The 70 Best Tools, Apps, and Resources You Need to Succeed
Whether you’re running a business, building a startup, working for the man, or doing whimsical and crafty things in your spare time, you always need resources to help you stay organized, focused, on point, and productive as hell.
We compiled a list of our favourite tools and resources for keeping your cool 24/7. (I promise it won’t just be your mom who thinks you’re cool)
Productivity & Organization
Asana A robust web and mobile app for teams to track all of their tasks, projects, progress, and communicate on those tasks, all within the same platform.
Trello Another great tool to track everything whether you’re flying solo or working with a team. Trello makes it super easy for everyone to be in the know.
Google Drive Keep everyone on the same page and cut down on unnecessary emails when you have everything in one place that’s easily editable and shareable.
Evernote I love Evernote for keeping all of my meeting notes and to do lists for projects. The search functionality is reminiscent of Mac in how it finds EVERYTHING.
Passion Planner Paper lovers rejoice. This is the only planner I’ve ever used consistently. I swear it’s a full time job trying to find the perfect planner, and most just miss the spot.
Wipebook Wipebook is a whiteboard turned into a notebook. I love using this for meetings, planning, and brainstorming.
Agile Hands down, one of the most important tools to Rebel. Agile. Learn how to use it here.
Communication, HR, Employee Engagement
Skype A big tool in our office – Skype has literally replaced our office phones.
Slack A favorite at Rebel. Similar to Skype but greater functionality and customization. Slack is fun, and makes office gif parties easy and hilarious.
Tinypulse Ask your employees questions about culture, leadership, happiness or anything you want to gauge their feeing on- and get anonymous answers. We love this wonderful tool!
Small Improvements Set goals and objectives throughout the year and watch your progress. This tool also lets you conduct and share performance reviews.
SpeakUp Vote on problems, ideas, or questions within your organization. A great way to keep track of new product ideas, bugs that need fixes, your next potluck theme, etc.
Dialpad Meetings If you’re tired of less than stellar online conference experiences, meet Dialpad Meetings. It’s easy to use, no pins or weird installations.
Bamboo The easiest way to book time off, see who is out of the office, and familiarize yourself with your coworkers if you’re a newbie.
Glassdoor Glassdoor gives you insight into company culture with employee reviews that cover everything from perks to benefits, salaries, and interview questions. It’s anonymous, so you won’t find any BS here.
Social Media Management and Marketing
Sprout We love Sprout for scheduling, monitoring, and analyzing all of our social channels. Sprout also has outstanding reporting features so it’s easy to share progress reports with your team.
Buffer Buffer is another great tool with appealing price points if you’re on a budget, a basic plan starting at $10/month. They also have a great blog packed full of insightful tips and tools.
Hootsuite One of the longest-running social media tools out there, so it’s well recognized and trusted. You can set it up to have all of your feeds on one page, so it’s easy to see what’s happening at a glance.
Most social media management tools have free trials, so be sure to check them out
Insight tools
Google Analytics One of the easiest and most recognized ways to track and analyze what’s going on with your website.
Cyfe An all-in-one online business dashboard that tracks whatever you tell it to. Connect it with the tools and apps you already use to see your data in one place.
Klipfolio Build and share real-time dashboards similar to Cyfe with tons of integration options.
Google Trends Analyze Google’s data and visualizations to see what’s coming, what’s been popular when, and how trends change over time. This is a great insight tool.
Import.io Use import.io to collect your own data from websites without writing any code. Just enter the URL and they’ll transform the web page into data that you can download as a CSV or save as an API.
Ad tools
Facebook Ads Get yourself set up with a business account on Facebook for advertising. You can also publish ads on Instagram via your account, so it’s easy to kill a couple birds with one stone.
Twitter Ads Advertising on Twitter is a great option if you have engaging imagery and copy. The ads feel a part of the platform as opposed to a loud and out there ad. This might sound counterintuitive, but it’s a great way to feel more like a recommendation from a friend, which will likely convert you faster than an ad.
AdRoll AdRoll is a retargeting platform that enables you to advertise on multiple social platforms as well as the web. The way they deliver ads to potential customers differs from how Facebook and Twitter do it within their own platform, so it’s a great option for your marketing efforts.
AdWords Pay-per-click advertising for text based, image based, and video based ads. AdWords can be a great platform to drive brand awareness and leads, but it can also be risky if you’re not well-versed in how it works. It’s easy to lose a lot of money on AdWords if you’re in a saturated market, so be sure to do some research before you jump into this one.
Design resources
Creative Market The Etsy of design goods. They’ve got everything you need to build a memorable brand online – fonts, stock photos, graphics, presentation templates, website templates, and more.
Fonts
Font Squirrel, Da Fonts, Google Fonts
Free Stock Photos
Check out our full list of 74 Stock Photo Sites You Should be Using
Make sure you always double check the licensing when you’re using a photo. And if you can, source the artist.
If you’re into GIF parties, then you definitely need Giphy
For editing images
Snappa Snappa pairs free stock images with a handy dandy editor. Pick the platform you’re making an image for and it knows the size it needs to be. It’s easy to pump out beautiful images with text and graphics.
Adobe Photoshop For advanced users. It’s pretty well the gold standard for graphic designers, but requires a decent amount of work to learn how to use it if you’re not familiar with graphic design and image manipulation.
Pixlr A great free tool for beginners to advanced users. Choose your skill level and you’ll get an editing layout that works for your knowledge level. Their advanced platform mimics photoshop.
Canva Super simple way to create beautiful images and documents with tons of fonts and layouts to choose from. Try it for free!
Pablo A great image editor Pablo is cool because it’s built into Buffer, so you can make images for your social accounts in a jiffy.
Infogr.am Creative interactive infographics and online charts
Piktochart An intuitive, easy-to-use infographic platform that helps non-designers create beautiful visuals.
Inspiration
Unmistakable Creative Self described as a podcast for “instigators, rebels and and people with a pathological inability to accept the status quo”. We couldn’t agree more. This is our go-to for constant inspiration, growth, and challenging what we know.
Soul Pancake Viral video content that will melt your heart, make you cry, feel inspired to make your mark online, open up to a stranger, and talk about things that matter.
TEDTalks The ultimate source for motivating and inspiring education from people all around the world. TED talks are always on our playlists. Start with Simon Sinek!
Flipboard Save great articles, videos, and photos into beautiful digital magazines you can share and take anywhere.
Guides.co Interactive, up-to-date, and extremely useful modern ‘how-to’ guides for everything under the sun.
Escape
Breather A network of beautiful spaces that you can unlock on-demand to work, meet, and relax. Rebel loves using these for creative brainstorm sessions.
WeWork Provides you with the space, community, and services you need to make a life, not just a living.
Spotify An epic database of music to choose from to craft the perfect playlist.
Swag on point
Jakprints Artists, musicians, dreamers, and hard workers that enjoy seeing creativity come to life by printing paper, apparel, stickers, and banners.
Stickermule Custom stickers that kick ass. Sticker Mule is the fastest and easiest way to buy custom stickers.
Lumi Lumi has a great collection of supplies that you can brand in a jiffy. If you like simple but beautiful designs, you’ll love Lumi.
Landing pages
Instapage Create beautiful landing pages in minutes with easy to use templates and a drag and drop builder. Integrate with tools to help your campaigns, a/b test your landing pages, collect leads, and more.
Unbounce Build high-converting mobile responsive landing pages to power your marketing campaigns.
Leadpages Create and split test responsive landing pages, sales pages, and conversion pages.
Customer insight
Survey Monkey Create and publish online surveys quickly and easily.
Hot jar Hotjar is loaded with features to give you insight – heat maps, conversion funnels, user session recordings, surveys, recruiting user testers, etc.
Crazy egg Another great tool to see what your users are doing on your website. Use heat maps, scroll maps, click maps, etc.
UserTesting Want feedback on digital products or your site? Sign up for user testing and pick the segments of people you’re after. Give them some instructions on what you’d like from them and they’ll give you audio feedback on what you’ve asked them. This is a great tool to understand the user experience with your product or site so you can make changes that have positive impacts.
Blogs
These days there are a ton of blog and site builders to choose from for crafting your online presence. The one that’s best for you will depend on your needs – take some time to check out each one and see what you like.
PLUS, all of Rebel’s domains integrate with these builders!
These are our favourites:
Weebly Bring your vision to life with Weebly and their beautiful themes that are easy to set up with their drag and drop builder. They’ve got you covered whether you need a blog, basic site, or ecommerce site.
WordPress WordPress is a robust platform for blogging and one pagers. If you’re serious about getting into blogging, WordPress offers a suite of features to make it easy to publish content and schedule posts. It’s easy to set up and has unlimited options for free and beautiful templates.
Blogger Blogger is great because it’s free and easy to connect it with your domain. Blogger tends to be quite popular for simple blogging as there are many resources for free and beautiful templates online.
Shopify One of the veteran’s in building beautiful blogs, sites, and online shops. I’d recommend Shopify if you’re looking to start selling online. Keep in mind when choosing Shopify that their sites are coded a little differently than most, so you will need support from developers who understand Shopify’s setup.
Squarespace Squarespace is another site that excels in aesthetically pleasing sites that are simple to set up. Whether you just need a blog, one pager, or a full ecommerce set up, they do it all. Their platform is by far my favourite when it comes to laying out pages and content with ease on your site.
Wix Create a free website, store, or blog with Wix. With over 200 app integrations to choose from, you’ll be set for whatever you need when crafting your presence online.
tumblr A microblogging and social media network at the same time. If you’re looking for something super simple and focused on visuals, you’ll like Tumblr. Depending on your business, you might want to consider pairing a Tumblr site with a flagship site as opposed to making it the one and only.