Recommended TOOLS
Here are some of the tools, software and other resources I (Josh) use, trust and/or recommend.Find Tools by Category
Divi
The Divi Theme® by Elegant Themes is the trusted WordPress I’ve used exclusively since 2014. It powers my site, my agency clients’ websites. The company, support and community behind it are also top notch!
Circle
Circle is the platform I run my Web Designer Membership on. I generally steer clear from “all-in-one” solutions but this one is AMAZING. For online communities, memberships, live streams, coaching and now courses…Circle is truly the best tool to have it all under one roof. I’ve been an early adopter since it released in 2020 and I’m in love with it today more than ever before.
SiteGround
SiteGround is the web hosting company I use for my hosting and trust for my client sites. They’re affordable, reliable, have top-notch support and have been the foundation of me and my client sites since 2015.
17hats
17hats is what I use for managing clients and creating and sending proposals, invoices, contracts, collecting payments and more. They’ve been the key tool which helped me organize my systems and processes which I’ve used since 2016.
Local SEO Acadmey
Local SEO Academy is Web Designer Pro®’s “little brother” community, founded by rockstar WDP member Sam Sarsten who grew his agency to multi–six-figures with mostly monthly recurring revenue through SEO, more specifically local SEO within 2 years. He’s on the front lines of SEO, teaching everything he and his agency are doing so you can do the same.
Termageddon
Termageddon is my trusted tool for creating auto-updating privacy policies. I use this to keep my site compliant and protected and my agency uses this for all our client websites which we offer as an up-sell.
Design Day Blueprint
Design Day Blueprint is Bailey Collin’s “website in a day” course which breaks down her entire process for building one day websites, which her agency has done over 500 times. Oh and also selling each one for $4,000. That’s a 4k day. If you want to speed up your web design process and morph her process to your packages as a website in a day, or website in a week, this is your guide. Use my link to get 10% OFF + the brand in a day module ($500 value) for free!
Senja
Senja is the tool I use to collect course and product testimonials. It’s awesome, you can create separate testimonial forms and customize the review experience! Senja makes it super easy to automate collecting, categorizing and embedding your reviews (written and audio)
Content Snare
Content Snare is top recommended way to effectively, efficiently and successfully collect content from clients. For big projects where you’re collecting content, images, media files and more, having a tool to assist is key and this one is GOLD.
FocusWP
FocusWP is like have a white-label web developer team on call. They’ll handle your maintenance, support, development, design help and more. You can purchase hours one-off or go month to month depending on how many hours you need. It’s one if not THE best solution around for getting quality help when you’re ready to delegate and hire.
BuzzSprout
Buzzsprout is the hosting platform for my podcast. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Buzzsprout for many reasons but in short, it makes it easy-peasy to upload your audio files then it takes care of the rest. The UX is great, it’s been super reliable and it’s very affordable.
Divi Life
Divi Life is a collection of Divi Plugins, Divi Child Themes and other great Divi resources. They’re the creators of some of my personal favorite plugins like Divi Overlays, Divi Bars, Divi Welcome Home and more.
Fathom
Fathom is a GDPR compliant and ethical analytics tool for tracking and analyzing your website traffic. I left Google Analytics and starting using this awesome tool to avoid any potential legal issues with tracking users. Plus, you don’t need cookies when using it!
Pretty Links
Pretty Links is my preferred URL shortener plugin for WordPress! I use it for my podcast episodes, affiliate URL’s and other pages or post types that have a long URL that I need to shorten so I can share in other places online.
SPI Courses
Smart Passive Income’s All Access Pass is where you can get access to ALL of my friend and mentor Pat Flynn’s courses.
I’ve been in All Access myself since they moved all courses into it and it’s insane how much value there is for the little investment. Highly recommended!
Divi Stylist Academy
I only teach the foundations of CSS, my colleague Ania Romańska is not only a world-class designer but also an incredible teacher of beginner to advanced CSS for styling websites with Divi. For those reasons, I highly recommend her Divi Stylist Academy to help you take your Divi CSS jQuery chops to the next level.
LifterLMS
LifterLMS is an amazing online course platform for WordPress. Perfect for creating online courses for you, clients or for membership sites. Plus, the owner and team behind it are AWESOME. If I were starting with courses today, I’d go with Lifter.
*** Important note ***
While the companies and products listed are affiliate links, they are not sponsors and they do not pay to be on this page. The tools and companies listed here are ones that myself and/or my agency uses and trusts.
There are also a lot of other great options for tools in the Divi, WordPress and wider Web Design market that may suite you, your budget and your needs. These are simply the ones in my toolbox 🙂
– Josh