Choosing a good tech stack is one of the best things you can do to streamline your operations in a small business. In this blog post, I explore a range of tools and platforms that have helped me in my business.
Note: Some of the links are affiliate links.
Writing, project management and content production
- Note-taking and personal knowledge management: Logseq (Open-source – $5/month contribution)
- Project management: Tana (currently free in early-alpha, but expected to cost $10/month)
- Generative text: OpenAI Plus subscription ($20/month)
Writing edits: Quillbot ($49.95/ year)
Graphics & visualizations
- Workflow diagrams: Draw.io (Open source – $2/month contribution) and Excalidraw
- Animations and graphics: Microsoft PowerPoint 2021 (purchased Office 2021 as a one-off to avoid Office365 subscription)
Image creation: Midjourney ($10/month)Cancelled and replaced by OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 which is included in Plus subscription.
Video creation
- Video recording and editing:
- OBS for recording (Open source – $2/month contribution)
- DaVinci Resolve 18 for editing (free)
- Descript for all-in-one recording, editing and video hosting (Creator plan – $15/month)
- Descript is also a great alternative to screen recording software like Loom and VEED.
- Video compression: Handbrake (free)
Course and template sales
- Course hosting and syllabus management: Systeme.io ($27/month)
- Nowadays there are all-in-one course management platforms such as Thinkific, Teachable and Systeme.io that allow you to create a landing page for your course, integrate the payment processing and manage your syllabus all-in-one. I use Systeme.io because it offers course hosting at my domain (www.logseqmastery.com/school), simple sales funnel tools and campaign management. If you want to sell some digital product, the free plan doesn’t take any percentage of transactions, unlike some of the competitors mentioned.
- Template sales: Lemonsqueezy (5% + $0.50 per sale)
- Purchasing power parity automation: ParityDeals ($13.30/month with a parity discount applied)
- Testimonial automation: FameWall ($11.99/month)
Domains, content management and websites
- Domain name registrar: Cloudflare. They sell domain names at cost and provide great security, as well as some basic analytics
- Websites:
Ghost for OneStutteringMind ($31/month) and Zoho Sites for this site (included in Zoho One)(updated below)- I moved all of my websites to Hugo static sites using Hugo, which generates HTML from Markdown. This was all hosted using GitHub and Netlify for free. Some other personal projects still use this approach, but I’ve consolidated my main websites.
- I’ve since migrated this website to WordPress and I host it with Hostinger ($3.99/month)
- Video hosting: Bunny.net (usage based) along with Systeme.io for some videos
- Personal blog: Substack ($50 once-off to change domain)
- Course blogs: Systeme.io – One of the easiest website builders I’ve come across. Their free version is one of the most generous offers you’ll find online, especially if you want to start a simple blog for free.
Workflow automation
- Online relational database: Airtable (free up to 1000 records) and Google Sheets (free)
- I use Airtable as a secondary database that stores all my transactions for ease of reference and to faciliate integrations. I also mirror most of the data in Google Sheets, as almost every application on the internet integrates with Sheets. However, Sheets doesn’t compare to Airtable when it comes to managing the information in your database.
- Automation: Zoho Flow (included in Zoho One) and Zapier (Starter plan, $19.99/month)
- Zapier does a lot of the heavy lifting for my integrations, and they have an impressive number of integrated apps. It is relatively expensive compared to Make.com, but there are many services that it integrates with that Make.com doesn’t, e.g. Systeme.io. The integration process and user interface also feel more refined.
Finances
- Book-keeping: ZohoBooks (included in Zoho One)
- Some of the popular alternatives in this area are Xero and Intuit Quickbooks, but my integration requirements and need for multi-currency transactions meant that these quickly became too expensive. Furthermore, when I trialled them, some transactions did not come through as desired. Zoho Books has not let me down. It felt clunky at first, but now that I’ve set everything up and gotten used to it, it runs seamlessly. The invoicing process is simple, and it also integrates with my banking and payment providers.
- Payments: Stripe and PayPal (both % based)
- PayPal takes quite a chunk in fees, around 4% of the transaction and an additional 2.5% on currency conversion, so I prefer to use Stripe. However, I had a number of requests to add a PayPal option, so I’d rather take the hit on pricing, than not make the sale at all.
- Direct payments from consulting clients: Zoho Pay (included in Zoho One)
- Integrates with Stripe if I need to get direct payments from clients.
- Banking: Wise (transaction based)
- Most of my earnings are paid into my Wise account, which I then convert and send over to my South African bank account. The transfer fees add up over time, but I’ve found the service to be reliable and I have yet to come across a competitor with a better offering.
Customer management, emails and feedback
- CRM: Zoho CRM (included in Zoho One)
- Feedback surveys: Zoho Survey (included in Zoho One)
- Forms: Zoho Forms (included in Zoho One)
- e-mail hosting: Zoho Mail (included in Zoho One)
- Campaigns / emailers: Zoho Campaigns (included in Zoho One)
Social media
- Thread-writing:
Typefully ($96/year)Cancelled because I can use Zoho Social instead when my annual subscription runs out (included in Zoho One) - Platforms: X, formerly Twitter ($8/month) and YouTube Premium (~$5/month)