4 Apps Worth Paying For

Supercharge your small business or side hustle with these power tools

If you are a small business owner, you know how important it is to have reliable and affordable tools to enhance your business. Whether you want to create engaging content, sell your products online, manage your finances, or communicate with your customers, there are some fantastic online tools that can help you do that.

I recommend these four great tools for any small business owner: Canva, Shopify, Quickbooks, and Mailchimp. Each of these tools has a free version or a free trial. But they are worth paying for to get scalable premium features that boost your business. They are all customizable for Jamaica's unique payment and data protection landscape.

Here's the deal: no affiliate links or sponsorships are associated with this post. I have used these apps, found them worthy and recommend them to others.

Pay for value

Canva: Create Stunning Designs Easily

Canva is a powerful online design tool that lets you create stunning graphics for your website, social media, flyers, logos, and more. You can choose from thousands of templates or start from scratch with a super simple drag-and-drop interface. You can also upload your own images, fonts, and logos to make your designs more personal.

Canva has a free plan, giving you access to over 250,000 templates and 5GB of cloud storage. But to unlock more features and resources, upgrade to Canva Pro for USD 9.95 per month (or USD 119.40 per year). With the pro version, you can:

• Access over 75 million premium stock photos, videos, audio, and graphics

• Use over 3,000 fonts or upload your own

• Create a brand kit with your logo, colours, and fonts

• Resize and animate your designs with one click

• Collaborate with your team and share feedback in real-time

• Download your designs in different formats and resolutions

• Organize your projects in folders and subfolders

For me, Canva's superpower is the robust collaboration feature that allows users to start a design for a colleague to finish or tweak custom designs created by a friend. You can also share your creations with anyone via a link or email and get feedback or approval instantly.

Shopify: Sell Your Products Online

Shopify is the leading e-commerce platform that lets you create your online store and sell your products across multiple channels. You can customize your store's look and feel, add products and categories, set up payment and shipping options, track inventory and orders, and more ... from a browser window, with no installation required.

There is no free version, but Shopify has a 14-day free trial that lets you test all the platform's features. After the free trial, you can choose from three plans:

Basic Shopify (USD 29 per month)

Shopify (USD 79 per month)

Advanced Shopify (USD 299 per month)

The higher the plan, the more features and benefits you get, such as:

- Lower transaction fees

- More staff accounts

- More sales channels

- More reports and analytics

- More shipping discounts

- More third-party apps and integrations

Shopify is customizable for Jamaica's unique payment landscape. You can accept payments in local currency through multiple payment gateways, such as PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, Paystack, DigiPay Jamaica, WiPay Caribbean, and more. International payments are a cinch, too.

Spotify also has a superpower; you can use the platform to build a website or integrate the Shopify platform into your existing website. It's pretty easy. Squarespace (my favourite site builder) and Wix (the least expensive site builder) have built-in tools for seamless integration.

Quickbooks: Manage Your Finances

Quickbooks is the most popular online accounting software that helps you manage your finances efficiently and securely. You can track your income and expenses, create invoices and receipts, send reminders and accept payments online, reconcile your bank accounts, generate reports and tax forms, and more.

Quickbooks has a 30-day free trial that lets you explore all the software's features. After that, you can choose from four plans: Simple Start (USD 10 per month), Essentials (USD 17 per month), Plus (USD 30 per month), or Advanced (USD 75 per month). The higher the plan, the more features and benefits you get, such as:

• More users and permissions

• More tracking options (projects, inventory, time)

• More automation and customization

• More support and training

• More advanced reporting and insights

Unlike similar online accounting platforms, Quickbooks can access several local online banking platforms for easy importation of transactions. You can customize your invoices and reports to suit your business needs and preferences.

If in-app access to your bank account to avoid tedious data entry needed to be more - and really, that was the feature that had me at Hello - then being able to add your accountant for free most certainly is.

Mailchimp: Communicate With Your Customers

Mailchimp is the best online marketing platform that helps you communicate with your customers directly. You can create beautiful email campaigns, landing pages, forms, surveys, ads, social media posts, and more. You can also segment your audience based on their behaviour and preferences, automate your messages based on triggers and events, and measure your performance and optimize your strategy.

The free plan lets you send up to 10,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 contacts. But if you want to access more features and benefits, you can upgrade to one of the paid plans: Essentials (USD 9.99 per month), Standard (USD 14.99 per month), or Premium (USD 299 per month). The higher the plan, the more features and benefits you get, such as:

• More contacts and audiences

• More email templates and designs

• More testing and optimization tools

• More automation and personalization options

• More advanced analytics and insights

• More support and resources

Mailchimp complies with the Jamaica Data Protection Act (DPA), which regulates how personal data is collected, stored, used, and shared. You can also use Mailchimp's GDPR tools to ensure that you have the consent of your contacts to send them marketing messages.

The Recap

I think these four online tools are worth paying for if you are a small business owner. They can help you create engaging content, sell your products online, manage your finances, and communicate with your customers. Plus, they are all customizable for Jamaica's unique payment and data protection landscape.