Finding web design tools, services or resources you could use is not necessarily all that much of a challenge. The marketplace is full of them, and there are a large number of good ones in each of these categories. The difficulty lies in locating a product or service that is best suited for your work.
Websites that describe a product’s or service’s features in detail will often provide the information you need to make your decision. And that’s what this post is going to do. The web design products and services listed here are top quality, otherwise they wouldn’t make the list.
WordPress Themes
X Theme
This multipurpose WordPress theme has recently released Version 4 that comes with an app-like interface, and a new innovative frontend page builder called Cornerstone. X Theme is one of the fastest-selling Themeforest theme boasting the finest customer support teams found anywhere.
Users get free access to all of Themeforest’s WordPress plugins, continually updated collections of elements, as well as to the interesting and helpful community forums among other great features.
Enfold
Enfold has always been popularly known and loved for its user-friendly WordPress themes and easy-to-use drag-and drop layout editor. As you create your website design, you will find yourself moving seamlessly from one intuitive operation to the next; the site creation process is smooth and uninhibited.
Enfold is continually being updated and improved upon, and has excellent support that contributes to it being the best-rated top seller on Themeforest.
Be Theme
With more than 40 impressive core features, over 100 high-quality pre-made layouts, topnotch support, Be Theme is lightning fast and everything you expect a premium theme to be and have. The large number of topical pre-made layouts serve as valuable design concepts, and as they are 100% editable, they make this theme one of the most versatile themes on the market.
Website Builders and Platforms
XPRS
Think Lego with bricks that can be modified to suit your needs, and you will get a sense of how XPRS functions. Its building block methodology, combined with tons of professional templates, and a no-coding-required web scheme called POLYDOMS, allows you create sites in a matter of minutes. The websites built will be responsive, and a free e-Commerce solution is included.
Try out XPRS for free, and continue to use it for free for non-commercial purposes.
Webydo
Developers have WordPress; amateurs have Wix, Weebly and Squarespace; and designers have Webydo. This SaaS platform is led by its designer community of more than 175,000 designers and web agencies. It is the designers who decide which features should be developed and added to the platform. This results in a code-free, multi-featured all-in-one tool designers can use for prototyping, wire-framing, managing and publishing.
WordPress Page Builders
Cornerstone
Cutting-edge, innovative, state-of-the-art, Cornerstone is changing the way WordPress developers build websites and pages. Using a frontend editor in combination with a preview display, developers can see in real-time their changes on their final product, as and when they introduce changes to the page design. It also comes with its own element library and a drag-and-drop layout editor.
Themify Flow
Drop in your layout modules, set your options, and away you go. Themify Flow will show you the status of your layout instantly, giving you total control of your design modules and your layouts. The live preview makes styling a piece of cake, particularly with the use of the Styling panel that gives you endless styling options. Since this page builder is open source, it is free to use.
Project Management and Collaboration Tools
Nutcache
Nutcache excels at saving important things until they are needed, and then locating them and displaying them appropriately. It is a project management tool that also serves as an online team collaboration tool. No matter the size of your business or your team, it will assist you in efficiently and effectively organizing, tracking, invoicing, and receiving payments.
You can also organize and track diverse collections of ideas, memos, and display statuses using easy-to-understand graphical representations.
Azendoo
Azendoo offers a relaxing, yet efficient way to go about your work. It is an intuitive project planner and task manager that was primarily designed as a collaborative teamwork tool for marketing and design teams.
This application is integrated with Dropbox, Evernote, the Box, and Google Drive, making it a well-supported information-sharing and organizing tool.
Designs to Code Conversion Services
PSDGator
PSDGator is powered by a small web development team that is big in providing conversion services. The service specializes in converting your Photoshop designs into clean, hand-coded, HTML/CSS that is responsive, SEO optimized, and optimized for speed as well.
Your design submissions are always reviewed before being converted into code; this is to see if there are problems or issues that need to be addressed beforehand.
Direct Basing
Direct Basing offers an HTML5 slicing service. In addition to this standard service, other services include PSD to Responsive converstion, and email HTML5 slicings as well. If it is what you are looking for, PSD conversion to WordPress template is also available. This slicing service’s clients range from freelancers to Fortune 500 companies.
40 Dollar Markup
40 Dollar Markup is another quality PSD-to-code conversion service provider. Automated coding techniques are not a part of their M.O. The final product is always hand-coded, clean, and optimized for excellent performance, features automated systems are not always capable of delivering. This outstanding conversion service has a record of providing full support to its deliverables, including converting a website into a responsive one.
Digital Ocean
It takes about a minute of your time to deploy a Digital Ocean SSD-based cloud server. You will gain access to high-performance SSD hard drives and a flexible applications program interface, as well as access to the datacenter that is located nearest to you.
Your server will be provisioned in as little as 55 seconds, will feature a 1 GB/sec bandwidth, and an initial 1 TB storage capacity.
Stock Photo Agencies
Bigstock
Bigstock is an excellent resource for images, whether you are designing flyers or brochures, or creating a website. You can get started by signing up for a 7-day free trial, then diving into their awesome collection of 26 million or so high-quality stock images. You get up to 35 images for free. 26 million is a large number, but the images are extremely well organized, and finding what you need is rarely a problem.
Stockfresh
Stockfresh, with its millions of stock photos, vectors, and illustrations, offers the best prices in the market. You can pre-pay, and download your selections if you only need a few images, but if you intend to use this service regularly, you can save up to 60% or more by signing up for a subscription service.
Stockfresh’s website is responsive, you can even browse their selections and order images from your mobile device.
Web Apps
Sendloop
If you have been looking for a web app that is the right solution for your email marketing campaign, Sendloop is an excellent choice. This package features a drag-and-drop email builder and an online image editor.
A comprehensive selection of mobile-ready email templates is also included, and a professional HTML email editor is also a part of the package for those with HTML coding skills; the fun part is coding is not necessary to make full use of this app.
Typeform
Forms used to be a necessary evil, but not anymore. Typeform is on a mission to make forms awesome. You can conduct surveys, send out feedback forms, make landing pages, organize a contest, or give your students a test. Start building something cool today.
Core features are free, but if you’re a power user, check out their Pro plan.
UI Kits
Drunken Parrot Full UI Kit
The Drunken Parrot Full UI Kit is a retina-ready and responsive flat UI kit that is particularly well suited for users of Bootstrap. It features a complete set of popular Bootstrap PSD and HTML components supplemented by a colourful and attractive selection of icons and icon fonts.
Other features include button groups, dropdowns, radio buttons, page headers, etc. It is available in both designer and developer editions, or as one full UI kit.
iOS Social UI Kit
This Basement Social iOS Wireframe Kit by Visual Hierarchy provides the ideal solution for quickly and easily creating mobile app designs and prototypes that focus on social activities and multimedia applications. It features 60 iPhone 6 compatible app screens, and it is intended to be used with Photoshop C5+ and Sketch.
The social activity feed category alone features 11 easily customizable screens, and you will also find a comprehensive selection of vector shapes.
Icons and Fonts
Icons Responsive
With a library consisting of more than 1000 icons and counting, Icons Responsive is an excellent resource to have in your designer’s toolkit. These unique items are responsive, and they are also pixel-perfect and easily scalable. The icons come in sizes ranging from 16×16 pixels to 128×128 pixels, and in outline, flat filled, and round container styles.
Since the icons are presented in vector format, they can easily be edited and scaled.
TrueSketch Hand-Drawn Fonts with Ornaments
TrueSketch is an extremely practical font that can be fun to work with. It can be used in digital design projects or in print designs, or used to emphasize a brand. This multilingual font comes with italics, as well as with a number of stylistic alternatives, and a complementing symbol font is included as a bonus.
Choose between desktop and webfont, Ebook, and App and Server licenses.
Conclusion
All of the products and services that are listed here are top quality. Whether you are looking for a premium theme, an app, website, or page building solution, or design resources and services, you won’t make a bad choice no matter what you might select. Comparisons can be close, so you will probably be wanting to look into one or more of these selections more closely before making a final choice.
Whether you see something you want or you don’t, we would like to have your comments, so we can continue to offer the very best recommendations in our future listings.