We use a ton of tools to make our businesses runs smoothly. We’ve compiled a list of the tools we use with links to them.

Email Opt-Ins:

In an effort to grow your email list, we (and our companies) use a plethora of different opt-in tools to collect information from prospects.

AWeber-: Easy email marketing tools that allow you to send awesome emails.

MailChimp: Send better email.

Constant Contact: Helping small business do more business.

Infusion Soft: Grow sales. Save time. Get organized.

 

 

Call To Action:

Lead Pages: The Internet’s Easiest ‘Next Generation’ Lead Generation Platform

Form Building:

Wufoo: Building online forms can be hard. Wufoo makes it easy.

Survey Monkey: Create surveys. Get answers

Google Sheets: Create and edit spreadsheets online, for free.

 

 

Payment Gateways:

Paypal: The faster, safer way to send money, make an online payment, receive money or set up a merchant account

Stripe: Payments infrastructure for the internet.

Gumroad: Sell products directly to your customer.

Authorize.Net: Accept payments. Anywhere.

Storage:

BaseCamp: helps you wrangle people with different roles, responsibilities, and objectives, toward a common goal: finishing a project together.

Google Drive: Cloud storage and file backup.

Dropbox: Your stuff, anywhere.

Box: Free cloud storage, secure content, and file sharing.

 

 

Web Tools (Technical):

Bootstrap: The most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.

Github: Build software better, together.

Font Awesome: The iconic font and CSS toolkit

Coda 2: Coda is everything you need to hand-code a website, but more than anything else it’s an advanced text editor.

Pixelmate: Let’s you search for photos and access photo feeds of any event.

Unity: Development platform for creating  2D/3D games and interactive experiences.

Photoshop: Photo editing software

Canva – Empowering the world to design. A mostly free web app for designing great graphics.

Yummy FTP:an easy to use, yet powerful FTP + SFTP + FTPS file transfer client for Mac OS X.

PHP My Admin:Handles the administration of MySQL over the web.

Gimp: A freely distributed software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.

 

Screen/Audio Recording:

Quicktime: A powerful multimedia technology with a built-in media player, QuickTime lets you view Internet video, HD movie trailers, and personal media in a wide range of file formats.

Slideshare:  SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations and other professional content.

 

Communications:

BaseCamp: Basecamp helps you wrangle people with different roles, responsibilities, and objectives toward a common goal.

 

Sales Management/CRM:

Salesforce: CRM solutions for sales and marketing.

xTuple: Open source ERP software for small to mid-size businesses.

Vtiger: Open source CRM software for sales, marketing, invoices, inventory, project management.

 

 

Content Management/Blog:

WordPress: Create a free website or blog.

Tumblr: Tumblr is 237 million different blogs filled with literally whatever. (blog hosting network)

Medium: Blog publishing platform.

 

 

Video Conferencing:

Skype: Telecommunications application software

Hangouts: Google hosted telecommunications application

Go To Meeting: HD video conferencing.

Speek: Audio conference call for personal or business uses.

 

 

Legal:

Pierce/McCoy: Legal firm focusing on startup/business matters, transactional opportunities, tax laws, intellectual property, nonprofits and foundations, civil litigation, and dispute resolution.

Kaufman & Canoles: Business law firm with ample experience in working with entrepreneurs.

 

Briefcase

 

 

Accounting:

xTuple: xTuple is open source business management software to power your entire company with one system ― accounting, time & expense, CRM, sales, purchasing, manufacturing, inventory and distribution

QuickBooks: QuickBooks is the #1 accounting solution for small business.

Less Accounting: Accounting Software for Business Owners Who Dislike Bookkeeping

Freshbooks: FreshBooks makes your accounting tasks easy, fast and secure.Start sending invoices, tracking time and capturing expenses in minutes.

Expensify: Hassle-free expense reporting built for employees and loved by admins.

 

 

Banking:

TowneBank: You can always expect one-to-one service and a wide range of product options that allow you to run your finances smoothly and efficiently. Our experienced bankers will make sure you can focus your energy on your business and not your banking.

Monarch Bank: We removed the hierarchy that often exists in a bank by creating an environment without tellers. Anyone in our banking office can help you, necessitating an extremely high level of service.

PayPal: PayPal is a smarter, faster, and safer way to pay.

SunTrust: No matter what accounts you need—checking, savings, credit cards—SunTrust can help.

Bank Of America: At Bank of America, our purpose is to help connect our customers and clients to what matters most to them. Every day, we’re proud to partner with 57 million individuals, businesses, and communities, bringing them our skills and expertise to help make their financial lives better.

 

 

Physical Tools WordPress Resource Guide

Definitions:

Themes –  the look and feel of the website.

Plugins – used to increase functionality on wordpress website

Pages – static pages on that serve as the primary content on wordpress sites

Post – dynamic content that post into the blog feed

Dashboard – backend administrative access area

 

Theme Options:

Theme Forest – Marketplace for premium website templates including WordPress, Magneto, Drupal, Joomal, and more.

WordPress.org – Website or blog hosting platform.

Elegant Themes – Premium wordpress themes coupled with advanced functionality and awesome support.

 

Hosting Options (starting $100/yr):

GoDaddy: Internet domain registrar and web hosting company.

InMotion: Web hosting services.

Host Monster: Web hosting provider.

 

High End Hosting Options (starting $300/yr):

A Small Orange– Powerful hosting and exceptional service

WP Engine– Stunning speed, powerful security, and best-in-class customer service. At WP Engine, WordPress isn’t just our platform, it’s our passion.

Windows Azure– The cloud for modern business

Amazon AWS– Amazon Web Services & Cloud computing

 

Free Plugins to Install:

WordPress Backup – schedule backups

SEO Yoast – SEO plugin

Contact 7 – great form plugin

WP Super Cache – web cache ( uses memory to reduce website load times)

Akismet – high end spam filter

Google Analytics – web analytics

WooCommerce – shopping cart system for wordpress

MiwoFTP – FTP access though wordpress

 

Premium Plugins:

Revolution Slider – great responsive slider plugin (can be included with a lot of themes)

WPMU– premium plugin creators

Visual Composer: (can be included with a lot of themes)

 

Image Sites:

123rf – Stock photos and royalty free images

vectorstock – Royalty free vector art and stock images.

 

Graphic Design Site:

Canva – Empowering the world to design. A mostly free web app for designing great graphics.

 

Info Resources:

SitePoint – Building incredible internet things over a number of platforms

WordCamps – WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress.

WPMU – Epic plugins, Astonishing themes, Unbelievable 24/7 WordPress support

Webtuts – Web design and hosting platform

 

FTP – backend access to hosting files:

FileZilla – Welcome to the homepage of FileZilla, the free FTP solution. Both a client and a server are available. FileZilla is open source software distributed free of charge under the terms of the GNU General Public License