You’re probably reading this because you spend much of your working day in the Chrome browser and you’d like to know how to work faster and smarter. And you've probably dabbled with Chrome extensions and are wondering which extensions can help with running a business. You're in the right place. I've tried and tested hundreds of these plugins for the world's most popular web browser.
As the world’s most popular browser, Chrome has more developers working on extensions and plugins than any other. For business owners, this is good news. Add-ons for Google’s web browser (called extensions and sometimes called plugins) can transform how you run your business on the web. And many of these Chrome extensions are available for free so there’s no need to spend a fortune to turn your browser into a productivity machine.
But I want to point out from the start that Chrome isn’t the best browser. These days Firefox and Microsoft Edge are ahead, mainly because of Chrome’s tendency to devour your system resources. Chrome is the most used browser in the world. And it’s one of the most flexible thanks to the millions of extensions that 3rd party developers have built to enhance the browsing experience and increase productivity, among other things. But did you know you can use the same ones on Edge?
What can Google Chrome extensions do?
This question could be rephrased as “what can’t Chrome extensions do?” Think about all of the ways you interact with websites and try to imagine a faster, more efficient, and more enjoyable way to do everything.
- Are you spending a lot of time cutting and pasting from websites into a Word document, productivity tool, file organizer, or some other note-taking tool?
- Do you regularly search through websites in your industry for leads and then add the email and contact details to a CRM or spreadsheet? Speaking of CRMs, Hubspot has an excellent Chrome Sales tool extension for it's free customer relationship management software.
- Is social media sharing, scheduling, and content curation eating up all your time?
- Do you repeatedly type the same answers to questions, fill out similar forms, and reply to emails with the same text as you’ve done many times before?
- Would you like to automatically spell check your emails and forms?
- Are ads and tracking cookies bothering you and slowing down your browsing experience?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, there’s a Chrome add-on for you. But the list doesn’t end there. Let’s look at some of the most useful Chrome extensions you can add today.
Text Blaze
Save time typing long phrases, emails, and usernames
A must-have Google chrome extension for business owners, marketers, and freelancers that spend much of their day typing the same replies.
Using snippets, templates, and shortcuts save hours of your time every week by filling in the boring details. You’ll be a whole lot more productive once you remove the drudgery or repeatedly typing the same thing. Sure, you can copy and paste from a text file. But that’s the old school way of doing it. And it’s not much faster either.
Turn anything into a snippet and then use a shortcut to bring paste that snippet into the focus area, which could be an email, signup form, blog post, or pretty much anything else.
Maybe you always start a blog post with the same template, or you have favourite emojis. If you write complicated web searches on a regular basis, save time and mental energy by adding these search queries as snippets and call them up with a few keystrokes.
And if you like this functionality, check out the excellent multi-purpose productivity tool called Alfred, that also has text expansion functionality.
Grammarly
Check your spelling and grammar
If you’re not already using Grammarly, listen up. This tool will make you look smart, make it easier for people to read your content and emails, and help you discover what aspects of your writing need improving.
Wow, that’s a lot. It is, but Grammarly delivers. And there’s a free version for Chrome which automatically highlights spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. Once you’ve installed it, you will be fearful of writing on the internet without it.
Hunter
Find email addresses for any business
If you do any kind of B2B selling, outreach, or you need information on a website’s owners or staff, Hunter.io is invaluable. Just click the icon in the extension bar and magically (not quite – but nearly) a list of email addresses associated with that domain appears.
Verify the emails with Hunter’s advanced algorithm and then take advantage of Hunter’s free outreach software. Similar products cost a hefty monthly fee from other developers. But you can get started for free. One of the best additions to any email management toolkit.
Bitwarden
Never have to remember passwords
Bitwarden saves me days of work time over an entire year. I never have to look for login details and passwords for websites and I don't need to remember them either. All I need to remember is one master (and secure) password. This is a massive time saver
The free version of the tool is good enough for most people but if you want to share passwords with your team, the paid plan is the next step up. It's also very inexpensive and open source.
What Runs
Spy on Your Competitors’ Website Tech
Studying and monitoring your competitors is, many experts say, an essential part of building a business. Why reinvent the wheel when your competitors are already having success with methods and strategies that work.
One way to find out what kind of technology, apps, and services your competitor's website employs is to use the What Runs Chrome plugin.
Like the look of the chat software on the site? WhatRuns will tell you which product the site uses. Want to know which WordPress theme runs on a good-looking website? What about the fonts? Does the site use heat map tracking software? Find out all of this juicy information and more.
ProWritingAid
Your own personal writing assistant
An alternative to Grammarly is ProWritingAid, an all-in-one stylistic editor and AI writing coach. This writing tool can be used in many niches, industries, and styles and offers a great Chrome extension for writers.
Get automatic grammar and spelling checking, and stylistic recommendations in creative writing, academic writing, and business correspondence.
ProwritingAid’s account gets you the text Text Expansion feature, which is super handy for when you regularly use the same replies, intros, email addresses and other snippets of text when writing. For a more advanced text expansion tool see the next extension in our list. It's a great way to improve your writing as you work.
ContentStudio
Save time on Social Media Marketing
While social media has its merits (brand building, connection building, lead generation), it can also be a complete time-suck.
ContentStudio helps business owners, social media managers, and virtual assistants create content, create fresh content and schedule posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business.
The chrome extension is a simple way to share content from the internet. Click the chrome extension on any content (including from your own site) and select the accounts to post on. Schedule for any time in the future, automatically add saved hashtags, UTM parameters, or short links.
A huge timesaver.
Notion Web Clipper
Save, format, & organize the internet
Notion has been one of the internet productivity tool successes of the past few years (Notion was founded in 2018). Millions of people use it to organize their business and personal lives. The fact that the core product is 100% free makes it quite attractive to businesses without massive budgets,
The Notion Web Clipper is great for saving clips, images, quotes, and even entire web pages to your personal filing system for later use.
Did you find an article you’d like to reference in a post? Clip it to Notion to organize later. Found some content that you’d like to save for later reading? Simply click a button and save it to the cloud. Want to save a recipe without the sidebar, ads, and extraneous content? Notion Web Clipper can do that.
I use it on a daily basis to strip out everything from a webpage apart from the content and save it for reading later.
Session Buddy
Declutter your browser tabs and save computer resources
Love the name. Session Buddy lets you close a bunch of open tabs and save them for reopening later. Your web pages will resume exactly where you left off with one click, so you don't lose your history or current work. It's a simple extension that helps you save computer RAM by suspending browser tabs that you’re not using. We all have too many open tabs when we’re working and this can lead to your Mac or PC ram getting chewed up quickly.
An awesome Chrome extension that makes it easy to improve performance for little effort. One of the best Google Chrome extensions for entrepreneurs interested in productivity. Also worth a look is a paid alternative with more features called Partizion.
TabExtend
A Better Bookmark Tool
TabExtend is billed as “more than just a bookmark manager”. TabExtend lets you organise your browser tabs visually for easier and more intuitive access. Essentially, it takes the place of a brand new tab and shows your web page bookmarks organised as you would like them.
Make browser-based tab management a breeze by easily managing tabs, taking notes, and making to-dos – all while keeping everything organized and visually appealing. Even if you don't need to access them right away, you can save tabs with either a drag-and-drop or single-click action and then quickly open them again when the time is right.
uBlock Origin
Remove annoying ads from webpages
Ads are part and parcel of the experience these days. Google and Facebook make most of their money from advertising so they aren’t going away anytime soon.
But you don’t have to put up with intrusive and annoying ads all over the screen. Tired of those long YouTube ads before and during a video? Get rid of them all with uBlock Origin – a 100% free, secure, and open source ad blocker extension
Not only will you save time, you’ll save bandwidth. This extension allows you to work faster on slower connections by removing slow-loading advertisements. It also helps you stay focused by removing distracting ads.
Install from the Microsoft Store (if you’re using Edge)
