Small Business Owners Identify Their Favorite Software

QuickBooks Most Popular

The overwhelmingly most popular software that small business owners who responded consider as a “must have” is Intuit’s QuckBooks, a cloud-based accounting and financial management software. The widely popular program is designed for small businesses and is relatively cheap with varying price tiers. It provides relatively simple accounting and bookkeeping needs.

QuickBooks primary competitors include Xero, FreshBooks and Wave.

Small business owners who responded cited QuickBooks’ ease-of-use and it’s all-in-one features. The program can be used for:

• Accounting and bookkeeping. QuickBooks is able to automates transaction categories, bank reconciliations, and general ledger entries.

• Invoice creation and payment tracking. Creates professional, customizable invoices, tracks their status, and accepts payments online.

• Automatic expense tracking. The program monitors syncs small business accounts bank accounts with credit cards and widely used apps such as PayPal Venmo.

• Payroll Management: QuickBooks can process employee payroll for small businesses, including calculating tax withdrawals from paychecks.

• Financial management. The program also reports such P&L statements, manages balance sheets and cash flow statements.

• Track Inventory: QuickBooks is capable of tracking stock levels for physical products.

“The most foundational software for our cleaning company has been QuickBooks Online,” said Joseph Passalacqua, owner of New York-based Maid Sailors. QuickBooks did more than organize our books; it provided the financial insight we needed to guide pricing, purchasing and long-term planning decisions with confidence.”

For Marc Pamatian, founder of Chief Bookkeeping Officer, the best aspect of QuickBooks is its multi-usability and flexibility, “This flexibility is invaluable because it lets you stay on top of your cash flow and financial reports without being tied to a desk,” he said. “Additionally, the platform is designed to integrate easily with other business tools, which can simplify tasks like payroll or inventory management. For any small business, accurate and easy-to-manage financial tracking is key, and QuickBooks Online does a great job of providing that in a practical, straightforward way.”

Dat Ngo, a CPA at Vetter Prop Firms, QuickBooks provides precision accounting and bookkeeping in a user-friendly way. “For small businesses, it is very important to have financial clarity,” he said. “For this reason, cloud accounting software such as Quickbooks, which automates bank reconciliations, reduces human errors in important reports or improves cash flow visibility, are tools that cannot be missing.”

Shopify Among Favorite in Online Selling

The second most popular software tool that responding small businesses owners pointed to as “must have” is Shopify, a cloud-based ecommerce platform that allows businesses to create customized online stores without needing to know computer code. Shopify also offers point-of-sale systems, allowing online shoppers to purchase products directly from them.

Shopify’s prices depend on the needs of its users. A basic package can be $39 per month, while Shopify Plus can be as high as $2,300 per month. Its main competitors are BigCommerce, WooCommerce and Wix/Squarespace.

Many small business owners fear that their products will get lost in a sea of thousands of similar products on mass selling platforms such as Amazon and Alibaba. They said that Shopify makes it easy to build their own online store.

“We sell everything from $20 natural wines to $500 Burgundies in two stores and a 110K subscriber newsletter,” said Jeff Patten, co-founder of Flatiron Wines and Spirits. “We selected Shopify because selling rare wine online is actually complicated, and we needed one platform that could hold the whole operation together without falling apart every time we decided to grow. Inventory across two stores used to follow you home at the end of the day, and Shopify pulled everything into one place and our team could stop spending hours every week just keeping two locations in sync.”

Anh Ly, CEO of Mim Concept, Shopify’s AI suite, which includes Shopify Magic and Sidekick, has been invaluable, The AI features allow users to generate content and edit images. “Shopify’s AI tools have been most valuable in two ways. First, they offer speed without hiring for every micro-task. I can draft and refine product page copy in minutes. Second, it offers consistency across the storefront. When customers ask the same operational questions, AI-assisted drafts helps me keep answers consistent across listings and policies, which reduces misunderstandings.”

Dominic Adriano, director of Autotech Workshop Solutions, went so far as to say that his business wouldn’t survive without Shopify. “If I hadn't stumbled across Shopify, my business would never have launched,” he said. “Shopify makes it unbelievably simple to create a website and has the necessary support and tools to keep it running. It's not the cheapest option. But, for the tools and support you receive, it proves its worth. Shopify replaces multiple tools with a one-size-fits-all solution. It includes tools for inventory tracking, point of sale, email marketing and website development, reducing the need for multiple subscriptions.”

Are You a PEO? ADP TotalSource May Be for You

There are many small businesses that agree to become a professional employer organization (PEO) for tax reasons. In this agreement, the small business allows an outside party to provide human resources services such as payroll, benefits, tax administration, and compliance. The PEO becomes the employer of record for tax reasons, while the small business owner maintains ownership and control of the business. This is a complex arrangement that usually requires specialized software to manage.

For Guillermo Triana, founder of PEO Marketplace, a firm that offers PEO agreements to small businesses, ADP TotalSource is the best platform for small businesses owners seeking to become a PEO.

“Prior to partnering with ADP TotalSource, when we used three separate platforms for payroll processing, benefits administration, workers comp tracking, we were paying approximately $3,200 a month for software licenses and spending around 14 hours each week on administrative tasks,” he said. “After we moved everything into ADP TotalSource, we were able to reduce administration time to 6 hours per week. Payroll correction rates went from approximately 2.5% per quarter to less than 0.5%, reducing rework and client escalations.”

The cost for ADP Totalsource can range between 2% to 12% of the total payroll. Its primary competitors include Paychex PEO TriNetJustworks, Insperity, and Rippling.

ClickUp for Project Management

Data management is crucial for some small businesses, and one of them is Entity Check. Levon Gasparian, the company’s founder, pointed to project management software ClickUp as crucial to project management and tracking. The cost range for ClickUp is $7 to $12 per user per month. Its primary competitors include Monday.com and Asana.

“Before ClickUp, our data analysts, content writers, and developers all worked separately,” said Levon Gasparian, founder of online small business Entity Check. “Tasks were duplicated, deadlines were missed, and no one had a clear picture of what was happening across the business. ClickUp changed how we work. Every task, deadline, and workflow now lives in one place where everyone can see it.”

Coders Paradise

If your small business depends heavily on online sales and presentations but you don’t have a degree in computer science, there are plenty of software solutions that can code for you to help fix online bugs and add to your website. One of those solutions is Claude Code, an AI-powered agentic tool that can fix bugs, create commits and automate workflows.

For Jannes Stubberman, founder of Openclaw Rocks, Claude Code is a must. “Claude Code has recently transformed our workflow. It effectively optimizes onsite SEO for every page, accesses our production systems to debug and fix errors, and assists in generating marketing content,” she said.

Claude Code can cost you $20 to $200 per month, depending on your needs. Its main competitors are Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Cline, and Windsurf.

Small businesses obviously need clients to survive, and as such, they need strong client relationship management (CRM). For many business owners, good CRM software is needed to track accounts from early their early stages to retention.

One of the most popular CSM software tools is HubSpot CRM, although it has plenty of competitors such as Salesforce, Zoho CRM and Pipedrive. The cost for enterprise clients can range from $10,000 to $50,000 annually.

Sara Cemin, head of customer relations and Helio Cure, a small business that sells red light therapy devices, Hubspot CRM unified the company’s client data and ultimately led to increased sales.

“Before I came to Helio Cure, our client data sat in four different places and none of it felt reliable,” she said. “HubSpot CRM changed that almost overnight. We took all the interaction, consultation notes and follow-up work into one system and that alone saved hours of duplicate work every week. Scattered records have always been the quickest way to lose a person's confidence, from what I have seen across three companies now. Our missed follow-ups decreased about 60% in the three months and that freed up my team to actually talk to people rather than chasing down lost files.”

Consider Pricing, Needs

Choosing the right software for your small business is now a matter of survival, not just convenience. Carefully examine the areas of your business that need organization (such as sales), precision (such as accounting), and automation (such as client servicing). If the small business owners quoted in this article have taught us anything, it’s that the right software can support your operational goals. You’d be doing your business a big favor by considering the cost of the right software and the needs that it will serve.