43 Apps and Extensions Making Google Chrome the Best Small Business Browser

All of the major browser providers want to market their offering as a business-optimized browser. Microsoft Edge is a key part of Microsoft's mantra of "upgrading your business" with Windows 10. Same with Apple's Safari as a built-in app for the enterprise OS X experience. Firefox has a whole Extended Support Release (ESR) variant for deploying the browser in an enterprise environment, and even Opera has a whole line of Opera Business solutions. The one thing they're all missing, though, is a browser experience that treats business users like actual users.

Just like consumers, business users want choice and convenience. The catch is, they want it in an intuitive, natural-feeling browsing experience that integrates with all the day-to-day software and services they need in their small to midsize business (SMB), too. Larger enterprises can afford to customize their own company intranets with bespoke enterprise-grade browsers integrating in-house services, but small businesses need the built-in convenience. Google Chrome is the only browser with a wide enough selection of in-browser applications and extensions to work for any business.

Google has a free Chrome for Work offering as well; we reviewed it a few years back. But what garners Google Chrome the "Best Business Browser" crown is the depth of its web store.

Firefox has a decent selection of business-focused add-ons. Apple's Safari Extensions are limited by its own restrictive developer policies. Microsoft only added Edge browser extensions last month. But Google Chrome has far and away the most exhaustive selection of apps and extensions for a litany of business use cases—from document, project, and customer relationship management (CRM) to social media integration, collaboration, and productivity tools [and even extensions for business Voice-over-IP (VoIP) services.]

The following are 43 of the handiest Google Chrome apps and extensions, spread across many of the most important categories that matter to business users. Many of these have companion apps or third-party extensions associated with them as well but, for the purposes of a list that's not hundreds of redundant items long, we've condensed them into a single entry for each Chrome app.

Category: Collaboration

1. Asana
Task-oriented collaboration tool Asana (Visit Site at Asana) offers both an Asana app and an extension for Chrome. The extension lets you add tasks to Asana with one click from any web page you're browsing, while the app itself gives you full access to the workflow platform within the browser—from creating and assigning workflows to comments, notifications, and team communication.

There's also a pretty active third-party community for Asana. Available apps enable use cases such as viewing tasks offline and importing tasks to Asana via CSV files, along with extensions adding translation, tab-based tasking, notifications. There's also an arsenal of "power tools" and extra features that Chrome can layer atop Asana in the browser.

2. Podio
Podio (Compare Prices at Software Advice) is a collaboration and project management app that's free for small teams of five members or less; it comes with built-in chat and structured task collaboration. Podio's Chrome app brings the experience to the browser, and third-party extensions can add expanded Podio features to Chrome such as link bookmarking, item export, and Twilio call integration.

3. Slack
Slack (Visit Site at Slack) , the collaboration app that's taking the business world by storm, has a whole host of add-ons for Chrome, starting with its own app for team communication in the browser. It's also another platform with a fervent following, so you can find third-party apps such as SlackDeck for multiple teams and an external frameless window app. On the Slack extensions front, there's #Clicky for Slack, Slack Draw, and extensions spanning emoji tools, bot filters, issue tracking, and notification helpers. Asana and Slack are PCMag Editors' Choices for collaboration, and you can interact directly with both through Chrome.

4. Volerro
Volerro is another capable teamwork collaboration platform. You can add Volerro (Visit Site at Volerro) as a Chrome app to manage different types of content including Office 365 and Adobe documents, multimedia files, or webpages with team review, comments, and annotation. Volerro is free for up to three projects, and also lets you manage different versions and sync across desktop, mobile, and tablet responsive browsers.

Category: CRM

5. Salesforce
The Salesforce (Visit Site at Salesforce.com) Chrome app is pretty basic: just an app launcher redirecting you to the Salesforce login page. But the beauty of the Chrome web store is its third-party additions. An app called CRMflow condenses the Salesforce experience into a single view of interactive workflows and real-time analytics, synced with CRM data and LinkedIn contacts for lead management and sales reporting. It's an easy way to interact with one of our Editors' Choice CRM platforms without leaving the browser.

6. Insightly
Insightly (Compare Quotes and Save at Insightly) is a powerful CRM and project management app for small businesses that's free forever (for the first two users). The Chrome app lets you schedule events and tasks, log milestones, and sync with Gmail contacts, Google Apps, and Google Drive for customer and lead management. The company also released an Insightly Sidebar for Gmail extension to access the platform directly from Gmail.

7. Pipedrive
Pipedrive (Visit Site at PipeDrive) is another one of the most popular sales CRM platforms on the market. It came out on top in our CRM smackdown versus SugarCRM, and its Chrome app brings that deal-focused functionality straight into the browser. Pipedrive includes two-way sync with Google Contacts and Google Calendar, and available third-party extensions add dynamic sales document generation and CRM hotkey features as well.

8. ProsperWorks
ProsperWorks is a CRM platform created expressly for Google Apps. The Chrome app allows users to manage contacts and the sales pipeline directly from Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive.

9. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM ($24 Per User Per Month, Billed Annually at Zoho CRM) is just one of Zoho Corporation's many business apps available in the Chrome web store but, for the sake of brevity, we're only going to list them once. That said, Zoho has a long list of both apps and extensions that span the company's entire range of products—from Zoho Docs and Zoho Writer, Sheets, and Show to Zoho Projects (Free Trial at Zoho Projects) , Zoho Books, and Zoho Expense. From within Chrome, Zoho also lets you manage chat, forms, invoices and time tracking, mail, reports, surveys, websites, and even recruits and contacts.

Category: Business Document Management

10. Dropbox
Dropbox , one of the biggest names in cloud-hosted document and file storage, has an easy-to-use Chrome app for managing files and folders within the browser, and a Gmail extension to do the same without leaving your mail dashboard. For low-hassle document management in Chrome, it's a no-brainer.

11. Evernote
Evernote (Compare Prices at Software Advice) has both a web app and Evernote Web Clipper extension for Chrome users to clip any article or webpage to a specific Evernote notebook and assign tags. Using the extension, you can also highlight key text and use visual callouts. And, in the app itself, you can then create task lists and to-dos, and search your notes by keyword with automatic image processing (to search for words inside photos).

12. DocuSign
Popular electronic signature platform DocuSign (Free Trial at DocuSign) has a Chrome app that lets you right-click any files to send out documents for signature, and saves it all to Google Drive. Recipients can then sign the PDFs right from Gmail with the DocuSign extension.

Category: Email

13. AWeber
AWeber is one of PCMag's top email marketing platform options for businesses. The company's Chrome app brings email creation and templating, form building, and subscriber management to the browser.

14. Boomerang
Boomerang is a Gmail and Chrome user's best friend for email. The handy extension gives Gmail the much-needed native ability to schedule emails to send at a later date. There's also Boomerang Calendar, a smart calendar assistant extension to add meetings to your calendar with a single email.

15. HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM, email marketing, and sales platform for businesses. The HubSpot Sales extension for Chrome brings features such as CRM logging, email analytics and clickthrough stats, email scheduling, and a complete suite of sales features to the browser integrated with Gmail.

16. MailChimp
MailChimp (Visit Site at Mail Chimp) is one of our Editors' Choices for email marketing software and a leader in the space, and its MailChimp Stats extension is a no-brainer. You cna check your most recent email marketing campaign stats right from Chrome.

Category: Help Desk

17. Freshdesk
Freshdesk (Visit SIte at Freshdesk) and the more IT-focused Freshservice (Visit Site at Freshservice) both cracked PCMag's top 10 help desk platforms. In Chrome you can manage both with the Freshdesk app and Freshservice app, along with a Freshdesk Gmail Gadget for managing customer support processes—from ticketing to multichannel customer interaction—synced with Google Drive.

18. Help Scout
Help Scout is a great small business-focused help desk solution that you can manage from the browser with a Chrome app. The workflow-based platform lets you filter emails, set up custom folders, and automate actions with canned responses; it offers more than 60 keyboard shortcuts to help customer service representatives respond to issues quickly.

19. LiveChat
LiveChat's help desk software is another easy Chrome app or extension to add to your browser. This platform's value is in its ease of use for real-time communication between website visitors and customer service agents. Drop some JavaScript code onto your website, install the Chrome add-ons, and start chatting with customers using that pop-up window a user sees at the bottom of the page when they enter a website.

20. Mojo Helpdesk
Mojo Helpdesk (29.00 Per Month for Up to 10 Agents at Mojo Helpdesk) can help businesses track incoming ticket requests via email, and the Mojo Helpdesk Launch Pad app can take you right into the tool from Chrome. There are also some helpful third-party extensions to add Gmail ticketing and in-browser ticket notifications to Chrome as well.

21. Zendesk
Zendesk is one of the most popular help desk platforms available, and the company wants to make it easy for agents to handle requests from Chrome. Using the Zendesk Activity Stream and Zendesk for Gmail extensions, you can view a real-time stream of Zendesk tickets in the browser and manage tickets directly from Gmail.

Category: Productivity

22. Checker
Checker is a productivity powerhouse. The multi-purpose extension also appears in our roundups of the best free Google Chrome extensions, the bestChrome extensions for Gmail, and the best Chrome extensions for Google Drive, and for good reason. The extensions are the best way for multiple Google users to gain access to a fast drop-down menu in Chrome—and a wide array of business features, from voice input and color coding to native notifications—all in the browser.

23. Google Drive for Work
Accessed via the Google Drive app, Google Drive for Work (Try it Free at Google Store) is the central productivity hub of any Chrome business user. Most of the apps and extensions in this list host their files in Google Drive by default, so quick browser access is key to managing your entire Chrome-based user experience (UX).

24. Office Online
Under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft wants to own productivity, regardless of whether it's on their own platforms. To that end, you'll find not only the Office Online ($69.99 Per Year at Microsoft Store) extension in Chrome, but dedicated Chrome apps for the entire suite of Office applications including Excel, OneDrive, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word.

25. Zapier
Zapier (aka "that app that integrates with pretty much everything) works with more than 200 web apps you can pull notifications and related tasks for right into its Chrome extension. Zapier lets you save attachments to Google Drive, create tasks in project management tools, and sync lists with email marketing and CRM apps, turning each action into another "zap" within the ubiquitous productivity tool.

Category: Project Management

26. Basecamp
Basecamp (Visit Site at Basecamp) offers its project management platform as a fully functioning Chrome app for managing tasks and workflows, and a wide array of third-party extensions can supercharge the experience in the browser. Add notifications, bookmarks, assignment to-do lists, and even an emoji cheat sheet on top of Basecamp's Chrome experience.

27. Breeze
The Breeze project management tool for small businesses and freelancers has a Chrome app, an extension, and an official Breeze extension for another Chrome help desk app called Groove. The apps and extensions give you the platform's full range of project management features—including project budgegting, reports, time tracking, to-do lists—in a browser-based fashion with Google Drive and Dropbox integration.

28. Mavenlink
Wearing both project management and collaboration hats, Mavenlink (Visit Site at Mavenlink) is a capable business platform with a Mavenlink Project Manager extension for Chrome. The extension lets you check project activity, view and respond to messages and team feeds, and manage files, tasks, and work/time logging, without leaving the browser.

29. Teamwork Projects
Teamwork Projects (Get Price Quote at Software Advice) is one of PCMag's Editors' Choices for project management along with the aforementioned Zoho Projects (and LiquidPlanner, which doesn't have a Chrome extension). Luckily Teamwork Projects does have one and it lets you create tasks, lists, and projects from Chrome. You can also save links, log time, and switch between Teamwork accounts. The extension also includes a Gmail widget.

30. Wrike
While not quite an Editors' Choice, Wrike (Visit Site at Wrike) is another popular and powerful project management platform that you can manage with both an app and an extension in Chrome. Wrike integrates with Google Drive and lets you import tasks into Google Calendar. It includes functionality such as interactive Gantt charts, custom workflows, and document versioning within the browser.

Category: Security

31. Avast
If your business is already invested in a security solution such as Avast , or you just want a more secure browsing experience, Avast offers the Avast Online Security extension. Applicable for both consumer and business users, the extension gathers phishing data and applies Avast's website reputation system via plug-in to any website you visit. It shows you warnings and ratings, and it also switches you to "SafeZone" when you're visiting sensitive financial websites (if you've installed Avast Pro Antivirus or higher).

32. Ghostery
Ghostery (Visit Site at Ghostery) offers an innovative website monitoring platform for mapping out all of the third-party services running on a website, but the other half of the business deals with web privacy. The Ghostery extension for Chrome lets users block third-party website trackers to speed up load times. It also lets you control how much data your browser and device are giving to whatever website you're browsing. It's a simple way for business users to bring a more discerning eye for privacy to their browsing experience.

33. LastPass
LastPass ($0.00 at LastPass) is one of our Editors' Choices for password managers, and its browser extension brings that easy password saving and access to Chrome. Just remember your LastPass master password, and the extension will save all of your usernames and passwords for quick and secure browser log-in.

34. Lookout
On the mobile device management (MDM) front, the Lookout app for Chrome enables browser-based management of every device protected with Lookout security. The Chrome app can keep track of any Android, iOS, or Kindle Fire device, letting the business's IT manager geolocate a device, remotely lock or wipe it, and view saved backups of the device.

35. WordPress Plug-in Security Checker
Many people know that WordPress is a prime access point for malware and viruses. The WordPress Plug-in Security Checker app scans all new WordPress plug-ins you're thinking of downloading (if your business website, like many, runs on WordPress). It helps you check for security vulnerabilities and cross-check with the plug-in's vulnerability history and developer response time to fix flaws.

Category: Social Media

36. Buffer
Buffer (Visit Site at Buffer) is one of the most intuitive social publishing tools on the market for curating your Facebook, Instragram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other presences from one drag-and-drop post queue. The Buffer web app and extension in Chrome let you add any link into the Buffer queue with a single action, and they let you view your timeline and post-by-post analytics.

37. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is probably the most popular free third-party social publishing platform on the market, and the Chrome app lets you publish updates, track real-time feeds, and view analytics data across social channels—all from within the browser. The company also offers the Hootlet extension for sharing webpages through Hootsuite.

38. Sprout Social
Sprout Social ($199 Per User Per Month at Sprout Social) is one of PCMag's Editors' Choices for social media management and analytics, and the platform's Chrome app and extension give users full browser-based access.

Category: Videoconferencing and VoIP

39. ClickMeeting
ClickMeeting ($40.00 Per Month Per Host at ClickMeeting) , PCMag's Editors' Choice for videoconferencing services, offers a Chrome extension to conduct online meetings from the comfort of your browser. The extension lets you schedule meetings directly from Google Calendar, too.

40. GoToMeeting
Citrix GoToMeeting ($12 Per Organizer Per Month at GoToMeeting) is another highly rated and oft-used videoconferencing service that offers a browser app for Chrome. The platform also has a Google Calendar-specific extension for scheduling meetings with a single click.

41. Fonality
On the VoIP side, our Editors' Choice for Business VoIP services, Fonality Hosted PBX (24.99 Per User Per Month at NetFortris) , has a Chrome extension for its Heads-Up Display (HUD) app. While far from the most robust extension on this list, it gives the platform's graphical representation of complex phone systems some browser functionality.

42. RingCentral
VoIP provider RingCentral (Visit Site for Pricing at RingCentral) , on the other hand, has put some serious effort into its extensions for both Google and specifically for Office 365. The main extension lets users make computer-based calls directly from Gmail, invite up to 1,000 participants to Google Hangouts, and schedule meetings and conference calls from Google Calendar. The Office 365 extension does the exact same thing for the Microsoft ecosystem of business apps, making RingCentral a no-brainer for business-integrated VoIP on Chrome.

43. Skype
Finally, we have Microsoft's own videoconferencing and VoIP service. The Skype Chrome app gives users quick access to Skype for Web and "Share on Skype" functionality in the browser. And, as the company helps lead the charge toward fully integrated Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC), look to Skype's Chrome extension as one of the front lines for all of the ways multimedia collaboration is about to change.