21 Tools to Launch a Product or Business

If you’re launching a new product or business, get help from free and inexpensive online tools at every stage of the process — from designing and developing your product to marketing and gathering feedback.

Here is a list of online tools to launch a product or business. There are tools to create and animate graphics, locate free design elements, build prototypes and web pages, test products, and notify journalists and followers.

Design and Development

Canva. Canva is a design tool with professional layouts and drag-and-drop features to create attractive graphics. Design with millions of stock photographs, vectors, illustrations, or upload your own. Edit your photos using preset filters or get advanced with photo editing tools. Use icons, shapes, elements, and hundreds of fonts. Price: Free. Canva for Work is $12.95 per user per month.

Freebbble. Freebbble is a resource to find thousands of design freebies made by designers on Dribbble, a community site for sharing design projects. Search by element type or license attributions. Price: Free.

Pixabay. Pixabay is a community of creatives, sharing copyright free images and videos. All contents are released under Creative Commons CC0, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist, even for commercial purposes. Find over a million free stock photos, vectors, and art illustrations. Price: Free.

Tumult Hype. Tumult Hype is a tool for creating animated and interactive content. Create animated banners, buttons, interactive galleries, animated ebooks, infographics, and presentations. Tumult Hype uses a keyframe-based animation system. Click “Record” and Tumult Hype watches your every move, automatically creating keyframes as needed. Or, if you’d prefer to be more hands-on, manually add, remove, and rearrange keyframes to finetune your content. Price: $49.99.

Bubble. Bubble lets you design your application by dragging and dropping elements and programing it with workflows. Customize your application’s behavior with a user-friendly interface without writing code. Bubble connects with any service that exposes a REST API via plugins — payments, analytics, Facebook, SQL. Price: Free plan with core features and branding. Premium plans start at $14 per month.

InVision. InVision is a collaborative prototyping tool. Upload your design files and add animations, gestures, and transitions to transform your static images into clickable, interactive prototypes. Sketch, draw, wireframe, present designs, and share feedback — all in real-time. Price: One free prototype. Premium plans start at $15 per month.

UX Testing. UX Testing is a tool that enables any company to capture its user experience, to better understand visitors and customers. The dashboard displays usability metrics with versatility to customize your own surveys and allows you to compare the results of each. It supports mobile prototypes, mobile web, Android apps, and iOS apps. Price: Plans start at $19 per month.

Marketing

BetaList. BetaList is a site for founders to share their startups and get early user feedback from entrepreneurs and early adopters. BetaList also powers Submit.co, a list of places to get press coverage for your venture. Price: Free.

Hey Press. Hey Press is a searchable database of tech journalists. Simply enter a keyword to see the most relevant journalists for that topic, along with the articles they’ve written and contact details. Price: Starts at $15 per month.

Notify. Set up notifications for your startup name, competitors, events, and topics that you are interested in. Pick from dozens of sources like Twitter, Facebook, and Product Hunt. Receive Slack or HipChat notifications once your topic gets mentioned. Price: Free for 50,000 mentions every month on selected sources.

Buffer. Buffer is a tool to plan and schedule your social media posts. Buffer publishes them automatically, according to the posting schedule you put in place. Buffer also has Pablo, to easily create images easily to enhance your posts. Price: Free for one profile and 10 scheduled posts per platform. Premium plans start at $10 per month.

Maître. Maître is a simple widget that creates a waiting list and referral campaign for your upcoming launch. Maître automatically tracks visits and conversions from each marketing channel — Facebook, Twitter, custom channels — so you know where you should invest your marketing money. Price: Starts at $99.

Sumo. Sumo provides a suite of tools to increase your traffic, build a following, and track results. With List Builder, create popups that convert viewers. Welcome Mat builds followers before they hit your page, Scroll Box creates a polite and persuasive popup, and Smart Bar stays glued to the top of your page. Price: Free plan for one site with limited visits. Paid plans start at $29 per month.

Monitor Backlinks. Monitor Backlinks is a tool to check your bad links and monitor your competitors’ good links. Make informed decisions with all of your most vital search-engine data brought together in one place. Quickly analyze which backlinks are most valuable to your campaign. Price: Starts at $24.90 per month.

Unbounce. Use Unbounce to build custom landing pages and add overlays for more conversions on your site. Integrate your favorite email, marketing automation, analytics, or client-management platforms. Optimize with lead generation tools, A/B testing, and dynamic text. Price: Starts at $79 per month.

Upcall. Upcall provides an on-demand outbound sales team for your new venture. Upcall’s platform provides all the tools you need to create, launch, and manage your call campaign. Communicate with Upcallers in real time — listen to calls and review their performances. Analyze your campaign in real time. Target a U.S. business and consumer database, or import your own leads. Contact for pricing.

Good Email Copy. This is a gallery of well-written email copy from reputable companies. Search a topic for inspiration, or pick a relevant tag. Price: Free.

Feedback

Intercom. Intercom is a platform to talk to customers — for sales, marketing, and customer service personnel. Use live chat to convert visitors and help users on your website or mobile app. Send targeted messages to onboard users. Solve customer problems faster with an integrated help desk and public knowledge base. Price: Plans start at $49 per month.

Typeform. Typeform is a tool to help interactions with customers, to imitate real conversations. Customize your Typeform design to stand out from the crowd or match your brand. Change the flow of questions depending on answers. Get usage metrics across devices and export data for further analysis. And follow up automatically. Price: Free for 100 responses per month. Paid plans start at $30 per month.

Hotjar. Hotjar is tool to understand your web and mobile site visitors. Use heat maps to understand what users want and interact with on your site. Identify usability issues by watching recordings of real visitors. Find the biggest opportunities in your conversion funnel. Collect insights with surveys, and recruit user testers. Price: Free for up to 2,000 page views per day. Paid plans start at $29 per month.

Olark. Olark is an easy-to-use live chat solution that lets you dialog with visitors on your website. Olark features real-time reporting to see when your business is most successful. Automate messages based on a visitor’s behavior on your site. Searchable transcripts make it easy to filter for conversations or keywords that are most valuable to you. Price: Plans start at $12 per month.