447 Growth Tools You Can’t Live Without

Written by Henry "HMFIC" in Growth Hack Tool,Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Last Updated December 17, 2022

The niche that I enjoy being top of, with regards to SEO and search, are the keywords of Hacker Tools, which I hope to stay top of throughout the year.

I’m also trying to get some traction with Growth Tools and SEO Tools because clearly, that’s a similar niche in my view.

It’s worth me also noting that I have another resource that relates to lead generation hacks that you might also find interesting.

So, really, this site is predominantly a resource to help Cybersecurity Professionals and Growth Marketers (“Growth Hackers”) with tools they can use to enhance their security or grow their business.

In this resource, I list out a bunch of tools that I use as well as scraped lists from the likes of BlackHatWorld forum (which is a forum I highly respect and encourage you to check out).

My Recommended Tools For 2021

Free Website Tools & PlatformsFree Email Management ToolsFree Useful Things (Bit Random)
Free Branding & Logo Creation ToolsFree Social Media & Community ManagementFree Developer and Coding Tools & Platforms
Free Invoice & Legal Template ToolsFree Customer Service & SurveysBackground Tunes To Stay Focused With
Free Flow-Chart & MindmapsA/B Testing Tools For Growth HackingOrganize & Collaboration Tools
Free Business Name GeneratorsFree Design Resources For Growth MarketersDigital Nomad Tools For Remote Workers
Free Blogging and Content Growth ToolsColor Picking ToolsPlatforms To Find Tools
Free Trend Analysis ToolsInspiration ToolsCommunity Sharing Networks
Free SEO + Analytic ToolsFree Stock PhotographyGrowth Marketing Courses
Free Image OptimizersFree TypographyNewsletter Tools
Free Image EditorsFree Icon Generator ToolsUseful, Random & Founder-Related
I update this resource often so stay tuned friend 🙂

So, here’s the list!

Free Recommended Video Editing Tool

  • Stripo: Stripo is an all-in-one email design platform – and one that I think is particularly useful.
  • Veed.io: is a fantastic video editing tool. They have free and paid accounts. Make incredible videos with a single click, add subtitles, transcribe audio, and more!
  • RecordCast: is an equally excellent tool. With this tool, you can record your screen and also edit your video in one as well as trim recordings, add text effects, add overlays, add dynamic components, music, and modify backdrop colors with a built-in video editor.

Free Professional Networking over Video

  • Meetaway: This is a virtual networking platform is designed to ensure attendees build real relationships by meeting the people they want for one-on-one conversations at events. The Meetaway solution offers either free or paid solutions.

Free Website Tools & Platforms

We’ve come a long, long way.

When I first started out in 2002 (pre WordPress) is was expensive to get a site going. The cost of a domain, hosting, and web design were all expensive, but these days you can easily pick up an amazing WordPress Theme for free or next-to-nothing.

Here are some resources which I can’t live without.

    • HTML5 UP: Responsive HTML5 and CSS3 site templates. This is good when you need a stand-alone (non-CMS) resource.
    • Bootswatch: Free themes for Bootstrap.
    • Website Ripper: Free tool to rip (download) an entire website.
    • UIDeck: Another excellent batch of templates that can be used for your next project.
    • Templated: A collection of 800+ Free CSS & HTML5 site templates.
    • WordPress.org | WordPress.com: Create your new website for free.
    • Strikingly: Free, unlimited mobile optimized websites.
    • Layers: A WordPress site builder so simple. It’s free, forever.
    • Bootstrap Zero: The largest open-source, free Bootstrap template collection.
    • Landing Harbor: Promote your mobile app with a free landing page.
    • OnePage Love: Mix of excellent themes, all one-pagers.

    Free Branding & Logo Creation Tools

    Creating a logo for your business is obviously a vital element when getting it going but it needn’t’ become a hassle. These tools can create you a fast awesome logo for your next project!

    As ever, when it comes to logos, simplicity is always key.

    • Logaster: Professional online logo maker & generator.
    • LogoMakr: Very nice simple way to make logos
    • 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.
    • Signature Maker: A free web-based tool that creates your handwritten digital signature.
    • Logo ShapeFactory: Excellent tool that works really well and creating simple vector style logos. If you just need a logo knocked up in a few minutes then this one might be the best one.

    If you’ve been in the Internet Marketing game for any period of time you’ve likely come across the need to generate an invoice, an LOI (Letter of Intent), a receipt, expenses form or an SEO Proposal document – and these tools listed below will help.

    There are several approaches you can take when trying to find a god invoice or legal documentation tool. You can either:

    1. Use a tool listed below (my favorite is Proposify);
    2. Or, use a Google Dork. To use a Dork run this search parameter in Google, copy and paste this:

    SEO Proposal filetype:pdf

    What this does is pull any PDF’s that have been created with the terms “SEO Proposal” in it. The chances are that someone has inadvertently placed their SEO Proposal online to a client, and naturally, as a curious Growth Hacker, you can take a look and crib it and improve it! I’ve done this multiple times, even for “founder decks” – try it, you’ll be amazed at just how much you can find online!

    Some of these tools will undoubtedly help too:

    • Invoice to me: Free Invoice Generator.
    • Free Invoice Generator: Alternative free invoice generator.
    • Slimvoice: Insanely simple invoices.
    • Wave: Free & easy accounting, invoicing and more.
    • Invoice.to: Free invoice generator
    • Kiss: Free legal docs for startup founders and investors.
    • Docracy: An open collection of free legal documents.
    • Shake: Create, sign and send legally binding agreements in seconds. Free for personal use.

    Free Flow-Chart & Mindmaps

    Personally I always start everything with Paper and Pencil Mark 1.

    Mind maps are definitely a solid idea especially when you’re working with freelancers and need to explain your business or a process that you’ve asked them to do for you.

    Free Business Name Generators

    Chosing a domain in 2023? Good luck with that.

    The chances of finding your .com domain is doubtful if it’s a basic English word or a combination (also known as a portmanteau). However, these tools really do help you get the creative juices flowing and you’ll be up and running in no time.

    I’d advise on three things:

    1. Make sure the business name you choose is not in use;
    2. Make sure it has relevance to your niche. An example is this, I own and manage an InfoSec Conference Directory, and the domain is, hardly surprisingly, infosec-conferences.com. It’s clear what the domain is and what you’ll find there!
    3. Don’t be tempted with vanity domains. I registered and still own Hacker.Clothing and Hacker.Equipment and at the time I thought that they were awesome ideas but the truth is that the general public doesn’t seem to trust these domains – just stick with the .com variation which is tried and tested.
    • 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.

    Free Blogging and Content Growth Tools

    It’s all about content in 2023. These tools will help you churn out that all important SEO’d content and keyword rich posts and pages.

    • Hemingway: Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear.
    • Grammarly: Finds & corrects mistakes in your writing.
    • Medium: Everyone’s stories and ideas.
    • ZenPen: The minimal writing tool of web.
    • Editorial Calendar: See all your posts, drag & drop to manage your blog.
    • Story Wars: Writing stories together.
    • 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.
    • BlankPage: Writing made simple.
    • Wattpad: The world’s largest community for readers and writers.
    • Known: A single site for the content you create.
    • Wattpad: The world’s largest community for readers and writers.
    • Dbook: Structured and collaborative writing for large documents.
    • CoSchedule: Blog post headline analyzer.
    • A5gg: When you return your text will still be here.
    • Free Summarizer: Summarize any text online in just a few seconds.

    Free Trend Analysis Tools

    Identifying trends is key for any niche. Being able to predict search would stand you in a highly competitive position.

    • 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.
    • Twitter Trending: Obvious what this one does
    • Quora: Definitely a solid idea, ask the question yourself first then answer it.
    • Reddit: users are passionate but have zero tolerance for clickbait or placing links to offers.
    • Ruzzit: ind the most shared content on the web.

    Free SEO, Keyword + Analytic Tools

    There are a bunch of gems here.

    Honestly though, if I were you I would not buy any tools for SEO. The best approach is to use Google Auto-prompt since all the answers are there.

    Free Image Optimizers

    Fast-loading images are a must for fast-loading websites. These tools will help you on your quest to have a faster-loading website.

    Free Image Editors & Social Media Creative Design

    Some of these tools will really help you get your content to stand out.

    • Canva: Amazingly simple graphic design that I use for everything, social media, creating ads, etc. Excellent tool and totally worthwhile getting an account. I’ve used the paid account but free is good enough.
    • 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.
    • Pablo: Design engaging images for your social media posts in under 30 seconds.

    Free Email Management Tools

    Email lives on! There’s no doubt that email packs an unbelievably high ROI compared to other media. Email has stood the test of time and well-written email content will offer you the highest ROI when it comes to your digital marketing efforts.

    Free Social Media & Community Management

    There’s a bunch of great resources here to ramp up your social media. I haven’t used all of them but I’ve heard of them and my scraping brought these to light.

    Free Customer Service & Surveys

    Understanding what your niche wants is clearly key to being able to monetize your site effectively.

    • Typeform: Free beautiful online survey & form builder.
    • Tally: Create polls in no time.
    • Free Survey Creator: Create a survey. Get user feedback for free.
    • Batch: The first-ever 100% free engagement platform for mobile apps.
    • Helprace: Customer service tool. Free for up to 3 agents for small support teams.

    A/B Testing Tools For Growth Hacking

    If you haven’t done an A/B test then you’ll never know what works and what doesn’t. I’d absolutely recommend that you implement these tools.

    • 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.

    Free Design Resources For Growth Marketers

    “People buy images not words,” said some clever chap, and I couldn’t agree anymore. Images are vital for the success of your content and growth marketing.

    Color Picking Tools

    These tools do exactly what the title says above!

    Inspiration Tools

    We all need inspiration and you’ll get it from these tools.

    • 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 mood board 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 Pinterest board.
    • 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.

    Free Stock Photography

    There’s more than just unsplash!

    Whatever you do never, ever, ever, use anything created or owned by Getty Images. If you haven’t paid for an image and you have it on your site they’ll come after you with everything they’ve got. They’re a nasty bunch and they have software that picks up images that you haven’t paid for. Anyways – pardon my rant – just avoid them and use free images instead.

    Free Typography

    Stop paying for fonts and use these.

    Also – remember, if you want your content to show in China then your Google fonts wont load because, well, China doesn’t like Google.

    Free Icon Generator Tools

    As well as a memorable logo, name, images and excellent well-written SEO’d content you’ll also need icons! Here’s a bunch to get you going.

    Free Useful Things (Bit Random)

    These are random but helpful nonetheless.

    • UI Faces: Find and generate sample avatars for user interfaces.
    • Copy Paste Character: Click to copy.
    • Window Resizer: See how it looks on various screen resolutions.
    • Sonics: Free packs of UI sounds and sound effects delivered to your inbox every month.

    Free Developer and Coding Tools & Platforms

    For those that code, then you’ll find some useful gems in here.

    • Hive: First free unlimited cloud service in the world.
    • GitHub: Build software better, together.
    • BitBucket: Git and Mercurial code management for teams
    • Chisel: Chisel offers an unlimited number of fossil repositories.
    • Visual Studio: Comprehensive collection of developer tools and services.
    • Landscape: Landscape is an early warning system for your Python codebase.
    • Swiftype: Add great search to any website. Free with limitations.
    • Keen.io: Gather all the data you want & start getting the answers you need.
    • Coveralls: Test coverage history and statistics.
    • LingoHub: Free for Small Teams, Open Source usage, and Educational projects.
    • Codacy: Continuous Static Analysis designed to complement your unit tests.
    • Searchcode: Search over 20 billion lines of code.
    • TinyCert: Free SSL certificates for your startup.
    • StartSSL: Free SSL certificates.
    • Opbeat: The first ops platform for developers. Free for small teams.
    • Pingdom: Website monitoring. Free for one website.
    • Rollbar: Full-stack error monitoring for all apps in any language.
    • Loggly: Simplify Log Management Forever. Free for one user.
    • Devport: Get your developer portfolio.
    • Getting Real: The smarter way to build web apps. A free book by 37signals.
    • Peek: Get a free, 5-minute video of someone using your site.
    • Creator: Build better Ionic apps, faster.
    • DevFreeCasts: A huge collection of free screencasts for developers.
    • CodyHouse: A free library of HTML, CSS, JS nuggets.

    Background Tunes To Stay Focused With

    Soma FM is my station of choice, but you might prefer some of these resources to keep you totally focused on the tasks as hand

    • Noisli: Background noise & color generator.
    • Noizio: Ambient sound equalizer for relaxing 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.
    • Octave: A free library of UI sounds, handmade for iOS.
    • Free Sound: Huge database of free audio snippets, samples, + recordings.
    • Sonics: Free packs of UI sounds and sound effects delivered to your inbox every month.

    Organize & Collaboration Tools

    We all work best together but staying on top of bizzle can be a tricky task so these tools will hopefully help

    • Xtensio: Perfect platform to create powerful business content together.
    • 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.
    • Raindrop: Mac app for bookmarking and reading it later.
    • Flowdock: Free for teams of five and non-profits.
    • Typetalk: Share and discuss ideas with your team through instant messaging.
    • Slack: Free for unlimited users with few limited features.
    • Hipchat: Free for unlimited users with few limited features.
    • Google Hangouts: Bring conversations to life with photos, emoji and group video calls.
    • Voveet: Simple, free 3D conference calls. Experience the difference.
    • FreeBusy: Eliminate coordination headaches when you need to schedule a meeting.
    • RealTimeBoard: Your regular whiteboard, re-thought for the best online experience.
    • Witkit: Witkit is the secure platform for teams. 50GB of free encrypted data storage.
    • Any.do: Get things done with your team.
    • Asana: Teamwork without email.
    • GoToMeeting: Online meetings without the hassle.

    Digital Nomad Tools For Remote Workers

    Bunch of nice tools here for the Digital Nomads amongst you.

    • Founded X Startup Stats: Find the best country to build your startup in
    • Teleport: Startup Cities: Discover and budget your next move to 100+ startup cities.
    • Nomad Houses: Houses around the world for nomads to live and work together.
    • Workfrom: Coffee, Wi-Fi, and good vibes.
    • Lastroom: Simplifying your team travel management
    • Nomadlist: The best cities to live and work remotely.
    • What’s It Like: Helping travelers figure out WHEN to go.
    • Nomad Jobs: The best remote jobs at the best startups.

    Platforms To Find Tools

    Looking for work? Then hit thees links up.

    Community Sharing Networks

    Often we need feedback. The folks at these resources will do exactly that.

    • 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.

    Growth Marketing Courses

    Keep learning my friend…

    Newsletter Tools

    There are some interesting resources here for those looking to improve their email ROI and open rates.

    Random stuff that doesn’t hurt.

    Henry "HMFIC"

    I'm Henry, the guy behind this site. I've been Growth Hacking since 2002, yep, that long...

    7 thoughts on “447 Growth Tools You Can’t Live Without”

    1. Awesome collection Henry! Thank you very much for linking Inovatik in the website templates section. This kind of feedback helps so much with motivation. All the best to you!

      Reply

      1. You are very welcome! The templates you have are excellent and I am using them on other projects.

        Reply

    2. Thank you very much for sharing. I think this automatic subtitle generator https://autossub.com/ is also worth adding to the tool you share. It is very simple and convenient to use, and the accuracy of the transcribed subtitles is very high.

      Reply

      1. I’ll add it to the list when I get a chance, in the meantime I’ll publish your comment – thanks for posting BTW, Henry

        Reply

    3. That’s such a huge list, Henry! Thank you for collecting and sharing. If you’re still interested in updating the page, this website (https://branition.com), I think can also be noteworthy under the free branding & logo creation tools section. It’s literally a platform for brand designers’ portfolios of unused logos.

      Reply

    4. Hi, Henry! Thank you for sharing this handful list with us. With the right tools, our progress increases significantly. Therefore I take my time to discover different tools and look for the most convenient ones for my professional growth. And this catalog helps out a lot. Surprisingly, I didn’t see Bordio https://bordio.com/on this list. It’s also one of the excellent platforms to keep your plans, events, and projects well organized. I hope you will find it helpful too.

      Reply

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