing data simple, and the built-in analytics help measure the bot's effectiveness.

Pricing: Free plan is suitable for small businesses, while the Pro plan at $15/month adds advanced features and removes the ManyChat branding.

The best lead management AI assistants for business

We all know that today’s entrepreneur running an online business is multitasking like never before. Regular questions on the to-do list include finding new clients, following up with existing ones, analyzing the sales funnel, preparing proposals, scheduling meetings, managing the CRM… and the speed of sales is everything.

Alongside chatbots, the AI market has expanded to include tools focused exclusively on sales. These tools can handle or make calls, craft personalized outreach emails, schedule meetings with clients, and analyze your interactions.

1. Regie.ai

Regie.ai is ideal for quickly composing and sending personalized emails for both cold and warm lead generation. It automatically creates targeted email sequences, such as those for active clients only, and allows you to set up templates for different sales scenarios, including seasonal promotions triggered by specific events.

Regie.ai integrates with apps like Outreach and generates unique email content based on customer data, which is essential for hitting the mark with your target audience and increasing conversion rates.

Pricing: Free plan includes 100 credits (1 credit = 10 words or 1 lead search) and access to the AI Toolkit. Pro plan — $59 per month with unlimited credits, campaign types, touchpoint sequences, and A/B testing.

2. My AI Front Desk

My AI Front Desk is a smart virtual assistant that ensures you never miss a call or lead inquiry. The platform easily integrates with popular scheduling tools like Calendly, Booksy, and Vagaro and supports multiple languages. You simply set up voice and text scripts, and My AI Front Desk can handle simple inquiries or schedule clients, such as for meetings or appointments, without your direct involvement. Its analytics dashboard lets you track all interactions and even save phone numbers for follow-up campaigns.

Pricing: Free trial available; paid plans start at $48.75 per month for small businesses.

3. Avoma

Avoma is a powerful AI-powered meeting assistant that enhances client interactions. It automates meeting recordings, creates precise transcripts, and, most importantly, highlights key points such as "next steps," questions, and objections —perfect for boosting your sales efficiency.

The platform enables team-wide note sharing and allows you to analyze recordings by keywords, making it highly useful for capturing essential details without needing to replay the entire meeting.

Pricing: From $19 per month for the basic plan; advanced features are available starting at $79 per month.

4. Clay

Clay is the best solution for automating lead data collection and enrichment without hours of manual searching. It gathers contact information from websites and integrates data from over 50 sources, including LinkedIn, Apollo, and BuiltWith.

One of the great features is Clay’s AI-powered messaging, allowing you to create personalized text for each prospect. It also simplifies lead filtering and prioritization, helping you focus on the most promising opportunities. While the platform is powerful, new users might experience a slight learning curve.

Pricing: A free 14-day trial is available, with paid plans starting at $134 per month for the basic level with 2,000 credits and CRM integration options at higher levels.

The best no-code automation tools for business

Imagine if new orders from your online store automatically synced to your CRM. Or if data from a form on your website instantly populated a Google Sheet. Maybe you're hoping for your Instagram posts to auto-publish across other social platforms.

These tasks are not magic, nor do they require coding — just simple, human-friendly commands. When your apps don’t talk to each other, it doesn’t just cost you time through manual work; it leads to data errors, lost sales, frustrated customers, employee burnout, and limitations on scaling. Thankfully, there are no-code platforms designed to seamlessly connect your applications.

1. Zapier
Zapier is an automation tool designed to integrate your apps with each other seamlessly. With Zapier, you can automate data transfers and streamline time-consuming daily tasks, such as report generation. Zapier integrates with over 5,000 applications, including Slack, Google Sheets, and Salesforce. Integration setups are straightforward, using a drag-and-drop editor with triggers and actions.

Pricing: A free plan is available for basic tasks, while paid options start at $19.99 per month, offering multi-step Zaps and access to premium apps.

2. Albato

Albato is a no-code platform for automation and app integrations and a great  affordable alternative to Zapier. Albato connects your applications and supports over 800 apps. It uses a visual builder, allowing you to link apps intuitively.

What stands out about Albato is its simplicity — ideal even for beginners who have never used automation tools before. Despite its ease of use, Albato manages complex integrations well. The platform also offers white-label options, making it a great choice for SaaS owners looking to deploy their own app marketplace.

Pricing: A free version is available, and paid plans start at $19 per month with a limit of 1,000 tasks.

3. Parabola

Parabola is a no-code platform that excels in data synchronization, making it especially suitable for eCommerce. If you own a large online store that manages inventory, finances, and data control, Parabola is ideal for setting up scheduled synchronizations across systems. With Parabola, you create "flows" where you can visually link stages: collecting, processing, and then sending data to the needed applications. This is particularly convenient for businesses that need to frequently clean, sort, and analyze large data volumes.

Pricing: A free plan is available for simple flows, while paid plans start at $80 per month, making Parabola a good choice for businesses of any size.

Final thoughts

Being a business owner today means tackling fresh challenges daily, inventing and testing new strategies along the way. At this pace, delegating routine tasks is essential — and fortunately, there are powerful tools to help. Make sure to also check out the best scheduling tools for your online business to keep track of your business events in the most efficient way.

By carefully selecting the right toolkit, you can free up valuable time for strategic priorities. For instance, creating a website can now be done in just a couple of hours with SpreadSimple, and there are equally efficient tools for content creation, customer support, SEO management, and other tasks.