Starting a business has a funny way of turning one job into twelve.
You need a website, somewhere to track whether anyone visits it, a way to email people, send invoices, manage projects, answer customers, sort out privacy and cookies, and, ideally, get paid.
The good news is you don’t need an enormous tech stack to get started. You need a few solid tools that each solve a real problem.
Here are 10 worth knowing in your first year.
In short
- You don’t need a big tech stack to start. A few solid tools that each solve a real problem are enough.
- These 10 tools cover privacy and consent, your website, analytics, email, design, social media, projects, invoicing, support and leads.
- Start with the essentials and add new tools when there’s a clear need for them.
1. iubenda: manage privacy, cookies and consent
What it does
iubenda helps businesses manage the privacy and compliance work that comes with running a website or app. That includes privacy and cookie policies, consent banners, tracker blocking and consent records.
Why it’s useful
Privacy requirements get complicated surprisingly quickly. Add analytics, advertising, embedded tools or a newsletter form and you may already be collecting data in several different ways.
Instead of piecing together policies, banners and consent management separately, iubenda brings them into one system. Its scanning tools can also help identify cookies, pixels and trackers running on your site.
Best for
Founders who want to put privacy and cookie management in place early rather than scramble to sort it out later.
More details
iubenda supports multiple privacy laws and regions and integrates with tools including Google Consent Mode and Google Tag Manager. Legal documents can also be updated as relevant information changes.
Its new MCP connector also lets you work with iubenda directly from AI assistants like Claude or ChatGPT, so you can handle tasks such as scanning your site, updating policies, or configuring your consent setup through natural-language prompts.
2. Macaly: build your website or web app
What it does
Macaly builds websites and web apps from a conversation. You describe what you want in plain words, it writes the code, sets up the database, wires up the forms and logins, and puts the whole thing online. Ask for a change and it makes that too. A few minutes in, there’s a working link you can send to someone.
Why it’s useful
The hard part of building anything on the web has never been the design. It’s that a real site needs a database, somewhere to run, a way for people to log in, a domain, and every one of those is a separate service with its own setup. Macaly handles all of it, so you never have to know it exists.
It’s also all the things you’d forget to add. SEO so Google can find you. A database so the people who sign up are stored somewhere. Logins so customers have their own accounts. Payments if you’re selling something. Analytics so you know whether any of it worked. You don’t ask for those separately, your agent adds them when the project needs them.
Which means idea to live takes minutes instead of weeks, and more importantly you can keep changing it.
Best for
Anyone with an idea who doesn’t want to deal with the technical parts. Founders testing something before they commit to it, small businesses that need a real site this week, agencies building for clients, people with a side project etc.
If you can describe what you want, you can build it. That’s genuinely the only requirement.
More details
What’s cool is that you don’t have to start from a blank page. You can paste an existing website and Macaly rebuilds it. Drop in a screenshot, a document or a spreadsheet and it works from that instead. Most people start by pointing at something they already have.
3. Google Analytics: track website traffic and conversions
What it does
Google Analytics helps you understand how people find and use your website or app. You can monitor traffic, see how users move through your site and measure actions such as clicks, page views and purchases.
Why it’s useful
Google Analytics shows you where your traffic comes from, which pages people visit, how they move through your site and which actions lead to conversions. That makes it easier to spot what’s working, where users drop off and which channels are worth investing in.
Best for
Any founder with a website or app who wants to make decisions based on user behaviour rather than guesswork.
More details
You can create events around the interactions that matter to your business and connect Analytics with other Google marketing tools as your setup grows.
4. Brevo: start building your email audience
What it does
Brevo lets you create email campaigns, manage contacts and automate messages based on what your audience does.
Why it’s useful
Your first customers, subscribers and leads are too valuable to leave sitting in a spreadsheet.
Brevo gives you somewhere to build those relationships from the beginning. You can send regular campaigns and automate useful messages such as welcome emails or abandoned-cart reminders instead of doing everything manually.
Best for
Startups and small businesses that want to start email marketing without immediately building a complicated marketing stack.
More details
Brevo includes campaign tools, contact management and automated workflows for common customer journeys.
5. Canva: create marketing and brand assets
What it does
Canva is a design platform for creating social posts, presentations, ads, documents and other brand materials.
Why it’s useful
Canva makes it easy to create polished marketing and sales materials without relying on a designer for every small asset. Templates help you move quickly, while Brand Kit keeps your logos, colours and fonts consistent across everything you publish.
Best for
Founders and lean teams creating their own marketing and sales materials.
More details
Teams can also share brand assets and templates, collaborate on designs and organise work in shared folders.
6. Metricool: plan, publish, and measure social content
What it does
Metricool brings social media planning, scheduling, analytics and reporting into one workspace. You can plan content in a shared calendar, publish across multiple channels, track performance and compare what’s working without jumping between platforms.
Why it’s useful
Posting manually is manageable when you publish twice a month. It gets considerably less so when you’re juggling several channels alongside everything else involved in running a company.
Metricool lets you plan content in a calendar, schedule it across networks and see how it performs without bouncing between platforms.
Best for
Founders and small marketing teams managing several social channels without a dedicated social media team.
More details
It also includes reporting, a social inbox and tools for analysing performance and finding useful posting times.
7. Notion: organize projects and company knowledge
What it does
Notion combines project management, documents, notes and company knowledge in one workspace.
Why it’s useful
Notion gives early-stage teams one place to manage projects, document decisions and keep important company knowledge easy to find. You can use it for roadmaps, meeting notes, launch plans, customer research and internal docs, so less information gets scattered across different tools.
Best for
Small teams that need to organise projects and information without introducing a heavyweight project management system.
More details
You can manage tasks, owners and deadlines alongside documents, meeting notes and internal knowledge, so the context behind a project doesn’t have to live somewhere else.
8. QuickBooks: manage invoices and business finances
What it does
QuickBooks combines invoicing with broader small-business accounting tools. You can send invoices, track payments, record expenses and keep financial information organised.
Why it’s useful
Getting your first customer is exciting. Realising you now need an actual system for invoicing them is less so.
QuickBooks turns that side of the business into a repeatable process. You can see what’s been paid, what’s outstanding and send reminders without manually chasing every invoice.
Best for
Founders, freelancers and small businesses that want invoicing and financial management in the same place.
More details
QuickBooks can also connect to bank feeds, track income and expenses and support online invoice payments, depending on your setup.
9. Crisp: manage customer support conversations
What it does
Crisp is a customer support platform that brings conversations from channels such as website chat, email and messaging into one shared inbox.
Why it’s useful
Crisp brings customer conversations into one shared inbox, so your team can manage support without losing context across email, chat and messaging channels. You can assign conversations, leave internal notes and see previous interactions, which makes it much easier to respond consistently as support volume grows.
Best for
Startups getting enough customer conversations that ad hoc support is becoming difficult to manage.
More details
Crisp also offers live chat, a knowledge base, automation and support analytics, giving you room to build a more structured support operation over time.
10. HubSpot: manage leads and customer relationships
What it does
HubSpot CRM gives you one place to manage contacts, companies, deals and sales activity. You can track conversations, organise opportunities in a pipeline, assign follow-up tasks and see the history behind each customer relationship.
Why it’s useful
Once leads start coming in, spreadsheets and inboxes get messy quickly. HubSpot helps you keep track of who you’ve spoken to, where each opportunity stands and what needs to happen next, so fewer leads fall through the cracks. Its pipeline view also makes it easier to see where deals are getting stuck.
Best for
Founders and small teams that are starting to manage a growing number of leads, prospects and customer conversations.
More details
HubSpot’s CRM includes contact and deal management, tasks, pipeline tracking, reporting, meeting scheduling and email tools. You can start with the core CRM and add more advanced sales, marketing and service features as the business grows.
Choose tools that support the way you work.
The right startup stack is the one that supports the work you’re already doing.
Start with the essentials: building your site, tracking performance, managing customer data, handling privacy and consent, communicating with leads, organising work, sending invoices and supporting customers.
Then add new tools when there’s a clear need for them. That keeps your setup simpler, reduces unnecessary spend and makes it easier for your team to know which tool does what. Building your first website? iubenda can help you set up privacy, cookies and consent as you go. See how iubenda works.