It takes a ton of software to run an online business. In each category, there are several options. Some work better than others depending on your needs. The following are some recommendations.

Ecommerce Platform

BigCommerce – Truly the best platform on the market for selling online. While they target mid-market customers (those doing sales in the 1-5 million range), I’ve found it to be the best software hands-down whether you’re just starting out or have hundreds of products.

Blogging Platform

WordPress – It’s the standard in blogging. It used to be a lot more difficult to use, but now that they’ve added the block editor, it’s really straightforward and manageable.

Online Learning Platform

In this category, I’ve experimented with a few.

Thinkific – This one is my favorite for several reasons – it’s easy to set up, easy to add more courses, and is cost competitive. They have various tiers (even a free version) and you can upgrade as your course business grows.

Graphic Design

Canva – Hands-down, Canva is the best. In my office, we use Canva every-single-day. Whether it is a social media post, blog post graphic, flyer, or a product picture, this is what we use. We upgraded to Pro years ago. This allows us to use the automatic background remover, gives us access to a huge library of stock photos, and allows us to upload additional fonts. I really can’t say enough about what a huge asset Canva is to my business.

For the Photoshop fans out there, yes, Photoshop is a lot more powerful. But you need the equivalent of a master’s degree of experience to use it properly. For what we need, Canva does the trick.