How to think about AI tools (before buying any)
The biggest mistake we see is small businesses signing up for half a dozen AI subscriptions and using none of them properly. Before adding a single new tool, ask:
- What specific task am I trying to make faster or better?
- How much time would the tool save me each month?
- What’s it costing me, all in?
- Am I going to actually use it weekly?
If the answers don’t add up to “yes, this is worth it”, skip the tool. The best AI setup is a small one that you actually use.
For writing and content
ChatGPT (or Claude)
If you only use one AI tool, this is it. Both ChatGPT and Claude are general-purpose assistants you can use for brainstorming, drafting, editing, summarising and answering business questions. Claude tends to be slightly stronger at long-form writing and nuance; ChatGPT has more integrations and a wider plugin ecosystem.
What we use them for: outlining blog posts, tightening copy, drafting client emails, brainstorming campaigns. We covered the workflow in the small business guide to ChatGPT for marketing.
Grammarly or Hemingway
Not strictly “AI” in the modern sense, but they’re a useful second pair of eyes. Grammarly catches typos and clunky phrasing. Hemingway flags overly complex sentences. Together they save you the embarrassment of obvious errors.
For images and visuals
Midjourney, DALL-E, or Adobe Firefly
For social images, blog headers and concept work, AI image generators are now genuinely useful. Midjourney still leads on quality. Firefly is the safest choice for commercial work because Adobe trained it on licensed content.
Best uses: hero images for blog posts, illustration ideas, mockups. Worst uses: anything where accuracy matters: logos, brand assets, product shots, real people.
Canva Magic tools
Canva’s AI features (Magic Write, Magic Design, Magic Edit) are baked into a tool most small businesses already use. They’re not the most powerful, but they’re the most convenient. If you live in Canva, you’re already paying for these.
For meetings and admin
Otter, Fathom or tl;dv
Meeting transcription and summarisation tools record your calls, transcribe them, pull out action items and create searchable archives. For small businesses doing a lot of client calls, this is one of the highest-impact AI investments you can make. No more frantic note-taking, no more “what did we agree last week?”.
Reclaim or Motion
AI calendar tools that automatically schedule your week around your priorities, deadlines and meetings. Useful for solo operators who hate calendar Tetris.
For SEO and search
SE Ranking or Ahrefs (with AI features)
The big SEO tools have all added AI features over the last couple of years. SE Ranking has AI content briefs, on-page AI suggestions, and competitor insights. Ahrefs has similar features. They’re not magic, but they cut down the manual grunt-work of keyword research and content planning.
Perplexity
Perplexity is part search engine, part research assistant. Ask it any business question and it returns a cited answer with sources. Brilliant for fact-checking, market research and quickly understanding a new topic. We talked about Perplexity and similar tools in AI search and SEO.
The point of AI tools isn’t to do your job for you. It’s to take the friction out of the boring parts so you can spend more time on the parts that actually need a human.
For customer support
Intercom Fin, Tidio AI or HelpScout AI
AI-powered chatbots have finally got good enough to be useful instead of frustrating. The best ones answer most common questions accurately and only escalate the genuinely unusual ones to a human. For businesses with a lot of repetitive support enquiries, they pay for themselves quickly.
Important caveat: test thoroughly before letting one loose on your customers. A bot that confidently gives wrong answers is worse than no bot at all.
For analytics and insight
GA4 with AI insights
Google Analytics 4 has built-in AI insights that flag anomalies, surface trends and answer plain-English questions about your data. If you’ve avoided GA4 because it feels overwhelming, the AI features make it much friendlier. We talk about analytics in our piece on how to conduct a website audit.
Hotjar AI summaries
If you use Hotjar for heatmaps and session recordings, the AI summaries pull out the patterns you might miss watching recordings manually. Good for spotting friction quickly. We covered the wider picture in heatmaps and session recordings.
For sales and outreach
Apollo, Lemlist or Instantly with AI
Sales tools that help you find prospects, personalise outreach and run cold email campaigns at sensible scale. The AI angle is mostly around personalisation and reply handling. Useful for B2B sales teams, less so for local service businesses.
Tools we’d skip (or be cautious about)
- “All-in-one AI marketing platforms” that promise to replace everything. They usually do everything badly.
- AI content factories designed to pump out hundreds of articles a week. Google penalises low-value content regardless of who wrote it.
- Cheap AI tools that wrap ChatGPT with a fancy interface. Just use ChatGPT.
- AI tools without a clear privacy policy. If you’re feeding it client data, you need to know where that data ends up.
How to decide if a tool is worth it
Before subscribing to anything, run a one-month experiment. Use the free trial. Track how often you use it, whether it actually saves you time, and whether the output quality is good enough. At the end of the month, decide. If you’ve used it five times and got real value, keep it. If it’s gathering digital dust, cancel.
Where this is heading
AI tools are a moving target. The best tool for a job today might be replaced by something better next quarter. The healthier mindset is to focus on the underlying capability you need (writing, transcription, research, analysis) and switch tools as the landscape evolves. The capability you build (better content, smoother admin, faster research) outlasts any individual subscription.
If you’d like help putting together an AI toolkit for your specific business, drop us a line. We’re happy to share what’s working in our own setup.
Frequently asked questions
Ask four questions before you sign up for anything. What specific task am I trying to make faster or better? How much time would it save me each month? What is it costing me, all in? And will I genuinely use it weekly? If those do not add up, skip it.
If you only use one, make it a general assistant like ChatGPT or Claude. Both handle brainstorming, drafting, editing and summarising. Claude tends to be a bit stronger on long-form writing and nuance, while ChatGPT has more integrations and a wider ecosystem around it. Either will cover most small business needs.
It depends on the tool. Adobe Firefly is the safest choice for commercial work because it was trained on licensed content. Midjourney still leads on visual quality. Whichever you pick, avoid AI images for anything where accuracy matters, so no logos, brand assets, product shots or pictures of real people.
Tools like Otter, Fathom and tl;dv record calls, transcribe them, pull out action items and build a searchable archive. If you spend a lot of time in meetings and lose track of what was agreed, they earn their keep quickly. If you have two calls a month, they will not.
A few that you actually use. The most common mistake is signing up for half a dozen subscriptions and using none of them properly, which costs money and delivers nothing. A small setup you use weekly beats a large one you forget about.
