As a team that has worked remotely since day one, our partners still choose to work where they are comfortable, even though we have an office. We rely heavily on tools to stay in touch, and we're constantly trying new ones. Here are some great tools we think are worth recommending to you, and if you think there's something we should take a look at, feel free to let us know.
Suggest on Twitter Last updated on Mar 21
Communication 12
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$6.67/moSlack
Slack has been the hub of our communication since 2013. It links our Figma project, Zoom meetings, Whimsical docs, GitHub webhooks, and a bunch of bots to make our work easier. Sometimes we invite clients to join our Slack channel directly or connect two companies through Slack Connect.
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FreeWorkspace
Google Workspace has probably been our longest companion, generously supporting our mailboxes, documents and sheets. We now use Sheets the most, providing details of hours worked for those clients who need to be billed on time.
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BetaMimestream
Mimestream is a native Mac app for Gmail. It looks just like Mail.app only feels infinitely better.
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FreeWeCom
Due to the wide acceptance of WeChat in China, it is now also one of the official channels to contact us.
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$5/moKrisp
Krisp is just as amazing as the noise canceling feature of AirPods Pro, and it works with any voice software. It dramatically reduces background noise during meetings, not only your own but also the other person's, making it a real must-have for the home office.
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$48/yrProton
We were recently assisting a client in setting up custom domain mailboxes, and Proton outperformed the competition on all fronts, impressing us with its ease of use, security, extra features, and price.
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FreeLoom
Loom not only has a name somewhat similar to Zoom, it is also one of the most important tools we use to communicate. It provides an asynchronous way to communicate, and we are now addicted to using it to create internal tutorial videos.
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$14.99/moZoom
The best tool for online meetings, period.
Replaced with Lark Meetings and VooV Meeting.
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FreeSpark
We love Spark for being able to write emails together and discuss without getting stuck in reply-all hell. My favorite feature is Templates, which saved me so much time.
Replaced with Mimestream.
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FreePaper
Who doesn’t enjoy writing on a freeform paper? Also, it comes with the Dropbox subscription. We draft all of our documents, even contracts in Paper, thanks to its version control and beautiful tables.
Replaced with Whimsical Docs.
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FreeTandem
Tandem is a lightweight team meeting tool. Not all meetings require a new Zoom room, sometimes asking a quick question or just chit-chat, Tandem can be very convenient.
We’re disappointed by the video/audio quality of Tandem, so we went back to using Zoom as our primary meeting tool.
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$8/moNotion
Notion is our documentation center. With our plans to expand our team, we are now more frequently documenting knowledge and skills that others need to learn.
Replaced with Lark.
Design 8
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$15/moFigma
Our primary design tool. We used to have Sketch, Abstract, and Zeplin, but it was messy and expensive. Now everything is in one place instead of all over the place. We also use Ai and Ps for brand identity work occasionally.
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$59.91/moCinema 4D
Cinema 4D has become an essential part of our toolchain. Most of our marketing designs are more or less in 3D. Even if they are illustrations that look 2D, it is easier to design in Cinema 4D, and there is more room to play.
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$15/moFramer
At first, I was a little hesitant to classify Framer as a design or development tool. Although we use Framer more often to implement designs in Figma, we still do some details in Framer, especially the interaction design. Nevertheless, we love this tool, and it's a pleasure to use it every time.
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$9/moDrama
Currently, Drama is our favorite tool for creating sophisticated interactions and animations. Although most of the time, we use Prototype in Figma. Before Drama, we have used Origami, Flinto, and Principle.
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$5/moFontstand
We’re all huge font nerds, and we enjoy using Fontstand to try out fonts for each new project.
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$5/moDropmark
We started using Dropmark when there weren’t many choices around for collection. Now, the market is crowded, but we stuck to it mostly because we forget to unsubscribe…
Replaced with Figma and FigJam.
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$10/moWhimsical
Whimsical is the best tool for designing wireframes and flowcharts. The newly added Docs feature is our go-to place to document product changes, discussions, and plans.
Replaced with Figma.
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$12/moOverflow
Overflow is an amazing tool for creating diagrams and flows. But Figma has replaced so many tools and saved us so much money.
Replaced with Whimsical.
Management 9
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FreeLinear
We are finally on board. All the rumors out there are true, and the Linear experience is like magic. It seems similar to the task management systems we’ve used before, but the experience is really different and there are so many details that make using it silky smooth.
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$15/moDropbox
Our absolutely genuine paid font files and tens of billions of dollars worth of top-secret contracts are safely stored in the good ol' box.
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FreeLark
After trying almost all of the low code/no code tools, we came to the conclusion that we needed to find a stable one because we were tired of constantly migrating large amounts of data - especially financial data. We mainly use Lark's doc, table, and meeting feature.
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$10/moCoda
After countless attempts and painful data migrations, we chose Coda as our internal data management platform. Instead of being limited by the pre-defined paradigms of other tools, we can now customize the look and behavior as we wish.
Replaced with Lark.
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¥40/moHipacloud
Not only because we helped design the app, but also because Hipacloud truly replaces the work of many other tools that we use to manage reimbursements, send estimates, tally payroll, schedule projects, and keep track of company finances.
Replaced with Coda.
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$9/moZoho Books
Zoho Books is a faithful old companion. It's simple, with no fancy animations or interactions, but it's stable enough and trustworthy. We just wanted to settle down after trying many fancy things, and we signed up for Zoho Books and haven't looked back since.
Replaced with Hipacloud
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$19/moHarpoon
We use Harpoon to send estimates and invoices. But we ditched its time tracking because the mac app lacks features and updates. Instead, we use Timemator for much more accurate tracking.
Replaced with Zoho Books.
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$99/moBasecamp
We have been paid customers of Basecamp for many years. As I mentioned above, now we invite clients directly to our Slack. We still use Basecamp occasionally if the project requires a lot of sending deliverables and documents back and forth.
Too slow to use in China. Also too expensive for small businesses.
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$10.99/moAsana
After many years of being on our own, we are back to Asana. Its latest version is more powerful than ever, with not only Kanban boards and lists, but also our favorite view, the timeline. A recent complex project forced us to use such a powerful tool to keep track of everything, and we can't work without it now.
Replaced with Notion.
Marketing 8
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$14/moFathom
We value our visitors’ privacy as much as our own. That’s why we replaced Google Analytics and Gauges with Fathom, a privacy-focused alternative. No cookie consent popups, yay!
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FreeCreator Studio
Finally we can publish (and schedule) Instagram posts from the desktop. But weirdly you can’t boost your posts right from the app.
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FreePitch
Pitch is a complete platform for presentations. With high-quality templates, anyone can create beautiful presentations in no time.
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FreeFormspark
Our website is a static architecture, so we use a third-party form tool to handle client inquiries, and we're happy with the stability and power of Formspark. You’d be surprised how much people like filling out forms.
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$12/moPaste
We’re a big fan of presentations, the best way to sell a design is to present it beautifully. Paste is super easy to use. You can focus on the content and let it take care of the rest automatically.
Replaced with Pitch.
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FreeSmallchat
Smallchat is connected straight to one of our Slack channels, visitors on our website can talk to us directly from the page.
We removed Smallchat from our site because it tracks our visitors.
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FreeGetform
We've recently added new ways for clients to contact us quickly, and Getform is one of the few tools that I can confidently say is "easy to set up".
Unstable email delivery and poor spam handling. Replaced with Formspark.
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FreeRevue
If you’re a subscriber of Dine News—which you should be—you probably have seen Revue, our email marketing service.
Development 9
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FreeGitHub
We use GitHub for all of our websites and client projects. Thanks to the generosity of Microsoft, we no longer need to pay for private repos.
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FreeGitLab
GitHub is great for most of its job, but for speed and compliance reasons, we also have our own GitLab server and a CI/CD workflow set up on Aliyun.
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¥240/moAliyun
It’s vital to our business to have a fast website for domestic visitors as well as a pleasant experience for our clients to use their CMS that we provided.
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FreeCloudFlare
Everyone loves CloudFlare. From their robust DNS service with speed optimization to the powerful Workers that turns Notion page into a website with a custom domain.
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$49.99Fork
Fork is our preferred git client. It’s fast, friendly, and made git less intimidating for designers like us.
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FreeVisual Studio Code
VS Code has finally won me over once I begin to learn React development. The integrations and extensions are unmatched. It’s just so neat and pleasant to finish all the developing, debugging, committing work in one single app.
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FreeVercel
Vercel is our newest web hosting provider. It is very fast, not only in terms of access speed, but also in terms of build speed. It was able to reduce the build speed from 3 minutes to just 22 seconds compared to the previous Amplify, giving us the freedom to try more new things.
We have fully migrated to Aliyun private servers, but we continue to use it for testing.
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$5/moAWS Amplify
AWS hosts all of our websites, builds code with CodeBuild, routes all the traffics through Route 53, hosts all of our files on S3, and serves via CloudFront.
Replaced with Vercel.
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$19/moNetlify
The shiny new toy. Currently serves as our build and test platform for Jekyll and Gatsby sites. It’s super fast and a delight to use.
Replaced with Vercel.
Miscellaneous 13
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FreeArc
In this day and age, there are very few apps that bring a sense of freshness and desire for exploration anymore. Fortunately, Arc is one of them that does. Most of us are already loyal users of Arc, which fits in well with our workflow: opening a few frequently used web pages instead of constantly opening and closing tabs.
Psst, do you need an invite?
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$1.99remove.bg
Remember when we had to remove the image background in Photoshop? This tool can do it for you automatically in 5 seconds with zero clicks.
It even works with videos!
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FreeHandbrake
Since we have been using more and more videos on our website and in client projects, Handbrake really comes in handy when dealing with MP4 files.
Here’s our preset for compressing videos to use on the web.
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FreeDeepL
Compared to Google Translate, which you don't dare to trust too much, DeepL's translation is so good that it's unreal. Combined with Grammarly's error correction, you can confidently put a large paragraph on your website or send it as an email to a client.
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$15Optimage
From time to time, we need to optimize image file sizes manually. Optimage is the best choice after trying almost everything.
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$11.66/moGrammarly
Grammarly is a must-have tool for us to find and correct writing mistakes. We recommend it to everyone who works in an English speaking environment.
QuillBot is a great alternative you should try too.
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FreeDocuSign
DocuSign is the de facto standard in electronic signature services. We use it with our foreign clients and contractors.
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$39Timemator
Manually tracking your time can be troublesome and easy to forget, also inaccurate from the employer‘s point of view. Tell Timemator which files you’re working on or what applications you use for your work, it will automatically start the timer for you.
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$19.99/yrElpass
Elpass is your all-in-one password manager. It’s lightweight, blazing-fast, and syncs with iCloud. In our opinion, its autofill feature works a lot better than 1Password’s.
Of course, we designed their lovely icons.
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$29CleanShot X
CleanShot is our team’s favorite screenshot tool. With its powerful annotation utilities and built-in cloud sharing feature, it’s a superior replacement for the macOS tool, Droplr, CloudApp, etc.
We use uPic to share files with clients through our private server.
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FreeDrafts
If you like taking notes, you should definitely try Drafts. I use Drafts to jot down design ideas and take meeting notes. It’s the fastest and most versatile plain text editor that also syncs across devices instantly.
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$5/moCraft
I recently replaced Drafts with Craft as my personal note taking app. It has the similar native feel, but with richer formatting and cleaner Markdown export.
Can’t beat plain text sometimes.
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$9/moSmallpdf
All-in-one easy-to-use online PDF tools, for those who can’t afford Acrobat.
Replaced with PDF Squeezer