Resources
Our favorite software and tools we use for our business and wholeheartedly recommend to you. Jump directly to one of the categories:
Productivity
Notion
Notion has become the backbone of our entire life and business organization. Itâs where we have our editorial calendar and manage both our daily tasks and bigger projects.
free + paid available
Dropbox
Our cloud and file-sharing system of choice to keep all the business data between us in sync. The syncing works more seamlessly than Google Drive in our experience.
This is an affiliate link that gives you 500 MB of free storage.
paid
Spark
A free and powerful email client. Favorite features include the easy management of signatures and email templates, as well as the search functionality. Thanks to different swipe gestures and keyboard shortcuts, handling the daily avalanche of emails becomes more bearable.
free + paid available
1Password
A super reliable password manager that works on all platforms and has never let us down. It enables us to have private vaults for our own passwords as well as shared vaults with passwords for shared tools and services.
paid
Grammarly
To check for grammar and spelling mistakes. As non-native English speakers, this tool has become indispensable. It even works in Google Docs or the WordPress backend and is correcting my mistakes as I write these paragraphs. đ
This is an affiliate link that gives you 1 month of free usage.
free + paid available
Google Workspace
Formerly known as G Suite, we use some of Google’s services, such as Gmail, for our business email as well as Google Docs, for collaborating with freelancers on certain blog posts or ebooks.
paid
SEO Tools
Ahrefs
We use Ahrefs for everything SEO-related: analyzing traffic drops, looking up new content ideas, tracking keywords, and checking for on-page SEO errors. Out of all SEO tools, Ahrefs is supposed to have the most accurate data.
paid
Rankmath
Our WordPress SEO plugin of choice. You canât go wrong with either Rankmath or Yoast here, but Rankmath has a few more features in its free version, plus the nicer user interface (personal preference!)
free + paid available
Creativity
Affinity Photo
I’m so glad I made the switch from Photoshop. Not only is Affinity Photo much cheaper and doesn’t require a subscription, but it also has a much smoother performance and a more modern user interface. It does everything I need in a photo editing software.
paid
Affinity Publisher
This is Affinityâs counterpart to Adobe InDesign. We use it to design all our ebooks and free PDF resources. StudioLink is the most amazing feature; it lets you access Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo tools without leaving the app.
paid
Affinity Designer
This vector design app is the counterpart to Adobe Illustrator and works seamlessly within the Affinity ecosystem. Iâm not much of a graphic designer, but once in a while, Affinity Designer comes in handy to open and manipulate an SVG file.
paid
Rawpixel
Rawpixel started out as a stock photography site and ventured into a creative platform for creating logos, mockups, pictures to share on social media, etc. We still use it mainly for photos, which we find to be less cheesy than those found on other platforms.
free + paid available
ColorSlurp
A color picker for MacOS with a couple of cool tricks up its sleeve: creating different color palettes, easily exporting colors as HEX Code, RGB, CMYK values, and more, checking the contrast or accessing tints and shades of a given color (which I use all the time!)
free + paid available
Streamline Icons
My go-to resource when it comes to icons for every occasion. The selection is gigantic, the styles are consistent, and it couldnât be easier to export icons in different file formats or just get the SVG code to easily paste it into WordPress.
paid
Eagle
Perfect for organizing all kinds of design files and design inspiration. You can put your design resources in different folders, tag them, or find them with the search function or a clever filtering system.
paid
Marketing
Flodesk
Flodesk is the email marketing tool we use for our newsletters and automated email sequences for new subscribers. It has beautiful email templates and doesn’t punish you for growing your listâthe monthly price stays fixed!
This is an affiliate link that gives you 50% off your first year.
paid
Sendowl
We use Sendowl to sell our digital products. They handle the whole process of accepting payments and safely delivering the product. You’ll get marketing tools such as upsells, coupon codes, and cart abandonment, and it’s even possible to create an affiliate program for your products!
This is an affiliate link that gives you 50% off your first year.
paid
Hosting
Cloudways
This is where our website is hosted. Cloudways offers excellent performance for the money. As a tradeoff, you’ll need a bit of technical knowledge to set everything up (not too hard, though, with their documentation.)
This is an affiliate link that gives you $25 of hosting credit.
paid
Cloudflare
We use Cloudflare Pro as our Content Delivery Network for improved loading times all over the globe and for added security thanks to the Web Application Firewall.
free + paid available
Forklift
Whenever we need to access files on our web server, Forklift comes into play. It’s a file transfer client that lets you easily transfer files to and from your server. Once a month, we download a full local backup of our entire website.
paid
WordPress Themes
GeneratePress
This has been my go-to theme for years. It’s super fast and minimal yet very flexible. The support is outstanding, and the developer is very intentional about every new feature to keep the theme lightweight yet up to modern standards.
This is an affiliate link.
free + paid available
WordPress Plugins
GenerateBlocks
The ideal companion of GeneratePress. Made from the same team, this plugin adds almost infinite layout options to the Gutenberg editor. It has the same focus on page speed and clean, minimal code.
free + paid available
WP Rocket
Our preferred caching plugin (we use it on all our sites!) because it comes with powerful optimization tools such as removing any unused CSS, and is quite user-friendly at the same time. The devs are very active and ship new updates frequently.
This is an affiliate link that gives you 20% off.
paid
Perfmatters
Helpful for some more speed optimizations: disabling certain WP functionalities that you don’t use, hosting Google Analytics locally, and more. The coolest part is probably the script manager that lets you disable scripts on a per page/post basis.
paid
Novashare
A lightweight social sharing plugin with a focus on page speed (no wonder because it’s from the same guys behind Perfmatters.) Also includes the option to add Pinterest share buttons on images.
paid
Code Snippets
Lets you insert PHP or HTML code snippets into your site which can eliminate the need for a child theme. We use it for all kinds of stuff, like enhancing the comment form, changing the layout of archives, or enabling smooth scroll functionality.
free + paid available
Fluent Forms
A form plugin, again with the focus on being lightweight and fast. Its script only loads on pages that actually have a form. It’s intuitive and easy to use, too, and comes with 45+ input types and a visual form builder.
free + paid available
WP Recipe Maker
This one is for food bloggers. After trying many recipe plugins, this one has turned out to be the best by a long shot. It’s extremely customizable and powerful! The developer is super dedicated and oftentimes answers support requests himself.
free + paid available
Enable Media Replace
A simple plugin that fulfills one purpose: replacing an image in your media library with a new one. Finally, you can say goodbye to deleting, renaming, and re-uploading files. We use this surprisingly often!
free
Simple TOC
A simple and minimal table of contents plugin that doesn’t add any Javascript or CSS out of the box. It can be inserted into the content area or widget area. We use it in the sidebar of this site (visible on Desktop only).
free
Mac Apps
Arc
A web browser that’s super fun to use. It has tons of playful little features that will make you smile, but also make you work more productively. Arc is based on Chromium and, therefore, supports all Chrome extensions.
free
CleanShot X
Powerful screenshotting tool with a variety of options to capture screenshots and videos. Great to quickly annotate screenshots with arrows or numbers, or to shoot quick explainer videos where you share your screen + record from your webcam at the same time.
paid
Flow
A simple and free Pomodoro timer. You can adjust the flow and break durations and be reminded to take regular breaks. I kept the standard 25-minute work and 5-minute break sessions, and it helps me stay a bit more in the zone!
free + paid available
MonitorControl
Just a small (free!) app that lets me use my keyboard brightness buttons to control the brightness of the external monitor, as long as the mouse pointer is in the external monitor.
free
Magnet
Window management for Mac isn’t great. Thankfully, this app comes to the rescue and allows you to snap windows to different positions on your screen, either by dragging them with your mouse or using keyboard shortcuts. A must-have for multitasking.
paid
CopyClip
This small app is a clipboard manager that lives in your menu bar, allowing you to easily access your latest clippings. I like its simplicity and the fact that I can choose how many clippings are displayed in the dropdown menu.
free
