Tools such as web hosting providers, CDNs, and email marketing software can help you build a website and market your business. Learn more about the best web hosting companies, domain registration tools, website builders, marketing tools, and more.
Web Host and Domain Registration Tools
Choosing the right web host and domain name registrar is key to establishing a successful site. You have several options.
Linode
Linode is a cloud-hosting company with over 40,000 customers. Compared to titans like DigitalOcean, Linode offers competitive prices and invaluable hosting features.
Besides ensuring 99.9% uptime, the Linode Manager mobile app provides a straightforward and content-rich user interface. SSD storage is standard with every VPS, so everything moves super fast. And with a programmable API, a virtual console in case you can’t get to your server, and a simple stack deployer, you’ll always have what you need.
SiteGround
If you’re looking for a cheap web hosting provider that offers the latest technology and fast speeds, give SiteGround some serious consideration.
This host provides free daily backups and restores a domain name, SSD storage, and a website builder. There’s 24/7 support, and the team can help you transfer an existing website at no cost when you initially sign up.
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Uniregistry
Whether you’re after the standard .com or something more quirky, Uniregistry is a great choice for your domain registration needs. It’s a well-known and affordable registrar offering hundreds of domain extensions and a simple domain name manager.
Unlike many competitors, Uniregistry includes WHOIS privacy free with each domain. The interface is user-friendly, whether you want to register a new domain or sell off domains you no longer use.
Uniregistry has also partnered with G Suite so that you can get it at a discount.
Website Builder Tools
There’s no reason to be overwhelmed while putting together your new website. Use these tools to build your website.
WordPress
WordPress is a free and versatile open-source content management system that needs little introduction. It’s universally known as the go-to choice for small businesses with little or no experience in website management.
Millions of sites are powered by WordPress. With tens of thousands of plugins to help refine whatever website you’re designing, you’ll find that WordPress is extensible and flexible. Use it to quickly get a visually pleasing, organized, and functional site online.
Genesis WordPress Framework
Genesis is a very popular WordPress theme framework by StudioPress. And like all StudioPress themes, it’s search engine friendly. State-of-the-art code and smart design architecture will ensure search engine crawlers can index your content without errors.
Genesis child themes are mobile responsive and built using HTML 5, making them functional and future-proof.
Altitude Pro Theme
Altitude Pro is not just another WordPress theme; with Genesis’ underlying framework, the functionality and aesthetics are boosted. Customize your site with several different nifty theme options and optimize it for mobile screens.
With Altitude Pro, you can have a brand-new website up and running with just a few clicks.
Genesis is already bursting with beautiful themes, but give Altitude Pro a look if you want a rapid solution.
HTML.com
HTML is the code that displays the content of web pages, along with various scripting languages and styles. If you’re looking to make your website, it’s necessary to know the basics of HTML. Even if you plan on using a drag-and-drop designer, it’s still handy to know how to make tweaks or use custom code to get things done.
If you want to learn anything more complicated than how to italicize text, HTML.com is a great starting point. It’s a simple step-by-step course, and you can use it as a handy reference guide. The information is all there, in an easy-to-learn format. Even if you just need a quick cheat sheet when you’ve forgotten your basics, HTML.com is your new go-to.
VaultPress
Make sure you have a reliable backup service that takes regular backups of your WordPress website.
VaultPress is a reliable contingency measure to include in your small business toolkit in the event of malicious attacks, outages, and natural disasters. It automatically backs up your site and allows you to view backups by hour, day, month, or year.
VaultPress also has a stats page that shows you when your posts are published and when visitors post comments. You have three pricing plans, and there are no long-term contracts.
DummyText.com
When making a website from scratch, it’s necessary to check the integrity of the text boxes, fonts, and other text-based areas of the pages. That’s why designers use placeholder text, otherwise known as dummy text.
This often manifests itself as lorem ipsum, a scrambled Latin passage that passes for accurate English without being distracting.
Adding dummy text to your infant site can sometimes be difficult and leave remnants of code in your HTML that could be a nightmare to remove. Thankfully, DummyText.com provides a much simpler solution.
By injecting a small script into the code, the site is immediately populated with as much lorem ipsum as you need. It takes a few small tweaks to tailor it to your site.
If programming isn’t your strong point, the site also includes an easy script generator that will generate the syntax for however many lines of dummy text you need.
This is a great resource if you just need a quick solution.
PrivacyPolicies.com
Writing a privacy policy can be pretty boring. Worse yet, attorneys can cost copious amounts of money, even though every privacy policy seems to look the same.
PrivacyPolicies.com is here to save the day. If you run a commercial website, you can pay a small $20 fee to generate a robust privacy policy tailored to your site’s needs. For other sites, it’s free.
The generator will adapt to your country’s requirements so that non-US websites can use it safely. Just tick a few boxes about how your site collects information, and you’re on your way.
The website says, “every website needs a privacy policy.” Don’t let a small oversight lead to a big lawsuit.
Website Performance Tools
Once your site is up and running, ensure it’s optimized for top performance using these online tools and services.
Comodo SSL Certificates
Encryption is necessary for any website that sells a product or stores sensitive information. Without it, malicious users could access passwords, addresses, and credit card information.
That’s where SSL certification comes in. Comodo is a leading provider of SSL digital certificates for home offices, businesses, e-commerce stores, and enterprises.
Trusted by all browsers, the company provides 256-bit encryption, unlimited server licenses, phone support, and a $250,000 warranty. Different packages are available at specific price points.
With an SSL certificate, you can encourage visitors to browse your site and make purchases with peace of mind.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a global content delivery network (CDN) with a robust infrastructure. It has POPs on every major continent in the world. You’ll be connected to the nearest server no matter where you are on Earth. That means no more slow loading times.
There’s a free plan for small websites, and the company offers more robust monthly plans beginning at $20. All plans include Cloudflare’s acclaimed DDoS protection, SSL encryption, and up-to-date internet protocols.
Cloudflare was built on a mission to provide the Internet with a reliable, secure CDN, and it has been very successful.
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Google Search Console
Once your website is up and running, website analytics will help you understand what’s going right and what needs to change. Here’s where Google Search Console can be of assistance. It’s a free SEO diagnostic and monitoring tool that provides information about your website and visitors.
You can use it to measure fundamental statistics, like:
- The number of people visiting your site
- The most popular pages
- Whether more people visit from desktop or mobile.
You can also identify and fix website errors, create a robots.txt file, and submit a sitemap to Google.
It’s an invaluable tool and ideal for businesses without money for expensive alternatives.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a very popular service consisting of custom reports, remarketing options, multi-channel funnels, and more. The free web analytics service also offers statistics for search engine optimization and marketing purposes.
Knowing your audience is vital to constructing a successful business website. Use Google Analytics to:
- Find out how visitors locate your website
- Segment visitors
- Fine-tune your website to improve the user experience.
Instead of using expensive, resource-hogging tools, this is the complete solution to help identify your audience and find optimization opportunities.
Down.com
Downtime is a killer for any website. But is it the fault of your hosting company? If you can’t load a site, it could be because of a problem with your internet connection, and there’s nothing the host can do if that’s the case.
With Down.com, you can quickly check if any website is offline. Type the domain name into the text box on the homepage, and click the Check Website button. It will instantly tell you if the website is offline.
You can use this tool to test your website or any website on the internet to see if it’s up or not.
Down.com also publishes web hosting reviews that make it easy to compare speed, uptime, and support response time for dozens of popular hosting providers. That way, you can see the hosts that offered the best uptime in genuine user tests.
Website Marketing Tools
These small business marketing tools will ensure your site reaches its target audience.
Rankinity
Keeping track of your website’s performance on search engines can be frustrating and time-consuming. Rankinity, a cloud-based keyword rank-tracking service, does this for you. With intuitive graphs, it informs you about your search rankings and competitors’ rankings so you can stay ahead of the game.
Rankinity’s affordable and advanced tracking delivers real-time information, so you can constantly adjust your business marketing efforts to improve your rankings. Instead of floundering blindly and hoping Google will notice you, this tool helps you to get on top of website promotion.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a backlink and competitor SEO research tool that uses its crawler to bring you the latest intel. The index collects information from 6 billion web pages and updates it every 15 minutes.
As a member, you can make the most of its SERPs analysis and site explorer, and see detailed information about backlinks you’ve won and lost over time.
Whether you’re spying on your competitors or analyzing your traffic, Ahrefs is the best way to go about it.
MailChimp
Email should be essential to your lead and customer engagement strategy. MailChimp is a valuable email marketing software platform to consider. More than 10 million businesses use MailChimp to promote and distribute content.
You can use the service to send attention-grabbing emails to customers and easily streamline the email engagement process. Even with the free basic plan, building great-looking, automated small business marketing material is child’s play. And upgrading provides even more helpful tools.
Whether you’re new to the game or have thousands of subscribers, MailChimp is easy to use and well-regarded. Implementing a good marketing strategy is one of the most important parts of developing a website, so don’t neglect email in your strategy.
Social Warfare
Social Warfare is a lightweight, fast WordPress plugin with great features.
Along with modern and appealing social buttons, it includes a tweet counter, analytics to see who has clicked on your social buttons, and shortcodes to add buttons wherever you need them.
Having attractive share buttons vastly increases the chance of visitors clicking them. Along with all the other features and the analytics tracker, Social Warfare is worth the investment.
Online Small Business Tools
Keep a handle on the inner workings of your business with these handy tools.
G Suite
Google G Suite is a cloud-based office application. Members of your team can work simultaneously on a single document without the need to send each other multiple versions or corrections.
Millions of businesses use G Suite to facilitate team communication, collaboration, and productivity. G Suite offers email, calendars, and messaging, which means you can use one streamlined product instead of separate programs.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks is a cloud-based accounting package for business owners who want to place, create, and manage mail invoices in one place.
It is ideal for newbie small business owners, businesses with a few clients, companies that send out invoices every few weeks, and those who want to track the time they spend on a project.
FreshBooks offers several useful features, including:
- Faster billing
- Automated collections
- Recurring charges
It can also be integrated with other sites and applications, making it the go-to for cleanly tracking your invoices.
PayPal
PayPal iss the gargantuan leader in online payments and a go-to service for small businesses. Using PayPal, it’s easier than ever to send and receive money online.
Most online vendors integrate with PayPal, and you should be one of them. You can use the service as a primary means to be paid by your users, though that’s more typical of freelance writers and artists.
PayPal also allows you to create invoices directly on its website.
Skype
Skype is a market leader in the VOIP and messaging market, with over 300 million monthly users. It’s an invaluable application for free communicate with team members, freelancers, and other entrepreneurs.
The Skype application offers screen sharing, group voice and video calls, instant messaging, and premium services. The company also has a separate product, Skype for Business, aimed at companies that need reliable VOIP services.
Conclusion
Now that you have all the tools to set your small business up for success, there’s no stopping you! You can also refer to the following helpful guides for more information: