Best Software for Small Business: 12 Affordable Tools

Small businesses do not need more software for the sake of software. They need tools that save time, make everyday work easier and help keep the business moving.

The best software for small business should solve a clear problem — taking payments, managing bookings, keeping track of customers, creating marketing content or simply making sure nothing important gets forgotten.

The difficult bit is choosing what actually deserves a place in your business. There are thousands of apps for small business, and many solve slightly different versions of the same problem.

So we have kept this list practical. These 12 tools cover the main jobs a small service business is likely to deal with, from accounting and appointments to marketing and design. You probably will not need all of them. The aim is to find the few that make your week noticeably easier.

If you are still deciding which parts of marketing deserve your time and budget, start with our guide to how to create a marketing plan for small business.

Key takeaways

• Choose software around a job you genuinely need to do, not an impressive feature list.
• Start with the areas that affect customers and cash flow most directly: money, bookings, communication and follow-up.
• Use free plans and trials to test a real task before committing.
• Check whether your tools integrate before creating extra admin for yourself.
• Buy for the business you have today. Upgrade when you actually reach the limits.

The best software for small business at a glance

Category	Software	Best for
Accounting	Xero	Bookkeeping, invoices and UK tax admin
Payments	SumUp	Simple in-person card payments
Booking	Fresha	Salons, beauty and appointment-led teams
Booking	Calendly	Calls, consultations and simple appointments
Website	Wix	Building a professional small-business website
Email	Brevo	Newsletters and customer email campaigns
Social media	Buffer	Scheduling content across social channels
CRM	HubSpot CRM	Tracking leads and customer conversations
Messaging	WhatsApp Business	Quick customer communication
Marketing	Peerie	Planning and carrying out small-business marketing
Organisation	Trello	Tasks, projects and recurring work
Design	Canva	Graphics, flyers and marketing materials

Prices and plans change regularly, so always check the latest terms before subscribing.

Money in, money out: accounting and payment software

Xero

Xero is cloud accounting software widely used by UK small businesses. It covers invoicing, bank reconciliation, expenses, cash-flow tracking and VAT, with support for Making Tax Digital.

Who it suits: small businesses that invoice customers, reconcile a business bank account or work with an accountant.

Key benefit: you and your accountant can work from the same records without passing spreadsheets backwards and forwards.

Pricing: UK plans start at around £16 a month, with higher tiers adding more features. Xero also offers a free trial and regularly runs introductory discounts.

SumUp

SumUp is a payment app and card-reader system for businesses that take payments face to face.

Who it suits: local service businesses taking in-person card payments without wanting a traditional card-terminal contract.

Key benefit: the standard setup has no fixed monthly subscription. You pay when customers pay you.

Pricing: card readers generally start at around £25–£39, with a standard transaction fee of 1.69%. SumUp also offers a monthly plan with a lower transaction rate for businesses processing more payments.

Getting booked: scheduling and appointment software

Fresha

Fresha is booking and point-of-sale software designed around salons, spas, barbers and other beauty and wellness businesses. Customers can book online, while you manage appointments, staff schedules, client details and payments from one place.

Who it suits: beauty salons, hair businesses and other appointment-led businesses, particularly those with several team members or services.

Key benefit: the booking experience is built around the way beauty and wellness businesses actually operate rather than being a generic calendar with a booking button added.

Pricing: Fresha moved away from its old free-forever model in 2025. Pricing now starts at roughly £15–£20 a month for solo businesses, with pricing varying by team setup and extra fees for some marketplace bookings and payment services.

Calendly

Calendly is much simpler. You connect your calendar, choose when you are available and share a booking link. Someone selects a time, and the appointment appears in your diary.

Who it suits: coaches, consultants and other professionals booking calls or straightforward one-to-one appointments.

Key benefit: it removes the back-and-forth of arranging a time manually.

Pricing: there is a free plan for basic scheduling. Paid plans start at around £10 per user a month when you need more event types, integrations or team features.

Your shop window: website software

Wix

Wix is a drag-and-drop website builder that lets you create a professional-looking site without writing code. It includes templates for service businesses and can be extended with bookings, payments, and e-commerce features.

Who it suits: small businesses that need a straightforward professional website they can manage themselves.

Key benefit: you can update your own site without relying on a developer every time a price, service or team member changes.

Pricing: you can build and test a site for free with Wix branding. Paid plans are needed for your own domain and most business features, with plans starting at roughly £16 a month depending on the package.

If getting found through Google matters to your business, our local SEO guide covers what needs to happen beyond simply putting the site online.

Reaching people: email software and messaging apps

Brevo

Brevo is an email marketing platform for newsletters, promotional campaigns, automated emails, and customer communication.

Who it suits: small businesses that want to stay in touch with customers or leads through email.

Key benefit: its free plan gives small businesses a practical way to start email marketing before a larger list makes a paid plan worthwhile.

Pricing: a free plan is available, with paid plans increasing sending capacity and adding extra marketing features.

WhatsApp Business

WhatsApp Business is the business version of WhatsApp, with features such as a business profile, quick replies, automated messages and product or service information.

Who it suits: small service businesses whose customers already prefer messaging.

Key benefit: it is familiar to customers and requires very little setup or training.

Pricing: the standard WhatsApp Business app is free.

_{Direct marketing by email or messaging services such as WhatsApp is subject to privacy and electronic marketing rules, including requirements relating to consent, personal data and the use of contact details for marketing purposes. Email and messaging software may help you manage contacts, consent records and opt-outs, but using these tools does not in itself ensure compliance. This information is not legal advice. If you are unsure which rules apply to your business or how you contact customers, seek advice from a qualified legal professional.}

Creating and sharing content: design and social media tools

Canva

Canva is a drag-and-drop design platform for creating social media graphics, flyers, presentations, price lists, videos and other marketing materials.

Who it suits: small businesses creating their own marketing materials.

Key benefit: templates make it much faster to create polished content without learning professional design software.

Pricing: Canva has a useful free plan. Canva Pro adds premium templates, brand tools, and additional features for businesses that use it more heavily.

Buffer

Buffer lets you plan and schedule social media posts in advance across channels including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

Who it suits: businesses posting regularly on a small number of social platforms.

Key benefit: you can prepare several posts together and schedule them instead of stopping work every time something needs publishing.

Pricing: Buffer has a free plan for up to three channels. Paid plans are available when you need more channels, users or publishing features.

Buffer helps with publishing. It does not decide what your business should post in the first place.

If choosing the right channels is the harder part, see our guide on how to choose the right social media platform for your business.

Planning and executing your marketing

Peerie

Peerie is built for small service businesses that need a clearer way to plan and carry out their marketing. It creates an industry-specific marketing plan, turns that plan into weekly action steps and gives you practical resources and AI assistants to help with the work behind them.

There is also a peer community for learning from other small-business owners working through similar marketing challenges.

Who it suits: small services businesses that want to market consistently without building an in-house marketing team.

Key benefit: it connects the planning and the doing. Instead of collecting marketing tools first and working out what to do with them afterwards, you have a clearer plan for what matters and what to work on next.

Pricing: Peerie is currently open for early-access sign-ups, with a 14-day free trial and subscription pricing after that.

Sign up for early access

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Staying on top of customers: CRM

HubSpot CRM

A CRM keeps track of leads and customers: who they are, what they asked about, when you last spoke and what needs to happen next. HubSpot’s free CRM is a useful starting point for a business that has outgrown a spreadsheet but does not need a complicated sales system.

Who it suits: coaches, consultants and service businesses where an enquiry may involve several conversations before someone books.

Key benefit: contact details, notes and follow-ups stay together instead of being spread across email threads and spreadsheets.

Pricing: HubSpot offers a free CRM for small teams, with paid plans available as you add more advanced sales and marketing features.

Getting things done: organisation tools

Trello

Trello is a visual task-management tool based around boards, lists, and cards. You might have columns for “to do”, “in progress” and “done”, then move each piece of work across as it progresses.

Who it suits: solo owners and small teams that want a simple way to organise client work, recurring admin or marketing tasks.

Key benefit: you can see the workload at a glance instead of keeping everything in your head.

Pricing: the free plan includes unlimited cards and up to 10 boards per workspace. Paid plans add more automation, views, and collaboration features.

How to choose the right software for your small business

Twelve tools is still a lot to look at. The best software for small business is not the software with the longest feature list — it is the software that solves a problem you actually have.

Start with the job, not the app

Instead of asking which apps for small business you should have, ask what is currently costing you the most time.

• Are you chasing invoices?
• Rearranging appointments manually?
• Losing track of enquiries?
• Spending an hour deciding what to post?

Start there. One tool that removes a recurring headache is much more useful than five apps you might need eventually.

Check what it needs to connect with

Your booking software may need to connect to your calendar.

Your payment tool may need to work with your accounting software.

Your website may need to send enquiries into your CRM.

Check integrations before you commit. Otherwise, you can end up re-entering the same information in several places.

Use the free trial for real work

Do not spend the trial clicking around menus.

• Send a test invoice.
• Create a real appointment type.
• Schedule a real post.
• Ask a team member to use it too.

One genuine task will tell you more than another product demo.

Think about who else needs to use it

If employees, freelancers, or your accountant also need access, make sure the software works for them too.

A system only saves time when people actually use it.

Check the full cost

A £12 subscription does not sound like much. Neither does another one for £19, or another for £8.

Look at what the whole software stack costs over a year, including extra users, transaction fees and paid add-ons.

Include marketing subscriptions when working out your small business marketing budget, rather than treating every app as an unrelated expense.

Buy for the business you have now

It is tempting to choose software for the business you might have in three years. That often means paying for complexity long before you need it.

Choose what works today, but check that there is a sensible upgrade path.

Move to the next plan when the limits become a real problem rather than a theoretical one.

Building a simple small-business software stack

If you are starting from scratch, keep the first version simple.

A local service business might use Xero for accounts, SumUp for payments, Calendly for bookings, Wix for its website, Peerie for marketing, Canva for design, and WhatsApp Business for quick customer communication.

Then add software when there is a clear reason.

• If enquiries are getting hard to follow, add a CRM.
• If you are building an email list, add Brevo.
• If posting manually is taking too much time, add Buffer.
• If projects are getting harder to track, bring in Trello.

The best software for small business should make the business simpler to run. If managing the tools starts taking more time than the work they were supposed to save, it is worth reviewing the stack again.

_{Peerie is our own product. Unless stated otherwise, we are not affiliated with or endorsed by the other companies featured in this article. Product names, trademarks and website screenshots are the property of their respective owners. Screenshots are included for identification and review purposes, with links to the relevant providers.}

_{The features, pricing and terms referred to in this article reflect the information publicly available on the date of publication and may subsequently change. Please refer to each provider’s official website for the most current information before making any purchasing or subscription decision.}