Smarp, the employee advocacy tool this guide originally recommended, was acquired by Firstup in September 2021 and no longer exists as a standalone product. The underlying idea it was built around, turning employees into a distributed content and social-selling channel, is still sound. If you’re evaluating tools in this category today, Firstup (Smarp’s successor platform) and similar employee communication and advocacy tools like GaggleAMP now cover the same ground, generally with more built-in AI content suggestions than Smarp originally had.

Oribi, the no-code analytics dashboard originally recommended here, was acquired by LinkedIn in February 2022 for a reported $80 to $90 million, and its customer-facing product was shut down shortly after, with existing customers pushed toward alternatives. If you’re looking for a simplified, business-owner-friendly analytics dashboard today, tools like Google Analytics 4, Plausible, or PostHog now fill that role, with GA4 in particular becoming the default free option most businesses end up using.

VoilaNorbert is still operating and still does what the original recommendation described: finding and verifying B2B email addresses. What’s changed around it is the broader category, prospecting tools now routinely layer AI-driven signal detection on top of basic email finding, so a modern evaluation should weigh Norbert against newer AI-native prospecting tools, not just older email finders.

Growbots remains active, though the outbound sales category around it has shifted meaningfully toward AI-personalized outreach. Signal-personalized outreach, meaning messages triggered by a specific buying signal rather than a generic template, now achieves 15% to 25% reply rates, compared to a 3% to 5% industry average for standard cold email, according to a 2026 AI sales prospecting report from Autobound drawing on Salesforce, Gartner, and HubSpot data. If your outbound tool isn’t incorporating this kind of signal-based personalization by now, it’s worth checking what’s changed in the category since 2018.

Groove (GrooveHQ) remains active and still positions itself around unified, collaborative support for small and mid-sized teams. As covered in our broader look at tools and resources for growing a business, most help desk platforms in this category, Groove included, have added AI-drafted response suggestions since 2018, which is worth checking for specifically if you haven’t re-evaluated your support stack recently.

UberSuggest is still active and still free at its core tier, remaining a reasonable entry point for keyword research and competitor analysis. What’s changed since 2018 is the broader SEO landscape around it: AI Overviews now shape a meaningful share of search results, so keyword research tools in 2026 are increasingly expected to show AI-citation and visibility data alongside traditional ranking data, not just search volume and difficulty.

Meta’s advertising platform is still one of the most capable targeting systems available, though the mechanics behind it have changed substantially since 2018. Manual audience targeting has given way to AI-driven Advantage+ campaigns, which now handle most of the bidding, placement, and audience-finding work that used to require manual configuration, part of the broader shift covered by artificial intelligence in marketing. The remarketing opportunity the original guide highlighted is still one of the strongest use cases for the platform, and if anything it’s become more automated and more precise since 2018.