Too many businesses own dozens, sometimes hundreds, of tools across their go-to-market teams. A complete waste of money and time. How do you decide on the best marketing and sales tools for startups like yours?
Most people ask peers, some ask us, and others go to analysts and other sites to read reviews.
The problem with most feedback is that it only answers one question: which tool are you using, and why do you like it?
It rarely answers the broader question of the best tools for your needs, your size of the company, or your industry.
This article will break out the major categories of sales and marketing tools and share our feedback on which is best for you to check out.
Our working assumptions
For these recommendations, we are working under the following assumptions:
- You are selling B2B solutions.
- Your annual revenue is less than $20 million.
- You have not yet received a B-round of financing.
- You have done fantastic work to date but you have limited or no repeatable processes in place. You need to scale.
We will begin by looking at the foundational tools to create your scalable business.
Best Go-to-Market Core Tools for Startups
As a startup, you need to cover these core go-to-market capabilities early on and plan for scale.
The three types are:
- CRM
- Project Management
- Customer Success
CRM Solutions
Each of the following CRM solutions works great for your startup — consider our recommendations closely as they help you position the right solution for you right now.
| Capabilities | Pipedrive | Hubspot | Salesforce |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ideal for… | An early-stage startup that will not be adding more than 5 additional sellers in the next couple of years. | An early-stage startup that is adding more than 5-20 reps in the next couple of years and depends on inbound marketing to drive leads. | An early-stage startup that is hiring more than 20 reps in the next two years and must scale now. |
| Key DIfferentiator | Solid Contact and Deal Flow to manage the sales processes you are building out. | Top of the line Marketing Automation for Inbound Marketing Including a Capable CRM | The top-of-the-line CRM for most businesses, certainly for any early-stage startup that will be growing quickly. |
| Integrations | More than 250 integrations. | More than 1000 integrations. | Too Many to List, here is the list of all integrations |
| Top Verticals Supported | Technology, Financial Services, Construction | Technology, Retail, Health Care | Technology, Financial Services, Health Care |
| Cons | Fewest Integrations — Use solutions like Zapier to close the gap. | Free CRM is solid but the least robust of the three. Adding in paid features becomes expensive. | Most complex solution to learn. |
| Pricing | Free Trial available. Four pricing packages are available but we urge buying the Advanced Package at $24.90/user/month as you will want the email and workflow capabilities available at this level. | The Free version of Hubspot is not the solution you can build your startup on. You will need to build your own bundle, consisting of CRM and Marketing Automation. This will range from as low as $50/month through thousands per month depending on team size and the number of marketing contacts in your account. | Sales Cloud Pricing ranges from $25/user/month to $300/user/month depending on functional needs. Most startups will be able to use Essentials at $25/user/month initially. However, collaborative forecasting is powerful and a big reason to upgrade to Professional at $75/user/month. |
| Try Now | Try Now | Try Now |
Project Management
We know the startup world. It is magical, energizing, chaotic, and exhausting every day.
Too many teams run around, getting stuff done without documenting their processes, prioritizing their efforts, or measuring their results.
A great project management solution can help you document and prioritize.
That’s why our team uses monday.com for our work, and we highly recommend it to every business we work with. monday.com supports:
- The project management capabilities you need, of course.
- Managing internal documentation and building processes to keep it updated as part of your projects.
- And it comes with a free version that will work for the very early-stage startups, teams of 2, for example.
For teams larger than 2, the paid version will cost anywhere from $8/user/month upwards.
Customer Success
If your business depends upon recurring revenue from existing customers, you need to hire customer success early and arm them with the tools necessary to win.
Initially, the most important tools for this person or team will include the CRM and your Project Management platform. No additional cost there.
However, as you grow your customer base grows you will want to evaluate tools like Totango, Gainsight, and ChurnZero. This is how we compare the platforms.
Note: that you will want licenses for your Customer Success Leader and Sales Leader, at a minimum.
| Capabilities | ChurnZero | Totango | Gainsight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Integrations | ChurnZero has many integrations, including Hubspot, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft Outlook, Gmail | Many integrations listed, including Hubspot, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce | Integrations: Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Hubspot, Pipedrive, Zoho, Zoom, Gong, Google, Outlook, Google Analytics, Einstein Analytics, Segment, Tableau, Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud, Freshdesk, Zapier, Software AG, Workato, Celigo |
| Top Verticals Supported | Technology, Human Resources, Financial Services | Technology, Higher Education, Healthcare | Technology, Healthcare, Financial Services |
| Pricing | Pricing is not listed on their website. | Community Pricing: Teams of 3, 1 product, and a max of 100 customers can use FREE Starter Pricing: Teams of 5, 1 product, and a max of 500 customers costs $499/month. Growth Pricing: Team of 10 users, 1 product, $899/month. Larger Plans, Enterprise Pricing, are custom quoted. | Pricing pages are listed on the Gainsight website but no prices are provided. |
| Try Now | Try Now | Try Now |
Best Sales Tools for Startups
Content Management and Delivery Solutions
You need a platform for managing and measuring the effectiveness of your sales content.
The most important thing for these platforms is their ability to integrate with your CRM and your mail clients. You cannot afford the content or the data produced by its usage to not integrate with your broader tech stack.
| Capability | Showell | Saleshood | Paperflite |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Sales Rooms | Solid capabilities, dynamic content (optionally), security. | Solid capabilities, dynamic content, but no security. | Solid capabilities, dynamic content (optionally), security, chat/conversation capabilities. |
| Content Playback | Good playback includes annotations and the ability to save notes. | Basic, No Annotations or Notes | Basic, No Annotations or Notes |
| Search | Title, Description, File Contents | Title, Description, File Contents | Title, Description, File Contents |
| Reporting | Sellers can use reporting to identify customer engagement, identify who to reach out to and what to discuss. | Sellers can use reporting to identify customer engagement, identify who to reach out to and what to discuss. | Sellers can use reporting to identify customer engagement, identify who to reach out to and what to discuss. |
| Email Integrations | None | None | Gmail, Microsoft Outlook |
| CRM Integrations | Salesforce | Salesforce | Hubspot, Pipedrive, Microsoft Dynamics |
| Pricing | Free – Up to 25 documents – Up to 5 users – Basic theme – Self-service onboarding – Help Center and tutorial videos – Virtual product training – Community Slack support Essential $18/user/month – Up to 50 documents – Up to 20 users – Basic theme – 1-to-1 virtual onboarding session – Help Center and tutorial videos – Customer support – Community Slack support Professional No pricing published – Unlimited volume & storage – Unlimited users & admins – Custom themes – Onboarding program – Dedicated customer success manager – Premium support – Showell community | Try Free $50/user/month All Pricing | Try Free $50/user/month All Pricing |
| Evaluate Now | Evaluate Now | Evaluate Now | |
Prospecting Tools
For startups, consider these two prospecting tools based on your expected growth rate.
| Capabilities | Lusha | LeadiQ |
|---|---|---|
| Ideal for Business Size | Slow by Steady Growth | On the Rocket Ship |
| Key DIfferentiator | Can handle LinkedIn as well as other data sources, with a robust Chrome extension to identify contact information on websites you are reviewing. | Very easy to use for purpose of unmasking LinkedIn contacts. |
| Integrations | Lusha has many integrations, including Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, Microsoft Outlook, GMail, Outreach, and others. | Salesforce, Hubspot, LinkedIn, Outreach, Salesloft, GSuite, Slack |
| Cons | The con is the opposite of Wiza’s. If you only use LinkedIn or LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you’ll find Lusha to be more complex than required. | Slightly more complex than Wiza and Lusha. |
| Try Now | Try Now |
Sales Document (Proposals and E-Signatures)
| Capability | PandaDoc |
|---|---|
| G2 Ratings | 4.7/5.0 (1547 Reviews) |
| Paid Pricing | $49/user/month |
| Templates | 400+ |
| CRM Integrations | Salesforce, Pipedrive, Hubspot, Zoho, Copper, Sugar, Nimble, Zendesk Sell, Insightly, Microsoft Dynamics, Nutshell, Nimble, monday.com |
| Usability | 8/10 |
| CPQ Support | Yes |
| Additional Add-ons | Yes |
| Set Signing Order | Yes |
| Variables and Custom Fields | Yes |
 |
Sales Outreach Solutions
Once you’ve identified your leads using the tools covered above, you want to begin your outreach efforts.
Klenty and Reply.io are our two recommendations to consider in this category as the best sales tools for startups.
Let’s compare a bit closer.
Note: As you compare pricing between Autoklose and Klenty below, note that the Startup pricing only provides email cadence support, not support for the broader capabilities.
| Capability | Klenty | Reply.io |
|---|---|---|
| G2 Reviews | 4.6/5.0 (161 Reviews) | 4.6/5.0 (816 Reviews) |
| Cadence Support | A more complete sales cadence solution supporting defining and running cadences that are email, phone, and miscellaneous (e.g., social). Also integrates with popular CRM and email solutions. Note: Startup pricing only provides email cadences. | A more complete sales cadence solution supporting defining and running cadences that are email, phone, and miscellaneous (e.g., social). |
| Email Integrations | Gmail and Microsoft Outlook | None Listed |
| CRM Integrations | Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive | Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zendesk Sell, Hubspot, Copper CRM, Freshsales, Salesflare, Zoho, Insightly, Nutshell, Bullhorn |
| Pricing | Startup $35/user/month – Email Cadences Growth $60/user/month – Cadence Playbooks – Multichannel Outreach – CRM Integrations Enterprise $100/user/month | Reply.io is very transparent with its pricing and there are a ton of choices. Summary for Businesses $50/user/month for 10+ users $60/user/month for 5-10 users $70/user/month for fewer than 5 users. Review here. |
| Buy Now to Support Lead Generation | Buy Now to Support Lead Generation | |
Best Marketing Tools for Startups
Let’s begin the marketing tool discussion with email marketing.
Email Marketing Solutions
| ActiveCampaign | Moosend | |
|---|---|---|
| G2 Reviews | ||
| CRM Integrations | More than 870 integrations total – CRMs: Dozens, including Pipedrive and Salesforce | Dozens of integrations total – CRM: Many, including Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Salesforce |
| Pricing | ActiveCampaign has four paid plans. Full details for each package can be found here. Lite $9/month Plus $49/month Professional $149/month Enterprise Price not provided | Moosend’s Free 30-day trial provides prospects with an opportunity to get comfortable with the platform. Beyond the Free trial, there are two pricing tiers: Pro $9/user/month for up to 500 subscribers. Enterprise Pricing not provided Custom Reporting Dedicated Account Manager Priority Support Single Sign-on (SSO) |
Best Search Engine Optimization Tools
| Content Marketing Tools | Why do we use it? | G2 Ratings | Pros | Cons | Pricing | Try Now |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ahrefs | In-depth SEO Research | 4.6/5.0 (386 Reviews) | Hands down the best overall SEO tool on the market. | Pricing ranges from $99/month to $999/month. | Try Now to Win the SEO Wars | |
| Surfer SEO | For Content Planning and Web Page Analysis | 4.8/5.0 (263 Reviews) | Very easy to use and hands-down the best content planning and auditing tools on the market. | Many tools are newer — not really a negative as much as an observation that some of their growth tools are evolving. | Paid plans range from $49/month to $199/month. | Try now to Put your Website SEO on Another Level |
Best AI Writing Assistants
| Category | Jasper | QuillBot |
|---|---|---|
| TOP FOR OVERALL QUALITY | TOP FOR PARAPHRASING | |
| Overall Quality of AI-Generated Writing | 8/10 | 7/10 |
| Ease of Use | 9/10 | 7/10 |
| Pros | Very easy to use to generate content of any length. | Does an excellent job at rewrites — |
| Cons | Would benefit from the outline capabilities offered by WriteSonic and the per-section SEO targeting from Ryte. | Not a tool for writing from scratch. |
| G2 Reviews | 4.8/5.0 (605 Reviews) | 4.3/5.0 (15 Reviews) |
| Pricing | From $29 to $59/month. | $19.95 per month for Premium |
| |
What would you recommend we add to our recommendations?