As I get back to working and blogging after a nice break, my focus is on getting my digital domain on order. Since starting my own business I have added all sorts of services, subscriptions and platforms to my tech stack, and as my work has evolved, so have the tools I use.
My aim for this review is twofold: first up, I want to make sure I am not paying for services or subscriptions I don’t actually make good use of, and secondly I want to make sure that the technology I do use is, wherever possible, aligned to my values. I should probably thank Zoom’s “we are an AI-first company” announcement for prompting me to find an alternative video call platform, ideally one that put humans before technology.
I am blogging about this as I go along, so let’s see what happens. In the interest of transparency, I have added some current costs as well as my “status” and a personal “overall” evaluation. This is not meant to be anything more than my personal view.
To make it easier, I have come up with three headings to group tools together:
Organisational infrastructure
Tools and platforms that help me run by business day to day.
Google Workspace
My business, small as it may be, still needs an organisational infrastructure, and after trying out various alternatives I have settled on Google Workspace to provide that. It’s a tool I have used for over 15 years, and it does exactly what I need it to, reliably and cleanly.
Google Workspace provides my email, file storage and video call capabilities for informal calls and meetings. It’s where I work and live day to day.
Cost: £6.00 per user per month
Status: Here to stay
Overall: Excellent
Asana
I use Asana to plan out by business objectives, and to schedule recurring tasks and actions from completing my tax return to logging CPD coaching hours. I used Asana in my CEO role and I use it also with other teams at the moment, and it has great utility in those context. For me personally, my little Asana instance of one user is a dream as I have been able to customise it exactly to my preferences and I use it pretty much only to plan out annual cycles of work or larger projects.
Cost: free (at the level I am using it)
Status: Here to stay
Overall: Excellent
Stripe
Having tried pretty much every payment processor out there at some point, I had no great hopes for trying out Stripe. Fortunately I was wrong. For my (low volume) purposes, Stripe offers all round excellent functionality. It’s a standard fee structure, and I found it a pleasant surprise that most people seem to get on with paying invoices happily and quickly without support.
Cost: transaction fees depending on turnover
Status: Here to stay
Overall: Excellent
Domains, blog and newsletter
This warrants its own category because it’s so important.
Reclaim Hosting
My primary domain, https://marendeepwell.com/ , is where my WordPress blog lives, and it’s been safely and happily looked after by Reclaim Hosting for over a decade. I am a big fan of this independent hosting company for many reasons, including their excellent service, personable support and fair pricing.
I have been a Shared Hosting client for a long time and was also converted to Reclaim Cloud as my needs grew. I also have several domains which I manage here.
Cost: Shared Hosting $60 per year + top level domains. Reclaim Cloud costs depending on usage.
Status: #4life
Overall: Excellent
My blog and domain on Reclaim include my newsletter and mapping of my domain to my Google Workspace email account.
Newsletter, MailPoet and Mailgun
Since I started my newsletter, I tried out various WordPress plug-ins and also MailChimp and its equivalents. Eventually I settled on the Newsletter plug-in, and Mailgun to manage the actual sending of the emails.
More recently, I started experimenting with MailPoet as an alternative and I am as yet undecided which one I will go with. MailPoet seems attractive as it has a nice design interface, and its integration with WordPress feels more light touch than the recently updated Newsletter plug-in, which is trying to integrate the blog and newsletter more closely (which I am not keen on).
Cost: Mostly free.
Status: in transition
Overall: could be better
Course/coaching delivery
A lot of my consultancy work takes place within organisations who have their own tech infrastructure set ups, from security and sign-ins to file storage and video conferencing tools. Like many others in similar roles, I manage multiple profiles for platforms like Teams or Google or Slack. When it comes to delivering coaching and courses independently however, I try to find balance between form, function and feasibility.
Zoom
This is the platform I use nearly everyday and which I like the least. Despite the fact that it is reliable and easy to use, this is a platform I dislike and would like to find an alternative to. Ideally something more light-weight and less objectionable. For my purposes, I really *just* need a video call platform that offers recordings, and nothing more.
My current contenders are: Google Meet (easy for me, but not always a good option for folk because of log-in issues), and Whereby.
Cost: £15.59 per month
Status: moving away from
Overall: dislike
Squarespace Courses
In 2024 I started offering coaching courses, and tried out a whole host of platforms, starting with WordPress, dedicated course platforms and so on. This platform offers the functionality I need in terms of managed access, offering a fully accessible course design, it’s mobile friendly and relatively easy to learn (for me). As I produce my own course resources and (audio) content, this was the only platform I tried out that work for short-term development like courses and still resulted in a professional finish.
Cost: £100.51 for 12 months (course module)
Status: Working well
Overall: Like the finish
Moo
Moo is a printing service that I love and I have used for many years. I use it to produce printed materials for my coaching, workshops and courses. It’s especially good if you need small quantities and lots of different versions of the same content.
Cost: depending on product
Status: Here to stay
Overall: Excellent
Personal productivity and communications
This is a catch all category for everything else I use.
- Canva: I have a love/hate relationship with Canva, and am always looking for alternatives. However I do find it exceedingly useful, especially when it comes to producing coaching materials and printed designs. After being offered the opportunity to pay 300% more per month earlier this year, it’s pricing has remained at £10.99 per month for me, for now.
- Buffer: a tool which can schedule posts across various social media platforms. I do use (the free) version, but not enough.
- Calendly: another tool which I use currently in the free version, but which I make limited use of.
- Fission and AudioHijack: audio recording, streaming and editing, Excellent tools I bought licences for very happily and which I couldn’t do without.
- Spotify for Podcasters: a podcasting platform experiment that stuck. Would like to move away from, but not a priority.
In part 2, I’ll report back on what has changed and how I got on.
Image: Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash
Thanks for sharing all of this Maren! It’s an interesting prompt to think about sharing my own. I’ll be keen to see where you get to with a Zoom alternative. It’s a key part of my stack too and I haven’t found anything quite as convenient yet.
Oh, I’d be curious to see that, Anne-Marie. Especially in terms of writing.
I still haven’t tried fission, and I need it for some recent audio work given I always need to do some quick, in the moment, editing. Do you use that for your podcast editing?
I know Bryan Mathers uses MailPoet for his newsletter given I have migrated his site a time or two, so would be interested to hear how that works for you. I like how you and Marting summarize your monthly posts at the end of the month, and it is something I am toying with, but I have nothing like the cohesiveness you two do when it comes to your blog, so it would seem almost like an abstract painting.
Yes, Fission is what I use to edit the podcast. It’s a fantastic tool! And thanks for the comment, Jim – “ABC” #4life