Web Hosting
WPengine
WP Engine is the best WordPress hosting available, a bit pricey but it’s the best in terms of uptime, speed and customer service, WPengine is where I host my main domains.
Note: you can’t host your emails on WPengine.
Web & Emails Hosting
Bluehost
Bluehost is a good affordable hosting service, I never experienced issues with them, I host my emails with Bluehost and also host some of my domains when my WPengine hosting plan is full if you are just starting out start with Bluehost as your hosting service.
WordPress Small Fixes & Maintenance
WPCURVE
Imagine never having another WordPress a headache…With 24/7 access to the world’s best developers for unlimited small jobs, WP Curve is very good small fixes and maintenance service for wordpress Co-Founded by my Friend Dan Norris.
Note: In 2016 or early 2017 Go Daddy bought WP Curve, now the service is not available in its previous form, if you will try to sign up with them it will lead you to Go Daddy wordpress maintenance service which I never tested but in general I had very bad hosting experience before with Go Daddy.
LANDING PAGE SOFTWARE
Leadpages
Leadpages generates leads and sales for your business on the web, I use it to build my landing pages and thank you pages to generate leads by offering a lead magnet and then leads the subscribers into my email autoresponder software, Leadpages is easy to use and now they allow you to integrate with Stripe for checkout.
LANDING PAGE SOFTWARE
Click funnels
ClickFunnels Gives You Everything You Need To Market, Sell and Deliver Your Products Online! another famous landing page software, checkout, membership and email autoresponder services, I never tried it and I hear mixed reviews about it but I think in general it’s a software that will save you so much time as it combines several services together.
Virtual Assistants Service
FancyHand
Fancy Hands offers virtual assistants to everyone. Great outsourcing service based in the US so you get to work with Americans for small tasks like research, bookings and many other small tasks, each task costs approximately $5 based on a monthly membership for a certain number of tasks, I use it for research, or to outsource some annoying tasks.
Freelancing & Outsourcing Design Service
99Designs
Find and work with talented freelance designers online, great design service based on a competition model, you post your design job like your logo, catalogue or book cover and many designers will compete on the prize money for the competition by submitting different designs, so you get to see many different designs and develop it with all the designers for certain period of time, then you pick the best design and get to finalise it with the same designer of the best design, I use it to get many different perspectives and ideas for one design then develop it with the same designer or with another designer from my team after I finalise the job on 99Designs, each completion or prize money has several levels, each level you get to work with different quality of designers, I highly recommend using this service to get several ideas and concepts for a new design.
Freelancing & Outsourcing Service
Upwork
Get more done with freelancers. Grow your business with the top freelancing website, it’s one of the best websites online to hire freelancers to work with you based on per hour or per project deals, Upwork is formerly Elance-oDesk so now this service is combining the former famous Elance and oDesk services that’s why it’s the best player in the outsourcing space, I use it to hire most of my freelancing teams like designers, copywriters, web developers and others.
Freelancing & Outsourcing Service
Fiverr
Another freelancing and outsourcing service based on $5 per task or it multiplies, it’s cool service to get some different ideas or execute a small specific task.
Email Marketing & Autoresponder Software
MailChimp
Email Marketing automation offers up to 2000 subscribers free plan, I used it but wasn’t so happy about it as it has many limitations, the best service I used in this space is Active Campaign which I suggest you start with however it’s more costly than MailChimp but it worth it, if you have 0 budget for an email marketing software then sign up for MailChimp but you will pay the price later once you cross the 2000 subscribers.
Projects & Tasks Management Software
Asana
Move work forward Asana is the easiest way for teams to track their work—and get results. It’s a must use use software to manage and track tasks with your team, if you send 100 emails to your team and they ignore 10 you will not be able to know that easily while with using Asana no one can skip any tasks or make any task as complete without you knowing about it, plus it’s a great service to separate your team work communication from the outside world communication, when I visit my asana account I know I’m going to see things related to my team only, while when I visit my email inbox I see a lot of different things so Asana is a great tool to make you focus on your team work, so you better shift your team communication to Asana, the great news is if you use the personal plan it’s free for your and your team.
Personal Finance App
Home budget
I use this app on daily basis to input all my expenses, income, budget and do transfers between my accounts and credit cards, it’s a great tool to budget and track your personal expenses and compare it monthly, I use it on my iPhone and I highly recommend it if you want to stay on top of your finances.
Cloud Strorage & File Sharing Service
Dropbox
The leading Cloud File Sharing and Storage Service, all my hard drives on my computers are syncing with Dropbox so I don’t have to worry about losing any data plus it allows me to access my data from any computer or any phone worldwide, also I use it to share large or small folders and files with my teams, once I upload anything to the shared folders my team receives it automatically while it’s still accessible from my drive or from the cloud, Dropbox is a must use service for file sharing and data backup.
LANDING PAGE SOFTWARE
Google Docs, Sheets and Slides
Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides are a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation program respectively, all part of a free, web-based software office suite offered by Google within its Google Drive service. The three apps are available as web applications, and as mobile apps for Android and iOS. The apps are compatible with Microsoft Office file formats, I use Google Sheets for hosting live excel sheets so me and my team can reach and update easily in a live time I also use Google Docs to update some word documents live, this service provides great access, usually I save the links to the files either in an asana task or in Evernote, you can easily control the accessibility of the files in terms of edit or view permissions.
LANDING PAGE SOFTWARE
WhatsApp Messenger is a freeware and cross-platform instant messaging service for smartphones. It uses the Internet to make voice calls, one to one video calls; send text messages, images, GIF, videos, documents, user location, audio files, phone contacts and voice notes.
This app is the core of my communication with my team offline and online because it’s way easier to communicate via text and easier to communicate via voice messages than text or emails, combining WhatsApp for fast communication and Asana for tasks tracking is so powerful, efficient and effective. Also now it’s available on Mac & PC in case you want to copy paste some data from your computer or images or if you feel better communicating through your laptop instead of your mobile.
LANDING PAGE SOFTWARE
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS), and what I use for all my blogs or websites because it’s easy to control, edit and to add new customized features or plugins.
LANDING PAGE SOFTWARE
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a freemium web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, that’s what I use to track the traffic of my websites.
Audio Books Store
Audible
The only service that I use to buy and listen to Audio Books, in the last few years I listened to over 400 books, usually, I use the app to listen to Audio Books in the car, Audio Books have transformed my life and I think it’s the most efficient way to consume books.
Social Media Management Platform
Buffer
Me and my team share and schedule content to be buffered or published to my different social media platforms using buffer, this app will save you lot’s of time and effort, they have a free plan up to 5 social media accounts and then they have several paid versions of the app, it’s powerful as you can plan ahead how many times a day or a week and at what several times exactly you want to publish to each of your social media accounts and once you do that then later one whenever you decide to publish your post, you select which social media account you want to publish to and then it will be planned to be published based on times that you want to publish for each one of your social media accounts.
Travel Fare Aggregator & Metasearch Service
Skyscanner
Skyscanner is a travel fare aggregator website and travel metasearch engine, this app is what I use to book 95% of my flights around the world, the app is powerful as it gives you the most affordable prices and guaranteed better than the prices of your travel agent 99% of the time, it provides you with more details like the airline type, the number of hours for each flight or connections, how many stops and much more so you can compare based on the dates and destinations that you have input in the app what’s the best deal or shortest flight that works for you.
Hotel & Travel Fare Aggregator & Metasearch Service
Booking.com
What I use to reserve 80% of my hotel bookings around the world.
Transportation Service
UBER
What I use as Taxi or some call it private car transportation around the world, Uber is much safer than any normal Taxi when you are in a city that you don’t know as each driver is verified by the service plus you don’t need to carry cash or deal with coins and change as you pay in advance via the app which is linked to your credit card plus it will help you know how long it will take you to reach your destination before even stepping in the car, and usually they have much better cars than the Taxi cars at any city and much better rates.
Food Delivery Service
UBER EATS
Another genius service by Uber Technologies, Uber Eats is what I use to order 80% of my delivery food that I would like to order from home or even when I’m away in a different city around the world in case the service is available in that city, it’s very convenient to order through the app, choose the type of food that you like, the restaurant that you prefer and customise your food order the way you like, it’s very fast and efficient and the app will show you the stage of your food delivery from food preparation to where is your driver currently located.
Travel, Booking & Reviews Service
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is what I use to research the places and landmarks that I should see or visit at any new city that I visit based on the pictures, reviews, and ratings for each place, some people also use it to book certain city tours or other services.
Short-Term Home & Vacation Rentals
Airbnb
Airbnb is a short-term lodging service that includes vacation rentals, apartment rentals, homestays, hostel beds, or hotel rooms until now I never used Airbnb but it’s the current market leader in this space if you want to save money renting temporary apartments or sharing temporary apartments with others.
Telecommunications Service
Skype
Free Audio & Video Calls over the internet, I use Skype for the video calls with the interviewees of my TV Show Be Efficient Tv, also to communicate with my team or new applicants if that requires a call.
Time & Location Tracking Service
Hubstaff
Web-Based Time Tracking Software that I use to track Screenshots, Activity, Invoicing, and reporting of my team online and also I use it to track the time and location for my offline team, what’s unique about this time tracking service it’s allowing you to track location as well through GPS.
Notes Software
Evernote
The king of notes is Evernote, I use it for all my notes, also I use it to upload all my pictures and documents to it and I add titles to them so I can find them easily, you can forward emails to it to be saved as notes, you can record audio notes, you can integrate it with multiple different apps or social media platforms to record all pictures, notes or posts from them.
Snap & Mark-Up Software
Skitch
I use this simple tool on my Mac mainly and sometimes on my iPhone to snap pictures, crop them or mark them up then share them or save them.
Photo Collages and Slideshows
Diptic
Simple app that I use on my iPhone to add 2-4 pictures inside one picture.
Online Calorie Counter and Diet Plan
Myfitnesspal
Great to track calories and to understand food calories in depth, I used it for a while then stopped using it after I had a general idea about the calories of each food item, highly recommended.
Online Payment System
Paypal
Paypal provides you with a fast, easy and secure way to send and receive money online, I use it to pay some of my team members and to receive payment from clients.
Integration Software
Zapier
Zapier makes it easy to automate tasks between web apps and integrate apps, I use it to automate some tasks or actions between several apps, example when someone books an appointment on my appointment booking software his name and email will be added automatically to my email marketing software.
Video Hosting & Publishing Platform
Vimeo
I use it to host my any video that I want to lock and then to be viewed on an only certain website, it’s great functionality for membership sites or digital courses, it also allows you to customize how the video look and the video control buttons.
Mac Cleaner App
Clean my mac
One day I was stuck with full drive on my Mac and I found this service, after using it immediately it cleared for me more than 80 GB, is eight zero GB, it’s great to clear unwanted files, cookies files, delete apps, unwanted emails, in conclusion, it will make your Mac faster, lighter and will reduce your drive storage. Also will show you how much Memory is left in real time based on the programs that you opened on your Mac so you can close some of them to improve your Mac performance.
Facebook Messenger Bot App
ManyChat
This software can be used to create Facebook Messenger bots, I never used it until now.
Payoneer
I use Payoneer to create USD, EUR, GBP & JPY Bank Accounts, so you can receive payment from Stripe or Amazon or other payment gateways that transfer money only to USD, EUR, GBP & JPY Bank Accounts.
