Every freelancer has certain apps they use in their day-to-day business operations. Developers, especially, have to keep a tool belt full of useful apps that touch multiple areas in development, design, client management and billing.
It’s important not to let your apps rule your working life. If it’s not quick enough, crashes all the time and is too pricey, perhaps you should think about switching to something else.
I’ve tried lots of different apps over the course of my freelancing career, but have only found a few that really speed up my workflow, are inexpensive and intuitive. What are these great apps?
I’ll say this right now–I hate Adobe products. They’re overpriced, bloated, very buggy and their customer service stinks.
That being said, there really is no good alternative to Photoshop that I’ve been able to find. I’ve tried a couple of other alternatives:
Why does a developer even need Photoshop? If you’re a backend programmer, you can easily get away without having Photoshop and using one of the free alternatives for the occasional image edit.
But, if you specialize in front-end development, like XHTML and CSS, you have to have a powerful image editor to cut up your clients’ PSDs and optimize the images for the web.
After I dropped Adobe Dreamweaver, I tried out several all-in-one development apps, but I really liked Coda the best. It comes with the FTP program, Transmit, built right into it and handles all development file extensions, so you no longer need a ton of applications open when coding. Plus, it’s pretty snappy and takes up little computer resources.
The perfect app to send estimates, track time and bill your clients with. I prefer this app over Freshbooks, a similar online-based app, because it stays on my machine, backs itself up and has a one-time fee of $30, versus a $20 a month fee and limited clients on Freshbooks. I have more control over the way my invoices and estimates look and what information is included in them.
I also love how they include the timer in your top task bar, which allows you to start or stop and quickly move between open projects and clients. It also runs great reports, which allowed me to file my taxes quickly and painlessly.
A freelancer needs to be available to clients in as many ways as possible–but there are over ten instant messenger companies! To have all of these open at once would kill your computer–and your productivity.
Adium is a free instant messenger app that has 15 of the most popular chat clients integrated in it. You can have as many accounts signed in as you want, and they all display nicely in one buddy list.
Skype is probably the most popular, and useful, way of communicating with clients and doing business. It includes a regular instant messenger, screen sharing and video and audio chat. Calls to any Skype user anywhere in the world are free.
Freelancer…meet “Mega App”. While the iPhone itself isn’t technically an app (it’s a device), it carries lots of useful apps I can use while on the road or away from my desk to help clients.
Some of these useful apps include:
An awesome free app from Apache, XAMPP allows you to set up a local testing server, so you can view your websites without having to upload them to an actual server. Combined with Firebug in Firefox or Chrome, this speeds up development time exponentially.
SnapNDrag allows you to take screenshots by selection, by window or the whole screen. This app has been super useful on more than one occasion. As a matter of fact, this app took all the screenshots on this post!
Do you have an app you consider necessary to your business? What is it?
My original post was published on FreelanceFolder
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Hi Amber,
I need absolutely Aptana Studio (for code developing) and Inkscape (for vector drawing): both are complete and easy to use and both are free!
Wish I had a list for Windows xD
I just use Notepad++ (with the FTP plugin) for coding and Photoshop for images.. That’s it >_> don’t need the other stuff
I don’t develop on windows so I don’t know any except Netbeans, which Nikita uses
haha you can get a really good used mac that’s like only a few months old for $500 with 3b of ram, 500 gb of space. we have mac retailers here that sell awesome used macs, can also find on ebay.I’m getting ready to sell my macbook and they hold their prices well too, so you can get your money back for a new one in a year 
Some good programs on there, how about Things for making to do lists etc? http://culturedcode.com/things/
Apart from that I would probably also say that people should have some kind of Twitter application to help network, although that can be a big distraction during the day sometimes too
Yea some days I feel like my business is about tweeting
“Every Freelance Developer” doesn’t own a Mac!
But they should…that was going to be the 9th “app”
That is a great list… thanks for sharing a bit about your tool set!
Quick question, I use MAMP (http://www.mamp.info) as my local virtual host client. How does XAMPP compare and why do you prefer it?
They are basically the same thing with XAMPP a bit more open source and no pay version required. One note in the latest 1.7.2a release is that if you have a case sensitive disk on Mac, you will run into some issues as links in the program point to both XAMPP and xampp. Simple fix is to make an alias in the Apps folder that points one to the other.
Have you tried using Pixel?
http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=12
No I haven’t. I tried the link, but it says it’s broken.
Great list, most def going to pick up SnapNdrag later today.
May I ask what your reasons were for dropping Dreamweaver?
Dreamweaver was slow, buggy and you could only use the ftp one site at a time….plus clients were assuming I used the WYSIWYG editor and it was looking not so good
For those crazy people still stuck on Windows
Pidgin multi-IM client (open source)
http://www.pidgin.im/
WAMP server
http://www.wampserver.com
fireshot screen grabber for firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5648
Codelobster with Joomla, Drupal, jquery, smarty, wordpress, and code igniter code hinting (development software)
http://www.codelobster.com/
Winmerge (open source) text file merging and comparing software
http://winmerge.org/
Winscp (open source) – ftp, sftp, scp client for windows
http://winscp.net/
and finally, the greatest tool ever invented for frontend web dev. (probably works on mac?)
Web Developer toolbar for firefox
http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
Cheers!
~Zachariah
Thanks, this is a useful list. I’ve been meaning to check some of these out and it’s great to hear someone else’s thoughts on them.
For windows users there is something built in called Snippit.
AWESOME for grabbing screenshots of a selected area. I suggest adding it to your quick launch.
Dropbox and evernote are some great apps as well.
Snapz pro x for screenshots, takes quicktime movies.
The list could go on.
Quicksilver… can’t live without it
Remember The Milk… todo list manager
Evernote… second brain
Jott… transcribe audio notes for RTM, Evernote, Google Calendar, etc.
TextMate… very powerful text editor
I personally user MAMP instead of XAMPP
Why do you use MAMP instead of XAMPP?
i’ve used MAMP for years… never looked into XAMPP because MAMP has worked flawlessly and always met me needs.
You are brilliant Amber, thanks!
http://www.macrabbit.com/cssedit/
I’m telling You, once you start using it You’ll never go back!
It’s the only piece of software I cry over not being able to use it at work as it’s a windows based company… And I sold my MacBook Pro in anticipation of the iTablet.. Which turned out to be nothing more than a giant glorified itouch..
:’( Newmacforjefffund? .com? ;D
I love Coda!
I know everyone has their own solution for time tracking and invoicing but I thought I’d mention one that I found to be the most useful since it’s a free: http://www.paymo.biz/
Billings is only for Macs. I tried a number of different systems but I found them all to have downsides. Paymo is free, tracks time, clients, projects and more. They also offer a desktop widget (for Mac or PC) which runs in your taskbar and makes time tracking that much easier. The invoicing system is great too and it allows you to create invoices as PDFs or even send the invoice as a permalink so clients can pay via Paypal.
Since I switch between Windows/Linux/Mac systems all the time, here’s the programs I use that work across all three:
Netbeans for major coding
jEdit for smaller edits and remote edits
Filezilla for file transfers
Pidgin/Adium for communication. Same client really.
Firefox w/firebug for debugging
Chrome for regular browsing
XAMPP for local edits and a VPS for actual stuff
Image apps but mostly OS specific like Paint.Net for windows, GIMP for Linux and still looking for a good Mac alternative.
I wonder why a Mac user need some app for taking screenshots, ’cause it’s all built-in and is available all the time at the tips of mac-junkie’s fingers
http://guides.macrumors.com/Taking_Screenshots_in_Mac_OS_X