If you’re anything like me, you’re always curious to know what tools other people use to run their businesses. Today, I’m sharing my favorite tools and resources that I currently use and love.

Disclaimer: All of these products and services are ones that I personally use and whole-heartedly support. With that and for the sake of being fully transparent, some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that if you click through and decide to purchase, you’ll be supporting me in a small way without any additional cost to you. 

DESIGN SOFTWARE

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ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD SUITE – I couldn’t run my business without Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop!

CANVA – This is a free, easy-to-use online design program, and it’s great for quick designs.

ONLINE MARKETPLACES

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ETSY – This is where I sell my everyday stationery collections and where my business started!

CREATIVE MARKET – This is an amazing marketplace for all design things. I use Creative Market to purchase things like fonts, stock photos, mockups, etc. And I just recently launched my own template shop.

SOCIAL MEDIA 

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TAILWIND – I use this online tool to help me plan and schedule out pins for Pinterest. I occasionally use it for Instagram as well, but haven’t taken full advantage of that feature yet. For Pinterest, this is great to help me schedule out pins so that I can keep content going out without being on Pinterest every single day. It’s a great time saver!

WEBSITE

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SHOWIT – If you’ve been following along with me, you know that I love Showit for building websites!

SHOPIFY LITE – I use Shopify’s Buy Buttons in my template shop

YOAST – A free wordpress plugin that I use with my blog, and it helps me with SEO.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS – Okay, I’m still figuring this one out, but it’s a great tool to see the stats on your website traffic.

CLIENT MANAGEMENT

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DUBSADO – I can’t express enough how much I love using Dubsado. This is an amazing all-in-one client management software that lets me keep track of inquiries, client projects, contracts, invoices, proofs, and more. It takes some time to set up, and I’ll admit that I’m still learning, but it’s one of the best things I’ve found for my business. Plus they have the best trial period – you don’t pay anything for your first 3 clients, so you have plenty of time to test it out before committing to a payment. And save 20% off your first month or year when you use my code: petitepoppydesigns

MISCELLANEOUS

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SQUARE – This is the payment processor I choose to use for all of my invoices through Dubsado. If you’re looking for a payment processor, you can get free processing (no fees!) on your first $1000 here.

QUICKBOOKS SELF-EMPLOYED – I use this to manage all of my business finances, keep track of receipts, etc. This makes tax-time pretty painless! Feel free to use this link to save 50% off your first 6 months.

VELA – This is a great (and free!) tool that saves me an incredible amount of time with my Etsy shop. It helps me batch update my Etsy listings all at once. If you’re currently selling on Etsy and aren’t using this yet, I’d highly encourage you to check it out!

BOOMERANG FOR GMAIL – This is a great tool to help you stick to your own boundaries (ie, office hours). You can schedule out emails to send at a specific time, and you can even set times for your inbox to “pause,” so you have one less distraction during the day. Also free!

OFFICE EQUIPMENT 

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DYMO LABEL PRINTER (specifically, this one) – This little printer has saved my sanity! I use this little printer to print all of my shipping labels. Which means I don’t have to worry about ink running out, cutting anything down to size, taping anything, pulling my hair out when the printer wouldn’t connect (again!).

PIXMA iX6820 – Another printer that I love. I use this one for all of my envelope printing for my stationery, and it has become one of my favorite purchases.

LAPTOP STAND – Okay, this one seems random, but hear me out. When I first set up my dedicated office space (hello grown-up office, goodbye dining room table), my back was killing me. Eventually, I remembered that I had this smart contraption stowed away back from when I was in grad school. Once I started using it (+ keyboard and mouse) instead of crouching over my laptop all day, my back pain completely went away!

I hope this list was helpful to you in some way. I’d love to hear what tools you use and couldn’t live without!