Favorite Web Apps For My Web Design Business

Here’s my list of web tools, apps and services I use and recommend.

Top 10

Rackspace Cloud – web hosting
Great for hosting dozens of client websites. Includes client management, client billing, quick hosting setup and easy control panels for owner and clients. Best support team I’ve every worked with.

FreshBooks – invoicing
Simple and effective invoicing. You can create and send invoices by email in just a few minuets. It gives your clients the ability to pay online by credit card to your PayPal account. It’s also very easy to track payments received and billable hours.

FormStack – web forms
A quick and easy way to make web forms. This hosted form system allows you to create forms by drag and drop or inserting a URL of an existing form. The system will store all form data and send it to an email address. Once a form is made it gives you an insertion code. Plus many advanced features.

PSD2HTML – HTML service
Hand over a Photoshop document and get back great HTML/CSS. This service has worked out pretty well for me. The quality of HTML and email based support is pretty good. They also can create WordPress and other CMS template files. They are not the cheapest out there but the price is still affordable and the service is high quality.

Basecamp – project management
This lightweight project management app is great for web production teams. I use it when ever I have a few people on a project that lasts a couple of months. It’s quick, easy and inexpensive. It tracks tasks, time, dates and file versions.

Highrise – CRM
When new customer leads or client leads come in faster than I can keep track of I fire up my Highrise account. It helps organize all my discussions and followups for pursuing new business. I use the free account to manage my talent resource pool.

Things – task management
I wrote my to-do list on paper every day for years until I found this Mac application. It allow you to keep several to-do lists that all come together into one daily task list. It’s really quick to add and prioritize tasks.

99 Designs – logo design
This is a decent and affordable service when I have a lower budget client that needs a new logo designed. You can expect a few logos from several designers and time to critique and ask for revisions. It’s not as good as hiring a real logo designer but a good low budget option.

ProofreadingPal – proofreading
Proofreading on demand. Fast, professional and high quality.

Google Docs – shared text docs and spreadsheets
You can use Google Docs to have documents with multiple authors and readers that all see the document at the same time. Usefull when sharing a project plan that is always changing, a task list or tracking document. Instead of emailing files I just share the Google Doc with my team members.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top