Top 13 Affordable AI Tools for Small Businesses & Startups
After the rise of GPT, over 4000 new and useful AI tools for small businesses have swarmed the market. And over 30% of small businesses have already fished out a toolkit from these that can help cut down expenses and potentially double profits.
We’ve studied each one of these tools in complete detail.
And after deep evaluation and analysis, here we’ve shortlisted the top 13 AI tools that your business NEEDS. If you don’t leverage the power of these, you’re practically leaving money on the table!
How so?
Well, these tools are light on the pocket, easy to use, and your quickest route to increased savings and profits. You can execute at least half of your business-related tasks using these — meaning you don’t need to spend money on hiring experts or spend time mastering the skill yourself.
So, without further ado, let’s jump right in!
How did we shortlist the BEST affordable AI tools for you?
Before we present our list of the top 13 must-have AI tools, we need you to understand how we assessed each of the AI tools out there.
For an idea, browse top AI tools. As you can see, there are hundreds of AI tools for each aspect of business. You'll find:
- Best AI tools for designs
- Best AI tools for writing
- Best AI tools for project management
- Best AI tools for lead generation
- Best AI tools for accounting
- Best AI tools for building websites
And so on.
We know that irrespective of business size, there are three essential departments that every business needs in order to run smoothly. These are:
- Production
- Marketing
- Management
So, we studied all AI tools in these three domains and shortlisted the best of the best based on the following factors:
- Performance Accuracy
When it comes to AI, the most important aspect that you need to assess for any tool is performance accuracy (i.e., how accurately it performs whatever it is designed to perform).
Now, how can you possibly determine that?
It’s simple. Sign up for the AI tool that you’ve chosen (most of them come with free credits or 14-day free trials). Give one easy task and one difficult task to the tool. And assess the results. See if you could produce better results manually within a limited timeframe.
For example, let’s say you’re testing an AI tool for creating social media videos. Attempt to create one video by yourself. Use this step-by-step guide on how to create social media videos if you’re completely new to video content creation.
Now, task the AI tool to do the same.
( Just btw, we’ll get into the nitty gritty of what parts of video creation AI can help you with in ChatGPT and Synthesia review below. )
Next, compare the results to see if the AI tool is:
- Actually helping you save any resources like time and money.
- Producing a video that you’d at least rank 8/10 in terms of engagement, visual appeal, and relevancy.
If it checks these two boxes, yep the AI tool has a great performance accuracy. It is the way✊
- Ease of Use
The second aspect we assessed is how easy the tool is in terms of use and operation. We signed up for each of these tools and played with all their features to see possible hurdles and obstacles.
Only those that were a piece of cake made it to this list.
To guide you on how to go about it; any tool that makes you google ‘how to do this’ or ‘how to do that’ on XYZ AI tool is NOT good for your business.
Why? Well, that’s because your primary goal here is to make it easier for yourself to run a business online.
Remember, you are not concerned with CRMs, complex data analysis, engineering, etc. Instead, as a part of the creator economy, you only need the following steps to run a successful business online:
📍Content Creation
📍Community building
📍Monetization
And $$ can convert to $$$$ if you opt for a software-based business instead of a service-based business. That’s why we’ve recorded several SUPER EASY app-building courses for you on RecreateApp.
Even if you do choose to embrace a steep learning curve of complex AI software, you’ll find that such tools are often resource intensive – meaning they’ll cost more money and you might need powerful hardware or a super advanced technical infrastructure to run them.
So, nope. Avoid going that way. Stick to easy tools!
- Affordability
We’ve emphasized this way too many times by now. But again, it cannot be stressed enough. DO NOT INVEST IN TECHSTACK until you make your first dollar online.
- Invest in courses, they’ll get you somewhere.
- Invest in coaches, they’ll get you somewhere.
- Invest in a community, they’ll get you somewhere.
But if you invest your money and time in buying ‘tools’ for a business that hasn’t made you a single penny yet, you’re doing it wrong.
Remember, tools are for easing the job. They are not meant for doing the job. There’s a difference and we’ll come back with another post on that. If you’re interested in knowing it – follow us here.
For now, note that AI tools cost anywhere between $0 to $40,000 per year depending on the type of AI software and its complexity. Below, we’ve shortlisted AI tools for small businesses that are either free or cost less than $200/year.
- Customer Support & Community
Lastly, we don’t want you stuck cluelessly in a situation. So, we assessed how quickly and efficiently customer support of each of these tools respond.
If the customer support wasn’t as promising, we went ahead and checked out the communities of each of these platforms. Only those AI tools made to the top 13 that offer super-efficient customer support, active community, or extensive online knowledge bases.
⚡ If you’re finding it difficult to set up a small business online, join Recreate community support. Share your issue and our small business coaches will do their best to help you take the first step!
Top 13 Affordable AI Tools for Small Businesses & Startups
Now, let’s jump into our list of the best AI tools for small businesses and startups!
- Production
These tools can help you produce ideas, digital products, or marketing material for your existing product or a service that you sell.
- ChatGPT
Overview
ChatGPT is like an all-in-one personal assistant for every business owner. You can depend on this tool for:
- Generating new and unique social media post ideas or video ideas
- Editing emails, LinkedIn text posts, tweets, IG captions, etc.
- Extracting key points from long-form blog posts & articles
- Writing informative product descriptions
- Conducting market research
- Repurposing your original post into Twitter threads, Instagram captions, or YT video scripts
- Collecting and analyzing customer feedback to improve your product/service
- Improving decision-making by analyzing data and predicting consumer behaviors
A lot of people recommend writing social media posts or blog posts using this tool too. While it can do the job perfectly well, it cannot add a flair of your personality or human touch to the written content.
Plus, ChatGPT basically produces a new piece of content by rephrasing content that already exists on the internet. So, it cannot generate truly unique content – which can be damaging to your reputation (and community building). Your readers might realize they’ve read this stuff elsewhere and assume you ‘stole’ the content.
Also, by now, anyone can recognize the way GPT writes (there are AI detection tools too!). So, if someone realizes you haven’t invested the effort to put out real and original content, they drift away from you.
Pricing
- $0 for the free version
- $20/month for the paid version (ChatGPT Plus)
Best Features
Able to converse in 50+ languages
Can generate various types of text content (including tables, lists, etc.)
Can study, analyze, and interpret provided data (think of social media analytics)
Capable of suggesting improvements in business and marketing strategies
Stores all conversations and serves as a mini-database for your ideas
Limitations
No internet access for the free version. Knowledge limited to Sep 2021.
Demands little know-how of prompt engineering
Often reports incorrect statistics and facts
Potential technical glitches and bugs
- Grammarly (GrammarlyGO)
Overview
We’re recommending two versions of Grammarly here; good old Grammarly and the latest GrammarlyGO.
Typically, Grammarly is an AI-powered writing tool that enhances your text to make it grammatically perfect. You can even use the tool to optimize your text for a desired tone. You can make your text sound formal, informal, confident, optimistic, authoritative, serious — whichever way you like it.
All you have to do is type the text on a blank document as shown below or simply copy-paste the text.
The AI machine learning algorithm that powers the tool gives a few suggestions on what you could do to improve the text and achieve your desired output. It’s got a click-and-correct mechanism, so you don’t have to implement the suggestions manually.
With that said, we recommend downloading the free Grammarly Chrome extension to all small business owners, content creators, and startup owners. It can drastically improve your communications and aid greatly in setting a good first impression..
Now, with GrammarlyGO on its way, we believe this AI tool has become even more important for creators of all sorts. GrammarlyGO is more like a fusion of old Grammarly and ChatGPT, so it will act as your personal writing assistant.
Say you’re writing an email and you don’t know how to say a particular sentence in a professional way. You can task GrammarlyGO to do it for you right there on the email-typing window. You don’t even have to switch the tab!
So, it helps save time and your public reputation. Definitely, a must-have!
Pricing
- $0 for the free version
- $12/month for the Premium version
- $15/month for the Business version
Best Features
Smooth user-friendly experience
Can be integrated into different word-processing software
Allows tailoring text to a custom tone
Super quick
Limitations
Sometimes makes the text sound too robotic
The AI algorithm is not trained for slang or GenZ language (you might want to craft some not-so-professional email subject lines to get your lead’s attention)
- Bing Chat
Overview
Bing Chat is an incredibly good AI tool for producing blog content.
Before you’re over the moon, thinking it saves you the entire blog writer or blog team expenditure — stop. No, it doesn’t do that.
However, it can drastically improve your chances of ranking and ensure a high ROI. Or it can give you an awesome head start if you plan to run your business’s blog all by yourself.
How so?
Well, do a deep dive into your niche and find out at least three topics that are:
- Something your target audience will be searching for
- Something you can write an 800 - 1000 words blog post about
If you do not have any content writing or SEO experience, it’ll take you ages to create an outline for this blog post that could help it rank.
Bing Chat cuts the struggle short. Just provide the bot with the topic and ask it to generate an informative and ranking blog post outline for you.
It will give you impressively precise results. Check this out:
I tasked Bing to create an outline for an article titled ‘5 Common Dog Behaviour and Solutions’. It gave me an impressively detailed outline that covers the gist of the first 10 blog posts ranking on Google — SUPER COMPREHENSIVELY.
Here’s another snippet from the same response. Check out how detailed it is!
The great part is you can rely on Bing’s facts and information. There’s rarely a factual error.
It’s even connected to the Internet! So, you can get your hands on the latest info along with the links to sources.
If you have ZERO budget and ZERO time to invest, simply connect all the sentences and your blog post is ready to go. Note that there is no guarantee that the content will rank, but there is still a high chance.
Plus, it reduces the research time required for easy blog topics by half – which saves you and your team loads of time. You can invest the saved time in optimizing the blog post for search engines, adding unique elements, or enhancing the content to stand out.
We also recommend using a combination of Bing Chat and Jasper.ai.
Bing Chat can help you gather and arrange all the information that you need to include in your blog post, while Jasper.ai can add some life to it using proven copywriting frameworks.
But note that Jasper.ai only offers a 7-day free trial. After that, you can use the tool at $39/month.
Pricing
- It’s free!
Best Features
Incredibly accurate data (facts + stats) and cites sources of information
Can generate images and code too
Real-time data & information
Delivers info in desired tone/method
Doesn’t plagiarize text
Limitations
Content not captivating enough to trigger human emotion
Slower responses
Occasional technical bugs and glitches
Requires access to the latest Microsoft Edge
- Flick
Overview
Flick is an excellent AI tool for small businesses and startups to grow their social media.
If you aim to attract your target audience via social media, you will need to post at least one quality post EVERY SINGLE DAY on each chosen social media platform. You’re likely to see positive results (like DMs and subscriptions) in a couple of months. And as per this fact sheet, there’s a 100% higher lead-to-close rate with social media marketing.
On that note, a social media growing AI tool like Flick can significantly ease the job for you. It can help with the following:
- Generate unique and relevant post ideas
- Generate captions in your custom tone
- Schedule your posts to be published on high-reach times
It's a good pick for solopreneurs who happen to be handling all marketing departments by themselves. Eases the job.
However, we do not recommend investing in Flick if it means emptying your bank. There are more useful tools on this list you might want to invest in if you're too tight on budget.
Pricing
- £14/month for Solo Plan
- £30/month for Pro Plan
- £68/month for Agency Plan
Best Features
Can find high-engagement rate hashtags (particularly on Instagram)
User-friendly and simple interface makes understanding analytics super easy
Capable of finding viral posts for specific topics
Limitations
Cannot generate other types of content. This investment is limited to social media content production.
- Synthesia
Overview
91% of consumers want to see more video content from brands. And 8 out of 10 people actually purchase after watching a video.
What's more, videos are more likely to go viral — especially if it's a TikTok or an IG reel.
However, producing one professional video can cost you $50 - $150 per hour
If you're thinking you can just grab your camera and do it, nope that's not how it works. Unless you're a well-established influencer.
So, if it costs $50 - $150 per hour and it takes 5-6 hours to create a two-minute video, you're likely to spend $250 to $2500+ per video. Three videos per month could mean $750 - $7500! That could leave you bankrupt!!🤯
Fortunately, Synthesia solves the problem by eliminating the need for expert videographers and video editors. At only $22.5 per month, you can generate professional-looking videos in three simple steps:
- Write a video script
- Choose a video template or click on ‘new video’ on the Synthesia STUDIO dashboard and start from scratch
- Choose an AI avatar
And there you go! The AI tool will generate a ready-to-publish video for you. Here’s an example of what it could look like:
Embed Video: https://youtu.be/a8UDJfyvvBQ
On Synthesia Studio Dashboard, you can choose from:
- 60+ video templates
- 140+ human avatars
- 120+ languages and varying accents
You can even request a custom avatar with your own voice. It costs about $1000/year, so maybe you can plan for it when you check off major revenue milestones.
Also, apart from converting text to video, you can convert your PowerPoint presentations into engaging talking head videos or screen recording videos too.
Pricing
- $22.5/month for Personal plan
- Custom pricing for Enterprise plan
Best Features
Super easy to use and delivers professional results
Very cheap as compared to manual video production
Highly ethical operating policies
Limitations
Trimming videos can be a bit tricky
Cannot generate video ideas and video script
Realistic but no bloopers 🙃
- Repurpose.io
Overview
Repurpose.io is the best affordable AI tool for content repurposing. It works a lot like Zapier but for content creation. You can set up workflows and generate about 10-15 new pieces of content from just one.
For example, let’s say you regularly create YouTube videos. But you find it difficult to write tweets, blog posts, LI posts, or shoot fresh TikToks and IG reels relevant to the same topic.
You can connect all your accounts to repurpose.io and set up a workflow that sources content from YouTube but has Twitter, TikTok, or Instagram as its destination.
The tool will automatically fetch content from the source, generate snippets of video, and post immediately or as scheduled.
💡In the case of YT videos, you can adjust the progress bar to create a snippet of YT videos of your preferred duration.
You can even insert templates in workflows to further customize the results.
The user interface of this AI tool is simple and easy to navigate. However, it’s not intuitive and could use a bit of alignment with the customer journey.
All in all, it’s affordable and a huge time-saver. If you have a SaaS product and you’ve just begun marketing it, it is definitely for you. This AI tool can take of content repurposing and distribution for you, while you focus more on creating innovative content for promoting your product or innovating the product itself.
Pricing
- $15/month for the Podcaster plan
- $25/month for Content Marketer plan
- $125/month for the Agency plan
Best Features
Wide range of customization options (thumbnails, embed texts, templates, reel covers, etc.)
Can import unpublished content from Google Drive as well
Super easy to use
Limitations
Experience on free trial is sub-standard
- Dall-E 2
Overview
If you haven’t got the budget for hiring a graphic designer, illustrator, or photographer, you can rely on Dall-E 2 to generate media for you. It is an extremely affordable text-to-image AI generator tool.
You can simply give this AI tool a text prompt, in which you can define what you seek. And it will generate approximately four images relevant to the prompt.
NightCafe is a similar tool (powered by Dall-E 2). We recommend trying it out if you want to get an idea of what type of results you can expect.
In terms of pricing, it is super cheap. Each image generated from Dall E-2 costs 3-4 cents. This is almost a 98% saving.
If you hire an artist, illustrator, photographer, or graphic designer, they will charge a minimum of $30 - $40 per deliverable – that too if they’re a beginner. Expert media creators may charge up to $300 -$400 per deliverable.
Pricing
- 3-4 cents per image
Best Features
Generate media in seconds
Can expand the existing image and zoom out to provide more view of what’s going on in the frame
Unique and copyright-free images
Limitations
Complex textual description required
May not be able to handle complex 3D structures
B. Marketing
These tools can help you find the most relevant audience for your business and efficiently distribute marketing content.
- Google Analytics
Overview
Google Analytics was first introduced back in November 2014. It has been every marketer's go-to tool ever since.
Here are some of its key features:
- Reporting and Visualization: It allows generating comprehensive reports for marketing campaigns. Visualization features like graphs enable you to easily interpret data and spot trends, so you can make decisions based on solid data.
- Funnel Analysis: It helps understand the user journey from ad click to conversion. This feature helps identify bottlenecks or drop-off points in the conversion process and enables you to optimize your marketing campaigns at each stage.
- Tag Management: It simplifies the process of adding and managing tracking code on your website or app using Google Tag Manager.
- Smart Goals: It allows you to set specific goals and measure progress to evaluate the success of your marketing campaigns. The goals are automatically tailored to the website’s performance and user behavior.
- Data Activation: It identifies patterns, anomalies, and audience demographics using machine learning algorithms and predictive analysis, It also provides actionable insights to make informed marketing decisions and drive better results.
- Integrations: It integrates Google Analytics with other Google products (like Google Ads and Adsense) and partnered tools for efficient data management.
Expert marketers and novice marketers both agree Google Analytics is an excellent tool to find who is currently visiting your website, blog posts, and different landing pages. It helps track user journeys and figure out which piece of content is performing best and which ones you need to approve.
As a small-business owner or as a startup, this can help tremendously with building a content marketing funnel.
Pricing
- $0 for the free version
- $50,000/year for Google Analytics 360
Best Features
Gain valuable insights about audience demographics, interests, and behavior patterns
Helps figure out how people are finding you
Allow setting up and tracking custom dimensions and metrics
Limitations
Too many features, slightly overwhelming for beginners.
*Visit GA Academy to get the hang of features.
- 1MoreLead
Overview
1MoreLead (a.k.a. OneMoreLead) is an excellent AI tool for B2B startup owners. This tool gives you access to a database of 40 million B2B contacts. You can search relevant prospects by:
- Name
- Title
- Industry
- Country
The tool offers detailed analytics about each tool listed in its database. Using this data, you can reach out to the prospect with a sales pitch, build a connection, and eventually sell your product or service.
It can even automate email communication for you, so you only spend time on super-qualified leads. For small business owners and startup owners, this can mean targeted sales.
Although crafting an indirect and compelling sales pitch will take time, you won’t have to waste your time finding those perfect candidates who really need your product/service.
Pricing
- $99/month for the Freelancer plan
- $199/month for the Startup plan
- $399/month for the Business plan
Best Features
Simple and intuitive UI
Verified contacts
Credits are returned if the listed contact does not respond or the email bounces back
Limitations
It’s a gateway to sales but it does not confirm sales
- MarketMuse
Overview
MarketMuse is basically a content planning and optimization tool. It can help you create content that bridges the gap between you and who you want to reach as a business.
How so? Well, it gives you well-research, data-backed outlines for different long-form content like blog posts, email sequences, landing pages, etc. The outlines are SEO friendly in a lot of ways.
Here’s what you pay for when you use MarketMuse:
- Page and site audits
- Thorough competitive content analysis
- Content clusters
- Content planning
- Keyword research
- Content brief generator
- Content optimization
All of these features serve you in your desired way. Being an AI tool, it’s capable of delivering results that are relevant to your goals and wants.
Pricing
- $0/month for the Freelancer plan
- $149/month for the Standard plan
- $399/month for the Team plan
- Or you can request a custom plan!
Best Features
Suggestions comprehensive enough for beginner SEOs and content creators
Suggestions on what previous content is worth updating and how
Offers good internal and external linking suggestions and helps with authority building
Can generate content using AI
Limitations
Slightly complex user interface
C. Management
These affordable AI tools can help you with basic business administration and security.
- SEON Fraud Prevention
Overview
You are highly susceptible to fraud, scams, and attacks if you’re in any one of the following industries:
- eCommerce
- fintech
- iGaming
- Banking and insurance
- Online lending
- Travel
- Crypto
- Trading
- Buy Now and Pay Later
According to data, phishing attacks have increased by 61% and over 33 billion records have been stolen by cybercriminals. What’s even worse, the cost of a data breach can be about $2.98 million for small businesses.
If you lose your sensitive files, the business would drain all money out of your pockets instead of bringing you cash. And if you lose sensitive customer data, they could even file a lawsuit against you!
Given this, we highly recommend every startup owner and small business owner use SEON Fraud Prevention. It safeguards your business early on and keeps hackers and attackers from draining money out of your pockets.
How so? Well, this AI tool basically uses AI and machine learning to detect potential risks, fraudulent transactions, fake accounts, phishing attacks, data breaches, and account takeover attacks. It will identify the risks for you, alert you so you can take timely action, and help you save time and money that you could lose to fraud.
Pricing
- $0 for the Free plan
- $299/month for the Pro plan
Best Features
Impressive accuracy
Intuitive and user-friendly UI
Real-time monitoring
Great customer support
Limitations
The dashboard is not customizable
It’s not available in other languages
- People.ai
Overview
If you were asked to build a strategic customer acquisition strategy that brings a solid 3x increase to your current revenue and minimizes loss of leads and resources by 3% - 5%, you’d be like:
It’s ok. Cuz same. 🥲
Sales and marketing concepts can be confusing — especially for a first-time entrepreneur with no academic background in these fields.
But it shouldn’t stop you from making your break as a startup founder. It shouldn’t stop you from earning money online!
That’s what we, at RecreateApp, advocate.
Use handy AI tools like People.ai to conquer your knowledge gap and jump into business as soon as you come up with a business idea and build your own SaaS product.
People.ai allows you to set up your sales and marketing goals, track them, and achieve them much more smartly than any other tool out there. How so? Here are a few ways:
- Automatically collects data about promising accounts, so you don’t have to manually capture contact details.
- Gives real-time pipeline analysis and tracks deal activity. This means you have a transparent visual view of how many sales you make this month and how many sales opportunities there are.
- Tells which leads you should prioritize.
- Constantly updates your database and automatically eliminates outdated and incorrect data. It also finds missing information.
When working on a tight budget, you can utilize all of its features by yourself and improvise the efficiency of your sales and marketing efforts. But we recommend investing a bit in a sales rep or sales professional. They can help you make the best of this platform and even quadruple your profits.
Pricing
- $0 for the Free plan
- $50 per user per month
Best Features
Track and analyze sales activity
Track and analyze sales team performance
Impressive data accuracy
Excellent customer support
Limitations
The dashboard is a bit tricky
- Wrike
Overview
Wrike is an affordable AI-based project management tool. This can come in handy for managing your team – whether it comprises contract-based members, freelancers, or permanent employees.
Here are a few reasons we recommend Wrike over all other project management tools:
- It sends quick real-time alerts to your phone in case of any blockers.
- Its AI project risk prediction feature predicts risks timely and eliminates delays.
- You can convert your handwritten notes into digital documents by simply taking a picture.
- It integrates Siri and Google Assistant. So, you can talk to your Wrike app and get stuff done.
- It can automatically create sub-tasks from the main tasks.
If you’re working independently, it gives a lot of value than any other project management tool out there. It’s smarter, and hence, capable of saving lots of time.
Even as you expand, you won’t be disappointed with the money you invest in this tool. Because Wrike is much more than just a management space. It’s a complete digital workplace.
Pricing
- $0 per user per month for the Free plan
- $9.80 per user per month for the Team plan
- $24.80 per user per month for the Business plan
- Custom quotes for Enterprise and Pinnacle plan
Best Features
Prevents duplication of data
Easy to track deadlines
Automatically assigns tasks in sequential workflows
It can track hours and work time
Limitations
Doesn’t show team member’s profiles, current workload, and availability in one place
End Note
Hope you enjoyed our list of the top 13 affordable AI tools for small businesses and startups!
Before we sign off, we’d like to remind you again: AI tools can ease the job, but they cannot do the job.
They can help you scale your business much more quickly and easily, but they cannot independently run the business. You will still have to show up every day to decide what should be done and you can use these tools to do just that.
If you need help with determining what’s the best route to scale your business quickly, connect with successful entrepreneurs who started at the same spot as yours on our form: Recreate Community.
And if you haven’t settled on a business idea yet, visit app.recreate.com. We’ve got a massive library of easy-to-follow tutorials on how to start app-based businesses in different industries. We’ve even got step-by-step tutorials on how to create your own versions of apps like Spotify, Cameo, Twitter, Instagram, and much more!