20 Tools For The Freelance Designer On A Shoestring Budget
In your career as a freelance designer you’ll probably use tens, if not hundreds, of different tools to perform all the tasks needed to run your business. From image editors to accounting apps to text editors. There’s no way I could list all the tools available in one post, and if I did they would range from being completely free to costing an arm and a leg. So I thought I’d focus on the least expensive ones.
All these tools and services are either free or pretty cheap, considering what can be done with them, and can be great replacements to the more expensive ones we’re used to. The ones on this list probably won’t break the bank! :)
Image Editors ↓
Of course nothing’s gonna replace Photoshop, but you can do a lot with PixelMator, Gimp or even SplashUp, a web-based app.
PixelMator
Gimp
SplashUp
Feedback And Usability Testing ↓
Getting feedback on your designs is essential, no need to ask friends and family (you’d probably get the ‘looks good‘ type of answers anyway). Instead you can use services like Concept Feedback, FeedbackArmy and Five Second Test.
Concept Feedback
Five Second Test
Feedback Army
Color Tools ↓
My 2 favorites: Colour Lovers and Adobe Kuler. They’re both free.
Colour Lovers
Adobe Kuler
Billing, Invoicing And Time-Tracking ↓
I’m a hardcore Freshbooks fan, but Invoice Machine and Billings are awesome too! And very inexpensive.
Freshbooks Invoicing
Invoice Machine
Billings 3
Cross-Browser Compatibility ↓
When you design websites you need to make sure everything looks good in different browsers (die IE6!). I personally chose to install Parallels to run Windows and test in Internet Explorer, but services like Litmus App, or even the free BrowserShots, are great for checking your sites in different browsers.
Litmus App
BrowserShots
Parallels
Local Testing ↓
Mamp is awesome! Use it to setup a local test environment. A must have for coding and testing without affecting a live site. There’s a free and a pro version.
Mamp
Coding & Programming ↓
My favorite text editor is TextWrangler, but I’ve tried TextMate and NotePad+ before and they’re both really good! And cheap!
Text Wrangler
NotePad+
Text Mate
Images and Photos ↓
Whether you’re looking for inspiration or for some images to use in your designs, Flickr and DeviantART are 2 must-use websites. Make sure you check the licenses before using any images you find on those sites.
Flickr
DeviantArt
Your Turn To Talk
I’m curious to know what tools you use as a freelance designer. Are you just starting out or you’ve been freelancing for a while? And when your freelance business started to take off, did you buy more expensive tools, or you just stuck with what you had? Let us know in the comment section! :)
About the author:
Jon Phillips is the founder and owner of SpyreStudios and the co-founder of MediaLoot. Jon is a designer, developer, typography lover and musician.
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August 10th, 2009
Great article. A freelance on a budget is me. I use Pixelmator, Coda, Invoice Machine and CMS platforms. When on a PC I use Filezilla and Notepad ++
August 10th, 2009
There are at least three tools here I had never seen, but will check out right away. I guess Aviary could have been added to the list. I sometimes use it for a quick edit of screenshots, or other graphics. Very easy to use and free.
August 10th, 2009
Some apps I never heard of. Great list.
Another great Browser testing site is http://www.xenocode.com/. It is is only for Windows… but it can run IE6 on vista!
August 10th, 2009
Coda, Espresso, and CSSEdit are incredible coding programs. I use billable for billing.
August 10th, 2009
Great list thnaks for share!
August 10th, 2009
I’m interesting in starting some freelance work, and really appreciate that you compiled this list of inexpensive (and free!) resources. I know about deviantart and flickr and think they’re great, but I hadn’t heard of the rest of the resources. Thanks.
August 10th, 2009
I also strongly recommend Coda – it’s a bit more expensive (will run you around $100), but I absolutely love it (probably more than I do TextMate, admittedly).
Also, iClockr for keeping track of how many hours I put into a project (regardless of whether its flat-rate or hourly, I find that keeping track of how much time is spent on projects is invaluable).
August 10th, 2009
Great resources! There were many I never heard of before, and I’m cheap. :)
August 10th, 2009
Awesome selection, reminded me of a couple of sites I need to register on!
August 10th, 2009
I would also like to add lessaccounting. I have been using them for a while and they are quite good.
August 11th, 2009
Hi there i see you forgot http://www.sxc.hu/
it is the best free stock foto site that i have found on the net, i have done a lot of webdesigning on the basis of the photos there.
August 11th, 2009
Great tools!Thanks for sharing.
August 11th, 2009
Thanks for the list, it was right on time. I was about to start searching for some tools you’ve listed and found all I needed here. Giving it thumbs up in Stumble also.
August 11th, 2009
Brilliant list, thanks Jon!
August 11th, 2009
I am a proud user of Gimp and notepad++
August 11th, 2009
If you are a freelance designer with a tight budget, let me introduce CurdBee (http://curdbee.com) for invoicing. We are a simple, solid invoicing application specially designed for freelancers and small businesses. We inspired to build it to scratch our own itch, after being dissatisfied with the restrictions of other invoicing solutions. Later, we realized it could help many other freelancers like us – so we’ve launched it as a totally FREE application.
We offers unlimited invoices, clients, multiple currencies and PayPal/Google Checkout integration. If you need extra customizations, security, modules such as estimates & recurring invoices, you can upgrade your plan to PRO version, which would cost you only $5 per month.
So don’t waste your hard earned money for invoicing – be wise and consider using CurdBee.
August 11th, 2009
TimeXchange.net is less than a buck/week and lets freelancers can enable collaborative reporting of time with other freelancers and clients.
You can check it out at http://www.timeXchange.net
August 11th, 2009
Thanks! Very useful stuff. Here’s the site I use most often for free images: http://www.morguefile.com
I like the lightboxes and find there’s less noise than with flickr.
August 11th, 2009
Many of our time tracking and billing clients are freelance designers and freelancers. They use our free version which accommodates for one user.
August 11th, 2009
Great list. A lot of resources I have not heard of but need to checkout. The tool I need the most is a Windows version of isMamp to setup a local test environment.
August 11th, 2009
Aptana Studio is an awesome, free IDE with way too many useful features
to list here…
August 11th, 2009
This should absolutely have made this great list: VirtualBox. It’s great for running multiple OS’s.
August 12th, 2009
They are all very useful tools..
August 12th, 2009
Great list ! i discover new tools as Litmus App. Very useful, Thanks!
August 12th, 2009
Wow there’s some programs on this list that i’ve never even heard of! I’ll probably try a few of these out, though I love kuler and i’m not sure i can be pulled away from it, even by colour lovers!
Thanks for the list, looks like it could be really useful!
August 12th, 2009
Being a freelance web designer/developer I am using couple of services from the above list and would recommend them for anyone with similar needs,
Adobe Kular – If you are looking for colors and combinations this is really cool.
Litmus – It has saved more hours which I spent on doing browser compatibility before I found this. Can you reduce the price? Please…
CurdBee (in comments) – Awesome app for sending invoices online. I am saving both my money and time thanks to this app.
SXC.hu – Don’t pay for Stockphotos before trying this one. You’ll feel sorry for yourself if you do so :)
August 12th, 2009
Thanks for thinking of FreshBooks when you made this list, Jon. Thanks even more for being a hardcore fan : )
Rayanne Langdon — Queen of Hearts, FreshBooks.com
August 12th, 2009
What a brilliant selection! Thanks a million, this is really handy.
August 12th, 2009
Very nice list, thanks for sharing.
August 13th, 2009
I have never heard of most of these amazing tools – I am glad the weekend is right around the corner – I will be checking them out for sure.
August 13th, 2009
Great article. Excelent freeware tools to designer´s.
Thanks!
August 13th, 2009
There is a neat little desktop tool called Fanurio http://www.fanuriotimetracking.com . I love it! You can try it for free too. You can just click to start, pause it, etc and you can do nifty reports. I use it to track the time I spend on client projects.
Even though I only bill hourly for consulting projects, it helps me to see how much time I’m spending to make sure my rates are in line. With Fanurio you can customize invoice templates using your own layouts and export them to HTML or PDF.
August 14th, 2009
I think it is great that you mentioned Gimp. It is a great program, especially for those of us venturing out into the linux world and using distros like ubuntu.
I would also suggest freelancers take a look at Intervals, a web-based time/task/project tracking app that handles freelancing workflow end-to-end.
August 15th, 2009
Man, I’ve been looking for something like Concept Feedback forever, so I’m glad you mentioned it. I would like to second adding Coda, it’s much better priced than Dreamweaver, lighter weight, and is optimized for mac. Also in terms of social networking for freelancers, behance.net is the bomb.
August 16th, 2009
gimp is awesome!
August 16th, 2009
I recommend Expono.com as a good service to host images and illustrations. They are in several languages and they have a lot of storage capacity.
August 17th, 2009
Hi!
Great article. Your article is very impressive. This is good source of money so it was great to went through your site.
Good Day
August 17th, 2009
IE Tester is a great tool. http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
It’s browser that has a few IE versions in it and you can open different versions in tabs.
August 17th, 2009
I’m using E – TextEditor which is a copy of TextMate for Windows.
It use TextMate’s themes and snippets.
This is a very powerfull and easy to use editor.
You can try it at http://www.e-texteditor.com/ and buy it for $34.95 or 26.23€.
August 18th, 2009
Great list! Some very nice programs there. For invoicing, I use CurdBee, which is a lovely free invoicing app.
August 18th, 2009
Smultron is as well a nice free text editor.
Nice list thanks !
August 19th, 2009
I’m a huge fan of GIMP. I’ve found that it can do everything I need for designing anything on the Web. And you can’t beat the pricetag of FREE, since it’s open-source.
August 19th, 2009
Real’ nice post with a lot of resourceful websites and apps! Bookmarked! Commenters added great tools too.. maybe you should add them to your [soon to be, updated] list..!
August 19th, 2009
You didn’t mention aviary.com , it helps when Im away from my dearest illustrator.
August 21st, 2009
Very usefull list!
“The tool I need the most is a Windows version of is Mamp to setup a local test environment.” #Kevin
Check out XAMPP, it will do the trick: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
August 22nd, 2009
This is a great list thank you for the post. So many opportunities.
August 23rd, 2009
Good list. Another free decent text editor for Windoze is Rj TextEd. Rj TextEd.
August 24th, 2009
Great list of tools. I also use free onscreen ruler by Delphi. It measures screen in pixels. I don’t create websites, but elearning. Surely website people might find this handy too, though. There are a bunch of free ones out there, besides just Delphi though.
Thanks,
Michele
August 26th, 2009
A handy list. I use Open Office, an excellent alternative to Word and Topstyle, a CSS/HTML code editor which may be better or comparable to Dreamweaver.
August 27th, 2009
Brilliant lists! Thanks a lot!
August 27th, 2009
I recently switched from Freshbooks to Ballparkapp.com for my estimating and invoicing. I found it to be alot cleaner and it doesn’t force me to have only a certain amount of clients on my account. The price is great and they have a free version as well. I would also add two free sites to this list for high quality free stock.
1. http://www.photoxpress.com/ for excellent high quality stock photography and
2. http://freestocktextures.com/ for awesome free stock textures.
August 27th, 2009
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Vim and Emacs editors. I personally use vim for all my coding tasks and find it very helpful because of its speed of use, scriptability and support for tremendous amount of programming languages.
The ‘rails’ plugin for vim is also priceless if you do some RoR coding.
August 27th, 2009
Beautifully designed site. Much cred.
August 29th, 2009
Great list! I just want to share morguefile (http://morguefile.com/) if you’re looking for some more photos. (doesn’t need signing up unlike http://sxc.hu/)
- programmers notepad (http://pnotepad.org) for your coding purposes and
- xampp (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html) if you dont want to use mamp. =)
August 30th, 2009
Thanks for the list.
I just want to add Inkscape as an open source version of Illustrator. Granted it is to Ai what GIMP is to Ps but it has a much better UI then GIMP and fits the bill for most jobs.
Also, Quickbooks offers a “lite” version if you have under 20 clients/vendors and best of all its FREE! :D
August 30th, 2009
Of course there is Firebug and the brilliant web developer tools for Firefox.
I use ‘view document size’, ‘resize window’ and ‘ruler’ quite often!
Dont know if you can still get it but Multiple Ie physically installs multiple versions for real world testing.
August 31st, 2009
Here is a good resource. Yu can’t beat free!
http://www.opensourcemac.org/
August 31st, 2009
For mass resizing and altering of images, I find FastStone Photo Resizer invaluable. I use it myself to fix up image libraries for clients before uploading, and I also give it to clients so that they can manage their own photos. It is very robust for a free program!
September 3rd, 2009
I recommend trying http://contentcube.com . It is like visual FTP. You can have all your originals organized online and then share proofs or deliverables with your clients. The service automatically generates previews of PSD and AI files too. Great presentation tool as well.
September 4th, 2009
I use litmus & deviantart a lot! Looking forward to checking out the usability testing tool, thanks.
Find firebug essential (surely everyone knows about it) but also use Rally (rallydev.com for project management) and LiveTimer (livetimer.com for time management).
Andy
September 4th, 2009
Nice list! Great to have a good selection from each category too! Another option instead of FreshBooks is FreeAgent, which is a bit cheaper and I’ve heard great things about it.
October 14th, 2009
Here’s a great tool for online photo storage and online video storage.
Zovue.com (http://www.zovue.com) is actually a social networking website that offers lots of unique features. I highly recommend that anyone storing photos or HD video online that they go and check it out.
November 1st, 2009
Wonderful articles wish to signup few of them mentioned above
December 11th, 2009
Thanks for sharing
now i got many new tools to use
=)
January 9th, 2010
An upcoming app that will make a good addition to the list is http://quoterobot.com.
March 19th, 2010
Hi Jon,
That’s a great sharing. I’m not much of a designer myself and I find your links useful. I will definitely look forward to reading more of your helpful information in the future. Cheers!
July 14th, 2010
Amazing tools!
Thanks 4 sharing
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