ic-home iconPromotional DesignDiscover the 35 best marketing tools your team needs

Discover the 35 best marketing tools your team needs

By Sharné McDonald
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21 minutes
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Marketers must keep multiple plates spinning. Managing campaigns, analyzing data, creating and distributing content—the list goes on.

The right marketing tools can help you streamline tasks, boost team efficiency, and enhance your return on investment (ROI).

That's why we've compiled a comprehensive list of top marketing tools for your team to try. While traditional marketing tools have their place in the business ecosystem, we're taking a fresh look at online tools for managing marketing projects.

Each software is tailored to meet various marketing objectives, from design and productivity platforms to social media and email marketing tools.

We've identified 15 unique categories or types of platforms for performing marketing activities.

8 types of marketing software applications:

  1. Content creation and design tools
  2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
  3. Automation tools
  4. Analytics tools
  5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  6. Project management
  7. Communication tools
  8. Online ads

There's no such thing as a perfect tool. Your marketing team will likely use a mix of these software applications to execute your marketing projects.

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34 marketing tools: quick comparison table

Let's take a quick look at the digital marketing tools listed in this article, along with the tool type and pricing.

Tool Tool type Basic pricing
Linearity Curve (formerly Vectornator) Content creation and design Free for individuals
Canva Content creation and design Paid plans start at $12.99 per month
Adobe Creative Cloud Content creation and design Starts at $60.94 per month
Frase Content creation and design Paid plans start at $38.25 per month
Invideo Content creation and design Starts at $99 per month
Unbounce Content creation and design, Analytics Starts at $15 per month
Wistia Communication, Analytics Starts at $99 per month
HubSpot CRM, Marketing automation Paid plans start at $18 per month
Streak CRM, Communication Paid plans start at $15 per user per month
Hootsuite Communication, Marketing automation $99 per month
Buffer Communication, Marketing automation Paid plans start at $12 per month for two channels
Sprout Social Communication, Marketing automation Starts at $249 per user per month
Zapier Marketing automation Paid plans start at $19.99 per month
Later Communication, Marketing automation Paid plans start at $40 per month
ActiveCampaign Communication, Marketing automation Starts at $49 per month
Google Analytics Analytics Free
SEMrush SEO, Analytics Starts at $129.95 per month
Crazy Egg Analytics Starts at $29 per month
Hotjar Analytics Paid plans start at $39 per month
BuzzSumo Communication, Marketing automation Starts at $119 per month
Ahrefs SEO, Analytics Starts at $99 per month
Moz Pro SEO Starts at $99 per month
Yoast SEO SEO Paid plans start at $99 per year
WordLift SEO Starts at $54.99 per month
Trello Project management Paid plans start at $5 per month
Asana Project management Paid plans start at $10.99 per month
CoSchedule Project management, Marketing automation Paid plans start at $29 per user per month
Basecamp Project management Starts at $15 per month for individuals
Monday.com Project management Starts at $8 per seat per month
Airtable Project management, Communication Starts at $10 per user per month
Mailchimp CRM, Communication Paid plans start at $10.40 per month
Slack Communication Paid plans start at $7.25 per month
SurveyMonkey Communication Paid plans start at $99 per month
Google Ads Online Ads, Analytics Varies, set your own budget
LinkedIn Ads Online Ads, Analytics Varies, set your own budget

After this quick overview, a few platforms have probably already caught your interest. Let's learn more about each tool's features, pricing, pros, and cons.

Content creation and design tools

1. Linearity Curve (formerly Vectornator) (collaborative design software)

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A comprehensive vector graphic design software, Linearity Curve (formerly Vectornator) empowers you to create, edit, and share stunning visuals.

It offers powerful features for designing images that enhance customer engagement on your company's website, product pages, and social profiles.

Linearity Curve"s (formerly Vectornator) AI-driven Auto Trace and Background Removal design tools automate tedious and repetitive tasks.

You can also cut down on design time using the readily available templates on the platform.

Whether you need visuals for social marketing, packaging, printed posters, business cards, or any other custom design you imagine—Linearity Curve puts the power in your hands.

Ready to create brand assets that pack a punch?

Visit our Academy for free advertising design courses.

Key features:

  • User-friendly interface for intuitive designing and editing
  • Expansive suite of design tools
  • Seamless integration with various platforms for an uninterrupted workflow

Pricing: Linearity Curve (formerly Vectornator) is free for individuals.

Pros Cons
  • Free version for individuals
  • Intuitive user interface
  • Extensive suite of design tools
  • Cross-platform compatibility
  • Not compatible with Windows OS

2. Canva (template-based design software)

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Image source: Canva

This is a user-friendly graphic design tool that enables you to create engaging visuals for your marketing campaigns.

Canva offers a vast library of pre-made design elements to inspire you. You can customize them with beautiful fonts, brand colors, and animated stickers.

Because it was designed for pre-built template customization, the platform doesn't offer sophisticated drawing tools such as a Pen and Node tools. However, you can use your simple designs for social media channels, web, video, and print.

Key features:

  • Drag-and-drop interface
  • Thousands of pre-designed templates for different social media platforms, presentations, posters, and more
  • Customizable fonts, photos, videos, and icons

Pricing: Freemium version, with a Pro plan available at $12.99 per user per month and an Enterprise plan at $30 per user per month.

Pros Cons
  • User-friendly interface with drag-and-drop features
  • Extensive library of templates, fonts, and images
  • Scalable pricing plans
  • Many templates and features aren't available on the free plan
  • Mobile version can be cumbersome to use

3. Adobe Creative Cloud (cloud-based digital design)

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Image source: Adobe

This collection of 20+ desktop and mobile apps offers tools for photography, design, video, web, UX, and more.

Most designers cut their teeth on this comprehensive suite of creative tools, often using it long into their careers. But some designers are seeking more user-friendly and cross-platform compatible alternatives that offer better workflow integrations.

Key features:

  • Includes popular apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro
  • Creative tools for everything from photo editing to graphic design and video editing
  • Cloud-based for easy access and collaboration

Pricing: Adobe Creative Cloud pricing starts at $60.94 per month for individuals and $91.99 per month per license for teams. There are also educational pricing options for teachers, students, and institutions.

Pros Cons
  • Wide range of creative tools
  • Cloud-based for easy access and collaboration
  • Industry-standard tools for design and multimedia
  • Can be expensive for individuals or small teams
  • Unintuitive interfaces that require training

4. Frase (content marketing software)

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Image source: Frase

Frase is an AI-powered content tool for marketers and content creators to develop comprehensive, SEO-optimized content.

This cloud-based platform uses AI to identify what questions your target audience is asking online and then helps you create content to address these queries.

With a mission to make your content more relevant and your website more discoverable, Frase can be a powerful tool in any digital marketer's arsenal.

Key features:

  • AI-driven topic research based on user intent
  • Automated content briefs to guide your writing
  • SEO analysis of top-performing content in your niche
  • Integration with Google Search Console and Google Analytics

Pricing: The Solo plan for individuals costs $14.99 per month. The Basic plan starts at $38.25 per month, and Team plan starts at $114.99 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Enhances content relevancy, improving SEO ranking
  • Time-saving tool for content research
  • Excellent integration with Google's tools
  • There can be a learning curve for non-SEO professionals
  • May not be as comprehensive as other dedicated SEO tools
  • The higher-tier plan can be expensive for small businesses

5. Unbounce (landing page design and analytics)

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Image source: Unbounce

Unbounce is a platform that helps you create and test responsive landing pages, website popups, and sticky bars without coding. You can create, customize, and optimize visually appealing landing pages that prompt your visitors to take action.

This platform is designed for businesses looking to grow their marketing funnel and increase conversion rates.

Key features:

  • Drag-and-drop landing page builder
  • A/B testing to optimize conversions
  • Popups and sticky bars to capture more leads

Pricing: Unbounce pricing starts at $99 per month for the Launch plan, $145 per month for the Optimize plan, and $240 per month for the Accelerate plan. The Concierge plan starts at $625 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Easy to use landing page builder
  • A/B testing and conversion tools
  • Popups and sticky bars for lead capture
  • Can be costly for small businesses
  • Limited integrations
  • May require training for some of the features

6. Wistia (video content creation)

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Image source: Wistia

Wistia is a professional video hosting solution with analytics, SEO, and marketing tools. It's designed to help businesses communicate effectively using video, track video performance, and find leads using video analytics.

Unlike YouTube and Vimeo embeds, Wistia gives you more customization options to create fully branded, HD video embeds for your website and product pages.

Key features:

  • Professional video hosting
  • Video analytics and SEO tools
  • Video marketing tools like calls to action (CTAs) and email collectors

Pricing: Wistia offers a free plan, while the Plus plan starts at $24 per month. The Pro plan starts at $99 per month, Advanced at $399 per month, and the Premium plan for custom pricing to suit any type of business.

Pros Cons
  • Professional video hosting service
  • Extensive video analytics and SEO
  • Effective video marketing tools
  • Advanced features require custom pricing
  • No live streaming options

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

7. HubSpot (customer relationship management)

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Image source: HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one digital marketing software. It's a CRM that also offers holistic marketing, sales, and customer service features to help businesses scale efficiently and effectively.

Besides its powerful CRM offering, HubSpot can be used to manage your sales and marketing funnels.

You can connect various marketing channels to automatically populate your account with potential customers. Then, use the comprehensive dashboards and database features to track the entire customer life cycle.

HubSpot can also be used as a marketing automation platform, offering various tools to handle customer communications. These marketing automation features include a chatbot with branched workflows, AI content assistant, and social and email campaigns.

HubSpot"s Marketing Hub offers all the tools you need to deliver relevant messages to the right audiences and capture qualified leads.

Key features:

  • All-in-one platform that includes marketing, sales, and service tools
  • Comprehensive CRM for effective customer relationship handling
  • Advanced analytics to track marketing campaigns and drive data-based decisions

Pricing: HubSpot offers many different billing options, with the Starter plan starting at $18 per month, the Professional plan at $800 per month, and the Enterprise plan at $3,600 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Free version with limited features
  • All-in-one platform for managing various business aspects
  • Robust analytics for tracking and decision-making
  • Scalable pricing plans
  • Higher-tier plans can be expensive for smaller businesses
  • Confusing pricing structure

8. Streak (CRM and email marketing software)

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Image source: Streak

Streak is a fully integrated Gmail-based CRM tool. This intuitive platform streamlines your CRM workflow by incorporating itself directly within your Gmail inbox, eliminating the need to constantly switch between email and a separate CRM tool.

You can use it for outreach emails with personalized variants. Setting up your account takes a few minutes: install the plugin, upload your contacts, and you’re ready to start working.

Streak is free for up to 50 emails daily, making it ideal for small or inbound-focused businesses that perform minimal outbound marketing activities.

Key features:

  • Seamless integration with Gmail for easy access and usage
  • Email tracking to monitor when your emails are read
  • Mail merge for bulk personalized emails
  • Shared pipelines to improve team collaboration
  • Task reminders to ensure you never miss a deadline

Pricing: Streak offers a free basic plan with limited functionality. The Solo plan starts at $15 per user per month for individuals. The Pro plan starts at $49 per user per month, Pro+ starts at $69 per user per month, and Enterprise starts at $129 per user per month.

Pros Cons
  • Perfect for Gmail users due to its seamless integration
  • Allows for efficient team collaboration
  • Useful tracking features for emails
  • Not as comprehensive as other standalone CRM tools
  • Limited functionality in the free version

Automation tools

9. Hootsuite (social media marketing software)

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Image source: Hootsuite

An established social media marketing software, Hootsuite enables you to schedule posts, monitor conversations, and measure performance across multiple social channels from a single dashboard.

Hootsuite"s single-dashboard view monitors overall social performance and responds to customer queries on various platforms.

You can also use it for social listening by tracking mentions and hashtags. Moreover, you can set triggers and automated actions, such as liking any new post that mentions your brand or includes a branded hashtag.

Key features:

  • Comprehensive social media management features, including scheduling and analytics
  • Social listening capabilities to track brand mentions and sentiment
  • Integration with a wide range of social media channels and digital tools

Pricing: Hootsuite's Professional plan starts at $99 per month, Team plan at $249 per month, Business plan at $739 per month, and a custom Enterprise plan for any type of organization.

Pros Cons
  • Centralized social media marketing tools
  • Social listening and monitoring features
  • Integration with numerous platforms
  • Higher-tier plans can be costly for small businesses
  • Social scheduling tools aren't very robust

10. Buffer (social media marketing software)

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Image source: Buffer

Like Hootsuite, Buffer is an intuitive social media management tool for managing all your social accounts in one place. You can create and schedule posts, plan your content using the calendar, and analyze social post performance.

Buffer is very easy to set up. You can connect your social accounts and start scheduling posts almost immediately.

Key features:

  • User-friendly social media scheduling and management
  • Reporting capabilities to track performance and engagement
  • Team collaboration features for effective teamwork

Pricing: Buffer offers different packages, with the Essentials plan starting at $12 per month for two channels, and the Team plan at $24 per month for two channels.

Pros Cons
  • Limited free version
  • Intuitive and easy-to-use platform
  • Basic analytics and reports
  • Collaborative features for teams
  • Limited features in the lower-tier plans
  • Integrations don't always work well
  • Pricing increases as you add more channels

11. Sprout Social (social media marketing software)

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Image source: Sprout Social

Another popular social media management platform, Sprout Social provides engagement, publishing, analytics, and team collaboration tools.

This platform is ideal for businesses that want to grow their social media presence effectively while saving time and improving collaboration.

Key features:

  • Comprehensive social media management, including publishing and analytics
  • Social listening capabilities to track brand mentions and sentiment
  • Integrated CRM to build and manage customer relationships

Pricing: The Standard plan starts at $249 per user per month, Professional plan at $399 per user per month, and Advanced plan at $499 per user per month. Contact sales for Enterprise pricing.

Pros Cons
  • Centralized social media campaign management
  • Social listening and CRM integration
  • Scalable pricing plans
  • Can be costly for small businesses
  • Limited number of social profiles you can manage on lower-tier plans
  • The mobile app lacks some functionality compared to the desktop version

12. Zapier (integrations platform)

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Image source: Zapier

Want to connect your business apps, such as Gmail, Slack, and more? Zapier is a no-code online automation tool that you can use to automate repetitive tasks.

Zapier"s plug-and-play approach to cross-platform automation is a game-changer for marketers, who often switch between multiple platforms.

You can use this single platform to build your own all-in-one marketing toolkit: populate your CRM from different sources, create tasks based on different triggers, personalize employee workflows, and more.

Key features:

  • Automation of repetitive tasks between different apps
  • Easy setup with no coding required
  • Supports thousands of apps and services, plus custom integrations

Pricing: Zapier offers a free plan with limited tasks, with paid plans starting at $19.99 per month (Starter), $49 per month (Professional), $69 per month (Team), and $99 per month (Company).

Pros Cons
  • Easy automation between different apps
  • No coding skills required
  • Supports a wide range of apps and services
  • Costs can add up depending on the number of tasks
  • May not work well for complex, multi-step workflows

13. Later (marketing automation software)

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Image source: Later

Later is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to plan and schedule your posts in advance.

It supports a variety of platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. With Later, you can plan your posts in a visual layout to ensure the aesthetics are right.

The Instagram integration is a stand-out feature, as other social scheduling platforms may require an extra step to publish scheduled posts on the day (not fully automated).

Key features:

  • User-friendly interface for scheduling social media posts
  • Visual content calendar for easy planning
  • Analytics to track post performance

Pricing: Later offers a free plan, with the Growth plan starting at $40 per month, the Advanced plan at $80 per month, and the Scale plan at $200 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Intuitive social media scheduling
  • Visual content calendar
  • Detailed social post performance analytics
  • Some features are limited to higher-tier plans
  • Direct video scheduling is only for Instagram and Facebook

14. ActiveCampaign (audience engagement)

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Image source: ActiveCampaign

An all-in-one marketing platform, ActiveCampaign helps small to medium businesses (SMBs) acquire, retain, and engage their customers.

ActiveCampaign is an integrated marketing automation software offering email campaign features and small business CRM. Its suite of tools enable you to create dynamic content with audience segmentation, site messaging, social marketing, mobile marketing, and personalized chat.

These powerful features help you keep in constant contact with your customers, increasing customer engagement and conversions.

Key features:

  • Comprehensive automation and email marketing tools, including 250+ pre-built email templates
  • Contact management
  • Machine learning capabilities for data insights

Pricing: ActiveCampaign pricing starts at $49 per month for the Marketing Plus plan, $149 per month for the Marketing Professional plan, and custom pricing for Enterprise.

Pros Cons
  • Extensive email marketing and automation features
  • Integrated CRM and sales process management
  • Some advanced features are only available in higher-tier plans
  • Email template builder could be more intuitive
  • May require training

Analytics tools

15. Google Analytics (web analytics and reports)

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A web analytics service provided by Google, Google Analytics tracks and reports app and website traffic. These reports help you understand your website's performance.

Use Google Analytics as a campaign monitor to gain deeper insights into your marketing efforts—what"s working and what isn"t.

It's a powerful free tool for measuring the results of individual campaigns in real-time and comparing the data to previous periods. You can use Google Analytics' advanced filters to create granular reports and export these as Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, or PDF reports.

You can see where your traffic is coming from (including social media platforms and referrals from other websites) and use these actionable insights to improve your marketing plan.

Key features:

  • Events and audience behavior analysis
  • Website traffic tracking to monitor engagement and reach
  • Detailed demographic data for targeted digital marketing strategies

Pricing: Google Analytics is a free tool.

Pros Cons
  • Comprehensive audience insights
  • Detailed website traffic and user behavior tracking
  • Completely free to use
  • Some advanced features are only available in higher-tier plans
  • Email template builder could be more intuitive
  • May require training

16. SEMrush (SEO analytics)

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Image source: SEMrush

This is an SEO management platform that can help you improve online visibility and discover marketing insights.

SEMrush's popular tools and reports assist marketers in SEO, campaign management, social media management (SMM), keyword research, competitive research, and public relations (PR).

It can also be used to gain comprehensive insights into your pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and content marketing efforts.

Key features:

  • In-depth SEO toolkit for keyword research, site audits, and rank tracking
  • Advertising research tools to analyze competitors' ad budgets and keywords
  • Social media tracker to monitor your competitors' content and engagement

Pricing: The Pro plan starts at $129.95 per month, the Guru plan at $249.95 per month, and the Business plan at $499.95 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Limited free version
  • Extensive SEO, social media tracker, and advertising research tools
  • Competitor analysis capabilities
  • Scalable pricing plans
  • Can be expensive for small businesses

17. Crazy Egg (analytics and A/B testing)

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Image source: Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a user-testing platform that helps you understand your customers' behavior to improve the user experience and boost conversions.

Its web analytics tools provide heat maps, scroll maps, A/B testing, and other features to help you understand how users interact with your website. It visually represents where users click, how far they scrolling, and other essential insights.

Crazy Egg is well-suited for ecommerce businesses wanting to improve their user experience (UX).

Key features:

  • Heatmaps and scroll maps to visualize user behavior
  • A/B testing tools to optimize site design and content
  • Easy integration with other platforms

Pricing: Crazy Egg pricing starts at $29 per month for the Basic plan, $49 per month for the Standard plan. The Plus plan costs $99 per month, and it's $249 per month for the Pro plan. Custom pricing is available in the Enterprise plan.

Pros Cons
  • Visual representation of user behavior on your website
  • Easy to set up and use
  • Useful user recording feature
  • A/B testing feature is less advanced compared to standalone A/B testing tools
  • Limited third-party integrations
  • Customer support team’s response time can be slow

18. Hotjar (website analytics)

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Image source: Hotjar

Another user behavior analytics and website feedback service, Hotjar helps you measure and analyze user flows on your website.

The initial setup is pretty easy, and the dashboards are intuitive.

Like Crazy Egg, Hotjar offers heat maps, scroll maps, session recordings, and surveys. However, it doesn't include an A/B testing feature.

Key features:

  • Heatmaps to visualize user clicks, scrolls, and mouse movements
  • Session recordings for understanding user journeys
  • Surveys and feedback widgets for capturing user sentiment

Pricing: Hotjar offers a Basic free plan, and the Plus plan is available for $39 per month. The Business plan starts at $99 per month. The Scale plan costs $213 per month. There are various pricing brackets within each plan based on sessions volume.

Pros Cons
  • Heatmaps and session recordings
  • User feedback collection tools
  • Easy to use interface
  • Larger sites may need to purchase a higher-priced plan
  • Data may be difficult to turn into actionable insights

19. BuzzSumo (brand marketing platform)

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Image source: BuzzSumo

As a research and monitoring tool, BuzzSumo helps you to discover the best engagement, content, and outreach opportunities across social and search data.

It's a robust online tool that helps users to learn what content is popular by topic or on any particular website. You can use the platform to find key influencers who can help spread your brand message.

BuzzSumo also provides competitor analysis to compare performance and social backlink information to find the sites linking to your competitors.

Key features:

  • Content discovery and performance insights
  • Influencer marketing and outreach capabilities
  • Monitoring and alerts for brand mentions

Pricing: BuzzSumo pricing starts at $119 per month for the Basic plan, $249 per month for the Content Creation and PR & Comms plans, $499 per month for the Suite plan, and $999 per month for Enterprise.

Pros Cons
  • Extensive content and influencer research tools
  • Brand monitoring and alerts
  • Detailed content performance insights
  • Pricing may be prohibitive for some small businesses
  • Not all data (such as social shares) may be completely accurate
  • May require training

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

20. Ahrefs (SEO analytics)

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Image source: Ahrefs

Want to understand how to outrank your competitors on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)? Ahrefs enables you to set up projects to track owned domains, do in-depth keyword research, analyze competitor web pages, and more.

Ahrefs is a staple in any marketing toolkit and offers all the features you need to create a solid content marketing strategy.

Key features:

  • Comprehensive SEO analysis, including keyword research, backlink analysis, and rank tracking
  • Competitor analysis to understand their strategies and performance
  • Detailed content analysis for content planning and optimization

Pricing: Ahrefs offers multiple types of pricing plans for mid to large-scale enterprises. A webmaster account is completely free, with limited access to reports.

The Lite plan at $99 per month, the Standard plan at $199 per month, the Advanced plan at $399 per month, and the Agency plan at $999 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Easy to set up and use
  • Extensive SEO and content analysis tools
  • Detailed competitor research capabilities
  • Helpful Google Chrome plugin
  • Can be expensive for small businesses or individual users
  • Limited reports
  • Inaccurate traffic reporting

21. Moz Pro (SEO management)

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Image source: Moz Pro

Like SEMrush and Ahrefs, Moz Pro is an all-in-one SEO toolset that offers advanced capabilities for keyword research, link analysis, site audits, and page optimization. These powerful reporting tools help will help you take a more strategic, data-driven approach to your digital strategy.

Moz Pro is also a well-known, trusted source of SEO expertise for marketers looking for advice or how-to tutorials.

Key features:

  • Comprehensive SEO toolkit for website optimization
  • Advanced link research tools for building robust link profiles
  • SERP feature tracking to monitor and understand search engine changes

Pricing: The Standard plan starts at $99 per month, Medium plan at $179 per month, Large plan at $299 per month, and Premium plan at $599 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Extensive SEO analysis and optimization tools
  • Advanced link research capabilities
  • Detailed SERP feature tracking
  • Higher-tier plans can be expensive
  • Compared to its competitors, Moz Pro's keywords tracking is less robust

22. Yoast SEO (WordPress SEO)

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Image source: Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress plugin that provides comprehensive on-page SEO tools for optimizing your business website content.

Its seamless integration with WordPress adds helpful hints, warnings, and progress bars when editing posts and pages.

This enables you to optimize for search engines as you go without having to create your own checklists. But note that Yoast SEO simply points out best practices and doesn't guarantee high rankings on SERPs.

Vectornator is now Linearity Curve.

Visit our Academy for free graphic design courses.

Key features:

  • Detailed content and SEO analysis for optimization
  • Readability checks to ensure content is user- and browser-friendly
  • Keyword optimization to help your content rank higher

Pricing: Yoast SEO offers a free version, and the Premium version is available at $99 per year for one site.

Pros Cons
  • Detailed content and SEO analysis
  • User-friendly readability checks
  • Keyword optimization tools
  • Some features are only available in the premium version
  • Not always accurate

23. WordLift (SEO management)

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Image source: WordLift

WordLift is an AI-powered SEO tool that translates web pages into machine-friendly content, improving visibility and user engagement.

It's primarily geared towards publishers, bloggers, and content marketers who want to improve their website's visibility through structured data and semantic SEO.

You can create custom dimensions for your Google Analytics reports to deeply understand your content performance and audience base. You can also automatically generate meta-data using natural language processing.

Key features:

  • AI-driven SEO enhancements
  • Semantic tagging and knowledge graph creation
  • User-friendly interface for content creators

Pricing: WordLift offers different plans, with the Starter plan starting at $54.99 per month, the Professional plan at $88.65 per month, and the Business + Ecommerce plan at $223.31 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Uses AI to optimize SEO with structured data
  • Sophisticated content recommendation tools
  • Easy to use
  • May require training
  • Reporting may be too basic depending on your needs

Project management

24. Trello (task management and collaboration)

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Image source: Trello

Most well-known for its Kanban templates, Trello is an easy-to-use project management tool that helps teams collaborate and organize their work more effectively.

Add descriptions, images, and comments to tasks as you move them from initial project stages to Done.

The highly intuitive visual interface is especially well-suited for creative teams.

Key features:

  • User-friendly project management and collaboration
  • Customizable boards, lists, and cards to organize tasks
  • Integration with many other tools and platforms

Pricing: Trello offers a free basic plan, with a Standard plan at $5 per user per month, a Premium plan at $10 per user per month, and an Enterprise plan at $17.50 per user per month.

Pros Cons
  • Intuitive and easy to use
  • Customizable organization tools
  • Quick setup and sharing
  • Some advanced features only available in paid plans
  • May be too basic for some teams or projects

25. Asana (task management)

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Image source: Asana

Asana is a robust project management tool that helps teams plan, organize, and manage their work. This platform enables you to create visual reports on your team's most important metrics and allows the sharing of reports.

This means you can cross-collaborate and provide accurate insights into your team"s productivity.

You can set up dashboards with advanced integrations and automations. Its integrations with software development platforms like GitHub make Asana particularly useful for product teams.

Key features:

  • Comprehensive project and task management features
  • Customizable workflows to match your team's processes
  • Detailed progress tracking and automations

Pricing: Asana offers a free basic plan. The Premium plan starts at $10.99 per user per month, Business plan at $24.99 per user per month, and Enterprise with custom pricing.

Pros Cons
  • Extensive project management tools
  • Customizable workflows for flexibility
  • Detailed progress tracking
  • Can be expensive for large teams
  • Less robust reporting features compared to competitors

26. CoSchedule (digital marketing software)

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Image source: CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a family of agile marketing tools that helps you stay organized, deliver projects on time, and keep your team motivated.

This marketing suite offers several tools for boosting productivity, organizing work, and automating marketing processes. You can use CoSchedule for content marketing, social media, email, and project management.

Key features:

  • Marketing calendar for planning and scheduling
  • Project management features for content creation and publishing
  • Social media scheduling and analytics

Pricing: CoSchedule offers different packages, with the Marketing Calendar package for free. Marketing Calendar Pro starts at $29 per user per month. For custom pricing on a tailored Marketing Suite package, you must contact sales.

Pros Cons
  • Comprehensive marketing planning tools
  • All-in-one marketing team project management
  • Integrated social media scheduling and analytics
  • High cost for small businesses and agencies
  • Limited integrations in lower-tier plans
  • May require training

27. Basecamp (project management)

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Image source: Basecamp

This project management and team communication software helps you manage projects and collaborate with your team in a single, organized place.

Create to-do lists for task management and set up message boards for team communication. You can also schedule deadlines and events for your team and send check-in questions automatically.

Key features:

  • Project organization and task management tools
  • Communication tools like message boards and chat
  • Document and file storage

Pricing: Basecamp for individuals starts at $15 per user per month, and the Pro Unlimited plan for businesses is available at $299 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Comprehensive project management features
  • Centralized communication tools
  • Flat pricing structure
  • Lacks advanced features compared to other project management tools
  • No built-in time tracking
  • Customization options are limited

28. Monday.com (enterprise project management)

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Image source: Monday.com

This flexible platform empowers teams to collaborate, communicate, and track work in one easy-to-use visual tool. Monday.com is a complete project management solution offering fully customizable boards, groups, and task fields.

There are various templates available for different use cases if you don"t want to start from scratch.

Besides its built-in marketing automation features and team collaboration tools, you can integrate third-party apps to streamline your workflows. Monday.com also offers robust tools for creating various types of reports, including shareable client-facing reports.

Key features:

  • Customizable workflow templates
  • Advanced scheduling and time tracking
  • Team collaboration and communication tools

Pricing: Monday.com offers different packages, starting with a free tier. The Basic plan starts at $8 per seat per month, Standard at $10 per seat per month, and Pro at $16 per seat per month. Custom pricing is applied to the Enterprise plan.

Pros Cons
  • Highly customizable project management tool
  • Extensive scheduling and time tracking
  • Encourages team collaboration
  • Invite customers and external stakeholders to collaborate
  • Pricing can become costly for larger teams
  • May be too robust and complex for small project teams

29. Airtable (collaborative database management)

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Image source: Airtable

This cloud collaboration service combines the power of a relational database with the flexibility of a spreadsheet. Airtable is a versatile tool that can be used for everything from project planning to content management.

It offers customizable views (including Grid, Calendar, Kanban, Gallery, and Gantt charts) and rich field types for using text, checkboxes, attachments, and links to records in other tables.

You can also use the collaboration features to comment, share, and @mention colleagues in tables to streamline work efficiency.

Key features:

  • Flexible, spreadsheet-style interface
  • Wide variety of templates for different use cases
  • Integration with a variety of apps and services

Pricing: Airtable offers a Free plan, with paid plans starting at $10 per user per month for Plus, $20 per user per month for Pro, and custom pricing for Enterprise.

Pros Cons
  • Highly flexible and customizable
  • Multiple view options for different needs
  • Automation and integration capabilities
  • Some learning curve due to its extensive features

Communication tools

30. Mailchimp (CRM and digital marketing software)

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Image source: Mailchimp

This all-in-one integrated marketing platform allows you to create, send, and analyze email and ad campaigns. Besides automating newsletters and website pop-ups, you can use Mailchimp's email marketing solution to build various types of forms and customizable email templates.

With its recent addition of CRM features, Mailchimp can be used as a powerful tool for marketing professionals.

Mailchimp users no longer need additional software to manage contacts garnered from digital marketing campaigns and can more easily track marketing performance with comprehensive analytics.

Key features:

  • Comprehensive email marketing features, including newsletters, automated campaigns, and transactional emails
  • Data-driven email marketing with detailed reports and analytics to track campaign performance
  • Integrated CRM to maintain detailed contact records and segment audiences

Pricing: Mailchimp offers a Free plan, and the pricing for paid plans starts at $10.40 per month for the Essentials plan, $15.32 per month for the Standard plan, and $300.99 per month for the Premium plan.

Extra costs are involved based on high usage, making it ideal for various types of businesses (startups or mid-sized businesses).

Pros Cons
  • Wide range of email marketing features
  • Detailed analytics and reports
  • Many integrations
  • High costs for the premium plans, especially when using transactional emails
  • Lacks advanced CRM capabilities

31. Slack (online communication tool)

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Image source: Slack

A communication platform that aims to help teams collaborate more efficiently, Slack offers real-time messaging, file sharing, and integration with other tools.

Fun fact: Slack started out as an online game with built-in chat tools. The communication side of the app became so popular that the company pivoted its focus.

This software is particularly useful for remote teams to handle daily communications, team polls, file-sharing, and online meetings. You can join multiple workspaces and create online communities.

Key features:

  • Real-time messaging for immediate communication
  • File sharing and collaboration features
  • Integration with numerous other tools and platforms

Pricing: Slack offers a free basic plan, with paid plans starting at $7.25 per user per month (Pro), $12.50 per user per month (Business+), and Enterprise Grid with custom pricing.

Pros Cons
  • Efficient real-time messaging and collaboration
  • Wide range of integrations
  • Scalable pricing plans
  • Advanced features require a paid plan
  • Limited message storage in lower pricing tiers

32. SurveyMonkey (form builder)

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Image source: SurveyMonkey

Create, send, and analyze surveys with ease using SurveyMonkey.

SurveyMonkey is an online survey development tool that enables businesses, educational institutions, and individuals to create and send surveys for market research, customer satisfaction, event planning, and more.

It offers a wide range of question types and pre-built survey templates. You can also use skip logic to route respondents through different paths in a survey.

Key features:

  • User-friendly survey creation tools
  • Comprehensive analysis of survey results
  • Integration capabilities with other platforms

Pricing: The Basic plan is free. The Standard Monthly plan for teams starts at $99 per month, the Advantage plan at $32 per month, and the Premier Annual plan at $119 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Easy survey creation
  • Detailed analysis tools
  • Wide integration options
  • More advanced features are available only in premium plans
  • Limited form customization and branding capabilities

Online ads

33. Google Ads (business marketing)

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Image source: Google Ads

Another free-to-use platform by Google, Google Ads is an online advertising platform where you can bid to display advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users.

You can opt to appear in Search or DisplayAds, or create Dynamic Search Ads and let Google generate optimized messaging based on your website copy.

You can set your own budgets and run multiple campaigns simultaneously. Campaigns can be toggled on and off as needed. You can use extensions and callouts to draw attention to seasonal promotions and special pricing.

Key features:

  • Pay-per-click advertising on Google search and display network
  • Keyword planning and targeting tools
  • Detailed analytics to measure ad performance

Pricing: Google Ads operates on an auction system, which takes place every time a user performs a keyword search, so, costs vary. It offers flexible budgeting options where you set your budget cap and only pay when users interact with your ads.

Pros Cons
  • Large reach due to Google's extensive network
  • Detailed targeting and planning tools
  • Pay only when users interact with your ads
  • Can become expensive if not managed correctly
  • Difficult to troubleshoot if your ads aren't approved

34. LinkedIn Ads (business marketing)

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LinkedIn Ads is a self-service advertising solution that allows you to create and publish ads on the LinkedIn platform.

Its various targeting options and ad formats are particularly effective for B2B marketing and customer acquisition. These ads let you harness your broader professional network on LinkedIn to create personalized ads and boost posts.

You can also use LinkedIn Ads to increase brand awareness and grow your following on the LinkedIn social media platform.

Key features:

  • Targeted advertising based on industry, job title, etc. on LinkedIn
  • Different ad formats (sponsored content, text ads, sponsored InMail)
  • Detailed analytics to track ad performance

Pricing: LinkedIn Ads works on a bidding system like Google Ads. Campaign and ad budgets have minimum costs and bid amounts that must be set.

Pros Cons
  • Highly targeted advertising
  • Variety of ad formats
  • Powerful for B2B marketing
  • Requires a high budget to see good results
  • Setting up campaigns requires many steps and may require training
  • Smaller user base than other social media platforms

35. Invideo (Video Content Creation Tool)

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Image source: Invideo

This is a user-friendly video editing tool for content creators to create a video within a minute. It generates your script, creates scenes, adds voice overs, and tweaks everything at your command. Invideo is an AI-powered video creation platform that makes it easy for anyone to create customized, professional-looking videos for their business and marketing needs in minutes thanks to its library of templates, drag-and-drop editing, and helpful collaboration tools.

Key features:

  • Drag-and-drop video editor.
  • Uses AI to convert text into natural-sounding voice overs to easily add narration to explainers and tutorials.
  • Wide range of templates according to social media

Pricing:Invideo-free Invideo free plans offering a generous array of features to more advanced plans starting at $15 per month.

Pros Cons
  • Drag-and-drop editing
  • Useful collaboration tools
  • Affordable pricing tiers
  • Limited free plan
  • No advanced editing features like multi-cam editing
  • Steep learning curve for some advanced customizations

Marketing workflow recommendations

We've discussed many digital marketing tools that can be used for a wide range of marketing efforts. Some tools are more user-friendly but may lack the specific features you're looking for. So, how can you choose the right combination for your Marketing Technology stack?

To make these insights actionable, let's recommend some combinations of these tools for three common marketing workflows:

Workflow 1: content marketing

  1. Research and planning: Use SEMrush or BuzzSumo to research keywords and uncover your target audience's trending topics.
  2. Creation: Utilize Frase's powerful content creation features and collaborate on Linearity Curve (formerly Vectornator) or Canva to design blog visuals.
  3. SEO: Boost your content's visibility using Yoast SEO or Moz Pro.
  4. Performance analysis: Dive into Google Analytics for essential insights into your content's performance. Use Hotjar or Unbounce to understand how to improve your blog posts.

Workflow 2: online advertising

  • Ad creation: Use the design templates on Linearity Curve (formerly Vectornator) to create compelling ad visuals. Airtable can help keep your ad copy organized and ready to copy-paste.
  • Ad placement and management: Use Google Ads and LinkedIn Ads for impactful online ad campaign management.
  • Performance analysis: Use Google Ads and Analytics to measure the success of your ad campaigns. LinkedIn Ads also provides built-in analytics tools.

Workflow 3: monthly newsletter

  • Newsletter assembly and sending: Mailchimp is an all-in-one platform for creating and sending newsletters. This single platform offers templated email design and layout options, dynamic fields to personalize emails, and a form builder.
  • Visual design: Use Linearity Curve (formerly Vectornator) to create custom visuals to enhance your newsletter content.
  • Subscriber management: ActiveCampaign can help manage your email list and automate marketing interactions. You can also use HubSpot's integration with Mailchimp if you prefer HubSpot CRM for managing your subscriber list.
  • Performance analysis: Use the built-in campaign analytics dashboard provided by Mailchimp to measure key metrics or integrate with Google Analytics for a deeper dive into performance.

We hope this post helped you find the online marketing tools that suit your team and budget. Making an informed decision about the right tools for your MarTech stack will help you better manage marketing tasks, gain valuable insights, and ultimately drive your digital marketing strategy.

Ready to explore new innovative design software? Linearity Curve (formerly Vectornator) offers all the tools you need for impactful visual communication.

Jumpstart your ideas with Linearity Curve

Take your designs to the next level.

Sharné McDonald

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Contributing Writer

Sharné is a contributing writer to the Linearity Blog. She has 10+ years' experience in graphic design and marketing and holds a Master's degree in Art Education.

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