Tool Stack for a 4-Person Remote Startup

At Pixelic, we depend on tools and systems to make remote work easier and more efficient. If you're a 100% remote team, it's crucial that you have the right tools to use because you don't have the luxury of having others right next to you. Many things needs to be done asynchronously and should be automated.

These days, we have a good selection of tools to choose from, and these tools allow us to focus on what really matters for us: making remote work as seamless as possible.

Currently with the following tools, we spend about ~$500/month. How many tools do you use and how much do you spend?

Productivity/Work management

• Asana (free) — in our opinion, Asana is one of the best project management app out there. We track tasks, have a lightweight CRM for fundraising.
• Slack ($32/mo.) — Slack is where we essentially live. We chat, exchange thoughts, images, videos, and much more.
• Notion (free) — one of our team members was on the early, early list of users for Notion. They gave him lifetime access. We use Notion for documenting stuff and take meeting notes.
• Zoom ($10/mo.) — We always go by the mantra, “Do asynchronous work most of the time, and real-time sync on a need-to-basis.” There are times we need to sync real-time.
• Gsuite ($25/mo.) — Email, calendar, file storage, and google documents.
• Clockwise (free) — Calendar AI app that helps you secure focus-time. Also has multi-calendar syncs so you don’t have to double book calendars.
• Toggl (free) — Toggl is a simple time tracking tool for you to track your working hours. With Toggl, you can track how many hours you worked each day and what you worked on.

Product/Tech

• Figma (free) — Interface design tool that has real-time collaboration features. Also used to create prototypes.
• Pixelic (free) — We use our own tool daily! Design feedback and collaboration tool that integrates seamlessly with Slack and Figma. You can also convert feedback into tasks directly from the comments.
• Gitlab (free) — Git management.
• Mixpanel (free) — Track product analytics data, understand user behavior and engagement.

Marketing

• Hubspot ($80/mo.) — CRM and marketing automation. We use Marketing Professional and free features only.
• Adriel.ai (19% of ad budget) — Performance marketing as a service. They optimize our ad campaigns and take a commission from the budget. No retainer fee required.
• Intercom ($39/mo.) — Chat solution with event-based email automation.
• Zapier ($24.99/mo.) — an absolute need for us to connect various tools together. For example, if a person joins our waitlist from our landing page, we’d need that person’s information on Hubspot as well.
• Ghost ($36/mo.) — If you don’t want to bother building a blog/CMS from scratch, Ghost is your best option. Search engine optimized, great content management, and has a beautiful theme to patch onto your text.
• Landen ($29/mo.) — Amazing no-code landing page builder. Great templates and customizable features.
• Loom ($8/mo.) — Used when we record our screens to explain a bug or a feature.
• Dropbox Paper (free) — Great for writing content.
• Adobe Creative Suite ($31.49/mo.) — Graphic design needs for branding, content, etc.

Ops

• Captable.io (free) — Captable management for startups.
• Gusto ($39/mo. base, $6/mo. per person) — Payroll management for US-based employees.
• Quickbooks (free) — Standard bookkeeping software. Free until we lose our accountant discount (then $8/mo.)
• Brex — Business credit card for startups.
• Earth Class Mail ($129/mo.) — ECM provides a business address, corporate mail system where they accept any mail and scan/destroy upon request. Everything done online.
• Mercury (free) — Banking designed for startups.