Probably going to regret this post because it's just itching for a dumpster fire of self promotion disguised as actual tooling talk, but whatever I'm going for it. I'm spending far more each month than I should be for various tools, and using even more freemium tools, and I have opinions on each. Thought it might be interesting to hear from others what you're using and what you've found so far that's worth it for you. In no particular order: \- Canva - one of the few pieces of software I mostly-gladly pay for. It's been such a help for me in the content game, graphics, and all kinds of editing for personal and professional projects. It's like powerpoint and photoshop had a baby. Big fan. \- Stripe - does this count? I feel like there's not much option in this category but it just works for payments and I've used it long enough professionally that I just trust that I'll get what I need out of it. It is what it is, I don't have strong opinions about it other than I take it for granted. \- Calendly - just finally upgraded to a paid account and seems worth it for the ease of use and just filling a clear need. It's been a bit buggy, though, and I'm not sure what to think about that. Beyond that it's been a huge upgrade that I should have taken the plunge on sooner because coordinating calendars is just a waste of everyone's time. \- Adobe Creative Cloud - I really want to cancel this and if I ever bring myself to learn Davinci Resolve I probably will, but all of my content is edited on premiere pro and having acrobat and other crap just comes in clutch too often. Just sucks I have to "cancel" every year just to make it somewhat affordable. \- Storyblocks - another site I want to cancel that provides b reel, images, special effects/edits, music and sound fx that I use JUST enough to keep it going. I would say ChatGPT and Gemini are really close to making this one obsolete, but I keep it for now because it's just easier than prompt hunting for what I want sometimes. \- ChatGPT - I've fallen into a groove where I'm using this less and less in favor of Gemini, but it continues to be helpful with grunt work and it's my default for helping craft prompts for other tools, funny enough. If the cost went up I might actually kill this at some point, but hoping to get my hands on Sora soon. \- Gemini - This just has more personality than ChatGPT and I love it for creative work and deep research. Context seems really good too these days and I've become impressed with the image generation along with Veo/Flow, but with all the Sora content popping off I'm wondering if it'll keep up. \- Cursor - My champion, even if the pricing drives me crazy, I don't know where I'd be were it not for this tool. It's incredible and it took my production speed to another level. Easily the most valuable tool I use. \- Bolt dot new - I paid for a year so I'll have it for a while more, but I like it for first prompt kinda creative work, but it feels like it's only gotten worse lately and that's not acceptable. I have one project still on there that after I peel it off I'm not sure if I'll go back to this. I used to advocate bigly for them, but feels like they've made a number of crappy decisions and now I'm not so sure how I feel. Maybe I'll crawl back someday. \- Supabase - database as a service. It just works for me. I wish I had tried others before going all in on them, but so far it's done what I needed it to do. I don't particularly care about their pricing model and the seeming lack of transparency, but overall I can't complain too much because this is a critical piece of my business riding on them. \- Linkedin - I guess I should include this because I use it so much, but this feels like a hostage situation at this point. I had zero problems growing until I went with their paid plan and ever since then it feels like I'm stuck in their amateur hour extortion attempts. \- Zoom - I pay for pro but I use google meet for just about everything. Maybe I need to wire my calendly up with it and start taking advantage, but I have a weird relationship with zoom. Doesn't feel worth it, but maybe it is and I just don't use it right. \- G-Suite - I guess I have to include this, but it's so cheap it feels like peanuts and a ticket to ride. No complaints, you know what you're dealing with here and just kinda take it. It works. Fine. \- Notion - People love it. I like the idea of it more than my chaotic brain can actually take advantage of it. I think I am a paying customer but I never use it anymore. I feel like it's such a capable tool that many use to great ends, but I just can't. Seems a shame, but I've got enough other crap to worry about. Freemium/Open Source tools: \- Loom - I just signed up for this reluctantly and I hate that I like it. It's just easy to use and share stuff and I have no idea why I resist it. Maybe because I use so much other tooling it just makes me sad nothing else quite handles things as well as it does. \- Supademo - This is one I just discovered this week actually and I'm in love. I assumed to be able to throw guided demos and such on my site that I'd have to cough up a bunch of money, but no, their free tier is excellent and like Resend if I end up having to pay for this at some point I'll do it gladly because it seems great so far. Slight learning curve, but otherwise slick tool and I'm hoping it actually helps with landing page conversions, I guess that's TBD. \- Resend - I don't actually pay for this, which is wild, but it's an awesome tool for emailing based on application triggers and I'm probably going to reach a point where I have to pay them something, and I'll be glad to because it's been a big unlock for me. \- OBS Studio - This has been my go-to for streaming video and screen recording since forever. Great open source tool that has a bit of a learning curve, but it's great and I use it often.