Essential technology checklist for small businesses (2026)

When you’re starting a small business, choosing the right tech is essential to getting things off the ground. Technology will help you reach customers, track sales conversations, manage your books and more.

It’s also great for simply keeping you organised – a challenge that often gets overlooked in the first few months of starting up.

Naturally, you want tech to be easy to use and intuitive. It should serve your current needs and be flexible enough to grow with your business. And, crucially, it shouldn’t cost the earth.

We’ve put together a useful checklist for small businesses that covers the key areas of your business and how technology can help. It’s based on our experiences and years of working with business owners like you across the UK.

Nine important small business technologies

1. Set up your business website

Your website is the window to your business. It’s not just a place to showcase your products and services – it’s a vital part of building trust with your customers.

It’s normal to be apprehensive about building your own website, particularly if you aren’t necessarily tech-savvy. But there are many great budget-friendly options for small business owners that make the process simple and quick.

Squarespace is a popular option for beginners. You can choose a template based on the type of website you want or the sector of your business.

For example, website types include:

• online store

• blog

• launch page

And website topics include:

• art and design

• food

• events

• travel

Squarespace also has in-house tools like analytics and marketing dashboards, so you can understand where your sales are coming from.

If you want something more advanced, a lot of business owners opt for WordPress. It offers greater flexibility when it comes to customising your site and you can access powerful plug-ins, but getting up and running takes more time.

Retailers can use platforms like Shopify, which allow you to easily create an online store and even manage inventory sold through different channels.

Read more:

• Website building checklist: What small business owners need to consider

• How to build a small business website on a low budget

2. Create a visual identity for your business

Having a clear brand identity will make your business look more professional, cohesive and trustworthy in the eyes of your customers. It’s something you can create yourself too, using online tools:

• Coolors lets you create a colour palette. You can ‘lock’ colours you like, generate complementary colours and view different shades.

• FontPair matches two fonts – one for headers, one for body copy – so you can see what looks good together.

• Hatchful by Shopify asks you to fill in your industry and preferred visual style (for example, bold, reliable or elegant) and produces a free business logo. You can then edit the colours and font.

• Use Adobe Express to create branded images for your business. There are templates for everything, plus free photos, graphics and icons.

3. Start building your business community

Building a community around your business allows you to get feedback, find brand advocates and make sales.

That can start as a WhatsApp or Facebook group, or an email list. Think about what platforms your ideal customers use already and what fits with your communication style.

You’ll need to choose an email marketing platform to send email updates to your list. Mailchimp is a popular service. Its free plan lets users send emails to up to 2,000 subscribers, with a limit of 12,000 emails per month.

Read more:

• Learn how to create an excellent email newsletter

• WhatsApp Business app: How to build a community for your business

4. Track sales conversations in a spreadsheet or CRM

You don’t necessarily need expensive technology to record sales leads at an early stage – something simple like Google Sheets would work. List names, job titles, companies and sectors, plus whether the person is a warm or cold lead.

When your sales activity increases, a customer relationship management (CRM) system will organise customer data, log conversations and forecast sales growth.

HubSpot CRM and Capsule CRM are popular tech options for small business owners, but Salesforce Essentials could be worth the investment if you’re dealing with leads in larger volumes.

Read more:

• When to switch from spreadsheets to CRM

• Best CRM software for small businesses (2025)

5. Keep on top of your accounts

Having a good grasp of your numbers is essential when you’re running a small business. You need to track your expenses, set aside money for tax and monitor your sales and profitability.

Luckily, accounting technology has come a long way and there are plenty of tools designed to make the process simple for small business owners.

Accounting software plugs into your bank account, making it easy to track and label transactions, and produce reports. Popular accounting software includes Sage, Xero and QuickBooks.

Read more:

• How to choose the right accounting software for your small business

6. Schedule posts on social media

The reach and affordability of social media makes it essential technology for small business owners. But while it’s easy to create a profile on each platform, keeping track of different social accounts can become a full-time job in itself.

It’s worth using a scheduling tool, which lets you write social posts in advance and then publishes them at your chosen time.

Popular tools include Buffer and Hootsuite.

Read more:

• How to save time by automating your social media marketing efforts

7. Organise behind-the-scenes processes

Most people already have something that keeps them organised, whether it’s a calendar or trusty notebook. And that’s fine – but there are some great tech tools that can help you take that to the next level.

Here are some common project management tools that work well for small businesses:

• Monday.com: “Turn strategy into impact across projects, sales, marketing, IT, and engineering with AI agents and work products.”

• Trello: “The ultimate tool to boost your productivity. Escape the clutter and chaos – stay efficient with Inbox, Boards, and Planner from anywhere.”

• ClickUp: “Our mission is to make the world more productive. To do this, we built the everything app for work - Tasks, Docs, Goals, and Chat.”

Storing and sharing documents

Even if it’s just you in the business, using a cloud-based storage system like Dropbox or Google Drive is more secure than hosting your own files. They allow you to save big files online, like images for products or presentations.

Edits to Google Docs or Sheets are saved as you go too, so there’s no risk of losing an afternoon of work if your wi-fi drops out.

Mostly, these systems push you to create a process for keeping your business organised. Saving documents to your desktop might work for you right now, but it will be a nightmare to unpick if you team up with freelancers or hire staff in future.

8. Manage to-do lists

To-do lists tend to get complicated when you’re running a business and, as a result, things can slip through the cracks.

Having one central place for different tasks should give you a clear overview of everything you have on your plate.

We’ve found that this makes it easier to work in blocks – you can work through all the items on your admin list and then tackle your sales list for example, rather than dipping into every area of the business.

With Trello, which we mentioned above, you create tasks as ‘cards’ and assign them to columns.

It’s particularly useful for planning projects, since you can move tasks to show what’s in progress and what’s done. You can also tag people to cards if you’re collaborating with other people on a project.

For something simpler, Todoist is an app that does exactly what it says on the tin – it’s a digital home for your to-do lists. The free version lets you create lists for up to 80 projects.

Read more:

• Time blocking: How to make your working day more productive

• Communication tools that are great for small business

9. Stay in touch with your team

These are vital if you want to maintain regular contact with a co-founder, supplier, freelancer or colleague.

You can use them to speak to people one-on-one or in groups. Some apps have extra features for managing projects, sharing files, collaborating and so on.

Common apps for staying in touch with your team include Google Meet, Slack and Teams.

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