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300 awesome free things: A massive list of free resources you should know

By ALI MESE

I’ve prepared a list of 300 resources that are not only awesome, but free to use.Please let me know if I am missing any other useful resource!

 

Business + Marketing

A. FREE WEBSITE + LOGO + HOSTING + INVOICING

 

• HTML5 UP: Responsive HTML5 and CSS3 site templates.
• Bootswatch: Free themes for Bootstrap.
• Templated: A collection of 845 free CSS & HTML5 site templates.
• WordPress.org | WordPress.com: Create your new website for free.
• Strikingly.com Domain: One free website for strikingly.com domains.
• Withoomph: Beautiful logos designed instantly.
• Hipster Logo Generator: It’s Hip, It’s Current, It’s Stylish, It’s Hipster.
• Squarespace Free Logo: You can download free low-res version for free.
• Hive: First free unlimited cloud service in the world.
• Invoice to me: Free Invoice Generator.
• Free Invoice Generator: Alternative free invoice generator.
• Slimvoice: Insanely simple invoices.

B. FREE BUSINESS / PROJECT NAME GENERATORS

 

• The Name App: Find an available name for your brilliant idea.
• Naminum: Discover a perfect company name.
• Short Domain Search: Find short, available single-word domain names.
• Wordoid: Pick a short and catchy name for your business.
• Hipster Business Name: Hipster business name generator.
• Impossibility: The best domain name generator ever.
• Lean Domain Search: Find a domain name for your website in seconds.
• Domainr: Fast, free, domain name search, short URLs.

C. WRITING / BLOGGING

 

• Hemingway: Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear.
• Grammarly: Finds & corrects mistakes of your writing.
• Medium: Everyone’s stories and ideas.
• ZenPen: The minimal writing tool of web.
• Liberio: Simple eBook creation and publishing right from Google Drive.
• Editorial Calendar: See all your posts, drag & drop to manage your blog.
• Story Wars: Writing stories together.
• Headline Analyzer: Emotional marketing value headline analyzer.
• WP Hide Post: Control the visibility of items on your blog.
• Social Locker: Ask visitors “to pay” for your content with a tweet, etc.
• Egg Timer: Set a time and bookmark it for repeated use.

D. FIND (TRENDING) CONTENT (IDEAS)

• Portent: Content idea generator.
• Google Trends: A new way of displaying trending searches.
• Buzzsumo: Analyze what content performs best for any topic or competitor.
• Hubspot Blog Topic Generator: Custom blog ideas.
• Swayy: Discover the most engaging content. Free for 1 dashboard user.
• Others: Google+ What’s Hot | Twitter Trending | Quora | Reddit

E. FREE SEO + WEBSITE ANALYZERS

 

• Open Site Explorer: A comprehensive tool for link analysis.
• Ahrefs: Site explorer & backlink checker.
• Quick Sprout: Complete analysis of your website.
• WordPress SEO by Yoast: Have a fully optimized WordPress site.
• SEO Site Checkup: Check your website’s SEO problems for free.
• Hubspot Marketing Grader: Grade your marketing.
• SimilarWeb: Analyze website statistics for any domain.
• Alexa Ranking: Analytical insights to analyze any site’s rank.
• SERPs Rank Checker: Free keyword rank & SERP checker.
• OpenLinkProfiler: The freshest backlinks, for free.
• Keywordtool.io: Free alternative to Google Keyword Planner.
• Google: Analytics | Keyword Planner | Webmaster Tools | Trends
• Nibbler: Test any website.
• Browseo: How search engines see your website.
• Broken Links: Find broken links, redirects & more.
• Copyscape: Search for copies of your page on the web.
• Woorank: Website review and SEO tool.
• Google Pagespeed Insights: Check the performance of your site.
• Pingdom Website Speed Test: Test & the load time of a site.
• GTMetrics: Analyze your page’s speed performance.
• Moz Local: Check your local listings on Google, Bing, and others.
• XML Sitemaps: Sitemap generator that creates XML & HTML variants.
• W3C validator: Easy-to-use markup validation service.
• Shopify E-commerce Report: Get your free Ecommerce report.

F. FREE IMAGE OPTIMIZERS

• TinyJPG | TinyPNG Compress images.
• Compressor.io: Optimize and compress your images online.
• Kraken: Optimize your images & accelerate your websites.
• ImageOptimizer: Resize, compress and optimize your image files.
• ImageOptim: Makes images take up less disk space & load faster.
• Smush.it: Image optimizer WordPress plugin.

G. FREE IMAGE EDITORS

 

• Canva: Amazingly simple graphic design for bloggers.
• Pixlr: Pixlr Editor is a robust browser photo editor.
• Skitch: Get your point across with fewer words.
• Easel.ly: Empowers anyone to create & share powerful visuals.
• Social Image Resizer Tool: Create optimized images for social media.
• Placeit: Free product mockups & templates.
• Recite: Turn a quote into a visual masterpiece.
• Meme Generator: The first online meme generator.

H. COLLECT & SEND EMAILS FOR FREE

• Contact form 7: Famous WordPress plugin to collect email addresses.
• Mailchimp: Send 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers for free.
• ManyContactsBar: Free contact form sits on top of your website.
• Hello Bar: Get more email subscribers.
• Sumome List Builder: Collect email addresses with light box popover.
• Scroll Triggered Box: Boost your conversion rates?—?Wordpress only.
• Sumome Scroll Box: Capture more email addresses, politely.

I. FREE SOCIAL MEDIA + COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT + SURVEYS

 

• WriteRack: The easiest way to blog/tweetstorm on twitter.
• Spruce: Make Twitter ready images in seconds.
• Click To Tweet: Get more shares on your content.
• MyTweetLinks: Increases Twitter traffic.
• Latergram: Easily plan & schedule your Instagram posts.
• WordPress Pin it Button for Images: Add a “Pin It” button.
• SharedCount: Track URL shares, likes, tweets, and more.
• Justunfollow: Follow / unfollow people on Twitter & Instagram.
• SocialRank: Identify, organize, and manage your followers on Twitter.
• Klout: Social media influence score on browser extension.
• Ritetag: Instant hashtag analysis.
• Social Analytics: Interactions for a URL on most social platforms.
• Riffle: Full profile and info on any Twitter user.
• Buffer Free Plan: Schedule posts to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+.
• Bitly: Create, share, and track shortened links.
• Flament: A free beautiful and customizable sharing bar.
• Addthis: Get more shares, follows and conversions.
• Sumome Share: Auto-optimizes your share buttons for max traffic.
• Digg Digg: Your all in one share buttons plugin.
• Disqus: Build a community of active readers & commenters.
• Typeform: Free beautiful online survey & form builder.
• Tally: Create polls in no time.

J. A/B TESTS & GROWTH HACKING

• Petit Hacks: Acquisition, retention, & revenue hacks used by companies.
• Optimizely: One optimization platform for websites and mobile apps.
• Hello Bar: Tool for A/B testing different CTAs & power words.
• GrowthHackers: Unlocking growth. Together.

Design + Code

A. FREE DESIGN RESOURCES

 

• Freebbble: High-quality design freebies from Dribbble.
• Dribbble: Dribbble search results for “freebie”. An absolute freebie treasure.
• Graphic Burger: Tasty design resources made with care for each pixel.
• Pixel Buddha: Free and premium resources for professional community.
• Premium Pixels: Free Stuff for Creative Folk.
• Fribbble: Free PSD resources by Dribbblers curated by Gilbert Pellegrom.
• Freebiesbug: Latest free PSDs & other resources for designers.
• 365 Psd: Download a free psd every day.
• Dbf: Dribbble & Behance best design freebies.
• Marvel: Free resources from designers we love.
• UI Space: High quality hand-crafted Freebies for awesome people.
• Free Section of Pixeden: Free design resources.
• Free Section of Creative Market: Freebies coming out every monday.
• Teehan+Lax: DiOS 8 GUI PSD (iPhone 6).
• Teehan+Lax: iPad GUI PSD.
• Freepik: iFree graphic resources for everyone.
• Tech&All: PSD, Tech News, and other resources for free.
• Tethr: The most beautiful IOS design KIT ever.

B. COLOR PICKERS

 

• Material Palette: Generate & export your Material Design color palette.
• New Flat UI Color Picker: Best flat colors for UI design.
• Flat UI Colors: Beautiful flat colors.
• Coolors: Super fast color schemes generator for cool designers.
• Skala Color: An extraordinary color picker for designers and developers.
• Couleurs: Simple app for grabbing & tweaking colors you see on screen.
• Material UI Colors: Material ui color palette for Android, Web & iOS.
• Colorful Gradients: Gradients automatically created by a computer.
• Adaptive Backgrounds: Extract dominant colours from images.
• Brand Colors: Colors used by famous brands.
• Paletton: The color scheme designer.
• 0 to 255: A simple tool that helps web designers find variations of any color.
• Colour Lovers: Create & share colors, palettes, and patterns.
• Adobe Color CC: Color combinations from the Kuler community.
• Bootflat: Perfect colors for flat designs.
• Hex Colorrrs: Hex to RGB converter.
• Get UI Colors: Get awesome UI colors.
• Coleure: Smart color picker.
• Colllor: Color palette generator.
• Palette for Chrome: Creates a color palette from any image.

C. INSPIRATION

 

• MaterialUp: Daily material design inspiration.
• FLTDSGN: Daily showcase of the best flat UI design websites and apps.
• Site Inspire: Web design inspiration.
• UI Cloud: The largest user interface design database in the world.
• Moodboard: Build a beautiful moodboard and share the result.
• Crayon: The most comprehensive collection of marketing designs.
• Land-Book: Product landing pages gallery.
• Ocean: A community of designers sharing feedback.
• Dribbble: Show and tell for designers.
• Behance: Showcase & discover creative work.
• Pttrns: Mobile user interface patterns.
• Flat UI Design: Useful board I discovered thanks to Erik.
• Awwwards: The awards for design, creativity and innovation.
• The Starter Kit: Curated resources for developers and designers.
• One Page Love: Resource for one page website inspiration.
• UI Parade: User interface design tools and design inspiration.
• The Best Designs: The best of web design.
• Agile Designers: Best resources for designers & developers.
• Niice: A search engine with taste.

D. FREE STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY

 

• Stock Up: Best free stock photo websites in one place.
• Pexels: Best free photos in one place.
• All The Free Stock: Free stock images, icons, and videos.
• Unsplash: Free (do whatever you want) high-resolution photos.
• Splashbase: Search & discover free, hi res photos & videos.
• Startup Stock Photos: Go. Make something.
• Jay Mantri: Free pics. do anything (CC0). Make magic.
• Moveast: This is a journey of a portuguese guy moving east.
• Travel Coffee Book: Sharing beautiful travel moments.
• Designers Pics: Free photographs for your personal & commercial use.
• Death to the Stock Photo: Free photos sent to you every month.
• Foodie’s Feed: Free food pictures in hi-res.
• Mazwai: Free creative commons HD video clips & footages.
• Jéshoots: New modern free photos.
• Super Famous: Photos by Dutch interaction designer Folkert Gorter.
• Picography: Free hi-resolution photos.
• Pixabay: Free high quality images.
• Magdeleine: A free high-resolution photo every day.
• Snapographic: Free stock photos for personal & commercial use.
• Little Visuals: 7 hi-res images in your inbox every 7 days.
• Splitshire: Delicious free stock photos.
• New Old Stock: Vintage photos from the public archives.
• Picjumbo: Totally free photos.
• Life of Pix: Free high-resolution photos.
• Gratisography: Free high-resolution photos.
• Getrefe: Free photos.
• IM Free: A curated collection of free resources.
• Cupcake: A photographer’s treat by Jonas Nilsson Lee.
• The Pattern Library: Free patterns for your projects.
• Public Domain Archive: New 100% free stock photos.
• ISO Republic: High-quality, free photos for creatives.
• Stokpic: Totally free photos.
• Kaboompics: The best way to get free photos.
• Function: Free photo packs.
• MMT: Free stock photos by Jeffrey Betts.
• Paul Jarvis: Free high-resolution photos.
• Lock & Stock Photos: Free stock photos for you.
• Raumrot: Free high-resolution picture.
• Bucketlistly: A free creative common collection of travel photos.
• Some more websites: Free Digital Photos |Morguefile | Public Domain Pictures | Stockvault | ImageFree | Rgbstock |Dreamstime | Free Images| Free Range Stock | Free Photos Bank.

Some hand-picked some free photo packs:

• ? from Free Goodies for Designers: (here | here | here | here | here | here|here | here |here | and here.),
• ? from Deal Jumbo: (here | here | here | here | here | here | here | here|here| and here.),
• ? from Dribbble: (here | here | here | here | here | here | here |here |and here.),
• ? from Graphic Burger: (here | here | here | here | here | here | and here.)

E. FREE TYPOGRAPHY

 

• TypeGenius: Find the perfect font combo for your next project.
• Font Squirrel: 100% free commercial fonts.
• FontFaceNinja: Browser extension to find the web fonts a site uses.
• Google Fonts: Free, open-source fonts optimized for the web.
• Beautiful Web Type: Best typefaces from the Google web fonts directory.
• DaFont: Archive of freely downloadable fonts.
• 1001 Free Fonts: A huge selection of free fonts.
• FontPark: The web’s largest archive of free fonts.
• Font-to-width: Fit pieces of text snugly within their containers.

F. FREE ICONS

 

• Fontello: Icon fonts generator.
• Flat Icon: A search engine for 16000+ glyph vector icons.
• Material Design Icons: 750 Free open-source glyphs by Google.
• Font Awesome: The iconic font and CSS toolkit.
• Glyphsearch: Search for icons from other icon databases.
• MakeAppIcon: Generate App Icons of all sizes with a click.
• Endless Icons: Free flat icons and creative stuff.
• Ico Moon: 4000+ free vector icons, icon generator.
• The Noun Project: Thousands of glyph icons from different artists.
• Perfect Icons: A social icon creation tool.
• Material Design Icons: 750 Free open-source glyphs by Google.
• Icon Finder: Free icon section of the website.
• Free Round Icons: Doodle Set | Flat Set | Vector Line Set
• Icon Sweets: 60 free vector Photoshop icons.

G. USEFUL STUFF

• UI Names: Generate random names for use in designs and mockups.
• UI Faces: Find and generate sample avatars for user interfaces.
• UI Blurbs: Quick user bios for your mockups.
• Copy Paste Character: Click to copy.
• Window Resizer: See how it looks on various screen resolutions.

Work & Productivity

A. BACKGROUND SOUND TO FOCUS

 

• Noisli: Background noise & color generator.
• Noizio: Ambient sound equalizer for relax or productivity.
• Defonic: Combine the sounds of the world into a melody.
• Designers.mx: Curated playlists by designers, for designers.
• Coffitivity: Stream the sounds of a coffee shop at work.

B. AVOID DISTRACTION

• Self Control: Mac: free application to help you avoid distracting websites.
• Cold Turkey: Windows: temporarily block yourself off of distracting websites.

C. ORGANIZE & COLLABORATE

 

• Trello: Keeps track of everything.
• Evernote: The workspace for your life’s work.
• Dropbox: Free space up to 2GB.
• Yanado: Tasks management inside Gmail.
• Wetransfer: Free transfer up to 2GB.
• Drp.io: Free, fast, private and easy image and file hosting.
• Pocket: View later, put it in Pocket.
• Mailtoself: An iOS extension to mail notes to yourself from any app.
• List.ly: Discover and create great lists.
• Markticle: Mark your reading progress in articles for later.

D. DIGITAL NOMADS & REMOTE WORKING

• Nomadlist: The best cities to live and work remotely.
• Where Nomads at: Find digital nomads & travelers all around the world.
• Nomad Jobs: The best remote jobs at the best startups.
• What’s It Like: Helping travelers figure out WHEN to go.

Discover & Learn

A. DISCOVER TOOLS & STARTUPS

 

• Product Hunt: Curation of the best new products, every day.
• Angellist: Where the world meets startups.
• Beta List: Discover and get early access to tomorrow’s startups.
• StartupLi.st: Find. Follow. Recommend startups.
• Startups List: Collections of the best startups in different places.
• Erli Bird: Where great new products are born.

B. BUILD TOGETHER

• Assembly: Co-create new ideas no matter where they are.
• CoFoundersLab: Find a co-founder in any city, any industry.
• Founder2be: Find a co-founder for your startup.

C. LEARN

 

• Skillshare: Unlock your creativity with free online classes & projects.
• Khan Academy: Free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.
• Coursera: Free online classes from 80+ top universities & organizations.
• Codecademy: Learn to code interactively, for free.
• How to start a startup: As an Audio Podcast or As Online Course
• Startup Notes: Startup School invites amazing founders to tell their story.
• The How: Learn from entrepreneurs.
• Launch This Year: Guide to help you launch your online business.
• Closed Club: Browse shut-down start-ups & learn why they closed down.
• Startup Talks: A curated collection of startup related videos.
• Rocketship.fm: Learn from successful entrepreneurs each week.
• reSRC.io: All free programming learning resources.

D. NEWSLETTERS THAT DON’T SUCK

 

• Email1K: A free 30 day course to double your email list.
• Design for Hackers: 12 weeks of design learning, right in your inbox.
• Startup Digest: Personalized newsletter for all things startup in your area.
• Mattermark Daily: Curated newsletter from investors & founders.
• ChargeWhatYou’reWorth: Free course on charging what you’re worth.
• Product Psychology: Lessons on User Behavior.
• UX Newsletter: Tales of researching, designing, and building.
• UX Design Weekly: Best user experience design links every week.

E. USEFUL

• Foundrs: Co-founder equity calculator.
• Ad Spend Calculator: Should my startup pay to advertise?
• HowMuchToMakeAnApp: Calculate the cost of a mobile application.
• App vs. Website: Should you build an app or website?
• Pitcherific: Pitcherific helps you create, train, and improve your pitch.

 

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