Best Software for Startups, by Function

A new company has about ten software decisions to make, and most can be settled in an afternoon. The accountant, the bank and the payment processor deserve more thought, because they're painful to change later. The rest can be swapped in a weekend if you pick wrong.

This is a buying list, sorted by function. It gives one or two named picks for each, with the price we read on the vendor's site on 2 November 2026. We sell Nautis, but a suite is the wrong way to think about most of these decisions, so ours appears in one short section near the end.

One or two picks for each function

Prices are per month and as of November 2026, in US dollars unless the vendor showed otherwise. Regular prices are shown, since many vendors discount the first few months.

Named picks by function, with the price read on each vendor's site

Function	Picks	Published price	Buy it when
Accounting	Xero, QuickBooks Online	Xero from $27; QuickBooks from $38	Your first invoice or expense
Payments	Stripe, Paddle	Stripe per transaction, rates by country; Paddle 5% + 50¢	Your first paying customer
Banking	Mercury, Brex	Mercury from $0; Brex from $0 per user	Incorporation day
Legal setup	Stripe Atlas, Clerky	Atlas $500 once; Clerky $427 to incorporate	Before you take money or issue shares
HR and payroll	Rippling, Deel	Rippling from $8 per employee plus base fee; Deel from $49 per contractor	Your first hire or contractor
CRM	HubSpot, Attio	Both have a $0 version; Attio Plus $35 billed annually	More than a few live deals
Docs and email	Google Workspace, Notion	Workspace $7 a user; Notion $0 to $20 a member	Day one
Design	Figma	Full seat $16; Collab seat $3	Someone starts designing product
Code and hosting	GitHub, Vercel	GitHub $0 or $4 a user; Vercel Pro $20 a developer	First line of code
Analytics	Mixpanel, PostHog	Mixpanel $0 up to 1M events; PostHog price not read	You have real users

What "best software for startups" means on this page

Selection: products with published prices that a small company could start on this week, chosen by our judgment. Plenty of good alternatives aren't listed, and an entry doesn't mean we've used it.
Evidence: vendor pricing pages, read once on 2 November 2026. We didn't test, score or rank anything, and we spoke to no customers. Two picks in a row aren't in order of preference.
Couldn't confirm: We couldn't read the sites of Gusto, Pipedrive or Canva, so they have no prices here, and we couldn't read the pricing pages of PostHog or Linear. Stripe showed us its India pricing, so we can't quote a US rate.
Region: several picks serve US companies first. Check that a product works in your country before anything else, especially banking and payroll.

Accounting and banking

Ask your accountant before you choose. If they run every client on one package, the discount you'd find elsewhere won't cover the hours they lose. Xero lists Early at $27, capped at 20 invoices and 5 bills, Growing at $59 and Established at $97 a month, with no per-user licence fees. It was offering 90% off for six months on a code ending today, so check whether a new one has replaced it. QuickBooks Online lists Simple Start at $38 for 1 user, Essentials at $85 for 3, Plus at $140 for 5 and Advanced at $340 for 25, with 50% off for three months when we read it, and a 1-user $0 version.

For banking, Mercury costs $0 a month at the base tier, with no fee on domestic and USD international wires, and Plus at $29.90 adds recurring invoices. It states that it's a fintech and not an FDIC-insured bank, with services through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A. Brex lists Essentials at $0 per user, with cards, bill pay and reimbursements, and Premium at $12 per user a month. Start with Mercury if you want an account. Look at Brex once several people are spending company money and need rules around it.

Payments

This choice turns on who handles sales tax. Stripe charges per transaction with no setup or monthly fees. The page we were served listed India's rates, at 2% for cards issued in India and 3% for cards issued elsewhere, so read your own country's page. Billing adds 0.7% of billing volume if you use it for subscriptions. The page we read shows no tax-filing service in that rate, so plan to handle registration and filing yourself or price that separately.

Paddle charges 5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction with no monthly fee, and acts as Merchant of Record. Its FAQ says it collects the right tax, tracks filing deadlines and submits sales tax returns and payments. If you're selling software to customers in many countries and have no finance person, the higher rate may well be cheaper than the alternative. If you sell mainly in one country, or at high volume, run the sums the other way and ask about custom pricing.

Legal setup

Both of these get a company formed with standard documents. Stripe Atlas forms a Delaware company for a one-time $500, including government fees and the first year of registered agent service, then $100 a year after that. It covers the company tax ID, founder equity and 83(b) filing, plus SAFE templates and tracking at no added cost, and US$2,500 in Stripe credits. Clerky prices by the piece: $427 to incorporate, $299 for post-incorporation setup, $9 per SAFE, and hiring paperwork from $19 a month.

Choose Atlas if you want one bundled price, and Clerky if you want to pick the documents yourself or your lawyer prefers it. Neither replaces a lawyer. Pay for an hour of legal advice before a founder split, a priced round or anything unusual. If you need the numbers on a note before that conversation, try the SAFE calculator and the 83(b) election calculator.

HR and payroll

Your first paid person forces this decision. The mistake to avoid is treating a spreadsheet as payroll once tax filings are involved.

Rippling says plans start at $8 per employee a month with a monthly base fee, and that payroll is quote-based, so you won't get a final number without a call. Eligible US venture-backed startups can get 6 months free. Deel publishes more for cross-border teams: $49 per contractor a month, $325 for contractor of record, $599 per employer-of-record employee and $125 per US PEO employee, month to month. Hiring across borders before you have a local entity is the case for Deel. We couldn't read Gusto's site, but Xero lists a payroll add-on powered by Gusto at $36 a month plus $6 per person, and Mercury lists its own payroll at $100 a month plus $50 per person, with the fee waived until 31 December 2026 on Plus and Pro. Team-size thresholds are on our startup team management page.

CRM

Below a dozen live deals, a spreadsheet is honest and cheap. After that, pick something with a next step on each deal. HubSpot's free tools cover 2 users and 1,000 contacts with no time limit. Starter is listed from $7 a seat billed annually, or $10 monthly, as a limited-time offer for new customers against a regular $20. Attio has a $0 version for up to 3 seats, and Plus at $35 a user a month billed annually or $44 monthly, with Pro at $79 or $99.

HubSpot fits a company where marketing feeds sales. Attio fits a small team wanting flexible records and enrichment. Don't use either to run a raise without adapting it, because investor conversations differ from sales. Startup fundraising CRM explains how.

Docs, email and design

Google Workspace gives you email on your domain, with Starter at $7, Standard at $14 and Plus at $22 a user a month on a one-year commitment in the US view. The rupee view we also saw showed Starter at ₹270, so expect your screen to differ. Notion adds a place for written company knowledge: $0, Plus at $10 and Business at $20 a member a month, and Notion Agent and AI Meeting Notes start at Business. A startup of any size can start on Workspace alone. Add Notion when your docs need structure.

Figma's Professional plan charges $16 a month for a Full seat, $12 for a Dev seat and $3 for a Collab seat, with unlimited viewers at no charge. That pricing rewards careful seat assignment, since many teammates only comment and don't need a Full seat. We wanted Canva here for non-designers, but we couldn't read its pages, so we can't confirm anything about it.

Code and hosting

GitHub has a $0 organization with 2,000 Actions minutes a month, and Team at $4 a user with 3,000. Most small teams can stay on the $0 version until they need its paid controls. Vercel's Hobby version costs $0, but the page describes it as for personal, non-commercial use, so a startup shipping a commercial product should budget for Pro. That's $20 a month per developer seat, including $20 of usage credit, with unlimited viewer seats.

For issue tracking, Linear's docs confirm a $0 version and paid plans per user, though we couldn't read its pricing page. AI coding tools have their own section in AI tools for startups.

Analytics

Set up analytics when you have users whose behaviour would change a decision, and not before. Mixpanel's $0 version gives up to 1M events a month and unlimited seats, with 5 saved reports per seat. Its Growth plan moves to $100 a month billed yearly at 1.5M events, or $140 monthly, and reaches $840 or $1,176 at 10M, so watch your event count. PostHog's site confirmed $50K in credits for early-stage teams, but we couldn't read its pricing page, so we can't quote a rate. Its docs say you can set a dollar limit for most products, and that data beyond a limit is lost, so set one with care.

Startup credit programs worth applying for

These programs can pay for a large part of your first year. Conditions vary, and some only work if you're new to the product, so apply before you sign up and pay. Each entry below is the vendor's own description as of November 2026.

Startup programs published by vendors, as of November 2026

Program	What's offered	Main conditions
AWS Activate	$1,000 to start, up to $5,000 for self-funded; up to $200,000 through a provider	Pre-Series B, founded in the last 10 years, paid-tier account; provider's Org ID for the larger amount
Google for Startups Cloud	Up to $350,000 over two years for AI startups; up to $100,000 plus $100,000 for others	Pre-seed through Series A, working MVP, no prior credits above $5,000; excludes subscriptions and Marketplace
Microsoft for Startups	Up to $150,000 in Azure credits	The page we read doesn't state eligibility
Notion	1, 3 or up to 6 months of Business with AI	Non-paying, under 100 employees, work email; 6 months needs a startup partner
HubSpot for Startups	90%, 50% and 25% off over three years; 30% and 15% for affiliates	Pre-seed to Series A with a partner or verified funding; annual commitment; new Professional or Enterprise only
Attio	80% off annual Pro for year one, 30% for year two	Venture-backed, within 90 days of creating the workspace, up to 10 seats
Mixpanel	First year at $0, with 1 billion events	Under 5 years old, up to $8M raised, no other offers redeemed
PostHog	$50K in credits	Early-stage teams; we couldn't read the full terms
Rippling	6 months at no charge	Eligible US venture-backed startups

Two traps. Credits usually expire, so a big number doesn't help if you won't use it in time. And a discount on a Professional plan you don't need still costs more than the $0 version you do.

Where suites fit, briefly

You can skip most of this list's decisions in docs, tasks and CRM by choosing one suite, and that's a fair trade for some teams. All-in-one software for startups covers the options by stage. Nautis is one such product, from $49 a month as of November 2026 with a 14-day trial: a CRM, invoices, runway tracking, task boards and a fundraising CRM under one AI Chief of Staff. It won't replace accounting, payments, banking, legal setup or dev tools. You'd keep most of this page either way.

Before you add anything, total what you already pay with the tool tax calculator. Tools every startup needs gives the order to buy things in, and the startup software stack prices whole stacks at 2, 10 and 30 people.

FAQ

What software does a startup need on day one?

Email on your own domain, a business bank account and something to write in. Accounting follows with your first invoice, and payments with your first customer. Most other tools can wait until the problem appears, and many have a $0 version when it does.

How do startups get free software credits?

Apply to vendor programs such as AWS Activate, Google for Startups Cloud, Microsoft for Startups, Notion and HubSpot. Many ask for funding proof, an accelerator link or a young company. Apply before you start paying, because some, like Notion's, are only for non-paying customers.

Should a startup use Stripe or Paddle?

Stripe suits a company that wants control and can handle its own sales tax. Paddle acts as Merchant of Record for 5% + 50¢ a transaction as of November 2026, and takes on tax collection and filing. A small team selling software across many countries should price both.

Is Mercury a real bank?

Mercury states that it's a fintech company and not an FDIC-insured bank. Its banking services are provided through partner banks, Choice Financial Group and Column N.A. Read its terms, and check that it serves your company's country and entity type.

Do startups need a CRM from the start?

Usually not. A spreadsheet works until you have about a dozen live deals or a second person selling. After that, use a $0 version such as HubSpot's or Attio's, and move up only when you hit a limit you actually feel.

Disclosure: We make Nautis, which gets one short section on this page, so we have an interest in what you buy. Everything else comes from vendors' published pages as read on 2 November 2026, with no hands-on testing, scoring or ranking. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.

Software for startups, one function at a time