The Best Startup
Growth & Marketing Tools
👋 Hey! I lead growth at early-stage startups.
I built this list to help startups move with urgency and agency.
Marketing and growth teams at early-stage startups have limited resources, short timelines, and tight budgets.
As such, these scrappy crews of t-shaped marketers need to do more with less, often independent of developers and designers building the product
These 93 tools, services, and resources are the first ones I turn to when a startup asks for help in ideation, execution, or a crash course.
You won’t find table-stakes products like Google Analytics or project management software like Asana.
| Product / Tool | Category | Description | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs | Data | Get insights for traffic, back-links, keywords for any domain. | Freemium |
| Apollo | Sales | Chrome plugin to get B2B contact Info for free. | Freemium |
| Artboard Studio | Graphic Design | Create mockups for physical products. | Freemium |
| Artlist | Video | Royalty-free music and sound effects for your content. | Free |
| Backlink Checker | SEM / SEO | A backlinks research tool for competitive intelligence. | Free |
| Branch | User Behavior | Automatically convert links into multi-platform deep links. | Freemium |
| Brick By Brick | Community | A free guide to community building. | Free |
| BriefBox | Design | Mentor-led, affordable design courses. | Freemium |
| Buffer | Social Media | Social media management tool. | Freemium |
| Built With | Website | See the infrastructure and technology stack of any site. | Free |
| BuzzSumo | Content | See the top performing content for any site. | Freemium |
| Canva | Graphic Design | Simply graphics design and document creator. | Freemium |
| Catalant | Research | Find experts on any topic. | Paid |
| CleanShot X | General Tool | The best screenshot and screen recording app. | Freemium |
| CrazyEgg | Data | See site visitor behavior using heatmaps and recordings. | Freemium |
| CustomInk | Swag | Create and purchase custom swag, quickly. | Paid |
| Design Systems | Content | A Figma publication for design systems creators, designers, developers, and managers. | Free |
| DontGo | UI / UX | Change favicon and site titles when visitors leave. | Freemium |
| Dribbble | Graphic Design | Inspirations for all design types under the sun. | Free |
| F5Bot | Community | Get notified when your product gets mentioned in communities. | Free |
| Facebook Ad Library | Advertising | All ads running on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. | Free |
| First Round Review | Learning | Great articles and insight from First Round Capital. | Free |
| Fiverr | Outsource | Find budget-friendly contractors for tactical work. | Paid |
| Fomo | User Behavior | Provide live social proof on your site. | Freemium |
| Font Joy | Graphic Design | Create matching fonts. | Free |
| Fonts Ninja | Graphic Design | Chrome extension to identify fonts on any website. | Free |
| Fullstory | User Behavior | Product analytics and detailed, recorded user behavior tracking. | Freemium |
| GoFullPage | Graphic Design | Chrome extension to take a full-page screenshot. | Free |
| GoLive | Website | Squarespace templates. | Freemium |
| Guide | B2B Playbook | Everything to become a great B2B startup marketing leader. | Freemium |
| Grammarly | Content | AI-powered writing assistant. | Freemium |
| GummySearch | Community | Discover early adopters from online communities. | Freemium |
| Google Ad Transparency | Advertising | See any Google Ad for any company. | Free |
| Hashtag Stack | Social Media | Hashtag generator for social posts. | Freemium |
| Headline Analyzer | Copywriting | Free headline analyzer for marketing copy. | Free |
| HelloBar | Content | Plug-in for custom bars, modals, and sliders on your site. | Paid |
| High Growth Handbook | Learning | Lessons to scale your startup from the top names in tech. | Free |
| Hover | Website | Buy domains easily with privacy included by default. | Paid |
| HubSpot Resources | Content | Endless library of Ebooks, guides, templates, and tools. | Free |
| Hunter | Sales | Find professional email addresses for almost anyone. | Freemium |
| Ideas Grab | Creativity | 3,500+ ideas for your own projects. | Free |
| Jasper | Copywriting | Let artificial intelligence write your marketing copy. | Freemium |
| Jitter | Graphic Design | Create custom motion graphics. | Paid |
| Kamua | Video | Resize and edit videos to meet platform requirements. | Freemium |
| Keyword Tool | SEM / SEO | Generate keywords based on actual search data. | Freemium |
| Leadpages | Website | Quickly create and design campaign landing pages. | Freemium |
| Lenny's Newslettter | Learning | The best newsletter for those in Product and Growth. | Freemium |
| Lenny's Slack | Learning | Free online community for Lenny's Newsletter subscribers. | Paid |
| LetterHunt | Growth | 10,000+ active, curated newsletters to promote your business. | Freemium |
| Loom | Video | Get a message across instantly shareable videos. | Freemium |
| Lordicon | Graphic Design | A library of 8,000+ animated icons. | Freemium |
| Mailchimp | Easily manage your email lists. | Freemium | |
| Marpipe | Advertising | Automate the creative testing process for online ads. | Paid |
| Meta Ad Library | Advertising | Search ads running on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. | Free |
| Milk Money | Advertising | Highly discounted premium outdoor advertising. | Paid |
| Milled | A search engine for email newsletters. | Free | |
| Mode | Data | SQL editor, Python notebook, and visualization. | Freemium |
| Orbit | Community | Grow and measure your community across any platform. | Freemium |
| Pexels | Content | Thousands of high-quality, free videos. | Free |
| Pinterest Trends | Content | Surging trends on Pinterest by topic. | Free |
| Plastiq | General Tool | Pay any vendor or contractor with a credit card at no cost to you. | Free |
| PlusThis | UI / UX | 70+ plug-ins for your CRM. | Freemium |
| Pop Pays | Social Media | Find social media influencers by content topic. | Freemium |
| Proxi | Content | Create custom interactive maps. | Free |
| Punchlist | Website | Feedback layer on top of websites, images, and PDFs. | Freemium |
| Really Good Emails | Brainstorming | 9,000+ examples of great emails. | Free |
| Really Good Push Notifications | Brainstorming | Curated collection of push notifications for inspiration. | Fee |
| Reel | Social Media | Turn podcast into video & promote podcasts on social media. | Freemium |
| Reforge Blog | Learning | Articles for techies in marketing, product, data, and engineering. | Paid |
| Riverside | Content | Easily create and edit podcasts. | Paid |
| Rotato | Graphic Design | Create custom 3D video mockups or images. | Freemium |
| Segment | Data | Collect your data once, then send it to 200+ tools. | Freemium |
| SEMRush | SEM / SEO | SEO, PPC, SMM, content marketing, and competitor research. | Freemium |
| SharedCount | Data | Track shares, likes, and reach of your content. | Paid |
| Similar Web | Data | See website traffic and key metrics for any website. | Freemium |
| Social Blade | Social Media | Track YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, & Twitter stats. | Freemium |
| Supershots | Social Media | Create beautiful screenshots of social media posts. | Freemium |
| SwipeFile | Brainstorming | Swipe File examples from top copywriters and marketers | Free |
| Synthesia | Content | Videos created by Artificial Intelligence. | Freemium |
| The Noun Project | Graphic Design | Free icons and photos for anything. | Freemium |
| TikTok Creative Center | Advertising | See high-performing ads on TikTok. | Free |
| TikTok Creator Marketplace | Advertising | Connects brands to TikTok creators | Free |
| Traffic Think Tank | SEM / SEO | Slack community for SEO and link-building. | Paid |
| Typeform | Data | Easily build beautiful, interactive forms. | Freemium |
| Unsplash | Photography | 2,000,000+ free stock photos. | Free |
| UTM Generator | Data | Add campaign parameters to URLs to measure performance. | Free |
| Verify Email | Bulk email address verification. | Freemium | |
| WalkMe | UI / UX | Create tool-tips to walk user through your product. | Freemium |
| Wordtracker | SEM / SEO | Find new keywords for your market | Freemium |
| Zapier | General Tool | Create workflows and automation for anything. | Freemium |
| Zlides | Presentations | Presentation kits for startups and busy designers. | Freemium |
| Techstars Educational Resources | Resources | To help entrepreneurs learn the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. | Free |
| Mobile Simulator | Testing | Test website or email content on a variety of mobile devices. | Freemium |