When I say that we run a lean business, I mean it. We evaluate our subscriptions every month to see what we can cut and we HATE to pay for things that aren’t super helpful. But, we also love our technology and our tools. Here are top 5 favorite tools that we are happy to pay for:

Canva: With 125 million users per month, we’re not alone in loving Canva. With Canva you can quickly design social media posts, fliers, and web graphics either from nothing or using their templates. You can also design and order business cards, record webinars and source stock photos. It really is a one stop shop. One of the features we love is the Brand Hub – we can create different brand kits for each of our clients. This makes it so easy to find colors, layouts, and logos when we’re working on client work.

Voxer: Voxer is a professional walkie-talkie app that makes connecting with our clients so easy. With talk and text capabilities, we can message and chat with people all over the US as if we were all in the same room. We’ve never met most of our clients, but because of Voxer we feel close and connected. 

WP Engine: For years we searched for a great WordPress host and then, thanks to a very scammy marketing company, we discovered WP Engine managed hosting. It’s a little bit more expensive than the basic hosting plans offered by Bluehost and GoDaddy, but it is 100% worth it. The customer service is choice, the interface is easy to use, and the piece of mind you get from knowing that your site is backed up and secure is unmatched. (We have a couple more spaces available on our plan if you’re looking for a discount on the yearly fee. Just shoot us a message and we can get you set up.)

Divi: Not sure if this one qualifies as a tool, but it’s a WordPress theme that we could not live without. Using the Divi theme is straightforward while still allowing a TON of customization. There really isn’t anything that you can’t do once you learn the ins and outs of the theme, WordPress, and some basic CSS. The customer service at Elegant Themes (the company that created Divi) is incredible and will always help if you’re in a pinch. 

Google Workspace: Who doesn’t love Google? Let’s be real. But we couldn’t put this list together without including Workspace. We have a Gmail interface for our email and calendar, access to Google Meet (which allowed us to cancel our Zoom subscription), and a lot of storage on Google Drive so that we can share big files back and forth with each other and our clients. Before we switched over to Google Workspace, we were using Outlook for our business emails because it came with the Microsoft Office Suite that we already paid for. But, it was so frustrating and clunky that we decided to make the switch and we’ve never looked back.

Other than these 5, there are only a couple of other tools and programs that we even use and we don’t love them. We also use veed.io for video editing, Shutterstock for stock images, and Photoshop for photo editing. Everything else we use is either open source software or the free versions of services. 

One tip that has really help us to keep costs low when it comes to business subscriptions is to always try the free version or the monthly version first and then either upgrade or pay for the full year at a discounted price. This way, you’re never paying for services that you don’t need or don’t help your business. 

We’re not sponsored by any of these (unfortunately!) so these are really just things that we find helpful in our business. We’ve tried more services and software than we’d care to admit and these are the ones that really make a difference in how we run our business.