I’m a firm believer in dividing work smartly. So when someone else has a product, at the right price, that can give you more time to focus on the important stuff, it’s a win-win. When it’s cheap or free, the decision is even easier — you can try it and discard if it’s not useful!
Luckily in the context of building a web startup there are a plethora of tools available, but just staying aware of what’s out there can help you make better decisions about what to tackle yourself, and what to try to grab off the shelf.
Here are some tools that I have used personally (not in rank order, btw) in the last year:
Brainstorming / Mindmaps
1. mindmeister.com – great when you’re rambling off lots of ideas in lots of directions and you want to write them down and group them somewhere for later reference
Checking Names (yes, a decent, memorable, spellable, and pronounceable name can be helpful!)
2. nxdom.com – search recently expired domain name lists for names that start with or end with certain words
3. ud.com – checks domain names and popular social networks for reserved name availability all at once
Prototyping user interfaces
4. balsamiq.com – throw together screen concepts to help communicate your idea to others
Screen sharing, conferencing, feedback
5. vyew.com – great for getting feedback remotely . . vyew even lets you mark up a screen shot collaboratively
Project Planning and Story/Task tracking
6. Pivotal Tracker - Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize. Drag-and-drop prioritization and automatic velocity calculations to help you improve your estimates.
Usability testing
7. usertesting.com – cheap independent feedback on your web site which includes video-capture of user using the site and talking out-loud about their reactions.
Cross-browser,email testing
8. litmusapp.com – screenshots of a url in a laundry list of browsers, cross-email client testing too!
Build and keep in contact with your following
9. madmimi – build that initial e-mail list and keep in contact with a newsletter, or announcements
Price-scalable hosting
10. appengine – pay for what you use, for most apps it’s free until traction
Gathering feedback / mkt. research
11. survey.io – broad swath feedback on what people think of your product/value.
12. ask500people.com – poll general web population for opinion – i.e. – find out which logo people like better, etc
If there’s something you feel should be on the list and particularly if you have used it personally, please chime in!
There a number of tools here that I hadn’t heard of before, great post!
A couple of others out there are:
http://mockflow.com for web-based mockups
http://heroku.com for super cheap/free rails hosting and easy deployments to start out
Also check out http://braintrust.io for social collaboration within your startup.
It’s been said a million times, but google apps is one of the best deals going, free email/chat/calendar/docs.
Another tool for a/b testing and gathering market research feedback is PickFu.
Great list. Thanks for sharing.
Ycombinator comments can be found here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1229401
Thanks for the post and for the mention! I wrote a post similar to this one a little while ago. Check it! http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/10/30/tools/
Prototyping websites?
For getting ideas down, there’s paper. For interactive stuff, there’s HTML. (credit: 37signals, I believe)
http://collabedit.com for collaborative text editing
I made a similar (and longer) list specifically for web publishers: http://publisherapps.org
Also try http://www.browsethisforme.com for cross browser rendering testing. Neat looking service that works through email.
I would also add TweetMiner.net (http://tweetminer.net) in the “Build and keep in contact with your following” category.
One thing a startup can’t miss is on security or they might lose everything (reputation, confidence, etc).
For that, http://sucuri.net is pretty good (Freemium model)
Wow, AWESOME list of apps. Some I knew about, but most I did not. We’ll be adding them to cloudomatic this week
-jlb
http://www.olark.com for chatting with your early visitors to help understand the problems they run into and to sell your product.
For cross browser testing you can try http://crossbrowsertesting.com (we do live testing and screenshots)
We discovered sipgate team a while ago. It is a great virtual VoIP phone system for startups. Saves a lot of money & gives you unheard of collaborative features for voice just like google apps does for email. http://www.sipgate.com/team
With regard to Google App Engine, if you require simple database apps for your startup, you may want to check out iFreeTools Creator.
No need to signup for Google App Engine, download Python/Java SDKs and set-up the development environment, code you app and then uploading it to Google servers.
Just signup online using your Google Accounts and start creating customizable database apps online.
For targeted mailing list and business contacts for lead generation you can check out http://www.contactdb.com. they have an extensive collection of targeted contact list that any business would like to have.
Another app in the project management and invoicing sector is:
http://projectbubble.com
There is a free plan available.
I’d add a few:
http://xpenser.com/ – best expense tracking app I’ve found.
http://outright.com/ – simple accounting.
http://transfs.com/ – to get a good deal on a merchant account.
For project management and code hosting, you can add http://www.indefero.net you can use it for free for small private projects. You get Git and Subversion projects.
You should also checkout CurdBee for invoicing, which is totally free and doesn’t have any restriction on the number of invoices you can send.
Check : http://curdbee.com
Thanks for listing UD.com in your resource list. Just wanted to let you know of some upcoming developments.. we’re working on adding functionality to the Namecheck tool that will allow you to register available names.