24 Powerful Free Tools & Resources for Freelancers & Startups
Setting up as a freelancer or startup and struggling to find the right tools and resources? Or are you already growing but craving more organisation, creativity, automation and ease in your business?
We’ve compiled a list of the 24 most powerful free tools and resources to help you take your branding, marketing, project management, website building and collaboration to the next level.
Let’s dive in!
Branding & marketing
It’s the DIY graphic design oracle: Canva.
With its intuitive features, accessible interface and AI add-ons, you can use Canva to create bold social media graphics, presentations, brochures, business cards, videos, logos, posters, flyers and website designs.
If you’re a startup, you can even create your own company merch from t-shirts and mugs to calendars and stickers.
Free plan or upgrade to Canva Pro for £99.99 per year or Canva for Teams for £260 per year for the first five people.
Have you ever wanted to be a fly on the wall when prospective customers explore your website? Google Analytics gets you closer.
By bolting GA onto your website, you can access real-time analytics of your website performance, identify your top sources of traffic and top performing webpages, discover how long visitors are spending on your website and so much more.
Using this tool helps you better understand your audience. You can also gain insights that you can turn into actions to improve your user experience and increase conversions.
Free plan or upgrade to Google Analytics 360 (only recommended for large enterprises).
Social media is an excellent place to market your business but it’s important to remember: it’s rented space. Your mailing list, on the other hand? That’s an asset you own. So, if a social media channel you’re using comes crashing down tomorrow, having a healthy mailing list will keep you afloat.
To get started with email marketing and building a community through your mailing list, MailChimp provides the ultimate DIY toolkit.
You can use MailChimp to set up your mailing list, encourage subscriber signups, create email templates and much more.
Free plan when you have under 500 contacts or unlock additional features by upgrading to Essentials ($13 per month), Standard ($20 per month) or Premium ($350 per month).
Paid alternative: If you’re looking for a platform with no tiers and no limits, we would recommend Flodesk at $38 per month for email marketing.
Looking for a scheduling tool to help you organise your social media content? Buffer gives you the tools to easily plan, schedule, publish and analyse content across Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, Shopify and Mastodon.
With a user-friendly layout, AI assistant, landing page builder and much more, Buffer allows you to batch your social content so you can get back to what you do best without the daily interruption of posting manually.
Free plan for 3 channels and 10 monthly posts per channel or upgrade to Essentials (from $6 per month), Team (from $12 per month) or Agency (from $120 per month).
Paid alternative: For advanced functionality and analytical insights, we would recommend SocialPilot starting at $25.50 per month.
Project management
Looking for a satisfying and simple way to organise your projects? Trello could be the one for you.
As a Kanban-based tool, Trello allows you to create boards and cards for your projects with a drag-and-drop function to track your progress to completion.
On each card (representing a task), you can assign team members, add due dates, leave comments, attach files and much more. This gives the tool an agile and compact feel as well as possibilities for customisation to suit your work style.
Free for up to 10 boards or upgrade to Standard ($6 per month), Premium ($12.50 per month) or Enterprise (cost dependent on number of users).
Dubbed as your wiki, docs and projects all in one place, Notion is an increasingly popular tool for project management, organisation and collaboration.
With an aesthetic, clean and crisp design, Notion allows freelancers and startups to visualise their projects and tie together brainstorming notes, guides, files and much more. You can also create bespoke templates for your projects, track tasks and write within the platform.
Designed for both personal and professional goals, you can even turn a Notion page into a publicly-accessible website in one click.
Free plan or upgrade to Plus ($10 per user per month), Business ($18 per user per month) or Enterprise.
For robust product and project management, Asana allows you to connect company-wide goals across teams and functions with customisable workflows.
Using this tool, you can manage tasks and status updates within projects, build workflows and automations to suit your team, manage resources, reports and time tracking and set goals.
If you’re looking for strategic planning and agile management combined with workflow optimisation, Asana is calling your name.
Free plan or upgrade to Premium (£11.59 per month) or Business (£25.69 per month) for teams.
With products for Dev and Sales CRM as well as Work Management, Monday.com has a myriad of functions and capabilities to manage your team’s projects and increase productivity.
Whether you work in creative and design, marketing, HR or operations, Monday.com is a powerful platform that gives you the tools you need to build and connect intuitive workflows across your company.
With boards, views, dashboards, integrations, automations, apps and docs, this tool can help you supercharge efficiency and transform the way your team works.
Free plan or upgrade to Basic (£7 per seat per month), Standard (£9 per seat per month), Pro (£14 per seat per month) or Enterprise.
Honourable mentions
Website & portfolio building
If you want to get a website or portfolio up and running quickly, here are some fantastic options.
Contra - a commission-free freelance marketplace with beautiful and easy-to-use portfolio templates to share with prospective clients
WordPress - a powerful industry favourite for building a website, setting up an online shop, starting a blog and much more (we would also recommend Squarespace from $17 per month – check out our course on how to master this platform and create your own beautiful website)
Milkshake App - a free app allowing you to build a simple and stylish website from your phone (perfect for link in bio)
Carrd - a simple, responsive website builder allowing you to quickly and easily build one-page sites
Collaboration & co-working
For freelancers and small startup teams looking to maximise focus and connection, check out these platforms.
FLOWN - virtual co-working and focus tools backed by the neuroscience of body doubling and accountability
LinkedIn - the ideal social media channel for freelancers and startups where you can connect with potential customers, partners and future colleagues
Pomofocus - a Pomodoro-technique website where you can set yourself tasks and use the timers to work in blocks of 25 minutes with 5 minute breaks in between
Slack - a team collaboration and communication tool with instant messaging (use it to work with your team or connect with like-minded people and build communities)
Image libraries
Imagery plays a big role in visual branding. But if you don’t have the capacity or budget to commission your own professional photography, image libraries are a great resource.
Pexels - free stock photos, royalty-free images and videos made by creators from around the world
Unsplash - beautiful free images you can use across your marketing (or upgrade to Unsplash+ for more)
Pixabay - an impressive library of free stock images, illustrations, videos, music and more
Burst by Shopify - stunning high-resolution photos that are free to use on websites and for commercial use
Creative apps
Looking for some fun apps to spark creativity, up your game on social media and find your tribe? Here’s our picks.
Shuffles - a creative play and collage-making app from Pinterest
Lightroom - a powerful photo and video editor app powered by AI and made by Adobe
Unfold - beautiful templates and designs for Instagram/Facebook Stories, dubbed ‘the toolkit for storytellers’
Discord - an easy-to-use instant messaging and community-building platform with voice, video and text capabilities
Recap
Fancy trying out some of these or digging deeper into their features and functionalities? Experiment away!
Here’s a recap of the full list of the free tools listed:
Canva
Google Analytics
MailChimp
Buffer
Trello
Notion
Asana
Monday.com
Contra
WordPress
Milkshake App
Carrd
FLOWN
LinkedIn
Pomofocus
Slack
Pexels
Unsplash
Pixabay
Burst by Shopify
Shuffles
Lightroom
Unfold
Discord
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