The Tools & Tech For SaaS Marketing

Website

Carrd

Carrd is the least expensive coming in at $19/year for the paid version. It’s definitely the fastest way to get something up and in market. Easy, intuitive, plenty of integrations, and well-designed.

Launchaco

Launchaco comes in at $50/year for the paid version. Launchaco has great templates and great design to get something up fast.

Webflow

Webflow starts at $12/month in their paid plans. Webflow is the perfect blend between the ease of use of Squarespace and the flexibility of a custom-coded Wordpress site. Webflow has an incredibly robust visual editor but is still an exceptionally functional CMS.

WordPress + Bluehost/WPengine

WordPress themes usually run between $60-$180 for a one-time purchase and Bluehost starts at $3.95/month. WordPress has great themes, the most integrations, and great flexibility for development later on. WordPress also has great blogging capabilities built in.

Squarespace

Squarespace starts at $18/month (billed annually) for their Business plan, which gets you the best bang for your buck in my opinion since they throw in a free domain for the first year along with a free G Suite account the first year as well. Squarespace is very intuitive with plenty of integrations. Squarespace is the best DIY option as well as having great hosting, website builder, and blogging capabilities all in one. The Brine template is a great template to get going.

Blogging Platform

Medium

If your website doesn’t have blogging capabilities (Carrd and Launchaco), or even if it does, Medium is a great way to start a blog. Start a publication, pay $80 once to have it under your subdomain and then you’re on your way.

Ghost

Starting at $19/month (billed annually), Ghost is a great platform for adding on a blogging CMS to your existing website.

Website Analytics

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the most popular option, as well as being free, makes it an obvious default choice.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel offers some great capabilities instead of or also alongside Google Analytics. If your SaaS is a web app, I’d recommend you use Google Analytics for your marketing site and Mixpanel for your app site.

Segment

Segment is an amazing solution to help ensure data consistency between all your tools. Segment is a single platform that collects, stores, and routes your customer data to hundreds of tools with the flick of a switch. Segment takes care of the messy analytics installation process for you, so you can spend more time using your data and less time tracking it down. Segment starts for free and tiers up very affordably.

Hotjar

Hotjar is a suite of analytics tools that will help you gather “qualitative data” (that's the stuff that isn't numbers).  We're talking heatmaps, funnel tracking, user polls, surveys and more. Hotjar is a MUST for your marketing sites and starts very affordably.

Heap Analytics

Heap is the best alternative to Google Analytics when you can afford it. Heap is especially good with conversion funnels, event tracking, and doing it all without having to be technical.

Hull

Hull is the beast of the group, being an enterprise-level combination of Segment and Heap Analytics. Hull is one unified customer database to transform, enrich, segment data in all your tools in real-time. Hull starts at $950/month.

Domains

Namecheap

Namecheap is my go-to for purchasing and managing domains. It’s affordable and easy to use. But above all else, their customer service is what I count on.

Squarespace

If you use Squarespace to build a website, buy your domain through Squarespace as well to make things as easy possible for you to manage it.

Testing & Optimization

Google Optimize

Google Optimize is Google’s solution for A/B testing and personalization. The true progress here is how Google Optimize pairs with Google Analytics, and how easily we can tie our experiments to KPIs in Google Analytics.

Optimizely

Optimizely is a website testing solution to optimize your pages. Optimizely doesn’t disclose it’s pricing, but it doesn’t start cheap.

Automation

Plainflow

Plainflow is one of the simplest ways for SaaS companies to integrate services and create behavioural based customer journeys. Think of it as a mix between Zapier and and customer journey mapping tool.

Zapier

Zapier is an automation tool to move data between apps. Super affordable and easy to use, Zapier is an essential app to get data to the right places.

Landing Pages

Leadpages

LeadPages is a drag-and-drop software tool that you can use to create a landing page for your webinars, product launches, etc., set up email sign-up forms that help you grow your list faster, and deliver ethical bribes that convert new website visitors into leads or customers

Carrd

Carrd is a super simple, super affordable landing page builder and favorite among Indie Hackers. Carrd pages can connect with your domain, is responsive on all formats, and enables users to create pages super fast.

Squarespace

If you’re already using Squarespace, Squarespace is also great for building standalone landing pages.

Email Marketing

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is the best beginner email marketing platform. Send emails, manage subscribers, offer SUPERB tracking, set up autoresponders, create beautiful email templates, target subscribers, and split test our campaigns. Mailchimp starts for free and scales up along with the size of your list. Mailchimp is not optimal if you want to have a lot of lead magnets, as it’s list based and you’d have to set up a separate list for every piece of content you want to gate.

Drip

Drip combines the ease of use and light weight of Mailchimp with the power and sophistication of a product like Infusionsoft. Drip has an amazing workflow visualization tool as well as great event tracking features. Leadpages acquired Drip in 2016 so the two tools integrate flawlessly and really work well together.

Convertkit

Convertkit is an equally great alternative to Drip, combining great sophistication with an easy UI. Convertkit allows you to build landing pages as well. There are no A/B testing capabilities, but that isn’t a dealbreaker. The truth is, Convertkit is equally as good as Drip, just a matter of preference and integrations.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is very similar to Drip and ConvertKit with the added capabilities of a CRM as well. ActiveCampaign doesn’t have a landing page builder, but it’s well integrated with many tools and is still very easy to use.

CRM

HubSpot

HubSpot offers a free CRM that integrates well with many tools and generally is a good solution for any startup just starting out. One of the gripes with HubSpot is the disconnect between Contacts and Companies. In HubSpot, they classify people and companies as different records and they generally don’t sync very well together. There are some advantages however, as this allows you to clearly define company leads and individual people leads.

Streak

If you’re looking for a super lightweight CRM that works well with your google email account, Streak is a great solution. Streak starts for free and tiers up to $50/month for more advanced features and other integrations.

Close.io

If you’re going to be a very high-touch, sales led model, Close.io is a great solution if you’re willing to pony up the money for a premium service. Close.io is especially great for inside sales teams, who focus on prospecting and developing leads.

PipeDrive

Pipedrive is also great for high-touch sales models that require many touchpoint and a system for staying productive. Pipedrive combines sales efforts with kanban style productivity to easily organize your leads. Pipedrive starts much more affordably than Close.io at $15/user/month and tiers up.

Salesforce

Salesforce, the SaaS that started the revolution. To be honest, I hate the Salesforce products. They’re old, clunky, and confusing. The value in Salesforce is purely in the integrations. There are an unparalleled number of direct integrations that are much more fluid than others.

Lead Enrichment

Clearbit

While pricy, Clearbit offers amazing prospecting, lead enrichment, and anonymous revealing products to help get the data you need on all your website visitors and leads. Reveal allows you to turn anonymous visitors into leads, Enrichment adds additional data to every contact, and Prospector allows you to discover qualified accounts.

Collaboration

Slack

Slack is a no-brainer for team communication and collaboration. Seamless integrations (especially with G Suite products), super easy to use, and a great way to organize conversation. Slack starts for free and tiers up very affordably.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a great way to backup important files, have a single place for evergreen content, and create a wiki to draw from. Dropbox is a great alternative to Google Drive because Google Drive can get cluttered and overloaded with random google docs, pictures, and email attachments. You need Dropbox so that you can keep a single place for all your important documents to draw from.

Google Docs

Google Docs is the best way to collaborate in documents. The Google Docs suite includes Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Google docs update in real-time and have all the functionality you need to get stuff done.

Airtable

Airtable is an amazing way to build interactive tables. Airtable is a great step up from Google Sheets if you feel you need to do more than what Google Sheets allows you to do.

Screenflow

Screenflow is a great way to create screen-capture videos and recorded demos. Capture the highest quality screen recordings, adjust and revise your video using the easy-to-use editing interface, and create all sorts of videos for marketing.

Trello

Trello is insanely easy to use and has a ton of integrations with products you probably already use. Kanban style productivity boards are the best way to organize what you need to get done. I’ve personally used Trello for content planning, event planning, and personal productivity tracking.

Notion

Notion is my absolutely favorite tool, hands down. Think of it as a combination of Trello, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Sheets. It’s the “all-in-one workspace.” It’s a project management, wiki, database, and calendar all in one.

Webinar

Demio

Demio is by far the easiest webinar marketing software on the market today. Demio is browser-based, which is a much more fluid experience for your potential customers and customers. Demio allows you to do one-time webinars, automated webinars, and even onboarding webinars.

Livestorm

Livestorm is also another great webinar software out that that is still as easy to use as Demio, while having more features and functionality like some of the older platforms. Livestorm is browser-based and has been growing rapidly.

Social Media

Buffer

For social media marketing, you really only need to do one thing easily: schedule posts in advance. Buffer makes this seamless. Buffer is extremely easy to use, gets the job done, and is affordable.

MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a social media automation tool that allows users to recycle, repost, and automatically feed new content into scheduled blocks during the week. MeetEdgar is extremely easy to use and affordable with their one tier pricing plan.

Content Planning

Ops Calendar


Ops Calendar is an amazing product built especially for marketers. Map out and execute your content plan, automatically schedule social media posts, and plan out product launches.

CoSchedule

CoSchedule is an amazing combination of project management, content organization, social media scheduling, and social media automation. CoSchedule is essentially a heavy-duty version of Ops Calendar.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is the best and only tool you need for content research, competitive content research, influencer research, and alerts. It’s starts very affordably and is a must have for content creators.

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

CoSchedule’s headline analyzer is a free headline analyzer that will score your overall headline quality and rate its ability to result in social shares, increased traffic, and SEO value.

Podcasting

Anchor

Anchor is by far the easiest way to start podcasting. You can start recording on your phone and computer at the touch of a button, easily add music and effects, call in guests, and more — for free! You can even create an RSS feed URL through Anchor and use it to submit to all the other podcasting apps like Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Stitcher, Breaker, etc.

Transistor

Transistor is a company co-founded by one of my role models, Justin Jackson, and they are creating a turn-key solution to starting and managing an amazing podcast for your business.

Zencastr

Zencastr is the best way to record remote interviews. Zencastr allows you to simply send a link to your guest and they open it up and you can record high-fidelity audio. Recording remote interviews can be a huge pain and hassle, and Zencastr makes it seamless.

Conversational Marketing

Drift

Drift literally coined the term conversational marketing, and is the best sales and marketing platform on the market right now. Drift comes out with a new product every month, is super lightweight and easy to use, and is transforming the way business is done online. Their chat widget is free, and you can easily upgrade for amazing bot features, email sequences, and “playbooks” for targeted messages.

Intercom

Intercom is one of my favorite pieces of technology because of its connection between sales, marketing, and customer success. Intercom is a MUST have for your SaaS app, and is equally as valuable for marketing on your website.

Copywriting

Grammarly

Grammarly is a great chrome extension that highlights grammar and spelling mistakes and gives you recommendations for how to improve on any website. Oh, and it's free. If you’re doing marketing, you need Grammarly. You’ll be surprised how many mistakes it catches.

Hemingway Editor

Hemingway is a website where you can easily input your copy and get actionable insight into how to make it easier to understand and readable.

Viral / Giveaways

Viral Loops

Viral Loops is the best way to run viral and referral campaigns. Viral Loops has templated campaigns based on incredibly successful campaigns by real companies that you can use to plug and play for your own business.

Event Marketing

Splash

Splash is an end-to-end event marketing technology that gets you a beautiful landing page, easily manage RSVPs and tickets, and actionable analytics.

Sales

Hunter

Hunter does one thing and it does it extraordinarily well: find someone’s email. It starts for free, and is completely worth it.

Lemlist

Lemlist is the first automated outreach email platform with personalized images. It allows you to send unique cold emails in order to build warmer relationships with prospects. It’s affordable and will help you to stand out from the competition. Simple as that.

SEO/SEM

SEMrush

SEMrush is the best SEO/SEM tool for marketers to use of all sizes. It has an easy to use and modern interface, has the most updated and largest library of keywords, has great competitive insight, and gives real time reports unlike many others.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a toolset for SEO and marketing that covers backlink checking, competitor analysis, keyword research and more. I’ve used most SEO tools and Ahrefs is by far the easiest to use and most insightful. I’m on Ahrefs at least once a day, and it’s my go-to tool for content strategy.

PR

Hey Press

Finding relevant journalists for your content or your product launches is the hardest part of PR. Easily search keywords to find the best journalists to reach out to.

Help A Reporter Out

HARO provides journalists with a robust database of sources for upcoming stories and daily opportunities for sources to secure valuable media coverage. On the flip side, you can be a source that sends you opportunities for PR coverage and content co-ops.

Influencer, Affiliate, & Community

Quuu Promote

Quuu is one of those products that is so incredibly effective, yet not well known. Have real people share your blogs, videos, podcasts and infographics on social media. Get hundreds of shares, mentions and clicks to your content.

Rewardful

Turn your biggest fans into your best marketers. Rewardful is a simple way for SaaS companies to setup affiliate and referral programs with Stripe. Just connect your account and let us track referrals, discounts, and commissions for you!

First Promoter

First Promoter is an easy way to manage affiliates and referrals. Launch your own affiliate and referral program in minutes. Quick integration with Stripe, Recurly, Braintree, Chargebee or with our API.

Ambassador

Ambassador is essentially First Promoter on steroids. It’s a large-scale solution for when you have hundreds of affiliates and referral programs.

Zest.is

Zest isn’t actually in the influencer category, but it has the same power of influencers and a component of referrals. Zest is a chrome extension that curates the best marketing content by allowing users to suggest content.

CRO

FOMO

FOMO is a CRO tool that appears periodically to notify viewers of conversion activity on the page they’re viewing. Users will see how many people are viewing the page, who just signed up, and many other cool features. FOMO is a must have for everyone.

Snip.ly

Snip.ly allows you to add a call to action to every link you share. If you do guest blogging, appear in tech blogs, or are mentioned online, you can add a call to action to the page when you share the link to take more people back to your website and convert.

Bonjoro

Bonjoro helps you convert and retain more customers through personal video by connecting to your CRM and easily allowing you to send a personalized video to every person who signs up for your product. Bonjoro is one of my favorite new tools and is a must-have for every product.

Community Management

Mobilize

Mobilize is an all-in-one community management platform that allows you easily create and manage an online community. Mobilize provides a much better experience than Slack groups and has amazing features Slack can’t rival.

Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks is also a great solution for community management if you want to make your community a paid membership. Get started for free and create a great community to get going.

Analytics & Reporting

Databox

Databox is a BI platform built to help you understand what's going on with your business. KPIs from cloud services, spreadsheets, database in one place. No more chaotic google sheets. Create comprehensive (beautiful) reports easily.

Baremetrics

Baremetrics is a financial growth toolbox that helps subscription founders and marketers of all kinds to better understand their business and how to grow.

Ad Platforms

PixelMe

Retarget on every ads platform all the people who clicked on your link. PixelMe adds your retargeting pixel on every link you share. It’s a mega-easy way to get started with retargeting and has affordable plans as well.

Adroll

AdRoll is the growth platform that makes your display, social, and email advertising work together to drive more revenue, with less effort from you. It’s not for the faint of budget, but it’s the best out there.

Terminus

Terminus is a B2B account based marketing platform that enables marketing and sales teams to run ABM at scale. If you’re working with ad platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook to drive growth for your B2B SaaS, Terminus is the best ABM platform out there.

Misc.

Growsumo

Growsumo helps you manage your partner program to build channel sales. This is especially helpful for more high-touch sales models that may be reselling software through agencies or technology partners.

Appsumo

AppSumo is a daily deals website for digital products and software. It’s a great way to launch, gain initial traction, or create a pool of customers for future affiliates.

Design Pickle

Design Pickle provides unlimited graphic design services for $370/month.

Manypixels

Manypixels provides unlimited graphic design for startups for $259/month.

Outgrow

Outgrow allows you to easily create interactive content, great for side projects or lead generation. Create calculators, quizzes, recommendations, polls, and assessments.

Briefcase HQ

Briefcase is a site by AppSumo that curates a subscription bundle of premium software to help grow your business. Access dozens of tools for just $49/month.

Virtual assistants

Upwork

Upwork is the easiest (but maybe not the most quality) place to find freelancers to help you out with your business. I wouldn’t hire freelancers from Upwork for serious projects or anything long-term, but there’s nothing better than spending a couple bucks on work that saves you hours of tediousness.

Hubstaff Marketplace

Hubstaff hosts a global marketplace to find quality freelancers. Unlike Upwork, it doesn’t have mass adoption, so there’s a much better pool of talent.