New AI tools for small business

A free Google Mac app that records and transcribes your meetings, writes the notes and answers questions from them, all on your own computer, even offline.

solves

Missing what was agreed in a client call or site visit, without sending the recording to a cloud service: the notes and the transcript stay on the Mac.

for

Owners and managers on a Mac with Apple silicon who take client or supplier meetings and want notes without a subscription.

cost

free (Google AI Edge, Mac with Apple silicon only)

Save your colours, fonts, logos, reference photos and brand rules once in ElevenCreative, then tag them in any image or video prompt so the results match your brand.

solves

AI images and short videos that look nothing like your business: the kit steers every generation, and your whole team uses the same one.

for

Owners and staff who make their own social posts, ads and short clips and have no designer.

cost

free to start creating; paid plans for more use

An AI image model that picks the art direction before it draws, with a Brand Kit for your palette and type, and layer editing to fix text afterwards.

solves

Getting a good-looking, on-brand image from a short prompt, then correcting the exact wording and colours without regenerating the whole picture.

for

Small businesses making their own marketing images, menus, flyers and social posts.

cost

unlimited in the desktop app 8 to 15 October, then plan limits apply (check Magnific pricing)

An open source AI agent from Nous Research that learns reusable skills from the jobs you give it, with a Hermes Business option for teams.

solves

Repeating the same multi-step admin job by hand: you let the agent do it, it saves the method, and the next run is faster.

for

Owners with a technical person on hand who want to try an agent without a contract, and keep control of their data.

cost

free, open source (MIT licence); Hermes Business pricing on request

A Windows and Mac app that turns a task you demonstrate once into a reusable workflow, and gives you a daily brief and email triage.

solves

Recurring admin that eats the morning: sorting important emails, tracking to-dos and repeating the same clicks across apps.

for

Solo owners and freelancers with no assistant and a lot of repetitive desk work.

cost

free during the beta

A free Mac app that sends one question to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and a dozen other assistants at once and shows the answers side by side.

solves

Not knowing which AI gives the best answer for your work, and the tab-hopping it takes to find out.

for

Anyone who already uses a couple of AI assistants and wants to compare them on real questions, on a Mac.

cost

free and open source, uses the accounts you already have

A free scan that asks ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini real customer-style questions and shows how often each one names your business.

solves

Finding out whether AI assistants recommend you or a competitor when a customer asks for a business like yours, which a normal Google ranking check does not show.

for

Any business that gets customers from search or word of mouth, such as local services, shops and agencies.

cost

free scan with no sign-up, paid weekly monitoring from $19 a month

Gives your AI assistant the ability to phone a business, follow your brief and bring back the answer.

solves

The calls that eat the day: checking a supplier's stock or opening hours, asking for a quote, booking an appointment, or sitting through a phone menu.

for

Owners and office managers who already use an AI assistant such as Claude Code or Codex and want it to handle routine calls.

cost

pay as you go, $0.25 a minute of talk time, credits from $10

ChatGPT can now show clothing and accessories on a photo of you, and lets shoppers save products they like for later.

solves

Seeing how a product looks before buying, which cuts the doubt that leads to returns, and lets a shop owner see the experience their customers will now have.

for

Clothing, jewellery and accessory sellers, who should try their own products in it to see how they appear.

cost

free to try in ChatGPT, launched globally on 1 October

A new design space in Shopify where you build or redesign your whole online store by chatting with Sidekick, Shopify's AI agent, and see every page change live.

solves

Getting a custom-looking store without paying a developer or fighting a settings panel: describe what you want, react to what Sidekick builds, refine it.

for

Small shops on Shopify, or about to start one, with no designer or developer on hand.

cost

comes with a Shopify plan, no separate charge announced, rolling out from 1 October

A free web tool from Malwarebytes: paste a suspicious link and get a verdict of safe, dangerous or unknown, the reasons, a screenshot of the page and what to do next.

solves

Staff and owners unsure whether a link in a text, email or chat from a bank, courier or supplier is a scam, before anyone clicks it.

for

Every small business, especially those where one person handles invoices and deliveries.

cost

free

Cohere's business agent platform, rebuilt with shared skills, drag-and-drop automations, memory, access lists and token spend controls, deployable on your own servers.

solves

Automating work across your business apps while controlling who and what an agent can reach, and what it costs.

for

Larger or fast-growing firms with an IT lead; most small firms will meet these ideas inside other tools first.

cost

pricing on request

Google's ad creative tool that turns your website address and photos into video ads for YouTube, powered by Gemini Omni, with a preview before you publish.

solves

Making a video ad when you have no video: start from the photos and pages you already have and test a few versions instead of paying for a shoot.

for

Shops, trades and local services already running or planning Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns.

cost

no separate price stated; used inside Google Ads, where you pay for ad spend

A managed search over your own files, web pages, scanned PDFs and images, now generally available, with answers written by the chat model you choose.

solves

Customers and staff asking questions that your price lists, manuals and help pages already answer, but nobody can find quickly.

for

Small businesses with a developer or web agency, especially if the site already runs on Cloudflare.

cost

free monthly allowance (5M ingestion tokens, 10 GB, 1,000 queries of each type); billing from 1 November

DeepSeek's open-source AI agent, now with desktop apps for Mac and Windows that handle documents, spreadsheets and PDFs and run scheduled prompts.

solves

Repeating office jobs such as turning a spreadsheet into a chart or slides, or running the same weekly summary, without a monthly seat fee for the tool itself.

for

Tinkerers and small firms comfortable with a preview release that DeepSeek says will have breaking changes.

cost

free, open source (MIT licence); model use billed through your DeepSeek account or API key

Leebry

A work AI from MacPaw, the CleanMyMac maker, that answers staff questions from your own docs and chats, with the source linked.

solves

The same questions asked again and again, such as where the holiday form is or how to reset a login, when the answer is already written down somewhere in Slack, Confluence or Google Docs.

for

Growing teams with a shared drive full of how-tos and one person who answers every IT question.

cost

pricing on request; book a demo on the site

Muse Gadgets

Meta's open-source kit for building your own small devices that talk to its Muse AI agent, from ESP32 boards to Linux.

solves

Connecting a cheap button, screen or sensor in the shop to an AI assistant, for example a counter button that logs a delivery or a display that reads out today's bookings.

for

Tinkerers and small firms with someone handy who already uses Meta's Muse agent.

cost

free, open source (Apache 2.0)

Cloudflare Clef

Small open-source decision models on Cloudflare Workers AI that sort, label and route things fast, plus a service to train them on your own data.

solves

Sorting incoming email, enquiries or support tickets into the right pile automatically, without paying a large model to read every one.

for

Small businesses with a developer, or the agency that builds their website and forms.

cost

open source; hosted use is billed through Cloudflare Workers AI

Ideogram 4.5

An AI image model built for precise edits: change one part of a photo and the rest stays as it was, edit after edit.

solves

Fixing product and shop photos without a designer: swap a background, change a colour or correct the text on a sign, without the rest of the picture going strange after a few edits.

for

Online shops, cafes and trades that make their own product shots, menus and social images.

cost

in the Ideogram app; API from 0.8 to 22 US cents an image

Earlyn

A searchable memory for your Mac: it keeps an encrypted record of your screen and transcribes meetings, all on your own machine.

solves

Finding the price, link or promise you saw yesterday, or what was agreed on a call, by asking in plain words instead of digging through tabs and notes.

for

Owners and freelancers on an Apple Silicon Mac who juggle many calls and documents and want nothing sent to a server.

cost

7 days free, then $19 a month or $149 a year; meeting notes stay free

Microsoft MAI-Voice-2.1

New Microsoft voice models: lifelike speech in 23 languages with the same voice, plus fast live transcription in 60 languages.

solves

The building blocks for a phone or website voice assistant that answers quickly and sounds natural, including in your customers' own languages.

for

Businesses working with a developer or agency on a voice agent or phone line. Try it first in the MAI Playground.

cost

pay as you go: speech from $15 per million characters (Flash), live transcription $0.54 an hour to the end of 2026

Communicate

An AI support assistant that answers customers from your own help pages and past replies, and hands over to a person when needed.

solves

The same ten customer questions every day, about delivery, refunds and opening hours, answered from your own words, with a teammate brought in when the answer is not there.

for

Small shops and service firms that answer customer questions by chat or email and want a person kept in the loop.

cost

$1 once to start with 100 test credits, then plans from $19 a month

ElevenLabs Eleven v4

ElevenLabs' new text-to-speech model: more natural, more emotional voices, plus a fast Turbo version for phone and voice agents.

solves

Voiceovers for product videos, training clips and phone menus that sound like a person reading, directed in plain words such as calm or upbeat.

for

Anyone making short videos, explainers or a voice line who has been put off by robotic AI voices.

cost

free plan with 10,000 credits a month; commercial licence from $6 a month

Never Boring AI

An AI agent for LinkedIn that interviews you about your work, then plans, writes and schedules posts in your voice.

solves

Knowing your trade but never knowing what to post this week. It keeps your stories on file and turns them into a few weeks of posts you approve.

for

Freelancers, consultants and founders who sell through LinkedIn. Works in English and French.

cost

39 euro a month, first month half price; 329 euro a year

Gemini skills

Save a set of instructions once in Gemini, then run it any time by typing / and its name. Replaces Gems.

solves

The prompt you retype every week, for a quote, a supplier email or a weekly summary, saved once with your reference files and run in two keystrokes.

for

Anyone already using free Gemini. Google Workspace business accounts get it in the coming weeks; old Gems move over automatically.

cost

free, rolling out to all Gemini users (18+) from 30 September

Macaly Cloud

Plugs into your Claude or ChatGPT subscription and adds the database, hosting and sign-in needed to put a small web app live.

solves

A booking page, an internal tool or a simple customer portal built from the chat you already pay for, without a second AI subscription charging per message.

for

Owners already paying for Claude or ChatGPT who want a simple app online. Hosted in Frankfurt and Ireland, and you can export the code.

cost

$10 a month from 1 October (free before), custom domains extra

WebinarFlow

Record your product demo once, run it on a schedule, and get a phone alert when a real person asks a question.

solves

Giving the same 20-minute demo five times a week. AI answers the repeat questions; you step in live only when someone is worth talking to.

for

Small sales teams and founders who demo the same product over and over.

cost

14-day free trial, then from $49 a month

OpenSEO

An open-source alternative to Semrush and Ahrefs: keyword research, rank tracking, backlinks, site audits and AI search visibility.

solves

Find what local customers actually search for, see where you and the shop down the road rank, and check whether AI search mentions you, without a $129 a month SEO tool.

for

Owners and small agencies who look after their own website and want to know which pages would bring in more work.

cost

free, open source (MIT), pay-as-you-go data; hosted plan $10 a month

SaleSmartly

One inbox for WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, TikTok, email and website chat, with an AI agent that answers, qualifies and translates.

solves

Enquiries arrive on five apps and some get missed. Here they land in one place, the AI replies out of hours and hands the hot ones to a person with the full chat.

for

Shops, clinics and service businesses taking bookings and questions over WhatsApp and Instagram DMs.

cost

free plan (2 seats, 100 chat contacts a month), Pro from $12.72 a month

Sez Where?

Upload a contract or terms, ask a question in your own words, and it points to the exact passage that answers it.

solves

Am I locked into this lease? What happens if I cancel the supplier? It highlights the clause in the original text, so you read what it says, not a chatbot's summary.

for

Anyone signing supplier deals, leases or software terms without a solicitor on call. Not for confidential documents: the text is sent to an AI service to search.

cost

free, 25 questions a day with an email login

VoiceStudio

A desktop app that does dictation, transcription, voiceovers and dubbing on your own machine, no cloud account.

solves

Turn calls and voice notes into text, and record a clean voiceover for a promo video, without uploading a word to anyone.

for

Owners who talk faster than they type, or who make short videos and do not want a monthly voice subscription.

cost

free, open source (AGPL-3.0)

WeKnora

Drop in your PDFs, Word files and spreadsheets, get a searchable company wiki and an assistant that answers from it.

solves

The price list, the warranty terms and the how-we-do-it notes, answered with the source page, instead of someone digging through a shared drive.

for

A team with years of documents and the same questions asked every week, with someone who can run Docker.

cost

free, open source (MIT), run it yourself

Ekselio

Ask your QuickBooks books a question in plain English, get a repeatable report you can check line by line.

solves

The monthly cash, margin and customer reports you rebuild in Excel, built once and rerun each month, with the maths shown as SQL, not guessed by a chatbot.

for

Owners and bookkeepers on QuickBooks Online who spend a day each month copying numbers into spreadsheets.

cost

free browser trial, then $49.99 a month

Open WebUI

A private ChatGPT-style front end for models you run yourself, with your team's logins on top.

solves

One shared, self-hosted chat your whole team can use, with nothing typed into it leaving the building.

for

Anyone already running Ollama who wants a proper interface instead of the terminal.

cost

free, open source (BSD-3, with a licence notice clause)

OpenClaw

An open-source AI assistant that meets you where you already work: Slack, WhatsApp, Teams, email, and more.

solves

One assistant that reads and drafts across the apps you actually use, instead of a chat window you have to remember to open.

for

A small team who wants an AI presence in their existing channels, run under their own control, no vendor token required.

cost

free, open source, run yourself

Ollama

Run open models like Qwen, Gemma, DeepSeek and gpt-oss on your own laptop with one command.

solves

Summarise, draft and classify without sending a single document to a cloud model.

for

Anyone with client data they are not allowed to upload, and a recent Mac or a PC with a GPU.

cost

free, open source (MIT)

n8n

Visual workflow automation you can self-host, with AI steps built in.

solves

Connect the email, the CRM and the invoicing tool without paying per task.

for

A business with one technical-ish person and too much copy-paste between systems.

cost

free to self-host (fair-code licence), paid cloud plans

Granola

An AI notepad for back-to-back meetings: notes, actions and memory, without a bot joining the call.

solves

Walking out of a client call with the actions written down, not a recording nobody replays.

for

Owners and salespeople who live in calls and forget what they promised.

cost

free to start, paid plans

Invoice Ninja

Invoices, quotes, projects and time tracking in one app you can run yourself.

solves

Quote to invoice without retyping, with recurring bills and online payment links.

for

Trades and small services firms still invoicing from a spreadsheet.

cost

free to self-host (source-available), hosted plans with a free tier

Docmost

An open-source wiki for the how-we-do-things pages every small business is missing.

solves

The two pages a new hire needs, in one place, instead of in someone's head.

for

Any team of five or more where the same question gets asked every week.

cost

free, open source (AGPL), paid cloud

Shortwave

An email client with an agent that organises, writes, searches and schedules from a prompt.

solves

Triage the inbox before you read it, and chase the threads that went quiet.

for

Anyone running a business from Gmail who gets more than fifty emails a day.

cost

free tier, paid plans

Cal.com

Scheduling infrastructure for absolutely everyone, in the project's own words, and open source.

solves

The eleven-message thread about when to meet becomes one link.

for

Anyone who books calls with customers and wants to own the booking page.

cost

free to self-host (MIT), hosted plans with a free tier