Essential Tools for Running a Business
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About this ebook
As a software company, we need tools to collaborate, code, promote our product, and support our customers. This book lists every tool we use and how it helps us.
The list is a result of running a business for over 9 years. We started off with only a few basic tools, mainly for coding; as we grew, our needs grew with us: we needed to improve how we track our marketing campaigns, create designs and content, organize our work, and automate repetitive tasks.
We hope you find something that’ll help you with your particular challenge, or just inspire you to try out a few new apps.
Aleksandar Olic
Tech writer interested in: - Software development - Business and project management - UX and interaction design - Usability and information architecture - Marketing, growth hacking, and copywriting
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Essential Tools for Running a Business - Aleksandar Olic
Before We Start…
As a software company, we need tools to collaborate, code, promote our product, and support our customers. This book lists every tool we use and how it helps us.
The list is a result of running a business for over 9 years. We started off with only a few basic tools, mainly for coding; as we grew, our needs grew with us: we needed to improve how we track our marketing campaigns, create designs and content, organize our work, and automate repetitive tasks.
Some tools are free, some we pay for. To save you some time, we mark if there’s a free plan and the price of a starter paid plan. The ones with a price tag are definitely worth it - they help us get the job done and make money. So when we pay $400 a month for a tool, we are getting our ROI.
You’ll find a lot of different platforms: from web based apps, browser extensions, and command-line programs, to desktop and mobile apps. We mostly use Macs, but most tools on the list are web based, so it shouldn’t be a problem if you’re on Windows or Linux.
The left page has basic information about the tool while the right one has a real-life screenshot of and a short comment on how we use it.
You’ll notice we use a lot of tools that have the same functionality — that’s both because each has its unique purpose and people on our team have different preferences.
We’re sure there are many more great tools out there. The ones on the list are what we’ve tried out so far. If you think we left something out, tell us and we’ll check them out - maybe even include them in an update.
We hope you find something that’ll help you with your particular challenge, or just inspire you to try out a few new apps.
Collaboration Tools
Active Collab
Project management
To keep up with our to-dos and work-related tasks that involve more than two people, we use Active Collab.
Active Collab is our main information hub, while other tools act as support. We keep a separate project for everything:
All the reported bugs and feature requests
Work in progress
One for each product (Timer, Android, iOS, SupportYard)
One for each team or process (support, marketing, management, HR)
Other things (UX, blog, analytics)
By looking at the My Work page, everyone knows what to do next. It keeps track of our assignments and notifications for tasks we’re subscribed to.
To get an update on everything that happened the day before, we scan the global Activity page. It lists every new comment, task, status update, and more.
Notes are good for saving important information that’s accessed semi-regularly (release notes, workflow guidelines, and feature suggestions).
Active Collab also has time tracking and invoicing features, but we don’t use them because we don’t do client work or charge by the hour.
A separate project for work in progressA separate project for work in progress
A separate project for work in progress: We splitted to-dos across two projects - in one we put stuff we’re currently working on, and in the other what we need to do in the future. This helps us focus on the work at hand, separating what we’d like to work on from what really needs to be done.
A task keeps everything in one placeA task keeps everything in one place
A task keeps everything in one place: We discuss work and keep each other in the loop through task comments. When we need a fast reply, we use @mentions to get someone’s direct attention.
Platform: · Web based · iOS, Android
Price: · $25/month/5 users · $499 self-hosted
https://www.activecollab.com/
Slack
Chat
Slack lets us quickly and informally message each other.
That way we don’t have to overburden Active Collab with disposable information that has a short lifespan.
We chat in channels