Blogging Toolbox

HostWind– From $3.29/month

I was with Hostgator for the longest time before their customer service deteriorated to the point that I couldn’t get any support questions answered. Support via tickets was switched to chat only which was totally unresponsive.

Currently, I am with Hostwinds. They have good and helpful support. At $3.29/month, it’s one of the best value for money when it comes to starter web hosting.

Bluehost – From $3.95/month

Bluehost is a popular host among bloggers. It’s a good alternative if you’re just getting started. Here’s my guide on how to start a blog using BlueHost.

Godaddy – Varies depending on the discount

I’ve been purchasing domains through GoDaddy for over 10 years. Although I couldn’t recommend their other non-domain related services because I have never used them.

MailerLite – Free for the first 1000 subscribers

MailerLite is an email marketing software targeted towards small businesses and bloggers.

It’s forever free to use if you have 1000 subscribers or fewer. In fact, it’s one of the most affordable email marketing providers around.

Unlike some other email service providers, the free tier comes with an automation tool without any extra charge. The interface is beginners-friendly and should help you get started quickly.

Check out my tutorial on starting your own email list free.

Thrive Leads – $67 for a single license

This is a WordPress plugin to help you create a highly effective email opt-in forms to capture email leads.

If you want to build your list faster, using the default opt-in forms that come with the email service provider just wouldn’t cut it.

You need to be able to implement the latest marketing tactics to explode your growth. Thankfully, these features are baked right into this powerful yet easy-to-use software.

I like to save money anytime I can so the one-time fee instead of recurring monthly charges is also one reason why I choose Thrive Leads.

Yet Another Mail Merge – Freemium

YAMM is a tool I discovered recently when trying to send the same email only with slight personalization to multiple people.

It’s an easy to use Gmail add-on for users to perform a mail merge.

YAMM is free for everyone with a Gmail account to send up to 50 emails per day. Pay $24/year and you can send up to 400 emails/day.

If you install the add-on using my link, both you and I will receive an extra +50 emails per day. How cool is that!

Email Hunter – Freemium

If you are doing any email outreach, you know it can be tedious trying to locate a person’s email address if it’s not readily shown on the contact page.

Email Hunter solves this problem by looking up for the website owner’s email address for you.

All you have to do is enter the website URL and Hunter will spit out the owner’s email address if it finds any.

KeySearch.co – Starts $17/month. Use KSDISC to get 20% monthly discount

KeySearch is a keyword research tool that will help you rank higher on Google.

With a quick search, you can find how many searches a keyword gets each month, how competitive it is to rank on the first page of Google and the profitability of the keyword.

You can use KeySearch to discover the keywords used by other websites to rank on Google and find out how you could target those keywords yourself.

While other tools can cost up to $70 monthly for their cheapest option, KeySearch cheapest plan only cost $17 per month (before discount).

As a member, you’ll have access to the free SEO course which is created for beginners in mind.

Yoast SEO – Freemium

Creating content that is properly optimized for Google and other search engines can be daunting.

And this is where the Yoast SEO plugin comes in.

It walks you through optimizing your blog posts for the search engines without having to be an expert in blog SEO.

Grammarly – Freemium

Before you hit the publish button, make sure to double check your grammar and spellings for any mistakes.

Grammarly is the go-to tool for most bloggers. It can be extremely helpful to help communicate your ideas in a better and more concise way.

As a non-native English speaker, Grammarly makes it easier for me to write in ‘proper’ English. It won’t fix everything but good enough for the average users.

I’ve used both the free and paid version.

G Suite – From $5/month/user

Gmail by itself is pretty awesome and their spam filter works great for me.

Even better, I can host emails from my own domain using Google G Suite. So instead of using name@gmail.com, I have a name@sabahan.com Gmail account.

In addition, the Google apps account gives you a 30GB of storage, docs and calendars and access to other Google productivity suite.

There are several Gmail addons that I use for my email marketing campaigns, so choosing G Suite is a no-brainer.

Toggl – Freemium

Toggl helps you track your time better.

It is useful for bloggers who want to focus on the time they spend writing, researching and editing.

If you are curious how much time you’re taking on a project you can time yourself with Toggl and find out.

I’ve used Toggl every day since forever (over 10 years). I’ve used both the paid and free option and found the free one is good enough for a solopreneur like myself.

Trello – Freemium

I started using Trello in June 2018. Since then I’ve found myself stop posting virtual sticky notes or to-do list in multiple places and become more organized.

Trello is a project management tool that lets you create boards for each of your projects and visually view them in one place for easy management.

It’s a great tool for individual bloggers or a team to manage workflow, collaborate on a project and be productive.

Roboform – Freemium

Roboform is a password management tool which supports multiple devices from desktops, tablets to mobile and has multiple browser support as well.

There’s a free option available but I needed to sync across devices, cloud backup, Two Factor Authentication and web access, therefore, the paid option is what I am using right now.

When you have a lot of accounts on different websites, having a password management tool is a must.