The Ultimate 50 Must-Have Tools to Help your Startup Grow in China

December 9, 2016
Innovation Practice

XNode Blog

The Ultimate 50 Must-Have Tools to Help your Startup Grow in China

As an overseas entrepreneur or startup taking advantage of all tech solutions available online today, you are using Asana or Trello to be very organized and productive, you are storing your files on Google Drive and Dropbox, you are using Twitter and Facebook to raise your target’s awareness on your products or services, and broadcasting videos through your Youtube channel, because video content is must.

You are also using the best SEO tools and strategies, and following a strong content strategy to market your brand, applying an email tactic through Mailchimp to nurture your audience with relevant infos that you are collecting on Feedly. You are probably also backed by several freelancers that you are hiring on Upwork.

Your business is doing quite well and you want to grow in a challenging market. So you are settling your operations in China but you are figuring out that the majority of the tools used out there, in your country, are useless in here, because of the GFW (great firewall), or simply because your Chinese team is not used to them. Worse, you are realizing that your prospects and customers are different from those you used to know and that you need to adapt to them.

You are lost.

But then you dig deeper and you realize that all those tools have Chinese equivalents. You understand as well that a lot of amazing Chinese tools can help you reach your audience more efficiently, and run your business smoothly in China.

Here is a list of the 50 must-have tools to grow your startup in China.

The uncategorized

  • WeChat: Hard to describe in one paragraph, but this is the most obvious and powerful tool in China. And you can do everything on it, the Chinese way: sales, marketing, collaboration, organization and the list is long. The desktop version is a must have. Just type Wechat on google or yahoo and you will understand the power of this platform. It is an operating system on itself. It has the potential to become the next Windows or mac in China.

Sales

  • 麦客CRM(MikeCRM): It tracks your daily reporting tasks. From generating feedback forms to keeping a tab on the number of filings per day. It also makes questionnaires as per your requirements and based on the information collected can also calculate your target customers’ likes and dislikes. It is also connected to Wechat and automatically fills out user forms to create a contact file.
  • 金数据(Gold data): A data solutions and management platform, it covers various sectors like education and training, culture, advertising and media, electricity etc. It has roped in with big companies as well as startups giving a wide range of data solutions. From managing the operation of an event including registration, SMS notifications without the headache of auditing and manual entry to jumpstarting your business by online booking and managing your transactions.
  • Parllay: performs WeChat content marketing and customer support through data. It also offers insights to personalized interaction. This tool can uses Wechat for content marketing, online customer service, social CRM, real time analytics, data tracking among other services.
  • Weixin: provides services such as  customer management support by exchanging a large customer database to get correct search, screening, one to one interaction etc. It also provides customer assistance with statistics, data synchronization for better understanding of your customer.
  • 微盟 Weimob: offers services through micro communication platforms through its online as well as online to offline service. It covers a range of industries such as food and beverage, hotel, real estate, automobile and medical etc. Through this service it offers customer communication channels.
  • Dodoca: It provides mobile related services. From mobile business tools, mobile power platform, mobile advertising services to  full range of mobile Internet financial solutions.
  • Xiaoi: ​ They have a micro chat bot feature, a Wechat assistant which is ready to serve you and answer all your questions. By using large data technology, it provides information on travel, life services, game entertainment.
  • Pingxx is a payment management platform which gives a quick overview of the day's trading conditions, cross-channel transaction management, audit reconciliation, data analysis, output reports and so on.

Marketing

  • 皮皮时光机(PiPi time machine): It provides timekeeping for your microblogging activities. It has other features also like beautifying your micro blog, clone or delete your micro blogging activity. It is mostly being used by Weibo users.
  • Wenjuan: It is an online survey platform. It is focused on questionnaire establishment, distribution, management, analysis services and even more.
  • 秀米Xiumi:  It is an editing tool for Wechat articles.
  • 聚议(JuEvent):  They are marketing events service provider and organize exhibitions, seminars, summits and conferences and business meetings.
  • 领库(KOL store): is a Social media marketing platform. They help advertisers to enhance their brand. They provide promotions, broadcast strategy, opinions of key leaders in the industry among others.
  • 会鸽(EventDove): It aims to create shortcuts for management activities, from creating events to providing you with safe and reliable  integrated payment system. Its services like notification and feeds are custom made with the feature of multichannel promotion on Wechat and microblogging sites. It is the chinese version of eventbrite, Huodongxin (event platform) and Yoopay.cn.
  • 上线了(SXL): It is the Chinese version of Strikingly, to help build website in an easy and efficient way. It has various kinds of editing techniques, pageview data monitoring service, collects user feedback to facilitate visitor registration applications etc.

If you want to dig deeper in the tech digital side of marketing, this link is very useful. https://www.cnbusinessforum.com/chinese-digital-marketing-tools/

Social Media

  • (Newrank): It is a mobile internet content business service platform. It provides data-based consulting, advertising, marketing, copyright brokering and incubation services.
  • Robin8: Robin8 is based on large data network, new media advertising platform. Its system helps brands find the most appropriate new media network.
  • Parklu: It provides data and analytics to check what content works on social media. It helps in digging relevant influencers on Chinese networking sites to help in positioning and promoting of brands.
  • Kbstreet: They are an influencer marketing platform for the Chinese market. They offer to match you with influencers, distribute your content and provide real time performance report for your campaign. Their services include content marketing, social PR and social e-commerce among others.

Streaming

  • Inke: Live streaming platform.

Design

  • 昵图网 (Nipic): Picture material sharing platform. It has editing options such as graphics, multimedia and photography.
  • 699pic: It is a picture editor and manager. It has stocks of photographs for all kinds of occasions.
  • Xiudodo: It is an online platform for designing Wechat article.

Data and Analytics

  • Appannie: is an App for data collection and analysis, providing customized solutions.
  • 友盟+(Umeng): Big data service provider, serve the full-package data-related solution.
  • Adbug: Tracing all advertisement published on Internet.

Technical Stuff

  • 快码(KuaiMa):  Its is a coding crowdsourcing platform. It develops and outsources softwares.
  • Testin:  is a world leading “Cloud Testing” service provider. Its services include function test, compatibility test, debugging, safety test and quality control among others.
  • 听云(Ting Yun):  It is the most popular APM(Application Performance Management) service provider in China. Its services are based on cloud performance visualization.
  • 阿里云(AliYun):  It is a Cloud computing platform by AliBaba, to help startups in cloud computing, cloud storage, big data analysis.
  • 青云(QingCloud):  It is a cloud computing service provider.
  • 七牛(QiNiu): It is a leading public cloud service provider focusing on enterprise market. It creates data-centric scene PaaS services, data processing, content anti-spam services, and live cloud services among others.
  • 码市(Coding): is the Chinese version of Github.It offers services such as code hosting, quality management, demonstration platform, and development tools to enhance research and development efficiency.
  • DNSPod:  It is country’s second largest Domain Name Service (DNS) provider. It provides reliable technical support for domain name security and speed analysis of user site visit experience.
  • 个推(GeTui): It is based on large data push technology providers, providing Android and iOS push SDK. It also has services for App developers to effectively improve product activity, increase user retention.
  • Qmacode:   It is used for QR code’s online design.

Cloud Storage

  • jianguoyun.com (nutstore):They provide cloud storage, file sharing etc through nutclouds. They offer services like enterprise knowledge management.
  • BaiduPan – Baidu Pan can download any files via BitTorrent, eD2K, HTTP, HTTPS and FTP automatically and directly to the Baidu Pan cloud storage.

Accountancy

  • 易后台(EHouTai):  They provide financial and tax advise. It is an Internet-based service platform to achieve tax reporting data for users. They also offer in-depth analysis of financial data to avoid tax risk.

HR, recruitment

  • 猪八戒(ZhuBaJie):   The leading service crowdsourcing platform in China, it finds part time service provider for UI/UX design,SEO advertising,app development, etc.

Productivity

  • 知乎(ZhiHu): It is the Chinese version of Quora, a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by the community of its users.

If you want to dig more, here is the perfect link: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-popular-project-freelancer-websites-in-China

Project Management

  • Teambition:    It is a coordinated management tool. They provided all in one management solutions from creating projects, managing tasks, posting ideas, storing files to book keeping and monitoring among others.
  • Tower: is invested by Sequoia, one of the best team cooperation tool. It facilitates online discussion with quick results, one by one tracking of sub-tasks, easy access for file sharing and collaborative editing for online documents.