As a startup, I always find it very interesting to hear what software and tools other startups are using. I thought it would be cool to share with everyone what startup tools we use here at MagLoft to run our business. Some of these are minor startup tools that are nicer to have, and others have a huge impact on our business.
Communication
Intercom
This is by far the most important tool we use for communicating with clients and users! Intercom has 4 main components (platform, inbox, messages, and articles) and they all tie together beautifully. It allows us to track important events and attributes of our users. Stay in touch with customers via live chat and conversation.
Setup and configure automated messages that get sent to specific leads and users with the right message at the right time. Build out a huge library of help articles that get automatically suggested to users based on the conversation topics. I could write an entire article just on Intercom alone. It’s awesome so check it out!
Asana
All of our projects and tasks are managed in Asana. We have used Asana since day 1 and find it very simple and easy to use. It does what it says on the box very well. We have not yet had the need for bloated project management startup tools and are happy to keep things simple. We use Asana projects for daily operations, checklists, recruiting, prioritization, development planning and so much more.
Slack
This is our first stop for internal communications. We use Slack a lot for communicating via chat and have of course plugged in a bunch of apps so we get an overview of different messages from payment system to Git commits. This is also where we share project updates and progress internally.
Skype
For live calls with the team, customers and partners we use Skype. I’m sure there are other and better alternatives out there, but everyone seems to have a Skype account, and it’s very convenient when we need to do screen sharing.
Payments
Stripe
We use Stripe as our payment processor. It’s an incredible tool but definitely more aimed at developers. It’s not as easy to set up and use as PayPal, but it allows us to customize our checkout process exactly as we want it. Stripe comes with a ton of security features and tools that make sure we stay PCI compliant.
Stunning
This is a great tool for automated dunning service which plugs right into Stripe. We used this to set up automated emails that would go out to customers who missed payments. It will also send out reminders when their cards are about to expire.
ChartMogul
This is an awesome analytics tool for measuring KPIs like MRR, LTV, Churn, and more. ChartMogul also plugs straight into Stripe and you can connect it with additional apps to enrich your customer information. It also hooks into Intercom so we can pass on information about our users and events and segment based on these in ChartMogul.
Administration
Xero
I’m personally super happy we started using Xero way back. It’s incredibly convenient for us to keep track of everything financial. It makes it incredibly easy for us to export reports for our accounting company when we get to our financial year-end. The key here is consistently reconciling your accounts and making sure that every expense has a bill/invoice attached.
Cezanne
This is a HR tool we use to keep track of our team members. It’s quite advanced and offers a lot of features. We use it to keep track of team member records, changes to contracts, tracking vacation and more.
Acuity Scheduling (replaced with HubSpot)
By far this is the best booking system we have used, and we have tried a lot! You can see it in action by going to our online booking page (opens in a new tab). As we work with clients all around the world, it’s quite challenging to find dates/times that work for everyone. With Acuity, we simply let customers find a date/time that works for them in their timezone and that is available in our calendars. They can then directly book a call with one of our team members and everyone is notified and followed up automatically.
Advertising
Wordstream
We don’t do a great deal of paid advertising, but we mainly use Google Adwords and Facebook Ads for this. Wordstream is a great little admin tool that gives you a 20 minute workweek of tasks, based on the performance of your campaigns. It will also show aggregated statistics on performance and conversion rates.
The Hoth
This is a managed SEO service we started using around November 2017. As we don’t have a dedicated content writer on our team we were looking for alternatives and stumbled across The Hoth. So far they have been amazing and we have been very happy with the results we are getting.
With a managed SEO service we provide them with a monthly budget which they will propose how to invest. The allocation will be based on initial and on-going SEO and competitor analysis to find keywords and articles with the biggest potential for improvements.
Feedback
Inspectlet
This is a great app that records how our users are interacting with our app. This allows us to see where users are having a hard time using our platform. This is incredibly valuable for us! Now we have actual video of what users are doing in our app. We can see where they get stuck and what parts of our app we need to improve on. We use this information to plan out new monthly improvements for MagLoft.
Startup Tools Questions?
This was just a selection of some of the startup tools we use here at MagLoft. If you have any questions or would like to know what we use for certain other aspects of the business, please feel free to comment or reach out to us.
