Administration tasks are an essential part of running your architecture or construction business.

Without a smooth process; mistakes will be made, things will be forgotten, clients will get confused and irritated, and you could risk making big financial or legal mistakes that could jeopardize your business.

With the right tools and processes in place—your productivity will increase, you’ll impress your clients, and your business will grow.

And when it comes to perfecting processes, a lot has changed in the past 10 years. From Building Information Modeling (BIM) to the Internet of Things (IoT), new tools and online platforms have revolutionized how we handle administrative tasks.

From project management tools to saving time on email writing, there are dozens of fantastically helpful tools that can change the way your business operates; helping you save time, optimizing workflows, hitting deadlines, and impressing your clients with your professionalism and expertise.

But where to start? What tools are available and what do you need?

Today, we are going to look at the 7 most time-consuming administrative tasks you probably have to do each week, and the tools that can help you do them faster and better.

This extensive list of apps and tools will cover:

1: Project management 
A. Project and business management tools built specifically for architects
B. Easy to onboard project management tools
C. Sharing documents and files

2: Streamline your finances
A. Bookkeeping, tracking your costs, and income
B. Payroll, time tracking and expenses:
C. Generate and track invoices

3: Keep your contracts organized

4: Creating gorgeous field reports and punch lists

5: Communicate more effectively and in a timely manner
A. Manage your inbox more effectively
B. Schedule meetings more efficiently
C. Flawless grammar and spelling

6: Stay top of mind with CRMs and newsletters
A. Stay in communication with your clients with a CRM
B. Manage your newsletters

7: Managing your online presence
A. Website Services
B. Keep your social media consistent

Let’s get started.

Tool Type No. 1: Project management

Running your own construction or architecture company means you will most likely be in charge of one or several projects at any given time.

There are usually many moving parts when it comes to your projects—with many different people involved and different stages of the projects, knowing exactly where your project is at any given time is essential.

The problem with trying to do the whole project in your head is that sometimes small details can get lost or forgotten, and mistakes can be made—which is why the first tool we suggest you get is a project management tool.

Project management tools can help you make sure you are hitting all of your clients’ requirements: managing the time, budget, and scope constraints.

Let’s look at three different types of tools, with some examples.

A. Project and business management tools built specifically for the AEC industry

Here are the top 5 tools which have been built specifically for architects, engineers, and managers in the construction industry.

1. Monograph

A project management tool for architects: a complete product for managing tasks, tracking time, and invoicing clients. Monograph streamlines your entire workflow—so you can focus on what matters most—your creativity. It reduces non-billable hours, gets you paid on time, and builds professionalism with clients.

 

Starting Price: $15 per month per user
Available on: Website (iOs and Android)

 

2. Synergy

16K architects and engineers around the world use Synergy to get organized, stay on track, and work better together. Synergy has been around for 20 years and has grown with the times, becoming one of the most complete tools for staying organized and keeping your projects on time and on budget.
Starting Price: $10 per month
Available on: Website

 

3. Core (BQE)

Core includes many features specifically designed to solve everyday problems for architects and engineers. They have a team of industry experts on their product development team, meaning the tool has the needs of architects built right into the core of the platform. Core will help you automate most of your administration task, saving you time and resources.

Starting Price: $19.95 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

4. Rapport 3

With dozens of features built specifically for AEC businesses, and integrations that will help you work seamlessly with the platforms you already use—Rapport 3 is a great option if you are looking for an all-inclusive project management tool. They can also help you customize the tool based on your needs, which is a major plus.

 

 

Available on: Website and iOs 

 

5. Workflow Max

Scrap the spreadsheets—Workflow Max will help you run your business from one seamless dashboard. From invoicing to dozens of integrations, this tool will help you keep an eye on what is happening not only on individual projects but your whole business. Manage your workflow from quote through to invoice while tracking time and costs. Improve project budgeting and gain critical insights into your business.

 

Starting Price: $20 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

B. Easy to onboard project management tools

While some of the above options are ideal for professionals in the AEC industry, some can be costly, and somewhat arduous to figure out how to use. The below 4 options are tried-and-true project management tools that will take you an hour or so to figure out how to use (and most have a free version.)

6. Trello

Using Trello is as easy as playing cards: for each project, you can make different lists and tasks are categorized as various cards. As work progresses, the cards can be moved from one list to another, showing you exactly what needs to be done on each task and project, what is complete and what still needs to b done. Customize each card to show due dates, add attachments, and all team members who are on the project.

Starting Price: Free
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

7. Basecamp

Basecamp allows you to sideline all the problems that you would usually deal with while you are working on a project with your team; communication gaps, missed work and so on.  Instead of going through multiple emails to find specific instructions, Basecamp combines various tools needed by team members in one place, so that the work can be done much more efficiently and effectively.

Starting Price: $99 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

8. Asana

Asana helps you and your team get organized, stay on track and hit deadlines. Tasks are assigned to each team member and they are prioritized and then deadlines are set. So now you can see where each team member is with the completion of their tasks. Asana helps you to keep a track of all your projects in a smart way and helps everyone meet their goals as well, so that all deadlines are met. 

Starting Price: Free. Premium packages start from $10.50 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

9. TeamworkPM

A snapshot of your entire project at your fingertips. With TeamworkPM, team members, irrespective of their number, can now easily see who is working on what, with whom and what future tasks will be. But the best part about this software is that it lets you work the way you want to. 

 

Starting Price: Free. Pro packages start from $ 9 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

C. Sharing documents and files

10. Google Drive (+ Google Docs)

Google Drive and Google Docs allow you to collaborate in the best possible way with your colleagues or team members. It’s just like Microsoft Office, but all the changes you make are saved so that you don’t have to send documents to each other again and again. Other than that, members are allowed to edit the document in the form of suggestions as well, so that others can go through it and then they can accept or reject these suggestions. Not only for documents, but it is also available for photos, drawings, stories, recordings and so on. 

Starting Price: Free. Extra data packages: $1.99 – $9.99 per month.
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

11. Dropbox

Dropbox is similar to Google Drive and is an amazing tool for collaboration as it allows you to share big files with team members without having to send attachments. Not only that, but it brings your files together and then these files can be accessed across various devices. 

 

Starting Price: Free. Packages start at $9.99 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

12. Xtensio

Xtensio allows you and your team to create professional-looking presentations and other content on a single platform. Create content using the drag and drop functionality that works like a page builder, or choose from a wide range of premade templates that are easily editable. Work together with your team on living documents. All content made in Xtensio can be presented in real-time and is responsive to any mobile device.

Starting Price: $8 per month/user
Available on: Website

Tool Type No. 2: Streamline your finances

From invoices to expenses to day-to-day accounting to dealing with tax forms and holiday pay—managing your business’ finances can seem like a never-ending job. Unfortunately, ignoring your finances can get you in trouble! From not making payments on time to unhappy team members to legal issues, having your head in the game and staying on top of your finances is critical to the success of your business. 

The great news is that there are dozens of tools that have been developed in the past few years which make managing your finances a breeze. They will save you time and make sure you stay out of the red and above board. Technology has brought about a multitude of tools to save small business owners time and headaches on daily financial tasks. 

Streamline your financial management process so you can get back to your real job—creating beautiful new buildings. Check out these 13 financial tools for yur AEC business.

A. Bookkeeping, tracking your costs, and income

The 4 tools below are nearly all-encompassing. They have been designed to help small-to-medium-sized business manage their finances, however, you may need to add on additional tools (like time trackers) to get more out of your automations.

13. Bench

Bench accounting is specifically designed for small businesses who want to focus on the growth of their business and let the professionals handle the bookkeeping. It is an online service, which connects small business owners to an in house team who import your financial data and use them to create financial statements for you. 

Starting price: $119 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Shopify

 

14. Brightbook

The main focus of Brightbook is on freelancers, sole proprietors and contractors, basically for people who have started out and are looking to a free online service where they are allowed access to unlimited invoicing in multiple currencies. 

Starting price:  Free
Available on: Website

 

15. Wave

Wave, another free online bookkeeping software, which is clearly making waves as not only is it free, but it is also available as apps for your smartphone. The main audience for Wave is also small business owners and they have made sure that their easy to use interface keeps their clients happy. It has multiple features such as automated expense tracking, cash-basis accounting, and a lightweight e-commerce feature, all of which makes it a par ahead of its competitors. 

Price:  Free. Options for adding extra payroll, payment processing, and professional bookkeeping options.
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

16. ZipBooks

B. Payroll, time tracking and expenses

Drop the excel spreadsheets and switch over to tools build specifically for tracking. From apps that have GPS time trackers so that your team starts tracking the hours the moment they arrive on the job site, to snapping photos of your receipts and instantly logging them into your expense reports—below are 4 tools that will help automate your tracking and logging.

17. TSheets

TSheets is a cloud-based time tracker. It is a real-time software which can be accessed through either the web or a smartphone. The smartphone app allows employees to even track times from remote locations or when they are not sitting at a desk and working. The best part is that you can use any device (smartphones, computer, mobile apps) or any medium (text messages, landlines, email, twitter) to clock in out times. 

Starting price: For the self-employed it is free, but otherwise it starts off at $4 per month.
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

18. Harvest

Harvest makes it easy to track time from your desktop, smartphone, and other devices—including integrations with tools like Asana, Trello, and Basecamp. It collates all your timesheet data into visual reports so you can see what your team is working on, catch projects before they go over budget, and make more intelligent decisions about which personnel you have on what project. Harvest also makes it simple to streamline your invoicing process: track the time to a specific client, or manually fill in the information. From that billable time, you can easily make up an invoice to email directly to your client and get paid online.

Starting price: Free, package up to $12 per month per user
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

19. Hubstaff

Hubstaff lets you track time through multiple devices, like desktop, web, and mobile. That way you can get a high-level perspective on your project’s budget by managing your team’s tasks, hours, timesheets, and invoices, all through your central dashboard. It also integrates with many top apps so you can run your building projects, and business, more efficiently.

 

Starting price: Plans range between $5-$10 per month per user
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

20. Expensify

Expensify offers multi-cash capacity, with the item supporting more than 160 monetary forms. For those that desire to oversee travel costs,. The app enable the user to effectively see the genuine expense of any movement cost. Expensify likewise tracks mileage, with clients ready to track and later enter mileage data from the web or utilize the portable application, which can be utilized with separation, odometer, or GPS computations.

Starting price:  Basic is free, packages start from $5 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

C. Generate and track invoices

21. Freshbooks

Perfect for small to medium-sized businesses, FreshBooks is a simple finance and accounting software which also happens to be cloud-based. FreshBooks customers save 16 hours a month.   It helps by automating simple tasks like generating invoices, calculating expenses and tracking time, all in just a few simple steps. The software also allows the online collection of payment.

Starting price: $15 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

22. Invoicera

Invoicera is a simple-to-use, award-winning online billing software for companies of different nature and sizes. With Invoicera, you can quickly manage invoices and keep track of who needs to be paid, all on just one platform. It offers multiple payment methods. Integrations of top payment gateways with Invoicera, allows your business to offer customers multiple payment options. 

Starting price: For a staff of 3 members it is free, then it starts from  $15 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

23. InvoiceNinja

Invoice Ninja comes with a variety of tools to make tasks related to invoice management easy peasy for you and your business. You can now come up with quotations and invoices in real-time and send them to your clients. Clients can then get a breakdown of all the work you have put in on various tasks and can also download the invoice or even print it for a record.  This software also allows you to make invoices for various projects with various clients. 

Pricing: Free, then packages start from $8 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

24. Blinksale

With 14 invoicing templates, Blinksale is an easy-to-use cloud-based invoicing platform and a client portal where customers can pay invoices directly online. Other than this, it allows for contact management and unlimited users. It helps everyone who needs to invoice clients for services or products sold. 

 

Starting price: $15 per month
Available on: Website and iOs 

 

 

Tool Type No. 3: Keep your bids and contracts organized

Managing biding and contacts can be a stressful time for a lot of contractors.  Strict deadlines, moving goalposts, a lot of moving parts to manage. 

And while the process of bidding, negotiations, and contracts can vary widely from project to project, more often than not, most projects will stick to the same set of rules to make sure that evaluating the different bids is fair and timely (for example, you will be asked to estimate material costs on every bid, but some clients might ask more in-depth questions than this, demanding more or less information) 

In the past, managing bids and contracts meant a lot of spreadsheets and emailing, printing and scanning and sending back and forth, which can be difficult to keep organized. The risk of not staying organized can have a detrimental effect on your business, if you or client forgets to initial a certain clause on the contract, it could result in legal and financial ramifications if something goes wrong. 

Make the process more surefire and easier by taking them online. By using the tools below, you can strengthen connections and relationships, leverage project data and analytics to make better decisions. 

25. Shake

The Shake app by Legal Shield is an easy to use app, which asks you a few simple questions; all the details that are required to make a contract. Using this information, it drafts a contract which will have your digital signature on it. Once it is sent to the person in question, they too can digitally sign it.  So now, instead of a handshake, you can send an agreement through shake and finalize any deals. 

Starting price: Free
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

26. HelloSign

HelloSign is a simple to use application which instantly allows you to create a contract. All you have to do is answer the questions that it asks and while you answer these on your phone, the software starts to complete the PDF document simultaneously. So by the time you are done answering the questions, your document is all ready, making it the fastest eSignature solution out there. 

Starting price: Free, Pro packages start from $13 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

27. SmartBid

They call themselves the “The #1 Construction Bid Software for General Contractors” This construction bid management software application allows you to send invites to subcontractors or General Contractors that then securely streamlines prequalification, subcontractor management, invitations to bid, and document collaboration, all in one place. With SmartBid, builders can now manage pre-construction data from anywhere, anytime.

Starting price: estimated $600 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

Tool Type No. 4: Creating gorgeous site reports

If you are spending a lot of time in making site reports via Word od Docs, but you have the impression that no one is reading them, you might be losing out on valuable hours each week. 

Your site reports contain information that people have to act upon, it can affect whether your project stays on time and budget and whether your client ends up happy with the end result. So how do you make sure they are well written, professional and organized?

Simple. Automate it. While there are a handful of tools out there to help you create field reports, we are biased and believe we have created one of the easiest and most well-design platforms on the market. 

Let’s introduce you to our field report and punch list app:

28. ArchiSnapper

With ArchiSnapper you can draft and access observations and reports onsite. Photograph, sketch, annotate and assign from your smartphone or tablet; all information is automatically numbered and classified. Your data is organized, digitized, and synced quickly and securely to the cloud. You can use previous reports, standard checklists or blueprints as a starting point for your site visits and follow up. From drafting to sharing, with ArchiSnapper you can cut your inspection time in half (or more).

Pricing: $24 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

 

Tool Type No. 5: Communicate more effectively and in a timely manner

Now, project proposals and emailing clients about very specific tasks and queries aside—a lot of time is spent on emails related to:

• Planning meetings: arranging meetings, going back and forth trying to find a time that works for everyone.
• Pitching and answering questions: Writing pitches or answering the same questions from potential clients
• Following up with potential clients: Emailing potential clients to ask if they are still interested in working on a project together.
• Contracts: Chasing up unsigned contracts (please see above for the tool that can help with this.) 

While these types of emails are small and necessary, they can easily add up to an hour of your time every day.
Now, if you were to automate each of these small but persistent emailing tasks, you could shave that hour down to 10-15 minutes, leaving you with 45 extra minutes in a day.

Ah, but 45 minutes doesn’t seem like a ton of time does it?

Well, let’s think about it this way.

If you save 45 minutes a day, that’s a little more than 3.5 extra hours a week.

Or about 15 extra hours a month.

Or about 180 hrs in a year.

Say your hourly rate is $65/hr.

That would be $11.7K by the end of the year.

Still think we are talking about small numbers here?

The point is that the minutes you spend in your inbox can really start adding up over time, and can end up making a big difference on how much time you have at the end of the week, and your bottom line. 

A. Manage your inbox more effectively

Emails doesn’t need to take up hours and hours every week. Streamline with these tools.

29. Superhuman

Superhuman is an AI-based email management system that helps you by prioritizes your emails, streamline your email and social media accounts, scheduling emails to go at later times, temporarily hide emails from your inbox until you are ready to deal with them, and un-sending sent messages. Basically, it acts as an artificially intelligent virtual assistant, helping you stay on top of your inbox and saving you time. 

Starting Price: $30 per month
Available on: Website

 

30. 17hats

17hats has it all on one platform. The software allows you client communications, proposals, online payments, contracts, project management, bookkeeping, client management, and so much more. It helps to eliminate busywork, as well as simplify repetitive tasks with templates and automated workflows. Whether you are at home or on the go, it will help you organize, systemize, as well as get paid faster, to grow their business, and land more clients.

Starting Price: $45 per month
Available on: Website and iOs 

 

31. Boomerang

Boomerang for Gmail is an extension for Google Chrome which is designed to enhance email productivity and efficiency for Gmail and Google Apps users. It has many features which are linked with emails such as email tracking, reminders, delayed schedule sending, read receipts, and more. Other than that, it helps can help with everything from scheduling birthday/holiday messages to reminders to pay bills.

Starting price: Free. Pro plans start from $4.99 per month
Available on: Google Chrome Extension

 

B. Schedule meetings more efficiently

The back and forth for arranging the meeting often takes longer than necessary.  These tools will help automate and save you time on scheduling meeting.

32. ScheduleOnce

ScheduleOnce is an end-to-end appointment scheduling software that allows businesses to more easily connect with prospects and enables its users to customize an online booking system that fits their business processes. ScheduleOnce also has web integrations and multi-device accessibility.

Starting Price: $7.50 per month
Available on: Website and Chrome Web Store

 

33. Doodle

Doodle is a free, easy to use productivity app that helps in scheduling appointments or meetups by making it easy to find a time when a group of people can get together. This helps save numerous amounts of time which would otherwise be wasted on needless emails and schedule-juggling. 

 

Starting Price: Free
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

34. Calendly

Millions of users are using Calendly, an automated scheduling tool, as it helps scheduling appointments and meetings amongst a large number of people in a smooth and easy way. It takes the hard work out of connecting with your team and clients so you can accomplish more. It also works well with Office 365, Google, Office and Outlook calendars and other apps like Salesforce and Stripe as well. 

Starting Price: Free. Premium package is $8 per month
Available on: Website, iOs, G Suite Marketplace and Google Chrome Web Store

 

35. YouCanBookMe

YouCanBook.me is a software which fully integrates with Zoom and Zapier and helps simplify the scheduling process so that you can get back to work. It syncs with your cloud-based calendar in order to make bookings which can then be seen in your calendar. It also sends out personalized emails and SMS notifications to others as well, which include programmable triggers and delays so that everyone is on the same page. 

Starting Price: $10 per month
Available on: Website

36. Join.Me

Join.Me has a friendly interface and is great for smaller companies and startups. It is a cloud-based application which helps various teams and businesses meet online in a jiffy. It helps in collaboration and the sharing of ideas. Another great thing is that, Join.Me allows the setting up of personalized URL meetings with a unique code as well as send out automated notification emails. In these emails, instructions are given as to how to join the meeting. During the meetings, you can even share your screen which makes it easier to get your point across. 

Starting Price: $10 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

C. Flawless grammar and spelling

Emails that are all over the place grammatically can cause confusion and even misinform the reader. A quick proof-read can go a long way in making sure you stay professional and clear.

37. Grammarly

Grammarly is an easy to use spell check and grammar app/software which integrates well with Word or online text boxes. It can be used by anyone who wants to have 100% accurate writing but is especially suitable for bloggers, content writers, and students. Not only does it check for spelling and grammatical mistakes but it also checks for plagiarism and looks at the writing style as well. 

Starting Price: Free. Premium packages start at $11.66 per month
Available on: Website, iOs, Android and Chrome Web Store

 

Tool Type No. 6: Stay top of mind with CRMs and newsletters

Is it possible to cultivate new and repeat business…from your inbox? 

Stay in contact and top of mind with potential and older clients easily, cultivating new and repeat business directly via email with CRMs and newsletters. 

Not entirely sure what those are or how they can help? Read on. 

A. Stay in communication with your clients with a CRM

The best way to imagine a Customer-Relationship Management (CRM) software is like a robo-Rolodex: a self-managing contact book and assistant rolled into one. They will help you take potential clients (called leads) and then help you turn them into new clients. And while you could self-manage this with spreadsheet and extra time, the point of getting a CRM system is to make you more efficient, by helping you keep track of all your potential leads details and automate your interactions with them.

38. HubSpot CRM

A free CRM platform, HubSpot is a simple and smart software that allows sales teams to get started quickly without making much of a change in their existing workflow. It allows for companies to use their CRM systems to their potential. It has the necessary basic features and is best for beginners or mid-market companies as it gels in well with all industries and niches. It helps you boost your company’s profile and helps you keep a check on your agents and all other team members can see the company activities.

Starting Pricing: Free
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

39. ZenDesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is a CRM software, under the ZenDesk branch of various software. It targets salespeople specifically and gives the users access to an all-in-one platform where they can complete tasks such as tracking sales, lead contact management, and task management. 

 

Starting Pricing: $19 per user per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

40. Zoho CRM

An award-winning software, the Zoho CRM’s main focus is on lead and contact management, while also focusing on sales pipeline management and purchase control. Doesn’t matter if you are a small business, a solo entrepreneur or a big company, the Zoho CRM works well for all, irrespective of company size. The best part about this CRM software is that it integrates well with famous applications like: Microsoft Outlook, MailChimp, QuickBooks, ConstantConnect and Google Apps; as well as with cloud-based connectors like OneSaas and CloudWork.

Starting Pricing: $13.50 per person per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

41. Insightly CRM

Easy to set up and use, Insightly is a cloud-based CRM tool that lets users organize themselves as well as manage their customers and business leads. In addition to being a CRM, Insightly also offers both project and contact management. It helps users to track projects, opportunities, and contacts. The interface, because of its project dashboard, enables users to easily manage tasks. It also integrates with other applications. 

Starting Pricing: Free up to 2 users, then $29 per user per month billed annually
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

42. Agile CRM

Best for small to medium size businesses, Agile CRM helps businesses in their sales, marketing and service automation, all on one platform. In addition to this, it also offers web analytics, two-way email service, telephony, and helpdesk service with a clean and modern and user-friendly interface.

 

Starting Pricing: Free up to 10 users, then $8.99 per month
Available on: Website and iOs

 

B. Manage your newsletters

A newsletter helps you stay top of mind with your clients. It’s a good idea to send out a newsletter somewhere around once a month. If you only send out a newsletter once every 6-months, they might forget who you are. More than this, you may exhaust them and they will get bored of hearing from you. A newsletter can be heavily designed with tons of images and graphics (and the tools below have lots of templates that can help with this) or can look exactly like a normal email you send with a couple of short sentences. You can choose what works best for you and your clients, but either way, an email marketing platform can help. 

43. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign gives us the best of both worlds as it is a combination of sales and CRM with email marketing and marketing automation. It allows users to create meaningful automated marketing and sales processes that target happier, more loyal customers. It allows you to send beautifully designed newsletters or e-mail campaigns so that you can keep in contact with your target customers. 

Starting Pricing: $9 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

44. MailChimp

MailChimp is the most famous ESP (email service provider)  and has paved the way for email marketing for others to follow, which makes it one of the leading ESP’s. It is user-friendly and allows you to create campaigns which can then be sent over to your designated contact lists. It has multiple templates to choose from and helps you create amazing newsletters, so your clients can be up to date with you and your business.

Starting Pricing: Free, then  $9.99 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

45. Hubspot Newsletter

HubSpot offers a variety of tools, which also include marketing tools. It is an easy-to-use software with lots of features which will help you manage your potential clients. It’s Marketing Professional allows for blog/news, email marketing, automation, social media, marketing attribution/reporting, email design, list management/segmentation, and light project management. 

Starting Pricing: $50 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

Tool Type No. 7: Managing your online presence

Having a presence online is becoming more and more essential. 

Clients are no longer dependent on your sales efforts to find about your services—with the rise of search engines and social media—all the client has to do is perform a simple search, find all the information they need, and then they choose whether or not they will work with you. 

But it can be time-consuming, and when deadlines are looming, managing your online presence can often feel like an afterthought. 

Luckily, there are a ton of tools that have been developed to help you maintain a great website, and consistently stay active on social media. 

A. Website Services

46. Webs

If you are an individual, a small business or an agency then Webs.com is a website builder and hosting platform that can help amateurs like you create websites without needing any coding knowledge. It will provide you with a custom domain name and password-protected pages (as well as unlimited web pages). 

Starting Price: $5.99 per month
Available on: Website and Android

 

47. Wix

Creating a professional website has become easier with Wix’s drag-and-drop editor. Doesn’t even matter if you have no knowledge about coding techniques as the hundreds of templates and great tools available on Wix will help you build and sell through your website. It is user-friendly and even beginners can work with its tools. 

Starting Price: $5 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

48. WordPress

WordPress is one of the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (CMS) available. 60 million websites are powered by WordPress. It’s a popular website platform for hosting professional portfolios and blogging. 

 

Starting Price: There is a free version, price packages range between $3-$45 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

49. Weebly

If you are a small business and are looking to build a website for your business then Weebly is for you as it is seen as the best website builder for small business sites. It has a drag-and-drop editor making it user-friendly. It also has a large range of features and apps so that you can add many sections to your website such as about me, pricing, current projects and so on.  

Starting Price: Free, Premium packages from $5.50 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

 

B. Keep your social media consistent

50. Buffer

For any business looking to boost their social media presence, Buffer is an application they can rely on. It is a platform which allows you to post from multiple social media sites at the same time. Not only that but you can schedule posts for the future as well.  Whether you are just interested in publishing content, or you want to analyze your social media engagement, Buffer is the way to go. 

Starting Price: Free accounts available, packages start at $15 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

51. Hootsuite

With over 16 million users from all over the world, Hootsuite happens to be the world’s most widely used social media management platform. It can be used by the smallest startup to the big companies out there, all who are looking to manage their social media in an effective way.  It works well with multiple social media sites and helps you and your company manage social media profiles, interact with clients, and generate revenue.

Starting Price: $28 per month
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

 

52. MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a platform/plugin which can connect with social media sites to help you manage your social media presence by automating content re-sharing and optimizing your social traffic. It helps companies perform the tasks that a content manager would have performed otherwise. It works best for companies that have evergreen content; as the app is the best for their content marketing strategies.

Starting Price: $59 per month
Available on: Website and iOs

 

 

BONUS: Make your apps work together

Wow, we just went through 51 different platforms and apps. Obviously, you are not going to use all of them, but even if you choose 10 to work with—it can be a lot to manage. 

There are two additional platforms we are going to suggest to make this more seamless: Zapier and  IFTTT

Connecting apps have never been this easier. With Zapier and IFTTT (if this then that), you can now connect your apps on one online platform which will allow you to automate your workflow to boost your productivity. This helps to empower businesses as with these app connecting softwares you can now achieve much more in the same amount of time, hence making your far more efficient. They are simple and easy to use and are used worldwide by multiple companies. 

Zapier

Starting Price: Free. Packages start from $20 per month
Available on: Website

and

IFTTT

Starting Price: Free, but for larger businesses please contact for a quote.
Available on: Website, iOs and Android

Running your own architecture business there is a lot to do, and it can sometimes it can feel draining to try and manage everything. But instead of getting discouraged and tired, level up and get some help: automate processes whenever possible.

Apps and platforms can help. And while there are millions of apps, websites, and platforms out there, many are tried and true, and a handful (like Archisnapper!) have been created specifically with your needs in mind. The above list just scratches the surface but should inspire you to start looking at how you run your business in a different way. 

What to read next

Want to read more articles from us? Here are some suggestions:

• 17 Free Construction Apps You Need to Download Right Now
• Best Apps for Architects – Our selection for 2020
• Work Smart, Not More: Time Management for Architects
• 11 Ways to Make Your iPhone or iPad Your Best Construction Tool
• 11 Tips that made me an Insanely Productive Person

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