When you’re growing and maintaining a long-term online business, you need good tools.
Whether you’re involved in affiliate marketing, e-commerce, digital agencies, or selling your own products, the right tools and softwares will help you accomplish your tasks efficiently.
On this page, I’m going to list and briefly talk about the tools and software that I use (or have used in the past) in my own online businesses. These are tools that have proved essential for my success.
Web Hosting
SiteGround
SiteGround is the web host that I currently use for my sites. I’ve been with them for years and I think they’re fantastic — probably the best beginner-friendly web host that has affordable shared plans.
What makes SiteGround exceptional is:
- their speed and uptime is extremely good, even on the cheapest shared plans. They beat web hosts like Bluehost, HostGator and GoDaddy soundly in this regard.
- they use the latest cutting-edge technologies and features
- their support is terrific, with 24/7 live chat, phone, and ticket support available
- they offer free professional website transfers
If you’re an online marketer or businessperson, you should have a website. SiteGround is the way to go, no question.
Email Marketing
GetResponse
GetResponse is the platform that I currently use for my email marketing needs. I like them because:
- they’re affordable
- there are multiple plans to choose from
- they are continually improving and coming out with new features
- they can be used an an all-in-one solution for marketing and selling products online
- their autoresponder and workflow technology is excellent
- they have exceptional deliverability
I’ve always been satisfied with how my email campaigns have run with GetResponse. Their excellent customer support (you can connect to live chat quickly at any time) has always been able to address my issues.
AWeber
AWeber is another quality email marketing platform that I have used in the past and had good success with.
What I like about AWeber is that you get access to all of their features right away, without having to sign up to a more expensive plan. The monthly cost only rises if your subscriber count rises.
They are more focused on email marketing and don’t have many of the features that GetResponse has. However, their deliverability has historically been among the best in the industry.
Sales Funnels
ClickFunnels
Have you ever needed to build:
- a landing page
- a sales page
- a members area or product delivery page
- an opt-in or squeeze page
- a thank-you page
- a custom page with video embeds and other elements
Most internet marketers and people working online need to build one or more of these kinds of pages for their business, and ClickFunnels is arguably the best software tool for it.
ClickFunnels is a platform that allows you to build all kinds of sales funnels and market and sell your products online. What distinguishes ClickFunnels from other software tools is the sheer power of its page builder, the ability to easily put together and organize funnels, and the amount of different pages and funnels you can create.
Most of the top online marketers use ClickFunnels in their business and have been using it for years. It’s one of the most valuable tools an online entrepreneur can have in his or her toolbox.
SamCart
SamCart isn’t a tool that everyone will need. However, the fact is that it’s a quality tool run by quality people, and thousands of online entrepreneurs have experienced tremendous success with it.
SamCart is a specialized checkout platform. It allows you to showcase your product and accept orders all on the same page, and these pages are highly customizable.
SamCart has recently made major improvements to the software, including introducing a more affordable plan option and adding a powerful new drag-and-drop page builder.
If you’re interested in marketing and selling your products online, and you want the flexibility to be able to easily manage payments, add integrations, maximize profits and more, you should check out SamCart.
WordPress Plugins
ThirstyAffiliates
If you do any affiliate marketing on your websites, it’s a really good idea to use a link cloaking plugin. This allows you to take an ugly affiliate link and cloak it into a neat, pleasant URL based on your domain name.
ThirstyAffiliates is probably the best link cloaking plugin for that. Not only do they offer link shortening and cloaking, but they also offer a ton of other features including link insertion, link categorization, advanced analytics, and automatic tagging.
Some of the things I like most about ThirstyAffiliates are:
- their plugin is clean and efficient
- you can disable modules you don’t need to make things less cluttered
- they offer a very valuable geolocation feature (PRO version only) that enables you to redirect visitors from different countries to separate pages
I needed geotargeting capabilities for one of my websites, and I didn’t hesitate to pay the small cost for a PRO license.
If you like the link cloaking features that they offer, I wholeheartedly recommend using the plugin. Click the button below and use the code FREEDOMFELLOW15 at checkout to get 15% off.
Thrive Leads
Thrive Leads has been very valuable to me over the years because it has allowed me to collect email addresses and build email lists on my websites.
If you want to present forms and collect emails on your websites, Thrive Leads is definitely one of the best plugins for it. With it, you can:
- create many different types of forms, including in-content, lightbox, footer, ribbon, sidebar widget, scroll mat, and more
- split test forms
- create shortcodes that allow you to flexibly insert forms wherever you want on your site
- view detailed reporting of metrics such as impressions and conversion rates
I’ve been very pleased with the performance of Thrive Leads. Don’t use free lead generation plugins — they suck. Get a quality list-building plugin like Thrive Leads.
Final Words
These are the tools and softwares that I recommend for helping online businesses prosper.
If you’re serious about succeeding online, or you’re already successful online and the functions of these tools line up with your goals, then I strongly urge you to get them as soon as possible.
Trust me, you won’t regret it.