Small business marketing tools: the ones I actually use, and what they cost

Small business marketing tools are easy to collect and hard to use well. Mine fit in one table: one tool per job, and most of them have a free plan or a modest first tier.

Marketing is noisy, and the noise is the point: there is always a new tool, platform or tactic asking for your attention. It is easy for a small team to fall into the shiny object trap and sign up for the next thing instead of getting more out of what already works. So my list is short, and every tool on it does a job that would otherwise be done by hand.

Below you will find the table, how I choose, then each job with who the tool suits, who it does not, and a dated price. Every tool has its own review or tutorial on this blog, linked in its section.

My small business marketing tools at a glance

Prices are for the entry paid plans shown at the time of writing (October 2026).

There is no total at the bottom on purpose. Few businesses need every row, several rows cost nothing, and the right budget depends on the channel that brings you clients. Where a tool bills in US dollars, the pound figure is an approximate conversion.

Websites, hosting and email are not in this table because they have guides of their own: small business websites and domains, hosting and email. A password manager for the logins to all these tools is not in it either: I compare Bitwarden, 1Password and Proton Pass for teams separately.

How I choose a tool, and why the list stays short

My rule is simple, and it is what keeps the list short: a tool should take over a job you already do every week, not create a new one because it looked good in a demo.

In practice:

1. Start from the job, not the tool. List the marketing tasks you repeat each week, then look for help with the one that eats the most time.
2. One tool per job. Two schedulers doing the same work usually means neither is set up properly.
3. Start free, and upgrade when you hit a limit week after week, not one you might hit one day.
4. Test on real work. A month of real posts, bookings or campaigns tells you more than any comparison table, mine included.
5. Decide in advance what would make you cancel, so the subscription does not outlive its use.

Staying put is a skill too: when a tool does the job, the next one has to be much better, not just newer. If you keep adding channels and tools before the first ones have had time to work, read my piece on shiny object syndrome. And choose your marketing channels before your tools: the channel decides which rows of the table you need. If an all-in-one funnel builder tempts you, my comparison of Systeme.io, ClickFunnels and GoHighLevel says when you need none of them.

Design: Canva every day, Affinity or Adobe for heavy work

I use Canva every day for little tasks, the small visuals a business needs all the time. Not having Canva for my work would be like not having a kettle in the house. For heavy work, I move to Affinity or the Adobe suite.

Canva suits anyone who makes visuals often without being a designer. The free plan covers a lot, including one Brand Kit for your colours, logos and fonts, and 5 GB of storage. Canva Pro adds the premium library and the time-savers, such as resizing a design for each network, translation and background removal. At the time of writing it costs about £100 a year for one person in the UK ($120 in the US); check your own figure on Canva’s pricing page. I weigh the free plan against Pro in is Canva Pro worth it.

Canva is not the right tool for precise, heavy work such as building a brand identity, drawing a logo from scratch or laying out a long print document. Affinity, which Canva bought in 2024 and relaunched in October 2025 as one free app for Mac and Windows, covers vector, photo and layout work; its built-in Canva AI tools need a paid Canva plan. Adobe remains the safer choice when you exchange files with designers who work in Photoshop or Illustrator. I compare the three in Canva vs Adobe vs Affinity.

Social media scheduling: Metricool or Postly

Metricool is the scheduler I recommend first. Beyond planning your posts, it lets you watch what your competitors publish, especially the ones that are succeeding, and analyse your own growth. Its first paid tier is generous with accounts: up to five brands for about £15 ($20) a month billed yearly, at the time of writing. The free plan covers one brand and 20 scheduled posts a month, on every major network except LinkedIn and X.

Postly is good enough to get you going, and besides social networks it can post to Google Business Profile and WordPress. Its Pro plan starts at $16 (about £12) a month, billed yearly, for five channels. Look at Postly’s own site and at AppSumo, where deals come and go, then pick your favourite based on your needs. The full comparison, with Buffer, is in social media scheduling tools for a small business.

A scheduler saves time; it does not pick your network for you. For most small businesses, Pinterest and YouTube Shorts keep working long after you post, while Instagram, TikTok and Facebook make you post constantly to stay visible. My guide to the best social media for a small business shows where your time pays off.

Booking calls: YouCanBookMe, though Calendly is good too

A booking tool connects to your calendar and lets clients choose a free slot from a link, with no email back-and-forth. I use YouCanBookMe: it has the Calendly features I need, the team behind it is smaller, I find my way around it easily, and it costs a bit less. It runs the booking calendar for the free 15-minute call on the MLK Leadhunters contact page.

Calendly is a good tool too, don’t get me wrong, and it is the better pick for sales teams that rely on its integrations and routing forms. On monthly billing, YouCanBookMe’s first paid plan costs $9 (about £7) a month against $12 (about £9) for Calendly’s, at the time of writing, and both have a free plan. The details are in Calendly vs YouCanBookMe.

For many solo businesses, YouCanBookMe’s free plan is enough: one booking page connected to one calendar, with a “Powered for free” button on the page. The setup, step by step, is in how to set up a free online booking system.

Keyword research: Semrush, or Google’s free tools

I use Semrush mainly for keyword research, and to see which keywords advertisers pay for and what each click costs them. That cost per click shows which searches bring business, so I can win those keywords with SEO instead of paying for ads.

Semrush suits people who research keywords every week, for several websites or for clients. For a single small business website, the free account, limited to 10 requests a day, plus Google’s free tools such as Google Search Console, usually does the job. The Pro plan costs $139.95 (about £105) a month, or $117.33 (about £89) a month billed yearly, according to Semrush’s pricing and limits page at the time of writing. My full review is is Semrush worth it for a small business.

The tool matters less than the method: start from the words your clients already use, as in keyword research for a small business, and give each search its own page. The rest of the work is in my small business SEO guide.

Visitor behaviour: Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity is free, and it shows what visit counts cannot: where visitors engage the most, whether they came for something specific, and which parts of a page make them leave. From there I can work out whether the copy, a picture or the layout is to blame, and fix it.

Its heatmaps show where people click and how far they scroll, its recordings replay real visits, and its dashboard flags frustration signals such as rage clicks, dead clicks and quick backs. It suits any small business website with steady traffic; with a handful of visits a week, there is not much to watch yet.

Hotjar earns its place when you also want on-site surveys, which Clarity does not offer. It is now part of Contentsquare, where new users sign up, and Contentsquare’s free plan covers up to 200,000 sessions a month at the time of writing. I compare the two in Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar, and the installation is in how to use Microsoft Clarity.

Prospecting: Instantly, Reoon and Outscraper

Prospecting is the part of this stack closest to my cold emailing work, and the one where a cheap shortcut costs the most: a dirty list bounces, and bounces wear down your sending domains. Three tools cover the three jobs. And to answer the usual objection: cold emailing companies is legal in the UK and France when you follow the B2B rules, set out in my B2B cold emailing guide.

Instantly, to send

I use Instantly because it is straightforward and has good settings to keep your emails out of spam. I started with it and have found no reason to change: once you have the right recipe, it simply runs. The Growth plan costs $47 (about £35) a month at the time of writing, with unlimited mailboxes and warm-up, and room for 5,000 emails a month and 1,000 uploaded contacts. The setup is in my Instantly tutorial, and the mailboxes you send from are a choice of their own, covered in the best email provider for cold email. A newsletter to people who signed up is a different job: my comparison of Brevo, MailerLite, Mailchimp, Kit and beehiiv covers the tools for it.

Reoon, to verify

Reoon is well priced for a verifier, and you can get a good deal on AppSumo: the starter tier there was about £60 ($79) for 100,000 verifications plus 500 a day, which is plenty, and higher tiers go up to 700,000, with more credits available if you need them. Those are my figures, so check the current deal. My lists go through Reoon before any campaign; the architect list for Pilotech’s campaigns was verified with it, as the architects case study tells. The method is in email list verification with Reoon.

Outscraper, to find

Outscraper turns a Google Maps search, such as “plumbers in Leeds”, into a spreadsheet of businesses with their contact details. The way I use it, a lead costs about €0.003 (a quarter of a penny), and about €0.006 (half a penny) per active, qualified lead once the list is verified. It only finds businesses listed on Google, so for companies without a Google listing you will need another source. At the time of writing, the first 500 businesses are free every 30 days, then it costs about £2.25 ($3) per 1,000. The walkthrough is in Google Maps scraper for B2B leads.

Sending large files: SwissTransfer

For files too big for email, such as photos, videos or print-ready designs, I recommend SwissTransfer. It is run by Infomaniak, a Swiss host I discovered through clients and recommend highly (see my Infomaniak review), and I find it much better than WeTransfer. At the time of writing, it sends up to 50 GB per transfer for free, with no account, and keeps files online for up to 30 days.

WeTransfer’s free plan now stops at 10 transfers or 3 GB in total over 30 days, and its files expire after 3 days. It still makes sense for a team that already pays for it. The full comparison is in why I recommend SwissTransfer as a WeTransfer alternative.

AI: Claude, with Research for copy and keywords

I use Claude. In my work, ChatGPT tends to make things up a bit too often, while Claude, and its Fable 5.1 model especially, has been extremely accurate. That is my experience, not a benchmark, so test both on your own tasks; each has a free plan. My full comparison is Claude vs ChatGPT for business.

For marketing, I use Research, Claude’s deep research mode, for copywriting and SEO: to find what people complain about most, which gives me the words for the copy, and which keywords keep coming back, and in which niches. The method is in how to use Deep Research for copywriting and SEO.

Research is not on the free plan. Pro costs $20 a month in the US before tax ($17 a month billed yearly) and includes it; Fable 5.1 is paid on top, through usage credits. Anthropic shows prices in your local currency where it supports it, so check Claude’s pricing page before you subscribe. For uses beyond writing, from automations to the rules on client data, see AI for small business.

AppSumo and lifetime deals: a bit like a casino

AppSumo sells lifetime deals on software: you pay once instead of every month. Of everything I bought there, Reoon is the only tool I use every single day, and I regret missing a few SEO and automation tools because their deadline passed before I decided.

Be careful, though: AppSumo is a bit like a casino. Everything looks cheap, so you end up spending a lot; not everything is worth it; and some tools stop working eventually, for example when the company behind them closes. Your safety net is the refund window, 60 days on most deals at the time of writing. Only buy a tool for a job you already do, and test it on real work before the window closes. My full take is in is AppSumo worth it.

What you can run for free

You can cover most of these jobs without paying anything, which is the right way to start:

• Design: Canva’s free plan, and Affinity for heavier work.
• Social posts: Metricool’s free plan, for one brand and 20 scheduled posts a month.
• Bookings: YouCanBookMe’s free plan, with one booking page.
• Keywords: Semrush’s free account, plus Google’s own tools (Search Console, Keyword Planner and Google Trends).
• Visitor behaviour: Microsoft Clarity.
• Lead lists: Outscraper’s first 500 businesses every 30 days.
• Large files: SwissTransfer.
• AI: Claude’s free plan, without Research.

Pay first for the tool behind the channel that already brings you clients. If clients come from cold emails, that means the sending tool, since Instantly’s plans are all paid, and a verifier. If they find you on Google, a paid SEO tool makes sense once you research keywords every week. Everything else can wait until a free limit gets in your way.

When no tool fits: build your own

Sometimes the right tool does not exist, or your process needs five tools that do not talk to each other. I build SaaS tools for my own use, not for sale, so I know what it feels like to need something and build the solution.

That is what happened with Pilotech, an air conditioning installer near Paris. I brought the company so many prospects that the team could not keep up, and Pilotech asked me to build an app to see everything clearly and never miss a call-back or a reply. The result is a custom-coded internal tool that manages prospects, job sites, communication with the employees, the calendar and accounting analytics, with AI and phone integrations.

Most small businesses do not need this. If your process is simply enquiry, quote, won or lost, a free CRM or a spreadsheet with reminders will serve you better. When building makes sense is the subject of bespoke CRM for a small business.

Next steps: build your stack this week

1. List the marketing jobs you do every week, with the time each one takes.
2. Next to each job, write the tool you use now and what it costs.
3. Remove duplicates, so you keep one tool per job.
4. For the job that costs you the most time, try the free option from the table above.
5. Upgrade only when a free limit keeps blocking you, and test the paid plan on a month of real work.
6. Put every renewal date in your calendar a week ahead, with one question: did this tool earn its price?

If one row of the table matters more than the others for your business, start with its linked review: it goes further than this overview.