Tools & Resources
The platforms I actually run businesses on, rather than a list of everything that exists in each category.
Some of these I have used for years across several companies. Where I have written up a platform properly, including the parts that would put you off, the card links to that rather than straight to a signup page. One or two I am still forming a view on, and those are kept separate at the bottom.
The pages linked from here contain affiliate links, and I may earn a commission if you sign up through one. It costs you nothing and it has no bearing on what appears on this page or what those pages say. The last two entries carry no affiliate arrangement at all and are listed because I use them.
What I use
Automattic
The WordPress side of things: WordPress.com, Jetpack, Pressable, WooCommerce, Akismet, Sensei and WP Job Manager. Seven products under one company, which matters mainly because they are built to work together rather than merely coexist. Broken down individually on its own page.
Why I use Automattic toolsShopify
Two of my stores run on it, one carrying several thousand products. Hosting, payments, catalogue and checkout arrive as one decision instead of five. You give up control in exchange, and for most people that is the right trade.
Why I use ShopifySemrush
Keyword research, competitor visibility, site audits and rank tracking. I use it most for the unglamorous work: finding which pages have quietly lost position, and deciding whether a term is worth writing for at all. Expensive if you open it twice a month.
Why I use SemrushMake
The automation that joins everything else together. Around fifteen scenarios run sign-ups, billing, monthly reports and live site statistics across two marketplaces, most of them built by Claude through Make's own connector rather than by a developer. Learn how credits are counted before you build anything that loops.
Why I use MakeHolafly
Travel eSIM, used across seven countries so far without a failure. The whole point of working from a browser is that the browser has to work, which makes mobile data a business dependency rather than a convenience. Expensive if you are a light user, and the tethering cap is the number to check.
Why I use HolaflyNordVPN
Running a UK business from outside the UK means routinely hitting services that expect you to be in the UK. That, plus not handing your traffic to whatever network a hotel or airport happens to be running, is the practical case for it.
Why I use NordVPNWise
Multi-currency account and card. If you earn in one currency, live in another and pay suppliers in a third, the gap between this and a high street bank's rate stops being a rounding error fairly quickly.
Why I use WiseXero
Bookkeeping, invoicing, bank feeds and VAT. Accounting software is judged on one thing, which is whether your accountant complains at year end, and this is the category where paying for the established option is usually cheaper than not.
Why I use XeroIONOS
Where I buy and manage my domains, and a host I have used in the past. The registrar side is the part I still rely on, mostly because domains you do not control turn out to be somebody else's asset at the worst possible moment.
Why I use IONOSGoogle Workspace
Email, documents, storage and calls. The individual apps are all beatable. What is hard to beat is that they behave as one thing, and that a borrowed laptop is the same working environment as the one at home. No affiliate arrangement here, so this one earns me nothing.
Why I use Google WorkspaceClaude
Used daily for research, drafting, code and working through decisions. It is how a non-developer maintains a catalogue of several thousand products from a browser, which is either the most useful thing on this list or the most alarming, depending on your view. No affiliate arrangement here either.
Why I use ClaudeWatching, not recommending
Things I have looked at but not put real work through. Kept separate from the list above deliberately, because a recommendation from someone who has not used the product is not worth much and I would rather say so than blur the line.
Hynote AI
An AI note-taking and workspace tool aimed at organising research, meetings and half-formed ideas. The category is genuinely unsolved, which is why it is on my list. I have not run a project through it, so treat this as a pointer rather than an endorsement.
My write-up on Hynote AIWhat I have built with them
The tools are only half of it. The Operator's Library is the output side: courses and working tools built out of 23 years of running this kind of business, documented as I go.
Browse the Operator's Library