Essential Internet Marketing Tools & Services
Stuff that I actually use and recommend.
Web Hosting
ExonHost - from $2.99/mo
They are my go-to shared hosting solution, and offer an unthinkable value for the price. Plans start from as low as $2.99/month, and you get LiteSpeed-powered, ultra-fast, super reliable servers. On top of that, their support department goes above and beyond (often helping with issues outside of their scope) to ensure user satisfaction. Read my full review.
SiteGround - from $7.99/mo
Slightly more expensive, but also a much more well known brand that's still independent (not owned by EIG). A good option overall, performance and reliability wise. Read my full review.
CloudFlare - Free
The free reverse-proxy based CDN that everyone loves. Apart from speeding up your website by serving your site's static files from their 150+ data centers across the world, they also help keep your site secure by offering a capable firewall, free SSL and quite a few other useful things.
WordPress Plugins & Themes
Thrive Architect - from $67
What You See is What You Get - this is the motto behind the best drag-and-drop page builder ever built for WordPress (the page you're on was put together using TA, as well). It offers unmatched flexibility, is fairly easy to use (when your needs are simple) and quite affordable if you're getting it as part of a Thrive Themes membership ($30/mo, you can use ALL Thrive products on up to 25 sites, with all future updates even if you don't continue the subscription).
GeneratePress - $39
It's essentially a free WordPress theme, but its premium modules take it to a next level. What's the USP? Lightweight, highly flexible, extremely fast right out of the box, clean schema-optimized code (good for SEO). Perfect for using alongside page builders like Thrive Architect and Elementor. TechTage is built on GeneratePress.
ShortPixel - Freemium
It's a WordPress image compression plugin that has the best balance between compression and image quality, in my experience. It can automatically resize large images and compress all images as you upload them on your WordPress site. If your site's pages have a lot of images, compressing them will result in faster page load times and a much better user experience, overall.
SEO (KW Research, Link Building etc.)
Ahrefs - from $99/mo
If you can afford it, Ahrefs is the ultimate all-in-one SEO toolset that eliminates the need for separate tools for keyword research, backlink checking, rank tracking etc. by doing pretty much everything much better than older, dedicated tools. If you have a monthly budget of around $200, Ahrefs should be the first SEO tool you should pick, regardless of what you're trying to do.
Mangools (KWFinder) - from $49/mo
Mangools is a budget alternative to Ahrefs that does most of the things that Ahrefs does. You get KWFinder (their most famous tool), SERPWatcher (rank tracker), LinkMiner (backlinks checking tool) and SERPChecker (SERP monitoring tool). I'm especially fond of their sleek UI and lenient limits.
SEMRush - from $99/mo
SEMRush is a competitor reverse-engineering tool on steroids, although it has its own rank tracker and backlinks monitoring tool as well. Similarly priced as Ahrefs, but comes with more lenient limits. Works just as well, if not better, in uncovering the most high-potential keywords by reverse-engineering others.
SERPRobot - from $5/mo
SERPRobot is a cheap, fast, and accurate rank tracking tool that I use to stay on top of the rankings of the most valuable keywords of each site. It's quite a bargain at just $5/mo, which offers 600 SERP checks per 24 hours.
Miscellaneous Other Tools
Canva - Freemium
Not everyone has enough Photoshop skills to design beautiful graphics and header images for their websites, and this is where Canva comes into play. It's way faster, and is enough to design most graphics, thanks to its countless templates that are also available in the free version.
Pixabay - Free
Largest collection of free stock photos among all such websites that I've tested so far. Lets you download images in super high-resolution if you need it (some are as large as 5000px wide). Helps you avoid the potential copyright issues of using images straight from Google Images.
Trello - Freemium
A fantastic app to stay organized. The free version is more than enough for most people. Using Trello 'boards', you can easily maintain a workflow and stay on top of pending tasks, share access to your boards with other members in your team, and do much more.