This is a (not exhaustive) list of tools and web resources I choose to use, plus those I wish to evaluate. It is somewhat inspired by
awesome lists. It is leaning towards free or cheap tools and resources. I’ve created this as bookmarks aren’t really working for me and I wanted to share 😀
| The link |
My thoughts or just a description |
| Pexels |
Royalty free images |
| Unsplash |
Royalty free images |
| Openclipart |
Royalty free images |
| DALL.E |
AI Image generation |
| Night Cafe |
AI Image generation |
| GIMP |
Powerful Photoshop alternative. The tool you need to tidy up those AI images (see above) |
| Standard Colours |
List of common colours, names, Hex and RGB values |
| Canva |
Create designs, videos, images, etc. Seems to be the tool of choice of new business to auto-generate visual content |
| Aseprite |
Animated sprite editor and pixel art tool |
| Open Game Art |
All sorts of fun things like sound effects, sprites, 3d models, etc |
| Kenny |
More free game art (is a nicer looking website than Open Game Art) |
Building websites / landing pages
| The link |
My thoughts or just a description |
| Google Sites |
Cheap and easy. No SEO and has other limitations such as limited customizations. Great if you want a quick site though. |
| Github pages |
Free fast hosting at no cost. This site runs on Github pages! |
| Jekyll |
Turn markdown into nicely formatted websites. This site uses Jekyll. Jekyll and Github pages are a great combo but require some coding knowledge. |
| Google Analytics |
Measure your site’s performance. |
| GrapeJS |
Drag and drop website editor for self hosting. I’m looking for something which is as easy as Google Sites but can be hosted on Github pages. This might be it! |
| Mobirise |
Drag and drop website editor for self hosting. To be evaluated… |
| Publii |
Drag and drop website editor for self hosting. To be evaluated… |
| Simply Static |
Drag and drop website editor for self hosting. To be evaluated… |
| Shuffle |
Drag and drop website editor for self hosting. To be evaluated… |
| Squarespace |
If the above don’t work out, I’ll just use squarespace as I’m sure it’ll be great for SEO and ease of use (but not free) |
Find ideas / problems / inspiration
Social / Marketing / Communications
| The link |
My thoughts or just a description |
| LinkedIn |
Find work, B2B selling, etc |
| Bluesky |
A friendlier alternative to Twitter/X |
| Mastodon |
Another alternative Twitter/X. Techie focused |
| Later |
Marketing platform that was recommend to me. Haven’t tried it yet |
| openvibe |
Allows you to connect across Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky |
| Publer |
Only tool I’ve found that supports every social media platform including those above |
| Slack |
Team chat or good for building an online community |
| Discord |
Same as Slack but more focused on the gaming community |
| WhatsApp for Business |
Engage audiences, accelerate sales and drive better customer support |
Domain names
| The link |
My thoughts or just a description |
| TLD-LIST |
Price compare domain name registration and renewal |
| Spaceship |
Cheap domain registration with great interface |
Hosting / Cloud services / Monitoring
| The link |
My thoughts or just a description |
| IONOS |
Cheap VPS hosting (UK-based) |
| Hetzner |
More cheap VPS hosting |
| New Relic |
If you’re using a VPS, you’ll need to monitor server and app logs to see when things break. New Relic will do this for you… for free. |
| Coolify |
Self hosted cloud services (to look at) |
| Google Cloud Platform |
Can be expensive cloud provicer. If we are talking about AWS vs Azure vs GCP, I prefer GCP |
| Google Firestore |
A free database as long as you don’t mind No-SQL |
| Google Cloud Run |
Free app hosting but found issues with cold starts so had to use a VPS when this became an issue |
| Google Secret Manager |
Stores secrets and keys for free |
| Firebase |
A set of Google services that help you create the “backend” components of an application more easily. It groups together the other Google services mentioned (above). |
Project management / productivity / CRM
| The link |
My thoughts or just a description |
| monday.com |
Flexible Work OS that can be used for project management, CRM, spreadsheet replacement, automation, etc… |
| Hubspot |
CRM with lots of features |
| Notion |
Similar to monday. I use this for creating a daily todo list and managing projects |
Learning resources / reference material
AI
| The link |
My thoughts or just a description |
| Chat GPT |
Proofreading, content generation, etc |
| Claude |
Proofreading, content generation, etc |
| Relevance AI |
Build AI agents |
| LangChain |
Seems like this is for building AI agents before the “AI agents” buzzword (could be wrong) |
| Hugging Face |
Free AI resources, with the caveat that you will need to know how to use them |
| Perplexity AI |
Free AI search engine designed to revolutionize the way you discover information |
| Vertex AI |
Google’s fully-managed, unified AI development platform for building and using generative AI |
| The link |
My thoughts or just a description |
| PyCharm |
My main workhorse and worth every penny |
| iTerm2 |
macOS terminal |
| CotEditor |
The Plain-Text Editor for macOS (my notepad++ replacement) |
| Figma |
Design user interfaces |
| Github |
Store code, review code, build code, etc… |
| Gitlab |
Same as above |