Tools I use to run my freelance business

I wanted to share a quick list of tools I use for my freelance business.

Some are paid, many are free. 

Some I like, some I put up with.

I’m only including tools aren’t specific to my industry (SEO) so keep it helpful.

There are no affiliate links on this page, just my honest tool stack.

I’m generally very open to testing out new tools, and do so pretty often, but the mental load of moving to new tools that do effectively the same thing is tough.

I’ve starred my favourites.

⭐ Google Workspace. (£8/month) Everything I do with clients touches my Google Workspace. Emails, Docs, Spreadsheets and more. I take most of my notes in there too. Write emails for my newsletter here, literally everything.

Slack. (£8.40/month). Many clients use Slack. And most seem to like to use the Connect feature rather than adding my to their workspace this is the reason I pay for it.

Quickbooks. (£356/year). I’m not a big fan of Quickbooks, for my use case its a hugely bloated tool but my accountant uses it so seemed so maybe saves me money when it comes to tax filing.

⭐ Trello. (FREE). I love Trello. I have used it for years, and use it across both work and personal life. I don’t even use it to it’s fullest potential (one day) but I love it’s simplicity vs any other project management tool I’ve used in comparison.

ChatGPT. ($20/month). Great to brainstorm ideas. Get feedback on random things. Testing out some more agent stuff recently to see what it can really do and support different parts of running the business.

⭐ Canva. (£100/year). I’ve been a paid up subscriber of Canva since 2017. It’s my unsung hero that I use far more often than I realise. It makes me look like I’m not completely useless at design too.

⭐ Kit. ($990/year). I run a newsletter dedicated for ecommerce SEO. Niche focus but over 8000 subscribers right now. I love Kit (and even did some SEO for them back in 2020), everything they stand for, how they do business. Obviously if you don’t want to run a newsletter, don’t worry about this.

Senja. ($29/month). Senja is super-cool and where I keep all my testimonials in one place. I have client testimonials, newsletter reviews, course reviews and more, all easily collated in one place to make it easy to use across my site and elsewhere.

Podia. ($89/month). I have a small online course that I sell through the platform Podia for ecommerce stores looking to grow with SEO. It does the job although feels pricey for what I use it for (that’s probably more on me than them though).

I’ve probably missed some (probably ones I use all the time knowing me) but I’ll keep this updated over time.

Last updated: September 2025