7 Extremely Cool Software for Businesses

Most businesses start with the basics – accounting, a CRM, email, and some way to track work. The problem is that “basic stacks” create a lot of manual glue work: copying data between tools, chasing status updates, and rebuilding the same workflows over and over.

The software below is cool because it removes that friction and gives small teams leverage, while still fitting neatly into a standard stack like the one covered in our previous guide.

1. OpenAI Frontier

Frontier is “cool” because it turns AI from a chat window into something you can actually run like a system inside a business. Instead of asking for one-off answers, teams use Frontier-style agent setups to handle repeatable work: drafting and rewriting content, summarizing customer feedback, preparing research briefs, extracting data from documents, or keeping internal docs up to date. The practical win is that you stop treating AI as a novelty and start treating it like an operational layer that produces outputs on a schedule.

Where it fits best is above your existing stack. For example, you can have agents that watch inbound leads, produce a short qualification summary, and push it into your CRM; or agents that read support threads and produce a weekly “top issues + suggested fixes” digest; or agents that turn meeting notes into tasks and update the project board. The “cool” part is not the model – it’s orchestration: managed prompts, tool access, permissions, logging, and repeatability. That makes it usable for real teams, not just power users.

If you already have the core small-business categories in place (accounting, CRM, communication, task tracking), Frontier-like agents become the glue that removes busywork and makes the whole stack feel integrated.

2. Anthropic Claude Cowork and Claude Code

Claude’s recent momentum in business use comes from something very specific: it is being packaged for longer, more structured work – not just writing a paragraph, but completing multi-step tasks across documents, spreadsheets, and systems.

Claude Code and the more “non-technical” Cowork approach are cool because they bring agent-style execution to everyday knowledge work. Think of it as a capable assistant that can read a messy bundle of inputs, produce a coherent output, and keep going without needing constant babysitting.

In practice, teams use this kind of tool for internal operations and production pipelines: drafting first versions of docs, generating structured summaries from long materials, finding inconsistencies in text-heavy workflows, or preparing analysis from a mix of spreadsheets and written context. For engineering-adjacent businesses, it also shines because it reduces the effort of routine coding tasks and debugging – the difference is that it can keep context over longer runs, which is where a lot of AI tools still fall apart.

This fits especially well in businesses that already “live in documents.” If your operation is full of policies, SOPs, proposals, reporting, onboarding guides, and recurring analysis, Claude-style tooling becomes a force multiplier because it makes that document layer easier to maintain and easier to operationalize.

3. Perplexity Enterprise

Perplexity is cool for one reason: it makes research usable inside a business without turning every question into a mini project. A lot of companies waste hours on “find me the answer” work: competitive checks, quick market scans, product comparisons, vendor due diligence, or validating claims before they end up in a deck or a decision memo.

Perplexity’s enterprise positioning is built around enabling fast, confident answers for knowledge workers while keeping security and access control in mind.

The real-world value is speed-to-clarity. Teams can standardize how they do research, build repeatable question patterns (“compare X vs Y for our use case”), and turn findings into structured outputs like briefs, pros/cons, shortlists, or internal FAQs. In a modern stack, this pairs nicely with your documentation layer (so research doesn’t disappear into chat logs) and your decision process (so you can attach a clean brief to a vendor choice). It’s also useful for marketing and editorial workflows where you need a fast baseline of what’s known before you add original insight.

If you publish content or run deal flow, Perplexity is the kind of tool that reduces the time between “we need to know this” and “we can act on this,” which is one of the highest-leverage improvements a small team can buy.

4. Relay.app

Relay.app is cool because it’s a practical “AI agent builder” that behaves like business automation rather than a science project. Most teams already understand automation through tools like Zapier, but the jump with Relay-style agents is that you can combine automations with reasoning steps: interpret an email, classify it, extract the right fields, decide what should happen next, and then take actions across multiple apps.

The best use cases are the boring-but-expensive ones: inbox triage, lead routing, pulling structured data out of messy inputs, creating tasks from messages, generating follow-up emails, updating CRM records, building small operational dashboards, and running recurring “ops hygiene” workflows.

What makes it feel modern is that it can handle ambiguity better than traditional rule-based automation. Instead of “if subject contains X then do Y,” you can set goals like “identify high-intent leads and route them to the right owner with a one-paragraph summary.”

It fits beautifully next to the stack most small businesses already use: Gmail, Slack/Teams, Notion, HubSpot, Google Sheets, and project trackers. If you want automation that a non-engineering team can actually maintain, Relay is one of the most business-friendly ways to get there.

5. Gumloop

Gumloop is cool because it turns AI automation into something you can literally see. A lot of automation breaks because teams can’t understand or debug the workflow once it grows. Gumloop’s visual, drag-and-drop approach makes it easier to design multi-step systems that mix data sources, app integrations, AI steps, and output formats – without requiring a developer to rebuild the whole thing.

Businesses use it for workflows that have real leverage: content ops (turn a topic list into briefs, outlines, drafts, and checklists), research ops (gather sources, summarize, classify, produce a final brief), sales ops (enrich leads, generate tailored outreach, log everything), and support ops (tag issues, route tickets, draft responses, create internal summaries). The point is not that it can “do AI.” The point is that it can run repeatably and connect to the tools teams already live in.

If you’re building a process-heavy operation – publishing, lead gen, reporting, internal ops – Gumloop helps you convert that process into a system. It’s especially good when you want to experiment quickly, because you can adjust the workflow without waiting for engineering cycles.

6. Retool

Retool is cool because it gives businesses “internal software” without forcing them to become a software company. Every growing business eventually needs internal dashboards and admin panels: approve something, review something, fix something, reconcile something, see the status of something. Off-the-shelf tools rarely fit perfectly, and building custom apps from scratch is expensive and slow.

Retool connects to your data sources and APIs and lets you build real internal apps fast: operations dashboards, customer support consoles, finance review tools, inventory/admin panels, moderation tools, internal request systems, and more. This is the type of software that quietly removes hours of manual effort across a team, because it replaces copy-paste workflows with one interface that matches how the business actually operates.

It fits best when your stack has grown messy: you have a CRM, a support system, analytics, payments, and spreadsheets, and people are constantly jumping between them to do one job. Retool becomes the “single pane of glass” that makes execution faster and reduces mistakes. For businesses that are serious about ops efficiency, this is one of the most practical “cool” tools you can adopt.

7. Hex

Hex is cool because it makes data work collaborative and usable without requiring everyone to become a data analyst. Most companies have data – in spreadsheets, databases, CRMs, ad platforms, payment systems – but turning that into decisions is still painful. Hex blends notebooks, dashboards, and app-like outputs so teams can explore data, build reusable analysis, and share it in a way that non-technical stakeholders can actually consume.

The differentiator is that it supports a workflow from exploration to a repeatable asset. You can prototype an analysis, turn it into a dashboard or lightweight internal app, schedule it, and keep it living. For businesses that rely on performance loops (marketing, sales, content, ops), that matters because you stop re-running the same analysis manually every week. Instead, you create a shared view that stays current and can be audited.

Hex is especially compelling when you want a tighter feedback loop than “export CSVs and hope someone figures it out.” It sits nicely alongside BI tools, but often feels more flexible for teams that want to move quickly while still keeping work structured and shareable.