MailChimp is free up to a 500 user mailing list. It will allow you to manage email campaigns, share them on social networks and integrate with web services. The real power is in the metrics and list managment. You will be able to see bounces, clickthrough rates, unopened emails etc.. Email is becoming increasingly difficult to break through the noise and spam filters, having a program like MailChimp is essential.



Dropbox allows you 2GB of storage for free to store and share both files and folders with others on the web. It has some of the best and easiest storage in the cloud. Another nice feature is being able to email links to large files rather than congest email clients with huge attachments.

LogmeIn is a telecommuters dream. It has as a free service plan and will allow you to take full control of your remote desktop. Often I’m on the road or at my home office and need to access a file on my Office desktop. LogmeIn is one of the best remote login’s on the market and is very effective for remote IT support as well.


Jing by TechSmith allows free still & motion screen captures ideal for bloggers and reporters that need to take fast screen captures. It is effective for mockups, scrapbooking and brainstorming as well. The paid version of Jing will allow for all the bells and whistles and no ads.



Unbounce is a landing page platform for startups building a mailing list before launching. The power of Unbounce is to enhance conversions and signups with A/B testing, analytics and real-time metrics. It has a nice WYSIWYG editor with no HTML knowledge required allowing users to deploy a landing page quickly.

User feedback is critical to any business and can be the difference of succeeding or failing for startups. Survey Monkey allows users to create web-based surveys with in get it in the hands of your customers with ease. The plans range from free – $64 a month.

Wufoo will allow you to create contact forms, invitations and web surveys. There is also integration with MailChimp and equivalent mail programs. Cost will range from free to $199/month.



If you have not left Outlook or other local mail clients behind you should get acquainted with Google Business Gmail and the app marketplace. Since plugging the Insightly app (free) into my Google Business mail I don’t miss Outlook a bit. Insightly, acts as your contacts, task and CRM supplement. In addition, Google docs will allow you create easy online forms from the spreadsheet program. Google apps will run you $50/year and is worth every penny compared to licensed single install software and the value add of the Google marketplace.

I have bordline ADHD based on my personality and social media hasn’t helped my cause. To be effective and efficient I need to jott down information from anywhere and worry about organization and expansion of that data later. Enter Workflowy, which was built exactly how the human brain works.

Evernote helps you remember everything and allows users to save ideas, voice notes, photos and to-dos anywhere from a computer or mobile device. Evernote is free with a $5 per month plan as well.