Best Agency Software Tools and Services 2024
I use most of these on a day-to-day basis with my agency and they’ve served me well. I I won’t pretend I know best. But these ones have worked great at my 25-person branding agency.
Note: some of these links come with discounts for you and kickbacks for me.
For Payroll
Gusto
Get $100-200 when you signup with this link:
Gusto is amazing if you haven’t tried it. It automates everything and makes it easy for employees to handle their own pay and benefits without constantly harassing you.
Features:
- Runs payroll with a click on a button
- Auto deductions and tax filing
- Awesome interface for employees and managers to see all their info and make updates
- Manage health insurance, HFA, HSA, 401k, workers comp, charitable donations, and more.
- Hiring and Onboarding (Hiring letters that go out automatically! Built-in employee handbook)
- Easy Time Off Requests and Approvals
- Easy reimbursement system for employees
- And a ton more.
For Project Management
Monday.com
25% off
Use this link: https://share.honeybook.com/chris5769834
Ok. The name of this app is a little annoying, because saying things like “It’s on Monday” suddenly could have two meanings, but other than that this tool is amazing. We’ve gone through quite a few PM tools *Basecamp, Asana, Trello, and others) and Monday fits us best.
It’s very similar to Clickup, but with a lower learning curve and friendlier interface. As a design agency, usability and layout are super important–so this tool works great! There are tons of automations and integrations so you can customize to your hearts desire.
For Knowledge Base
SLAB
SLAB – 20% off your first 3 months with this link
Here’s the link: http://slab.com/r/z3mnbsdi
I love Slab. It’s super intuitive and does exactly what it needs to do and not all the other stuff. It’s a wiki that doesn’t feel like a wiki. It has the ability to make pages and sections public or private, which is great for sharing docs or even multi-page guides with clients. It’s also not expensive.
If you are not documenting how your business works it will never scale. Use Slab!
For Project Manager Help
Partnered MG
Use this code CAP10
(And get 10% off 2 months with Partnered MG)
Project management is where profit happens and it’s one of the hardest things to scale up and down at a small agency. One of the things that literally saved my agency was working with Partnered MG. They help you run projects without the overhead of hiring additional project managers or keeping a stable of freelance PMs at the ready. I can’t recommend them enough.
For SEO and Marketing
SEMRush
Use this link! https://semrush.sjv.io/c/5577463/995972/13053
SEMRush is a swiss-army-knife of marketing and tracking tools. While it’s focus is SEO, they a ton of great tools that any marketer would love from website aududits to competitor marketing to social media tools and more. I kinda can’t belive I went so long without using them.
For Email, Calendar, File Storage
Google Workspace
Get 10% off (contact me for a discount code)
Storage and Documents
Calendar Management
Email Management
Video Meetings
Lots more!
For Legal
Matchstick Legal
The best there is for Agencies
Emessay
For Contracts (By the same folks behind Matchstick but more affordable!)
Data and Automation
Airtable
Use this promo link to signup: https://airtable.com/invite/r/ETfuYB5f
Airtable is pretty amazing and can be used for just about anything. It’s like spreadsheets on steroids with tons of integrations. We use Airtable for numerous things from client surveys to customer database management, to content planning for website projects. It also really opens up possibilities of no-code app creation.
For Domain Hosting
Namecheap
Sign up Here
Namecheap is great for buying and managing domain names. The price is right and their customer service has always been much better than Go Daddy. They periodically offer deals on domains and I love their domain search feature with “Beast Mode.”
They also offer affordable C panel hosting and other hosting-related services.
More Tools
GatherContent
GatherContent is currently a sponsor, but I’ve been using this tool at our agency for over a year. It’s awesome for managing, creating, and collaborating on content for a website build. It totally eliminates sending copy edit emails with attachments and it makes an otherwise chaotic process much simpler. We use it every day.
Proposify
Really it’s hard to imagine life without Proposify. We used to create our proposals in Adobe illustrator and it was a huge pain. Now Proposify makes it super easy to throw together a proposal and get it digitally signed. Also, the people that run it are super nice!
Screaming Frog
Screaming frog has many uses. Basically, it scrapes data from websites. If you build websites it’s a great tool for creating content maps, mapping 301 redirects, or just estimating the size of a website. We use it constantly.
Blubrry
I use Blubrry to host my podcast files and track subscribership. It works great. Highly recommended if you or one of your clients is setting up a podcast. (Get a free month with this link).