Quick post today where I’m sharing the software and apps I’m testing right now in 2025. And then we’ll do an update in about 6 months and I’ll share what I learned. (To be clear, I’m not an affiliate for ANY of these tools, I’ve just included the links at the bottom to make it easy for you to check them out for yourself.)

We’re going to be talking about tools in a couple key areas:

• Client support
• Financial management
• Social media scheduling
• Content management

So in each category, I’ll talk about the main challenges I’m facing, my goals for the tool or tool set and what I’m currently testing out. So let’s get into it.

Client Support

Test #1: Voxxer vs. Twist

I’m not a big fan of doing client support on email because I’m always afraid I’ll miss something. And responding to my clients is absolutely the most important thing I do. So the tool I’ve actually been using inside my Business Breakthrough program for the last 6 months is Twist. Twist is a lot like Slack except that it’s less invasive. It’s built for asynchronous communication, and it let’s you create separate conversations for different topic areas.

So let’s say someone was asking for feedback on their program design and they also had a question about pricing. Those could actually be two separate private conversations. l also like the way Twist gives me a lot of ways to respond and give feedback – I can type out my answer or I can upload a quick video or attach a resource. Really anything I could do with an email platform.

But recently, I’ve been working with my own business coach who offers Voxxer support. So I”m considering it for my program because it’s really easy to use. Especially for quick questions and notes. 

The only reason I’m thinking about switching is that a few of my clients seemed reluctant to adopt the Twist platform. So I’m going put some additional effort into onboarding and see if that helps. But I’ll also be learning from my experiences with my own coach using Voxxer.

Test #2: Fathom vs. Video review

The other tool I’m testing on the client support side is Fathom. It’s a note taker bot, but from what I’ve seen of this one is that it blows the other ones I’ve seen out of the water. It summarizes the conversation, captures any to dos that came out of the meeting and sets it all up with a professional looking webpage that also has a link to the replay. I think it’s a really valuable add for my clients and I know it will save them as much time as it saves me.

I’m currently using the free version and it’s been great so far. So I’m really excited about putting it to work both in my free strategy sessions and also in the Business Breakthrough kick off calls where I create a personalized prioritized 3 month work plan for everyone who comes in. I actually spend a lot of time on those plans and I’m hoping Fathom is going to help me speed things up a big so I can focus more on the plan and less on going through the replay.

Bookkeeping/Fin. Mgmt.

Test #3: Cashflowy.ai vs. Quickbooks Online

I’ve always used quickbooks online (QBO) with all my previous companies, and it’s fine. But it’s overstuffed with features I don’t need, it’s clunky to use, and frankly, I feel like it’s overpriced for the way I use it. I’ve been searching for an alternative for about six months.

I tried Freshbooks and I thought their reporting was awful. So I signed up for Xero and I really really wanted to like them, but they don’t integrate with my bank. Which is just weird. And they basically lied and said it was a glitch but a month later – after I subscribed by the way – it still wasn’t fixed and they finally let me know that they had no timeline for getting it fixed.

So I was about to resign myself back to QBO when I got offered early access to a platform called cashflowy.ai.

So I pride myself on being an early adopter and this sounded pretty cool, but frankly the onboarding and experience so far has been pretty disappointing. So I’m going to give them one or two more weeks to see if they can turn it around but if not, I guess it’s back to quickbooks. So I’ll updae you in 6 months about what I decided to do there.

Update as of February 2025: Cashflowy.ai is already out. The experience with them was absolutely terrible. They are not ready for even beta users. It’s a great idea, but this product isn’t useable yet, and I’m not sure why they’re marketing it as if it is.

Social Media Scheduling

Test #4: Buffer vs. Zoho Social

One of the areas where I’ve been having a tough time is social media automation. At some point since 2008 I’ve probably tried five or six, with the most memorable being Hootsuite, Buffer, and SproutSocial.

And they all do the posting part just fine. I was actually managing just fine using the free version of Buffer right up until last week. But I really wanted to do a deep dive into the analytics and that’s where Buffer – even the paid version – failed me.

I know that LinkedIn doesn’t share the API for individual accounts – thanks a lot Microsoft – so you can only get data from your company page which I’ll be honest – I don’t even use. But Buffer also couldn’t show me the info from my YouTube account. So given that I only post on Instargram, YouTube and Linkedin, data on 1 out of 3 wasn’t going to work for me.

I think Sprout is generally considered the best for analytics, but their BASE PRICE is $199 a month. It’s really built for teams and bigger companies – not for solo practitioners.

The tool I”m testing now is Zoho Social. If you don’t know Zoho they have an entire suite of pretty reasonably priced tools. Their $10 a month version will give me summary stats for Instagram and YouTube. But if I want analytics at the post level, I’ve got to go to $30 a month. So I’ll do some testing and see what I really use and how helpful it is. I’ll let you know what I decide in the follow up article.

Content Management

Test #5: Notion vs. something else?

The tool I’m most excited about is the one I’ve ben testing for content management. I’ve been struggling to find a way to manage all my ideas, and then how to translate that into production and distribution.

For instance I have ideas for core content that ends up here in the newsletter and on YouTube. But then I (try to) repurpose that content for my blog and social media.

I tried using an spreadsheet to manage the process, but that wasn’t working. I tried putting it in Asana which was better – and I still love Asana – you can check out the video I did on how I use it to keep my business and my projects organized. But project management and content management are different. Especially in the volume that I’m working with right now.

So I did some research and found Notion. It’s a really flexibile tool that’s ideal for organizing all different kinds of information – like text and images. But it also makes it really easy to create a simple database where you can track the status of all your content.

So I moved away from the spreadsheet and over to notion – maybe 3 or 4 months ago? And so far I’m really loving it.

One thing people love about notion, is that you can get started with these templates other people have created. But everyone’s workflow is a little bit different – so I think those are a helpful place to start but it takes awhile to get it customized in a way that works for you. So it will be interesting to see how I’m feeling about it in 6 months.

So to recap – here are the tools I’m testing:

• Client management – Voxxer, Twist and Fathom
• Social media – Zoho Social
• Content management –Notion

I put the links here if you want to check them out too – but right now let me be clear – I’m not recommending any of them. I’m just testing them. And I’ll check back in with you this summer and let you know which ones I think are winners.