small business | The Blog Pros

May 20, 2022

8 Best Small Business Cell Phone Plans for 2022 (with Free Option)

Are you looking for a small business cell phone plan to stay in touch with your customers and team members?

A business cell phone plan gives you the freedom and flexibility to answer calls, communicate with your team, and attend meetings while on the go. It helps you stay connected from anywhere in the world.

In this article, we’ll share the best small business cell phone plans with pros and cons, so you can pick the best solution for your needs.

Why Do You Need a Business Cell Phone Plan?

A business cell phone plan is important for many small business owners, so they can keep their business phone separate from their personal phone and easily coordinate with other team members.

With the right cell phone plan, your customer support staff will be able to help out customers and respond to their questions while on the go. This way you can improve retention and create a long-term relationship with your customers.

Similarly, if you have a remote team spread across different locations, then a cell phone plan can improve business communication since you can hold webinars and meetings to keep everyone connected.

As a business owner, you have a lot of choices when it comes to selecting a cell phone plan for your company. There are traditional wireless carriers, business VoIP services, and virtual calling systems that provide a business cell phone service.

That said, let’s look at some of the best small business cell phone plans in the market.

1. Nextiva

Nextiva is the best VoIP and virtual business phone service in the market. It’s a cloud-based business phone system that offers a powerful set of features, and it’s super easy to set up.

This is what we use for our business here at WPBeginner.

Nextiva is often referred to as a UCaaS (unified communication as a service) because it brings separate communication channels like video, text message chat, voice, and collaboration tools together in one place.

There are Nextiva apps for mobile phones, tablets, desktop, and even desk phones, so your team can use a separate business phone number or extension without needing two separate devices which helps reduce cost.

Some of the features you get include an auto-attendant feature, HD video conferencing option, nationwide unlimited calling and SMS messages, free number porting, voicemail to email notifications, toll-free numbers, a cloud-based VoIP call center, cloud PBX, call pop with caller ID details, and more.

The VoIP service also helps your team improve communication and automate different workflows. For example, you can set up email automation and create automated replies to quickly respond to business customer queries that come in through your WordPress website.

Another benefit of using Nextiva is that it easily integrates with other communication tools and CRMs like Salesforce, Google Contacts, Zendesk, Oracle Sales Cloud, Zoho, and more.

Nextiva offers 3 business cell phone plans that you can choose from.

Essential – The prices start from $18.95 per user per month, and you get unlimited voice and video calling, toll-free numbers, Outlook and Google contacts integrations, and more.
Professional – Starting at $22.95 per user per month. In addition to the features in the Essential plan, you also get unlimited conference calls, a screen sharing option, mobile and desktop SMS/MMS feature, auto-attendant, and more.
Enterprise – In this plan, you get all the features that Nextiva offers, and it will cost $32.95 per user per month. Plus, you get a call recording option, Microsoft Teams integration, voicemail transcription, and more.

If you’re looking for a small business cell phone plan that doesn’t require getting a separate device and allows for sharing the business phone number with multiple team members, then Nextiva is the way to go.

This is what we use for our business, and many other top organizations like UnitedWay, TacoBell, YMCA, Stanford University, and others also use Nextiva for their business phone.

2. RingCentral

RingCentral is also one of the best business cell phone services that you can use for your website. The VoIP phone service provider allows your support team to handle customer support from anywhere using its Android and iOS mobile app and desktop app.

This way, you can also implement a bring your own device (BYOD) policy and allow your team members to use their own devices to handle work-related tasks from any place at any time.

With RingCentral, you get unlimited phone calls within the US and Canada, voice-to-text features, video conferences, business SMS, internet fax, toll-free number, and more.

There’s also an auto attend feature in RingCentral and advanced call handling features where support agents can see the caller’s interaction history, get real-time analytics, and allow managers or another team member to take over a call.

RingCentral offers 4 business cell phone plans that you can use, and the best part is that you get a 14-day free trial.

Essentials – Starting from $19.99 per user per month, you get up to 20 users, a toll-free number, unlimited calls in the US/Canada, team messaging, and more.
Standard – In this plan, RingCentral offers an unlimited number of users, business phone numbers in 100 countries, unlimited internet fax, video meetings, 24/7 support, and more for $27.99 per user per month.
Premium – It will cost you $34.99 per user per month. You get more features like automatic call recording, hot desking, advanced call handling features, real-time analytics, CRM integrations, etc.
Ultimate – This plan is for $49.99 per user per month, and it includes all the features along with device status reports, status alerts, and unlimited storage.

3. Ooma

Ooma is an all-in-one virtual phone service for small businesses. With Ooma, you get amazing features to keep you connected with your customers and remote team members.

The phone service offers HD audio, video conferencing, messaging, virtual receptionists, free 1-800 toll-free numbers, and free local phone numbers. The best, you get mobile apps that let you receive calls and answer your customers’ queries on the go.

Besides that, there’s also an Ooma Office suite that works out of the box and is very easy to set up. With Ooma Office, you can attend meetings and video conferences to keep your team connected with each other.

Other features offered by Ooma include voicemail transcription, online fax, enhanced call blocking, call recording, call forwarding, unlimited calling in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, affordable international call rates, and more.

Ooma offers 2 pricing plans for small business cell phones.

Ooma Office – It will cost you $19.95 per month per user and you get a lot of features like a mobile app, virtual receptionist, call transfer, call logs, and more.
Ooma Office Pro – This plan will cost you $24.95 per month per user and you get additional features like a desktop app, call recording, enhanced call blocking, caller info match, and more.

4. Grasshopper

Grasshopper is a top virtual phone service for small businesses that’s affordable and packed with valuable features.

Using Grasshopper, you can get a toll-free number, a local number, a vanity number, and transfer users to an existing virtual number easily. The cloud-based phone service offers a desktop and mobile phone app, so you can take calls and respond to messages from anywhere.

Other than that, you can set up custom greetings to welcome callers and ensure that you never miss a call by routing customers to another phone or team member. The service also offers virtual fax, voicemail, incoming call controls, analytics, and more.

The only downside is that Grasshopper is only available in the USA and Canada. That said, you get a 7-day free trial with 3 premium plans.

Solo – It will cost you $26 per month. You get to choose 1 phone number and 3 extensions.
Partner – This plan costs $44 per month and offers up to 3 types of phone numbers and 6 extensions.
Small Business – You can use unlimited extensions and up to 5 phone numbers for $80 per month.

5. Phone.com

Phone.com is a versatile virtual phone service that’s great for small businesses and startups. It offers affordable pricing plans and lets you mix and match plans based on your business needs.

The VoIP service offers business mobile and desktop apps so that you can handle customer support from an office or on the move.

With Phone.com, you get additional functionality like audio conferencing, call analytics, call recording and screening, call forwarding, text messaging, fax-from-phone option, and much more.

Phone.com offers 3 pricing plans with a monthly billing cycle, and you can combine these plans according to what you need. Plus, each plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Basic Users – Starting from $10.39 per month per user, you get 300 minutes and 1000 text messages. It also includes video conferencing up to 10 participants, document sharing, fax from phone feature, and more.
Plus Users – It will cost you $15.99 per month per user and includes everything in the basic user package along with unlimited minutes and business text messages.
Pro Users – This plan will cost you $23.99 per month per user, and you get all the features that Phone.com has to offer. Plus, you get advanced call management features like call recording, call analytics, and CRM integrations.

6. AT&T

AT&T is one of the largest wireless carriers in the United States, and it offers unlimited domestic mobile data usage, talk minutes, and text messages. It’s a great alternative to VoIP business cell phone plans and you get exceptional call quality.

With AT&T, you get no roaming charges along with unlimited talk time and instant messaging for Mexico and Canada. There are also shared data plans where you can make the data shareable for up to 25 phones, tablets, and other devices.

There is also an international addon that lets you make calls and send messages to over 210 countries. Each mobile plan also comes with 5G and 5G+ access, so you won’t worry about slow internet speeds.

Other than that, AT&T offers a video streaming feature, but the video quality will depend on your plan. It also offers powerful security measures to protect your business. For instance, you get spam and fraud call blocking, identity monitoring, safe browsing, and more.

There are the 3 business cell phone plans offered by AT&T, and you get to choose up to 10 lines per plan. However, the prices go down if you select 6 to 10 lines per plan. Also if you exceed the data limit, then your internet speeds are slowed down to 128 Kbps.

We’ll show you prices for 6 – 10 lines.

Business Unlimited Starter – Priced at $30 per month per line, you get basic security features, 5G/5G+, standard definition video streaming quality, 5GB mobile hotspot data per line, and more.
Business Unlimited Performance – It will cost $35 per month per line, and you get HD video streaming, 40GB of mobile hotspot data per line, and advanced security features.
Business Unlimited Elite – This plan is for $40 per month per line. It offers advanced security features, business fast track, HD and 4K video streaming, and 100GB of mobile hotspot data per line.

7. Verizon

Verizon is another wireless carrier that you can use for your business cell phone needs. It also offers some of the best cell phone plans and features like unlimited calling, texting, and data plans within the US.

With Verizon, you get extended high-speed data coverage across the USA and selected international countries. It even offers flexible plans for adding unlimited data for tablets. However, you’ll need compatible devices and ensure that 5G coverage is available in your area.

Besides, the wireless carrier offers different security measures. For instance, you can use its call filter to block spam, protect your device against phishing and web risks, Wi-Fi protection notice, and more.

Verizon offers 3 different pricing plans, and you can choose the number of lines you require. The more lines you add, the lower will be the overall prices.

Business Unlimited Start 2.0 – It will cost you $30 per line per month, and you get unlimited talk, text, and data. It also includes 5G/4G LTE, an unlimited mobile hotspot, and a call filter spam blocker. You can also save $5 per month for paper-free billing and autopay.
Business Unlimited Plus 2.0 – You can select this plan for $35 per line per month. It includes a 5G ultra-wideband, 100GB of data, and more security features.
Business Unlimited Pro 2.0 – This unlimited plan is priced at $45 per line per month. In addition to everything in Start and Plus plan, you get unlimited premium network access and more perks. Since you get unlimited data, there are no overage charges.

8. Google Voice

Google Voice is the last business cell phone plan on our list, and it’s a virtual phone service that you can use for your business. With Google Voice, you can work from anywhere, as it works on your mobile device, laptop, and supported desktop phones.

Google Voice also offers ease of use with a simple interface that helps manage your workflows, assignments, and billing from a single platform.

Currently, the cell phone service is only available in the US. However, you get free calling to the US from any country, free calling to Canada from the US and unlimited SMS in the US.

A few other features offered by Google Voice include spam call blocks, voicemail transcriptions, and integration with Google Workspace. You can easily use Google Voice with Google Meet and Calendar.

You can choose from 3 monthly plans for Google Voice.

Starter – It will cost you $10 per user per month, and up to 10 users can use the service in 10 domestic locations. However, you cannot use Google Voice internationally if you use this plan.
Standard – You can get this plan for $20 per user per month. It includes an unlimited number of users and domestic locations along with all the basic features. You also get auto attendant, Ring Groups, desk phone support, and eDiscovery for calls, voicemails, and SMS records.
Premier – Priced at $30 per user per month, this plan offers unlimited users, domestic and international locations, and advanced features like advanced reporting.

Which Small Business Cell Phone Plan is the Best?

If you’re looking for a VoIP business phone service that offers lots of flexibility and features, then we recommend Nextiva.

It’s simple to use, and you can stay connected with your customers and team from anywhere. Plus, it offers mobile, desktop, and tablet apps, so you handle calls, take meetings, organize workflows, and provide a great customer experience while on the go.

RingCentral and Ooma are great alternatives for Nextiva, and they round out the top 3 providers in our list.

On the other hand, if you want to use a traditional wireless carrier, then you can consider using AT&T. It offers unlimited text, talk, and data, along with an addon to include international calling and messaging. Plus, if you’re an Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy phone user, then are no limits to 5G wireless service when using traditional carriers.

We hope that this article helped you find the best small business cell phone plans. You may also want to see our comparison of the best email marketing services and best push notification software for small business.

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The post 8 Best Small Business Cell Phone Plans for 2022 (with Free Option) first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 8, 2022

6 Best Auto Dialer Software for Small Business in 2022 (Compared)

Are you looking for the best auto dialer software for your small business?

Auto dialer software can help to improve business communication by making your sales and customer support teams more productive.

In this article, we’ve hand-picked some of the best auto dialer software that you can use along with your WordPress site.

6 best auto dialer software for small business (compared)

When Do You Need to Use Auto Dialer Software?

Auto dialer software can help your business save time by dialing numbers automatically and streamlining workflows. Once your call is answered, the software will automatically connect one of your available team members.

Instead of wasting time with manual dialing, your team can focus on delivering a great customer experience and spend more time converting new leads into long-term customers.

Many auto dialer solutions also include standard business phone, call center, and CRM features, so you can handle all of your business communication needs from one place.

Using auto dialer software can also help ensure your business is compliant with federal regulations when you’re doing cold-calling and cell phone calling campaigns.

There are all kinds of reasons to use automatic dialing software in your business:

Make your sales reps more effective by minimizing the time between calls
Help your customer service team assist a larger number of users
Reach out to potential nonprofit donors
Notify your contacts about an upcoming event
Canvas for political campaigns

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best auto dialer software that you can use with your small business website.

1. Nextiva

Nextiva is one of the best business phone services in the market, and this is why we use it in on WPBeginner and our our other companies.

It offers a unique click-to-call solution that lets your team instantly dial phone numbers and call new leads with the click of a button.

Nextiva seamlessly integrates with all the most popular small business CRMs in the market like HubSpot, Zendesk, Zoho, Salesforce, and more.

With these integrations, you can make phone calls directly from your preferred CRM software.

Basically, it turns your current CRM into an outbound call center solution. You can organize and segment your lists within your CRM, then make calls by clicking a button.

This helps to save your team time from dialing numbers manually and moving between different software. Plus, you can view all of your contact data that’s already present in your CRM to improve the quality of your calls.

Note: we use Nextiva on WPBeginner as our business phone service. In our experience, it’s the best business phone service from pricing and features.

With Nextiva, you also get access to all of the standard business phone features like voice and video calling, video conferencing, SMS messaging, faxing, screen sharing, automatic call routing and callback, and more.

Aside from that, they have several other really powerful features for outbound sales including the ability for your live agent to visually track and manage the entire sales process pipeline, implement automated follow up notifications via email, detailed analytics through call monitoring, and many more.

So if you’re a small business, you can use these smart tools to improve your lead generation efforts, boost sales, and drive more revenue.

Even large business that are using a call center software use Nextiva for their omnichannel communication needs because it seamlessly integrates with their various systems while offering powerful features for call center agents to maximize productivity.

Expert Review: Nextiva is the best business phone solution for most businesses. You can use the click to call solution plus all of the business phone features to easily manage all of your business phone needs.

It’s affordable too and starts at $20.95 per user per month, and annual contracts aren’t required.

You’ll need at least the Professional plan to access the CRM integration features. Discounts are also available by adding more users to your plan or buying pre-paid packages.

2. RingCentral

RingCentral is one of the best business VoIP providers in the market used by over 400,000 businesses.

It has all the features you need to run a call center, manage your business phone system, and simplify your sales and customer support process.

RingCentral offers multiple auto dialing options including a progressive dialer, previewing dialing, and predictive dialing. Predictive dialing lets you dial multiple numbers at once and uses algorithms to route the call to the next available agent.

It’s also one of the best auto dialing solutions for reducing your risk of regulatory violations.

If you’re going to be doing large-scale telemarketing campaigns, then this tool will help to ensure your business remains compliant with Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) guidelines.

For example, it has built-in features to ensure you’re only calling within specific time windows, avoiding the do not call list (DNC), calling cell phones safely, and more.

You can create custom automatic call scripts for different scenarios and can customize these scripts using the included drag and drop builder. This is also known as Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and is very helpful during busy times.

RingCentral also offers specific solutions for businesses across various industries like tech, retail, healthcare, financial, education, real estate, and more.

Beyond the automatic dialing software, you also get access to common business phone and contact center solutions like unlimited calling, caller ID, call forwarding, SMS, live chat, call tracking, call distribution, and others.

There’s also a 99.999% uptime guarantee, so your team will never drop an important call.

Expert review: We believe that RingCentral is one of the best phone solutions for business owners with scaling businesses.

It starts at $19.99 per month per user when billed annually. There’s also a 15-day free trial you can use to test out the software and see if it’s a good fit.

3. PhoneBurner

PhoneBurner is an auto dialing software used by companies like Remax and powers over 11 million monthly conversations. It’s a cloud-based software that uses VoIP to make calls, so it can be accessed anywhere and is an excellent solution for remote teams.

Even though the software caters to remote teams, the call quality is the same as a landline.

The auto dialing functionality can help your sales team make up to 80 calls every hour. This is a great way to make your sales team more effective and close more deals.

It includes advanced lead management features, so you can sort leads by location, tags, last time called, and more.

Another time-saving feature is the unlimited prerecorded voicemails. As soon as they reach someone’s voicemail, they can leave a prerecorded message with a single click. Plus, follow up text messages and emails can be sent in real-time within the software during busy signal.

PhoneBurner also includes an integrated sales CRM, so you can manage your contact list and leads without the need for an external CRM.

If you’re already using a CRM, then you can easily integrate with software like Zoom, HubSpot, Salesforce, Constant Contact, FreshDesk, and more.

There’s also an open API, so you can develop an integration with nearly every CRM even if the integration isn’t currently available.

Expert Review: PhoneBurner is a great solution for companies who don’t have a CRM and want an integrated easy to use CRM.

The phone solution isn’t as robust as Nextiva, but for those who need an advanced auto dialer it could be a great choice.

The pricing is very straightforward and costs $149 per user per month when paid yearly. There are also discounts available when you purchase a yearly plan.

4. Voicent

Voicent is one of the top auto dialer providers that offers flexible plans for businesses of all sizes.

Many providers simply charge a single flat rate, regardless of how much you use the service. Instead, Voicent offers flexible pricing based on your call volume. This is great for businesses who only need to use an auto dialer during the holiday season or other peak times of the year.

One of the main features of this software is prerecorded auto dialing. This makes it easy to send out recorded messages to a list of contacts. Your message can be in your voice, or you can use the computer-generated voice included with the software.

Beyond the auto dialing features, you’ll find everything you need to manage outbound and inbound calls, SMS messages, emails, and more.

There’s also a built-in CRM to help you automatically track your leads and customers and streamline your customer follow up process.

Expert Review: Voicent is one of the best providers for sending prerecorded messages to your list of contacts.

The pricing is affordable and starts at $19 per user per month when paid yearly and $29 per user per month when paid monthly. This makes it one of the cheapest options for businesses on a budget.

Addons like caller ID, workflow automation, and inbound call center features cost extra. However, there is a 30-day free trial you can use to test out the software and see if it’s right for your business.

5. CallHub

CallHub is an all in one auto dialer solution for small businesses. It’s commonly used by nonprofits and political campaigns like the American Red Cross, Sierra Club, the Bernie Sanders campaign, and more.

This tool has built-in templates for different use cases, so you can improve your voter outreach process, recruit volunteers, make fundraising and donations easier, and more.

The automatic dialing software includes a variety of dialing modes like predictive dialing, robo dialing, preview dialing, and a power dialer. The robo dialer features are commonly used for telemarketing and political campaigns.

Simply upload your list of contacts and begin dialing. There’s a caller ID feature included that will automatically display a local number based on your contact’s area code.

Expert Review: CallHub is one of the best solutions for nonprofits and political campaigns who want to save time with the built-in workflows.

It’s not as flexible as Nextiva, but for certain use cases it would be a good solution for your business.

Plus, there’s a Lite version available that lets you test the software for free, and you can add on the auto dialer feature for $99 per month.

Paid plans start at $199 per month and includes auto dialing, predictive dialing, power dialing, and support for unlimited contacts and agents.

6. Five9

Five9 is one of the most well known auto dialer solutions that’s been around for over 20 years. It’s used by big brands like DoorDash, Lululemon, Fitbit, and more.

The auto dialer software supports predictive dialing, progressive dialing, power dialing, and a preview dialer. The preview dialer feature shows your agents important information about the customer before they hop on the call.

The predictive dialer can help to increase your agent productivity and talk time by 300%. Instead of waiting for unanswered calls, the predictive algorithm will only connect your agents once a live person is on the phone.

It can also be customized based on your contact’s time zone and list penetration, which will help to keep your business compliant with regulations.

You can choose the type of auto dialer that works best for your business and set it up in a couple of clicks.

The software also includes standard auto dialer features like agent scripting, answering machine detection, automated voicemail, local caller ID, live call recording, and more.

Expert Review: Five9 is an advanced solution that can power a call center for thousands of agents.

It caters to large scale businesses, so it might not be the best fit for your WordPress businesses.

The pricing for Five9 is not available online. To get pricing information unique to your business needs, you’ll need to contact their team.

Which is the Best Auto Dialer Software for Your Team?

All of the above software are great auto dialing solutions you can use to improve the productivity of your customer service, sales, and marketing teams.

We believe that Nextiva is the best business phone software for small businesses. Although it doesn’t offer strict auto dialing features, the one click calling and easy CRM integration can help improve your sales process and deepen customer relationships.

Plus, it has all the features you need to manage your onichannel communication like live chat, SMS, business phone, free toll-free numbers, and much more.

If you want an alternative to Nextiva, then RingCentral is another excellent choice. Not only is it one of the top business VoIP providers, but it offers industry-leading predictive dialing and all the tools your business needs to remain compliant.

If you’re primarily a remote team, then PhoneBurner can be a great way to streamline the workflow of your sales and customer support staff.

Finally, those who run nonprofits or political campaigns will find a lot of useful features and built-in workflows with CallHub.

We hope this article helped you find the best auto dialer software for your small business. You may also want to see our guide on how to get an email domain and our expert picks of the best email marketing services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 6 Best Auto Dialer Software for Small Business in 2022 (Compared) first appeared on WPBeginner.

February 28, 2022

6 Best Credit Monitoring Services for Small Business (2022)

Are you looking for the best credit monitoring service for your small business?

Credit monitoring is an important topic of discussion among website owners and entrepreneurs because of all the recent data breaches that’s been happening. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), there were 4.7 million identity and credit fraud incidents reported in 2020.

In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best credit monitoring services for your small business that you can use along with your WordPress site.

Best Credit Monitoring Services for Small Business (Compared)

Why Do You Need a Credit Monitoring Service?

With everything going on in the digital security world, it’s absolutely critical that every small business owner and entrepreneur have a credit monitoring service, so you can quickly detect and prevent identity theft and digital fraud.

A good credit monitoring service allows you to do the following:

Track your credit reports from all 3 major credit-bureaus and get near real-time alerts for suspicious activities.
You can setup bank account monitoring from a single dashboard. Their AI-powered algorithm helps you avoid becoming a victim of bank / credit fraud.
The dark web monitoring reports alert you if any of your passwords, social security number, or bank accounts were compromised as part of any data breach, so you can act fast.
You get device & wifi security which helps you browse safely wherever you are, and some services also gives you secure password management tools.
Easily get help from trained professionals with fraud resolution in case an unfortunate event occurs where any of your financial accounts are compromised.
Most credit monitoring services will also offer up to $1 million dollar in insurance to help protect you and your business.

If you are running an online store or a small business website, then adding a credit monitoring service can help you protect your business and bring peace of mind.

Credit theft can significantly hurt a small business’ ability to open bank accounts, borrow money, get a credit card, and even accept online payments.

While it’s easy to think this would never happen to you, in 2020, WPBeginner founder Syed Balkhi, nearly lost $1.4 million dollars due to a digital fraud.

After months of stress and countless hours, he recovered vast majority of the money with the help of Department of Homeland security, but all of that could have been prevented if everyone involved was using a comprehensive online security solution.

That being said, let’s take a look at the best credit monitoring services for small business owners & entrepreneurs.

1. Aura

Aura Identity Theft Protection Service for Small Business

Aura is the best credit monitoring and identity theft protection service when it comes to features, ease of use, and price.

They offer an all-in-one financial security platform with an easy setup and reasonable pricing. Their user interface makes it easy for small business owners to setup credit monitoring, manage their identity protection, financial protection, and device protection from one single app (mobile or desktop).

Their credit monitoring service includes near-real time credit report monitoring for all three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) which allows you to get instant fraud alerts sometimes up to 4x faster than competition.

The dashboard also includes the ability monitor your credit score, ability to lock your credit profile, financial transaction monitoring, bank account monitoring, 401k & investment account monitoring, and more.

Aside from their credit monitoring service, you also get all the powerful security features like A.I. powered dark web monitoring, identity verification monitoring, personal information and social security number (SSN) monitoring, criminal and court records monitoring.

All plans include a $1 million dollar identity theft insurance policy to cover eligible losses and any fees due to credit fraud or identity theft. Their expert resolution team is U.S. based, and they work 24/7 to help you recover your identity and assets if you’re a victim of fraud.

Pricing for Aura’s credit monitoring service starts from $9 per month for the Individual plan. Their Family group plan costs $25 per month for up to 10 people, and it includes all credit monitoring features as well as VPN + antivirus. These are special pricing for WPBeginner readers and let you save up to 50% off.

Note: We use Aura on WPBeginner as our credit monitoring service. In our experience, Aura is the best credit monitoring and identity theft protection service in the market from both features and pricing point of view.

As a small business owner, we really like that Aura offers a free VPN and Antivirus software to boost our device & wifi security. This really makes them a comprehensive credit monitoring service + digital security solution.

Their VPN (virtual private network) helps secures your internet connection with military-grade encryption wherever you are. It’s very useful when you’re traveling or working from a public place like Starbucks.

Aura Wifi Security - Identity Theft Protection

Expert Review: We believe Aura is the best overall credit monitoring service and identity theft protection solution for small businesses with affordable individual and family plans.

2. Identity Guard

Identity Guard - Identity Protection and Credit Monitoring Service

Identity Guard is another popular credit monitoring service for entrepreneurs, individuals, and families.

Their credit monitoring and identity theft protection platform includes all the standard functionality you would need in their Value plan such as data breach notifications, dark web monitoring (powered by IBM Watson AI), risk management report, high risk transaction monitoring, safe browsing tools, and $1 million insurance with stolen fund reimbursement.

Their Total and Ultra plans include advanced credit protection features as well such as bank account monitoring, credit & debit card monitoring, 401k & investment monitoring, address change monitoring, social media monitoring reports, monthly credit score report, 3-bureau credit monitoring, and 3-bureau annual credit reports.

Identity Guard pricing starts at $7.50 per month for their Value plan and goes up to $25 per month for the Ultra plan.

As a small business owner (employer), you can also purchase credit monitoring services for your team members and make it part of your overall employee benefits package.

In our research, we found that Identity Guard is a very affordable credit monitoring service that also include premium identity theft protection on their higher plans.

However, they currently do not offer Device and Networking protection services like Aura does such as free VPN, antivirus, or a secure password manager.

Expert Review: Identity Guard is the best credit monitoring service for employers.

3. IdentityForce

IdentityForce - Identity Theft Protection Service by Transunion

IdentityForce is a credit monitoring service by TransUnion which is one of the 3 major credit bureaus in the United States. They are consistently rated as a top identity theft protection service on TrustPilot.

As a major credit bureau, TransUnion have advanced credit monitoring and identity theft service solution for consumers, small business owners, as well as large enterprise and government agencies.

While they offer identity theft protection features in their UltraSecure plan, you need to get their more expensive UltraSecure + Credit plan to get the credit monitoring features which includes credit monitoring service for all 3-bureau, credit score tracker, quarterly 3 bureau credit reports and credit scores.

With Identity Guard, you get all the powerful identity theft protection features like smart SSN tracker, bank and credit card activity alerts, dark web monitoring, pay day loan monitoring, social media identity monitoring, medical ID fraud protection, identity threat alerts, and more.

They also have online protection tools to proactively help you fight phishing and keylogging attacks. Their mobile app gives you access to a secure VPN, so you always have a secure internet connection anywhere you go. Other digital securitytools include two-factor authentication, online identity vault, and a secure password manager.

All plans include a $1 million dollar identity theft insurance for stolen fund replacement, and white-glove customer service that can help you resolve any identity fraud case.

Expert Review: IdentityForce is the best credit monitoring service with FICO scores.

4. LifeLock with Norton 360

Norton360 Lifelock - Identity Theft Protection Service

Norton is one of the most popular internet security companies in the world. In 2017, they acquired LifeLock, a well-known credit monitoring service and identity theft protection solution.

Since then they have created a bundle Norton 360 with LifeLock to include all the standard credit monitoring features like dark web monitoring, credit monitoring (across 3 bureaus), SSN & credit alerts, ID verification monitoring, data breach notifications, fictitious identity monitoring, ability to lock your identity, suspicious bank & credit card activity alerts, 401k & investment account monitoring, and more.

Along with credit monitoring, you’ll get the Norton AntiVirus and online threat protection software that includes smart firewall, cloud backup, parental controls, privacy monitor, and a secure VPN service.

Their plans include identity theft protection insurance ranging from $25,000 to $1 million depending on the plan you choose.

Norton360 with LifeLock select plan starts at $9.99 per month, but it offers credit monitoring for only 1 bureau. To get comprehensive credit monitoring service from all 3 bureaus, you’ll need the Ultimate Plus plan which costs $29.99 per month.

You could also purchase LifeLock as a standalone credit monitoring service, but it will cost $8.99 per month for one-bureau credit monitoring and $23.99 per month for three-bureau credit monitoring. Also these plans will not include any of the advanced device security features that Norton offers.

If you’re already a Norton user, then upgrading to Norton360 with LifeLock offers the best value for the money.

Expert Review: If you’re already a Norton customer, then LifeLock is the best credit monitoring service for you because you can upgrade for a small premium.

5. IdentityIQ

IdentityIQ - Identity Theft Protection Software

IdentityIQ is another popular credit monitoring service for small business owners that also include anti-virus software and VPN for online privacy.

Their credit monitoring service include all the standard features you would expect such as 3-bureau credit report monitoring, dark web & internet monitoring, lost wallet assistance, synthetic ID theft protection, up to $1 million dollar identity theft insurance to cover stolen fund reimbursement and offer coverage for lawyers and experts expenses.

The SecureMax plan also offers additional features like enhanced credit report monitoring, alerts on crimes committed in your name, credit score tracker, credit score simulator, and family protection with ID fraud restoration.

One of the big reasons for credit fraud is lack of device & network security, so IdentityIQ includes Bitdefender premium VPN for up to 10 devices as well as Bitdefender total security anti-virus and anti-spyware to help protect your computers. They also offer a password manager for Windows OS, but doesn’t have it for Mac.

Expert Review: IdentityIQ the best credit monitoring service if you’re looking for Bitdefender total security software to be included. Their pricing is a bit on the higher end with SecureMax plan starting at $30.99 per month.

6. Experian IdentityWorks

Experian IdentityWorks - Credit Monitoring Service

Experian is one of the 3 major credit bureaus in the US, and they offer a premium credit monitoring service called IdentityWorks.

Their credit monitoring platform has built-in dark web surveillance that does daily scans of over 600,000 web pages to detect if any of your information is stolen.

You will get near real-time credit fraud alerts through their system if they notice any suspicious activity around your social security number, financial accounts, payday loans, false identity validations, social network monitoring, and more.

As one of the 3-bureaus that issue a FICO credit score, Experian will send you daily FICO scores from Experian and quarterly credit score updates from the other credit bureaus. This makes it easy for you to track your actual credit score without any extra cost.

Experian credit monitoring service also makes it easy to lock and unlock your Experian credit file within few clicks. This is a huge time saver because locking credit file is the ultimate credit protection.

IdentityWorks Premium pricing starts at $19.99 per month, and it includes the $1 million dollar identity theft protection insurance which is underwritten by AIG.

You can also get a family plan for $29.99 per month that includes two adults and up to 10 children identity protection.

The downside of Experian is that it does not offer any device or network security features.

Expert Review: Experian’s IdentityWorks platform offer a reliable credit monitoring service with standard identity theft protection features. However they are lacking the modern digital security features that you get with Aura or Norton360.

Which is the Best Credit Protection Service? (Expert Pick)

After carefully research all the top credit monitoring services, we believe that Aura is the best credit monitoring service for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

They offer the most affordable pricing with the most advanced credit monitoring and identity theft features.

The best part is that aside from comprehensive financial fraud protection features, they also include robust device & WiFi security apps to better protect you against cyberthreats.

At WPBeginner, we believe that security is all about risk reduction. Using the Aura smart digital security app, you get military-grade encryption for your online data, so you can have maximum online security.

That’s why, we use Aura in our business, and rate Aura as the #1 best credit monitoring service in the market.

We hope this article helped you find the best credit monitoring service for your small business. You may also want to see our comparison of the best business phone services and best website builder for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Source: We got our identity theft statistics from the U.S. FTC 2020 Consumer Sentinel Network report.

The post 6 Best Credit Monitoring Services for Small Business (2022) first appeared on WPBeginner.

January 31, 2022

How to Add Google Maps in WordPress (The RIGHT Way)

Do you want to show Google Maps on your WordPress website?

If you’re running a local business, then displaying Google Maps on your site can help users easily find your location. It can also help improve your site’s search engine visibility so you can attract more website visitors.

In this article, we will show you how to add Google Maps in WordPress.

Why Add Google Maps in WordPress?

Did you know that Google Maps is the most popular navigational app on all platforms?

If you have an office or physical store address, then adding Google Maps to your WordPress website makes it easy for users to quickly locate your physical stores, restaurants, or retail outlets. This helps you attract more customers and generate more business.

Not only that, but embedding Google Maps can also improve your WordPress SEO. According to Google, 46% of all searches are local. Adding Google Maps to WordPress can boost your local SEO and improve your visibility in local searches.

Now there are two ways to embed Google maps in WordPress, and we will show you both of them.

The benefit of the second method is that it follows all local SEO best practices, so if you use it, then Google will start to include your location on Google Maps. It will also display your business information like name, logo, address, phone number, open hours, and more in local search results.

Below are the quick links that you can use to go to the section you prefer:

How to Add Google Maps in WordPress without Plugin
How to Add Google Maps in WordPress with Local SEO (Recommended)

That being said, let’s see how you can add Google Maps to WordPress.

How to Add Google Maps in WordPress without Plugin

If you just want to quickly embed Google maps in a WordPress post or page, then you can use the default iFrame method.

Simply go to the Google Maps website and type in any street address in the search area.

Find location in Google Maps and Click Share to Embed

Next, you need to click the Share icon and it will show a popup with the option to either Send a location link or Embed a map. You need to select the Embed a map option.

After that simply copy the HTML code for Google maps, and then open the page where you want to embed the map. Inside the block editor, you need to add a Custom HTML block.

Now you can simply paste the embed code you copied from Google maps, and then update or publish the page to preview the changes.

Google Maps iFrame Embed Code in Block Editor

This method works for quickly embedding Google maps, but it doesn’t give you maximum SEO benefits.

If you’re a small business, restaurant, or online store with either a single or multiple physical location, then we recommend using the next solution to maximize your Local SEO rankings because it uses proper open graph data to help you rank higher in Google.

How to Add Google Maps to WordPress with Local SEO Plugin

The best way to add Google Maps and optimize your site for local SEO is by using All in One SEO (AIOSEO).

It’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress because it helps you get higher SEO rankings without editing code or hiring a developer. Over 3 million professionals use AIOSEO to improve their search engine rankings.

For this tutorial, we’ll be using the AIOSEO Pro version because it includes the Local SEO feature and other powerful optimization options. There is also a free version of AIOSEO that you can use to get started optimizing your site for search engines.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin in WordPress. For more details, please see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will launch the setup wizard. You can click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button to configure the plugin. If you need help, then please refer to our guide on how to properly set up All in One SEO in WordPress.

Next, you can head over to All in One SEO » Local SEO from your WordPress dashboard.

Then click the ‘Activate Local SEO’ button to get started configuring the local settings.

Once the Local SEO addon for WordPress is activated, you can add a single location or multiple locations in AIOSEO and display them on Google Maps. We’ll show you how to add both to your website.

Adding a Single Location

To add your locations, business information, open hours, and more, first you need to go to the ‘Location’ tab under All in One SEO » Local SEO.

If you have a single physical location, then keep the ‘Multiple Locations’ option set to No.

After that, scroll down to the ‘Maps’ section to pin your exact location.

Simply enter your address in the ‘Enter a query’ field and Google Maps will show your location.

Once you’ve entered your location, don’t forget to click the Save Changes button.

Adding Multiple Locations

If you have more than one physical location, then you’ll need to enable the ‘Multiple Locations’ setting under the ‘Location’ tab in Local SEO.

After that, a new Locations menu will appear in your WordPress admin panel.

Go ahead and navigate to Locations and then click the ‘Add New’ button.

Once you’re in the WordPress editor, scroll down to the ‘Map’ section.

Here you can enter your address in the ‘Enter a query’ field.

After entering your location on the map and adding location information, go ahead and click the ‘Publish’ button.

You can now repeat this step and add as many locations as you want for your business.

Once you’re finished adding your locations, you can go to the ‘Maps’ tab back in the All in One SEO » Local SEO menu.

Here you will have to enter a Google Maps API key.

Now, let’s see how to create an API key for Google Maps.

Creating a Google Maps API Key

To start, you’ll need to visit the Google Maps Platform website and click the ‘Get Started’ button.

After signing in with your Google account, you’ll need to set up a billing account.

Google Maps Platform has pay-as-you-go pricing, and they offer the first $300 of monthly usage for free for all users. For most websites, that will easily cover a simple map embed like the one we’re creating in this tutorial.

Don’t worry, they will not charge you any fees unless you manually upgrade to a paid account.

To get started, go ahead and click the ‘Create Billing Account’ button.

Next, you can select your country and choose what best describes your organization from the dropdown menu.

Once you’ve selected this information, click the checkbox for Terms of Service and then click the ‘Continue’ button.

Enter personal details for billing account

On the next screen, you’ll need to enter your phone number for verification and click the ‘Send Code’ button.

After verifying the code, the next thing to do is enter your business name, payment method details, and billing address.

Once you’ve entered these details, click the ‘Start my Free Trial’ button.

Next, you’ll be asked a series of 4 questions about your organization and how you’ll use the Google Maps Platform.

Google Maps will ask about your primary goal for using the platform, which industry you’re in, select a use case, and your company size.

After answering these questions, go ahead and click the ‘Submit’ button.

You’ll now see a popup with your Google Maps API key.

You can copy and save this key in a text file for future use.

Now that you’ve created a Google Maps API key, you’ll need to head back to your WordPress dashboard to enter it in AIOSEO Local SEO settings.

Configuring Google Maps Settings in WordPress

You can now go back to All in One SEO » Local SEO from your WordPress dashboard and then navigate to the ‘Maps’ tab.

Go ahead and enter the Google Maps API Key in the ‘API Key’ field. You’ll see a preview of the map in AIOSEO as soon as you add the key.

Next, you can scroll down to edit the map settings.

AIOSEO lets you display Google Maps using a Gutenberg block, shortcode, widget, or PHP code. It also lets you choose different map styles and add a custom marker to your map.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when you’re done.

Displaying Google Maps in WordPress

Next, you can add Google Maps to any WordPress post or page. To start, simply edit or add a new page on your website.

Once you’re in the block editor, click the ‘+’ button at the top and add the ‘AIOSEO Local – Map’ block anywhere on the page.

After that, your Google Map will be added to the page.

AIOSEO also lets you edit the map settings from the options on your right. For instance, you can show labels and icons, add a custom marker, and edit the map’s width and height.

If you have multiple locations, then you can select which location to highlight by choosing from the options given in the menu on your right.

Simply click on the ‘Location’ dropdown menu and select your preferred location to display on your website.

Once you’re satisfied with your settings, go ahead and publish the page.

Now you can visit your website to see Google Maps in action.

You can also add Google Maps to your site’s widget section, like the sidebar or footer.

To start, head over to Appearance » Widgets from your WordPress admin panel. Next, click the ‘+’ button and add the ‘AIOSEO Local – Map’ widget block where you’d like to display your location.

After that, you can edit the widget settings.

For example, you could add a title, change the width and height of the map, choose which location to display if you have multiple locations, and edit the label.

That’s it!

Now when you update your website you’ll see Google Maps in your widgets area.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add Google Maps to your WordPress site. You can also check out our guide on the best WordPress plugins for small business, and our expert pick of the best identity theft protection service for entrepreneurs.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add Google Maps in WordPress (The RIGHT Way) first appeared on WPBeginner.

November 9, 2021

How to Set Up an Auto Attendant Phone System for Your Website

Do you want to set up an auto attendant phone system for your website?

For business owners, an auto attendant phone system can cut costs, help you answer calls faster, improve customer service, and make your small business look more professional.

In this article, we’ll share a step by step guide on how to easily set up an auto attendant phone system for your WordPress site.

What Do You Need to Set Up an Auto Attendant Phone System for Your Website?

For most small business websites or online stores, you can simply add a phone number to your website. Your visitors can call the phone number to get in touch with you.

However, standard phone services don’t offer advanced features like call forwarding, auto attendant, call waiting, business hours, and more. Plus, it’s expensive to add on simple features like an auto attendant.

To set up an auto attendant phone system the right way, you’ll need to use a virtual business phone service provider.

We recommend using Nextiva since it’s the best business phone service in the market used by brands like Taco Bell, YMCA, Buffalo Bills, and more.

It lets you easily manage your business calls, set up auto attendant, call forwarding, and more at a much cheaper rate than a business landline or mobile provider.

Note: We use Nextiva here at WPBeginner for all of our business phone needs.

Since Nextiva is a VoIP phone service, it will use the internet to make and receive calls instead of traditional landlines.

This helps you save money and gives you access to advanced features like auto attendant, call forwarding, call waiting, voicemail, conference calling, and much more.

You can also get toll free number or choose a business phone number with any location.

It also lets you manage your calls from your current mobile phone, computer, or standard desk phone.

With that said, let’s show you how to set up an auto attendant phone system for your website.

Setting Up an Auto Attendant Phone System

First thing, you need to sign up for a Nextiva account. During the sign up process, you can choose a new business phone number or connect an existing phone number to your account.

After you’ve set up your account, you’ll be able to automatically make and receive calls from your business phone number across any device.

Next, you can set up an auto attendant phone system for your website.

From your account page, you need to click on the ‘Communication’ menu option and then click the ‘Phone System’ button.

This brings you to a screen where you’ll have different options for setting up business phone features.

Next, click the ‘Call flows’ button.

On the next screen, you need to create a new call flow.

Simply click the ‘Create New Flow’ button to get started.

If you’ve created call templates for other features, then they’ll be listed here.

We’ll select the ‘Start from Scratch’ option.

Next, you can give your call flow a name to help you remember.

After that, hover over and click the ‘Phone’ button.

Then, you need to enter your main business phone number.

You can add an extension and additional numbers as well.

Then, click the ‘Save & Continue’ button.

Next, click the ‘Add Action’ button for the next step.

This brings up a menu where you can choose the next action.

To create an auto attendant, you can select the ‘Phone menu’, ‘Dial by extension’, or ‘Dial by name’ options.

We’ll select the ‘Phone menu’ option since this lets us record a greeting and then offer callers options to dial specific departments or team members.

Next, you can choose the ‘Default Greeting’ from the ‘Greeting’ drop down.

You also have the option to record or upload your own greeting.

After that, you can customize the phone menu options that will play after your greeting.

You can use the keypad under the ‘Phone Menu’ for the numbers your callers will dial and the person or department they’ll be redirected to.

For multiple options, click the number, and add the corresponding department in the ‘Menu Options’ section.

Next, you can configure the ‘Advanced Options’ settings.

You can set the timeout length, select an option for dialing the operator, and click the checkbox to allow callers to reach individual team members by dialing their extension.

After that, click the ‘Save & Continue’ button.

This brings you back to your main call flow screen. You need to assign team members and phone numbers to the call options you just created.

Simply click one of the ‘Add action’ buttons.

Then, click the ‘Users and Teams’ menu option.

This lets you assign the action to a specific team member or department.

Next, you can choose who the call will ring, how it will ring, caller ID settings, and more.

Simply select the best options for your business and then click the ‘Save & Continue’ button.

You need to follow the same steps for all of the call menu options you created earlier.

After that, you’ll be taken back to your main call flow screen where you need to click the ‘Add action’ button again to finish your call flow.

Next, you’ll have a variety of different options for what happens if no one answers.

We will select the ‘Voicemail’ option, so callers can leave a message if no one answers the phone.

On the next screen, you can choose your voicemail mailbox and message.

Simply select the team or person from the ‘Voicemail Destination’ drop down, and the right department from the ‘Team’ drop down.

Then, click the ‘Save & Continue’ button.

After that, you need to follow the same steps for each extension.

Once you’re finished, you should see ‘Call ends’ at the end of your different call flows.

Then, click the ‘Go Live’ button at the bottom of the screen to activate the call flow.

Make sure you test out the auto attendant feature to ensure the greeting and call forwarding works properly.

Aside from all the powerful features, our most favorite part about Nextiva is that it lets our team members have a virtual business phone number, so they can only receive calls during certain hours without losing their privacy.

Adding a Click to Call Button in WordPress

Now that you’ve set up an auto attendant phone system, you may want to add a click to call button to your WordPress website. This makes calling as simple as clicking a button.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Call Button plugin. For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to go to Settings » WP Call Button to set up the plugin.

On this screen you can turn on the call button and add your number.

Then, you can customize the appearance of your button and add a sticky button that floats on the screen across your website.

You also have control over where the button appears and can choose to show or hide the button on certain posts and pages.

If you want more control over where the button appears, then you can display it manually. To do this, simply click the ‘Static Call Button’ menu option.

Then, you can change the button settings and copy the shortcode to add to your site.

After you’re finished customizing the plugin settings, make sure to click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

You can also add a sticky button directly to your pages, posts, and widget areas by using the included block.

In the block settings, you can change the colors, size of the text, alignment, and show or hide the phone icon.

Once you’re finished, make sure to click ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ to save your changes.

Now, your visitors will see your click to call button live on your website. When they click the button, they’ll be taken to your auto attendant phone system.

For more details on displaying a click to call button, see our guide on how to add a click to call button in WordPress.

Beyond a business phone, we recommend adding a contact form and even live chat or an AI chatbot, so your visitors can contact you with the method they prefer.

We hope this article helped you learn how to set up an auto attendant phone system for your WordPress site. You may also want to see our guide on how to choose the best website builder and our picks on the best email marketing services for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Set Up an Auto Attendant Phone System for Your Website appeared first on WPBeginner.

November 2, 2021

How to Setup WordPress Email Tracking (Opens, Clicks, and More)

Do you want to set up WordPress email tracking on your site?

WordPress email tracking will help you see whether your users receive, open, and click your emails.

In this article, we’ll show you how you can easily set up WordPress email tracking to gain new insights.

Note: This article is specifically for emails sent from your WordPress site such as order receipts, password reset emails, contact form follow-ups, and more. These are not marketing emails that you send with your email marketing service because those already have open and click tracking built-in.

Why Set Up Email Tracking in WordPress?

By tracking your WordPress site emails, you’ll be able to see who opens and clicks your emails. Plus, get detailed reports about email deliverability.

This helps to make sure that all of your website emails are reaching your users. You can even resend emails that didn’t get delivered to improve the overall user experience.

There are all kinds of reasons to track your WordPress emails:

See which links in your emails are clicked
Make sure important membership site and online course emails are sent
Check if emails being sent by a certain plugin are delivered
Ensure online store order and confirmation emails get to your users

Whether you’re running a WordPress blog or small business website, WordPress will send all kinds of automatic email notifications to your users.

This can be new user registration information, password reset emails, comments, WordPress updates, and much more.

You need to make sure all of the emails sent from your website go to your user’s email inbox and not to the spam folder.

The best way to do this is by using an SMTP service provider to improve email deliverability. For more details, see our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

With that said, let’s take a look at how to set up WordPress email tracking, step by step.

Setting up Email Tracking in WordPress

For this tutorial, we’ll be using the WP Mail SMTP plugin. It’s the best WordPress SMTP plugin in the market used by over 2 million websites.

It lets you easily send all of your WordPress emails using an SMTP server and improve email deliverability for your WordPress website.

Step 1. Install and Setup WP Mail SMTP

First thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Mail SMTP plugin. For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to go to WP Mail SMTP » Settings to configure your plugin settings.

Then, you need to enter your license key and click the ‘Verify Key’ button.

You can find this information under your account on the WP Mail SMTP website.

Once you’ve done that, you need to scroll down the page to the ‘Mailer’ section. Here you will choose how you want to send your WordPress emails.

The WP Mail SMTP plugin works with any SMTP service. There are easy setup options for the most popular providers, including Gmail, Outlook, SendInBlue, SendGrid, Amazon SES, and more.

Simply click on the mailer you want to use, and there will be detailed instructions on how you can set it up properly.

The default option is using the PHP mailer. However, we don’t recommend this method since it’s not reliable.

Most WordPress hosting servers aren’t configured to send emails. So, your WordPress emails may never even reach your users or end up in their spam folder.

For more details on setting up your SMTP server, see our guide on how to use a free SMTP server to send WordPress emails.

Step 2. Enable WordPress Email Tracking

Now that you’ve set up the plugin, it’s time to turn on the email logging and email tracking features.

Once activated, the plugin will automatically add a tracking pixel to every email that you send from WordPress.

To do this go to WP Mail SMTP » Settings and then click the ‘Email Log’ menu option.

After that, you’ll want to make sure that the ‘Enable Log’ box is checked for email records.

If it isn’t, then check the box now. This will keep a record of basic details about your emails and store them in your WordPress database.

You’ll also need this enabled if you want to resend emails in WordPress.

Next, you’ll see a few more checkboxes that let you turn on additional email tracking options. We recommend checking every box so you have more email tracking data available.

First, you can choose to save a copy of the email body. This lets you search the content of emails and also resend the entire email if it doesn’t send.

Simply check the ‘Log Email Content’ box to enable this.

Next, you can save a copy of the attachments that are sent from your site. This can be helpful if an email doesn’t send and you need to resend the attachment.

To enable this, you need to check the ‘Save Attachments’ box.

After that, you can track when an email is opened and which links get clicked by checking the ‘Open Email Tracking’ and ‘Click Link Tracking’ boxes.

Then, you can set the time period for how long you’ll save your email logs. If you’re concerned about disk space, then you can change the setting here.

Simply select the time period from the ‘Log Retention Period’ drop down.

Make sure to click the ‘Save Settings’ button before you leave the page.

Step 3. Check Email Tracking Analytics Data in WordPress

Once you’ve set up the plugin and sent out WordPress emails, you can view your email tracking and analytics data.

To do this head over to WP Mail SMTP » Email Log in your WordPress admin panel.

This screen will show you basic email data like opens and clicks, so you get a quick overview of your audience engagement.

Next, you can open up individual email logs to see in depth email information.

Simply hover over an email and click the ‘View Log’ link, and the email details will open in a new screen.

This shows you when the email was sent, the subject, if it was opened, and more.

Resend New User Emails in WordPress

Another great feature of WP Mail SMTP is the ability to resend emails.

To do this, go to back to WP Mail SMTP » Email Log to bring up your email logs.

This page shows you every email you’ve sent and whether or not it was delivered. The red dot means not sent and the green dot means delivered.

To resend an email, simply click the ‘View Log’ link on the email that didn’t send.

This brings you to the email log screen for that individual email.

Then, click the ‘Resend’ button in the ‘Actions’ tab.

This brings up a popup that will confirm the email address.

Simply click the ‘Yes’ button to resend the email.

If there are multiple failed emails, then you can use the bulk resend feature from the email log screen.

Simply check the box next to the emails that didn’t send, then select ‘Resend’ from the drop down list, and click the ‘Apply’ button.

This brings up a similar popup as above.

Simply click the ‘Yes’ button to resend the email to multiple users.

View WordPress Email Engagement Statistics

You can also view your full email tracking and reporting data by going to WP Mail SMTP » Email Reports.

This brings you to a screen with detailed statistics about your open rates and email deliverability.

Under the main graph you’ll find a breakdown of how your individual emails are performing.

You’ll see open rates, click through rates, deliverability breakdown, and more.

We hope this article helped you learn how to set up WordPress email tracking. You may also want to see our guide on how to create an email newsletter and our picks of the best business phone services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Setup WordPress Email Tracking (Opens, Clicks, and More) appeared first on WPBeginner.

October 5, 2021

22 Popular Types of Websites You Can Make in WordPress (+Examples)

Wondering what types of websites you can create with WordPress?

We are often asked by beginners about what kind of websites they can make using WordPress. Our short answer is ‘almost any type of website imaginable’.

In this article, we’ll show you top examples of types of websites you can create with WordPress.

Getting Started With WordPress

WordPress powers more than 42% of all websites on the internet, which makes it the most popular website builder on the market.

There are two types of WordPress websites. First, there is WordPress.com which is a web hosting company. Then, there is WordPress.org also known as self-hosted WordPress. To learn more, see our guide on the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

Through out this article, when we say WordPress, we are talking about self-hosted WordPress websites. We recommend using WordPress.org because it gives you full access to all WordPress functionality out of the box.

To get started, you’ll need WordPress hosting and a domain name.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are offering a generous discount + free domain name to WPBeginner users. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

We have a step by step guide on how to make your website with WordPress.

If you just want to play around with WordPress, then you can install it on your computer. Take a look at our tutorials on how to install WordPress on Windows and Mac computers.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the most popular types of websites you can create with WordPress.

1. Blog or Personal Website

WordPress started out as a simple blogging tool and quickly evolved into a powerful content management system. During the last 18 years, those blogging and personal website components didn’t disappear.

They have become more polished, sophisticated, and powerful. WordPress is still the best blogging platform in the world used by small websites as well as large publications.

Due to its flexibility, WordPress is equally good for a personal blog as well as multi-author blogs. It allows you to create content-rich websites that can be easily grown into a business.

For more details, see our guide on how to start a WordPress blog with step-by-step instructions for a beginner blogger.

2. Business Website

WordPress is the easiest way to build a professional-looking business website. It is so powerful that many big name brands use WordPress to power their websites.

Business owners love its ease of use and flexibility. By using WordPress plugins, you can add social media integrations, optimize your site for search engines, track marketing data, and add any other feature you need.

You can choose from thousands of themes and easily customize the design, all without hiring a web designer.

To get started, see our complete guide on how to make a small business website using WordPress.

3. Ecommerce Website / Online Store

WordPress with WooCommerce is the world’s most popular eCommerce platform. It supports top payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe so you can easily accept payments online.

You can use WooCommerce to sell both physical and digital products. It allows you to easily add any type of product to your store, and has tools to manage inventory, orders, shipping, taxes, and more.

For step by step instructions, you can check out our tutorial on how to start an online store.

Apart from WooCommerce, there are other eCommerce plugins for WordPress like Easy Digital Downloads and MemberPress that can be used to sell digital goods and subscriptions.

4. Membership Website

Membership websites sell subscriptions. This allows you to put some of your content behind a paywall, sell pay-per-view content, or run an online community.

MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin. It comes with powerful access control, subscription management, user management, and integrations with third-party tools and payment gateways.

For more details, take a look at our step-by-step tutorial on how to create a membership website.

5. Online Courses

WordPress can be used to easily sell courses and build an online learning community.

MemberPress Courses is the best WordPress LMS platform to sell online courses from your website. It comes with an easy to use interface to create courses, control access, and sell subscriptions.

To learn more, check out our tutorial on how to make online courses website with WordPress.

6. Online Marketplace Website

Don’t have any products to sell? How about creating a marketplace for other vendors to sell their products online?

WordPress has some incredible plugins that turn your website into an online marketplace. Third-party sellers can then list their own products on your website, and you earn a fee on each order.

For details, see our tutorial on how to create an online marketplace in WordPress.

7. Podcast Website

WordPress and podcasting go hand in hand. Most popular podcasters on the web are using WordPress for their podcasting websites.

There are several excellent podcasting themes and plugins for WordPress which make the whole process way easier. Plus, you can integrate any podcast hosting service to seamlessly serve files from your own website.

For more on this topic, check out our step by step guide on how to start a podcast with WordPress.

8. Dropshipping Website

Dropshipping is a type of eCommerce store that doesn’t keep the products in stock. Instead, when a customer purchases a product, the store owner places the order with a third-party vendor who ships the item directly to the customer.

WordPress has some excellent dropshipping plugins that help you easily add third-party products to your website.

For more on this topic, take a look how to make a dropshipping website with step by step instructions.

9. Affiliate Website

Want to make a commission by referring your users to products and services?

WordPress is used by millions of marketers to create highly successful affiliate websites. It has a ton of affiliate marketing tools and plugins that will help you boost your earnings.

You can sign up for individual affiliate programs, or you could create an Amazon affiliate store that relies on just one giant affiliate network.

For more details, see our complete affiliate marketing guide for beginners.

10. Coupons Website

Want to earn affiliate commissions from thousands of websites offering special discounts on their products and services? Then you can use WordPress to make a coupons site.

With the right plugins, you can easily add coupons to your site. You can control the expiration dates and other details, and your users can even rate and vote for their favorite coupons.

Need more details? Take a look at our tutorial on how to make a coupon site in WordPress with detailed instructions.

11. Micro Job Website

A micro job website is an online marketplace where employers can list tasks or gigs and individuals can apply for them. As the website owner, you can make money by charging a fee on each listing.

For more instructions, check out our tutorial on how to create a micro job website like Fiverr.

12. Job Board Website

Several popular sites like Smashing Magazine, ProBlogger, and others use job boards as an extra source of income. There is a growing demand for niche job boards catering to the needs of a specific industry or specialization.

WordPress allows you easily create a job board where employers can post job listings and professionals can respond to them.

13. Business Directory

Just like job boards, there is an increasing demand for niche business directories on the web. There are some great WordPress business directory plugins which allow you to easily create a business directory.

We have a guide on how to create a web directory like Angie’s List or Yelp.

14. Auction Websites

Want to run your own eBay-like auction website? With WordPress, you can create a fully functional auction website. Users can bid online and make payments, and you get to earn by simply providing a platform for your niche auctions.

See our tutorial on how to make an auction website for detailed instructions.

15. Non-Profits and Religious Websites

WordPress is free as in freedom (see our guide why is WordPress free?). This makes it an ideal solution for nonprofit organizations.

With WordPress plugins, you can easily add a donation form to raise money for your cause. There are also many great WordPress themes for churches and nonprofits.

16. Portfolio Websites

Need a place to showcase your work? You can easily add a portfolio to your WordPress site with stunning image galleries and beautiful slideshows.

You can use your portfolio site to feature your writing skills, showcase your music, embed videos, or display your photography.

WordPress can be used to provide a very sleek and polished user experience for your portfolio site, making it easier for others to browse and learn about your work.

17. Travel Website

WordPress is the perfect platform to make a travel website. You can share your own travels or launch destination guides and build a business upon that.

For examples and instructions, take a look at our guide on how to make a travel website for beginners.

18. Fashion / Lifestyle Website

WordPress is a popular choice among fashion and lifestyle businesses. That’s because it’s easy to create professional-looking website or blog, and you can even sell your own products or affiliate products.

For more on this topic, take a look at this guide on how to make a fashion website using WordPress.

19. Multilingual Websites

Want to create a website in multiple languages? WordPress has you covered.

Out of the box, WordPress is available in dozens of languages. Plus, it can also be used to create multilingual website using WordPress translation plugins.

Need help? See our guide on how to create a multilingual website in WordPress.

20. Online Forums Website

Online forums are a popular way to build a community and leverage user generated content to bring more search engine traffic to your website.

With bbPress, you can easily add online forums to your website. bbPress helps you convert your website into an easy to manage forum. Plus, you can still use the same website for other features like a blog, online store, or a business site.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to add an online forum in WordPress.

21. Social Network Website

Want to build a more active and engaged online community? WordPress allows you to easily build your own social network website with BuddyPress.

Users will be able to join your community, manage profiles, view activity, join groups, and more.

For more details, take a look at our step by step guide on how to build a social network with BuddyPress.

22. Wiki / Knowledge Base Website

Want to create a knowledgebase or wiki-like website?

WordPress allows you to easily add a documentation or knowledgebase section to your website. This allows you to use a powerful CMS to manage all your content under one dashboard.

You can pick any of these WordPress knowledge base plugins to start your own wiki website.

We hope this article gave you a good idea of the types of websites you can create using WordPress. You may also want to see our beginner’s guide to the most important things you need to do after installing WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

October 3, 2021

How to Start an LLC in Arizona

Starting a business can be an extremely challenging process when selecting a business structure that doesn’t mesh well with the size and type of business.

The LLC (limited liability company) business structure is a popular and easy-to-operate choice for small businesses in Arizona with one or a few employees.

LLCs don’t have a lot of complex rules that business owners have to follow, which is great for a small business.

Many times, the new business owner in Arizona can handle the process of filing for an LLC without having to hire experts.

The Easy Parts of Starting an LLC in Arizona

The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) oversees the process of managing LLCs in the state. It also offers advice to those seeking to start businesses.

The ACC makes the steps required to file as an LLC in Arizona a relatively straightforward process. Business owners can perform some work online and some through printed forms.

Low Fees for Filing

Arizona’s fees for filing an LLC are below average compared to other states. This is helpful for a small business watching every expense.

Additionally, Arizona does not require the LLC to apply for a state business license or file an annual report. In some states, the LLC must use these items, both of which can generate additional expenses.

Hiring an Entity to Help With Filing

Multiple business entities exist in the state of Arizona that can help new business owners complete the forms required for starting an LLC. These entities are available for hire. Many are the same entities that business owners can hire to serve as statutory agents, which we’ll discuss later.

Businesses may pay anywhere from a few hundred to several hundred dollars per year for the full services of this type of entity.

Simple Business Structure

When starting an LLC in Arizona, new business owners will appreciate the simplicity of this business structure versus some other options, such as corporations.

LLCs don’t have to follow many rules in Arizona regarding ownership structure and regular filing of reports. Once the business files its Articles of Organization with the state, it doesn’t have ongoing obligations. This leaves the business owner more time to focus on the company.

Simple Taxation Requirements

The taxation requirements on an LLC are far simpler than a corporation. LLCs do not pay taxes themselves. This differs from a corporation, where the business must pay income taxes.

The profits of the LLC migrate directly to the owners. The owners then report this money on their personal income tax statements. This is far easier than trying to work through business tax law at the federal and state of Arizona levels.

The Difficult Parts of Starting an LLC in Arizona

Some businesses will find that the LLC’s structure doesn’t work for them. Additionally, Arizona has a few complexities in creating LLCs that may make this business structure less than ideal for some businesses.

Printing Forms

Although those looking to start an LLC in Arizona can fill out quite a few of the necessary forms online, some only have a printed option. This slows down the overall process. It can be frustrating to have to print and mail some forms while the state allows the digital filing of others.

Finding a Statutory Agent

In Arizona, the statutory agent (called the registered agent in most other states) must submit and sign a form indicating that the person or entity agrees to serve as the agent. Many other states don’t require this extra form and don’t require a separate signature.

Taxing Employee Benefits

If your LLC hires employees and provides benefits to those employees, the employees must count the value of these benefits as income for taxation purposes. This differs from a corporation, where the majority of employee benefits are not taxable.

This can be confusing for employees. It also may hinder the LLC’s ability to hire people, as potential employees may balk at paying taxes on benefits.

Step 1: Determine the Type of LLC

Arizona officially recognizes two types of LLCs. Business owners will need to select the right option for their particular needs.

Both types of LLCs provide the same primary benefit of allowing business owners to separate their personal financial and legal dealings from the business’s financial and legal dealings. Should the LLC default on a loan or become the subject of a lawsuit, the business owner’s personal assets are not part of the settlement.

The two types of LLCs simply differ in the kind of business models they support.

LLC

The majority of people looking to start a limited liability company in Arizona will select a general LLC structure. The LLC works for almost any kind of business and nearly every kind of market.

PLLC

A PLLC is short for Professional LLC. In Arizona, licensed professionals may want to structure their business as PLLCs instead of LLCs. Some professions that may select a PLLC structure include doctors, dentists, lawyers, CPAs, and veterinarians.

The benefit of a PLLC is that if one owner becomes the subject of a malpractice or personal lawsuit related to work, the other owners aren’t liable for any settlement.

When attempting to file as a PLLC, every member of the LLC’s ownership group will need to hold the correct professional license. Some people will need permission from their professional boards in Arizona to operate a business as a PLLC.

Those filing as a PLLC do not need to fill out any additional forms for the Arizona Corporation Commission. However, they will need to add a bit of extra information on the standard Articles of Organization form to qualify as a PLLC.

Step 2: Select a Name for the LLC

Selecting just the right name for your small business in Arizona requires some thought. Remember that it must follow the ACC’s guidelines and rules for naming LLCs. Business owners can’t just assume they can pick any name they want.

Picking a Unique Name

Arizona requires each LLC registered in the state to have a unique name. It assigns these names on a first-come, first-served basis. So you may believe you have the perfect name for your business, but if someone else files it with the ACC a day before you do, you are out of luck.

If you select a name that another business already owns and submit that name as part of your LLC filing, the state may reject your filing. You likely will not receive a refund of your filing fee.

Fortunately, business owners looking to start a new LLC have an option for searching already-taken business names. The ACC Business Name Database contains a list of all current business names registered in the state.

New business owners can search this database as many times as they want for free. They can search for current business names that are an exact match for the search terms. They also can search for current names that contain a word that matches the search term. Use this resource to make sure your LLC’s name is unique.

Using the Correct Naming Convention

In Arizona, new LLCs must include “LLC” or “Limited Liability Company” somewhere in the company’s name. The state does allow some slight variations from the primary phrase or acronym, such as “L.L.C.” or “Limited Liability Co.”

PLLCs need to include the phrase “Professional LLC” or the acronym “PLLC” somewhere in the name.

Submitting a name that does not follow this rule will result in the ACC denying the application.

Reserving a Name

The ACC does allow potential business owners to reserve a name for up to 120 days before filing the forms required to become an LLC or PLLC.

This feature might be helpful if the business owner has a great idea for a name but isn’t ready to file as an LLC yet. The business owner can have the name reserved while putting together the work required to start the business, such as securing a website domain name that matches the desired business name.

The owner may complete the process of reserving a name by filling out a form online for $45 or by filling out paperwork and using postal mail for $10. The online process reserves the name for you immediately.

If the business owner eventually decides not to use the reserved business name, it becomes available for someone else to select after 120 days. However, the person who reserved it will not receive a refund of the reservation fee.

Step 3: Select a Statutory Agent

All LLCs or PLLCs in Arizona must have a statutory agent. This person or entity serves as the legal representative for the LLC when dealing with the receipt of legal documents. If you are familiar with starting an LLC outside of Arizona, other states commonly use “registered agent” for this purpose.

The statutory agent’s name and contact information will be part of the public record in Arizona. This allows people or government officials who need to submit legal forms to the LLC to have a clear point of contact. This person might receive things like:

Notice of a lawsuit
Tax-related documents and forms
Legal documents
Correspondence from the government dealing with legal matters

Prospective agents must sign the Statutory Agent Acceptance form to officially accept becoming the agent for the LLC. The LLC submits this form along with the Articles of Organization (that we’ll discuss in Step 4).

LLCs have a couple of options for selecting a statutory agent.

Selecting an Individual

A single person can serve as a statutory agent for the LLC. This person must be a full-time Arizona resident and must have an address in the state.

The business owner can serve as their own statutory agent if desired. The owner also has the option of assigning another employee in the business to serve as the agent.

The agent needs to be available most of the time at the listed address during normal business hours. If the business owner rarely or part-time is in the office, selecting another person or entity to serve as the statutory agent would be better.

Selecting an Entity

In the state of Arizona, an LLC has the option of hiring an entity that will serve as a statutory agent for the LLC. This type of entity likely is a business that serves as an agent for multiple companies.

By using an entity, the LLC owner doesn’t have to list their address as the public contact point for the LLC. Instead, the entity will list its physical address. The physical address for the statutory agent does not have to match the address of the business.

The LLC may pay anywhere from $50 to $200 annually to hire an entity to serve as the statutory agent.

Step 4: Complete the Articles of Organization

Arizona requires LLCs to file Articles of Organization as the primary means of creating the LLC. Business owners can file these forms for $50.

The filing must include a cover sheet from the ACC. This explains whether the business owner desires expedited processing of the Articles of Organization. It contains contact information and payment information as well. Expedited processing for the Articles of Organization can run from $35 to $400.

The Articles of Organization form consists of multiple sections.

Entity Type

Business owners will start by clarifying whether they will be filing the form as an LLC or PLLC.

For a PLLC, the business owner must add a description of the type of professional services the business will provide.

Business Name

After searching for and finding an available business name (as described in Step 2), the LLC will formally request the name from the ACC through the Articles of Organization form. It is vital to list the name exactly as the business owner wants it to appear officially with the state.

Statutory Agent Information

The Articles of Organization include a section where the LLC will list the contact information for the statutory agent. This section is different from the Statutory Agent Acceptance form (as discussed in Step 3). The LLC will also need to submit that acceptance form with the Articles of Organization.

Type of Management

An LLC in Arizona can either use a manager-operated structure or a member-managed structure.

In a manager-operated structure, the owners of the LLC will hire someone to manage the business for them. In the member-managed structure, those who own the LLC also manage the day-to-day aspects of running it.

The business owner must check which management type they will use and include a separate document containing additional information. The form is known as the Manager Structure Attachment Form L040 (manager-managed) or L041 (member-managed).

Step 5: Final Tasks

To finalize the process of starting an LLC in Arizona, the business owner may need to complete a couple more steps after the ACC accepts the Articles of Organization.

Complete the Publication Requirement

In certain counties in Arizona, the newly formed LLC must publish a Notice of LLC Formation in a local newspaper for three consecutive weeks. The newspaper must be in the same county as the LLC’s primary address.

This notice must contain the name and address of the business and the contact information for the statutory agent.

The ACC maintains a list of approved newspapers in each Arizona county where the publication requirement exists, as well as a list of counties that don’t require this publication notice. The cost for publishing it typically runs between $60 and $200.

The LLC must complete this process within 60 days of receiving approval from the ACC. Failure to complete it in time could result in the dissolution of the LLC.

Create an Operating Agreement

The state of Arizona does not require LLCs to file an operating agreement with the ACC. However, the business may want to have this legal document available. It spells out how the company plans to operate and the relationship among the owners of the LLC.

An operating agreement also discusses important things like voting rules and responsibilities, profit distribution, the power and duties of owners, the procedures for buying out a member or bringing a new one in, and more.

Once all members sign it, the operating agreement acts as a contract. While not required by Arizona, it is highly recommended for every LLC, as it protects the company’s LLC status and even protects your business from having to default to the state’s rules governing LLCs.

October 2, 2021

How to Start a Fitness Business

Starting a fitness business seems like a natural step to take for someone who enjoys physical activity, or even already works as a fitness professional.

It’s highly enticing to have the opportunity to be the boss and work at times that are convenient for you.

However, starting a fitness business is a challenging process that requires quite a bit of planning and preparation.

To have the best chance at success when trying to figure out how to start a fitness business, avoiding common pitfalls is a step in the right direction.

There are no guarantees when it comes to starting a business, but thorough preparation will increase the chances of making your dream a reality.

The Easy Parts of Starting a Fitness Business

Starting a new fitness business will have quite a few challenges, but it also can be quite a bit of fun. It won’t be easy all of the time, but there are some areas where things should be relatively easy.

Fitting Your Personality

If you worked for someone else as a fitness trainer in the past, you may not have been able to let your full personality shine. You may have had to adhere to the boss’ rules.

When you start your own fitness business, you can set the rules so that they fit your personality. And it is important to let your personal style come through in a fitness business. Your clients need to be able to trust you, and this is easier when you feel comfortable with how you can interact with clients.

You may find that your style and personality fit a perfect niche in the market that your competitors cannot match.

Doing Something You Love

It’s far easier to generate excitement about going to work and about your business when you are doing something you love.

If you appreciate the ability to help people reach their fitness goals or you enjoy the physical challenge of leading a fitness class, you will love the work that goes into operating a fitness business.

Playing To Your Strengths

There are literally dozens of different ways to teach fitness. Do you love group fitness classes, like Zumba or pilates? Are you into Crossfit and other high-intensity training? Are you a yoga fanatic? Or do you love outdoor fitness like hiking, climbing, or even parkour? With a fitness business, you can offer training, coaching, and/or classes in the kind of fitness you’re already really good at.

Similarly, you can choose to teach or train in the ways you’re most comfortable with. Do you like working one-on-one with people in person? Teaching to big crowds? Working with small groups online? Teaching early in the morning or later in the evening? With your own fitness business, you can tailor how and when you teach or train to the times and methods that work best for you.

The Difficult Parts of Starting a Fitness Business

This isn’t exactly a breaking news flash, but starting any kind of business is hard. Starting a fitness business does have a few specific difficulties that you should understand, however.

Wearing Many Hats

If you want to start a fitness business because you love being a fitness trainer, that’s a good start. However, the majority of small business owners in the world of fitness must handle many other parts of running the business, including:

Equipment purchase, maintenance, and repair
Accounting
Advertising and marketing
Continuing education and building new skills
Customer service

You do have the option of hiring others to handle some aspects of operating a small fitness business. But when finances are tight at the beginning, you may need to try to handle these items on your own.

Stiff Competition

There are thousands of athletes, fitness professionals, and generally active people who are trying to monetize their fitness hobbies. Companies like Zumba and Crossfit certify dozens of new trainers every month. And fitness is a buyer’s market–there are far fewer gyms looking to hire trainers and coaches than there are trainers and coaches to hire. This disparity tends to lead to lower pay for the fitness trainers themselves, too.

Owning your own gym also brings heavy competition. These days there is a 24-hour gym every few blocks in most major cities, not to mention multiple yoga studios, martial arts dojos, and Crossfit boxes. It’s certainly possible to stand out among the dozens of other gyms in your city, but it won’t be a cakewalk.

Long Hours

Everyone wants success in their new fitness business. To achieve that success and to keep it going, though, you will almost certainly have to work long hours.

Part of the reason you may want to start a fitness business is so you can gain flexibility about your working hours. What you may find, though, is that your work hours end up spiraling out of your control.

You may take on too many clients or gigs too quickly, leading to long working hours. You may find you’re spending significant time on administrative or marketing tasks. You may have a hard time finding regular classes or clients, leaving you with a lot of ongoing marketing to do to make up the shortfall.

And don’t forget about the time needed to prepare classes or training regimens ahead of time, the time to drive between different appointments, and the time YOU need to recharge and recover your body and mind between classes and training sessions. These hours are easy to overlook, but if you leave them out of your schedule you’ll pay for it.

Being busier than you expected can be good if the business is making quite a bit of money. But if you’re struggling to turn a profit at the same time you’re working a lot of extra hours, it can be disheartening and frustrating.

Step 1: Make Sure You Have the Proper Training

For anyone looking to have success in a certain job or business setting, training is vital. Someone who knows very little about plumbing, hanging drywall, or selling real estate cannot jump into those professions without training, at least not successfully.

Sure, you could try to learn how to become a fitness instructor and trainer while on the job, but this rarely works well. Training ahead of time is important.

Understand the Competitors

Take a bit of time to understand what kinds of formal training other fitness trainers have. If the competitors operating in your area have a high level of training, you will need to match them to compete.

If your competitors have minimal training, you can set yourself apart with extra training. Or you can start with light training to match what the market currently supports. You then can add more training in the future after you begin operations, so you can figure out the exact type of training that will benefit your business the most.

Understand What Credentials You Need

Some local or state entities require that fitness trainers hold certain licenses or credentials. Other times, you may want to obtain credentials from national boards to give potential customers confidence about your level of training. It never hurts to have some framed credentials on the wall behind the service counter.

Figure Out If You Truly Enjoy It

Through the training process, you’ll have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the world of fitness. You probably will learn that you really do love this type of work. On the other hand, you may find out that fitness instruction and training aren’t quite as enjoyable as you imagined. It’s better to discover this now than after you open the business.

Step 2: Study the Competitors

Once you have a good feel for whether you will enjoy fitness training, the next step toward starting your own fitness business is studying the competitors.

Looking at Location

Scout some physical locations for your potential fitness business. Don’t focus on particular buildings or available properties just yet, though.

Instead, pay attention to what kinds of fitness gyms already exist in the areas you’re considering. For example, if an area already has four yoga centers up and running, you probably don’t want to be the fifth one. Or if you’re planning on being a personal trainer that focuses on powerlifting, make sure there are at least two or three active barbell gyms in your immediate area where you can offer your training services.

Remain flexible in this phase of the process. Find multiple potential location options, as you may learn that your preferred location doesn’t work for you, or that you need access to multiple locations.

Focusing on Your Strengths

You may come into this process with a certain type of fitness center or business already in mind. Maybe you only have an interest in starting a yoga studio or a cardio training center. There’s nothing wrong with having a particular area of interest and focus from the start.

However, if you are open to starting almost any kind of fitness business, you’ll have more options for competing. Going back to the area with four existing yoga studios, rather than opening the fifth yoga studio, you might try opening the first weight training center in that same area. This could provide a significant leg up against the existing competitors. Similarly, if a gym near you already offers a lot of dance-based fitness classes, try offering to teach high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and strength classes to balance them out.

Step 3: Be Honest With Yourself About Your Business Expertise

This step will apply to starting a fitness business, but it really could apply to almost any kind of startup small business. Think about what you know about starting a business and, perhaps more importantly, what you don’t know.

No Business Expertise

If you have zero experience operating a small business or even working in management at a larger business, you will want to obtain some help.

Government: Multiple resources are available from local and federal government sources, such as the Small Business Association. These entities are free resources for doing research and answering basic questions about starting any kind of business.
Local sources: Your local Better Business Bureau may be able to connect you with some local resources. You may find advice from small business mentors or from consultants interested in helping businesses perform the required startup work. Understand that most of these services will carry a fee.
Lending institution: If you plan to take out a loan to start a fitness business, you often can find helpful sources of information and advice from the lending entity. Your lender may even be able to steer you toward real estate opportunities.

Past Business Expertise

If you tried to start or owned a business in the past, you have some understanding of what goes into this process. You may understand the areas of starting a business where you have strengths. Just as importantly, you may understand your weaknesses, so you know where to seek help.

Focus on areas where you know you need help, and find mentors or consultants that can deliver in these areas.

Don’t Ignore Naysayers

You probably know this already, but some people will tell you that starting a fitness business is a crazy idea, while others will be highly supportive.

Don’t just listen to the advice that you want to hear. You can always learn something from people who don’t agree with you.

Some people certainly just have a negative attitude, and they probably aren’t going to give you much useful advice. But some people will provide constructive criticism about your plan to start a fitness business, which can be helpful for you. A naysayer may even point out a challenge in operating a business that you didn’t think about previously.

Ultimately, completing a strong business plan and doing extensive research can help you feel comfortable about your choices when some people are doubting you.

Step 4: Create a Business Plan

Now you are ready to start your business plan. This process is hard work, but it is absolutely necessary. It will help you put your ideas into a concrete plan. You can share your vision and dream with others in a way they can understand.

You will need a business plan in place to obtain financing. Some state and local governments require a plan before you can obtain licenses as well. The Small Business Administration has multiple resources for helping with creating a business plan. Local small business consultants or lending institutions may have business plan advice for you as well.

Marketing and Competition

You may want to start a fitness business because you love the idea of helping people become healthy. You may like the idea of being your own boss.

Regardless of whatever idea steered you in this direction, your small fitness center business must be able to draw in customers. A very important part of the business plan is developing a marketing plan and calculating what your marketing costs and sales goals will be.

As part of this section, it’s important to study the competition closely. Understand what areas of the market have saturation and what areas will benefit from your business. Then include ideas of how you will market your business to take advantage of those areas.

Financial Expectations

Your business plan must include an estimate of your startup costs. Not only should you have an estimate of what your real estate rental costs will be, but you should also estimate the costs for transforming the space to meet your needs.

A general fitness center will require workout equipment and large spaces for classes, resulting in potentially high startup costs. A yoga center may not have high equipment costs, but you may end up spending quite a bit on decor and design to make the space relaxing and inviting. A personal training or fitness coaching business likely won’t have rent or location costs, but may still require some equipment to buy up front. And don’t forget about paying for certifications and continuing education!

Then you need to come up with an estimate of what you believe you can earn in the business over the first few years and several years into the future. This is challenging. It is an area where most startup business owners will need extensive help. Don’t just pull numbers out of thin air for this section, or no lending institution will take your plan seriously.

Include an estimate of the number of employees you may need to hire as well. Labor often is the biggest ongoing expense for fitness centers and gyms, so if that’s the route you’re taking, don’t leave this cost out.

Business Structure and Licenses

Include information in the business plan about the type of business structure you will select. Limited liability companies (LLCs) are easy to set up and relatively inexpensive to operate for small businesses, for example.

Ultimately, you want a structure that shields your personal finances and legal obligations from the finances and legal obligations of the business. In other words, with this protection, if your business suffers a loan default or receives a lawsuit, your personal holdings remain protected.

Include information in the business plan about how you will set up this structure and what kind of legal advice you will have. Plans for insurance are important here too. Additionally, include information about what kinds of local licenses and permits you will need to obtain, along with a cost estimate.

Step 5: Obtain Financing and Get Started

With your business plan in place, you then can start seeking financing. If you can afford to fully fund the business through your own means, this is a good idea. However, being fully self-funding is not realistic for many people looking to start a fitness-related business.

Financing Options

You may be able to obtain a loan from a local financial institution, but many banks expect you to put up some of your own money in the process. In other words, the bank rarely will fund 100% of the costs.

Small Business Administration-backed loans are possible for some startup businesses. Lines of credit are available too, but you may have to secure these with your personal holdings.

Friends and family may want to invest in your business, but this can be a tricky process. If you go this route, put the terms in writing, so everyone knows the expectations for paying the money back. Treat this source of funding like any other official loan you are seeking.

If you’re starting a group fitness teaching or personal training business as a side hustle, you may not need outside capital, assuming your day job can cover those costs. But any extra money will help, so you might want to look into financing regardless.

The SBA has multiple resources for helping you determine the best way forward with financing.

Keep a Reserve

When it’s time to open the business, always try to hold back a bit of funding in reserve. Odd expenses and unexpected costs are going to happen for a new fitness center. No new business owner can anticipate every situation that will arise in the first several weeks.

It’s nice to have some peace of mind that you can cover these unexpected costs right away without putting yourself in a giant financial hole before you have a chance to establish yourself.

August 6, 2021

IoT in Marketing

Introduction

The Internet of things (IoT) is a fancy term for a connected world where almost everything man-made is connected to the internet. This phenomenon is not very full-blown these days. Farms don’t yet have a complete internet-connected irrigation system, and not all cities are laden with geographic sensors.

But that’s not to say IoT won’t come to fruition. Our voice-assisted technologies like Alexa and Siri have become more personal and responsive in the last five years. Smartwatches get better at examining heart health and providing actionable care. And our voice can jumpstart a host of other mundane appliances like microwaves, TV, and air conditioners.

July 27, 2021

Right Inbox Review

Over 250,000 professionals use Right Inbox to increase their email productivity.

Right Inbox streamlines your Gmail processes through automation, email tracking, and scheduling—so you never miss an email again.

Both professionals and teams use Right Inbox to get the most out of Gmail by utilizing the robust features it offers at one of the lowest prices on the market.

Used by big-name brands like Netflix, Uber, and Verizon, you can also become a top performer and change the way you send and receive emails with Right Inbox.

Right Inbox Pros and Cons

Pros

Affordable
30-second install
Personalized templates
Works with Chrome, Safari, and Firefox
Effective email tracking

Cons

User interface can be clunky
Lack of customer service

[Product Review and Comparison Post CTA Box]

Right Inbox Features

Right Inbox offers many features that will transform your communication and increase email productivity.

Email Tracking

The Right Inbox email tracking feature is excellent for anyone wanting to see who opens their emails and clicks the links. Email tracking for Gmail will benefit you the most if you are working in sales, marketing, recruiting, or customer support roles—allowing you to adjust your strategy and follow-up accordingly.

With email tracking, your real-time insights are only a mouse-hover away, as you can check who has opened each email by hovering over the eye icon. You can also choose whether you want to track opens, link clinks, or both—so you know what happens to your emails after hitting send.

Right Inbox’s email tracking feature lets you effectively follow up on emails by tracking when and how a recipient interacts with your current email strategy.

It also lets you integrate other features into your Gmail account, like Sequences. The Sequence feature works alongside email tracking and lets you send automatic follow-ups at the times and days you choose, making email tracking more effective. But we will talk about that feature later on in this review.

Many email trackers fall more on the basic side, but Right Inbox offers a more advanced tool for increased email productivity. With its email tracker, you get to see:

When the recipient opens your emails
What time they opened emails
What devices your recipients opened them on
The location of where the recipient opened the email and the connected IP address
When they click any links

The easiest thing about email tracking is that you can get it up and running in four easy steps, and it won’t cause any functionality issues with your Gmail account.

Recurring Emails

This feature helps you save time writing repetitive emails, as you can choose to send out emails every two, three, and four weeks from Monday to Sunday.

The unique aspect of this Right Inbox feature is that it also lets you send out daily emails. Few recurring email tools allow this, as they usually set the minimum at one week.

However, sending out daily emails can work well for individual use, like setting reminders for yourself or daily business tasks that need to be taken care of—making Right Inbox a flexible tool not only for businesses but for individual needs, too.

The best part about the Right Inbox recurring email feature is that you can set it up in five easy steps, and it only takes a few seconds to install.

Recurring emails will come in handy for tasks such as:

Monthly invoices
Weekly meeting agendas
Quarterly expense reports
Seasonal updates
Daily reminders

If you send the same email repeatedly for business tasks or personal goals, Right Inbox’s recurring email feature will benefit you by saving you time and effort on repetition.

Templates

Right Inbox lets you turn your most effective emails into customizable templates to help you turn your ordinary email strategy into an extraordinary one.

With email templates, you can transform your best-performing emails with just one click by creating a template that you can use at scale instead of writing repetitive emails.

Right Inbox lets you optimize and personalize each template to fit every contact’s unique context and needs. It allows you to fill in sections like the contact’s name and company, bringing structure and consistency to your email communication.

By saving your most effective emails as a template, you can make it easier for you to run mid to large-sized email campaigns that are just too big to write. You still have control over each email, but with templates, you save time.

You can use the templates drop-down menu and keep track of each high-performing email without having to scroll through all your sent emails. With Right Inbox’s email templates, you can avoid mistakes and inconsistency simply by using the emails that have gotten you the results that you want.

With Right Inbox’s flexibility, you can also pair the recurring emails feature with the template feature to send out personalized emails regularly.

Signatures

Creating a fitting signature for every email you send will help make your business communication look more professional.

Right Inbox’s signature tool will get you more replies, generate more leads, and boost your social media reach by simply marketing your business.

With Right Inbox signatures, you can create different sign-offs for different situations and apply the one that fits you by using its drop-down menu. You can choose from sign-off personas like account manager, marketing strategist, Airbnb host, and friends and family.

Right Inbox also makes it easy to switch between signatures without leaving your editor and breaking your communication workflow. All you have to do is write up your email and select your unique signature from its easy-to-use drop-down menu.

What makes the Right Inbox signature tool unique is that you can add images to your email signature. You can choose to add a company logo, headshot, or an upcoming event banner to promote a new campaign.

You can effortlessly add images by utilizing Right Inbox’s editor window and selecting the Insert Image button, and you’re on your way.

Editing signatures in Gmail can be tedious, but Right Inbox lets you streamline your workflow and save time by creating and editing unique signatures for every type of email without leaving the editor.

Sequences

The Right Inbox sequence feature will help you further improve your email strategy by allowing you to follow up on unanswered emails as efficiently as possible automatically.

It’s common to forget to follow up on an unanswered email, but with Right Inbox, you’ll never forget again, as its state-of-the-art technology does it all for you.

With sequences, you can choose to schedule multiple follow-ups in your Gmail account beforehand and have Right Inbox send them out on the days you want.

For example, you can choose to send the first sequence after five days of no response and the second sequence four days later. However, what makes it so excellent is that the tool immediately cancels all scheduled follow-ups if you receive a reply.

With Right Inbox’s functionality, you can pair sequences with your best templates and email tracking for machine-like productivity and increased strategy. You can save your most effective follow-ups as a template and utilize the email tracking feature to see if the recipients open your emails.

Not only will the sequence tool supercharge your email marketing and make you look professional and consistent, but it also automates a time-consuming process and gives you a higher chance of converting your email campaigns.

Send Later

Right Inbox lets you schedule emails and send them out later in Gmail, which is an excellent feature for remote teams working in different time zones.

With the Right Inbox send later feature, you get to create the perfect email on your time and still send it out on your recipient’s time. For maximum efficiency, Right Inbox lets you customize the send later menu to include your most common time zone options.

Right Inbox’s built-in time zone support is easily its best capability within the send later feature. Time zone support allows you to sync with different time zones and check which time zone your recipient is in. Gone are the days of trying to count down the hours to figure out the timing of your scheduled email.

Gmail’s scheduling features are limited. However, Right Inbox expands on Gmail’s functionality by automatically detecting the receiver’s time zone, so you can adjust your schedule accordingly to ensure they receive your email at just the right time.

It doesn’t matter if you write an email at midnight or during the afternoon, Right Inbox lets your recipient receive your email on their time for maximum efficiency and professionalism.

Right Inbox Pricing and Package Options

Right Inbox offers a few pricing plans for both professionals and teams. It breaks down its pricing packages into monthly and yearly tiers, where you can save up to 25% by purchasing an annual plan.

The Professional plans are best for individual use, such as freelancers or small business owners, and the Team plans better suit medium to larger teams that are always cross-collaborating on email tasks.

Free Professionals Plan: Free forever.

Right Inbox offers a Free Professionals plan that is perfect for anyone who wants to learn the ropes of an email extension. The Free tier is generous, as it includes most features, excluding sequences and recurring emails. It also has unlimited CRM sync, smart link previews, and embedded gifs.

With its Free tier, you can send 10 emails per month for the send later, reminders, and private notes features. You also get to track five emails per month, which can be helpful for small startups or individuals that only send out a few important emails each month.

You also receive a maximum of five signatures and five templates to refine your business communication strategy.

Yearly Professionals Plan: $5.95 per month, billed at $71.40 per year.

The Right Inbox Yearly Professionals plan lets you save 25% on the initial price you would be paying monthly. With the Yearly tier, you get access to every single feature in an unlimited capacity, including recurring emails and sequences.

Monthly Professionals Plan: $7.95 per month, billed at $95.40 per year.

By choosing the Right Inbox Monthly Professionals plan, you still receive the same features in an unlimited capacity, except you will be paying a more expensive rate every month instead of a bulk price each year.

The great thing about this pricing plan is that you won’t be paying too much more, and it’s still a flexible option for anyone who can only afford smaller monthly installments.

Yearly Teams Plan: $4.99 per user per month, billed at $59.88 per year.

The Yearly Teams plan allows you to add users to your account and saves you $1 per user per month. The Yearly Teams plan comes with all the same features as the Professionals plans, except you can expand your email extension with extra users.

Monthly Teams Plan: $6.95 per month, billed at $83.40 per year.

Again, you will be paying a little bit extra every month, but you still receive the same benefits as the plans mentioned above.

Right Inbox Reputation

In terms of reputation, Right Inbox receives between 3.8 to 4.5 stars on most review sites. When scrolling through dozens of reviews, we found that the most common praise for this product is that it has saved many users a ton of time and that it is incredibly easy to use.

Another positive aspect many users seemed to focus on was the pricing and how easy Right Inbox’s pricing structure was to follow. Many users liked that its free tier was very generous and flexible in the features it comes with.

Although we didn’t come across many negative reviews for Right Inbox, the most common downfall we saw was a lack of customer service and that the UI can be a little rigid sometimes. However, the Right Inbox features and functionality seem to overshadow what little negative experience there has been.

Summary

Overall, Right Inbox is a user-friendly Gmail extension that will increase your email productivity, and we would certainly recommend it for this.

We would recommend Right Inbox to beginners, individuals, small business owners, or large teams, as its functionality is flexible. It’s one of the most affordable extensions on the market today and even offers a free tier for added convenience.

Right Inbox offers robust features like email tracking, customizable templates, and multiple signatures to increase your email strategy and make your business stand out.

July 25, 2021

TelemetryTV Review

TelemetryTV, a digital signage software platform, makes it easy to turn any of your screens into a haven of engaging content–regardless of the industry you operate in.

It stands out in the signage management field by serving an extra-wide range of industries and clients, boasting some of the highest user ratings, and having lower monthly costs than most of its competitors.

So if you’re looking for a signage management solution, you’ll want to stick around for this deep dive.

Below, we go into the best and worst parts of everything TelemetryTV.

TelemetryTV Pros and Cons

Pros

Lets you build content on its dashboard with its drag-and-drop features
Lets you automate playlists
Lets you display more than one piece of content on one screen
Easily displays emergency alerts that override programming when necessary
Integrates with more than 70 apps
Comes with uptime reporting as well as notifications
Caches content in the background in case your internet goes down
Lets you build your own custom dashboard
Easily creates groups and permissions for content display and editing
Lets you set and create ad campaigns with exportable reports

Cons

Occasional software updates might interfere with scheduled displays
Limited solutions for the free option

TelemetryTV Features

Besides knowing some of the pros and cons of using TelemetryTV, it’s worth taking a deeper dive into each of its most prominent features. Starting with the fact that it enables you to create huge video walls to display any kind of content imaginable.

Video Wall Creation

Have a lobby that’s in dire need of a video wall? TelemetryTV helps you make that a reality with its stunning video wall feature. With it, you can create a visual experience that sets you apart with eye-catching images, videos, or social feeds of your choice.

Now, the problem with video walls is that you’ll inevitably run into aspect ratio problems depending on the size and proportions of your wall. But TelemetryTV takes care of that for you by letting you input your own aspect ratio and zone grids.

This can also be a useful feature if you’re working with more than one screen of different sizes. Keep in mind that your screen resolution, regardless of your aspect ratio, can be anywhere from 1080p to 8k. So you don’t have to worry about sacrificing visual quality there.

Interactive Content Design

One of the biggest problems to solve when it comes to on-screen displays is the process of actually creating the content and getting it on devices that’ll display them on your choice of screens correctly. TelemetryTV enables you to create content by integrating with Canva, a powerful and accessible graphic design platform.

If you’ve used Canva in the past you know that there are a ton of design features to choose from. It comes with stock photos with commercial usage rights and it even has the ability to create animated content in the colors and fonts of your choosing.

One of TelemetryTV’s best content creation features is that it also allows you to create interactive content with touch screen digital signage. To learn more about this feature, I recommend you get in touch for a demo.

Flexible Content Management Dashboard

With everything you’re able to do with TelemetryTV, it’s only natural they’d provide you with a real-time dashboard that brings all of its tools together in one place for you to manage.

Once you’re onboarded, you’re able to build a custom dashboard with its many integrations.

You’ll also be able to take a closer look at your display analytics to be better able to make decisions on what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to be enhanced. Keep in mind that the more you pay per screen, the more access to a more robust dashboard and analytics tools you’ll have.

TelemetryTV’s content management dashboard also lets you:

Drag-and-drop to layout your content exactly how you want it
Schedule and automate your own curated playlists
Divide your screens into regions that display different pieces of content

Once upon a time, you might have needed a highly knowledgeable tech guy to come in and set everything up for you. This would probably cost you more than you’d want to pay.

Now, with the powerful tools that TelemetryTV offers, you can have minimal knowledge on everything related to digital signage–and still get started creating, scheduling, and managing media layouts that fall in line with the goals of your business. For any business looking for convenience, this is definitely a win.

Data Protection

It doesn’t matter if you operate in the ad industry, healthcare, education, hospitality, or retail, the bigger you are the more concerned you’re going to be with data protection and security. Thankfully, TelemetryTV has thought of this too.

TelemetryTV allows you to set specific user permissions for certain user groups. That way, you always know who’s allowed to view what data and who has the ability to edit or add any content. Not only that, but TelemetryTV also gives you access to login reports. It logs and tracks each user’s activity on your account.

Need to meet legal GDPR requirements? TelemetryTV has you covered. It also comes with SOC II Type II certification so you can have peace of mind about the security of any sensitive company information.

It’s features like these that go beyond the basics both SMBs and enterprise-level businesses can take advantage of when they’re thinking of implementing a comprehensive screen display plan.

Uptime Monitoring and Caching

With software like TelemetryTV, it’s easy to assume it solely relies on the internet to keep working. But TelemetryTV has taken things a step further by providing its users with uptime monitoring and convenient caching features.

With uptime monitoring, you can always stay in the know of what’s been happening with your screens. Are all of them continuously on? Is there a faulty screen that isn’t displaying content at all times? It’s questions like this that features like uptime monitoring can help you answer.

With the caching feature, you don’t have to worry about your screens going down if your internet connection happens to give out (which tends to happen at some point or another). Your scheduled media will go on playing as usual without skipping a beat.

While with the right tools, signage management can largely be a set-it-and-forget-it setup, it’s tools like media caching and uptime monitoring that’ll keep you informed on what happens when you aren’t around to keep an eye on everything all at once.

The more screens you manage, the more these features become useful. The fact that they’re all centralized into one dashboard where you can control each and every one of your screen displays makes it that much more convenient.

However, it’s hardly advisable to take anyone’s word for anything. One of the best ways to try out TelemetryTV’s features is to try it out for free or schedule a demo.

Flexible Hardware

Now, if you’re planning on working with digital signage there is hardware you’ll need to invest in. The beauty of working with TelemetryTV’s software is that they don’t muscle you into buying their hardware.

Here’s where you have choices. You can choose from a variety of hardware options as TelemetryTV is compatible with Android, Chrome, Windows, iOS, and Linux. Whatever hardware you choose to go with, TelemetryTV doesn’t leave you hanging.

Each one comes with a detailed guide on how to use it with TelemetryTV successfully.

TelemetryTV Pricing and Package Options

One of the best ways to get familiar with everything TelemetryTV has to offer is to take advantage of its free tier for one device. Better yet, you can also sign up for its free demo where its team will walk you through its best features. Here’s a quick breakdown of TelemetryTV’s prices:

Free – Limited to one device
Essential – $12 a month per device for up to three users
Enhanced – $17 a month per device for up to five users then $3 a month per additional user
Enterprise – Custom billing

If you’re a small business that can get away with only using one screen to display your content, then you’ll most definitely want to take advantage of TelemetryTV’s free tier. You’ll get access to image file storage, the Canva editor, more than 70 app integrations, and even email support if you were to need to speak to its customer service team.

Otherwise, if you’re considering a paid subscription, TelemetryTV charges a set fee per device, and each tier comes with a user limit. If you’re only needing to get three users or fewer registered on TelemetryTV then you can get away with its Essential tier at only $12 per device a month billed annually. But don’t take my word for it. I highly recommend you take advantage of the free trials it offers for any of its tiers.

Moreover, TelemetryTV doesn’t shy away from working with big brands too. If you’re looking for an enterprise-grade solution that gives you access to its top features along with a custom number of users, you’ll have to get in contact with its team to get a personalized quote.

TelemetryTV Reputation

TelemetryTV has been around for quite some time and it’s used by some of the biggest brands in the world including Starbucks, New York University, Stanford, and Carvana. So you can rest assured they know a thing or two about displaying content, whether that’s a social feed, video streaming, or videos.

Users praise it for being amateur-friendly and for offering stellar customer service. Problems are promptly solved and its customer service team offers follow-ups if needed. Its online chat is also very responsive, something you don’t always get with other SaaS companies.

Not only that, TelemetryTV is easy to set up once you’re ready to onboard it as part of your workflow. From there, once you’ve configured it to display exactly what you want, it makes it so that your signage management is relatively low maintenance.

Users love how intuitive it is to use from the moment you log on to your dashboard. It makes it easy to build displays with its drag-and-drop feature and users love that it enables them to easily build branded content through its Canva integration.

The fact that it’s cloud-based is yet another feature users love. It helps signage management be largely location independent and makes the process of getting things on display that much easier. It helps that you can set up group permissions for certain users. Especially the more content and screens you manage.

Some downsides? Sometimes the software updates can interfere with scheduled programming. This means you might have to go out of your way to reboot your box to get everything back to normal. If you’re wanting to switch feeds at a scheduled time, this might be something you have to do manually.

Also, keep in mind that its Canva integration can slow things down when you’re trying to export your creations since it isn’t a proprietary feature but rather an integration that works with TelemetryTV. If details like these bother you, they’re definitely something to pay attention to once you’ve tried a free trial or requested a demo.

Overall, TelemetryTV has shining reviews, is revered for making signage management an easy process, and is known for being reliable and having responsive customer support. When you’re looking for a signage solution that covers all its bases, you can’t ask for much more than everything TelemetryTV has to offer.

I’d say some of its more salient features are the fact that they care about the security of your content and information, they strive to be flexible in the hardware you use, and that they make it easy for you to create content right on its dashboard with the Canva integration.

All in all, it’s a solid tool worth considering if you’re in the market for a reliable signage system, or if you’re looking to switch from another provider. Ready to get started with TelemetryTV to manage your signage efforts? Start the process here with a free demo.

July 17, 2021

Best Business Management Software

Business management software empowers you to streamline your internal processes into workflows that garner results. The trick is finding software that can work with your business to help eliminate errors, gather data, and equip you with useful automations.

Today, we’re looking at the top business management platforms you can use to improve your business across the board. Let’s dive in.

The Top 5 Best Business Management Software

Zoho One – Best for big businesses that need high customization
Salesforce – Best all-in-one software
Wrike – Best for work and project management
QuickBooks – Best for freelancers
Scoro – Best for service businesses

Below we take a closer look at what each business management system has to offer and whether it’s right for your business.

#1 – Zoho One — Best For Big Businesses That Need High Customization

Visit Zoho

Hyper-detailed platform for large teams
Robust automation capabilities
Exceptional customization levels
GDPR compliance built-in

Learn more

If you’re managing large teams with enterprise-level needs, Zoho One offers comprehensive bespoke solutions for businesses that need a wide array of tools that are highly customizable.

Let’s face it, big teams can have a harder time staying nimble as they cater to customer’s needs and manage a growing audience. Zoho One offers everything from sales and marketing solutions, productivity and collaboration tools, HR and customer experience tools, finance and accounting, and even a low-code developer platform all at a granular level of customization.

It lets you automate daily tasks, set SOPs, streamline data management, and create workflows exactly how you need them. Not only that, Zoho One leads you through the onboarding process by taking care of migration needs, equipping you with in-depth product knowledge, and helping you set your unique technical needs.

For enterprise-level needs, security and privacy are of utmost importance. With Zoho One, you can be sure you’re GDPR compliant as you execute operations globally. Data gathered through Zoho isn’t sold to third parties, as they manage data security issues with great care.

Here’s a look at Zoho One’s two pricing plans:

All Employee – $37 per user per month
Flexible User – $90 per user per month

In the All Employee plan, you must purchase licenses for all of your employees and with Flexible User, you can purchase a license for any number of users. Both prices above are billed annually.

To learn more about Zoho One’s enterprise-level plans that include customization, you’ll have to get in contact with its sales team.

Get started by reaching out to Zoho today.

#2 – Salesforce — Best All-In-One Software

Visit Salesforce

All-in-one customer-facing platform
Built-in AI feature for flawless automation
Free employee training included
Flexible pricing

Try free for 30 days

Salesforce stands out as the all-in-one solution option for businesses that need streamlined management across every department. Its Customer 360 option, for instance, is designed to unite all your teams around one thing: your customer.

Salesforce does this by uniting sales, marketing, IT, service, commerce, and analytics into a customized solution that caters to your specific needs. Salesforce’s Einstein AI feature makes sure you can automate repetitive tasks and time-consuming tasks, even if you manage teams that are working far apart from each other.

What’s more, Salesforce also offers free training through its Reskilling hub, where your employees, old and new alike, can sharpen their skills while they learn the ins and outs of every tool Salesforce’s software has to offer.

Salesforce’s Customer 360 approach also makes sure all your team members have access to crucial data to be able to make smarter and quicker decisions.

It’s not an exaggeration to say Salesforce is a truly feature-rich business management tool. So if you want to get familiar with its prices, it’s best if you navigate to its extensive pricing page where it breaks down plans by either need, business size, or industry.

For instance, its small business management software plans break down as follows:

Essentials – $25 per user per month
Sales Professional – $75 per user per month
Service Professional – $75 per user per month
Pardot Growth – $1,250 per user per month

If you don’t yet want to commit, Salesforce also lets you try any plan for free for 30 days once you answer a few questions about your business.

Ready to dive in? Get started with Salesforce here.

#3 – Wrike — Best For Work and Project Management

Visit Wrike

Unify your team in one dashboard
Ready-to-use workflow templates
Extensive library for employee training
Three plans under $25 per user per month

Try free for 14 days

Sometimes, your business needs software that simplifies work and projects without bringing too much complexity. That’s where a tool like Wrike can be an optimal solution.

Wrike offers dashboards, processes, and automation tools for seemingly every business team. It can take care of anything from:

Marketing
Project management
Professional services
Business operations
Product Management
IT teams
Digital marketing teams

Wrike enables you to break down silos and connect all your teams through an easy-to-configure platform and secure cloud collaboration. Moreover, its customizable status reports help you keep everyone in the loop. With its out-of-the-box templates you can plan objectives and KPIs with actionable items that teams can organize on kanban boards with plenty of integrations.

One of Wrike’s standout features is its library of Wrike courses. They educate you on all things Wrike, including modules on building teams, managing processes, and increasing productivity all through the Wrike platform. In fact, Wrike won an award for the best customer training program in 2020. This all sounds great, but how do its prices break down?

Free
Professional – $9.80 per user per month
Business – $24.80 per user per month
Enterprise – Contact them for more information

For small businesses, Wrike can be a free tool worth using to streamline and scale processes. From there, its most popular Business tier at $24.80 per user per month offers more robust work management tools with plenty of reporting features and access to additional customization options.

If you haven’t made up your mind yet but think Wrike might be a tool you’re interested in, you can start a 14-day free trial for any plan you’d like to get a real feel for how the software operates.

Get started with Wrike here.

#4 – QuickBooks — Best for Freelancers

Visit QuickBooks

Accounting and time tracking
Payroll add-on available
Great for solopreneurs
All plans under $75 per month

Learn more

Business management software isn’t just for big businesses with large teams. Solopreneurs and freelancers need processes and automations to streamline their operations too. QuickBooks can be a solid option for freelancers and one-man businesses that need to get a handle on their accounting and time tracking needs.

With QuickBooks, you’ll have an easier time getting paid and sending invoices, keeping track of income and expenses for tax purposes, and you’re able to gain clarity on how many hours you’re actually working.

QuickBooks lets you ditch limiting spreadsheets and replace them with powerful cash flow management, as well as reporting features that’ll help you keep cash flowing. Need payroll? You can easily add that to your plan.

Its time tracking feature, a crucial part of keeping a well-oiled freelance workflow, takes note of hours worked for an easier time calculating payroll and billable hours. Thankfully, QuickBooks isn’t only built for efficiency, it’s also an affordable solution.

Simple Start – $12.50 a month
Essentials – $20 a month
Plus – $35 a month
Advanced – $75 a month

For only $12.50 a month the Simple Start plan gives you access to income and expense tracking, invoicing, general reports, cash flow, and contract management. However, for more advanced features its most popular Plus plan can run comprehensive reports, capture and organize receipts, manage and pay bills, and even includes access for up to five users.

Ready to get started with QuickBooks? Start here.

#5 – Scoro — Best for Service Businesses

Visit Scoro

Centralized dashboard to track all KPIs
Track progress in real-time Gantt charts
Robust automation capabilities
3 plans under $40/user per month

Request your demo

Managing a service-based business? Scoro has the tools you need to quicken your business processes through automation and data management. With Scoro’s real-time Gantt charts, your team can track progress in real time and lets you set tasks, dependencies, and events.

Scoro lets you create customer pipelines, automate billing and recurring invoices, and even automates the process of sending late invoice reminders. As far as data goes, it lets you automatically compile reports, and track KPIs through its data-rich dashboard. All of these tools and more help you manage the entire project life cycle on an intuitive and easy-to-use dashboard.

Built-in calendars, task lists, and time trackers make sure you’re keeping a finger on the pulse of all your service projects for higher rates of success. One of the best parts? Scoro can be pretty affordable for businesses that want a service management tool that can scale with them as they grow.

Essential – $26 per user per month with a minimum of five users
Work Hub – $37 per user per month
Sales Hub – $37 per user per month
Ultimate – Contact the sales team for pricing

Scoro offers a demo and a free trial if you’d like to try it out first.

Get started with Scoro here.

How to Find The Best Business Management Software For You

Finding a fitting business management system isn’t a situation where you can just eye some features to find out if any given tool will work for you.

While it’s pretty straightforward that you’ll want your budget constraints, the size of your team, and your overall business goals to dictate which tool to onboard, there are additional criteria you can think through to maximize the chances of finding the right one.

Customer Management

Before committing to any tool, it’s worth determining what customer management tools your business will make use of.

Tools that enable you to do things like create customer profiles, or to anticipate the needs of a customer through tracked data might not be necessary for young startups or freelancers. It doesn’t make sense to invest in a more robust software if your business won’t truly need it— since more complex business management software almost always means you’ll have to pay more each month.

On the other hand, if your business has hundreds of employees and/or thousands of customers, a heavier customer management software package might be worth investing in.

Training and Onboarding

The more complex your business management tool of choice, the more of a learning curve your team will have to deal with. Fortunately, the best business management software providers know this and make it easier for businesses to use their software by designing an onboarding process— or at the very least providing a library of knowledge.

This way, any downtime is minimal during the onboarding process, your team will feel supported as they’re introduced to a new tool, and the transition to new software can be as smooth as possible. Some software providers come with customer support forums, an extensive knowledge library, and even on-demand training webinars and videos.

Knowing there’s a library of material they can refer to can save your team a lot of time and avoid miscommunication.

Summary

Without a doubt, the right business management software can transform the way you work. But first, you have to find one that works with your team’s needs and business goals. Here’s the complete list of software we went through as a quick refresher:

Zoho One – Best for big businesses that need high customization
Salesforce – Best all-in-one software
Wrike – Best for work and project management
QuickBooks – Best for freelancers
Scoro – Best for service businesses

Once you’ve carefully read through the guide and considered your options, you can take advantage of the free trials and demos each tool offers before making a full commitment.

July 16, 2021

The Beginner’s Guide to Business Structure

Building a business can be incredibly exciting—until you hit the legal part.

When you start a business, you have to make the monumental decision of selecting a business structure. This is where you decide the type of legal structure you want for your company, which also determines the tax you pay and how you pay it.

It’ll affect the amount of paperwork your business needs to do, the extent of your liability, and your ability to raise money.

The good news is you don’t need an MBA to understand this. Things are very straightforward when explained correctly. Read on as I decode common business structure basics, along with a few useful tools and tips to set you up for success.

What is a Business Structure?

A business of structure indicates an organization‘s structure as it is recognized in a given jurisdiction.

Choosing a business structure creates a legal recognition for your trade, where it becomes a key determinant of the activities your business can undertake, including raising capital, paying taxes, and the responsibility for the business’s obligations.

Your business structure trickles down to several factors that are part and parcel of running a business. In addition to enlightening the legal documentation you need, it also clarifies the amount of taxes your organization owes to tax agencies. More importantly, it decides the extent of your liabilities on behalf of the business.

Precisely why before choosing your legal structure, you should carefully consider your needs and goals and understand the features of every business structure.

The Basics of Business Structures

In the section, I’ll detail the basis of common business structures. By the end, hopefully, you will have a fair idea about which option would be better suited for you.

Sole Proprietorship

The sole proprietorship is the simplest business structure, involving one individual who owns and operates the enterprise. Any organization that isn’t registered as otherwise is considered as a sole proprietorship.

For instance, if you make and sell jewelry on Amazon and your website, you’re a sole proprietor. So if you plan to work alone and want total control over operations, this is right up your alley.

But that doesn’t mean there are no legal obligations. You have to figure out the licensing, permits, and regulatory hoops depending on the industry.

A sole proprietorship is appealing for tax purposes because all the income and expenses from the business are included on your personal income tax return, Form 1040. Your profit and losses are then recorded on a form called Schedule C, which you’ll file with your 1040.

From here, the “bottom-line amount” is transferred to your personal tax return. You must also file a Schedule SE with Form 1040.

Sole Proprietorship Pointers

It’s relatively inexpensive—provided you don’t need to file for a DBA (Doing Business As).
Being a “pass-through” tax entity where all the profits and losses come straight to you (the owner), paying taxes is relatively easy.
You can have employees if you want. However, this will complicate your taxes a bit.
Raising money and getting a small business loan will be difficult.
You have to assume full responsibility for your business’s debts and obligations.

Partnership

When your business is owned and operated by two or more individuals, it becomes a partnership. Generally, partnerships can be of two kinds: General partnerships and Limited partnerships.

When you’re part of a general partnership, you and the other partners in the company assume full responsibility for the business’s debts and other obligations.

In a limited partnership, there are general partners and limited partners. While the general partners operate the business and are personally liable for the partnership, limited partners are strictly investors. Limited partners have no control over the company and don’t share the same liabilities as general partners.

Let’s explain this with the jewelry selling example on Amazon.

If you bring in your best friend who is equally as good as you in creating jewelry, you won’t be a sole proprietorship anymore—your business is now a partnership.

On the tax front, partnerships have it relatively easy. A partnership business isn’t required to pay tax on its income and is considered a pass-through entity, where any profits or losses are extended to the individual partners. During the tax season, the partnership files a tax return (Form 1065) to report its income and loss to the IRS.

Additionally, every partner has to report their share of income and loss on Schedule K-1 of Form 1065.

Partnership Pointers

There must be an official partnership agreement between the partners.
A partnership is a pass-through tax entity, where all profits and losses “passed through” to the partners.
Partners must stay true to each other and have a trusting relationship.
It’s possible to have a one-off partnership known as a joint venture. In this case, you partner with other individuals for one specific project.

Corporations

A corporation is the first thing that comes to mind when people think of a business structure. It has a complex legal structure comprising shareholders, which also makes tax requirements more intricate and stringent.

There are three different types of corporations: C-Corp, S-Corp, and B-Corp. Each type has its own set of distinct characteristics.

C Corporation or C-Corp refers to the structure where all shareholders combine funds in exchange for stock in a newly formed business. It‘s an independent tax entity in the eyes of the IRS, which means it can file taxes in its name and will get tax deductions.

This business structure has a unique double taxation situation. In addition to the corporation paying corporate income tax at the federal and state level, its owners have to pay personal income tax on any earnings they receive from the business.

S Corporation or S-Corp is similar to a C-Corp except in the tax aspect. In an S-Corp, all income and losses are passed through to shareholders and included in their individual tax returns. As such, there’s just one layer of federal tax that owners must pay.

In other words, you can take your share of profit home without deducting the corporation’s share of tax—something important in the case of C-Corps.

That said, becoming an S-Corp isn’t easy. You have to set your business up as a corporation within your state and then request an S-Corp status (Form 2553).

B Corporation or B-Corp simply means benefit corporation. This can be a viable business structure if your company has a dedicated social mission, with a good cause built into its foundation that you plan to continue pursuing as your company grows.

A B-Corp is just a regular C-Corp that has been vetted and approved for the B-Corp status. Many people prefer to be a B-Corp over a non-profit because of ownership terms. With a non-profit, there are no owners or shareholders, whereas, for a B-Corp, there are still some shareholders who actually own the company.

Corporation Pointers

Corporations offer higher protection for personal assets as the liability is mostly limited.
There’s greater potential to raise capital.
Corporate taxes are filed separately from personal taxes, making the business eligible for corporate tax breaks.
Corporations are more difficult to set up.
A traditional C-Corp has a double taxation factor.
B-Corporations must have a social mission and require vetting to receive the status.

Limited Liability Corporation

A limited liability corporation or LLC combines the best of both worlds. You get the flexibility of a partnership with the liability protection of a corporation. The earnings and losses pass through to the owners and are included on their personal tax returns.

An LLC is similar to an S-Corp—but with more attractions.

It offers a combination of legal liability limitation and favorable tax treatment for profit and its transfer. You can have as many shareholders for an LLC as an S-Corp, which has a limit of 100. It’s a new form of legal entity that varies a lot from one state to another. As such, the advisability and benefits of forming this business structure also vary.

Limited Liability Corporation Pointers

Starting an LLC is more complex as you have to adhere to stringent rules and regulations.
LLCs provide personal asset protection to the owner. If sued, they can only go after business assets, not personal property or money.
An LLC is a pass-through tax entity for federal income taxes and enjoy greater tax incentives.
An LLC is a good alternative to a sole proprietorship. Except for Massachusetts, you can form a single-member LLC.

3 Tools to Help Start Your Business

I’m going to go ahead and assume you plan on starting a business. Congratulations!

At the same time, you have to be prepared for the never-ending paperwork, legal assistance, and several other steps to kickstart your business. Check out our buying guide for in-depth reviews of the top 11 business formation services today. Below, I have listed three of the best business formation services that can do all the hard work for you, regardless of whether you want to create a single-member LLC, multi-member S-Corp, partnership, or a non-profit.

ZenBusiness

ZenBusiness is fast, reliable, and diverse. It comes with a wide range of offerings that include incorporation services, LLC services, registered agent services, and DBA.

It comes with a user-friendly interface, which makes it suitable for beginners. However, its biggest USP is arguably the worry-free guarantee that includes two amendments to yearly corporate annual reports.

The other reason why I like ZenBusiness is its affordability. A $39 price point and a free year of registered agent service and accounting assessment—in addition to incorporation—make it even more attractive.

Rocket Lawyer

Rocket Lawyer tries to provide the average person a reliable legal service without breaking the bank, and it delivers.

Signing up for this service gives you access to experienced attorneys who can answer all your legal queries within minutes. In addition, it has a lawyer directory that instantly connects you with an expert on a specific legal topic from your chosen state for the best possible guidance.

What’s more, you can contact your assigned lawyer whenever you want during the business incorporation process via call, mail, or chat. The fact you get post-launch care is another hard-to-miss benefit.

LegalZoom

LegalZoom is one the most popular business formation services that offer comprehensive legal assistance in all 50 U.S. states.

It has one of the most extensive lists of service offerings that are customized based on your business requirements. You’re directly paired with attorneys who can give personalized advice related to your business structure.

Additionally, LegalZoom offers various services like procuring seller’s permits, business licenses, EIN, state tax ID, and 501(c)(3) applications.

3 Tricks for Deciding the Best Business Structure for You

It’s not always easy to decide which structure would be most suitable for you, especially since there are several factors to consider.

Consider How Complex and Flexible You Want Your Business to Be

As mentioned before, nothing is more straightforward than a sole proprietorship. All you have to do is simply register your name, start your business, report profits and pay

Partnerships need a signed agreement that clearly outlines the roles of every partner, along with their profit percentages. Out of these, corporations and LLCs are more complex since they have different reporting requirements from the state and federal governments.

As for flexibility, your business structure should reflect the kind of growth you envision for your business. Take a long, hard look at your business plan where you’ve mentioned your long-term goals. Select a structure that aligns best with those objectives.

Think About Taxes, Licences, and Permits

LLC owners and sole proprietors are all liable to pay tax on profit considered personal income at the end of the year. On the other hand, corporation owners only have to file tax returns on behalf of the corporation as well as for all their personal returns through the business for the specific year.

Individuals in a partnership may also claim their share of profits as personal income.

In addition to taxes, you should also be mindful of whether you need specific licenses and permits to operate. This depends on the type of business and activities you indulge in, leading you to be licensed on the local, state, and federal levels.

Therefore, it’s best to determine the ongoing regulation concerning licenses and permits before you start operating.

Know the Level of Control You’re Willing to Give

If the sole control of your business activity is important to you, opting for a brighter ship or an LLC is your best bet. Furthermore, you can also negotiate this control when setting up a partnership agreement.

However, this isn’t possible in the case of a corporation. This business structure is constructed to have a board of directors responsible for making all the major decisions. You can, of course, have a single person control the corporation at its inception, but as it grows, so will its need to operate the business as a board-directed entity.

What to Do Next

Once you zero on a business structure for your company, it’s all action from there.

Start by signing up with a reliable business formation service to file the necessary paperwork. Once your company has been formed, you can then focus your efforts on getting more business.

Here are a few more QuickSprout guides to ensure your business’s success:

July 9, 2021

7 Best Referral Program Software for Small Business Compared (2021)

Are you looking for the best referral program software for your business?

Referral programs can be a great way to get more people to promote your products and reach a bigger audience. Using referral program software helps you create and manage a referral program easily.

In this article, we’ve hand picked some of the best referral program software that you can use along with your WordPress site.

Why Use Referral Program Software?

Referral programs are a great way to get more traffic and increase your sales. Companies like Dropbox and Coinbase became popular by using successful referral programs.

Referral programs are successful because they use word of mouth marketing to help grow your business. People are more likely to trust recommendations from friends, family, and influencers they follow.

By growing with referrals, you can also save money on advertising and build customer loyalty.

However, managing your own referral program can be difficult and time-consuming. Referral program software makes it easy to create and manage referral marketing campaigns for your business or online store.

Referral programs have many moving parts, but using the right software can help to simplify the entire process.

What’s the Difference Between Referral and Affiliate Programs?

Referral marketing programs and affiliate marketing programs are very similar, although technically, they refer to different things.

A referral program offers incentives like gift cards, discounts, and commissions to existing customers when they refer a friend or family to make a purchase.

An affiliate program allows your customers or affiliate marketers to sign up for your program, so they can receive an agreed upon commission when someone purchases through their unique tracking link.

Affiliates are like your own sales team without the salary, and they only get paid when they actually deliver results.

For more details, see our step by step affiliate marketing guide for beginners.

That being said, let’s take a look at the best referral marketing software that you can use with your small business website.

1. Easy Affiliate

Easy Affiliate is a powerful and easy to use referral program plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce. It has every feature you need to build, track, and manage your affiliate program.

In a few minutes, you can have your own referral program up and running. The simple dashboard stats widget lets you quickly see how your affiliates are performing, and who’s on top of the leaderboard.

You’ll also find built in fraud detection, one-click affiliate payouts, custom commissions, and no transaction fees.

If you run an online store, then you can use the WooCommerce, MemberPress, PayPal, and Easy Digital Downloads integrations.

Plus, you can keep your affiliates informed by integrating with some of the best email marketing services like ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, and more.

If you do run into any issues with the software, then there’s a knowledgeable customer support team ready to help.

For more details, see our guide on how to create a referral program in WordPress.

Pricing: EasyAffiliate currently starts at $99.95 per month. Users who want more integrations will need to opt for a higher priced plan.

Unlike most other affiliate program software, Easy Affiliate does not charge a per transaction fee which is a huge bonus for small businesses. This is a self-hosted referral tracking software that you can install as a plugin on your WordPress site.

2. ShareASale

ShareASale is one of the longest running affiliate networks in the world. Beyond offering access to thousands of affiliate products to promote, they also have a very useful referral marketing solution for business owners.

ShareASale is used by major publishers like Business Insider, Forbes, Buzzfeed, and more.

Note: We also use the ShareASale referral program for our software solutions like WPForms, OptinMonster, MonsterInsights, and SeedProd.

You can easily create a referral program for your own products and instantly access a network of over 225,000 affiliates who are ready to promote them.

There’s an in-depth affiliate dashboard and tracking tools to monitor performance, plus built in email marketing automation to stay in contact with your affiliates and inform them of sales and promotions.

You’ll find a variety of customization options to help you design your unique referral and recruitment program.

Pricing: ShareASale charges a one time setup fee of $500, plus a transaction fee that’s equal to 20% of the commission amount you are paying affiliates.

The biggest reason why some of our larger brands use ShareASale is because they handle all affiliate payments, local taxes, and such. The major downside is that the costs can get expensive since they charge a premium per transaction. For all our smaller businesses, we use Easy Affiliate.

3. Tapfiliate

Tapfiliate is an easy to use referral tracking software that takes the hassle out of creating your own referral marketing program.

It lets you simply onboard new affiliates and create a custom branded dashboard to match the design of your WordPress website and products.

You can control payouts, including one-time or monthly recurring commissions, percentage based commissions, performance bonuses, and more.

Tapfiliate offers tools to create short and elegant links for your referrers and affiliates, unique coupon codes, and sharable social media posts.

There are also integrations with popular tools like WooCommerce, WordPress, Zapier, Shopify, and more. Advanced users can take advantage of the REST API integration to create custom automated workflows.

Plus, there’s support for multiple currencies and languages so that you can run a global referral and affiliate campaign.

Pricing: Tapfiliate starts $69 per month and has zero transaction fees. This plan includes real-time reporting, third party integrations and automations, and support for up to 1000 affiliates.

4. AffiliateWP

AffiliateWP is an all-in-one affiliate program plugin for WordPress. It’s built for beginners and lets you set up a working referral program in a couple of minutes.

You’ll find features like affiliate coupon tracking, automatic referral link generator, and real-time reporting data on all of your affiliates.

There’s a dashboard that lets you review your affiliate applications, manage affiliate accounts, and view referral and affiliate performance metrics.

You can even create and customize unique landing pages that your affiliates can send traffic to without using a tracking link.

Plus, you can process affiliate payments directly within your dashboard.

It also integrates with popular plugins and tools like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, WPForms, MemberPress, and more.

Pricing: AffiliateWP starts at $149 per year. If you need even more features like Zapier integration, custom affiliate links, recurring commission payments, and more, then the Pro plan is $299 per year.

5. PartnerStack

PartnerStack is a powerful referral marketing platform for helping you create and manage your entire referral process.

Companies like Drip, Asana, Quickbooks, and Evernote all use PartnerStack to run their affiliate programs.

It’s built to help SaaS companies and new online startups grow. One of the most useful features is the ability to bring in new partners and affiliates from within the software.

The software is very flexible and lets you create different goals for your referral campaigns. For example, you can focus on traffic generation, new leads, or total sales.

It also allows you to build customer loyalty programs directly into your products. For example, when someone becomes a customer, it can trigger an automated sequence to bring them on as a referral partner.

The dashboard is easy to use and gives you a detailed breakdown of how your partners are performing, similar to a CRM. You create groups of partners and offer rewards based on different tiers.

Plus, various payment methods are supported, including credit card, ACH, Stripe, and PayPal.

Pricing: PartnerStack creates custom plans for every customer, including how much you will pay.

6. Impact

Impact is a great partnership management and affiliate software. The platform is more geared towards established companies. It’s used by brands like HostGator, Constant Contact, McAfee, Canva, and more.

This tool aims to help you find new partners to grow your business and speed up the customer acquisition process.

Instead of simply relying on existing customers and website visitors, you can seek out new partnerships with other businesses, influencers, media partners, and more, all from within the platform.

The dashboard will help you recruit, manage, and pay your new referrers. Plus, it provides detailed metrics, so you can see which affiliates and partnerships are bringing in the most revenue.

Pricing: Impact pricing is completely custom. To get a quote, you need to reach out to their team.

7. ReferralCandy

ReferralCandy is an easy to use customer referral program software that’s great for beginner eCommerce store owners. It can help make word of mouth marketing easy for your online store.

You’ll find useful features like automatic affiliate payments, premade email templates, custom reward options, and detailed reports to see who your standout affiliates are.

There are also tools to help you do A/B testing on your referral offers, so you can see what customer incentives convert the best.

You can even automate the referral onboarding process and create email and popup sequences to invite new customers to join your referral program.

It also integrates with WooCommerce, Google Analytics, Shopify, Magento, popular email marketing tools, and more.

Pricing: ReferralCandy starts at $49 per month plus a tiered commission rate that starts at 5% and decreases as you make more referral sales.

What is the Best Referral Program Software (Expert Pick)?

After trying the most popular referral program software, we believe that EasyAffiliate, ShareASale, and Tapfiliate are the best tools in the market.

EasyAffiliate is the best affiliate and referral program plugin for WordPress. You can create and manage your own campaigns in a matter of minutes. It’s also packed with advanced features while being easy to use.

ShareASale lets you get your products in front of a massive network of new affiliates, and it provides detailed analytics and reporting data.

Tapfiliate is another great choice that gives you complete control over your commissions, provides unique social media posts, and can easily integrate with WordPress and WooCommerce.

We also tried other referral program software like InviteReferrals, Friendbuy, Mention Me, Post Affiliate Pro, Referral Factory, and Referral Rock, but we decided to keep this list short to make your decisions easier.

We hope this article helped you find the best referral program software for your small business. You might also want to see our guide on how to create a free business email address, or check out our expert picks of the best customer service software for businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best Referral Program Software for Small Business Compared (2021) appeared first on WPBeginner.

July 6, 2021

The Beginner’s Guide to S-Corp vs. C-Corp

S-Corp and C-Corp are both separate legal entities that provide limited liability to owners and have similar ownership and capital generation provisions administering them. At the same time, they also have some important differences, with each option providing unique benefits, limitations around taxation, and ownership structures.

So how do you know which corporate structure is right for your business? Let’s find out.

What are S-Corp and C-Corp?

Before diving into the differences, you have to understand what the terms S-Corp and C-Corp mean.

What’s an S-Corp?

An S-Corp, also known as the S subchapter, is a type of corporation that allows its owners to pass income, along with other deductions, losses, and credits, directly to shareholders without the compulsion to pay federal corporate taxes.

Having an S-Corp status gives small businesses (100 or fewer shareholders) the regular benefits of incorporation while enjoying the tax-exempt privileges of a partnership business. It’s a federal tax status and not a legal business entity. Therefore, limited liability companies, limited liability partnerships, and traditional corporations may elect S Corporation status.

What’s a C-Corp?

A C-Corp is a legal structure for a company authorized by the state to transact business.

As the business is treated as a separate body from its owners, it has its own assets, liabilities, obligations, and rights and must pay corporate income taxes on profits. Owners receiving distributed profits will also have to pay taxes as personal income.

The taxing of profits from the business at both corporate and personal levels creates an interesting double taxation situation. This may sound unfavorable, but it really isn’t. C-Corps limit investor and owner liability, so if the business fails they are only out the amount of their investment.

The Basics of S-Corp vs. C-Corp

In this section, I’ll help you gain a better understanding of the differences and similarities between an S-Corp and a C-Corp, and how they impact your business’s bottom line.

Formation

How an S-Corp and C-Corp are formed is the most basic difference between the two.

In the case of C-Corp, the formation is by default. All you have to do is file articles of incorporation with your secretary of state to register your business as a corporation, and your company becomes a standard C-Corp.

However, to structure your company as an S-Corp, you must file IRS Form 2553 for federal tax purposes. You may also have to file additional papers at the state level to be treated as an S-Corp for state taxes.

Taxation

C-Corps are a separate legal entity and subject to double-taxation. Under this, every business is charged corporate income tax for the profits after which its shareholders have to pay personal income tax on the profit earned in the form of dividends.

Additionally, C Corporations can reduce their tax burden by deducting certain fringe benefits for employee welfare, such as life insurance and healthcare. This isn’t the case with S-Corps.

While S-Corps aren’t charged at the corporate level, business owners must pay personal income tax for the accrued gains attributed to them, similar to a sole proprietorship or a partnership model.

The cost of offering fringe benefits to employers, however, isn’t deductible. Instead, it’s added to the taxable income of all shareholders holding more than 2% of the stock.

Here’s an illustration of how this difference in taxation works:

Suppose you have a C-Corp with a taxable income of $100,000 (Total business revenue – Total deductible expenses).

First, you have to pay the 21% corporate income tax rate, amounting to $21,000. After deducting that, you’re left with $79,000. Assuming you take all that money as dividends, you also need to pay a 15% dividend tax ($11,850), which will make your tax bill amount to $32,850 ($21,000 + $11,850). But if you spent $25,000 on employee benefits, you could deduct that from the original $100,000 before taxes kicked in, thus reducing your tax burden by approximately 25%.

Contrarily, having an S-Corp with a taxable income of $100,000 will involve you filing a personal income tax return on the entire amount. As the current personal income tax rate is 24% for people earning between $86,376 and $164,925, your total tax bill would be $18,289.50. Your $25,000 in employee benefits could not be deducted, though other business expenses could be.

Ownership

C-Corps have the flexibility to list an unlimited number of shareholders, whose rights may be divided to enable implementing the different profit-sharing structures. It’s why this corporate structure is great for companies wanting to raise capital through IPOs (Initial Public Offering).

S-Corps cannot have more than 100 shareholders, with each holding equal voting rights since only one class of stock is permitted for distribution. All individuals must hold a U.S. passport or be an American resident to become a shareholder as well.

This makes artificial entities, such as trusts and other corporations, ineligible for ownership in such a company.

Scale of Operations

C-Corps tend to be large organizations–they have to be, to afford double taxation and still be profitable. Since smaller or new firms are likely to operate on losses for the first few years, the double taxation effect of C-Corp isn’t feasible for them.

Opting for an S structure would be more advantageous here as it allows owners to offset their income from other sources using the aforementioned losses, which, in turn, reduces their overall tax liability. Moreover, a few states don’t recognize S status and converted companies, even when recognized under federal laws, making them taxable under the C status structure.

Be sure to consider your regional legislation before alternating between business structures.

Corporation Similarities

There aren’t only differences; S-Corps and C-Corps share multiple similarities too. Let’s check them out.

Incorporation: You must follow the necessary steps for corporate formation, regardless of whether you structure your company as an S-Corp or C-Corp. This includes completing the proper incorporation documents, filing incorporation articles, appointing a registered agent, and creating corporate bylaws.
Limited Liability Protection: Having an S status or a C status makes corporations a legally separate entity from the owners and gives shareholders limited liability protection. In other words, they are not personally liable for the business’s debts or other obligations.
Compliance: S-Corps and C-Corps should meet certain documentation and compliance obligations, including issuing stock, paying fees, and holding shareholder and director meetings.
Corporation Structure: S-Corp or C-Corp shareholders don’t make all the company-related decisions. Management and policy issues are taken care of by the board of directors, elected by the shareholders. Whereas corporation officers—CEO, COO, and CTO—handle the daily activities of running the business.

5 Tools to Improve S-Corp or C-Corp Incorporation

Whether you decide on a C-Corp or S-Corp, you can use online incorporation services to form a corporation without any hassle. Below are the five best feature-rich tools on the market.

LegalZoom

One of the most popular LLC services, LegalZoom also offers top-notch facilities for S-Corps and C-Corps, complete with comprehensive legal assistance in all 50 states.

This service goes beyond the basics of business formation and comes with a wide range of services. It has a user-friendly platform and great customer service. But what works best for me is that LegalZoom directly pairs you with attorneys to provide you with personalized advice.

Access to educational resources designed to answer common questions asked by business owners is another plus.

Rocket Lawyer

Another option offering comprehensive legal services, Rocket Lawyer includes actual attorneys among its staff to answer all your legal queries.

You get ongoing attorney services as a part of its monthly membership plan, where you can call or message any Rocket Lawyer attorney at any time during the business incorporation process for advice. Although the website can use a revamp, it has a fairly straightforward and easy business entity registration process.

What’s more, throughout the business formation process, the service provides you a link with pop-up boxes to facilitate decision-making. For instance, when you ask a question about a corporation’s management and ownership, Rocket Lawyer will show you a statistic about what percent of other Rocket Lawyer customers choose for their business and how you could benefit from choosing that option.

Northwest

Northwest cuts out any fluff during the incorporation process and aims to give complete privacy, transparency, and great customer service.

It primarily focuses on a core selection of services, such as business formation, registered agent services, and ongoing compliance. Northwest is also the only major nationwide registered agent service that scans every document they receive as your agent.

Signing up for a Northwest service will get you paired with a Corporate Guide, who will be an expert in your state’s rules. They will guide you throughout the incorporation process and be your personal customer support agent.

ZenBusiness

ZenBusiness’s clean and easy-to-use interface, which, when combined with its highly efficient customer service, makes it one of the best incorporation services on the market.

What sets ZenBusiness apart from rival incorporation services is its worry-free guarantee that includes two amendments to yearly corporate annual reports—something that’s sure to give you peace of mind.

Let’s not forget its highly competitive $39-price point and a free year of registered agent service and accounting assessment along with your incorporation. Therefore, not only are your ZenBusiness packages fully featured but also incredibly pocket-friendly.

Incfile

Incfile offers several useful features to help you kickstart your business.

Similar to ZenBusiness, you get a whole year of the registered agent service in every Incfile package free, which costs only $119 annually after that. Its premium plans come with extra features, like a federal tax ID number (EIN), corporate bylaws, meeting minutes, a banking resolution, and a personalized binder.

Plus, Incfile has several positive customer reviews raving about its prompt customer service and how they do a fantastic job at helping you form your dream business.

4 Tricks to Decide Between Becoming An S-Corp vs. A C-Corp

We’ve covered the basics of S-Corp and C-Corp, their similarities and differences, and tools that help you start your business. But how do you decide which corporate structure is best for your small business? Start by asking yourself the following questions:

Do you plan on selling your company down the line?

If you do, you might want to become a C-Corp.

Having the ability to be owned by other types of companies, C Corporations make much easier acquisitions in the long run. Additionally, you can have as many owners as you like, along with different classes of shareholders.

Do you want to limit your shareholders?

If yes, you should opt for an S-Corp.

S-Corps are limited to 100 shareholders and emphasize shareholder input—something that can be useful for small businesses wanting to stick to a smaller setup. Nonetheless, if you think your company could expand exponentially later, file yourself as a C-Corp.

Are you okay being under constant scrutiny?

If not, a C-Corp would be a great option for you.

All corporations have C-Corp as the default filing. Becoming an S-Corp, on the other hand, involves an extra layer of paperwork, which you must be prepared for if that’s your choice. Moreover, you have to ensure a spotless record at all times, as even a single mistake can cost you your S Corporation status.

Consider filing as a C-Corp if the extra scrutiny from the IRS seems too much to handle.

Does double taxation seem worth it to you?

You already know the answer to this one—C-Corp!

If you’re comfortable getting taxed at the corporate level and then again at the personal level, you can consider becoming a C-Corp. But if you want to save on corporate taxes and handle profit and losses to your personal income, incorporating as an S-Corp is the better choice.

What to Do Next

Once you decide the better fit between S-Corp vs. C-Corp, you can use the above incorporation service tools to get the ball rolling.

These services are designed to take care of everything related to your business and make the process as seamless as possible. Be sure you choose an option that offers you round-the-clock customer service, competitive pricing, and accurate legal advice. If you are interested in looking more into LLC services instead, check out our guide on the best LLC services.

Here are a few additional QuickSprout guides to help you make the right decision:

June 30, 2021

How to Easily Create a Coupon Site in WordPress

Do you want to make a coupon site in WordPress?

Coupon sites help customers find discounts and deals online while you make money with affiliate commissions.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create a coupon website in WordPress without any special skills.

What is a Coupon Site?

A coupon website is an affiliate marketing site that helps customers find coupons and deals. It is a popular online business idea that has been growing rapidly as online shopping is becoming more common.

These websites make money online with affiliate marketing and partnerships. Basically, they earn a commission each time a user makes a purchase using their coupon code or clicking on their affiliate link.

For example, we have our own deals section on WPBeginner where we have partnered up with top WordPress companies to offer our users exclusive WordPress coupons and deals.

For more details on how partnerships and affiliates work, see our complete affiliate marketing guide for beginners.

That being said, let’s take a look at how you can easily make a coupon website in WordPress and grow it successfully.

Getting Started with Your Coupon Website

To make a coupon website you’ll need a domain name and a web hosting account.

A domain name is what users will type in their browsers to reach your site (example: wpbeginner.com). A web hosting account is where all your website files are stored. You can learn more in our guide about the difference between domain name and hosting.

Domain names typically cost $16.99 per year and website hosting starts at $7.99 / per month. This is a little expensive for a small business if you are just starting out.

Luckily, folks at Bluehost have agreed to offer a generous discount to WPBeginner users with a free domain name and SSL certificate. You can get started for $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Once you have signed up for hosting, Bluehost will automatically install WordPress and you can login from your account dashboard.

If you need help, then see our complete WordPress installation tutorial for more detailed instructions.

Setting up a Coupons Site in WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Coupons plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can go to Coupons » Add New page to create your first coupon. Simply provide a title for your coupon and then a long description in the content area.

Below the editor, you’ll notice a ‘WP Coupons Details’ box. This is where you’ll add your coupon code, affiliate URL, call to action, expiration date, and more.

Finally, you need to set a featured image for your coupon. We recommend using the same size images for all your coupon featured images to make sure that your coupon grid layout looks perfect.

Once you are done, you can save your changes or publish your coupon.

After you have added a few coupons you can visit the coupons archive to view all your coupons. WP Coupons will automatically create a coupon page on your WordPress website. It is generally located at a URL like this: https://example.com/coupons/

You can also click on the title of a coupon to view the single coupon page with a longer description.

Displaying Coupons on Your WordPress Website

By default, WP Coupons allows you to use the coupons archive template to display all your coupons at once.

However, the default template may not work well with your WordPress theme, or you may simply want to display your coupons on some other page.

To disable the default coupon archive page, simply go to Settings » WP Coupons. Under the Coupon Archive tab, switch off the ‘Enable Custom Template’ option.

Now you can use the [wp_coupons] shortcode anywhere on your WordPress website to display all your coupons.

Simply edit a blog post or page where you want to display your coupons grid. On the post edit screen, click on the (+) add block button and the shortcode block to your content area.

Now, copy and paste the [wp_coupons] shortcode inside the block settings. Don’t forget to update or publish your changes.

Here is how it looked on our demo site:

Displaying Individual Coupons in a Post or Page

WP Coupons also makes it easy to display a single coupon inside your WordPress posts and pages. This feature comes in handy when you are writing content to promote a specific product or partner.

To display a single coupon, you need to go to Coupons » Coupons page and click on the Edit link below the coupon that you want to add to a post or page.

On the Coupon edit screen, scroll down to the ‘WP Coupons Details’ box and you’ll see a shortcode at the bottom right corner of that section. You’ll need to copy this shortcode.

Now you need to edit the post or page where you want to display the coupon. On the post edit screen, click on the (+) add block button and then select the Shortcode block.

Go ahead and paste the shortcode you copied earlier and save your post / page. You can now preview your content to see your individual shortcode in action.

Displaying Coupons in a Sidebar Widget

WP Coupons offers two ways to display coupons in WordPress sidebar widgets.

To display a random coupon in your WordPress sidebar, you can go to Appearance » Widgets page and add the ‘WP Coupons Widget’ to your sidebar.

You can provide a title for your widget and then click on the Save button to store your changes.

You can now preview the widget on your website to see it display a random coupon in the sidebar.

If you want to display specific coupons in your WordPress sidebar, then you can use the shortcode method.

Simply add the ‘Text’ widget to your WordPress sidebar and then add the [coupon id="19"] shortcode in the text area.

Don’t forget to replace id with the ID of the coupon that you want to display. You can find a coupon shortcode by simply editing the coupon, as shown earlier in this guide.

To display multiple coupons in your sidebar, you can add multiple shortcodes with the coupon IDs. Here is how it looked on our test website.

Changing The Style of Coupons

WP Coupons provides limited options to choose colors and styles for coupon grids and panels.

You can find them by visiting Settings » WP Coupons page and switching to the Style Options tab.

From here, you can choose colors and font sizes to match your WordPress theme or design requirements.

Once you are done, don’t forget to click on the Save changes button to store your settings.

Managing and Growing Your Coupons Site

There are plenty of affiliate marketing tools and plugins that you can use to manage and grow your coupon website.

Here are some of the essential tools that you’ll need.

1. Pretty Links Pro

Pretty Links Pro is a WordPress affiliate links manager plugin. It allows you to shorten the long ugly affiliate URLs into short and clean URLs.

It also helps you easily track, group, sort, and manage your affiliate links. It is a huge time-saver for affiliate marketers.

For instance, if you promote a partner on multiple locations on your website and they suddenly change their affiliate links, then you can simply update the link at one location and it will be automatically updated everywhere else.

Alternative: ThirstyAffiliates

2. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It shows you where your users are coming from and what they do when visiting your website.

It also allows you to easily set up conversion tracking on your website so you can make data-based decisions to grow your business.

For instance, you can see which coupons get more clicks and which coupons get views but no clicks. You can then improve those coupon deals to boost their click-through rate.

3. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the #1 conversion optimization software on the market. It allows you to easily convert website visitors into subscribers and customers.

OptinMonster gives you incredibly powerful tools to promote coupons and deals across your website. It comes with lightbox popups, countdown timers, header and footer banners, slide-in popups, spin-to-win popups, and more.

All of these tools help to promote coupons and deals on your website, so you can increase your conversion rate and grow your affiliate revenue.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily create a coupon site in WordPress. Next, you’ll want to see our comparison of the best live chat software for small business, or our guide on how to choose the best web design software.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Easily Create a Coupon Site in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

June 18, 2021

9 Best Customer Service Software for Business in 2021 (Compared)

Are you looking for the best customer service software for your business?

Using the right customer service software can streamline your customer support workflow and help you create better customer relationships.

In this article, we’ve hand picked some of the best customer service software that you can use along with your WordPress site. We’re using these tools in our various businesses to help deliver top-notch customer support.

Why Use Customer Service Software?

Customer service software makes it easy for your business to provide a great customer experience. This leads to improved customer retention, which means more revenue for your business over the long run.

As your WordPress website or online store grows, it can be hard to maintain high customer satisfaction, but the customer service software makes this easy.

Since customers will make or break your success, investing in the right support software stack can give you a competitive advantage.

The best customer service software:

Enables you to deliver a faster and more consistent support experience
Lets you gather customer insights and data to improve your business
Allows you to scale up your customer support easily as your business grows
Helps you build a more efficient customer service team

That being said, let’s take a look at the top customer support software that you can use along with your small business website.

1. Help Scout

Help Scout is one of the best all in one customer support tools. It’s packed with nearly every feature you need to streamline your customer support processes.

Note: we use Help Scout here at WPBeginner and across all of our other businesses for our email support needs.

It lets you simply manage your email and chat support from a single tool. This lets your customers contact you from where they feel the most comfortable, and your team can work from a single support queue.

Your customer support team can create saved replies, so they can quickly respond to common questions and save time.

There’s a knowledge base feature that lets you build your own help center. This makes it easy for your customers to find the answers they need on their own while reducing the number of support requests.

Help Scout also provides detailed reporting data and metrics, so you can quickly get an overview of what’s working and where your team can improve. Their time tracking report helps you see where your agents are spending the most time, so you can improve your product workflows to improve time to resolution.

For business owners who want to add more support channels, there’s a live chat feature available. It’s not as powerful as other market leading live chat software, but it can be a good solution for many businesses.

Help Scout Live chat feature also known as Beacon has a self-service answer feature that recommends articles to your users. If they can’t find an answer, then they can quickly start chatting with your team.

Plus, there are over 40 integrations with tools your business is using like HubSpot, Slack, Google Apps, WooCommerce, and more.

Pricing: An affordable Basic plan starts at $20 per user per month. This provides 3 mailboxes, live chat, and more. Bigger teams can opt for the Plus plan that starts at $35 per user per month.

2. LiveChat

LiveChat is the best live chat software in the market today. It’s very flexible and feature rich, plus there’s a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to integrate with your website.

The LiveChat apps are very easy to use and work across mobile, desktop, and tablet devices. So, you don’t have to be logged in to WordPress to access your customer service hub.

You can set up LiveChat to work during your team’s off hours so that live chat requests will go directly to your support ticket management system.

Note: we use LiveChat across all of our eCommerce businesses to support our pre-sales staff. Their customization options make it easy to match the chat window to our company branding.

One stand out feature of this service is speed. The chat window loads much faster, has a better user experience, and works across every device. A lot of other live chat providers can’t match this.

When it comes to customer support, speed is essential, and this tool shines.

It integrates with nearly all the marketing services you’re already using, like Google Analytics, HelpDesk, and HubSpot.

You’ll find many additional tools to elevate support quality like visitor tracking, smart API that integrates with your knowledge base, and proactive chat.

The thing that we absolutely love about Live Chat is that they focus on sales conversion. They have built-in conversion tracking, and they have additional tools to help you get more leads / sales.

Pricing: You’ll find different plans for all businesses sizes. The starter plan begins at $16 per agent per month for a yearly plan, or $19 monthly. Every plan has a 14 day free trial to test out the service.

Deal: WPBeginner readers can get 30% off the first payment by using our LiveChat coupon code.

3. Nextiva

Nextiva is the best business phone service provider in the market today. They also offer a customer service CRM that’s very simple and easy to use.

It offers your business multichannel support including, email, phone, live chat, social media, and SMS messaging. You can view customer data from every source in a single dashboard.

Plus, you can respond to inquiries from one place, no matter how your customers reach you.

If you’re using other Nextiva services like Nextiva business VoIP or the Sales CRM, then these can integrate instantly.

You’ll find other features like call routing, a self-service knowledge base, canned responses, and a mobile app.

Note: we use Nextiva at WPBeginner for all of our phone support needs. If you need to offer phone support, then it’s the best option available.

There are a ton of other powerful features to help your phone support team as well, like call forwarding, call routing, custom greetings, call analytics, virtual business phone number, and a lot more.

Nextiva is a perfect platform for both small businesses as well as large call centers who’re looking for a customizable solution to help automate their sales and support contact center.

Pricing: The plans start at $18.95 per month for between 20-99 users. If you want support for SMS and additional integrations, then the Pro plan starts at $22.95 per month.

4. ChatBot.com

ChatBot.com is the best chatbot software in the market today. It make it easy for small business owners to unlock the power of AI chatbots to improve customer service.

It’s effortless to create your customer service chatbot with the drag and drop interface.

You can also use one of their pre built templates created specifically for your industry. You can use these conversation templates to develop your unique chatbot based on common questions and scenarios.

In the past, making a chatbot was very difficult, but this tool makes it very easy.

Adding a chatbot to your customer service workflow can make your customer support system more effective.

Your chatbot can handle simple requests and ask your users preliminary questions, then forward this to your team for a more detailed response.

Note: we use ChatBot.com in several of our SaaS businesses. It lets us automate portion of our pre-sales questions while seamlessly forwarding our support requests to our live support teams when needed.

ChatBot also integrates easily with both WordPress and WooCommerce. Plus, it integrates with your live chat software of choice, along with dozens of other popular apps.

Pricing: The starter plan is $50 per month and gives you up to 1,000 chats per month. Pricing and the number of chats scale up from here. Every plan has a 14 day free trial, so you can see if it’s right for your business.

5. FreshDesk

FreshDesk is another very popular customer service solution. It’s packed with features while still being intuitive and easy to use.

It’s an all-in-one tool and can bring all of your support channels together in one place. You’ll find live chat support, chatbots, modern messaging, omnichannel support, automation features, and more.

The ticketing system has features like a team inbox for fast and easy collaboration and problem solving. You can also route support tasks based on team member availability.

You’ll find a wealth of reporting data to help refine your support service over multiple channels, including social media.

There are plenty of additional customer self service tools like a chatbot, help widget, forum support, and more.

For business owners and startups on a budget, a free version of the tool that supports an unlimited number of agents is available. However, it only offers basic ticketing and knowledge base functionality.

Pricing: The basic version of the help desk software starts at $15 per month. Full omnichannel plans start at $79 when billed annually, or $99 when billed monthly.

Note: We have used Freshdesk in the past for few of our businesses, but over time have switched everything to Help Scout, so we can centralize our processes.

6. HelpDesk.com

HelpDesk is a very easy to use customer support software. The interface is incredibly clean and intuitive.

It can help you and your team manage tickets simply. You can manage emails, customer requests from contact forms, and more, all in one place.

Plus, there are advanced ticketing, sorting, and tagging features to prioritize what’s most important.

The team collaboration features let you create multiple mailboxes, add private notes to ticket threads, and create agent groups.

There are automation features available, like canned responses, automated task assignments, and fully automated workflows.

You can also integrate HelpDesk with LiveChat, so you can solve support tickets and talk to customers in chat from one app.

Beyond that, there are various other integrations like Slack, Zapier, HubSpot, Salesforce, and more that you can use to improve your workflow.

Pricing: The Starter plan is $5 per month per user, while the Team plan is $24 per month and adds the ticketing system and support for larger teams. There’s also a 14 day free trial for you to test out the service.

7. HubSpot

HubSpot offers small business owners a wide range of tools to grow and improve customer interactions. They have one of the best CRMs for small businesses and offer an excellent customer support software solution.

The support software is an all-in-one solution and has a ton of different tools. You’ll find help desk software and a ticketing system to keep track of long-term support requests.

There’s also knowledge base software to help your customers quickly resolve their problems.

On top of that, there’s live chat and chatbot functionality for real-time communication with your customers.

The free plan is free forever and has all the features you need to help your customer support staff.

Plus, everything integrates with the HubSpot CRM, so it’s easy to start using this software if you’re already using the CRM software for managing customer relationships.

Pricing: The entry level plan is free forever. The Starter plan begins at $45 per month and gives you access to more automation tools and support for a bigger team.

8. WPForms

WPForms is the best contact form plugin for WordPress used by over 4 million websites. Not only is it the most beginner friendly form plugin, but it’s very powerful and packed with features.

Note: we use WPForms on WPBeginner and all of our other websites.

You can use the drag and drop builder to simply create a contact form for your users to submit a support request.

The free version has basic contact form features, including basic form fields, spam protection, email notifications, and more.

The pro version extends these features and makes it a more helpful customer service tool. You can create forms with conditional logic, geo-location, form abandonment, and much more.

You can see all of your form submissions directly in your WordPress dashboard, making it easy to manage requests. You can even have these requests sent to the right team member in charge of support.

There’s also instant form notification, which will automatically email you when a user submits a form. You can choose to notify yourself or your entire team.

The user journey reports addon lets you see what your visitors did on your site before submitting a request. This can help you resolve their issue faster and see where they got confused.

WPForms lets you connect your forms with over 3000+ other software integrations including most marketing automation tools, project management software, service desk, human resources (HR software), and more. This makes it easy for you to streamline your workflow and save time.

Pricing: For simple form creation, the Basic plan starts at $39.50 per year, however, to get access to advanced integrations, user journey reports, and more the Pro plan is $199.50 per year.

9. Slack

Slack is a popular communication and team collaboration tool for remote teams, businesses, and bloggers. However, it also can be used as a unique customer service management solution and support channel.

It can be a great way to offer VIP support for your enterprise customers and clients. It provides a very open and collaborative environment, which can help you resolve the issue quickly and move forward on big projects.

Note: we offer VIP support through private Slack channels and receive enterprise support the same way. It’s one of the most effective remote communication tools.

With various integrations available, you can also pair this tool with another support software on this list. You can drop support team issues into Slack to have team members collaborate easily.

You can also integrate Slack with WordPress to receive website notifications, like form entries, directly in Slack. For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to integrate Slack with WordPress.

There’s an advanced AI powered search feature to find documents and past conversations quickly. You can also bring in team members from different departments all in one place.

Best of all, it’s very cost effective. You can create communication channels for your important clients and customers and add them as guests, which is entirely free.

Pricing: The free plan should be enough for most businesses. The Pro plan is $8 per month and offers more secure outside collaboration. Businesses that require enhanced communication security can opt for the Business plan for $15 per month.

What is the Best Customer Service Software (Expert Pick)?

In our expert opinion, there are a several services that can qualify for the best customer support software title, but it depends entirely on your needs.

If you need the best email support software, then Help Scout is the best option.

If you want a live chat tool to provide instant customer support, then LiveChat is the best choice.

If you are looking for a customer support phone system with addon features like live chat, then Nextiva is perfect.

If you like the idea of live chat support, but would prefer to automate with a chatbot, then ChatBot.com is a great choice.

If you were going to choose just one customer service software to support your business, then we recommend using Help Scout.

Besides the stand out email tools, you can also add live chat, create a knowledge base, plus integrate with popular tools like Slack, WooCommerce, and more.

Aside from the top customer service software on our list, we also looked at other providers like Zendesk, Salesforce, Zoho Desk, LiveAgent, and more.

However, we decided not to list them, so you can avoid choice paralysis and quickly find the best customer service software for your business.

We hoped this article helped you find the best customer service software for your business. You may also want to see our list of the best SEO tools to increase your traffic and our expert picks of the must have WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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