Image Credit: Flickr – @maheshone
Here is a list of all my favorite Internet Tools, Software and and Applications. I’ve featured only my personal favorites but you can check out my Web Directory for a more comprehensive list. I’ll make sure that the following list is always up-to-date.
Web Browser
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Google Chrome – It’s my preferred browser because of its intuitive design, password manager, cross-platform syncing, auto-fill forms, apps and extensions.
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Google Chrome Extensions – List of my favorite Google Chrome extensions.
Chrome: Productivity Extensions — SEO Extensions — New Tab Extensions
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Google Mail – Gmail is my preferred email service due to its powerful features like labels, filters, search, e-mail forwarding, plus addressing, multiple accounts, etc.
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Outlook.com – I love Outlook.com for its unique design and features like email alias, Skype integration, and social media connections.
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Mailbox – Mailbox app is the best thing that happened to email after Gmail and it’s my preferred email app for mobile.
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Outlook – It’s my preferred desktop email client – thanks to its iCloud integration.
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Google Apps – To manage custom email addresses.
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Windows Live Admin Center – To manage custom email addresses (but no longer supported by Microsoft – so no new sign ups).
Instant Messaging
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Skype – For free VoIP calls and cheap phone calls.
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Google Hangouts – Since it’s integrated with Gmail.
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WhatsApp – As an alternative to text messaging – thanks to its read receipts feature.
Cloud Storage
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Microsoft OneDrive – I love OneDrive because of its rich interface, awesome apps, and tight integration with Windows 8.
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Picasa Web – To archive photos as it’s got a lot of storage.
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Dropbox – I love Dropbox for its simplicity, cross-platform support, and its one-click sharing feature.
Read: OneDrive vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. Cloud Drive vs. Box vs. Mega
Productivity
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iCloud – I love iCloud for its Contacts, Calendar, Notes, and Reminder.
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OneNote – It’s my preferred planner app – to stay organized.
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Evernote – It’s my favorite note-taker app (read 30+ Evernote Tips).
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Pocket – It’s my preferred read later app.
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Sunrise Calendar – It’s the awesomest calendar app (for web, desktop & mobile) that integrates with Google Calendar, iCloud, Exchange, Evernote, Facebook, etc.
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Todoist – It’s my favorite to-do app (read Todoist Review) and is the best Google Tasks alternative.
Suites
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Office 365 (Premium) – My favorite office suite.
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Office Online – Office.com is the online version of Microsoft Office suite (yup, it’s free!).
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Google Drive – I like Google Drive for its sharing and collaborative feature.
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iWork – Sometimes – on mobile – it’s more useful than Microsoft Office.
Read: My Favorite iOS (iPhone & iPad) Apps
Web 2.0
My favorite social networks – to connect, to collaborate, to showcase, to discover, to question, to answer, and to share.
Read: Over 60 Web 2.0 Sites To Get Instant Backlinks To Your Blog
Social Media Tools
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IFTTT – To connect different apps.
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Buffer – It’s the easiest way to share to all our social networks in one-click.
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TweetDeck – My favorite Twitter client.
News
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LinkedIn Today – For curated social news.
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Zite – My favorite social magazine app (read Zite Review).
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Pulse – It shows the RSS feeds in a beautiful way.
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Digg Reader – I like Digg Reader because of its Google Reader like interface and the “Popular” feature.
Read: 25 Content Discovery Tools To Find Great Social Media Content
Photo Sharing
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Flickr – My favorite photo sharing service.
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Imgur – It’s the best place to find Internet memes.
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Photosynth – It’s an awesome app by Microsoft that creates 3D images from 2D photos.
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Photobucket – I use Photobucket primarily when I want to embed images in a forum.
Photo Editing
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Adobe Photoshop – My preferred photo editing application.
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Google+ Photo Editor – I like Google+ Photo Editor for its auto enhancement feature.
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Awesome Screenshot – It’s the best screen capture extension for Google Chrome.
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Canva – It’s the best way to create professional designs for web and print.
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PicMonkey – It’s a free online photo editing that’s perfect for quick touch ups.
Word Processing
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Word – My preferred word processor application.
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Google Docs – I like Docs because of its real-time collaboration and editing feature.
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Pages for iCloud – It’s my favorite word processor app on mobile as it shows word count.
Music / Movies
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iTunes – I love iTunes because it acts as a hub between a PC and the iOS ecosystem.
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VLC Player – I like VLC player because it plays almost everything. Otherwise, my favorite media player is Windows Media Player.
Money
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Microsoft Money Plus – My favorite personal finance management software.
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Yahoo Finance Portfolios – My preferred portfolio manager.
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PayPal – My preferred payment method.
Utilities / Other Tools
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InstaCalc – It’s a real-time shareable online calculator.
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Excel – My favorite spreadsheet application.
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Pastebin – To anonymously share text online.
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Hide My Ass – A free proxy server to surf the web anonymously.
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Down For Everyone Or Just Me – To check if the website is down or not.
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Screenr – A web-based screen recorder.
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Screenfly – To test websites at different screen resolutions.
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FileZilla – It’s my favorite FTP client.
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uTorrent – My favorite BitTorrent client.
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TeamViewer – It’s my preferred remote control/remote access software.
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eFax – For free internet fax.
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Bitly – It’s my favorite URL shortening service.
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LastPass – A free password manager.
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Google Forms – An easy to use tool to create web forms, surveys, quiz, plan events, etc.
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Google Bookmarks – A free online bookmarking service by Google.
Read: Over 101 Google Products You Probably Don’t Know
Domain Names
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GoDaddy – For domain registrations.
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DomainTools – For domain name whois lookup.
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Pool – To backorder expiring domain names for free.
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DropCatch – An alternative to Pool.com.
Web Hosting
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Eleven 2 – Affordable web hosting for beginners ($59.40/year).
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HostGator – Perfect for hosting unlimited websites ($119.40/year).
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InMotion Hosting – Reliable web hosting for small businesses ($131.88/year).
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Digital Ocean – Affordable VPS web hosting ($5/month).
CDN
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Google PageSpeed Service – Google PageSpeed Service fetches content from our servers and delivers pages to the users from the Google cloud after optimization.
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Photon by WordPress – It’s a free image acceleration service by WordPress.com.
Read: Web Hosting Comparison – Top 25 Web Hosting Companies
Blogging
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WordPress – My preferred Content Management System (CMS) as it can be customized the way we want.
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Disqus – To manage the comments.
WordPress Plugins
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Contact Form 7 – It’s my favorite contact form plugin.
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Digg Digg – It adds floating social sharing buttons on the sidebar.
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Disqus Comment System – It’s the best comment system for WordPress.
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HelloBar (Freemium) – It adds a call-to-action button at the top of the blog.
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Jetpack – It brings the cloud power of WordPress to our self-hosted WordPress blog.
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Simple Social Icons – To show beautiful social icons on the sidebar.
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W3 Total Cache – It’s the best performance optimization plugin for WordPress.
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WordPress SEO – It’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress.
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WPtouch – It makes the blog mobile friendly in few seconds.
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WordPress Related Posts – It’s my preferred “Related Posts” plugin for WordPress as it uses “tags” to suggest related posts.
Read: Over 30 Awesome WordPress Plugins To Supercharge Your Blog
WordPress Themes
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StudioPress (Premium) – Genesis by StudioPress is my preferred WordPress framework and I also love their professionally designed WordPress skins.
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Themeforest (Premium) – It’s perhaps the largest marketplace for premium website templates (HTML5, WordPress, PSD, Tumblr, etc.).
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WordPress (Free) – It’s the largest directory of free WordPress themes.
Read: Top 15 “Cherry Picked” Premium WordPress Theme Marketplaces
Webmaster
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Bing Webmaster Tools – To view our website’s visibility on Bing search.
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Google Webmaster Tools – To view our website’s visibility on Google search.
Publishing
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Microsoft Expression Web 4 (Free) – My favorite HTML editor.
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Windows Live Writer (Free) – My favorite desktop blog-publishing application.
Website Performance
My favorite tools to analyze the performance of a webpage. They also suggests ways to make the pages faster.
Read: 7 Tools To Check The Performance Of A Web Page
Internet Marketing
My favorite Internet marketing tools – for web analytics, competitor analysis, keyword research.
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Google Analytics (Free)
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Open Site Explorer (Freemium)
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Ahrefs (Freemium)
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Majestic SEO (Freemium)
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SEMrush (Freemium)
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Alexa (Freemium)
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AdWords Keyword Planner (Free)
Read: Top 30 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
Advertising
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Bing Ads – To buy pay-per-click ads on the Yahoo Bing Network.
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BuySellAds – To buy banner ads on other websites and blogs.
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DoubleClick – To manage website ad inventory.
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Facebook Ads – To buy Facebook ad inventory.
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Google AdWords – To buy pay-per-click ads on Google and their display network.
Read: Over 30 Advertising Programs To Make Money Blogging
E-mail Marketing
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FeedBurner – To manage blog RSS feeds.
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MailChimp (Freemium) – To manage newsletters.
Read: 101 Websites For Anyone And Everyone To Make Money Online
Outsourcing
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Elance – To outsource almost anything.
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Fiverr – To outsource micro-jobs.
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99designs – To outsource design stuff.
Read: Web Directory – Blogging, Digital Marketing, and Webmaster Resources
Quotable Quotes
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My Favorite Motivational Quotes – It’s all about ideas, innovation, and startups.
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My Favorite Inspirational Quotes – It’s all about creativity, life, and success.
Read: My Favorite Tech & Marketing Blogs
*Still thinking about what’s left here*
First Published: May 12, 2014; Last Updated: Wednesday, June 18, 2014
