My Entire Web Design Tech Stack (Rated: Love It, or Left It?)
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If you've recently looked at your monthly software subscriptions and thought "...what is all of this even doing for me" — same. 😂
I've been building and running my web design business since 2015, and in that time I've tried what feels like every tool, app, and platform that's ever been marketed to a solo creative! Some of them changed my business, some of them collected dust until I cancelled them feeling guilty that I wasted the time/money on it, and some are sitting in a "still testing" pile while I figure out if they're worth the hype or the cost.
So I decided to just... lay it all out here for ya. Every category of tool I can think of that I use (or have used) in my business, with my honest verdict on each one.
This is not a "top 10 tools for designers" listicle though. This is a full, unfiltered tech stack journey of someone who's been in the trenches long enough to know what's actually worth paying for, to do which specific tasks, and when it’s time to pass/leave it & move on.
So I did what Hilary Farr and David Visentin have been doing to stressed-out homeowners on HGTV for years — I made a list of all the tools I could think of, that I use or have used/tested, and rated them on a scale ––mostly whether I Love it, or Left It? Except in my version, nobody cries about the kitchen island, and the budget is entirely my problem. 😂
Every category of tool I use (or have used) in my business, here’s a list of possibilities you can literally use (there’s a checklist at the end!) to tally up what you want, see how much that’ll cost, and then decide what you’ll Love, or Leave, behind for 2026. 👏🏻 🙌
A quick note/disclaimer:
Some of these links are affiliate links & all will be marked with an asterisk (*) — meaning I may earn a small commission if you make purchase from one of them, at no extra cost to you. A handful of tools were gifted to me in exchange for an honest review, and those are marked clearly too. As always: I don't recommend anything I wouldn't use myself, and I'll tell you when something didn't work for me just as readily as when it did. Okay, grab a cup of coffee/tea & let's dig in! ☕
🛑 Wait! —Before you spiral!
I see you looking at this list thinking, "OMG I need ALL of this… ?? 😳" NOPE.
It took me 10+ years to build this tech stack. Ten years of trying things, cancelling things, switching things, regretting things, and occasionally impulse-buying an AppSumo deal because it seemed like a great idea at the time. 😂 I would bet money that I could be using most of these tools significantly more efficiently than I currently do —and I built this damn list.
This is not a "must-have tools" post. This is a "here are options for which categories of tools are worth paying for in your business after a decade of trial and error" post. Your business is different, your workflow is different, and your budget is different than mine. Where you are right now is different from where I am, too.
So please — don't go adding 26 new apps this week, because that’s NOT the point of this resource. But do pick one category where you feel the most friction or the most disorganization, look through the options, thenfind a tool in that section that fits your budget and your situation, and try that one thing. See if it helps! Then come back for the next one if you hit another struggle.
My goal was never to have the most tools. The goal is to have the right ones — and to actually use them to free up my time, because that's the hardest thing to manage these days. Everything else is just an expensive distraction. 😄
🏷️ Rating System:
Each tool gets one of three verdicts:
🧡 Love It — currently using
🔴 Left It — tried it, moved on
💙 Used it — used it at some point
⚪️ Passed — only researched it
🧪 Testing — testing now
Client-Facing Business Tools
CRM (Client Relationship Management)
If you're a service-based designer, your CRM is the backbone of your client processes. It's where leads come in, projects get booked, contracts get signed, invoices go out, and the whole client journey lives. Getting this right matters more than almost any other tool on this list. While you don't "have" to use a CRM, as you grow/scale, most people prefer to pay a software to help them manage these processes, vs hiring a person to do these things because it's much MUCH cheaper.
Dubsado* — 🧡 Love It
I've been on Dubsado since 2017 and I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. It's the most customizable CRM I've found for solo service providers — robust forms, contracts, proposals, invoicing with payment plans, automations, and a client portal all under one roof. It's not perfect, and the learning curve is real, but once it's set up it runs like a machine.
One thing worth noting: not every inquiry that comes into my business is a client inquiry. Software review requests, general questions, digital product questions, partnership opportunities — those don't belong in a CRM built for 1:1 client projects. I'm currently moving my lead capture system out of Dubsado for exactly that reason, but not because of a flaw in their software. It's definitely best for managing leads that will become clients for 1:1 services, not necessarily for managing sales leads of all kinds.
Assembly* — 🧪 Tested
I started testing Assembly because I wanted to know what the competition was up to — and honestly, it's impressive in a few specific areas. It handles multiple contacts per company way better than Dubsado, has a genuinely strong built-in client portal, and offers features like a storefront for optional services. It even provides a way to send 1 message to all clients, or a group of clients, and each recipient can respond privately without seeing the communications from everyone else; Dubsado just added this ability in Q1 of 2026, but it's so new as of posting that I haven't even tried it yet!
Where Assembly falls short: it's less customizable overall, the contract editor is upload-only (no edits inside the platform, so placeholders have to be built in as blanks or spaces in the original before you upload it), and invoicing options are much more limited compared to Dubsado. It can also get expensive fast, especially on mid-tier plans and above, which you'll need if you have more than 50 clients to manage.
My take so far: Dubsado still wins for solo designers who want full customization and control. Assembly could be a great fit for agencies that want a simpler straightforward CRM with a strong built-in portal and don't mind the price point. Full review coming soon! 👀
Bonsai* — 💙 Used It
Bonsai is primarily a CRM, but has other useful features built-in like light task management, scheduling & a portal. If you can’t use or don’t like Honeybook, found Dubsado to be confusing or overly complicated, Bonsai might be a great fit for you. It’s still a fairly robust tool, but feels simpler to use, and while it lacks much of the extra features Dubsado offers, it will probably be easier to start with for newer businesses that don’t mind migrating to a different option later on, if business growth requires more features. I started my freelance journey with Bonsai in 2016 and used it for about a year before moving to Dubsado. That said, it’s come a long way since then, and is much more comparable with both Honeybook & Dubsado now.
Tezzera — 🧪 Tested
This is a brand new CRM option, but as of posting, it’s so new that it’s still has a waitlist for new signups. I got the chance to play around with it when the Beta round first opened and was really impressed with how good it is this early in the game. It feels like a Flodesk-style user interface, and is more brandable than competitors, but in simplistic ways that really outshine the competition. It’ll be open to international users (avoiding the locale issues that Honeybook has), and it’s designed by a web designer who’s been unhappy with the existing pool of similar softwares. It did have limitations while testing, but I’m sure those will be eliminated as it grows. I’m keeping my eye on this one!
Other popular options
Of course the competitors with the best reputation are: Honeybook* which I've not tried/tested in earnest since ~2016, and Bonsai* which I've tested on/off over the years & used in 2016-2017 before switching to Dubsado for more features. (Bonsai has come a long way since then & offers a much more competitive product now!)
I'd say Moxie follows closely behind, based on its reputation, but I've never tried it myself. Then there's also some newer options like Tezzera, Bloom, and Indy.
You can see a breakdown in this post of the ones that also include a client portal (except Tezzera, because their Beta launched after I made that video, but they do have a portal & I've tested it lightly during Beta).
Client Portals
This one is close to my heart —I mean, my entire Ultimate Client Portal System course is built around the idea that your client's experience of working with you matters just as much as the work itself. A good portal isn't a nice-to-have. It can also be the difference between a client who ghosts midway through the project, and one who sends you referrals.
That said — not every designer needs a dedicated portal tool. If you're just starting out, Dubsado's client view or even a well-organized Google Drive folder can get the job done. But if you want something that feels genuinely professional and polished, these are the two I'd point you toward.
Kitchen* — 🧡 Love It
Kitchen is a dedicated client portal app with a lifetime payment, and it is genuinely one of my favorite tools in my entire tech stack. It's fully white-labelable, super customizable in general, and easy for clients to navigate without hand-holding or gifting them with 5,000 notifications by accident. I use it strictly for post-booking project collaboration during the active service I'm providing: client communication, file sharing, client-facing task checklists, and deliverable downloads when the project wraps up. It has basic invoicing built in, but I keep that in Dubsado where it fits into my existing CRM processes. If you want a dedicated portal that feels & looks like you built it yourself, Kitchen is the one.
Assembly* — 🧪 Testing
Assembly's client portal is actually one of its strongest features — it's neck-and-neck with Kitchen in some ways, and genuinely better in a couple of specific areas. The storefront feature (where clients can browse and add optional services directly inside their portal) is something Kitchen doesn't/can't do without embedding something from elsewhere (like a Breely form or Dubsado Proposal!). Where Assembly falls short is tied to their CRM pricing, which gets expensive after 50 clients, and the overall CRM feature-package offers less capability in many areas, and also possibly more in others, than most solo designers need. It's a better fit for agencies or business owners with a pretty rigid package system that doesn't change much and invoices that don't have payment plans, but also want a CRM and portal in one place and have the budget for it. Full review coming soon! 👀
Bonsai* — 💙 Used It
Bonsai is primarily a CRM, but it also has a really good portal feature built-in. If you already use Bonsai, you may not need or want an additional tool to have a portal you can use with clients. It’s not customizable like Assembly’s or Kitchen’s, but it’s very functional & efficient, and already exists in a tool you already pay for.
Dubsado* — 🔴 Left It
Dubsado has a client portal feature, yes, but is it actually useful? Not really. In this older post’s video, ⏯️ you can see Dubsado’s portal & its featuresbetween timestamps 4:53 and 8:17, while the rest of the video shows a Notion-built portal system that I no longer use, in favor of Kitchen’s dedicated portal which works wildly better for everyone.
Tezzera — 🧪 Tested
I covered this one in more detail in the CRM section, but this is primarily a brand new CRM tool that also includes a built-in client portal. As of posting, it’s so new that it’s still has a waitlist for new signups. I got the chance to play around with it when the Beta round first opened and was really impressed overall. It did have limitations while testing, but I’m sure those will be addressed as it grows. I’m keeping my eye on this one!
Calendar & Scheduling
I have been through basically every scheduling tool on the market since 2016 (including some that aren't around anymore but could've been really cool), so consider this section hard-won wisdom. 😂 The short version: most of them are totally fine, a couple of them are great, and one of them is so good at such a low price point that I'm still shocked it's real.
Acuity* — 🔴 Left It
I used Acuity from ~2016 to 2021. At the time it felt a bit clunky on the backend and the client-facing experience was genuinely ugly, ––in my humble opinion. Squarespace has since acquired it and improved it significantly — so if you're already deep in the Squarespace ecosystem, it's worth a second look. Just not where I landed personally, and it's also one of the more expensive options, especially if you need it to be HIPAA compliant (a US privacy law).
Calendly — 🔴 Left It
I switched from Acuity to Calendly in 2021, and LOVED it for a while. Then I watched it slowly add new features until the backend started feeling cluttered and complicated. Classic feature bloat? 🤷♀️ It still offers a great client-facing scheduling experience, and it has a decent but limited free plan, along with affordable payment plans — so if stability & simplicity on the client side are your priority, it's worth considering. It's also a good bit cheaper than Acuity; not sure if it's HIPAA compliant though.
Cal — 🔴 Left It
I switched from Calendly to Cal in 2024 because I loved their generous free plan — until they changed it, of course. And their pricing crept up close to what I'd been paying on Calendly, which made the switch feel pointless, though it definitely feels simpler & easier to use, and does basically all the same things with a cleaner interface. The generous free plan was great while it lasted, their service is genuinely good, and the open-source angle is interesting if that matters to you.
Breely* — 🧡 Love It
Here's the shocking one I was talking about in this section's intro! Around the same time Cal put new limits on the free plan I'd been using, Breely was recommended to me by Christy Price, and it was created by the founder of Acuity. So the scheduling DNA is pretty solid, but the execution is completely different and genuinely impressive.
Breely integrates automations, payments, and basic signatures directly into the scheduling flow. Forms can be separate from scheduling appointments & do lots of different things, being super flexible! It handles 1:1 appointments, classes, group events, and more. It's HIPAA compliant, which matters if any of your clients are in healthcare or regulated industries. Plus, the team is deeply invested in making the product better and it shows — because it's constantly improving.
Oh, and the price is just $7 USD/month. I know. 🙌 You heard me! $7/month is the ONLY paid plan they even offer. I've been using it since mid-2025 and I keep waiting for the catch. So far there isn't one, and Gavin (the Co-Founder, and former Founder of Acuity Scheduling) is genuinely a lovely human!
Dubsado* — 🔴 Left It
While Dubsado does have an internal scheduling feature, and it has improved in version 3.0, it still sucks, to be frank. It can’t compare to available features in dedicated scheduling tools like Acuity, Calendly, Cal, TidyCal, and Breely. Also, as my business grew, I found it cumbersome to have scheduling only in Dubsado, when not all of my appointments are with “clients”, because some of my appointments are meeting people in my network, friends, companies to discuss collaboration opportunities, etc. Basically, many of my appointments are NOT with clients these days, so I wanted an external tool that I could use, which wouldn’t ‘make’ them one in my CRM.
TidyCal* — 🧡 Love It
With AppSumo's lifetime deal, it's a one-time payment under $100 for access to every possible feature, it looks and feels a lot like Calendly, covers most features service-based businesses actually need, —just without the recurring cost. I'm testing it just so I know what's up (because people mention it all the time), and I may migrate some lower-stakes appointments over, but Breely is still my home base. TidyCal is a great option if you want a Calendly/Cal-like experience without the subscription.
Artful Agenda* — 🧡 Love It
I've been using Artful Agenda since 2018 or 2019 and have never once paused my subscription. 😄 It's a digital planner that's designed to look and feel like a paper planner — including stylus doodling on touchscreens, digital stickers, custom cover art, a habit tracker, lists, and lite task and goal tracking. It connects to both Google and Apple Calendars so ALL of your real events show up in a single pretty-to-look-at calendar that's also useful & fun to use. The widgets on iPhone, iPad, and Mac are genuinely beautiful & fun to see on home screens or desktops too. It costs about the same as a yearly paper planner, but with push notifications and events that sync across all your devices. Check out the old reviews & posts about it here, if ya want!
Artful Agenda is NOT a scheduling tool in the Calendly/Acuity sense — it's just a personal calendar management & planning app. But for the designer who wants their planner to actually spark joy versus stress, it's worth every penny.
Other options to consider:
Now that Google Calendar includes basic scheduling options, you don’t have to pay for simple appointment scheduling if it’s not in the budget yet. Superhuman also includes some scheduling features as well, as do many CRMs. So you may not need a dedicated scheduling tool like I did, if you get by with one features included in tools you already have/pay for!
Forms
Forms show up everywhere in a web design business — lead capture, client onboarding, surveys, internal requests, feedback collection. The mistake most designers make is trying to use one form tool for all of those jobs. Different contexts sometimes call for different tools, and here's how I think about it.
Tally* — 🧡 Love It
This is a standalone form builder that’s not just one feature among other types of things ––Tally only builds & shares forms. I’m still on the free plan myself, which is genuinely the strongest endorsement I can give. Tally's free tier is robust enough that I haven't felt the need to upgrade — it includes conditional logic, payments (I think?), signatures, embeds, and connects to both Notion and Airtable. The builder feels a lot like Notion if you're already comfortable there. It’s a great platform for most designers.
Fillout — 🧡 Love It
Similar functionality to Tally but trades a bit of their ease of use for more flexible styling options, but still have a decent (usable) free plan. If you want beautiful, fully styled Airtable-connected forms and don't want to use Airtable's built-in forms (which can't be styled at all), Fillout is the answer. Slightly steeper learning curve, but the design flexibility is worth it for the right use case, and they have a few extra 'question' types that Tally doesn't.
Dubsado* Forms — 🧡 Love It
Dubsado's forms are great for most things that happens inside a client project — lead inquiry forms, proposals, contracts, questionnaires. Where they fall short is creating & providing general public forms for non-clients, long multi-page forms with progress bars, complex conditional logic, or forms that need multiple thank you pages based on responses. Know what they're built for and use them accordingly!
Forms & Flows — 🧪 Tested
Really interesting concept — it's a whiteboard and mind-map style form builder with highly customizable visuals. But the question type library was too limited, integrations for where submission data could go was weak when I tested it in 2025, and emails sent from Forms & Flows weren't white-labeled or customizable in any way that mattered to me. Tried it so you don't have to, but it's a really interesting option so I'll keep my eye on it as it grows.
Squarespace Forms – 💙 Use it
I can't not mention these here, because they're free (included with your Squarespace website, that is) and do have actually pretty decent features including file uploads and follow-up questions based on a pre-selected answer, as well as a custom success-message, and storage options for where the submission goes after someone submits their information (Google Sheets, only emailed to the admin, connect to Zapier, etc). It's a decent option to get started with, and eventually you may want/need more features that it doesn't offer; that's when it's time to 'upgrade' to something else.
Airtable* – 🧡 Love It
Airtable forms all look the same, practically. They're not very style-able, but they are very robust. Every form field is related to a database property for the record created when someone submits the form, so essentially, all form submissions are added to a specific database automatically, without any 'automations' or integrations needed. Their forms also include conditional logic to hide/show form fields based on how the person is filling out the form, and a lot of other stuff too. So they're not brand-able, and pretty obviously built by Airtable, but super functional. If you want more styling options, build a Fillout form and connect it to an Airtable database with Fillout's built-in integration options, to 'style' the form the way ya want, but still have the form builder dump submission data into your database.
Invoicing & Payments
Short section because most of this is covered elsewhere, but worth acknowledging as its own category since it comes up constantly.
Dubsado* — 🧡 Love It
My invoicing lives inside Dubsado (my CRM) for client projects, including payment plans, auto-pay charges (recurring payments on payment plans for large invoices), early & late payment reminders, ––the works. I've already covered the other details in the CRM section, so cross-reference these two.
Quickbooks Online* — 💙 Used It
Don’t mis-hear or misread my intent here: I still use Quickbooks for accounting, but I no longer use it to send invoicing & take payments. I could use it for that if needed, but I prefer Dubsado’s system for invoicing because it also handles customized payment options for auto-pay, customized reminders, and more. Quickbooks has ‘estimates’ that look exactly like invoices, as far as most people can tell, and those you can break up into multiple individual invoices to split a large invoice into multiple payments, but it takes longer to do, it’s repetitive to set up, and it’s generally more annoying to do it that way. Especially if you’re also using a CRM to send your contract/service agreement, and other things. So it worked well for me, but it put pauses & annoyances in my workflows, adding more time to the booking process, so I ultimately quick using QBO.
Also, I think it may be important to note that Intuit may/may not be putting the onus on us to be/have/use ‘secure’ systems in place in order to take those payments from our clients via their invoices, as a merchant through Quickbooks… ––even though we (as Merchants) never see our client’s card numbers or actual monies and rely on Quickbooks’ system to manage those things. Dubsado seems to manage this internally for us with Stripe, so it seems that by just switching my invoicing system back to Dubsado, this problem was resolved. 🤷♀️
Stripe & PayPal — 💙 Use It
These are the two most common payment processors behind almost anything that takes payments online, in most softwares. They're not necessarily invoicing tools themselves, but they can also send invoices if you want them to; they're just not 'known' for that feature. You need at least one of these connected to whatever invoicing tool you use though, in order for that software (Dubsado, Breely, Kitchen, etc) to actually take the payment. Both are industry standard 'evils'. Stripe is my preference because most of the software I use process through Stripe, just making transaction categorization & financial reporting easier to manage, but PayPal is there because some customers/clients still use it to buy stuff at checkout. PayPal is notorious for siding with customers on disputes though, and Stripe has its own horror stories, but thankfully they do seem rare by comparison to the massive amount of payment processing they manage on the daily.
Framing for early-stage designers: invoicing should lives inside your CRM, your accounting software, or your online shop/checkout software. I don't generally recommend sending invoices through Stripe or PayPal because it's just a disjointed process, and you'll get more additional functionality elsewhere anyway.
A quick note before we get into this one: I'm not an attorney and I can't give legal advice — take anything I share here as a fellow designer's perspective, not legal guidance. When it actually counts, run it by a lawyer. 😊
Legal
Please, for the love of everything, do not use free, I-found-it-in-the-wild, legal templates you scrounged off of Google &/or the interwebs. It's not worth the risks! 😬
Now that we’ve cleared that up, these are the tools I love for providing the actual legalese (contract terms), and some bonus options for sending contracts if you’re not sure how to share the agreement(s) you have & are ready to use.
Termageddon* — 🧡 Love It
Termageddon is my go-to for all website-related legal pages: terms and conditions, privacy policy, cookie consent tool, disclaimers, and more. The reason I use it over static template-style legal pages is simple: privacy laws change constantly, and Termageddon's policies update almost entirely automatically as they do. You're not manually chasing legislation every time a new privacy law passes somewhere, or waiting on your template shop to release an updated template so you can download it & customize it all over again with the same details. That alone is absolutely worth the subscription cost, because they watch for updates, implement as much as they can without bothering you, and let you know when you are required to edit something yourself; even when your input is required, the edits are fast & easy, and the results get pushed/synced to your website. It makes website legalese a breeze... (I wish that hadn't rhymed... but I'm leavin' it in!)
Creative Law Shop* — 🧡 Love It
My go-to for service agreements and contract templates for creative service providers. Their templates are a one-time purchase per template — you buy it, it's yours & you get updates for free, when your template is replaced with a new version. I bought all of my contracts here before The Foundry® existed (more on that next) and I'd buy them from CLS again. The templates are written by an actual US-based attorney who understand the creative business industry, and they're also peer reviewed by professionals in each industry, which means they cover the kind of details you want in a contract that are specific to whatever you do.
The Foundry®* — 🧡 Love It
The Foundry® is built by the same team as Creative Law Shop (& their developers) and offers a more guided, hand-held experience for drafting and customizing your contract templates. It's a recurring fee instead of a one-time purchase, which makes it a different kind of investment — but if you want support and guidance through the process rather than just the template itself, it's worth it. I invested when it first launched in 2024/2025 and still use it. It's really helpful and makes the contract template customization process a bit easier.
Other affordable options to consider (for sending contracts)
Use your CRM:
If you already have a CRM (something like Dubsado, Honeybook, Bonsai, Moxie, Bloom, Indy, ––whatever) then it likely already includes a feature for uploading/pasting/editing/sending your service agreements to clients. Since it’s already built into your existing CRM tool, it makes sense to start with that & use it until you have a situation that doesn’t quite fit using the CRM to send an agreement (examples below).
Affordable dedicated contract-sending tools:
eSignatures* (Tested) or BreezeDoc(Untested) both have unique feature sets (each), and are great options if:
you don’t have a CRM yet that can handle sending e-signable contracts, or
if you occasionally need to send a contract agreement to someone that’s not a client, such as an independent contractor, a podcast guest, etc.
How eSignatures Billing Works:
eSignatures works based on flat-rate credits you can buy in chunks and use until you run out. It’s $0.49 to send each contract, the fee is charged or deducted from your balance when the contract is sent, you can have up to 10 signers per contract at no extra cost, resending contracts and reminders are free, your purchased credits never expire, and there are no monthly subscriptions or hidden fees.
So for example, if you use my eSignatures affiliate link* to sign up, and you buy $50 worth of credits (the minimum amount) to use with 1 contract sent representing about .49 cents/each, you’ll be able to send about 100 contracts with that initial payment, AND as a bonus, you’ll also get an additional $25 added to your account balance (which adds about another 50-contracts worth of credit)!
How BreezeDoc Billing Works:
With BreezeDoc, it’s one of AppSumo’s lifetime deals, similar to TidyCal. So you can use it for free with limitations, or pay once & use it without a recurring subscription. With two lifetime payment tiers to choose between, you can pick the one you want and both options are under $100. You’ll need the higher ‘Agency’ tier to remove their branding, but their service also includes basic invoicing as well.
Communication
Slack — 💙 Use It
It's great for team communication, basic group chat spaces, and anywhere you need threaded, organized conversations that aren't email. I use it when other people do for their groups or support spaces, but don't need it for myself, so my account is free.
Telegram — 💙 Use It
I rarely use it, and only when someone else requires it to communicate with their team. It's not a recommendation, just an acknowledgment that it exists, and it's free to use.
Voxer — 🔴 Left It
I actually do (I assume) still have an account from 5 or 10 years ago, but I'm not actively using it & haven’t in many years. It's a voice messaging app that had a moment in the online business world, and may still because it's super cheap & has a decent free plan. If someone specific in your circle uses it, it's fine, or if you like the idea of voice message-style communication, kinda like a walkie-talkie (am I dating myself with that reference?) but without voice talking at you unceremoniously, and only when you hit play. Otherwise don't go out of your way; it's cool that it exists and it's super useful for specific situations, but for me I don't need it.
Content & Marketing
Email Service Provider (ESP)
Your ESP is how you stay in touch with your audience, deliver freebies, run launches, and nurture leads over time. If you don't have one yet — this is a high-priority category that will help you build an audience that you control without algorithms dictating what they do/don't see in their 'feed' (unlike social media).
Kit* (formerly ConvertKit)* — 🧡 Love It
Switched to Kit in 2021 and haven't looked back. It's functionality kicks ass. It's built for content creators who want robust automations, sequences, tagging, and segmentation easily. The interface is modern but the editor isn't as pretty as Flodesk (though it's come a long way since Flodesk became competition). It's genuinely powerful, and once you understand how it works it's hard to imagine going back to something simpler.
Flodesk* — 🧡 Love It
I used Flodesk for a couple of years before switching to Kit, and I want to be clear: I didn't leave because it was bad. I left because I outgrew its feature set at the time. Flodesk has since added a lot of what was missing back then, and it remains one of the most design-forward ESPs on the market. If beautiful emails and an easy-to-use editor matter more to you than robust features & efficient functionality, Flodesk is a genuinely great choice. Use my code DAAAMN* for a discount on your first year!
MailerLite — 🔴 Left It
Used the free plan for about two years, then paid for their lowest tier for another year before switching to Flodesk out of annoyance with design limitations & clunky UI updates. It was fine at the time — perfectly functional, affordable, and did the job. Just not where I ended up long-term, and since then they've gotten clunkier & harder to use. I wouldn't bother with it; it's cheap for a reason. 😬
Squarespace Email Campaigns — ⚪️ Passed
Tried it briefly when it first launched out of curiosity & for a client project. Not the move, at least not for my needs. Fine for very occasional sends if you're already on Squarespace and want basic functionality, but not a replacement for a dedicated ESP, and cost most while offering fewer features & less functionality than competitors.
My honest take:
Kit vs. Flodesk isn't really a competition — they serve different priorities. Kit is for the designer who wants power and flexibility. Flodesk is for the designer who wants beautiful and easy. Both are genuinely good. Pick based on what matters most to you right now, knowing you can always switch later (yes, it's a pain, but it's survivable — I've done it A LOT 😂).
Lead Magnets, Pop-ups & Internal Ads
Lead magnets, pop-ups, and opt-in forms aren't necessarily just one tool's job — sometimes they're a layered system, depending on what you're doing & your goals. The tool that displays the pop-up may be different from the tool that delivers the freebie, which may be different from the tool that nurtures the lead afterward. Once you understand that and the possible options, picking the right tools for each layer gets a lot easier!
ConvertBox* — 🧡 Love It
ConvertBox is from the ThriveCart family, which means it plays nicely with the rest of my tech stack out of the box. It handles pop-ups, inline ads, lead magnets, and simple 1-2 question quiz-style opt-ins with a lot of customization options. Their functionality includes countdown timers, video embeds, conditional display rules, and more. It was a lifetime payment, which sealed the deal for me. Best for static or time-sensitive ads and pop-ups where you want control over who sees what and when, and deciding what happens if someone engages with it. I don't use it all year long, but I do use it for sales, promotional stuff, announcements, and more because it's really easy to set up, or even schedule to start/stop on a predetermined timeline automatically.
Kit* (ConvertKit) & Flodesk* — 🧡 Love It
Both of these also offer lead magnet forms too — but their real strengths is what happens after the person opts in (subscribes). The form, the automation, the delivery, the nurture sequence — all in one place. If you want someone to get a freebie AND receive a thoughtful follow-up sequence of emails, you'll want to do that in your ESP (Kit, Flodesk, etc). Cross-reference with the ESP section for the full breakdown on these!
Interact* — 🧪 Tested
Interact is one of the most reputable dedicated quiz builders on the market, and I've been gifted an account to test it out this year. Quiz funnels are a genuinely powerful list-building tool for a lot of people; they're interactive, they feel personalized, and they attract a more engaged subscriber than a static freebie (that may never be used) often does. Full honest review coming soon! 👀
The layered breakdown if using more than one of these:
ConvertBox = the pop-up advertising your thing (quiz, freebie, product, service, sale, etc)
Interact = hosts the lead magnet quiz & results page, if you want to use it
Kit/Flodesk = connects to either option above to deliver or direct the person to the thing & nurture them afterward if they share their email address.
They're not really competing tools — they're different parts of the same acquisition funnel for established businesses that are focusing on growth. For newer businesses, JUST using your ESP (Kit of Flodesk) is totally fine for a while, and just using what's available there.
Social Media Scheduling
Full transparency: social media is not my primary marketing channel and it never will be. My content lives on the blog and YouTube, and social is an occasional or organic thing — mostly because I find it genuinely exhausting to do or maintain, and I'd rather publish one useful blog post than ten Instagram captions that disappear in 48 hours (each). 😄
That said — when I do schedule social content, here's what I've been using most recently:
Viraly.io* — 🧡 Love It
It handles scheduling to LinkedIn, Threads, Instagram, Facebook, and more when batch scheduling makes sense. It's simple and easy to pick up (learn how to use), and does the job well. It's not a tool I'm in daily, but super useful when I need to batch schedule a bunch of posts to different platforms.
YouTube Studio — 🧡 Love It
My videos are uploaded & scheduled to publish directly through YouTube, without a third-party tool being required or necessary. Totally free, and easy to use.
Squarespace — 💙 Use It
Blog posts scheduled to publish directly through Squarespace, which is really easy to do & I love that functionality for blog posts! It does also have some very limited options for ‘pushing’ (publishing/posting) new content from the site to any social media profiles that are linked, but I find this functionality to be so limiting it borders on totally useless, so I don’t do this. I only use Squarespace’s system to publish or schedule internal blog posts or pages, and to ‘push’ (or send) new blog posts to Google Search Console to be indexed (crawled) by Google.
For designers who feel guilty about not being on every platform all the time, you don't have to be! Pick the channels that actually reach your people, you enjoy using, and show up there consistently. Everything else is optional.
Watch this interview with Paige Brunton to find out how to get clients via content creation & without social media
Watch this pep talk about doing #allthethings and get some relief.
URL Shorteners & Link Management
With as many affiliate links, freebies, and resources as I share, having a clean link management system isn't optional — it's how I stay sane. 😄
Dub* — 🧡 Love It
Dub is a simple free option to create short links using their free "links" feature which handles everything I need without a recurring fee, and the dashboard is clean and easy to navigate.
Squarespace URL Mappings — 🧡 Love It
This functionality is actually built into Squarespace and criminally underused. You can create branded short links (like launchthedamnthing.com/seospace) directly through URL mappings without any third-party tool or added subscription. It's great for affiliate links, freebies, and anything else you want to be memorable and on-brand. If you're on Squarespace and didn't know this existed, go find it immediately! Or watch this tutorial to see how it works. 👀
Bitly — 🔴 Left It
Used it in the past, moved on when better options came along. Fine for basic link shortening, just not where I landed long-term. I'm sure there are many other options now too, but I haven't kept up with what they are.
Content Creation
Video Recording & Editing
Tella* — 🧡 Love It
Currently using Tella for recording course lessons, video replies for Insider members in the Club, and some YouTube content. I'm in the process of potentially migrating my entire Loom account over to it (1,500+ videos). The editor is already more powerful than Loom's, the support team is more responsive, and the overall experience just feels more intentional. There are a couple of features Loom has that Tella hasn't built yet (like Meeting recordings) — but I'm betting on Tella's trajectory.
Descript* — 🧡 Love It
My go-to for simple edits. If you've never used Descript, the concept is wild: you can edit your video by editing the transcript, like a Word doc, or on the timeline like a normal editor; both options work really well! In the transcript editor, if you delete a sentence from the transcript, it's trimmed from the video too. It's not for complex editing like Davinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, or Premier Pro, etc, ––but for DIY video editing it's genuinely fast and easier to use than professionally competitive software options.
eCamm Live — 🧡 Love It
Using this for live streaming directly to YouTube. It's not browser-based like most streaming tools, which means significantly more control over your stream setup, scenes, overlays, and more — at a much more reasonable price than the competition. However, it is a Mac-only app, so if you're on PC, look at Riverside or possibly Streamyard instead (closest equivalent, but both are browser-based).
Loom — 🔴 Left It
I've used Loom since around 2019 and it's been a reliable workhorse. This isn't a bad breakup — Loom is genuinely good. Tella is just winning on features and support right now, and I don’t want to pay for both tools since they do practically the same things. For me, the switch makes sense for where my content is going. So…it's not you, Loom. It's me. 😄
ScreenStudio* – 🧡 Love It
This is a fabulous tool, and I used it for years after Omari from SQSP Themes shared it with his audience once. It's super easy to learn, but creates beautifully simple and engaging video recordings with any combo of screen-share-only, screen + camera, or camera-only videos. When I first started using it, it was a one-time payment for a year of software updates, and then eventually it turned into a subscription service like everything else. That said, their annual plan is still very affordable, as of posting, so it’s a great option if you want automatic (but editable) zooms where you click with the mouse, or blurred areas to hide sensitive details during a tutorial, or to switch between face & camera while recording the same clip, ––and easy edits & exports when you’re ready to publish. After several years, I’m moving to Tella for more editing control without needing Descript or Final Cut Pro (which I also have), or Davinci Resolve, or Premiere Pro, etc. It’s still a great software, but I needed a little more functionality at my stage.
Screen Recording & Screenshots
Separate from video recording for YouTube, this category is about the everyday captures — quick screen recordings, annotated screenshots, and anything you need to show someone without jumping on a call, or "asynchronous" communication as it's been termed by people cooler than me.
CleanShot X — 🧡 Love It
CleanShot X is the screenshot and screen recording tool I use pretty much every single day without thinking about it. It replaces Mac's native screenshot tool and adds annotation, scrolling captures, video recording, and a built-in cloud for sharing captures instantly via a link if you can't/don't want to upload & send a file. If you're on a Mac and still using Command+Shift+4 for everything, you're leaving a lot of functionality on the table. It's ridiculously easy to use and install, and it's really cheap too.
Tella* — 🧡 Love It
I've already covered this one in the Video Recording section, so cross-reference there for the full take. The short version here: Tella handles both YouTube-style recording & intermediate-but-simple editing, along with quick screen recordings, so it's pulling double duty in my tech stack.
Loom – 🔴 Left It
Again, I've already covered my thoughts on Loom, but the short version is that it's a great simple screen recording tool, like Tella, with or without camera on, and it has calendar meeting options to record calls & take notes which is great––but I wanted Tella's editing features more, and I don't want to pay for both, so I'm testing a possible migration from Loom. It's not bad, by any stretch, but in this season of my business, Tella is most useful for me.
ScreenStudio* – 🧡 Love It
Again, this is a really great tool. I covered most of it in the video recording section, so I won’t hash that out again here. That said, it’s great at recording camera-only, screen-only, or both, and basic cuts & trims, adding blurs or highlights, automatic transitions between camera vs screen vs whatever combo, and even blurring sensitive areas on screen to hide private details in tutorials. Where it fell short, was adding multiple blur areas to a single scene so I could cover up less but still keep certain information private, and there was no AI editing help. Otherwise, it’s a great software that feels very simple & easy to use.
Descript* 🧡 Love It
Descript is a text-based editor, but you can also edit on the timeline, import videos to edit, and even record video content too. It’s very versatile, works with AI on internal tasks to help with editing, and has more layout options, animations, and general video editing. It’s a fabulous tool for anyone that does NOT want to learn more professional video editing tools (like Final Cut Pro, Premier Pro, Davinci Resolve, etc) but still wants high-quality video content that’s easier to edit. While there is definitely a learning curve, it’s still way easier to pick up than the ‘pro’ softwares out there!
eCamm Live — 🧡 Love It
I’m very new to this one, so I don’t have much to add here yet –but I do think it’s a great software for the price. That said, I don’t think it’s a great fit for just screen recording. I think it’s a better fit for creating & streaming video content on published channels, like YouTube.
Copywriting Tools
When I say "copywriting tools," I don't mean "tools that write publish-ready content for you." I mean tools that help you get what's already in your head out faster, cleaner, and in a format your audience can actually use, but that you most certainly have to edit yourself before publishing. There's a big difference, and how you use these tools matters more than which ones you pick.
Claude — 🧡 Love It
Claude earns a second mention here for good reason: it’s my favorite copywriting tool because it works like a thought-partner, not my ghostwriter or copywriting contractor. I first heard Christy Price use that phrasing "thought partner" and it perfectly describes how I prefer to use it, too. My ideas, my opinions, my voice, my edits. Claude often helps me structure, draft, and refine faster than I could do it alone, with my perfectionistic tendencies.
Then, their Cowork feature takes it one step further because it can help me organize files, rename folders, and handle behind-the-scenes computer tasks I'd otherwise do manually, like ⏯️ clean up my downloads folder (by organizing & renaming generic file names to be descriptive). The Claude in Chrome browser extension allows it to scan my website pages in real time, helping me prioritize which posts to update and then checking my edits for typos and outdated information as I go.
And yes — this post is a real-world example of that workflow. I came to Claude with 26 categories worth of honest opinions, we worked through them together category by category, and Claude drafted from my thoughts. That's it. That's the whole process. Nothing was invented or fabricated — just organized and written faster than I could've done it alone. 😄
VoiceDash — 🧡 Love It
VoiceDash is a simple voice dictation tool that cleans up what you say aloud when prompted, then it cleans it up & writes it out for you. Sometimes it's genuinely faster to talk through an idea than to type it — especially for longer content like blog posts, email drafts, explanatory comments, or social captions. For me, it was a lifetime payment through AppSumo, which makes it a no-brainer alternative to recurring tools like WisprFlow or Willow that do the same thing. If you're a verbal processor who finds writing/typing slow and painful, this might be the most underrated tool on this entire list. Before VoiceDash, I was using WisprFlow and I really liked everything about it, except for the recurring cost, which prompted me to switch to VoiceDash.
RightBlogger* — 🔴 Left It
I used RightBlogger for about a year while I needed a content reset and a faster way to turn video transcriptions into blog posts. It's genuinely useful for newer content creators & business owners that know they need to post content but aren't 'good' at it yet. There are lots of AI-powered features for content creation, SEO, social media, and more! I left it when Claude became the better fit for my workflows, but that's not really a knock on RightBlogger at all; it's a solid tool, especially for getting started with content creation when you're not sure where to begin. Just know it takes some work to dial in your brand voice & ya might still want to run it through ChatGPT or Claude to get it to sound more like you.
AI & LLMs
Let's talk about the elephant in the room. 🐘
I know AI is a loaded topic for a lot of designers. There's a real fear of sounding robotic, of losing your voice, of your clients or customers noticing. I get it. But the way I use these tools has nothing to do with doing publishable work FOR me. Think of it less like outsourcing your jobs and more like having a really smart thought-partner who just thinks & types faster than you do.
Speaking of which — full transparency: this post was written with Claude's help based on my experiences, ideas, verdicts, my voice, and 20 years of my opinions. Claude helped me structure it, shorten it (if you can believe it!), draft it, and get it out of my head and onto the page. Claude also helped me create the kick-ass table at the bottom of this post (but don't look at that yet! 😂).
ChatGPT — 🔴 Left It
March 2026. No hard feelings. We had a good run! Just had other tools I wanted to pay for more than Chat.
Claude — 🧡 Love It
Cancelled ChatGPT in March 2026 after a few things stopped sitting right with me: no annual billing option, some business-level decisions I didn't agree with, and the news that they'd be introducing ads to their platform was the final 'well, do I really need both?' nail in the coffin. Anthropic actually ran a pretty funny ad campaign about exactly that (ads on Chat), which caught my attention — and here we are.
Claude is genuinely better at writing in my brand voice than anything else I've tried. With the Cowork feature too, it goes beyond writing — it can help me organize files, rename them, clean up folders, and handle behind-the-scenes tasks on my computer where I allow it. The browser extension (Claude in Chrome) can scan pages of my website and help me prioritize which blog posts to update, then check my edits in real time for typos, outdated info, and accuracy, based on guidelines I've given it in each circumstance. It's a legitimate workflow tool, not just a "write me a caption" button.
ClickUp* Brain — 🧪 Testing
Testing it alongside ClickUp's new version. Interesting so far! Verdict TBD alongside the overall ClickUp verdict. May report back, or may not.
Galaxy AI* — 🧪 Testing
I used the lifetime payment deal, and have just started playing around with it. It's really cool, but way too early to have a real verdict yet. May report back.
Midjourney — 🧡 Love It
Image generation, and only when a client project genuinely calls for more customized stock photography than I can find elsewhere. Not a daily tool — more of a "pull it out when I need it" situation. I know other designers use it a lot, and that's definitely a real-world scenario, but for me I don't need it that often since I take fewer custom projects each year & don't tend to use it for myself. A great tool, but you may not need it all the time, depending on you & your business.
Perplexity — 🧡 Love It
When I need to research something and I want actual sources instead of an AI confidently making things up, Perplexity is where I go. I use their free plan only; I've never paid for it. It presents results in a clean, readable format with citations, tables & bullet points in a way that neither Claude nor Chat ever did as consistently well. Think of it as AI-powered search rather than AI-powered writing. Very different use case, but still very useful.
Poppy AI* — 🧡 Love It
Poppy gives me access to multiple LLM models — including ChatGPT's — for a lifetime payment I made last year, with monthly rollover credits, without a recurring subscription. The interface is completely different from a standard chat & I LOVE that: it uses a whiteboard-style layout with nodes you can connect or disconnect to the chat, so you can control exactly what the AI "sees" at any given moment. Great for 'watching' videos, 'reading' web pages, and working with multiple files, images, and other assets all at once. Not my primary AI tool, but a smart addition to the stack that genuinely provides a unique way to use AI in my workflows. It is currently, as of posting, still browser based though (no app yet).
Website & Design
Design Tools
Yes, I saved design tools for near the end of a post about tools for web designers. 😂 The honest reason is that most of you already have opinions about design software, so this section is more about my specific choices than it is about introducing you to something new.
Canva — 🧡 Love It
Canva needs no introduction. I use it often for graphics, social content, presentations, sharable templates & resources, slides, printable graphics, and anything that needs to look polished without a lot of production time. If you're not using Canva yet, I genuinely don't know what to tell you. 🤭
Affinity — 🧡 Love It
I switched from Adobe to Affinity in 2024 and haven't looked back yet — though I'll be honest, the transition hasn't been fast. I'm still getting comfortable with it, after literally 20 years of Adobe muscle memory. Affinity does practically everything Adobe does, but in a FREE-no-gimmicks software, instead of a recurring subscription. The learning curve is real though if you're coming from Adobe, but the financial relief is equally real and eventually it really does become more intuitive to use than Adobe ever was. Worth the transition! ––Oh, and it works great with Canva, because Canva actually OWNS it now.
Adobe Suite — 🔴 Left It
After years of paying for software I wasn't using heavily anymore, I finally made the switch to Affinity. No regrets — though I do occasionally miss the familiarity. If you're heavily reliant on Adobe and use it daily, there's no shame in staying. Just know Affinity exists as an alternative when you're ready to evaluate.
Website Tools
This is my wheelhouse, so buckle up. 😄 Beyond Squarespace itself, there's a whole ecosystem of tools I use to build, optimize, and maintain websites — both mine and my clients'. Most of these your audience has probably never heard of, and some of them are genuinely game-changing, while others are just great additions depending on your goals & skills.
Squarespace — 🧡 Love It
Obviously. If you're here, you probably already know my stance. Squarespace is my platform of choice for smaller, service-based businesses that want a beautiful, functional website without wrestling with code or hiring a developer every time something breaks or needs updating. I've been building on it since 2016 and I'd still choose it today. A full platform comparison post is coming soon — so if you're on the fence about Squarespace vs. everything else, stay tuned. 👀
SEOSpace* — 🧡 Love It
Think of SEOSpace like Yoast, but built specifically for Squarespace. It audits your pages, scans for SEO issues, and gives you actionable feedback so you know exactly what to fix and whether your changes are actually working or following current best practices. I use it on my own site and on client sites during builds and after launches. If you're serious about SEO on Squarespace, this is the only tool.
SquareKicker* — 🧡 Love It
Been using SquareKicker for design customizations since 2020. It's a CSS and design enhancement tool for Squarespace that lets you do things the native editor simply can't — custom layouts, typography, spacing, animations, and more. I recently scaled back to their Solo plan since I'm doing fewer heavily custom builds these days, but it's still a core part of my own website. If you're doing custom Squarespace work, this is worth knowing about! They also have their own Squarespace template shop, which is a totally different experience than competitors can offer.
SquareWebsites* — 🧡 Love It
Multiple plugins I'm actively using from them include: Universal Filter, Portfolio filters, blog pagination, and more. These fill the gaps Squarespace leaves for designers who need more control over how content is displayed and filtered. I'm also using their pro tools Chrome extension & have for years now; it's a must-have for serious & professional Squarespace designers.
Will Myers* — 🧡 Love It
Will Myers offers multiple plugins with business licenses — meaning you can use them on client sites, not just your own. I'm also a Curious Coder member, which gives me access to Robo-Will, which is an incredible tool worth every penny! If you build on Squarespace professionally, Will's plugins are excellent & worth exploring.
Fathom Analytics* — 🧡 Love It
Fathom offers privacy-first analytics that I switched to from Google Analytics last year. Google Analytics is still free and ubiquitous — but Google's approach to user privacy became something I wasn't comfortable with anymore, and Fathom offers a clean, simple alternative that doesn't track your visitors in ways they haven't consented to. Yes, it costs money. For me, the privacy trade-off was worth it.
Google Analytics — 🔴 Left it
Still the default for most people, and I get it — it's free and powerful. Just not where I landed when I thought about what I actually wanted to support. Mentioned here for context, not as a recommendation.
Elfsight* — 🧡 Love It
Powers the embedded YouTube video library on my website. Simple, does exactly what it's supposed to do, free plan has been enough for my needs for a couple of years now. They also have widgets for a ton of other use-cases, and affordable plans to use them.
Senja* — 🧡 Love It
Senja is my favorite by a mile, and is how I collect, organize, and display testimonials and reviews from my digital product customers. It has a submission form, pulls reviews from third-party platforms like Facebook and Google, and generates embed widgets you can place anywhere on your site — so your testimonials stay in one place and sync everywhere, without duplicating them manually. More expensive than the alternative below, but significantly more powerful.
Shoutout* — 💙 Use it
Similar concept to Senja — testimonial collection and display — but simpler, a little clunky, and fewer features overall. The upside: it was a lifetime payment, so no ongoing subscription cost. If you're budget-conscious and just need basic review collection and display without all of Senja's bells and whistles, it's not a bad option. Just know what you're getting. It also doesn't currently (as of posting) sync with Google Reviews, yet.
BugSmash — 🧡 Love It
Visual website feedback tool — clients click directly on the site to leave annotated comments, which means not spending time trying to decode "the button on the left... no the other left" emails. 😂 Used it on my first client project of 2026 and it went really well. Check whether their AppSumo lifetime deal still available; it was as of posting. It's worth saying that it's new enough that there are occasional bugs, but the team is responsive and fixes things fast. Full honest review coming soon!
Pastel — 🧡 Love It
Similar concept to BugSmash and has been around longer, so it's more stable (less buggy). The free plan gives you unlimited canvases (projects) but has a 72-hour comment window on each of them — after that window closes, no new comments can be added to that canvas, but you can still view it & use it. Workaround: create a new canvas for each revision round. Works fine if that timeline works for your projects. Paid plan removes that time-limitation entirely if the workaround feels like too much friction, but it starts at around ~$30/mo. Used it with my last client of 2025 and it worked really well.
Business Operations & Admin
Project Management
Oh boy. This is the category where I have to just... own my shit. 😂
I have tried, at various points in my business life over the last decade+, the following project management tools: ClickUp, Asana, Notion, Airtable, Trello, SmartSuite, TickTick, Quire, Milanote, Blitzit, Coda, Basecamp, Griply, Akiflow, Motion, Apple Notes, Apple Reminders, AnyDo, Artful Agenda's lite tasks, Full Focus Planner, Google Tasks, Reclaim, ToDoist, Wrike, and Zenkit. ––And I'm sure I'm forgetting some. 😭
The ones I always come back to are Notion, Asana, and ClickUp. Those three are the finalists after years of rotating through everything else.
ClickUp* — 🧡 Love It
I'm in ClickUp's newest version right now with ClickUp Brain (their built-in AI) and so far, so good. I hesitate to even say that out loud because my track record in this category is... not exactly consistent. 🤭 But I'm cautiously optimistic. Full verdict TBD — ask me in 6-12 months.
Why do I keep leaving? Shiny-object syndrome, ––hello. 😂 But also, ClickUp can be incredibly granular and so it's easy to make it messy + cleanup feels overwhelming. Also, they add & update features regularly (like, every 2 weeks they post release notes), so it can be buggy sometimes, which can be annoying.
Why do I keep coming back? Don't make me say it again... ––fine: shiny-object syndrome! While I love Asana, I keep turning it into a ClickUp experience, and it frankly just doesn't work as well. So if you want simplicity, get the free plan of Asana & stay on it, but if you want custom properties & better automations, ClickUp is probably a more practical fit for the money, and their AI is definitely better, too.
Asana — 🧡 Love It
Used it last year and genuinely liked it. Clean, pretty intuitive, felt simple & easy to pick up. Left it when ClickUp's new version caught my attention literally by accident. Would absolutely consider going back — it's a solid and very stable tool.
Why do I keep leaving? Two reasons.
1) I hate their pricing model for solopreneurs. 😂 There, I said it. 🫣 It sounds stupid, but their pricing plans are ridiculous, in that to be on a paid plan as a solo business owner (with no team) you HAVE to pay for 2 users (seats), because that's the minimum, yet they continue to advertise as $10-ish/mo and they've done this for years, even though they actually mean $10-ish/mo x2 people/users = $20+/mo. Like... just say you want to charge us more than everyone else & be done with it. 😂 They know this is a problem (I've reported it to their support team at least two separate times in frustration), and each time they've said there are no plans to change this & they are aware. It's a known disconnect with their users.
2) Like I said in ClickUp's section above, I keep trying to turn it into ClickUp with all these custom properties, etc. and it just doesn't work as well. It's meant to be use more simply, and runs better that way. I on the other hand, like to fuck things up sometimes and have a tendency to make things more complicated than is necessary after I've had time to tinker in these tools, so Asana quickly becomes a Frankenstein that should've been built in ClickUp (or even in Airtable instead, if it turns into a database, god forbid).
Why do I keep coming back? When I'm craving simplicity, because it feels so simple and easy with a clean account. It's so tempting with its fresh & empty lists & projects, just waiting in horror to inherit the mess from whatever tool I used last. 😂 And they've also updated some things that were limitations before, so they are trying to be more competitive, feature-wise, but the changes/updates are slow by comparison to both ClickUp and Notion.
Notion* — 💙 Use It
I love it, but Notion is not a good ‘project management’ tool, despite what they advertise & how many free/paid templates that say otherwise. —It's a beautifully simple, yet flexibly customizable note-taker, database and wiki builder that can technically also manage basic tasks IF you build the system yourself, or know where to start with the right template system which sets it up for you (& always requires further customization). I just use it as a Google Docs replacement (because it’s faster for me to use with the keyboard shortcuts) to make internal notes, and externally shareable resources that I can embed in various places… But not for task tracking. More on Notion in the Databases section.
Other popular options — 🔴 Left It
Re: Airtable, Trello, SmartSuite, TickTick, Quire, Milanote, Blitzit, Coda, Basecamp, Griply, Akiflow, Motion, Apple Notes, Apple Reminders, AnyDo, Artful Agenda's lite tasks, Full Focus Planner, Google Tasks, Reclaim, ToDoist, Wrike, and Zenkit.
For the rest of the list, I've tried &/or actually used 98% of those, and for 1 or 2 they work great but not as a PM tool. For the rest of those, I just researched or created an account & quickly realized it wasn't the right fit for me, so I didn't actually do anything with it but poke around long enough to make a decision for myself.
Some were great. None of them stuck, as a PM tool, for me.
The honest truth about PM tools is that the "right" one is deeply personal — what works for me might drive you absolutely insane, and vice versa. The best PM tool is the one you'll actually open every day. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, including me. 🤭
Check this post next if you want to see my thoughts on how to choose the right PM tool FOR YOU, based on how you prefer to manage tasks offline with paper & pencil/pen. It might help you step outside the shiny-object stuff, and focus on how your brain works first, then which tool is the closest digital match to that.
Automations
Saving the most advanced category for last, because automations are the connective tissue layer for my tech stack that makes everything else run while I sleep. But they're also the category most people want to skip entirely because they feel complicated or like something you need an IT background to pull off. ––But you don't. You just need to start small.
Airtable* Automations — 🧡 Love It
Where Zapier drops data off, Airtable often takes over within the database there. Example: after Zapier zaps a template purchase into my template management hub, Airtable delivers that person's template access link to the customer immediately, and will also follow up with a reminder to access it if they don't accept the invitation. It also alerts me when my template inventory gets low, and sends me internal reminders to create more copies (that sit waiting to be purchased). It can also change field values, connect records, and fire off emails to myself or whoever, — all without touching Zapier. The two tools work together as a system, really well, and don't have to exist separately as competitors.
ClickUp* Automations — 💙 Use It
These are smaller scale than Zapier or Airtable, and are historically less reliable too. But they're genuinely helpful for internal task management. Example: when a blog post status is set to Scheduled and the publish date arrives, ClickUp can automatically change the 'task' status to Published and it can even leave a comment reminding me to add the post or video link to the task — and again to check analytics on the post & video later. They're smaller, internal things, but they remove a surprising amount of manual labor, and miscellaneous admin over time.
Where to start if automations feel overwhelming: pick one repetitive task you do manually every single week and ask yourself if a tool already in your stack could handle it by itself, with the right set up. Most of the time the answer is yes — you just haven't set it up yet. Start there, with one automation. Then build from there as you get more comfortable!
Dubsado* Automations — 🧡 Love It
Dubsado's internal automations handle the entire client workflow once a project is in the in the initial stages of my booking process, all the way through their support period & when the project officially ends. It adds all the right forms and email templates to projects, gives me time to adjust/edit/customize them before approving them to send, then later sending templated review request emails, support term reminders, final project completion emails, launch checklists for my clients, and payment reminders for invoice payment plans (even on auto-pay). Lead follow-up automation is currently here too, though that's moving out of Dubsado soon for the reasons covered in the CRM section earlier in this post.
Zapier — 🧡 Love It
Zapier is what makes the tools that don't natively (lacking built-in integrations) talk to each other & actually work together. Current Zaps running in my business include: sending ThriveCart sales data into a sales hub in Airtable, managing Squarespace template delivery and inventory tracking from purchases, auto-sending follow-up messages when clients submit support tickets in Kitchen, and triggering member-specific tasks in ClickUp when Club members request website audits through an Airtable form. If two tools in your stack don't integrate natively, Zapier is almost always the answer. (Or Make, or Pabbly, etc.; I'm just used to Zapier.)
Time Tracking
Two very different problems live in this category: figuring out where your time is actually going, and tracking billable hours for clients. They may sound similar, but they call for completely different tools — and confusing them is how you end up with software that doesn't solve either problem well. 🥴
Rize* — 🔴 Left It
I used Rize for about a year and let it go before it auto-renewed, but that was the plan all along. Rize tracks your time automatically in the background without any manual input, so you get a clear picture of where your hours are actually going versus where you think they're going. (Hint: those two things are rarely the same. 😂) It wasn't a forever tool from the get-go, but it was a useful one for the season I needed it. If you've never audited your own time before, a few months with Rize (or something like it) is genuinely eye-opening.
Timing App — 🧡 Love It
This is a Mac-only automatic time tracking app, similar to Rize, but feels more native to the Mac ecosystem. I downloaded it & did the free trial, so it's next to try 'for real' (on a paid plan) when I want that kind of data again. I can't fully review it yet since I haven't used it in depth, but it's the one I'll reach for next.
Toggl — 💙 Used It
I've used Toggl on and off for about 10 years. It's built for billable time tracking, ie: the kind you can send invoices for. It's simple, clean, easy to use, and makes timesheets shareable and (I believe) even payable through their system. A free plan exists but most of the genuinely useful features are on paid plans for heavier uses. I don't offer time-tracked services anymore so I don't have an active need for it currently, but when I did, it worked really really well. Especially worth considering if you don't have a CRM yet and need a simple way to track and invoice for time worked; only mentioning because Dubsado includes time tracking which can be applied to invoices, so you don't really 'need' Toggl if you already have Dubsado.
Dubsado* – 💙 Use It
Dubsado's features include basic time-tracking, and that makes it super easy to apply tracked time to a client's invoice. It's less useful though, as a contractor that's asked to provide more traditional timesheets (a log of time tracked).
ClickUp* – 💙 Use It
ClickUp also includes basic time-tracking, but it doesn't have any invoicing features so this presumably works best for internal time-tracking, either for your own knowledge of your time, for your team's workload management (see who has too much vs too little work on their plate), or just for your own tracking with the knowledge that you have to create & send the invoice elsewhere. The cool thing about ClickUp's time-tracking is that this can be built into the tasks themselves, and that task list can be shared easily with anyone.
The distinction worth making:
Rize and Timing are best for self-auditing — understanding your own patterns. Toggl is great for service-work, client billing or contract work where you're tracking billable time that you intend to collect a check for. ClickUp is task-oriented, but easily sharable, however it can't actually send an invoice. Dubsado is project-oriented, but can be easily applied to an invoice to collect payment. Pick based on which problem you're actually trying to solve! (You don't need all of these!)
Finance
Nobody got into web design because they love bookkeeping. But ignoring this category is how you end up handing your accountant a shoebox of receipts every April, crossing all your fingers & toes, and hoping for the best. 😂 Here's what I actually use to keep my financial house in order now.
QuickBooks Online* — 🧡 Love It
Been using QBO for years and it's my primary accounting software — tracking all debits and deposits, generating reports, and making sure I'm never caught off guard at tax time. I do a quarterly check-in with a bookkeeper too, so April is never a surprise. It's not 'fun', but it works well, and my bookkeeper is there to help with it when needed. That last part matters to me, more than any feature list. 😄
Novo* — 🧡 Love It
Novo is my business checking account and I've been using it for years with zero complaints. It's fee-free, ridiculously Profit First-friendly (you can create multiple "reserves" inside one account to group your money), and connects seamlessly to Stripe, PayPal, QuickBooks, Kick, and everything else in my tech stack. If you're still using a traditional bank for your business and paying monthly fees for the privilege — please look into Novo. It literally costs you nothing to use.
Kick* — 🧪 Tested
Kick is an AI-driven accounting tool with a genuinely impressive free plan (as of posting, free for up to $25,000 USD in expense transactions) — it connects to your accounts, auto-categorizes transactions, and keeps your P&L updated without you touching it. That's legitimately cool!! And it does a really good job. For anything that needs editing/adjusting, you can manually adjust it too. The reason I haven't switched from QBO is that the paid plan (where you get custom categories and reports) runs more expensive than my QBO plan, and the free plan's limitations aren't worth the switch for where my business is right now, without access to custom transaction categories. Worth keeping an eye on as they grow though. If you're just starting out and need something free to get your books in order, the free plan seems like a really solid starting point.
Xero — 🔴 Left It
Fast. One month. My bookkeeper only uses QBO and that settled it immediately, because I hated their 2020-era UI (hideous & outdated). 😂 By comparison, QBO felt a lot more modern & user-friendly.
Freshbooks, Wave, QuickBooks Self-Employed— ⚪️ Passed
Researched all three, never pulled the trigger on most of them. I tried Wave for a while, back when it was totally free, but found it hard to learn (not user-friendly) and then H&R Block bought it (I think?) and then the free plan got less & less functionally useful for me. None of them were the right fit for where my business was headed. Mentioned only because they come up constantly in designer circles and I want to be honest that I looked and chose to move on.
Dubsado* — 💙 Used it
I did use Dubsado's internal (very basic) accounting tools for the first few years of my business and it worked okay — but it was all manual entry, and tax season was always stressful as a result. Graduate to dedicated accounting software when you're ready! It makes tax season easier & less stressful, for sure.
Online Storage
Not the most exciting category on this list, but "I can't find that file" is a special kind of annoyance that costs you time every single day. Not to mention these are automatically a back-up system, so if your hardware (ie: your physical computer) dies or your cat spills water on it (🙋🏻♀️ hey, that's actually happened to me before!), your files are okay because they also live 'in the cloud.' So, pick a system, commit to it, and actually feel safer using it.
Dropbox* — 🧡 Love It
Dropbox has been my primary file storage for well over a decade ––maybe even 20 years now–– and I don't see that changing. The experience in Mac's file manager, Finder, feels completely native to my Mac OS. It's just there, like it's part of the operating system, which makes it easy to actually use consistently & hard to forget it exists.
Pro tip worth knowing: if you share a lot of files as downloads (lead magnets, deliverables, freebies) you can change the =0 at the end of a Dropbox share link to =1 and it'll prompt an automatic download instead of opening the file in the browser where the viewer has to manually select a 'Download' button. It's a small thing, but genuinely useful. 🙌
Google Drive — 💙 Use It
I have Google Drive through my Google Workspace account and have since 2016, but I use it so little that I've been on the same 30GB limit since 2016 because I keep everything in Dropbox. That said, Google Drive has its own useful bag o' tricks and it's own office suite of 'free' (included) business software, like Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc. Plus, if you swap /edit at the end of a file link to /copy it will prompt recipients to make their own copy of the file before they even see it, which is great for sharing templates or resources you don't want people editing directly, or that aren't that tech savvy & can't figure out how to make a copy as easily from the standard share link.
If you're choosing between the two:
Neither is objectively better than the other. It really comes down to personal preference and which devices you live on. Pick one, commit, and stop splitting your files between both.
Password Management
I'm putting this one bluntly: if you don't have a password manager, get one before you finish reading this post. Not tomorrow. Today. The number of designers running their entire business on recycled passwords, passwords saved in their browser, or in a notes app full of login credentials is genuinely concerning. 😬 "In today's day and age," we have way too many accounts to keep track of, so in my not-so-humble opinion, these have kind of become a necessary part of life.
1Password — 🧡 Love It
It's cheap at about $30-60/year for single or family users, last I checked, but it feels completely native on a Mac, and works seamlessly across all my devices. It's the password manager I'd recommend to basically anyone in my audience without hesitation. It can help generate new passwords, it can also manage the two-factor authentication codes so you don't need a separate authentication app, and more.
One thing worth knowing if you share access with clients or contractors: sharing a password through 1Password is super easy, but it does reveal the actual password to the recipient, which means they can save & use it directly without needing to be added to your 1Password account if you don't change it afterward. Useful to know depending on how you manage shared access.
Other options:
A few of note are LastPass, Dashlane, and ProtonPass, etc. If I could no longer use 1Password for any reason, ProtonPass would be my next stop — it's more privacy-focused and worth knowing about as an alternative. It's also never had a data leak.... *cough* like-LastPass-did! *cough*😬🤭
Email Inbox Management
Nobody talks about this category and so many people need help with it. Your inbox is either a tool that works for you or a source of high-grade anxiety that lives in a browser tab that you're afraid to click/open. These tools exist to fix that second thing.
Canary Mail — 💙 Use It
Canary Mail is a unified inbox app that pulls all your email accounts into one place — great in theory, and genuinely good in practice for personal accounts. It has a lifetime payment option, basic features like GIF access, snooze, reminders, and email sharing, and it's a solid alternative to Apple Mail if you find Apple Mail as annoying as I do. 😂 It's very similar to Spark, by Readdle, which I used for ~10 years until the price became higher than the value (my opinion).
The caveat: I tried using it for business email as a sub for something like Missive or Front (shared inboxes for teams), but since I don't have a team I just tried this instead. For me, it wasn't a good fit for business purposes. It also forces some weird standardized styling on marketing-style emails & newsletters, so some things look weird or are hard to read & it SUCKS in dark mode (luckily I rarely use that myself, preferring light mode). Some tools are personal tools, and this is one of them. Use it for that, and find something else for your business inbox.
Superhuman* — 🧡 Love It
Expensive, but worth every fucking penny! I don't say that lightly about an email tool. 😄
Superhuman is not a unified inbox — it's intentionally the opposite. It keeps each email account completely separate so you can focus on one at a time instead of drowning in everything all at once. I honestly thought I'd hate that, because I've been using a unified inbox system for YEARS (Apple Mail, Spark, Canary, etc) and Gmail's browser mail is annoying because it separates my inboxes from each other. BUT, I didn't hate it. I actually love it. 😂
It can (optionally) be used almost entirely on keyboard shortcuts, which sounds intimidating until you realize it means you can process emails at a genuinely alarming speed. The built-in AI tools make triage, drafting, and follow-ups significantly faster, generating email responses on command, auto-drafting replies that are ready to go when you open it & are ready to edit & send, and the built-in calendar features are WICKED SMART, pulling up the day you reference while writing any email so you can see the day you're talking about without doing anything to pull it up. They also include some scheduling features and booking pages, and even AI personalization options to make those drafts sound more like you. The ask AI features are incredibly useful too, for when you need to 'look for an email' or find something specific but aren't sure what you're looking for. I can't gush about it enough, frankly!
That said, yes, it's expensive. I know. But Superhuman was recently acquired by Grammarly, which means one subscription now also comes bundled with Superhuman, Grammarly, and a few other tools together for the same price — which can change the value calculation considerably.
If your inbox(es) genuinely stresses you out and you use Gmail for your business email, this is the tool I'd try first. You'll feel a bit confused at first, and then promptly realize how effective it is, fall in love, and never look back!
Streak — 💙 Used It
Streak is actually just a Chrome extension that overlays Gmail in the browser with CRM-lite features, like leads management, automations, basic bulk email sending, pipeline tracking, and more. It's great if your inbox feels completely unmanageable and you actually use (& enjoy using) Gmail in a web browser. I'm not one of those people, so Superhuman is the better fit for me, — but back when I did use Gmail in the browser, Streak helped organize my inbox a lot. Worth a try if browser-based Gmail is your preferred world.
Databases
This category confuses people because it overlaps with both project management AND forms, depending on how you use them. So let me clear it up upfront: databases are for storing, organizing, and managing information. Think of them as the filing cabinet in your office, or even your brain.
Notion* — 🧡 Love It
Notion is beautifully & visually simple, very flexible, and great for anything where the visual layout of information matters. I use it to house internal resources, external-facing resource pages (sharable with students & members, etc), and anything that needs a custom page layout or embedded content. It's not a great spreadsheet replacement — think of it as a pretty, flexible wiki. Fair warning: Notion starts with a blank page, and that blank page syndrome is real. If you're not someone who enjoys building systems from scratch, the setup process might actually break you. 😂 But for nerds who love tinkering with data & systems, it's super fun to use for the right reasons.
Airtable* — 🧡 Love It
If Notion is the pretty one, Airtable is the more powerful one. Numbers, formulas, dates, automations, linked records — it does things Notion simply can't do at all, or can't do as well. I use it to manage Club member data, monthly call schedules, onboarding forms, support and audit requests, surveys, and more. It'll eventually house my lead inquiry management system too, which I'm actively building out. Airtable beats Notion at almost everything except visual page design. Both have a place in my stack, but for different reasons.
My honest comparison:
Neither Notion nor Airtable is a great dedicated project management tool — you can technically do task management in both, but you'd be building the system for it yourself and it won't feel as intuitive as a dedicated PM tool. Use ClickUp, Asana, or Trello, etc. for tasks. Use these for data management. Don't understand the difference? Airtable guru, Ashley from Systems Over Stress builds something in both, side by side, in this video, to show you the differences! She's not a fan of Notion, obviously, but it's a side-by-side comparison for data management.
Digital Products
Digital Product Delivery & Checkout
If you sell digital products — courses, templates, workshops, anything downloadable — you need a way to handle checkout, delivery, and access. Here's what I've tried, used, chosen, and why.
ThriveCart* — 🧡 Love It
I purchased ThriveCart with a one-time payment in 2021 and it handles all of my digital product checkouts and course delivery for shop templates. It's significantly more powerful than anything Squarespace offers natively for this purpose, and the one-time payment model made it an easy decision at the time. It houses my courses, tutorials for software templates I sell in the shop, and manages the actual product listing, and processes the payments with both Stripe & PayPal, but doesn't take their own cut of the payment (only Stripe or PayPal take their cut).
Important caveat worth knowing: ThriveCart has since introduced recurring payment options for some of their features, so whether it remains a lifetime payment for new customers depends on the plan and features you choose. Verify current pricing before assuming it's still a one-time deal.
Circle* — 🧡 Love It
My community —the Club— is hosted on Circle, and has been since it launched in 2023. I love it because it feels most like Facebook, which means members adapt to it quickly without a super steep learning curve. That matters more than most platform features when you're trying to build an active community. It's pricey though, and the plan I started on no longer appears to be available to new members, so factor current pricing into your decision & whatever you charge for your members. It's totally worth a higher price for the right community builder, just go in with eyes open on your own expenses to manage it.
ThriveAcademy — 🤫 Coming Soon!
ThriveCart's upcoming community & (new) course hosting platform (launching later in 2026), will compete directly with Circle, Skool, Podia, Thinkific, and other community + courses tools. When I get access to it, I'll test it before making a decision; definitely keeping an eye on it — especially given the existing ThriveCart integration in my stack, but I honestly don't expect it to 'feel' like Circle does, and that ease-of-use goes a long way.
Other options I researched or tried:
MightyNetworks (tried it, didn't love it), Skool, Podia, Kajabi, Thinkific, Heartbeat (researched heavily, almost pulled the trigger, but decided on Circle). I only mention these because because they come up a lot and I want to be transparent that I looked at the landscape before committing, but haven't tried them all myself. Some are more expensive than others, and all of them have slightly different features, and wildly different UIs, so check them out & decide for yourself!
Checklist: Create Your Full Tech Stack
If you made it this far —first of all–– hi 👋🏻 you're my people. 😄
Below is every tool I covered in this post, organized by category and rated with my honest verdict. You can expand any category to browse, or hit "Expand all" if you want to see everything at once.
For fun, if you want to save a shortlist of tools you're considering, check the box next to any tool and it'll get added to the selection panel at the bottom. From there you can note the current plan rate for each one, see a running total of what it'd all cost you, and copy the whole list to your clipboard to save it somewhere — notes app, ClickUp task, Google Doc, wherever you plan your business stuff.
A couple of things worth knowing before you dig in:
Links marked "Affiliate link" may earn me a small commission if you sign up after clicking there, — but at no extra cost to you, it just helps me fund these long-ass deep dives! Tools marked "Gifted" were provided free in exchange for an honest review, with zero editorial input from the company. And anything marked "Coming soon" means I'm actively testing it and a full review is likely on the way.
