Top 20 Best Tools for developers and designers

The Internet is more accessible than ever before in our current day and age. Due to this fact, having a presence online is more important than ever for businesses, organizations and so on. Therefore, the demand for high quality work from both web developers and designers is at an all time high.

Consequently, the number of tools and services that have appeared in order to make their lives easier has similarly increased.

We’ve gone through the best tools for developers and designers and selected the top 20 to tell you about.

HotJar

Knowing how your users are really interacting with your website is essential knowledge of all website owners and developers. HotJar is a platform that unifies all functionalities you need in order to gather pertinent information about the way your website is being used. All the information that HotJar provides you is safely stored in the cloud and available at any time. Using this information, you will be able to improve your website’s UX and conversion plans easier than ever before.

HotJar is a team of experts with diverse areas of expertise like Product / SaaS Development, Web Marketing, UX and Conversion Rate Optimization. Their aim is to help you create a better website for your business, to that end, they offer a much better price plan than all of their competitors (just $29/month). Also, unlike their competitors, HotJar offers you all usability information in a unified platform so you can forget about having to use three or more applications to get the same result. Among the features that HotJar offers you will find: heat maps that will show you which areas of your website have gotten the most attention, feedback and exit polls, online surveys meant to get you better acquainted with your visitor’s wants and needs, funnel and form analysis, visitor session playbacks, proactive chat and more.

Giverz

Giverz is the best website to go to when you aim to enhance your projects on a budget. This website is dedicated to scouring the Internet in search of the best possible giveaways available. Not only that, they take it one step further and actually approach service providers with the intention to convince them to offer giveaways through Giverz. Here’s how Giverz works for you: you head on over to their website, check out their awesome past giveaways as well as the current ones, you sign up for their mailing list and you wait for their next campaign to launch (for you to be better able to manage your time, the team has put up a countdown on their website). This is how a campaign works: the entire mailing list receives an email from the team at Giverz letting them know that the giveaway they’re having is up for grabs, this email contains a link that you have to click on in order to claim the giveaway and, if you’re fast enough, you will be amongst the lucky ones. So, what are you waiting for?

ZippyPixels

In order for designers and developers to always stay on top of their game, it’s important for them to have access to the best resources to help them in their creative process. Unfortunately, most of these resources are quite costly. Luckily, ZippyPixels is a service that will offer you a varied array of graphic resources at reasonable prices. The team that founded ZippyPixels set out to create a place where creative individuals could find the resources they needed in order to hone their craft and not have to pay a fortune for them. This is why it’s so important for them to always keep in touch with their community and make sure the deals they offer are in accordance to the community’s needs. One example of how ZippyPixels is so attuned with their developers and designers is the Grandé bundle. This bundle comes in response to what customers of ZippyPixels need and it offers 160 HD mockups from a varied array categories like, logos, books, flyers and advertisements, device, magazines and more. They don’t call it Grandé for nothing.

ShrinkTheWeb

ShrinkTheWeb is a web development tool that helps web and mobile application developers out there save a lot of time. ShrinkTheWeb is a platform that offers an automated screenshot system fully capable of scaling to meet any need. With this platform you will be able to automatically capture, shrink, crop, save, upload and display screenshots with a single line of code or by using an existing plugin. Forget about having to go through a thousand tedious steps in order to do the work manually, it will all be taken care of by the most reliable website screenshot platform available out there. ShrinkTheWeb also provides unmatched reliability and unparalleled tech support. Among other things, ShrinkTheWeb offers URL to PDF Conversion, Custom Size Previews, Full-Length Previews, Private Label Service and Inside Page Previews. It’s no wonder it was used by Microsoft and Semantic, since it will make your site really shine with just a few clicks.

Stamplia

The Stamplia Builder is a tool that will help developers who are used to investing a lot of time into creating a variety of email templates for their customers save on time and money. By using the Stamplia Builder editor, all the adjustments to an email template developers had to do writing code can be managed straight from the editor in a matter of minutes and the results can be viewed in a real-time visualization mode instantly. With the Stamplia Builder editor you can now customize any aspect of your email template and be assured that by the time you’re done it will look amazing on both desktop and mobile. What’s more, this editor offers you the possibility to automatically export your template to popular providers like MailChimp, CampaignMonitor and SendGrid and be guarantee that it will be fully compatible with them. In addition to this, developers who submit templates that are compatible with the Stamplia Builder editor can now be promoted amongst the clients of these email providers.

DealFuel

DealFuel is the perfect website to go to when you’re in search of the best deals for both developer and designer resources available online. DealFuel’s community has access to some of the best items and services around. Here you’ll find first rate WordPress themes, dedicated software, online learning and tutorial resources to help you improve your skill and a number of useful tools for your website. Also, from a designer point of view, you will find a plentiful selection of icons, buttons, vectors, actions and more that are just waiting to be discovered. Don’t forget to check out the bundles that the team over at DealFuel offer, they’re in the habit of encompassing the best resources in a neat and plentiful package. What’s more, DealFuel has made sure to negotiate the best deals possible for you, so you’re sure that any item you purchase is at the best price you can get.

RumbleTalk

If you’re looking to create a website that aims to provide visitors with an active chat room, you can’t go wrong by turning to RumbleTalk. RumbleTalk is a service that will help you implement and manage a stylish HTML5 chat room for your website. By using this service you will make your pages more attractive to your clients and benefit from working with a company that seeks to create healthy, longterm business relationships with all their clients. RumbleTalk’s chat rooms can be embedded in any web page as well as added as a floating toolbar. They are feature rich offering moderators, SSL and themes that are fully customizable. With them you will also be able to give your customers complete liberty to add videos or photos straight into the chat room. What’s more, RumbleTalk offers top-notch support for users and with a portfolio of over 300,000 websites already using their chat rooms, you can be sure they’re at the top of their game.

BrowseEmAll

BrowseEmAll is a valuable tool for all web designers and developers. By using BrowseEmAll they are able to discover their website’s compatibility issues straight off the bat. BrowseEmAll is a lightning fast desktop application that allows you to view your website in a number of different browsers as well as in a mobile simulator. This will undoubtedly make your life a lot easier due to the fact that it allows you to automatize your testing process. What’s more, you can also use BrowseEmAll to optimize your projects for mobiles and make sure that they work just as smoothly regardless of device. Another useful feature that BrowseEmAll offers is the option of testing both your HTML and raw files without having to upload them to a server before hand. All in all, BrowseEmAll is the perfect tool to use in order to make sure that your websites are fully compatible across browsers, work seamlessly on all devices, be they laptop, mobile or tablet and are fully optimized.

Paddle

Paddle.com is a London-based eCommerce platform that’s set up to take away the annoyances of selling digital content online. No worrying about payment processing, tax handling, file hosting & delivery or customer support -- Paddle handles it all and leaves you to focus on what you enjoy: creating awesome products.

Getting started takes minutes and just involves naming and pricing your product, uploading your eBook, app, game, creative resource or any other digital file and that’s it -- you’ll be given a checkout link that you can use to start selling on your website. It really is an incredibly simple way to sell digital content.

Paddle’s Overlay Checkout gives your customers a beautiful and seamless buying experience, keeping them on the same page throughout the entire checkout process.

At a low cost of just 5% + $0.50 per sale using Paddle is super affordable, and all sellers get a beautiful dashboard with sales stats, reporting functionality and product management tools included in the cost.

10. jQAPI

jQuery is one of the most sought after libraries for JavaScript amongst web developers. Unfortunately, its standard documentation is not amongst the easiest to leaf through. This is why jQAPI is an initiative that has proven to be both useful and popular. The jQAPI offers an alternative jQuery Documentation Browser that helps developers find what they need and offers them the option to download and browse it offline.

11. CloudCart

When thinking about creating an online store there are a number of things you should consider like the way your clients will make payments, how to calculate tax (there are numerous tax refund estimators available online) and, most importantly, how to promote your website. Luckily, CloudCart does all of this for you and more. By using CloudCart you are sure to have access to the best possible resources for your online store. CloudCart will provide you with elegant, completely SEO optimized themes, an website that is optimized for both desktop and mobile browsing, secure hosting and CDN, an integrated live chat that will help you keep up with your clients and more. Also, the team over at CloudCart will take care to give you full social integration for your website across platforms such as Google+, Twitter and Facebook. As far as the actual selling process, CloudCart offers you features that will make your life easier and your client’s experience better and simpler. Amongst these features you will find integrated payments, 1-page checkout, delivery and tax calculator, international payments and more.

12. Opinion Stage

Opinion Stage is the best service for opinion polling for websites you’ll find. With Opinion Stage you will be able to create standard polls within your website and thusly boost the engagement of your visitors or social polls that encourage social sharing of the poll itself or of the vote your visitors cast on a variety of social networks. Setting up your first poll will take under 5 minutes and this includes the registering process. You will have full control over your poll and will be able to customize it as you see fit. In addition to this, you will also be able to have a complete overview of all the results of your polls in Opinion Stage’s comprehensive dashboard that offers you diverse search criteria through the information as well as nice graphs and charts. Also you’ll have to option to earn money with Opinion Stag by using their monetizing feature and either adding ads inside your polls or promoting polls from across the Opinion Stage network.

13. WPEka Club

WordPress has become the most popular platform for developing websites. Because of this, the resources available for those who work with the WordPress platform are endless. But it’s not always easy to sift through an endless supply of resources. This is why WPEka Club is such an important tool for developers. WPEka Club offers you both quality themes and first-rate plugins gathered in a repository of over 50 themes and plugins that is steadily growing each day. With WPEka Club you can be assured that all resources you purchase will be of the best quality and you will have no issues with using them. As a client of WPEka Club you will have access to one of the best support systems available online and all of this starting off at a monthly plan of just $27. Oh, and remember how we said that WPEka’s repository is growing? Well, they’re adding 4 new releases to it monthly so don’t waste any more time and head on over to WPEka Club.

14. Luvly

The aesthetics of your website are always important. This is why you have to always employ high quality design resources in creating and refreshing the visual aspects of your website. Luvly is the perfect place where you can find resources to fit these criteria. Luvly is a premium digital design marketplace that supplies all of your graphic, imagery and vector needs. Luvly is the place where you can find any graphic resource you need, starting with baby shower invitations, to DIY projects or amazing Blogger and WordPress templates. All the items available on Luvly have undergone a thorough approval process that assures you that they will all be both useful and of high quality. What’s more, Luvly is invested in growing along with its community of designers and developers. To this end, they are in the habit of hosting interactive workshops, classes and tutorials on top of all the premium design products they are selling.

15. New Relic

New Relic is the perfect tool to use when you’re looking to gather performance data about your applications and websites. All the data you need in order to understand how your applications are truly functioning will be provided to you by New Relic in the form of reports and analysis. By being completely up to date with all this information, you will be able to make business and performance decisions faster and easier.

16. Inspiration Hut

Inspiration Hut is a repository that holds a variety of creative resources that you can access at any time. The team over at Inspiration Hut searches the Internet daily in order to find the best and most useful creative downloads available. They add them to their repository as soon as they find them in order for their community to have access to new and exciting resources to help them in their creative process. By being able to access a variety of resources in one single place, web developers and designers will have the opportunity to track down the items they need faster and more efficiently. In addition to this, all creative individuals are encouraged to add their own work to Inspiration Hut. They will have to option to make their items either free or premium, according to their wishes. In the end, Inspiration Hut’s repository will grow daily and always be ready to offer you the freshest resources available from UI Kits, to Themes, Textures and more.

17. OOcharts

OOcharts is a service that will help you gather and access all the information provided by Google Analytics in an elegant and intuitive dashboard. As soon as you sign up with your Google Analytics account and provide an API key for your website, you will be able to see all the information gather within OOcharts. This tool costs $0 a month and queues all your requests that would normally exceed the Google Analytics API and ensures that you get your data fast and reliably.

18. Fiddler

Fiddler is a highly customizable free web debugging proxy that works on any browser, platform or system. Using Fiddler you will be able to debug traffic from PC, Mac or Linux systems as well as mobile devices. You will have the possibility to make sure that the proper cookies, headers and cache directives are transferred between client and server and have your web application run seamlessly.

19. Web Starter Kit

The Web Starter Kit is the perfect tool to help you get on your way to creating a website that runs across multiple devices. Among the features it includes you will find: a built in HTTP server, Sass support, Page speed insights reporting, Performance optimization and much more.

20. BrowserShots

BrowserShots is a tool that will allow you to view your website in a varied array of browsers. Using BrowserShots is easy and intuitive, all you have to do is enter you website’s URL, check the browsers you want to view it in and hit submit. Then, BrowserShots will automatically load a snapshot of how your website looks on each browser you’ve checked.

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