Resources
Resources that make business run smooth! From the best WordPress hosting companies to free stock photo sites, here’s a list of our go-to resources at Brindle.
WEBSITE HOSTING SERVICES
Flywheel* – Our preferred hosting provider. Rock solid WordPress hosting, crazy fast site load times, beautiful dashboard, nightly backups (i.e. peace of mind). What’s not to love?
WPengine* – One of the best WordPress hosting (get 2 months free) – Flywheel is now part of the WPengine team.
SiteGround – a great and affordable option for website hosting.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Asana – What we personally use here at Brindle and love it!
ClickUp – Another hugely popular tool that provides a flexible and visual way to manage your projects and organize anything.
Teamwork – an integrated software suite build for marketing teams.
Slack – team communication for the 21st century.
SOCIAL MEDIA REPORTING & SCHEDULING
SproutSocial* – World class product and platform. Simple, super easy to use social media scheduling, reporting and so much more. Generate beautiful reports with the click of a button for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Buffer – Another solid choice. Plan and publish your content for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, all from one simple dashboard.
Hootsuite – these folks have been around since I’ve started using social media – free and paid versions, plus they offer reporting.
STOCK PHOTO SITES
(free)
(paid)
DESIGN TOOLS / PHOTO EDITING
Adobe Creative Cloud – ’nuff said.
Figma – our go-to for web design.
Canva – one of my first choices for simple graphic creation – they have an app for your phone, too!
Sketch – what all the ‘cool kids’ are using now a days for web design mockups.
A Color Story (app) – an iPhone app with tons of filters and editing options from the ladies at A Beautiful Mess.
AfterLight –This is an iPhone app that is great for editing images on the go.
CUSTOM REPORTING
AgencyAnalytics – strong reporting software, highly recommend. Slightly more expensive than Cyfe, however it does offer additional functionality than others including – client accounts/dashboards, custom domain and branding, tons of integrations, view opens, etc.
DataBox – another top reporting dashboard offering all the bells and whistles. Slightly steeper learning curve, IMO, still worth a peek.
ReportGarden – Highly customizable reporting for Facebook, Twitter, Google Analytics and AdWords.
WEBSITE STATISTICS & SEO TOOLS
Google Analtyics– A must-have! Track all visits to your site, view your visitor’s demographics, learn where your traffic is coming from, and more. Here are instructions on how to install on your site.
Google Webmasters– A great tool to learn how to track your sites search performance and so much more! Need help? No problem!
SEO Press (WordPress Plugin)– we recently transitioned to using SEO Press for performance reasons and are extremely pleased. Great solution if you’re looking for something more robust to manage your WordPress site than the standard SEO accommodations.
EMAIL MARKETING TOOLS
MailerLite – awesome choice for email marketing software choice that is powerful, affordable, and perfect for small businesses. One of our first recommendations.
Active Campaign – email marketing software made for automation, funnels, and sequences!
SendGrid – Powerful email marketing software and API
MailChimp – This software is wonderful if you’re just starting to build your email list.
ConvertKit – Another popular email newsletter platform that specializes in, well…conversions!
CLOUD ACCOUNTING / BOOKKEEPING
QuickBooks – another great solution trusted by quite a few (million) people.
FreshBooks – FreshBooks offers a great cloud accounting platform. Super easy to use with powerful features, great for smaller businesses doing less than $600K in revenue/year (in our honest opinion).
*Items with an asterisk next to them means the item is using our affiliate link. This simply means that we get a commission or some benefit if you choose to purchase the item through the link. With that being said, we only recommend services we have personally used and stand behind and know these are trusted sources.
OTHER
Quick Forget – securely send passwords and login info using this (free) tool!