Revised April 24, 2019
Revised March 7, 2019
Revised June 28, 2017
To enhance and automate marketing functions, businesses need to invest in online tools, integration, and training. No question.
That said, however, it’s amazing how much can be done without spending any money—or even leaving whatever web page is currently open in your browser.
These Chrome browser extensions perform all sorts of interesting tasks, from displaying information about your email contacts to better managing your time, saving memory (your computer’s, not yours), sharing updates across social media platforms, managing passwords, taking notes, using voice dictation, protecting you from viruses and malware, viewing SEO information for any open web page, and more.
Even better—except where otherwise noted, all the tools below are free, or at least offer free versions.
1) Rapportive
Google Review Count: 332
Displays LinkedIn profile and other information about your contacts right inside your Gmail inbox: profile picture, current location (if known), job role and company.
Sample reviews: “Rapportive is a plugin you add to your email that will look up the social profiles of your contacts and let you connect to them directly within your email tool.” — RazorSocial
“Looking for the right email of a reporter? Try different combinations inside of Gmail – when you hit on the right one their LinkedIn will pop up. It also helps you know who you are emailing with…Knowledge is power. Rapportive is knowledge.” — Hunter & Bard
Showcase reviews: Buffer Social, BuzzBlogger, Econsultancy, Hunter & Bard, PR Daily (Automate), PR Daily (Tools), Razor Social, Social Media Examiner (Productivity), TNW News
2) StayFocusd
Google Review Count: 319
A productivity extension for Google Chrome that helps you stay focused on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites. Once the allotted time you’ve configured for each site, subdomain, etc. has been used up, those sites will be blocked and inaccessible for the rest of the day.
Sample reviews: “We have so much information and media available at our fingertips that it can be pretty tough to resist the urge to check our email, take a ‘quick’ look at Twitter, or see what’s happening over on Facebook. One solution I’ve found is to block distracting websites, or literally put my computer into lock-down, meaning I can’t do anything elseexcept type until I’ve hit my own target. There are lots of tools that can help you achieve this. I use StayFocusd.” — Marketing Insider Group
Showcase reviews: BuzzBlogger, Marketing Insider Group
3) NoFollow
Google Review Count: 245
Highlight links that point to any of your domains. You can choose the colors to highlight nofollow and follow links, and which domains/hosts to highlight. You can also turn highlighting on and off for different sites.
Sample reviews: “The nofollow Chrome extension is very simple and highlights the links that are nofollow, directly in your browser. Any SEO should use this extension, especially considering it’s free.” — Robbie Richards
Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards
4) MightyText
Google Review Count: 230
Only for Android phone users and you’ll need the (free) Andoid app to make this work, but then you can send and receive SMS messages from any PC or Mac using your Android phone number. Sync text messages, calls, notifications, photos, and battery status.
Sample reviews: “(MightyText) basically eliminates the need for me to constantly check my phone throughout the day. I can cut and paste from desktop windows to SMS conversations, send photos in my picture folder to MMS recipients, and works on my Nexus 7 tablet as well. Emoji’s are supported too. Love it.” — Gizmodo
Showcase reviews: Gizmodo
5) OneTab
Google Review Count: 230
Too many tabs open in Chrome? Click the OneTab icon to convert all of your tabs into a list. When you need to access the tabs again, you can either restore them individually or all at once. When your tabs are in the OneTab list, you will save up to 95% of memory because you will have reduced the number of tabs open in Google Chrome.
Sample reviews: “Suddenly find yourself with a zillion tabs open? Click this browser extension to consolidate them all into a single list. Restore them individually or all at once.” — Wrike
Showcase reviews: Wrike
6) Hootlet
Google Review Count: 217
Search social content, share directly from any page, highlight any text and automatically compose a message to share, search location relevant social shares, and share images and video. Post to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Sample reviews: “I love easily sharing articles and videos quickly through the Hootlet. I did a video last year about it – and I still use it every day!” — Katie Lance
Showcase reviews: Katie Lance
7) Eye Dropper
Google Review Count: 185
Eye Dropper is open source extension for Google Chrome which allows you to pick colors from various sources. You can pick any color on current webpage and store it in history or copy to clipboard.
Showcase reviews: Likeable Media
8) ColorZilla
Google Review Count: 168
ColorZilla for Google Chrome is an extension that assists web developers and graphic designers with color related tasks. Get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can analyze the page and inspect a palette of its colors.
Sample reviews: “Need to find the Hex # of an image? ColorZilla allows getting a color reading from any point in the browser, quickly adjusting this color and pasting it into any program.” — Likeable Media
Showcase reviews: Likeable Media
9) LastPass
Google Review Count: 153
Password manager extension: only remember one password—your LastPass master password. Save all your usernames and passwords to LastPass, and it will autologin to your sites and sync your passwords everywhere you need them. Only you know your master password, and only you can access your vault. Your master password is never shared with LastPass.
Sample reviews: “Save your usernames and passwords to LastPass, and access them wherever you need to.” — Wrike
Showcase reviews: Gizmodo, The Wonder of Tech, Wrike
10) Evernote Web Clipper
Google Review Count: 140
Use the Evernote extension to save things you see on the web into your Evernote account. Instead of bookmarking, clip the web pages you want to keep, save them in Evernote, then access them on any device. Great for research.
Sample reviews: “The Evernote web clipper allow(s) you to create beautiful annotated pictures with minimal effort…With the web clipper, you can select a full screenshot, an email, or a full page of content or select a specific part of a webpage.” — QuickSprout
Showcase reviews: Quick Sprout, The Wonder of Tech
11) Nimbus Screenshot
Google Review Count: 132
Capture web pages, either selected parts or the whole browser window, and edit your screenshots in a user-friendly interface. Record screencasts – record video from your screen. Record video and screencasts from your screen/tab.
Sample reviews: “Nimbus Screenshot lets you capture the visible part of a web page, a selected area, a selected scroll (my personal favorite), the entire page, or the entire browser window — including everything below the fold. Once you’ve taken the screenshot, you can crop, edit (like adding notes and callouts), and choose to print or save to your desktop or Google Drive.” — HubSpot
Showcase reviews: HubSpot
12) Google Voice
Google Review Count: 118
For Google Voice users—make calls, send SMS, preview Inbox, and get notified of new messages. (US only.) Adds a button to the toolbar, which displays the number of unread messages in your Google Voice inbox, alerts you to new messages, lets you initiate calls and send free text messages.
Sample reviews: “It’s great handling voice mail and texts from the a quick drop down.” — Gizmodo
Showcase reviews: Gizmodo
13) Hola Better Internet
Google Review Count: 108
Hola is a free and ad-free VPN proxy service that provides a faster and more open Internet. Enables you to access websites blocked in your country, company or school. Be careful with this one.
Sample reviews: “Websites from the US, UK, etc. will feed me a localized ad that lasts 30 seconds and then tell me I can’t view the actual video because I’m not in the right country? This fixes that bullshit and makes me watch things on their sites instead of The Pirate Bay.” — Gizmodo
Showcase reviews: Gizmodo, The Wonder of Tech
14) AutoPatchWork
Google Review Count: 100
Automatically loads the next page and inserts into current page when you reach the end of the page. like AutoPagerize. Helpful, for example, when examining multiple pages of Google search results.
Sample reviews: “Load websites with multiple pages as a single continuous page, so there’s no need to click ‘Next.'” — Wrike
Showcase reviews: Wrike
15) Dictation.io
Google Review Count: 98
Use Google Chrome as a voice recognition app and type long documents, emails and school essays without touching the keyboard. Dictation uses Chrome’s Local Storage to automatically save the transcriptions so you’ll never lose your work.
Showcase reviews: Wrike
16) Avast Online Security
Google Review Count: 88
Browse without worry—Avast checks every site you visit, from Facebook to your bank, to ensure nothing puts your data at risk. Stops phishing attacks, shows user reviews, and warns you when you’re visiting websites with bad reputations.
Showcase reviews: The Wonder of Tech
17) Open SEO Stats
Google Review Count: 82
SEO extension for Google Chrome that shows Alexa Rank, Compete Rank and Quantcast Rank of the current web page, in addition to information on backlinks, indexed pages, cached pages, socials, Whois, Geo IP location and more.
Showcase reviews: Lilach Bullock
18) Clearbit Connect
Google Review Count: 77
A Gmail extension that displays work email address, social media account links (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook), and other information for any contact. A helpful tool for sales teams.
Showcase reviews: Tenfold
19) N.A.P. Hunter
Google Review Count: 67
A tool for local SEO work: N.A.P. Hunter Lite performs searches for various combinations of a business’s name, address and phone number information to give you a look at a business’ citation profile and automatically download it to a .csv file. Helps find duplicate local citations.
Showcase reviews: Robbie Richards
20) Adobe Acrobat Create PDF
Google Review Count: 48
Convert web pages to rich, high-quality PDF files that maintain the look and feel of the original content (note: Windows only). Preserve the layout, formatting, and links of captured pages – including CSS styles, HTML5 tags, JavaScript, embedded Flash, and more.
Showcase reviews: The Wonder of Tech
21) Chrome Currency Converter
Google Review Count: 46
Automatically convert prices (Dollars, Pounds, Yen and Euros) within the page to the selected currency using current exchange rates.
Showcase reviews: Wrike
22) BuzzSumo Chrome Extension
Google Review Count: 36
Get social share counts for the page you’re viewing, or for any other website, across Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Share the current page on any of those networks with one click, and see who shared the page on Twitter.
Sample review: “The BuzzSumo Chrome extension shows you the share counts on any site you are on for all of the different social networks, including Twitter…There are a couple of other cool features that let you view which Twitter users shared a page you’re tracking, the backlinks pointing to that page and other content from the page‘s author. You can also see some of the most shared content on that site and even analyze the website. The BuzzSumo Chrome extension is free but requires a free or paid BuzzSumo account.” — Social Media Examiner (Tools)
Showcase reviews: Social Media Examiner (Tools)
23) Giphy for Chrome
Google Review Count: 23
Get a GIF search engine anywhere on the web. Respond to emails, tweets and more with GIFs quickly. Add GIPHY GIFs to your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and more.
Sample review: “You know that coworker who always seems to find the perfect animated GIFs for your social posts or internal chat client? With the free Giphy Chrome extension, you’ll be able to find great GIFs just as quickly. To use the tool, all you have to do is open the extension in Chrome, search, choose a GIF, and drag and drop.” — HubSpot
Showcase reviews: HubSpot
More Tools
ExpressVPN
Google Review Count: 291
A virtual private network (VPN) system which uses advanced encryption technology. It enables users to access the internet securely on public Wi-Fi hotspots, protecting sensitive information from the ISP, third parties and hackers, and malicious websites. The extension is free but requires a service account with ExpressVPN which runs about $10 per month.
ContactOut
Google Review Count: 195
Install this plugin, log into LinkedIn (or Github), and find (almost) anyone’s phone number and email address instantly. ContactOut’s AI engine is purportedly able to find emails for 75% of the western world. Great for recruiting, sales, and influencer marketing.
Flaunt
Google Review Count: 166
A reporting tool for agencies—grab screenshots of your best work any time, crop and annotate them, and automatically create a customizable report at month end (or whenever). The service costs $5 per month per client after the free trial period.
AeroLeads
Google Review Count: 143
Enables you to immediately find the email addresses and phone number of (many) people on LinkedIn. After installing the plugin and entering API key, you should see “Add Prospect to AeroLeads” button on every LinkedIn profile on top right corner. You will also see similar button on LinkedIn search pages as well as in Google when you search from AeroLeads.
Dittach
Google Review Count: 34
An attachment manager for Gmail that saves time finding past emails and attachments. Search (directly from the Gmail search bar) or browse every email you’ve ever sent or received, filtering by date or attachment file type. Search within the contents of PDFs, Powerpoints, and other file formats. Forward, download, print, or navigate direct to the email associated with each attachment.
Nudge for Chrome
Google Review Count: 24
Gave you AI sales insights, for free, on contacts and companies as you write emails and browse the web. Nudge closed down in January 2020.
Showcase Reviews
Buffer Social
BuzzBlogger
Lilach Bullock
Econsultancy
Gizmodo
HubSpot
Hunter & Bard
Katie Lance
Likeable Media
Marketing Insider Group
PR Daily (Automate)
PR Daily (Tools)
Quick Sprout
RazorSocial
Robbie Richards
Social Media Examiner (Productivity)
Social Media Examiner (Tools)
Tenfold
The Wonder of Tech
TNW News
Wrike
This was the 37th post in the Best Online Business Tools series.
#1: Best Online Business Tools Series Kicks Off Today
#2: The 12 Best Competitive Intelligence and Benchmarking Tools
#3: The Nine Best Facebook Marketing Tools
#4: The 14 Best Content Planning and Research Tools
#5: The 23 Best Content Ideation Tools
#6: The 24 Best Online Writing Tools and Apps
#7: The Six Best Google+ Marketing Tools
#8: The Four Best Online Education Tools For Business Pros
#9: The 14 Best Marketing Automation Tools
#10: The 17 Best Keyword Research Tools for SEO and SEM
#11: The Seven Best File Sharing Tools
#12: The Five Best Infographic Creation Tools and Services
#13: The 28 Best Influencer Marketing Tools
#14: The Five Best Pinterest and Instagram Marketing Tools
#15: The 24 Best Visual Content Creation Tools
#16: The Six Best Online HR, Payroll, and Employee Scheduling Tools
#17: The 20 Best SEO Rank Tracker Tools
#18: The Six Best Screen Capture Tools
#19: The 15 Best Special-Purpose SEO Tools
#20: The Four Best Online Survey Tools
#21: The 26 Best All-in-One SEO Tool Suites
#22: The 32 Best Twitter Marketing Tools
#23: The 29 Best Web Analytics Tools
#24: The 24 Best Email Marketing Tools
#25: The 28 Best Web Design Tools
#26: The 29 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools
#27: The 17 Best Project Management Tools
#28: The 21 Best Content Curation Tools
#29: The 26 Best WordPress Plugins
#30: The 14 Best Personal Productivity Tools
#31: The 11 Best Social Media Campaign Builders and Ad Monitoring Tools
#32: The 12 Best Landing Page and Form Builders for Conversion Rate Optimization
#33: The 17 Best Photo Editing Tools
#34: The Six Best Accounting and Finance Tools for Small Business
#35: The 15 Best Content Distribution and Amplification Tools
#36: The 17 Best Social Media Management Tools
#37: The 23 Best Google Chrome Extensions for Digital Marketers