20+ Must-Have Tools for Running a Profitable Website

Running a website goes far beyond just actually creating one, manually or with a content management system. If you want to have a technically flawless website that brings profits and customer satisfaction, you do need a bunch of additional tools to optimize everything you can, track your progress, establish the connection between you and your clients, and so on.

So here I am to help you. In this guide, I’ve collected 20 tools that will make your website running routine easier.

1. Who.is

Who.is is a tool you will need at the earliest stage of your website deployment when you’re choosing a domain name. Who.is lets you quickly check if the domain name of your preference is available, and what are the extra options if it’s not. In addition, you will get the information on the price, registrar, and the current owner if the domain is already taken.

Basically, all you need to do is enter the desired domain or keywords that you are willing to include in it. The tool will perform a domain whois search, whois IP lookup, and search the whois database for relevant information concerning domain registration and availability.

Note that many other tools of the same functionality still pull the data from Who.is, but can ask you to provide payment details to start using them. I doubt that you’d want to pay for what you can get for free.

2. Google Analytics

Google Analytics doesn't even need any additional introduction. This free tool is super popular among website owners, as it lets you analyze your website's traffic, your visitors' behavior, their demographic information, physical location, the exact time users spend on particular web pages, devices your website is visited from, etc. Google Analytics also lets you track your ad campaigns, so you can make changes in time to optimize their performance. On top of that, the tool helps a lot with A/B testing.

Google Analytics offers a variety of SEO and marketing metrics for you to keep an eye on. The most important of them will help you:

  • Track conversions. Once you set your marketing Goals (visits to a specific URL, purchases, signups, etc.) in your Google Analytics, the tool will start tracking the number of times visitors complete a certain goal on your website, and where these visitors are located geographically.
  • Monitor the number of unique visitors landing on your pages. This is what the Users metric is needed for. The tool assigns each user a unique ID, or client ID, that's stored in a browser's cookie. So when users come back, GA marks them as returning visitors.
  • See how visitors interact with your site. This is where metrics like Sessions, Bounce Rate, Pageviews, Average Session Duration, etc. enter the game.
  • Track when a visitor comes from Google Ads. Enable auto-tagging in Google Ads to tag each of your links so that Google Analytics is able to distinguish users coming from Ads.
  • See where your most profitable customers come from if you sell anything on your website. You can do this by setting up ecommerce tracking.
  • Customize reports. This feature lets you create reports with the data relevant to your business. What’s more, you can export the reports in PDF format and show them to your clients.

3. SEO PowerSuite

SEO PowerSuite is a powerful SEO toolkit that consists of four independent tools. Each tool covers a different SEO aspect, from technical audit to backlink outreach, with free versions available for each tool. Let’s have a closer look at each app:

  • WebSite Auditor, as it’s clear from the name, is a tool for a comprehensive website audit, including technical and content issues. WebSite Auditor lets you check the website structure, redirects, and all the issues related to indexing, encoding, on-page, and localization. In addition to these basic things, the tool lets you analyze Core Web Vitals, create a keyword map, etc. In terms of content, you can use the tool to audit any page on your website and see the overall optimization level based on your top SERP competitors and the exact areas where your page falls behind. For every issue on your site, WebSite Auditor gives a set of optimization hints for further improvement. Download WebSite Auditor
  • Rank Tracker is perfect for deep keyword research and performance tracking. The tool offers 20+ methods of finding new keywords, from Google Autocomplete to competitor research. It also lets you check keyword difficulty, SERP features (so you can decide on the most relevant type of content), semantically group keywords, track how your positions change over time, etc. Download Rank Tracker
  • LinkAssistant covers link building and link management needs. The tool lets you find backlink prospects of any type you need (guest blogging, reviews, etc.), collect contacts, check the latest backlinks of your competitors, and so on. LinkAssistant also evaluates the prospect’s quality (domain authority, the number of social media shares/likes, indexing details). The tool lets you immediately contact your prospects with a ready-made email template (still, you can customize it any way you want), and monitor the backlink status once you get one. Download LinkAssistant
  • SEO SpyGlass is a tool for auditing your own backlinks and spying on your competitors, for example, to find new backlink ideas. SEO SpyGlass can help you track the overall quantity of backlinks, spot any suspicious spikes or falls, evaluate backlinks’ quality, and even get rid of toxic backlinks by creating a disavow file and submitting it to Google. Download SEO SpyGlass

4. Awario

Awario is a tool for tracking brand mentions on social media. As you may know, linkless brand mentions do matter for SEO, and especially for local SEO, which is all about entities. As Google ranks entities based on how notable they are, it’s nice for you to know how often people mention your brand and what the context of those mentions is.

In addition to SEO goals, Awario works great in terms of reputation management, as you can track what people say about your brand, work out the solutions for negative mentions, and shape your marketing strategy to avoid negative mentions in the future.

All in all, Awario (free version available) provides you with:

  • a full list of brand mentions for you to be the first one to react to them;
  • tracking mentions for keywords in any language and all across the Internet;
  • powerful analytics to track the number of your mentions and spot top influencers;
  • ability to log in from literally any type of device, be that a PC, a smartphone, etc.;
  • set up email alerts if you need your new mentions delivered right to your inbox.

5. AgencyAnalytics

AgencyAnalytics is a powerful tool designed to help marketing agencies enhance their reporting and analytics processes.

Source: https://agencyanalytics.com/

With over 80 marketing integrations, it allows agencies to gather all of their client’s marketing and website data in one place. For example, AgencyAnalytics monitors specific website KPIs like traffic, bounce rate, and conversion rates, helping clients grow their online presence.

With customizable dashboards and automated reports, agencies reclaim their billable hours by focusing on what really matters—growing their clients' businesses.

Here are some of the top benefits of AgencyAnalytics:

  • Simplified Reporting: Generate comprehensive reports effortlessly with data from multiple sources, all in one place.
  • Customizable Reports & Dashboards: Tailor your dashboards to highlight the metrics that matter most to your clients, ensuring clear and effective communication.
  • Report Automation: Utilize tools like Smart Reports to generate reports in 11 seconds or less and automate your report-sending schedule, freeing up more time for strategic planning and execution.

6. Stripe

If you're to accept any payments on your website, then you’ll need a dedicated payment processor. I suggest Stripe here. The tool is pretty affordable with pay-as-you-go pricing starting from 2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge.

Stripe is a third-party payment processor that fits businesses of any scale, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. The tool’s functionality lets you process online, international, and B2B payments, and can be incorporated into any software or mobile app. What’s more, Stripe has no monthly fees.

Here’s a brief overview of the benefits you can get from Stripe’s functionality:

  • save time, as embedding checkout on your site requires a single line of JavaScript;
  • create a custom checkout design with the help of the Elements feature;
  • process payments worldwide, as Stripe supports both international and local payment methods, multiple currencies, and digital wallets such as Apple Pay;
  • get payments without delays, as the tool optimizes routing paths through direct integrations with card networks like Visa, MasterCard, and American Express;
  • accept Android and iOS in-app payments.

7. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is another useful website optimization tool that is integrated with your Google Analytics account and visually demonstrates how visitors interact with your pages. Prices start from $24/mo with a 30-day free trial.

The visual reports by Crazy Egg are as follows:

  • The Heatmap report lets you see the highest areas of click activity on any of your web pages. The warmer is the color, the higher is the level of user activity, and vice versa;
    Heatmap report of Crazy Egg
    Source: https://www.crazyegg.com/
  • The Scrollmap report is great for finding a perfect spot for placing your call-to-action button, as it shows the most popular scroll depth of your webpage;
    Scrollmap report of Crazy Egg
    Source: https://www.crazyegg.com/
  • The Confetti report displays color-coded dots that represent individual clicks, which you can further segment by various metrics (time on site, OS, geography, etc.);
    Confetti report of Crazy Egg
    Source: https://www.crazyegg.com/
  • The Overlay report may help if you need to see what CTA elements on the page receive the most clicks so that you can find the best spot to place a link to a converting page.
    Overlay report of Crazy Egg
    Source: https://www.crazyegg.com/

8. Grammarly

Grammarly is a free Chrome extension that instantly proofreads any text you are writing on your website or blog, corrects your grammar, punctuation, style, and offers you accurate, context-specific suggestions.

The tool can be also used with Google Docs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and almost everywhere else on the web where there’s a text input field.

All in all, Grammarly can save you a lot of proofreading resources and lets you improve your grammar skills. Still, if you’re writing texts with some specific terms in them, you’ll need to double-check on the tool’s corrections — it may simply not know some words. But you’re free to add them to your Grammarly dictionary.

9. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most popular tools for email marketing. It lets you create different types of newsletters and ad campaigns and send them to your audience. As for the pricing, you can use MailChimp’s free version if your amount of monthly sends doesn’t exceed 10k.

If you have an ecommerce website, you can easily connect it to MailChimp. The tool will instantly get the order and contact details of your customers to easily set up remarketing and follow-up campaigns.

The tool offers you a rich collection of ready-made email layouts, all customizable in the drag-and-drop editor. Still, if you want a brand-new letter design, you are free to create it with an HTML editor.

You can also sort out your subscribers by specific segments. For instance, those who have opened a specific campaign or those who have accomplished a certain goal on your site.

Moreover, MailChimp lets you easily track your campaign performance, i.e. see the total number of messages sent, how many of them were actually opened and clicked.

10. Sleeknote 

Sleeknote is a tool that can help you convert your website’s visitors into paying clients by collecting their emails. Prices start from €49/mo (>$54/mo), including a 7-day free trial.

Sleeknote lets you create various pop-ups to ensure successful email capture. You can place these pop-ups strategically on your website to make them relevant to the customer journey stage.

In addition to email capture, you can use Sleeknote to navigate customers’ shopping experience and promote your special offers.

The tool can also be integrated with your email service provider (MailChimp is in the list) to automate sending emails to your new subscribers.

11. Disqus

Disqus is a commenting system that can be installed anywhere on your website where you’re planning to accept comments from your users. Prices start from $12/mo with 30 days of a free trial.

Disqus
Source: https://disqus.com/

The tool provides a smooth user experience: customers can either create a Disqus account or login with Facebook, Twitter, or Google to start commenting. Users can also upvote or downvote comments and subscribe to thread updates.

In addition to user experience, Disqus also offers a lot of features for a website owner. So, you can monitor engagements (the number of reads, comments, and interactions) and even monetize engagement by placing ads in the comment threads.

12. MightyCall

MightyCall is a virtual phone system that provides your employees with a business phone line. This tool is especially important if your business provides support via phone, and your team works remotely. Pricing starts from $9/mo, with 7 days of a free trial included. The tool has a mind-blowing set of features.

MightyCall lets you make business calls from any type of device, automate greetings, record your conversations, etc. What’s more, you can use MightyCall for your own teamwork — set up conferences, distribute calls, create call queues, etc.

MightyCall
Source: https://www.mightycall.com/

13. Tawk.to

Tawk.to is a free tool that lets you implement life chats on your website so that your customers can easily contact the support team and instantly get professional advice on the problem they have.

Live chats by Tawk.to are easy to customize, so you can make a chat to match any brand style. You can also easily localize your chats for any region — your clients will surely appreciate this.

The tool lets you track chat progress, monitor customer behavior, filter messages, ban spammers, etc. Tawk.to has a pretty nice knowledgebase of ready-made short messages, so you may not worry about being late with a response.

Tawk.to
https://www.tawk.to/

14. Piktochart

Piktochart is a great tool to create infographics and visualize any data without a professional designer. People do love infographics, so having some on your website will give you an engagement boost. The tool has a free version, which may be enough to cover the needs of a small website.

In addition to infographics, Piktochart allows you to create informative and visually appealing presentations, reports, posters, and flyers. If you have little to no experience with any visualization tools, that's fine. Piktochart offers several free tutorials.

There's also an opportunity to import your data from a Google spreadsheet and visualize it straight away.

15. Google Structured Data Markup Helper

Google Structured Data Markup Helper is a free Google tool that will let you generate Schema markup without any coding skills. Search engines use structured data to better understand the content and form rich snippets in SERPs, so having schema on your pages increases your chance to stand out from your SERP competitors.

The tool offers 12 Schemas, which is more than enough for an average website.

To generate a Schema, you only need to choose the Schema type and mark all the necessary elements on your webpage. The tool will then generate a piece of code for you to add to your page.

Note: always test your schema with Google Rich Results Test before making it live on your page.

Also keep in mind that most ecommerce CMSs have Schema integrated by default, so you may not bother with markup generators and simply fill out product information in your CMS admin. If a CMS doesn’t have a default Schema generator, you can always fix this with plugins.

16. Google Search Console

It would have been weird not to mention it. Search Console is a free native Google tool for auditing a website’s overall performance and health.

GSC is a must for every website, as it lets you track your webpages’ performance, check indexing issues, test page experience, etc. In Search Console, you can also find clues to better content optimization: see if any of your pages get to Google Discover, check if Google sees your FAQs and rich results, and find underperforming snippets.

Moreover, Search Console is a proven way to check if your website got under any manual sanctions from Google.

Also, if you have made some drastic changes on your website, GSC will let you request recrawling of your pages or resubmit an updated sitemap (you can generate one with WebSite Auditor). This way, Google may notice those changes quicker.

17. PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is a free tool to check if your pages pass the Core Web Vitals assessment, both on mobile and desktop.

As Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor, you have to consider this metric a lot and fix anything that prevents from providing smooth user experience.

If the tool spots any issues, it will show you the opportunities for improvement:

Still, checking each and every URL on your website may be a tiring task, so I’d suggest using PageSpeed Insights when you create a new page or seriously update an existing one. This will help you ensure that your changes will not affect the website’s overall position.

18. Google Optimize

Google Optimize is a free tool and Chrome extension for A/B testing. It lets you optimize your website pages so that they get as much traffic and revenue as possible.

Google Optimize allows you to create different versions of your pages (no matter how many, you’re not limited to two variants) and tracks how users tend to interact with them (GA access for more precise data required). 

One of the most convenient features of this tool is its visual editor. It lets you edit your pages right in the browser via HTML source and JavaScript without any coding skills at all.

With Google Optimize, you can actually test every element of your site: headlines, images, CTAs, colors, graphics, and many more. You can also track how new pages or page elements perform against their original versions, and update the pages accordingly. In addition, the tool lets you target different audiences with your test (based on region, behavior, UTM parameters, etc.).

19. OneSignal

OneSignal lets you implement 4 types of push notifications on your website: user messages, transaction messages, conversion drivers, and promos. The tool has a free version and is compatible with custom-built websites as well as those created with website builders and CMSs.

In addition to website notifications, OneSignal lets you create mobile and in-app push notifications if you need them.

To start sending push notifications, you need to copy the piece of code generated by the tool and paste it on your website. Then you can go to OneSignal’s editor and create a notification you need. Paid Pro version ($99/mo) includes advanced analytics that can help you track the performance of your notifications and see how users of different segments interact with them.

With OneSignal, you can also A/B test your push notifications to see which one works best and eventually choose the best variant for your website.

20. CSS Hero

CSS Hero is a website customization tool for WordPress and Shopify themes. Prices start from $19/year.

This tool is integrated with Unsplash, so you actually have an almost unlimited library of images to use on your website. In addition to a rich сollection of visual aids, CSS Hero supports a vast variety of fonts — you can use those of Google Fonts, Typekit, and even upload your custom ones.

If you want to add a video background, use the Coverr library, which is also integrated with the platform.

All in all, you’re free to experiment with colors and backgrounds, pick ready-made combinations, create snippets, slideshows, and actually customize any single thing on your website.

If you think that highly customized themes will harm your page speed, I’m here to calm you down — CSS Hero lets you minify all the files without losing their quality, so the user experience will not be affected.

21. HootSuite

HootSuite is a tool for posting to multiple social media accounts from a single place. Plans start from €39/mo (>$43/mo), 30 days of a free trial included.

The tool integrates social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. You can write and schedule posts ahead, taking into consideration peak engagement times for every platform.

HootSuite
Source: https://www.hootsuite.com/

HootSuite also lets you promote your posts, so there’s no need for switching between the advertising accounts anymore. The platform also has in-built analytics, which lets you track your social media success and timely adjust your posting strategy.

22. Uniqode (formerly Beaconstac)

Exploring newer opportunities to boost your website's visibility? Uniqode is your solution. This versatile QR Code generator is designed to enhance user engagement, be it for your website or any other campaign. Trusted by major brands like Pepsi, Amazon, and Nestle, Uniqode offers essential features, including:

  • Craft QR Codes that match your brand perfectly with logos, colors, and patterns for a personalized touch and redirect your users to and from your website easily.

  • Supports various QR Code types: digital business cards, social media profiles, app
    downloads, WiFi QR code and more.

  • Get insightful data on scans, user engagement, and geographic trends through built-in and Google Analytics.

  • Even without technical skills, use the intuitive interface to swiftly create and deploy QR Codes.

  • Trust in our GDPR and SOC-2 Type II compliance for data security.

  • Enjoy 5000+ integrations with CRMs, sales, and HR tools like Zapier and Salesforce.

 

To sum it up

Of course, there are a lot more tools out there that make the lives of website owners much easier — these are different CMSs, design tools, and tons of alternatives to those tools I’ve just covered above. By the way, what tools do you find helpful for businesses in your niche? You are welcome to share in the comments.

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