Technology
Top 10 Customer Service Software That All Businesses Need
Published
3 years agoon
Customer service software is a tool that companies collect, organize, and respond to customer requests. They may use it to manage internal communication channels and integrate with external communication tools. Companies usually adopt cloud-based and subscription-based customer service software to enable faster and more efficient customer support. To help you decide what tools to use, here are the top ten customer service software, along with their features and pricing.
1. Zendesk
Zendesk customer service software enables businesses to establish flawless customer experiences. It allows a seamless flow of communication across channels, resulting in improved productivity and satisfaction of stakeholders.
Key Features:
- Ticket routing
- Live chat software
- Native integrations
- Knowledge base
- Application Programming Interface (API)
- Tracking and reporting
- Self-service portal
- Community forums
- Automation
Pricing:
Suite Team: $49 per user/month
Suite Growth: $79 per user/month
Suite Professional: $99 per user/month
Suite Enterprise: $150 per user/month
Free trial: 14 days
2. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a platform that allows teams to deliver relevant customer support. Its sales, support, marketing, social media monitoring, and engagement features facilitate effective communication across all social networks.
Key Features:
- Reporting and analytics
- Automation
- Tracking and reporting
- Customer segmentation
- Social media monitoring/management
- Post scheduling
Pricing:
Standard: $89/per user/month
Professional: $149/per user/month
Advanced: $249/per user/month
Free Trial: 30 days
3. Hootsuite
Hootsuite helps teams connect with clients and schedule content in multiple social channels from a secure web-based dashboard. The Zendesk native integration enables Hootsuite to create, review, and update information from various social media channels. In addition, the Hootsuite and Zendesk tandem eliminates the silos between social and support departments.
Key Features:
- Automation
- Tracking and reporting
- Customer segmentation
- Social media monitoring/management
- Post scheduling
Pricing:
Professional: $49 for one user/month
Team: $129 for three users/month
Business: $739 for five users/month
Free trial: 30 days
4. MailChimp
MailChimp helps businesses to create, send, and track email newsletters, event invitations, and registration forms. Teams can customize the emails with targeted customer segments combined with a customer support system like Zendesk Support. MailChimp can act as an all-in-one marketing platform for small businesses.
Key Features:
- Tracking and reporting
- Contact management
- Landing page and email design tools
- Automation
- Social media monitoring
- Live chat
Pricing:
Free: up to 2,000 contacts
Essentials: $11 per month
Standard: $17 per month
Premium: $299 per month
5. SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a customer service platform that provides businesses with templates for customer surveys to glean insight into product or feedback and customer satisfaction. With its extensive library of integrations, you can efficiently work this tool into your existing workflow.
Key Features:
- Live results tracking
- Polling
- Tracking and reporting
- Image/audio/video file support
- Email distribution
- Native integrations
- API
Pricing:
Basic: Free
Individual Advantage: $32/month
Individual Standard: $99/month
Individual Premier: $119/month
Team Advantage: $25 per user/month
Team Premier: $75 per user/month
Team Enterprise: Contact the sales team for a quote
6. Slack
Slack helps internal customers to seek assistance from the HR or IT team from the same communication channel. With Slack’s AI-powered bot, employees can self-serve over Slack at scale. When integrated with customer service software, Slack also enables agents to communicate better with each other when addressing tickets for more streamlined collaboration and faster.
Key Features:
- Live chat
- Video conferencing
- Messaging
- Native integrations
- API
- Community forums
- Surveys
Pricing:
Free plan available
Pro: $6.67 per person/month
Business+: $12.50 per person/month
Enterprise Grid: Contact the sales team for a quote
Free trial: 30 days
7. Boss Solution Suite
Boss Solutions Suite offers a fully functional ITIL-based help desk software and IT asset management package available on-premise or on the cloud. Their customers include the public, education, and healthcare institutions. Boss Solutions also provides asset, incident, and change management capabilities.
Key Features:
- Ticket routing
- Native integrations
- Knowledge base
- API
- Tracking and reporting
- Self-service portal
- Automation
Pricing:
Essentials: $19 per user/month
Professional: $39 per user/month
Enterprise: $69 per user/month
Free trial: 14 days
8. Jira Service Desk
The Jira Service Management software empowers IT teams with a modern service desk. It has everything they need out-of-the-box, including ITIL-certified processes. Atlassian developed Jira to remove silos between developers, operations, and IT. Non-IT customer service professionals may feel that Jira’s features are excessive for their needs. If unsure, try JIRA’s 7-day free trial to give you a feel for the software.
Key Features:
- Ticket routing
- Live chat
- Knowledge base
- API
- Tracking and reporting
- Self-service portal
- Automation
Pricing:
Free plan: free for up to three agents
Standard: $20 per agent/month
Premium: $45 per agent/month
Enterprise: contact sales for a quote
Free trial: 7 days
9. LiveAgent
LiveAgent is an excellent solution for smaller service teams using WordPress. Its extensive library of native integrations allows your team to seamlessly work it into their existing workflows. Likewise, it has native integration for several popular apps for support teams.
Key Features:
- Ticket routing
- Live chat software
- Native integrations
- Knowledge base
- API
- Tracking and reporting
- Self-service portal
- Community forums
- Automation
Pricing:
Ticket: $15 per user/month
Ticket + chat: $29 per user/month
All-Inclusive: $49 per user/month
Free plan available but with limited capabilities.
10. Freshdesk
Freshdesk helps customer service teams organize collaboration and automation with its interactive interface and competitive pricing packages. Freskdesh offers all the essential features in their more expensive plans, such as team dashboards, social signals, ticket routing, and chatbots.
Key Features:
- Ticket routing
- Live chat software
- Native integrations
- Knowledge base
- API
- Tracking and reporting
- Self-service portal
- Community forums
- Automation
Pricing:
Support Desk Plan: Free
Support Desk Growth: $15 per user/month
Support Desk Pro: $49 per user/month
Support Desk Enterprise: $79 per user/month
Omnichannel Growth: $29 per user/month
Omnichannel Pro: $59 per user/month
Omnichannel Enterprise: $99 per user/month
Free trial: 21 days
Conclusion
Figuring out what customer service software best serves you and your team can be daunting. It would help if you found a tool that meets your immediate needs and is flexible enough to cover future needs, all while staying within budget. Take your time to weigh your options and make a wise decision. The service you deliver to your customers is crucial regardless of which software you choose.
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The social media landscape is changing, and in a few short years, new tools will enter the market. While many of these tools have been used for marketing your business successfully in recent years, only a handful are worth investing in as they will become popular. Here are our best bets for social media marketing tools:
1. Sprout Social
An all-in-one social media marketing tool, Sprout Social enables businesses to effectively manage their online presence and engage with their customers across all social networks. It allows businesses to monitor conversations, publish content, and track performance across their social media accounts.
Additionally, it offers advanced analytics and insights to help businesses understand their audience and optimize their content strategy. Sprout Social has a free trial, which you can upgrade to any of its paid plans with prices starting at $199 per month.
2. Hootsuite
Another popular social media marketing tool, Hootsuite helps businesses efficiently manage their presence across multiple social networks. It provides features such as scheduling and publishing content, monitoring conversations, and tracking performance metrics. Furthermore, it offers advanced analytics to help businesses gain insights into their audience and optimize their content strategy.
Hootsuite also offers a variety of integrations with popular third-party services such as Mailchimp and Salesforce that allow businesses to extend the tool’s capabilities further. Start using this social media marketing tool for as low as $99 per month.
3. AgoraPulse
AgoraPulse is a powerful social media management tool that helps you stay on top of your social media activity. You can use it to monitor conversations about your brand, respond to comments and messages, and analyze the performance of your content. It also provides detailed insights on how to improve your results.
AgoraPulse is excellent for larger teams, as it allows you to assign tasks to different team members and keep track of the progress. Its pricing stats at $79 per month.
4. Buzzsumo
Want to know the most popular content in your niche? Buzzsumo is the social media marketing software you need. It is a powerful content marketing tool that allows you to see the engagement and shares of each post, giving you insight into what is working and what isn’t.
With the help of Buzzsumo, you can quickly identify the top influencers in your industry and target them for collaboration. It offers a free but limited plan. If you need more features, you can choose from its paid plans with prices starting at $199 per month.
5. Later
Later is a popular social media management platform best known for its visual content calendar. It’s an ideal tool for scheduling posts on the best social media platforms for ecommerce, including Instagram and Facebook. With its drag-and-drop interface, you can plan posts visually and preview your feed before publishing.
It also features Smart Scheduling, a Hashtag Suggestion tool, Linkin.bio for Instagram traffic tracking, and AI-powered post-writing assistance to streamline your workflow.
If you’re looking for social media marketing tools free of charge, Later offers a free plan with basic tools, while paid plans start at $16.67 per month depending on the number of social profiles and users.
6. Semrush Social
Next on our social media marketing tools list is Semrush Social, which gives marketers the power to schedule, draft, and analyze social media posts across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and X.
The platform allows AI-generated captions, built-in image editors, and easy performance tracking, making it among the best social media marketing tools for many users.
Semrush Social is included in Semrush’s Pro, Guru, and Business plans, starting at $139.95 per month. A free trial is available for first-time users.
7. Iconosquare
Also included in our top 10 social media marketing tools is Iconosquare is a powerful analytics and scheduling tool made for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok. It offers in-depth performance tracking, content planning, and industry benchmarking to help businesses on top of their accounts on social media marketing platforms.
Iconosquare offers a free trial, with paid plans starting at $33 per month for individuals.
8. Buffer
Buffer remains one of the most reliable social media management tools in 2025, offering simple post scheduling, team collaboration, and basic analytics. It supports Facebook, Instagram, X, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Mastodon.
Its clean dashboard is easy to navigate, making it perfect for small business owners and solo marketers. Buffer also features an AI Assistant to generate post ideas and captions, plus a start page feature to build basic landing pages linked to social bios.
Buffer offers a free plan with limited scheduling, and paid plans start at $6 per month per social channel.
9. Adobe Express
Adobe Express combines graphic design and social media marketing in one tool. It allows users to create scroll-stopping posts, videos, and stories using its vast template library and AI-powered tools. You can then schedule and publish directly to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter without leaving the app.
Adobe Express offers a free plan with basic tools, while the Premium version costs $9.99 per month with added social scheduling and branding features.
10. Canva
Last but not least in our featured social media marketing tools is Canva, which has become more than a design tool and is now a full-fledged social media management platform. With Canva, you can design graphics, edit videos, and publish posts to multiple platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and X.
The Content Planner lets you schedule posts directly, while AI-powered features like Magic Write help you draft captions. Canva also provides brand kits, design resizing, and collaboration tools—perfect for teams working remotely.
Canva offers a free plan with generous features, while Canva Pro starts at $14.99 per month.
Final Thoughts
Social media marketing tools are an essential part of any successful business strategy. The tools mentioned in this article provide a great starting point for any business looking to engage its audience on social media and grow its reach. By leveraging these tools, companies can create content, measure performance, and increase their reach on social media in 2025.
Technology
The 10 Best Small Business Budgeting Software for 2025
Published
3 days agoon
June 12, 2025Managing a business means careful planning, from product development to budgeting finances. More so if you’re a small business. This is the reason you need a budgeting software made specifically for you. Here are ten of the best small business budgeting software programs to try out in 2025:
1. Google Sheets
Track and monitor your spending habits with Google Sheets. It is a favorite of many small business owners, as you can use it completely free! It is flexible, robust, and has collaborative features that larger businesses can also appreciate. It has various templates and lets you link it to third-party applications to import your bank transactions automatically.
Google Sheets is free to use; all you need is to create a Gmail account. However, you can purchase Google Workspace if you need more features and larger storage space.
2. Float
Float is a powerful cash flow forecasting and budgeting tool, making it a practical small business budgeting software. It connects directly with your accounting software (Xero, QuickBooks, or FreeAgent) and pulls real-time data to help you track your finances effortlessly.
With Float, you can visualize your cash flow, set budgets, and plan for different financial scenarios without getting lost in spreadsheets. In addition, it offers an intuitive dashboard, giving business owners clear visibility over short- and long-term finances.
Float offers a 14-day free trial. After that, pricing starts at £40 per month, depending on your accounting software and the number of users.
3. Xero
Working mainly as a cloud accounting software, Xero has built-in budgeting features that are useful for small businesses. It can help you generate and track budget and accounting reports. Xero can also manage fixed assets, which many budgeting and accounting software lack.
This small business budgeting software has three subscription plans. Its pricing starts at $29 per month, but they offer discounts that could go as low as $2.90 per month. Each plan lets you get add-ons depending on the features you need. You can get its 30-day free trial to see if it would be an excellent fit for your business.
4. Freshbooks
Create and view estimates and manage your budget easily with FreshBooks. Not only will it help you with budgeting, but it will also help you track income statements, expenses, balance sheets, and other financial statements. Its efficient expense tracking system lets you create and view estimates and manage your budget.
One of the more affordable budgeting apps, you can get Freshbooks for as low as $2.10 per month.
5. QuickBooks
Cloud accounting software Quickbooks is one of the most popular budgeting software for accountants the world over. It is filled with useful features such as expense tracking, budget planning, and custom reporting, among many others. Simply put, it is an all-in-one budgeting and accounting app.
Quickbooks offers a free 30-day trial, but if you want to go ahead and use it, you can choose from its three cost-effective plans. Pricing starts at $3.50 per month.
6. LiveFlow
If you love Google Sheets but want more automation, LiveFlow could be one of the most practical small business organization tools for you. It syncs your accounting data (from QuickBooks Online and others) with your spreadsheets, giving you real-time visibility into your finances without needing to manually update your budget. You can also build custom dashboards and reports right within Google Sheets.
LiveFlow offers custom pricing depending on your business needs.
7. Zoho Books
Zoho Books is a cloud-based accounting software that comes with built-in budgeting tools perfect for small businesses. It lets you create and manage budgets, automate banking tasks, and generate real-time reports. Zoho Books integrates seamlessly with other Zoho apps, such as Zoho Invoice, which is one of the most popular invoicing software for small business ventures.
If you’re looking for budget management software free of charge, Zoho Books offers a free plan for businesses with revenue under a certain threshold, and paid plans start at $15 per organization per month.
8. Relay
A business banking platform, Relay is a budgeting software with small businesses in mind. It allows you to create up to 20 free, no-fee checking accounts to help you organize your money into different categories. It gives you a glimpse of how much money you have in every expense category, among many other helpful features.
Relay offers two pricing plans that will suit any type and size of business. It has a free plan and the Relay Pro that will cost you $30 per business per month. Check out each to know what would suit your small business the best.
9. PocketSmith
Next on our list of small business budgeting software options is PocketSmith, which takes a unique approach to budgeting by letting you view your finances on a calendar. If you’re a small business owner who wants to see the big picture when it comes to forecasting income, expenses, and savings, this could be the best small business budgeting software for you.
Though originally built for personal finance, its flexible features and multi-currency support make it a strong contender for solopreneurs and small business use.
PocketSmith offers a free plan with limited features. Paid plans start at $9.95 per month, with a 14-day free trial of its Premium tier.
10. Finmark
If your small business is ready for growth, Finmark offers robust budgeting, forecasting, and financial modeling features without the need for spreadsheets. You can manage runway, expenses, revenue, and headcount planning, all in one platform. It’s tailored for startups and small teams who need to make data-driven decisions without hiring a full-time CFO.
Pricing starts at $25 per month for one user, with custom pricing for larger teams. A free trial is available to test its core features.
Final Thoughts
Small business owners have a lot on their plate, and having software to make business management easier is always welcome. This list of budgeting software is explicitly designed with limited budgets in mind. They have already been filtered, and it’s up to you to choose the most suitable for your company.
Technology
BeReal App: Will It Ever Survive Its Instagram Clone?
Published
3 days agoon
June 12, 2025Social media trends come and go, everyone’s well aware of this by now. And currently, the app at the center stage is TikTok, the short-video hosting app. However, a new kid on the block is making waves, the BeReal app. Looking at the feedback from TikTok users, it seems that BeReal appears to have exploded so quickly.
What is BeReal App?
Source: Android Police
BeReal app is a new social media phenomenon that operates under a simple premise at works this way:
- Once a day, the app will alert you to take a photo. It will take one from your rear camera and one from your front camera a few seconds later.
- You will have a two-minute interval to take this photo to capture candid images.
- Then, the BeReal app will lay your front photo over your rear photo.
- You can share it with your friends. However, you won’t be able to see their posts until the next day. And if you missed the two-hour window, you’ll have to wait until the next day.
- You can also react to your friend’s posts by sharing a quick selfie attached to their post.
The premise behind these weird shooting windows is to encourage people to share snippets from their lives that aren’t just hand picked from parties or any planned events. But, it’s not the first app to go for the candid angle. Back in 2016, Casey Neistat of YouTube developed an app called Beme. The app encouraged users to take videos with their phones clasped to their chest so that, allegedly, they could stay focused on the moment. Later that year, CNN bought the app but ultimately shut it down in 2018.
BeReal vs Beme
What BeReal had that Beme didn’t was the ability to operate for two years with the increasing number of users showing for it. Based on a BeReal app job posting, the app has more than 10 million daiily users. It also says the company’s goal is to increase this number to over 100 million. Quite an ambitious goal but recent reports project the mid-size social media network Snapchat at about 350 million daily active users.
As Snapchat popularized the concept of communication through disappearing messages, BeReal may be relying on its own style to continue and encourage future partnerships with other businesses. Clubhouse, an audio-based social app that went live around the same time as BeReal, had plenty of activities to back it up, but things have quickly cooled down. It is recently experimenting with new features to make the app nteresting enough to attract more users. Meanwhile, the novelty of BeReal is still fresh, but once the surge of interest from TikTok has mellowed down, it will need to learn to be independent and beat the competitors.
What is an Instagram Candid?
Meta seems to be working on a feature called “Candid Challenges” for Instagram. Discovered by self-described reverse engineer Allessandro Palluzzi, users would be notified once a day to take and share a “candid.” It also copies BeReal right down to the last detail, giving users just two minutes to take the candid.
An Instagram spokesperson told Engadget that the feature was an “internal prototype” and with no users testing the feature. Still, we are yet to see this announced soon in an Instagram update.
While Meta has been the only company confirmed to be working on a BeReal clone, it wouldn’t be surprising if Twitter or TikTok followed suit as well. Twitter, specifically, might see BeReal candid shots a fit for the microblogging platform, but considering its brave attempt at copying Snapchat’s stories and the on-going buyout buzz with Elon Musk, it’ll need to stride carefully.
While BeReal is becoming popular, it faces an uncertain future. Will it end up being defeated by Meta as have many other successful startups that even vaguely have a conflicting interest with its existing properties? Or will it fail to innovate like Clubhouse did and die off after its 15 minutes in the spotlight? It might be a welcome change to the airbrushed faces and saturated filters from Instagram, but BeReal might just end up being a little too real for its own good.
If you’re interested in trying out the BeReal App, download it from the Play Store. Just remember you know how to take a selfie before you start aad that you’ll only get one shot daily.
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