Free Startup Tools

Use our handy list of free startup tools to help get you started and manage your business. Many companies will give you a free/discounted premium plan if you reach out to an account manager and state that you’re working on a Student startup. So do that!

A great source of information for startups is the free Techstars Entrepreneur's Toolkit, an online educational resource to help learn the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and accelerate your success. The Techstars Entrepreneur’s Toolkit is a “Learn by Doing” resource filled with foundational content from the prestigious Techstars global accelerator programs aimed at helping entrepreneurs everywhere create a better world.

The LaunchPad team at Syracuse University Libraries has crowd-sourced a list of free tools and platforms that could be helpful for student startups.  Many of these are completely free, while others have a flexible freemium model, or a scale up fee structure when you hit higher volume usage, at which point you will also have funding and revenue to move beyond free services. We’d love to hear about the tools you're using, too!  Send us an e-mail, LaunchPad@syr.edu, and we will continue to add to this list.

Adminsoft, free, ad-supported accounting software

Money Manager Ex, open-source, full-featured financial software

Wave,  financial/accounting/payment/invoicing software

Zipbooks, accounting and online invoicing

Expensify, expense reporting with mobile tracking and receipt scanning

Bitly, a link shortener that can also create custom URLs

Calendy,  scheduling automation platform for eliminating the back-and-forth emails to find the perfect time 

Envoy, an open-source edge and service proxy, designed for cloud-native applications

Google Trends, trend search with interest level graphs

NodePad, to nurture exploration and ideation without producing polished writing samples that users will barely skim.

Notion, A great tool for organizing and collaborating on almost anything you can think of

OnlineGDB - online compiler and debugger tool for multiple languages

Pomodoro Timer, a tool to stage work in time increments to work more effectively, for longer

QR Code Generator - Link QR codes to various different links/files

Thonny - Python IDE for beginners

TinyURL, URL shortener

AWS Credits, Build and scale your startup with the right resources at the right time

Google Data Studio, a dashboard and report creator for data

Google Forms,  a way to quickly create forms for surveys, events, and more.

JADBio, a user-friendly machine-learning platform equipped with powerful knowledge extraction tools that helps students to dive into machine learning easily. 

Qualtrics, a tool for surveys, research and customer discovery that can capture customer, product, and brand insights

/r/startups, a platform to get unbiased feedback and advice through a subreddit of entrepreneurs

Statista, a leading data portal that is an online repository of statistics, consumer survey results and industry data

Surveymonkey, online survey tool

Typeform, an interactive form building tool, without code.

ChatWoot - Free chatbot (self hosted) and communication software

ezTalk, video, audio and IM chat for teams

FortKnoxster, military-grade encryption online communication platform

Google Hangouts, online meetings and conferencing with Google accounts

GoToMeeting, online meetings and web conferencing for teams

Hunter, Chrome extension to find email addresses from a webpage

HyperWrite AI, an AI powered technology platform to help you communicate more effectively and efficiently

Join.me, screen sharing, online meetings, team collaboration

Lumen5, a free online video-making platform that has various tools that allow you to make videos effortlessly.

Ora, is a system that allows users to create their own targeted chatbots that are optimized for a particular task. 

Patchwork, Direct messaging for Google Chrome. Share and have conversations without ever leaving your page.

Skype, full-featured online meetings software

Slack, collaboration software platform to communicate, collaborate and manage workflows

TinyLetter, a tool to create personalized newsletters

Trello - A notion alternative, Collaborate and manage your projects.

UberConference, web conferencing and online meetings

WebEx (Cisco), enterprise video conferencing and online meetings/webinars

Whereby, free, high-quality video conferencing

Zoom, online meetings software

Apollo, Target your ideal buyer with precision, and get verified emails and direct dials phone numbers instantly on 200M people and 10M companies.

FreeConferenceCall, free HD audio/video/screen conferencing and sharing with up to 1000 participants

Grammarly, proofreading and plagiarism checker

Looka - Business name generator & icons

MentiMeter - Easy-to-build presentations, interactive Polls, Quizzes, and Word Clouds

MindMeister - Collaborative mind mapping

Miro - An online collaborative whiteboard platform to bring teams together

PollEverywhere - Engage audiences across hybrid workspaces through live online polling, surveys, Q&As, quizzes, word clouds, and more

Psiphon, a VPN tool that provides open access to the Internet for anyone, allowing users to create a community

RocketReach, Find a persons contact information from their name

Sales QL, Find contact details for the people you want to approach on LinkedIn, even if you haven't yet connected with them

Startup Checker, a comprehensive website with over 500+ startup tools for small businesses -- huge free directory, although some of the apps listed may have a fee to use. Extremely well organized and easy to navigate with hyperlinked resources in many categories

TeamViewer, remote computer access software

Affinity, a creative suite for graphic design, photo editing, publishing

Audacity - Free, open source, cross-platform audio software

Beautiful.ai, an AI-powered pitch deck designer

Bubble, no-code platform for creating digital products & web-apps without code

Canva, a simple-to-use design tool for easy slide, logo, social post (and more) creation

Coolors.co, Color palette generator

CorelDraw, a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Alludo (formerly Corel Corporation).

DALL·E 2, create original and realistic images and even the art understating the text description you give.

DaVinci Resolve, video-editing, color correction, visual effects, and motion graphics software

Epidemic Sound - Add music to your content creations

Figma - online platform for UI/UX design. Great for creating mockups for websites and mobile apps.

FlatIcon, a source for icons for pitch decks, websites, etc.

Flowmapp - UI/UX/Information Flow Design

FreePik, website with fantastic mockups, just make sure to set the filter to “free”

ImgOnline - replacement of a certain color in the image to the specified color online

Inkscape, an online replacement for Illustrator.

InShot, free app to create Reels or TikToks to market your business

InVision, digital product design platform powering the world’s best user experiences.

Jitter - Simple and clean motion design

Justinmind, platform to create web and mobile app prototypes and wireframes with a UI tool

Laws Of UX, Good rules to follow when building apps/websites

LucidChart - intelligent diagramming application for mind maps, diagrams, and visualization

Lunacy - Incredibly powerful Sketch alternative for windows

Pexels, free stock photos

Piktochart, an easy way to create high impact infographics for free, with templates and easy to use tools to communication information in a visual way

Pixabay, free stock photos

Pixlr Editor, free online Photoshop clone.

Polarr, iOS and Android online photo editing

Sketch, Full-spectrum design toolkit.

Slides Carnival, free PowerPoint templates and Google Slides themes that are customizable

Solidworks - solid modeling computer-aided design and computer-aided engineering computer program

TinkerCad - Easy to use 3D design, electronics, and coding software

Thingiverse, 3d models for 3d printing

Unsplash, free stock photos

UX Archive, UX software platform to inspire ideas

Vectr, 2D vector creator.

Visily.ai, a powerful software that utilizes AI to help teams craft stunning app wireframes with ease. 

Ahrefs - Ahrefs offers some of their SEO tools for free but they offer a surprisingly robust collection of data

Amazon Drive,  back up photos, files, documents, and other company files

Answer the Public, Customer insights based on Google Data, SEO, etc

Box, store, organize and manage company and personal content

Copy.ai, generates unique and easy-to-read content that engages your readers.

CoSchedule, a WordPress add-on to help organize all marketing in one place and help with collaboration

Dropbox, online file storage and sharing

Flickr, upload, store, and share photos

Google Drive, store and share files

GTMetrix - Website speed testing tools

OneDrive, store and share files

Bensound, royalty-free music

Brandmark, a machine learning-based logo creator

Buffer, social media scheduling tool

Feedly, news and content aggregator around specific topics and influencers

Hootsuite, an easy social media management tool

Hubspot, a marketing, sales, and CRM management software platform that is especially good for startups that are scaling

Hunter.io, find professional email addresses in seconds

Later, free platform to plan a feed and schedule social media posts

Mailchimp, an easy to use email marketing platform.

Medium, blog/publication website

NameBounce, free domain name generator that helps you find domain ideas

Namelix, a machine learning-based company name creator

Notion.ai, a copywriting tool to create high-quality plagiarism-free content

SEMRush, a SEO tool for auditing and optimizing social media and digital content

Springboard Enterprises, a connection platform for female founders

Tepfu, a marketing agency platform for startups and companies

Tube Buddy, a management and optimization tool  for YouTube creators

Drupal Commerce, e-commerce for Drupal CMS

Shopify, e-commerce website builder.

Smylelytics, website performance monitoring

Square Online Store, e-commerce website builder leveraging Square payments

Squarespace, a code-free website builder for startup websites

UberSuggest, SEO and Keyword Research

UptimeRobot, monitor digital assets for downtime and get notified if there are any issues

VS Code, Great code editor for Mac/Windows

Webflow, a code-free HTML/CSS generator to build great websites

Wix, a code-free website builder for startup sites

WooCommerce, WordPress plugin for e-commerce

WordPress, open-source website CMS software.

AngelList, a search platform for potential investors, early hires and team members

BuiltIn - startup and tech hub information with salaries

F6S, a tool to find and apply to accelerators (including Techstars), along with other startup resources

FounderSuite, a CRM for raising investment capital

Fundera, a one-stop marketplace to connect with the right business loan for your needs – like the kayak.com for business loans

Fundwurx, connecting fundraising projects with donors

Kickstarter, a way to crowd source your funding without giving away equity

SBA.gov, truly the one-stop for writing business plans, creating financial projections, finding advice on how to finance your business, and straightforward business information to start and grow a business