Tools Every Startup Needs: A Day-One Checklist

You're about to be offered forty free trials. Almost none of them matter this week, and a few of the boring ones you'll be tempted to postpone matter a great deal, since fixing them later costs real money. Mixing personal and company money, or letting a founder's personal email own the company's accounts, are classic examples.

This is the list we'd hand a first-time founder. It uses a US path as the example, since that's what most of the named products are built around. If you're incorporating elsewhere, the jobs stay the same and the vendors change, and Indian founders have their own page. Have a lawyer and an accountant check the legal and tax parts, because this page doesn't replace either.

The day-one checklist: tools every startup needs

Seven jobs, one row each. Prices come from each vendor's page as of November 2026, and they're examples of a sensible default. You don't have to use these particular brands.

Seven jobs to cover first, with a sensible default and its published price

Job	A sensible default	Published cost	Why it can't wait
Legal entity	Stripe Atlas for a Delaware company	US$500 once, including government fees and a first year of registered agent, then US$100 a year	You can't sign contracts or take investment properly without one
Bank account	Mercury, which is a fintech and not a bank; its banking runs through partner banks	$0 on the base plan. Plus is $29.90 a month	Mixed personal and company money makes bookkeeping and legal separation harder
Domain and email	A domain through Cloudflare Registrar, plus Google Workspace Business Starter	Domains at registry cost with no markup. Workspace $8.40 per user a month, or $7 on an annual plan	Every other account hangs off this address
Accounting	Xero Early	$27 a month at the regular price	Your accountant and tax filings need clean records from the first transaction
Contracts	Cooley GO templates, with a lawyer for anything unusual, and Dropbox Sign Essentials to sign them	Templates listed on the site, cost not stated there. Dropbox Sign $15 a month	Founder IP assignment and vesting get expensive to fix later
Password manager	Bitwarden Teams	$4 per user a month, billed annually	Passwords shared in chat are hard to revoke when someone leaves
Analytics	Google Analytics, or Plausible if you want something simpler	$0, or $9 a month at 10k monthly pageviews	You can't look back at traffic you didn't record

Two entity notes. Delaware suits companies planning to raise from US investors, and our Delaware C-corp guide goes through the choice. Atlas also files your 83(b) election, which has a short legal deadline and is painful to miss, so read the 83(b) calculator page even if you go another route.

Do them in this order

The order matters, because each step needs something from the one before. If you're using a formation service, the first three happen almost together.

Agree the split before you file. Sign a founders' agreement covering equity, vesting and who owns what. Set this down while everyone is still friendly.
Form the company and get a tax ID. You need the entity before a business bank account, and most banks need the tax ID. Atlas says you can bank and accept payments through Stripe before the ID arrives.
Buy the domain, then set up company email. Do this before signing up for anything else, so that every future tool sits under a company address and not someone's Gmail.
Open the bank account. Pay all company costs from it from here on. Founder-paid expenses need recording, so stop creating them.
Connect accounting. Mercury lists a bank feed into QuickBooks Online and Xero. Set up your books with a simple chart of accounts, and find an accountant before your first tax deadline.
Turn on the password manager and two-factor sign-in. Do this while you have five accounts and not fifty.
Add analytics to your site. It takes minutes, and the data starts from that day.

What it costs a month to start

Less than most founders expect. Here is the running bill for a solo founder and for two founders, using the list above at regular monthly prices as of November 2026. One-off formation costs and the domain sit outside this total.

Monthly running cost of the day-one list, in US dollars

Item	Solo founder	Two founders
Google Workspace Business Starter, flexible plan	$8.40	$16.80
Xero Early	$27.00	$27.00
Dropbox Sign Essentials	$15.00	$15.00
Bitwarden Teams, billed annually	$4.00	$8.00
Mercury base plan and Google Analytics	$0	$0
Monthly total	$54.40	$66.80

Xero advertised 90% off its first six months for new US customers, in an offer ending on the day we read it, so check for a current promotion. Dropbox Sign Essentials is one you can delay if you have nothing to sign this month. Keep some cash aside for a lawyer and an accountant, since those bills will be larger than all of this. The runway calculator shows what any of it does to your timeline. For fully priced stacks at 2, 10 and 30 people, see what a startup software stack costs.

Startup business tools to add at each milestone

Everything from here is triggered by an event in the business. If the event hasn't happened, don't buy the tool.

What each milestone adds, as of November 2026

When this happens	Add	Published cost	Read first
You're talking to prospects	A simple CRM such as HubSpot	$0 for up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts	First 10 sales
You send a first invoice	Mercury lists unlimited invoices on its base plan	Already covered	SaaS pricing
You have your first hire	A payroll provider such as OnPay, plus offer letters and IP assignment	$49 a month plus $6 per person. We couldn't load Gusto's pricing page to compare	Offer letters, full employee cost
You start raising	A SAFE from Y Combinator, an investor tracker, a data room	SAFE forms are free to download and use	Pre-seed funding, SAFE calculator
You have a third or fourth person	Team chat such as Slack and a shared task tool	Slack has a $0 version, and Pro is $8.75 per member paying monthly	First 10 employees
You grant equity to someone other than founders	A cap table record	Spreadsheet first, then a dedicated tool	Cap table simulator, ESOP setup
Revenue passes the point where your accountant asks	A bookkeeper, then a higher accounting plan such as Xero Growing	$59 a month for Growing	Ask your accountant

What to skip for now

Every item here is a fine product at the right size. At the start, each one costs setup time that you could spend talking to customers, which is what customer interviews are for.

A project management suite for two people. A shared list does the same job, and you can talk across the table.
A paid CRM before you have prospects. Fifty names fit in a spreadsheet or a $0 version without any trouble.
BI and dashboard software. Three numbers in a sheet are enough until there's a team to read them. The dashboard page has a list for when you get there.
An HR suite. Payroll covers the legal part when your first employee starts. Everything else can wait for the third or fourth hire.
A paid design tool, before anyone designs for a living. Figma's Starter costs $0, with capped AI credits.
Every AI subscription going. Pick one, use it heavily and cancel it if it isn't earning its place. Our AI tools roundup is sorted by task, so you can buy for one job.
Annual billing on anything you haven't used for three months. The discount is rarely worth the commitment this early.

The mistakes that cost more than the software

None of these takes more than an hour to prevent, and most of them only show up during fundraising diligence or a falling-out, when they're hardest to fix.

Accounts owned by a person. Register the domain, the cloud account and the bank login under company addresses, with a second admin, so that one departure can't lock you out.
No renewal list. Keep one sheet with each tool, its monthly cost, its renewal date and who owns it. Your registered agent renews at US$100 a year if you used Atlas, for instance, and it's easy to forget.
Unassigned IP. Founders and contractors should sign assignment agreements before they write code or design a logo.
Free email for the company. A personal address on a contract or an investor email looks small, and it complicates account recovery later.
Skipping the two-founder conversation. Software can't fix a split you never agreed. See the co-founder conflict guide before you need it.

Can one product cover this list?

Not this list, and we'd be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. Nothing can form your company or replace a bank, a registered agent, your email provider, a lawyer or an accountant.

Nautis covers some of what comes next. It includes Docsign for e-signature, a Credentials Vault for team secrets, Invoices and Expenses, a Leads CRM, Task boards, and Find investors and Data rooms for a raise. It connects to Google or Microsoft for email and calendar, and doesn't replace them. It isn't an accounting system or a payroll provider, so you still need those.

Plans start at $49 a month as of November 2026, with a 14-day trial and no card, and there's no $0 version. That is close to the entire day-one bill above, so on day one it doesn't make sense for most founders. It starts to earn its place once you're running a raise, a pipeline and a team at the same time. The first-time founders page and the bootstrapped startups page go into who it suits.

FAQ

What tools does a startup need first?

A legal entity, a business bank account, a domain with company email, accounting software, a way to sign contracts, a password manager and analytics. On published prices as of November 2026, the monthly part comes to about $55 for a solo founder. Set them up in that order, because each step depends on the last.

What are the essential startup business tools for a first hire?

You need a payroll provider, an offer letter, and a signed IP and confidentiality agreement before the person starts. OnPay publishes $49 a month plus $6 per person as of November 2026. Talk to an accountant about registrations in the state or country where the person works.

How much should a startup spend on software?

On day one, around $55 to $70 a month is enough for one or two founders. The bill grows with headcount, because most tools charge per seat, so review it each time you hire. Work out what you're carrying with the Tool Tax calculator before adding more.

Do I need a CRM and a project management tool on day one?

No. Add a CRM when you have real prospects to track, and a task tool when a third or fourth person joins. Until then a spreadsheet and a shared list will do. HubSpot's CRM has a $0 version for up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts as of November 2026, so there's no rush to pay.

Disclosure: We make Nautis, so we have a stake in this topic. Vendor facts come from published pages, not a scored hands-on test. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.

The tools every startup needs on day one, and what can wait