Image Credit: Flickr – @maheshone
Here is a list of all my favorite Internet Tools, Software and and Applications. I’ve featured only my personal favorites but you can check out my Web Directory for a more comprehensive list. I’ll make sure that the following list is always up-to-date.
Web Browser
Google Chrome – It’s my preferred browser because of its intuitive design, password manager, cross-platform syncing, auto-fill forms, apps and extensions.
Google Chrome Extensions – List of my favorite Google Chrome extensions.
Chrome: Productivity Extensions — SEO Extensions — New Tab Extensions
E-mail
Google Mail – Gmail is my preferred email service due to its powerful features like labels, filters, search, e-mail forwarding, plus addressing, multiple accounts, etc.
Outlook.com – I love Outlook.com for its unique design and features like email alias, Skype integration, and social media connections.
Mailbox – Mailbox app is the best thing that happened to email after Gmail and it’s my preferred email app for mobile.
Outlook – It’s my preferred desktop email client – thanks to its iCloud integration.
Google Apps – To manage custom email addresses.
Windows Live Admin Center – To manage custom email addresses (but no longer supported by Microsoft – so no new sign ups).
Instant Messaging
Skype – For free VoIP calls and cheap phone calls.
Google Hangouts – Since it’s integrated with Gmail.
WhatsApp – As an alternative to text messaging – thanks to its read receipts feature.
Cloud Storage
Microsoft OneDrive – I love OneDrive because of its rich interface, awesome apps, and tight integration with Windows 8.
Picasa Web – To archive photos as it’s got a lot of storage.
Dropbox – I love Dropbox for its simplicity, cross-platform support, and its one-click sharing feature.
Read: OneDrive vs. Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. Cloud Drive vs. Box vs. Mega
Productivity
iCloud – I love iCloud for its Contacts, Calendar, Notes, and Reminder.
OneNote – It’s my preferred planner app – to stay organized.
Evernote – It’s my favorite note-taker app (read 30+ Evernote Tips).
Pocket – It’s my preferred read later app.
Todoist – It’s my favorite to-do app (read Todoist Review) and is the best Google Tasks alternative.
Suites
Office 365 (Premium) – My favorite office suite.
Office Online – Office.com is the online version of Microsoft Office suite (yup, it’s free!).
Google Drive – I like Google Drive for its sharing and collaborative feature.
iWork – Sometimes – on mobile – it’s more useful than Microsoft Office.
Read: My Favorite iOS (iPhone & iPad) Apps
Web 2.0
My favorite social networks – to connect, to collaborate, to showcase, to discover, to question, to answer, and to share.
About.me
Facebook
Foursquare
Google+
Klout
LinkedIn
Medium
Pinterest
Quora
Reddit
Twitter
YouTube
Read: Over 60 Web 2.0 Sites To Get Instant Backlinks To Your Blog
Social Media Tools
IFTTT – To connect different apps.
Buffer – It’s the easiest way to share to all our social networks in one-click.
TweetDeck – My favorite Twitter client.
News
Feedly – It’s the sexiest RSS reader for desktop and mobile (Why?).
LinkedIn Today – For curated social news.
Zite – My favorite social magazine app (read Zite Review).
Pulse – It shows the RSS feeds in a beautiful way.
Digg Reader – I like Digg Reader because of its Google Reader like interface and the “Popular” feature.
Read: 25 Content Discovery Tools To Find Great Social Media Content
Photo Sharing
Flickr – My favorite photo sharing service.
Imgur – It’s the best place to find Internet memes.
Photosynth – It’s an awesome app by Microsoft that creates 3D images from 2D photos.
Photobucket – I use Photobucket primarily when I want to embed images in a forum.
Photo Editing
Adobe Photoshop – My preferred photo editing application.
Google+ Photo Editor – I like Google+ Photo Editor for its auto enhancement feature.
Awesome Screenshot – It’s the best screen capture extension for Google Chrome.
PicMonkey – It’s a free online photo editing that’s perfect for quick touch ups.
Word Processing
Word – My preferred word processor application.
Google Docs – I like Docs because of its real-time collaboration and editing feature.
Pages for iCloud – It’s my favorite word processor app on mobile as it shows word count.
Music / Movies
iTunes – I love iTunes because it acts as a hub between a PC and the iOS ecosystem.
VLC Player – I like VLC player because it plays almost everything. Otherwise, my favorite media player is Windows Media Player.
Money
Microsoft Money Plus – My favorite personal finance management software.
Yahoo Finance Portfolios – My preferred portfolio manager.
PayPal – My preferred payment method.
Utilities / Other Tools
InstaCalc – It’s a real-time shareable online calculator.
Excel – My favorite spreadsheet application.
Pastebin – To anonymously share text online.
Hide My Ass – A free proxy server to surf the web anonymously.
Down For Everyone Or Just Me – To check if the website is down or not.
Screenr – A web-based screen recorder.
Screenfly – To test websites at different screen resolutions.
FileZilla – It’s my favorite FTP client.
uTorrent – My favorite BitTorrent client.
TeamViewer – It’s my preferred remote control/remote access software.
eFax – For free internet fax.
Bitly – It’s my favorite URL shortening service.
LastPass – A free password manager.
Google Forms – An easy to use tool to create web forms, surveys, quiz, plan events, etc.
Google Bookmarks – A free online bookmarking service by Google.
Read: Over 101 Google Products You Probably Don’t Know
Domain Names
GoDaddy – For domain registrations.
DomainTools – For domain name whois lookup.
Web Hosting
Eleven 2 – For shared web hosting ($59.40/year).
HostGator – For reseller web hosting ($299.40/year).
Digital Ocean – For VPS web hosting ($5/month).
CDN
Google PageSpeed Service – Google PageSpeed Service fetches content from our servers and delivers pages to the users from the Google cloud after optimization.
Photon by WordPress – It’s a free image acceleration service by WordPress.com.
Read: Web Hosting Comparison – Top 25 Web Hosting Companies
Blogging
WordPress – My preferred Content Management System (CMS) as it can be customized the way we want.
Disqus – To manage the comments.
WordPress Plugins
Contact Form 7 – It’s my favorite contact form plugin.
Digg Digg – It adds floating social sharing buttons on the sidebar.
Disqus Comment System – It’s the best comment system for WordPress.
HelloBar (Freemium) – It adds a call-to-action button at the top of the blog.
Jetpack – It brings the cloud power of WordPress to our self-hosted WordPress blog.
Simple Social Icons – To show beautiful social icons on the sidebar.
W3 Total Cache – It’s the best performance optimization plugin for WordPress.
WordPress SEO – It’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress.
WPtouch – It makes the blog mobile friendly in few seconds.
WordPress Related Posts – It’s my preferred “Related Posts” plugin for WordPress as it uses “tags” to suggest related posts.
Read: Over 30 Awesome WordPress Plugins To Supercharge Your Blog
WordPress Themes
StudioPress (Premium) – Genesis by StudioPress is my preferred WordPress framework and I also love their professionally designed WordPress skins.
Themeforest (Premium) – It’s perhaps the largest marketplace for premium website templates (HTML5, WordPress, PSD, Tumblr, etc.).
WordPress (Free) – It’s the largest directory of free WordPress themes.
Read: Top 15 “Cherry Picked” Premium WordPress Theme Marketplaces
Webmaster
Bing Webmaster Tools – To view our website’s visibility on Bing search.
Google Webmaster Tools – To view our website’s visibility on Google search.
Publishing
Microsoft Expression Web 4 (Free) – My favorite HTML editor.
Windows Live Writer (Free) – My favorite desktop blog-publishing application.
Website Performance
My favorite tools to analyze the performance of a webpage. They also suggests ways to make the pages faster.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Pingdom Website Speed Test
GTmetrix
WebPageTest
Yahoo YSlow
Read: 7 Tools To Check The Performance Of A Web Page
Internet Marketing
My favorite Internet marketing tools – for web analytics, competitor analysis, keyword research.
Google Analytics (Free)
Open Site Explorer (Freemium)
Ahrefs (Freemium)
Majestic SEO (Freemium)
SEMrush (Freemium)
Alexa (Freemium)
AdWords Keyword Planner (Free)
Read: Top 30 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
Advertising
Bing Ads – To buy pay-per-click ads on the Yahoo Bing Network.
BuySellAds – To buy banner ads on other websites and blogs.
DoubleClick – To manage website ad inventory.
Facebook Ads – To buy Facebook ad inventory.
Google AdWords – To buy pay-per-click ads on Google and their display network.
Read: Over 30 Advertising Programs To Make Money Blogging
E-mail Marketing
FeedBurner – To manage blog RSS feeds.
MailChimp (Freemium) – To manage newsletters.
Read: 101 Websites For Anyone And Everyone To Make Money Online
Outsourcing
Elance – To outsource almost anything.
Fiverr – To outsource micro-jobs.
99designs – To outsource design stuff.
Read: Web Directory – Blogging, Digital Marketing, and Webmaster Resources
*Still thinking about what’s left here*
First Published: May 12, 2014; Last Updated: Tuesday, May 20, 2014
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My Favorite Internet Tools, Software & Apps is a post by Minterest