Small Business Resources

Following is a list of small business resources that we use as a company or recommend to our clients. Some of the links to these business and marketing resources are affiliate links. This means if you purchase their product, we receive a small bit of income. Although this is true, we don’t recommend products or services only based on their affiliate programs and many of these small business resources do not have affiliate links.

If you have a favorite resource not listed here, you can send us your recommendation by using our contact form.

Digital Marketing

Mail Chimp is primarily known for helping small businesses send Email Campaigns to their customers. They have added a lot more features, including social media management, landing pages, shoppable landing pages, postcards, and more — all from a single platform.

Free Basic Plan | Guides and Tutorials

Hootsuite can help you manage and schedule posts to up to 3 social profiles for free. Intagrates with Google My Business and other Marketing solutions using apps.

Free Basic Plan | Guides and Tutorials

LiveChat: Have you visited a website recently and seen a chat window and wondered if your small business can take advantage of this? With LiveChat, you can. If your team can be available to chat live with your customers, this will be the platform for your business. It has an easy to use interface, simple set-up and affordable pricing. Kick your online customer service up a couple of notches and sign-up today.

Free 14 Day Trial | Webinar Tutorials

ChatBot can help if your business doesn’t have enough people available to be available to chat online with your customers, but you still want to interact with your customers using chat. How this works is, you create conversations to help guide your clients to find information or solve problems online. To see a chatbot at work, visit KathodeRay’s Contact page, and our Chat Landing page to see how this can work. (Each page has a unique script.)

Free 14 Day Trial | Guides and Tutorials

Virtual Consults or Meetings

Microsoft Teams is a free secure service by Microsoft that helps teams chat, meet, call or collaborate from anywhere. Up to 500 users, also provides free file storage and works seamlessly with other Office Apps.

Free

Zoom is a video conferencing/screen sharing platform that can host up to 100 participants and unlimited 1 to 1 meetings for free. Offers webinar features as well.

Free Basic Plan | Paid plans start at $14.99/month

UberConference is a secure service that allows you to talk, video and screenshare Immediately without a PIN.

Free Basic Plan up to 10 users | Paid plans start at $15/month

Operations

Melio Payments is a service that integrates with most accounting software platforms and allows you to schedule payments, letting them print and send checks through your bank account. (You are in complete control of the authorizations.)

Free Basic Features

Ring Central offers full phone, texting and video conferencing with plans starting at $29.99 per month per user.

Paid plans starting at $29.99/month per user

Productivity Hacks

Google Drive makes it easy to share and edit document and spreadsheet files. You can even chat and share notes from within a document.

Free

Slack is a chat application that helps your team stay in touch and solve problems. Also offers 1 to 1 voice and video calls plus it integrates with Office and Google Drive.

Free | Paid Programs start $6.67/month

Trello is a team productivity tool, that helps you track projects and ideas.

Free Basic Plan | Paid plans start at $9.99/month per user

Ecommerce Websites

BigCommerce.com helps businesses of all sizes sell products online, their platform integrates with Amazon, Ebay, Google Shopping, Facebook and Instagram.

Free Trial | Plans start at $29.95/month | Guides and Tutorials

Shopify allows anyone to easily sell online and at a retail location. Includes tools to place ads on Social (Facebook) and Google; as well as create email campaigns.

Free Trial | Plans start at $29/month | Guides and Tutorials

SquareSpace helps small businesses start with a basic Website and grows with them. Advanced plans offer gift cards, online and retail shopping, email marketing, appointment scheduling, Adwords credits and more.

Plans start at $12/month | Guides and Tutorials

Marketing Grants

Annuity Freedom features a website analysis and marketing recommendations micro grant ($100 per month) for Black and Minority business owners. There is no fee required to participate.

COVID-19 Grants, Financial Assistance and Financial Literacy

HelloAlice can help you find funding, discounts, opportunities, and experts to assist you on your your small business journey – all for free. They have a special COVID program of $10,000 grants to impacted businesses.

Free Resources | 10k COVID Grant | Additional Financing/Grants | Learning Center

Greene County has created a special disaster loan program to assist small businesses that were negatively affected. The County, in conjunction with the Greene County Economic Development Corporation (GCEDC), is allocating Community Development Block Grant funds for small business loans that retain or create jobs that primarily benefit low- and moderate-income people.

Loan | Learning Center

Annuity.org has a lot of information about managing your money, this link in particular directs to COVID-19 relevant information. However the site as a whole offers a considerable amount of information regarding how to manage your money.

Learning Center

Professional Beauty Association is offering $500 grants to licensed beauty professionals who are unable to work due to COVID-19. The funding, if awarded, is intended to be emergency aid for short-term immediate needs such as food and bills.

Free Resources | $500 Grant | Learning Center

James Beard Relief Fund has awarded COVID grants to those in the Food and Beverage Industry. It appears they are not giving new grants at this time, however there are many other free resources that can be helpful.

Free Resources | Possibly Future Grant | Learning Center

Restaurant Strong Fund is for employees who have been employed for more than three months at a restaurant, bar, cafe or nightclub.

The Capital Region Response Fund is providing one-time operating grants will help fund frontline human services 501c3 organizations that have deep roots in the community and strong experience working with vulnerable populations.

GrantStation has a searchable database of grants, funds and loans. Most of their listings do not apply to the Albany Area.

Google is distributing Ad Credits to small and medium sized businesses, who have spent with a Google Ads account in ten out of twelve months of 2019, and in January and/or February of this year. The accounts we manage have had this credit applied.

Facebook has a grant program; however it is not available in the Albany / Capital District Region.

* FYI: A small number of these recommended products have affiliate links that would provide a bit of revenue to our company if you choose to purchase their service.