23 of the Best Free Web Services
The best things in life are free. The great paradox of internet marketing is that there are millions of info-products on the subject and yet all internet marketers will agree that the best tools are their disposal are free ones!
If you want to do internet marketing, blogging or any sort of activity on the internet I would always urge you to try the free option and do it yourself. People who spend money in this area nearly always regret it. So, let’s get going and put away the check book!
1. Google Analytics
Google, you will not be surprised, is the chief supplier of good free stuff on this list and first off their internet stats pack is one of the “must haves” for all internet sites out there. Just a short bit of JavaScript in the header after signing up and shortly you’ll be able to view how many visitors you’re getting, where they’re from, how many pages they viewed, how they arrived, what browser they’re using, the list is endless.
Many people like to pay for GetClicky but that is in addition to Google Analytics. Just about everyone uses GA!
2. Pingdom
If you have one main site I would recommend you head straight over to Pingdom and sign up for an account. Pingdom will tell you when your site is down immediately with a warning email. It also provides you with information of your site’s uptime and downtime for years and years to the nearest second.
You have to pay if you want more than one site monitored but for just one site this is an awesome free service.
3. Gmail and Google Apps for Business
We all know how amazing Gmail – the free email service from Google – is. But did you know you can route your you@yourdomain.com email through Google’s servers ensuring 100% uptime and awesome spam filters? You have to set up an account at Google Apps for Business and change a few MX records but the 10 minutes that should take is well worth the hassle.
4. Flickr
I’m not sure how long Flickr’s dominance as the primary photo storage site is going to last given that Google has really improved Picasa and integrated it with Google+, how Flickr is a great photo sharing site with a huge 300MB a month free limit. Flickr hosts 5 billion photos and is a great place to source Creative Commons-licensed photos for credited use on websites.
5. YouTube, Vimeo and TubeMogul
We all know what a great free video hosting service YouTube is. And Vimeo, although not as popular, looks better and allows you to host private videos that are viewable with a password. Uploading video can be a time consuming business, however, TubeMogul allows you to upload to a video to YouTube, Vimeo, Veoh, Metacafe, Viddler, and many more for free. And it gives you great viewing statistics from all these channels.
6. MailChimp
MailChimp is just the best free emailing service provider. They have great email templates, fantastic stats and the ability to send multiple follow-up emails (sequential auto-responders) to 2,000 subscribers for free!
7. Google Alerts
I’m trying to mix up the Google free tools here so the whole article doesn’t appear too Googley. This great services sends you emails every time Google indexes a webpage with a certain keyword in it. Great for monitoring a brand, a person’s name or any subject you are interested in. You can choose the frequency of the emails.
8. Dropbox
Dropbox is one of the best back-up tools. You can save a file to Dropbox and it will be instantly available on your computer, laptop, phone or multiple other devices. You have 2GB free – and a further 250MB if you invite someone else to join.
9. Tada-Lists
From the amazing 37 Signals, with Tada-Lists you can make lists for yourself or share them with others and tick items off as they get done – a great productivity tool.
10. Ping.fm and OnlyWire
Ping.fm is a way you can send a status update to multiple social networks at the same time. WithOnlyWire you can auto-submit content to 46 top social networks – 300 submissions per month.
11. Hootsuite and Tweetdeck
Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are great Twitter apps for handling multiple accounts and scheduling messages, etc.
12. SocialOomph and Dlvr.it
These services are great for automating Twitter. You can use SocialOomph to auto-follow people back and Dlvr.it to auto-tweet feeds.
13. Evernote
Evernote is a sort of digital notepad. It can be used on every one of your devices for recording thoughts, text, audio, video, images and links.
14. CloudFlare
Make your site faster and more secure in 5 minutes with CloudFlare – you’ll have to change your names servers though. This site loads through CloudFlare and I have noticed an increase in speed.
15. PageSpeed and Y!Slow
Speed up your website by working out where the delays come from with these two extensions
16. Last.fm
Last.fm lets you effortlessly keep a record of what you listen to from any player and recommends more music based on your taste.
17. Google Docs
An amazingly powerful resource offering the ability to create documents, spreadsheets, slideshows and forms both privately and publicly. You can canvas opinion by creating a form and collating the results. Leo Babauta recently wrote a book in Google Docs inviting anyone to edit it in real time.
18. YouSendIt
YouSendIt is the most popular and secure online file sharing site that allows you to easily send large files.
19. DaFont and WhatTheFont
DaFont is the best place to pick up free fonts. It’s especially good for quirky and retro typefaces.WhatTheFont can identify a font from an image, although I have to say it’s never worked when I’ve tried it!
20. PDF995
There are many PDF creation websites out there – this is one of the best.
21. HARO Help A Reporter Out
Want some free publicity? Sign up for the 3-times daily newsletter and scour it for topics that you know something about and the next thing you know you’re being interviewed by a radio station somewhere.
22. Online image editors
If you don’t have Photoshop there are scores and scores of great free online photo editors out there that give you filters, layers and effect galore! FotoFlexer and Pixlr being two of the best.
23. Free images
There are loads of great places to get free stock imagery, stock.xchage and Flickr Creative Comms search are two of my favorites.
