The marketing tools worth knowing.

HubSpot

All-in-one CRM with marketing, sales and service hubs. Generous free tier and the default for many SMB and mid-market teams.

Salesforce

The enterprise standard. Endlessly customisable, deep ecosystem of apps and integrations - powerful but heavier to set up and run.

Zoho CRM

Affordable CRM with a wide product suite (mail, books, projects). Strong fit for small businesses watching costs.

Pipedrive

Sales-first CRM built around the pipeline. Loved by small sales teams who want simple deal tracking.

Attio

Modern, data-driven CRM with a Notion-style feel. Popular with startups that want flexibility without legacy clutter.

Folk

Lightweight relationship CRM for agencies, founders and partnerships work. Strong LinkedIn and inbox integration.

Close

CRM built for high-velocity inside sales teams - calling, SMS and email all in one place.

Copper

CRM that lives inside Google Workspace. Good fit for teams already running on Gmail and Google Calendar.

Microsoft Dynamics 365

Microsoft's enterprise CRM and ERP suite. The natural pick when the rest of the business runs on Microsoft 365, Teams and Power Platform.

Freshsales

Freshworks' sales CRM with built-in phone, email and AI scoring. A friendly mid-market alternative to Salesforce and HubSpot.

Capsule

Simple, affordable CRM for small businesses that want contacts, pipeline and tasks without the bloat.

Insightly

CRM with project delivery built in. Useful when the same team that closes the deal also delivers the work.

Mailchimp

The classic small-business email tool. Easy templates, decent automation and a strong free tier to get started.

Brevo

Email and SMS in one platform with transactional sending built in. Pricing scales by volume rather than contacts.

Campaign Monitor

Beautiful drag-and-drop email builder favoured by brands that care about design polish.

Klaviyo

The default for ecommerce email and SMS. Deep Shopify integration and best-in-class segmentation.

ConvertKit (Kit)

Built for creators, newsletter writers and course sellers. Simple automations and a clean editor.

Beehiiv

Modern newsletter platform with growth tools, recommendations and ad network baked in.

ActiveCampaign

Powerful automations and lightweight CRM. A solid pick for SMBs with more complex lifecycle needs.

Customer.io

Event-based messaging across email, SMS and push. Popular with product-led B2B and SaaS teams.

MailerLite

Affordable email marketing with a clean editor and generous free tier. Popular with creators and small businesses.

Omnisend

Ecommerce-focused email and SMS automation. A direct, lower-cost alternative to Klaviyo for Shopify stores.

Drip

Ecommerce CRM and email automation built around customer behaviour and revenue attribution.

Constant Contact

Long-running SMB email tool with events, surveys and social posting bundled in.

GetResponse

Email, automation, landing pages and webinars in one platform. Strong fit for solopreneurs and course creators.

Substack

Newsletter and paid subscription platform with built-in discovery. The default for independent writers and journalists.

HubSpot Marketing Hub

B2B marketing automation tied to HubSpot's CRM. Strong forms, workflows and reporting out of the box.

Marketo Engage

Enterprise-grade B2B automation now part of Adobe. Powerful but typically needs dedicated ops resource.

Braze

Cross-channel customer engagement (email, push, in-app, SMS). A favourite for consumer apps at scale.

Iterable

Lifecycle marketing platform with flexible journey building. Strong fit for growth teams in B2C and product-led companies.

Pardot (Account Engagement)

Salesforce's B2B automation. Best when you're already deep in the Salesforce ecosystem.

Zapier

The easiest way to connect SaaS tools without code. Great for ad-hoc automations and lightweight integrations.

Make

Visual automation builder with more control than Zapier. Suits more complex multi-step workflows.

n8n

Open-source workflow automation you can self-host. Popular with teams that want full control over data.

Semrush

All-in-one SEO and competitive intelligence suite. Strong on PPC and content tools alongside the core SEO data.

SE Ranking

Solid SEO toolkit at a friendlier price point. Good rank tracking and a usable interface for smaller teams.

Ahrefs

Best-in-class backlink data and keyword research. The go-to for serious SEO and content teams.

Moz

Long-standing SEO platform with strong on-page tools and a friendly learning community.

Screaming Frog

Desktop crawler that's the de facto standard for technical SEO audits.

Sitebulb

Visual technical SEO audit tool with prioritised recommendations - great for client reporting.

Google Search Console

Free first-party data on how your site performs in Google search. Non-negotiable for any SEO programme.

Surfer SEO

On-page content optimisation based on what's already ranking. Popular with content teams briefing writers.

Clearscope

Premium content optimisation tool focused on quality briefs and editor-friendly workflows.

Google Analytics 4

Free web and app analytics from Google. The default, even if its UX divides opinion.

Plausible

Lightweight, privacy-friendly web analytics. Cookie-free and simple by design.

Fathom

Privacy-focused analytics with a clean dashboard and no cookie banner needed in many regions.

Matomo

Open-source web analytics you can self-host for full data ownership.

Mixpanel

Product analytics built around events and funnels. Strong for SaaS and consumer apps.

Amplitude

Enterprise product analytics with deep cohort, retention and experimentation features.

PostHog

Open-source product analytics, session replay, feature flags and experiments in one platform.

Hotjar

Heatmaps, session recordings and on-site surveys to see how users actually behave.

Microsoft Clarity

Free heatmaps and session recordings from Microsoft. Hard to beat on price.

Heap

Auto-captures every click, swipe and form fill so you can analyse retroactively without pre-defined events.

Pendo

Product analytics with in-app guides, surveys and onboarding tours. Popular with PM-led SaaS teams.

FullStory

Enterprise digital experience analytics with full session replay, frustration signals and retroactive funnels.

LogRocket

Session replay built for engineers. Pairs frontend errors and console logs with the user video.

June

Auto-generated product analytics reports tuned for B2B SaaS. Quick to set up if you're on Segment.

Statsig

Experimentation, feature flags and product analytics in one platform. Generous free tier for early-stage teams.

Looker Studio (Google Data Studio)

Free dashboarding tool from Google. Easy to plug into Google Ads, Analytics and Sheets.

Looker

Enterprise BI built on a modelled data layer. Powerful for governed, company-wide reporting.

Power BI

Microsoft's BI platform. Strong if your stack already runs on Excel, Azure and Microsoft 365.

Tableau

Industry-standard data visualisation. Great for richly interactive, exploratory dashboards.

Metabase

Open-source BI that's friendly for non-technical users. Quick to set up on top of any database.

Mode

Analyst-focused BI with SQL, Python and R notebooks alongside dashboards.

Supermetrics

Pulls marketing data from 100+ platforms into Sheets, Looker Studio or your warehouse.

Funnel.io

Marketing data warehouse and connectors. Useful when you want a single source of truth for all paid channels.

Sigma

Spreadsheet-style BI on top of cloud data warehouses. Familiar to Excel users without losing governance.

Hex

Collaborative data workspace combining SQL, Python and notebooks with polished interactive apps.

Klipfolio

Long-running cloud dashboarding tool with strong marketing connectors. A budget-friendly Tableau alternative.

Whatagraph

Marketing reporting platform built for agencies that send dozens of branded client reports each month.

AgencyAnalytics

All-in-one agency reporting with SEO, PPC, social and analytics dashboards under one client login.

Asana

Clean, flexible project and task management. A long-standing favourite of marketing teams.

Monday.com

Colourful, customisable work OS. Strong for cross-functional teams that want visual boards.

ClickUp

Highly configurable PM tool that tries to be many things at once - powerful if you invest in the setup.

Notion

Docs, wikis and lightweight project tracking in one workspace. Great for content and brand teams.

Trello

Simple kanban boards. Perfect for small teams or a lightweight content calendar.

Jira

Built for engineering teams but used by marketing ops where dev workflows overlap.

Linear

Fast, opinionated issue tracker. Increasingly used by modern marketing teams alongside engineering.

Basecamp

Calm, all-in-one PM with messages, to-dos and docs. Suits agencies and distributed teams.

Airtable

Spreadsheet-database hybrid. Brilliant for content calendars, asset libraries and campaign trackers.

Canva

Templated design for non-designers. The fastest way to ship social posts, decks and simple brand assets.

Adobe Express

Adobe's quick-win design tool. Templates, brand kits and AI-powered generation in one place.

Figma

Collaborative design and prototyping. The default for product, web and modern marketing teams.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and the rest. The professional standard for high-end creative work.

Sketch

Mac-only vector design tool. Still loved by some product teams for its simplicity.

Affinity

One-time-purchase alternative to Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Great value for in-house teams.

Pixlr

Browser-based image editing with AI tools. Handy when you don't want to install anything.

VistaCreate

Templated design tool with a strong stock library. A budget-friendly Canva alternative.

Grammarly

Grammar, tone and style suggestions across the apps you already write in.

Hemingway Editor

Free editor that flags long, dense sentences. Useful for tightening up marketing copy.

Notion

Flexible workspace for drafting, briefs and content calendars all in one place.

Google Docs

The default collaborative writing tool. Easy to share and review with stakeholders.

Frase

Content briefs and SEO-driven outlines built from live SERP data.

Jasper

AI writing platform with brand voice controls. Built for marketing teams producing at volume.

Copy.ai

AI tool for marketing and sales copy, with workflows for repeatable use cases.

WordPress

Powers a huge share of the web's content. Endlessly extensible CMS for blogs and marketing sites.

Writer

Enterprise generative AI platform with brand voice, terminology and compliance guardrails for in-house comms teams.

Anyword

Performance-focused AI copywriting that scores variants by predicted conversion before you publish.

Contentful

Enterprise headless CMS with structured content, localisation and a mature partner ecosystem.

Sanity

Developer-friendly headless CMS with real-time collaboration and a fully customisable studio.

Storyblok

Visual headless CMS that lets marketers preview and edit content blocks alongside the live page.

Buffer

Simple, well-loved scheduler for small teams and solo marketers.

Hootsuite

Long-standing social management platform with publishing, listening and reporting.

Sprout Social

Premium social suite with strong inbox, listening and analytics for mid-market and enterprise teams.

Later

Visually-led scheduler popular with Instagram, TikTok and creator-led brands.

Loomly

Calendar-style social planner with built-in approvals - good for agencies and clients.

Metricool

All-in-one scheduling, analytics and ad reporting at an SMB-friendly price.

Agorapulse

Social management focused on team inbox and collaboration. Strong for customer care.

Brandwatch

Enterprise social listening and consumer intelligence. Used for large-scale brand and trend research.

Google Ads

Search, Performance Max, YouTube and display ads from Google. The largest single ad ecosystem.

Meta Ads Manager

Run paid campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network.

LinkedIn Campaign Manager

B2B-focused ad platform with job title and company targeting you can't get elsewhere.

TikTok Ads Manager

Self-serve platform for short-form video ads on TikTok. Strong for brand awareness and Gen Z reach.

Microsoft Advertising

Search ads on Bing, Yahoo and partner sites. Often a cheaper supplement to Google Ads.

Reddit Ads

Community-driven advertising. Powerful when paired with niche subreddits and authentic creative.

Smartly

Enterprise creative automation and paid social management. Built for high-volume DTC and brand teams.

AdEspresso

Meta and Google ad creation, A/B testing and reporting in a friendlier UI than the native tools.

Pinterest Ads

Visual discovery ads on Pinterest. Strong for home, fashion, beauty, food and wedding brands targeting planners.

Snapchat Ads

Vertical video and AR ads on Snapchat. Reaches Gen Z and younger millennials at scale.

X Ads

Promoted posts and trends on X (formerly Twitter). Useful for real-time, news-led and B2B tech audiences.

Amazon Ads

Sponsored Products, Brands and DSP across Amazon. Essential for any brand selling on the marketplace.

YouTube Ads

Video advertising across YouTube via Google Ads. Skippable, non-skippable and bumper formats at huge reach.

The Trade Desk

Independent demand-side platform for programmatic display, video, audio and CTV. The default DSP for serious media buyers.

Display & Video 360

Google's enterprise DSP for programmatic display, video and CTV across the open web and YouTube.

Criteo

Commerce media platform for retargeting and product-feed display ads. A staple for e-commerce performance teams.

Taboola

Native content recommendation ads on major publishers. Strong for content distribution and top-of-funnel reach.

Outbrain

Native discovery ads on premium publisher networks. Often paired with Taboola for native diversification.

AdRoll

Cross-channel retargeting across display, social and email. Aimed at SMB and mid-market e-commerce.

StackAdapt

Self-serve programmatic DSP with native, display, video, CTV and audio. Popular with agencies.

Madgicx

AI-driven Meta Ads optimisation and creative analytics. Built for performance marketers running Facebook and Instagram at scale.

Revealbot

Automation rules and reporting for Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat ads. Saves manual bid and budget tweaks.

Unbounce

Drag-and-drop landing page builder with strong A/B testing and AI copy tools.

Instapage

Premium landing page platform geared at paid teams - personalisation, experiments and ad mapping.

Leadpages

Affordable landing page and lead-capture tool aimed at small businesses.

Webflow

Visual website builder that outputs production-grade code. Used for marketing sites and landing pages alike.

Framer

Modern site builder with stunning animations and a fast workflow for marketing pages.

VWO

Experimentation platform covering A/B testing, personalisation and behaviour analytics.

Optimizely

Enterprise experimentation and DXP. The serious choice for large CRO programmes.

Convert

Privacy-friendly A/B testing and personalisation, popular with agencies and CRO consultancies.

Loom

Quick screen and webcam recordings for async updates, demos and sales follow-ups.

Descript

Edit video and audio by editing the transcript. A game-changer for podcast and video teams.

Riverside

Studio-quality remote recording for podcasts and video interviews.

CapCut

Free, easy short-form video editor. The default for many TikTok and Reels creators.

Adobe Premiere Pro

Industry-standard video editor for high-end production work.

Wistia

Marketing-focused video hosting with player customisation, lead capture and analytics.

Vimeo

Ad-free video hosting with strong privacy controls. Good for branded content and gated assets.

Zoom Webinars

Reliable webinar platform with registration, Q&A and integrations into most marketing stacks.

Muck Rack

Modern PR platform for journalist discovery, pitching and coverage tracking.

Prowly

PR CRM with media database and press release distribution at SMB-friendly pricing.

Cision

Enterprise PR suite covering media database, distribution, monitoring and analytics.

Meltwater

Media monitoring and social listening at scale. Used for brand tracking and competitive intel.

Notified

Press release distribution, IR and broadcast comms in one platform.

Aspire

Influencer marketing platform with discovery, briefs, contracts and payments.

CreatorIQ

Enterprise creator marketing platform used by global brands to manage large influencer programmes.

Upfluence

Influencer marketing and affiliate tools, including ecommerce-focused integrations.

ChatGPT

OpenAI's general-purpose AI assistant. The default starting point for writing, research and ideation.

Claude

Anthropic's assistant. Often praised for long-form writing, reasoning and a careful tone.

Gemini

Google's AI assistant, with deep ties to Search, Workspace and YouTube.

Perplexity

AI answer engine with cited sources. Great for fast research and competitive scans.

Midjourney

Premium AI image generation. Beloved for editorial-quality visuals and concept art.

Runway

AI video generation and editing. Useful for short-form social and creative experiments.

ElevenLabs

AI voice generation and dubbing. Used for narration, ads and multilingual content.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft's AI assistant embedded across Windows, Edge, Bing and Microsoft 365. The default for teams already on Microsoft.

Grok

xAI's assistant with real-time access to X. Useful for live news, social monitoring and irreverent answers.

Mistral Le Chat

European AI assistant from Mistral. Strong on multilingual content and EU data residency.

DeepSeek

Open-weight Chinese AI assistant with strong reasoning and coding. Often free where ChatGPT is paid.

NotebookLM

Google's source-grounded research assistant. Upload docs and get summaries, briefings and audio overviews.

Poe

Quora's multi-model chat interface. Switch between GPT, Claude, Gemini and others on one subscription.

Adobe Firefly

Adobe's commercially-safe generative AI for images, vectors and text effects. Integrated across Creative Cloud.

Ideogram

AI image generator with class-leading text rendering. Good for posters, logos and typographic visuals.

Leonardo AI

AI image generation aimed at game art, concept art and marketing visuals. Strong fine-tuning controls.

Stability AI

Maker of Stable Diffusion. Open models for image, video and audio generation across self-hosted and API.

Suno

AI music generation. Used for jingles, social audio and creative concepts in seconds.

Synthesia

AI avatar video generation. Turn scripts into talking-head videos in 140+ languages.

HeyGen

AI avatars and translated video at scale. Popular for personalised outbound and localisation.

Pika

AI text-to-video and image-to-video for short, social-ready clips. Strong for stylised motion.

Luma Dream Machine

Luma's AI video model. Cinematic motion and camera moves from text or image prompts.

Shopify

The default ecommerce platform for DTC brands. Huge app ecosystem and fast time-to-launch.

WooCommerce

Open-source ecommerce plugin for WordPress. Flexible and self-hosted, with full control over the stack.

BigCommerce

SaaS platform aimed at mid-market and B2B sellers, with strong multi-channel selling features.

Squarespace Commerce

Built-in commerce for Squarespace sites. A clean fit for small brands and creators.

Wix eCommerce

Drag-and-drop store builder bundled with Wix. Good for small businesses already on the platform.

Shopware

European ecommerce platform popular with mid-market and enterprise brands needing customisation.

Commerce Layer

Headless, API-first commerce for teams building custom storefronts on a modern stack.

Stripe

Payments infrastructure that powers checkout, subscriptions and billing for most modern stores.

Adobe Commerce (Magento)

Enterprise open-source commerce platform from Adobe. Deep customisation for complex B2C and B2B catalogues.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Enterprise commerce platform tied into the Salesforce data and AI stack. Common in large retail and B2B.

commercetools

API-first headless commerce for enterprise. The serious choice for composable, MACH-architecture builds.

Medusa

Open-source, developer-first headless commerce. Self-hosted alternative to Shopify and Commerce Layer.

PrestaShop

Open-source ecommerce platform popular in Europe. Free to download with a paid module marketplace.

Ecwid

Lightweight commerce widget that bolts a store onto any website or social profile. Aimed at small sellers.

Amazon Seller Central

Amazon's portal for third-party sellers. Effectively a non-optional channel for most consumer brands.

eBay

Long-running global marketplace. Strong for collectibles, refurbished electronics and long-tail inventory.

Etsy

Marketplace for handmade, vintage and craft goods. The default discovery channel for small makers.

Faire

B2B wholesale marketplace connecting independent brands with retailers. Net-60 terms and free returns built in.

PayPal

Global payments network with one of the most recognised checkout buttons online. Often used alongside Stripe.

Adyen

Enterprise unified payments platform spanning online, in-store and in-app. Used by global brands and marketplaces.

Klarna

Buy-now-pay-later and pay-in-instalments at checkout. Lifts AOV and conversion for fashion, home and electronics.

Mollie

European payments provider with one integration for cards, iDEAL, Bancontact, SEPA and BNPL methods.

Recharge

Subscriptions and recurring billing for Shopify and BigCommerce stores. The default for DTC subscription brands.

Gorgias

Customer support helpdesk built for ecommerce. Tight integration with Shopify orders, refunds and macros.

Shogun

Visual page builder for Shopify and BigCommerce. Lets marketing teams ship landing pages without dev tickets.

impact.com

Enterprise partnership management platform spanning affiliates, influencers, B2B partners and referrals. The category leader for serious programmes.

PartnerStack

Partner ecosystem platform built for B2B SaaS - affiliates, agencies and resellers in one place with automated payouts.

Awin

Global affiliate network with strong UK and EU publisher base. Mid-market default for retail and DTC programmes.

CJ Affiliate

Long-running US-led affiliate network (formerly Commission Junction). Deep publisher base and enterprise reporting.

Rakuten Advertising

Global affiliate network with premium publisher relationships. Strong in retail, travel and financial services.

ShareASale

Awin-owned US affiliate network popular with SMB and DTC merchants. Self-serve setup at a friendly price point.

Refersion

Affiliate and influencer tracking SaaS built for ecommerce, with deep Shopify integration. Run your own programme outside the networks.

Tapfiliate

Cloud-based affiliate tracking for SaaS, ecommerce and course creators. Easy setup with first-party tracking.

Post Affiliate Pro

Self-serve affiliate software with flat-rate pricing. Popular with SMBs that want to own the data and avoid network fees.

Everflow

Performance marketing platform for affiliate, influencer and media-buying programmes. Strong attribution and fraud controls.

TUNE

Enterprise SaaS for running custom affiliate and partner networks. Used by large advertisers and networks themselves.

ClickBank

Long-standing marketplace and network for digital products, info products and supplements. Pays affiliates fast.

UpPromote

Top-rated Shopify affiliate and referral app. The default for DTC brands launching their first in-house programme.

LeadDyno

Affiliate tracking for SaaS and ecommerce with built-in recruitment tools. Friendly for non-technical programme managers.

Trackdesk

Newer affiliate and partner SaaS with a generous free tier. Popular with bootstrapped SaaS launching a programme.

Intercom

AI-first customer messaging platform with chat, inbox, help centre and Fin AI agent. The default for product-led SaaS.

Zendesk

Enterprise customer service suite with chat, messaging, ticketing and voice. The category standard for serious support ops.

Drift

Conversational marketing and sales chat for B2B. Owned by Salesloft, focused on pipeline-from-chat use cases.

Tidio

Live chat and AI chatbots aimed at SMB ecommerce. Generous free tier and quick Shopify install.

Crisp

All-in-one messaging inbox covering chat, email, Messenger and WhatsApp. Popular with bootstrapped SaaS and SMBs.

LiveChat

Long-running standalone live chat product with a polished agent experience and deep integrations catalogue.

Olark

Simple, no-frills live chat for SMBs that just want to talk to website visitors without a heavy platform.

Tawk.to

Free live chat used on millions of websites. Monetised through paid agents, branding removal and add-ons.

Freshchat

Freshworks' messaging product covering web chat, WhatsApp and in-app. Strong fit when you're already on Freshworks.

Help Scout

Customer support platform with shared inbox, help centre and Beacon chat widget. Loved by SMB SaaS for its calm UX.

Kustomer

Conversational CRM for support, owned by Meta. Strong on omnichannel and customer-timeline-based workflows.

Front

Shared inbox and customer ops platform across email, chat, SMS and social. Popular with logistics, finance and B2B service teams.

Userlike

German live chat and messaging platform with strong WhatsApp Business support and EU data residency.

Chatwoot

Open-source customer engagement platform. Self-host or use cloud - a strong open alternative to Intercom and Zendesk.

HubSpot Live Chat

Free live chat and chatbot tied to the HubSpot CRM. The natural pick when you already run on HubSpot.

Typeform

Conversational, one-question-at-a-time forms and surveys. The default when brand and completion rates matter.

SurveyMonkey

The original online survey platform. Strong question library, benchmarking and enterprise governance.

Qualtrics

Enterprise experience management platform spanning CX, EX, brand and product research. The category leader at scale.

Google Forms

Free, simple forms and surveys inside Google Workspace. Hard to beat for internal use and quick polls.

Jotform

Drag-and-drop form builder with thousands of templates, payments, signatures and approvals built in.

Tally

Notion-style form builder with a generous free tier. Popular with startups, indie hackers and creators.

Sprig

In-product surveys, replays and AI analysis for product teams. Strong for quick PMF and onboarding signal.

Delighted

Qualtrics-owned NPS, CSAT and CES platform. Quick to launch with email, web and link surveys.

Maze

Continuous product discovery and research platform - prototype tests, surveys, interviews and AI analysis.

UserTesting

Recruit real users and watch them complete tasks on your site or product. The standard for usability research.

SurveySparrow

Conversational, mobile-first surveys with workflow automation. A more affordable alternative to Qualtrics.

Formstack

Workflow-focused forms, documents and signatures. Common in regulated industries needing compliance.

Refiner

In-app micro-surveys for SaaS - NPS, CSAT, PMF and onboarding feedback wired to your user data.

Hotjar Surveys

On-site surveys and feedback widgets bundled into Hotjar's heatmaps and recordings product.

Dovetail

Customer research repository that turns interviews, surveys and notes into searchable insights with AI.