I get this question daily, “Sue, how do you…” (fill in the blank with the latest problem that has been causing you to tear your hair out)
So I decided to create a list of the best free (or low cost) blogging tools that answer that very question.
And, yes, I use 67 of these tools.
My newest addiction?
A membership site that you can put in a course for FREE – yes, membership software that’s forever free for unlimited courses (up to 50 students). So take it for a spin without spending a dime.
Check out my MemberVault site here and sign up for the absolutely free course, Blog In A Box.
And I have a deal for you if you already offer courses and have more than 50 students. Erin at MemberVault has a special code just for my readers. Use the code Insider100 for a free month of either the pro/base monthly or $100 off the first year of pro/base annual)
So, let’s get started!
Free Images For Your Blog and Social Media Posts
- PicJumbo: Totally free photos
- StockUp: Search 16 free photo sites at once
- PikWizard: over 100,000 completely free images
- Unsplash: Free high-resolution images
- Jay Mantri: Free pics
- Good Free Photos: Free images
- Gratisography: Free high-resolution photos
- New Old Stock: Vintage photos (free)
- Pexels: Free high-quality photos
- StockSnap: Free images with a lot of business images
- MorgueFile: High-resolution stock photos (free)
- Death to Stock Photos: Free monthly photos for all your creative needs
- Pixabay: Free high-quality images you can use anywhere
- Free Digital Photos: Free images
- Little Visuals: 7 hi-res images each week emailed to you (free)
- Picography: Free high-resolution pictures
- Stokpic: Totally free photos
- A Prettier Web and Ivory Mix: Great feminine images
- Iconfinder: Free icons
- Canva: Currently my most-used image tool. Great tutorials. (free)
- RawPixel: Inspired Design and Beautiful images (free)
- BeFunky: Photo Editor
- Minimography: royalty-free images
- Stock Snap: beautiful, free images
- CreateHerStock: Images curated for female bloggers, creatives, and online influencers of color
- Snappa: Great marketing graphics in a snap
- Burst by Shopify
- PicWizard for free photos
Free Plug-Ins for your WordPress Site:
- Smush.it: Free WordPress image optimizer plug-in
- Tinyjpg/Tinypng: Compresses your images (free)
- Social Image Resizer Tool: Create optimized images (free)
- Recite: Turn any quote into an image (free)
- UserThink: 99 images for landing pages (free)
- Thrive Leads: pay just a one-time charge for optin box software
Name Your Blog Or Product
- Blog Name Generator: Name generator suggested by niche topic (free)
- Wordoid: Pick a short, catchy unique name (free)
- Power Thesaurus: free thesaurus to look up synonym’s
Create a Blog Headline
- Blog Topic Generator: Check out this topic generator at HubSpot. (free)
- Blog Post Headline Analyzer: CoSchedule’s blog headline analyzer (free)
- Portent: Content idea generator (free)
- BuzzSumo: Analyze what content performs best in your niche (free)
- Impact Blog Title Generator: my favorite one (free)
Find Keywords for SEO
- Keyword Tool: Find out what your audience is looking for on the 4 main search engines. (free).
- ToolsISeek: Page Rank Checker
- Twinword: for SEO long tail keywords
- SEMRush Site Audit Tool: the most popular SEM tool
Be a Better Writer
- Hemingway: Have bold and clear wording for your blog posts (free)
- Grammarly: Find and correct mistakes in your posts (small charge)
- Editorial Calendar: Drag and drop scheduling tool for blog posts (free)
- Cool Timer: Clock with alarm app to keep you on track while writing (free)
Be More Productive
- Wri.it: Distraction-free writing tool with a spell checker and text formatting (free)
- Evernote An all-in-one tool that acts as your dedicated assistant (free)
- NewOldStamp: have a great signature for your regular email address
- Trello: Keep track of all of your tasks (free)
- Noisli: Improve focus and boost productivity (free)
- FocusAtWill: Music optimized to boost your focus (free 30-day trial)
- WiseStamp: A free signature for your email that links to your blog and social profiles
- Coffitivity: Ambient sounds of a cafe (free)
- Kill Newsfeed: A Chrome plug-in that makes your Facebook feed vanish
- Bookafy: Free online booking service for meetings, demos, and appointments.
- Clockify: ?Completely free time tracking and time management app that lets you keep track of time spent on various tasks and projects, calculate billable hours, export reports, and so on.
- Easy PDF: Totally free online PDF converter.
Get More Subscribers
- LeadPages: I use LeadPages every day for landing pages, opt-in pages, sales pages, etc. (starts at $25/month)
- Sumo: Use a heat map, scroll bar, hello bar, pop up for your blog. (get one tool for free)
- Create an eBook: The Complete Guide: Create a lead magnet or ebook to sell
- Peek User Testing: See a 5-minute video of someone on your website navigating around
- Instapage: creates landing pages and wonderful sales pages (easy to use, also!)
- Pushmaze: to send mobile and push notifications.
Keep Track Of Your Numbers
- Google Analytics: Know where your traffic is coming from (free)
- Clicky: Instant analytics ($10/month)
- SimilarWeb: Analyze website statistics for any domain
- SE Ranking: Effortlessly check your ranking keywords in Google, Yahoo and Bing
- Small SEO Tools: totally free
- Fit Small Business: Free Invoice templates
Is Your Site Fast Enough?
- Pingdom Website Speed Test: Check the load time of your site (free)
- GTMetric: Analyze the speed of your site (free)
- Use BlueHost’s Managed WordPress Hosting for faster speeds
Capture Email Addresses
- MailerLite: (free for 500 subscribers)
- ConvertKit (can do tagging for segmentation)
- HelloBar: Free bar at the top of your blog that captures emails
- Optinmonster (creates opt-in boxes and pop-ups)
Connect With Other Bloggers For Blogger Outreach
- Feedly: Keep track of your blogger outreach bloggers’ new posts. (free)
- Klout: Social media influence score (free)
- NinjaOutreach: Efficiently search and keep track of your interactions with other bloggers.
Easiest Ways To Do Social Media
- Buffer: Share all your content on social media, timed out for prime interaction. (free)
- Social Warfare: Share the correct sized image on every social media channel from your blog post ($29)
- Triberr: Join tribes where other tribe members share your blog posts on social media. (free)
- WriteRack: Divide your blog post into tweets (free)
- Bit.ly: Create and track shortened links (free)
- Click To Tweet: CoSchedule’s tool to get more shares (free)
- AddThis: Social sharing buttons (free)
- Digg Digg: All in one social share buttons (free)
- Lumen5: Make free videos for social media
Inexpensive Shopping Carts & Affiliate Programs
- e-Junkie: Shopping cart and affiliate program (free to start, then just $5/month)
- SendOwl: Shopping cart that uses PayPal with the ability to offer your own affiliate program (starts at $9/month_
Create a Membership Site or Set Up Your First Course For Free
- MemberVault: Eternally free up to 50 students.
Help! I need something techie done
- Fiverr: You can get anything you want for your blog – graphic artists, virtual assistants, anything for $6 (yes, they now charge a service fee – should they change their domain to sevener.com?)
What’s your favorite blogging tool? What have I missed that you love?
Hi
Sue,
I really appreciate the efforts you put in this post. You have picked out best blogging tools for particular purposes and here great to know about these tools. The ways you have categorized these blogging tools is awesome. I have used some of the blogging tools from the list like canva, stockup, thrive leads, buzzsumo, grammarly, evernote and buffer. I have bookmarked this post for future use. Really, these types of blogging tools help in increasing productivity and save lots of time.
Thanks for sharing this post with us.
Best wishes,
Praveen Verma
And I appreciate your comment!
Sue
Hi Sue,
I love this collection of free blogging tools. I use a few of the tools you mentioned here.
What about Google's PageSpeed insights?
Perfect! I will add it.
Sue
Hey thanks for sharing the tools list.
These tools are enough to every one may be, so there is no need to look at the search engine for tools.
Thanks for the comment!
Sue
Hii, You have shared such an good information above. I really would like to thank you so such informative knowledge.
Hi Sue,
I love this collection of free blogging tools.
Thanks
Hi,
Thank you for sharing the helpful post. It helped us a lot. I love reading the quality post. Nowadays many people are creating a blog. It's a very important post for a new and old blogger…
I am really impressed by the way you detailed out everything. It’s very informative and you are obviously very knowledgeable.
Wow, what a great list, Sue. I'am especially appreciate the free stock photos. Actually, I'am a photographer and travel blogger, so I use my own pics. But I come often in situations where I need a very specific pic. In this case, I'am using those free stock photos. Pexels was the only database I was familiar with.
Thank to your list, I have now much more resources.
Thank you for sharing this amazing article. Here I found the best blogging tools for using our websites and their categorization is just amazing. I have also used some of these tools very effectively.
You are so welcome!
Sue
So glad to help, Max!
Thanks for your comment,
Sue
Wonderful, what a great list Dear, I was looking for the same. Actually, I’am a blogger & I need a very Unique pictures. Thanks a Lot for Providing us a good stuff.
You are really great.Especially thank you for free stock photos address.
Thanks for sharing these helpful tools. They are gonna help me a lot, in building my blog.
Thanks for this list. I always trying to find royalty free photos for my posts. Beyond Pixabay and Pexel I didn't have much else. I never knew there were so many other free stock photos. I will be sure to check out some of the other tools as well.
Thank you so much,
Maria
Thanks. You are really great.Especially thank you for free stock photos address.
You are so welcome!
Sue
You are so welcome!
Sue
you share a such of wonderful information,its very helpful to us.
So glad it helped, Maria.
Sue
This is really a valuable information, thanks for sharing good kind of stuff.
Agree with You Friend… Same I was looking for
Awesome post, Sue!
We've used a bunch of free pictures from Pixels, PixaBay, and others. It's incredible how talented these photographers are, and even more incredible that they're allowing these photos to be free.
Thanks for your comment I appreciate your work
Hi sue
I love this collection of free blogging tools
I recently started a travel blog and this is super helpful! I just used the keyword research tool and am going to bookmark this page for the free photo sites. Thank you!
You are so welcome, Jimmy!
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Sue
Hi ! Impressive content. People are still not sure what particular steps to take. Now, I think your initiative is well understood to target those to learn the basics. Thanks sharing.
You are so welcome and thanks for your comment.
Sue
Thank you so much Sue for sharing such a helpful resources with us. much appreciated
This is awesome, you just have listed each and important tool in one. Thank you so much for sharing such a worthy content. this really helped me a lot.
Thanks for this. Gonna be really helpful for creating new content for social media. Some of these I’ve heard before and used, but a lot of them are new to me.
I really appreciate the efforts you put in this post. You have picked out best blogging tools for particular purposes and here great to know about these tools. The ways you have categorized these blogging tools is awesome. I have used some of the blogging tools from the list like canva, stockup, thrive leads, buzzsumo, grammarly, evernote and buffer. I have bookmarked this post for future use. Really, these types of blogging tools help in increasing productivity and save lots of time.
Thanks for sharing this post with us
So glad it helped!
Thanks for commenting.
Sue
Grammarly, Trello and ProofHub are some of my fave tools for Blogging. I’d recommend everyone to try these tools.
The resource with free pics is awesome! Thanks so much for sharing
This is the first time I have visited here. I found a lot of interesting information in your blog. From the volume of comments on your articles, I guess I am not the only one!
keep up the great work.
Thanks for sharing the list of blogging tools, Sue,
I love most of the collection of blogging tools that you mentioned here.
Especially I love the SEMrush which is the most powerful SEO tool on the web.
Thanks again for the wonderful information.
You are so welcome!
Sue
I have been using Trello for sometime. Its a great tool.
Hi Sue, this is such a great list of resources – especially the list of sources for free images, I only knew of two of them before.
So glad it helped, Melissa!
Thanks for commenting.
Sue
Blogging online requires tools aside from using social networking sites as a venue for blogs. Blog tools can either be free or not; hosted or independent.
Hello Sue
Wow, what an article. I can see it’s filled with lots and lots of value. You are surely grabbing all the attention, lol.
I have been using 7 tools from images section, 2 from headlines, Grammarly and Hemingway of course from writer’s section (a new suggestion-Reverse Dictionary), and 2 from productivity. I’m surely going to use a lot more now, as I’ve bookmarked your post. This is seriously going to be very helpful.
The keyword for SEO section is a little less, I see. You can have a go at my blog post where I’ve recently added free keyword research tools and their usabilities. Keeping newbies, fresh blogging enthusiasts, startups, or anyone who wants to perform keyword research without spending a single dollar.
Feel free to have a look as it can help you in updating this post.
Regards.
Great to hear, Ankur!
Thanks so much for your comment.
Sue
I’ve been a digital marketer for at least a decade, I’m going to go ahead and say that relevancy is probably the most important ranking factor. This is exactly why keyword stuffing doesn’t work anymore. Hemingway just doesn’t include insight into how relevant your content is. I’ve been working with a new tool called INK, it has built-in SEO features. Another good tool for the content creation tool box, wanted to share it with my fellow editors: http://bit.ly/2ZIT8ht