Best Tools for Bloggers (Continuously Updated)

This is a list of the best tools for bloggers that I recommend. I have used all of these unless otherwise noted (some have been used by friends who have told me extensively about them).

Many of these blogger tools are free or have a free option to use, but some are paid. Most of the paid ones have affiliate links, which means if you click and then decide to buy/subscribe, I get a small commission.

Note that I’m running my sites pretty lean these days. Not just to save money, but the fewer tools I use, the simpler my life is. And the less there is to break.

Hosting & Domain Registration

TigerTech

TigerTech handles my hosting and domain registration. I’ve been through a lot of hosts and registrars over the years, including VPS and managed hosting, but I started using these guys in 2008 and have used them exclusively since 2010. Yep, 15 years. They are lightning fast and very secure, and that’s why I won’t leave.

Yes, it’s “shared” hosting, but they do it so well they can handle over a million hits per month or a sudden traffic spike like it’s nothing. I can’t remember the last time I had even 5 minutes of downtime.

Website Analytics

Clicky Website Analytics

Clicky is more in-depth than Google Analytics, and yet everything is there at a glance. It’s very affordable for what it does. I love this for tracking outbound clicks, like the ones to my affiliate links. You can read my full in-depth Clicky Review here. I’ve been using it since 2011.

It’s especially critical to me now that GA4 was redesigned to hide all the most important information we need.

Kadence is a popular and feature-rich WordPress theme that’s known for its flexibility, performance, and user-friendly design. It’s got a lot of settings and features, which make it very easy for less techy users, and yet it’s as fast as any other theme I’ve tried.

And yet, it’s amazingly fast. I bought the lifetime deal and have been thrilled with it. I recommend adding Kadence Blocks Pro (which comes with the LTD or some subscriptions). It has a thousand uses!

GeneratePress

Can’t beat GeneratePress for speed. There is a learning curve, but if you like being able to tinker under the hood, this one’s the best. After a couple of years with Trellis, which followed a bunch of years with Studio Press’ Genesis, I switched to Generate Press. I wanted to be able to tweak things on my own that Trellis didn’t allow.

Tools and Services for Email Marketing

Rasa.io

I’ve been using Rasa for a few years now on several sites, and it really works. It’s an AI-powered seriously hands-off “set it and forget it” newsletter that generates from content you choose. Perfect if you’re not trying to make money from your list and want to keep people engaged without work.

Mediavine’s Grow FREE Email

But honestly? Mediavine’s free Grow email is just as good, possibly better, because it will pull older posts more than Rasa does. With Rasa I feel pressured to republish content constantly or it’ll send the same thing over and over to readers (despite this, somehow it still drives a lot of clicks). Grow doesn’t need to be that hands on, and drives a ton of clicks.

Courses I Recommend

New bloggers can benefit from courses, but there are so many to choose from. Some aren’t worth it. Others actually give you bad information. I’ve taken all of these (and then some), and these are the best blogging courses I’ve found.

Scheduling Shortcuts [Hacks for the New Pinterest Algorithm]

Amy Levee’s Scheduling Shortcuts is my new favorite Pinterest course. It’s a lot more than shortcuts – it’s a whole strategy of how to pin, how often and how many pins to make, and loads of ways to do it more quickly. Amy does a terrific job of digesting the Pinterest engineering blog and telling you what it all means. She also works for a lot of clients, and that enables her to test lots of strategies.

She also has mini courses I recommend highly: the entirely FREE Pinterest Strategy Guide which is surprisingly useful, Pinterest Rank Boost (all about improving your rankings in Pinterest), and the Stolen Pins course, if you need it.

Pinteresting Strategies

Pinteresting Strategies is another very reliable course. You can read my full review here.

Graphics

You’ll probably need to make graphics and videos for articles and social media promotion. Here’s what I use:

Affinity

I used Affinity as a subscription free PhotoShop alternative before they sold it to Canva. The good news is that Canva’s Affinity is so far working well for me. They didn’t change much, which is good. Hopefully they’ll update it as needed and maybe add some new features.

InVideo Studio

Invideo is a surprisingly good and easy-to-use video editor that keeps getting better with new features. I’ve only used their manual editor, which is very quick for generating the kind of videos I make. To be honest, I wouldn’t subscribe to this at $17 (I have an LTD). If you make videos constantly, it’s a great deal. But if you only do it occasionally, then not so much.

Productivity Tools

ClickUp

Clickup may have a lot going on, but you don’t have to turn on features you don’t use. I use the free version and it does all I need. It lets you keep documents alongside task lists and boards. If you start working with employees or collaborators, it’s easy to add them into the system.

UpNote or Joplin

Both of these completely replaced Evernote for me, and they’re way more affordable, faster, more features, everything.

If you want excellent privacy and more features than Joplin, go with UpNote. It’s what I currently use. Nested notebooks with custom sorting, custom sorting of notes, beautiful interface, excellent and unbeliavably fast web clipper… I love it!

If you want complete privacy, pick Joplin. It’s also completely free unless you pay for them to sync it in the cloud. You can use a Dropbox free account for syncing too, and it will still have end-to-end encryption if you so choose.

Dynalist

Dynalist is great for writing outlines and taking notes. It’s like Workflowy, but with more formatting options. It has desktop apps and several mobile versions, too, so you don’t have to run it in your browser.

Wavebox

Wavebox is a desktop app runs my Gmail, Todoist, Evernote, Dynalist, all your Twitter accounts, Facebook and lots, lots more. Think of it as a very sophisticated browser that holds lots of tabs without bogging down your computer, and that lets you be logged into multiple accounts (like Twitter) at once.

Legal Pages

I’m currently using the latest version of ASelfGuru’s Legal Bundle for the legal pages on my sites – like Terms, Privacy, and Disability Statements. She updates frequently, so as long as you get the latest ones, you should be well-covered.

Legal Templates come from a lawyer who provides a great collection at a reasonable price. Her advice aligns with what I’ve heard from a lot of online lawyers for bloggers, including the ones who’ve actually dealt with ADA suits. She also provides contract templates if you’re contracting with people to write posts or use their images, etc.

WordPress Plugins

Novashare

Novashare is THE social media plugin to guide your readers to all the networks and add all the Pin descriptions you want. The code is lean, so it runs reliably and you get very fast support from the developer. It will make very little impact on page speed scores.

Scriptless Social Sharing

This is a totally free social sharing plugin that’s so lightweight it makes virtually no impact on your page loading speed. It doesn’t have all the features of Novashare – mainly it’s missing a lot of the networks I want, like Flipboard. But that’s definitely not absolutely necessary. People mostly share from their phones. To me, the buttons are there to remind them to share, not necessarily to be used.

Affiliate Programs for Bloggers

Amazon Affiliates: depending on your business model, you can earn a lot from the Amazon affiliate program, despite the modest commissions and 24-hour cookie. This is because people buy from Amazon more readily than from some lesser-known sites.

Linkshare: this company runs the affiliate programs for a ton of companies, including Macy’s, Nordstrom’s and BestBuy. If you want to sell products for companies like that, get a LinkShare account and get started.

Stock Photos for Bloggers

DepositPhotos is one of the more affordable paid image sites, and it’s got some great quality photos. I rely on it for most of my stock photos.

Ad Networks for Bloggers

Mediavine

MediaVine is an ad manager who handles your ads for you and brings in better money than you could earn on your own. They. Handle. Everything. in exchange for a small percentage of your ad revenue. The ads load fast, you have total control over them, and I immediately earned a little higher RPMs with them than I had with one of their competitors. One of the best features is their Site Health Checks, which give you actionable advice on optimizing your posts and sidebar for ads.

Blogger Forums

Once upon a time, before everyone would hang out on Facebook all day, we hung around in forums, chatting with people who shared our struggles and achievements.

• The Admin Zone
• Webmaster World
• WebDeveloper – get into the nitty gritty of programming languages and all aspects of running websites.
• Geek Village
• ABestWeb
• Cre8asiteforums
• GIDForums
• HighRankingsForum
• SEOChat
• SitePoint Forum
• WebProWorld

Computer Security

Hacking is a big business and it’s only going to get bigger. I recently switched from PC to Mac, and on both platforms, there are security apps I wouldn’t be without. Read my story about getting hit with ransomware because I made the mistake of buying one of those Lenovos that had Superfish. LastPass is a password manager, and using it can protect your logins from any keyword tracker malware that’s gotten onto a computer of wifi you’re using. I highly recommend it, especially if you like to get on the shared wifi at coffee shops, airports, etc.

Windows

Emsisoft Anti-Virus doesn’t just try to catch viruses it knows about; it stops suspicious behavior of zero-day viruses (brand new ones) that nobody knows about yet. That’s the kind of protection you need against today’s ransomware.

Crypto-Prevent is a small app that changes group policy settings to make it tougher for ransomware and other takeover malware to do its thing.

Malwarebytes Premium. A lot of antiviruses shouldn’t be run side-by-side with another AV, but Malwarebytes and Emsisoft are both exceptions to this rule. Malwarebytes is relatively cheap, and it does a great job. I think it’s worth it to have both unless your computer just absolutely can’t handle the load.

Mac

Yes, Macs are pretty secure and aren’t targeted as often by malware creators. But there is malware for Macs. Why not run an AV just to be safe? Sophos Home Premium. After an update of BitDefender caused it to start using all my CPU and making my laptop run hot, I tried out Sophos’ paid home antivirus. That was a few years ago, and I’ve never looked back. It catches Windows malware as well as Mac, so you can swap files with Windows users without infecting them. And it runs light on my system so far.