6 Digital Tools for Running a More Efficient Startup Business in 2027
Running a startup means juggling a bit of everything. One minute you're talking to a potential customer, the next you're sorting out paperwork, updating your website or trying to get through a growing to-do list.
When you've only got a small team, most of those tasks land on your desk. The right digital tools can take some of that pressure off. Here are six worth exploring as you build your business.
TL:DR
Tool | Best for |
Tally | Collecting customer enquiries and feedback |
Smallpdf | Organising and preparing business documents |
Softr | Building customer portals and internal business tools |
Cookiebot | Managing website cookies and visitor consent |
Loom | Recording demonstrations and sharing video updates |
Scribe | Creating process guides and training materials |
Metricool | Planning social media content and tracking performance |
1. Tally: Get useful feedback from your customers
You've launched a new product and want to know what your first customers think. You could email everyone individually, but keeping track of their replies would take time.
Tally lets you create online forms without writing code. You can use it for customer surveys, enquiries, registration forms and other situations where you want people to share information.
For a startup, there are several ways to put it to work:
Customer feedback: Ask people what they like about your product, where they're struggling and what they'd like you to improve.
New enquiries: Create a contact form that collects the information your team needs before responding.
Customer onboarding: Ask new clients to share their business details, goals and project requirements.
Market research: Send a short survey to potential customers before investing in a new product or service.
Tally also supports conditional logic, so you can show different questions depending on someone's answers. If a customer reports a problem, for example, the form can ask them to explain what happened.
You can start for free, with unlimited forms and submissions within Tally's fair-use limits. Consider upgrading when you want your own branding, custom domains or additional team features.
Keep your forms short and focused. You'll get more useful information from a handful of relevant questions than a long survey people struggle to finish.
2. Smallpdf: Make everyday document tasks easier
Running a startup comes with more paperwork than you'd expect. One day you're preparing a customer proposal, the next you're converting a spreadsheet into a PDF or trying to get a contract signed.
Smallpdf offers online tools to create, convert, edit and organise business documents.
Here are a few ways you can use it:
Convert files to PDF: Turn Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and HTML files into PDFs.
Edit and organise documents: Add annotations, rearrange pages, remove sections and combine documents.
Compress large files: Reduce file sizes when reports or presentations are too large to email.
Sign documents: Add electronic signatures without printing and scanning paperwork.
Extract information from scanned documents: Use OCR to recognise text in scanned PDFs.
Convert PDFs into other formats: Convert PDFs into Word or Excel files when you want to work with the content.
If you're preparing an information pack for a potential investor, you can convert your financial projections from Excel, add your company overview, arrange everything in the right order and compress the finished PDF before sending it. You can also convert HTML files into PDFs, which comes in handy when you want to share a website layout or exported web content in a format that's easier for someone else to review.
Smallpdf offers free access with usage limits. Consider Pro when you regularly handle documents or want unlimited downloads and advanced editing features.
3. Softr: Build customer portals without coding
As your startup grows, keeping customer information, requests and projects in spreadsheets can become difficult, especially when several people work with the same information.
Softr helps you build customer portals and internal applications without developing everything from scratch. It also lets you control who can access different information through user roles and permissions, which comes in handy when customers and employees use the same system.
You can start with Softr's free plan, which supports up to five app users. Its paid plans offer features such as custom domains and higher usage limits.
Before building anything, think about what you're trying to solve. A startup with five clients probably doesn't need an elaborate portal, but one handling dozens of projects could benefit from giving customers a central place to find updates.
4. Cookiebot: Keep website consent under control
Getting your startup website live is exciting. You've worked on the design, written the content and connected tools to understand your traffic. But have you checked which cookies and trackers your website uses?
Even a simple website can collect information through analytics platforms, advertising tools and third-party services. Consent management tools such as Cookiebot help businesses identify these technologies, explain their use to visitors and manage consent choices.
Cookiebot offers several features that can help:
Automated cookie scanning: Scan your website to identify cookies and tracking technologies.
Customisable consent banners: Give visitors a way to accept or reject different categories of cookies.
Consent records: Keep records of the choices visitors make.
Google Consent Mode support: Help compatible Google services respond to visitor consent choices.
If you use Google Analytics or advertising tags, Cookiebot helps you identify these trackers and manage when they can collect data based on your visitors' choices. As you add plugins and marketing platforms, check whether they introduce new cookies or trackers.
Cookiebot offers a free plan for one website with up to 50 pages. Larger sites or businesses that want premium features will need a paid plan.
5. Loom: Show your team how things work
How often have you arranged a meeting just to show someone how to do something?
Maybe a new team member is struggling with a software tool, or a customer wants to know how a particular feature works. You could explain everything in a long email, but some things are simply easier to demonstrate.
Loom lets you record your screen, camera or both and share the video with someone else.
Say you've asked a freelancer to update a few pages on your website. Instead of writing several paragraphs explaining where to find everything, you can record your screen, show them what to change, and send the video. They can watch it when they're ready, pause at certain points, and return to it if they forget a step.
Loom's free plan allows up to 25 videos per person, with a five-minute recording limit. Upgrade when you regularly create longer videos or need a larger video library.
6. Scribe: Turn everyday processes into simple guides
When you're starting a business, a lot of the important information lives in your head. You know how to send invoices, update customer records and prepare orders because you've been doing those things yourself.
But what happens when you hire someone to help? Scribe helps you document processes by capturing the steps you take while completing a task on your computer. It turns those actions into instructions with screenshots that other people can follow.
When you hire someone to handle customer orders, you can use Scribe to walk them through the process and create a step-by-step guide they can follow whenever they're unsure what to do.
This can help you document everyday tasks such as:
Creating and sending a customer invoice.
Adding a new customer to your database.
Updating product information on your website.
Preparing a weekly report.
Scribe's free plan lets you create guides for browser-based tasks. Paid plans offer desktop application support, branding and additional export options.
As you document more of your everyday tasks, you'll have a collection of guides your team can turn to whenever they're unsure how something works. This is especially handy when you bring in new employees or freelancers, as they can follow the instructions without asking you to explain everything again.
Just remember to keep your guides up to date. If you change your invoicing software or the way you process orders, update the steps so everyone follows the same process.
Finding the right tools for your startup
With so many business tools available, it's easy to end up paying for subscriptions you barely use. Before signing up for anything new, think about which tasks take up the most time or regularly cause problems.
Before signing up for anything new, think about which tasks regularly slow you down. Most of these tools offer free plans, so you can try them before committing to another monthly expense.
Start with one or two, see whether they make your work easier and only upgrade when you have a good reason to. Every subscription adds to your running costs, so make sure it earns its place.