The actual tools I use to run my online businesses — no fluff, no affiliate links - Let me know what you are using?

I run a couple of online businesses in Australia. One is a small business resource site monetised through referral partnerships, the other is a local services business. I've also built and sold sites in the financial education space over the years.

I see a lot of "what tools do you use" posts in here and the answers are always vague or people just list whatever's trending. So here's my actual stack — what I pay for, what's free, what's good, what's average, and what I'd ditch if something better came along.

Website & Hosting

WordPress on every site. Astra theme. I've tried plenty of others and keep coming back to Astra because it's light, fast, and doesn't fight you when you want to customise things.

Hosting depends on the site. Bluehost or Namecheap for the basic stuff that doesn't need to be bulletproof. WP Engine for anything that needs to perform — it's more expensive but the speed and support justify it on sites that actually make money.

For domains I use Namecheap. Cheap, simple, does the job.

Email Marketing

AWeber. I know everyone talks about Mailchimp or ConvertKit, but AWeber has been solid for me. Tags and automation are where the real power is — I don't send the same email to everyone on my list. If someone came in through an insurance tool, they get insurance content. If they came through a loan tool, they get loan content. People convert when you send them stuff they actually care about. Sounds obvious but most businesses just blast their entire list with the same generic email and wonder why nobody opens it. Have tried plenty of others more advanced, but never use most of the add ons.

SEO & Analytics

Google Search Console and GA4. Both free. Search Console tells me what Google actually thinks of my site. GA4 tells me what visitors are doing once they get there. I don't pay for any SEO tools at the moment — there's enough data in those two to keep you busy for years.

For programmatic SEO I use MPG (Multiple Pages Generator by Themeisle). Free plugin. It lets me generate thousands of location-based and industry-based landing pages from a CSV. If you're doing local SEO at scale, this is how you do it without losing your mind building pages one by one.

I often use https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/ and Ahrefs for tracking SEO projects.

Video

This is where it gets interesting. I use HeyGen to create AI avatar videos of myself. I record a base video, it clones my likeness, and I can produce dozens of variations without sitting in front of a camera every time. For the longer form talking-head content and editing, I use Camtasia — been around forever, premium product, does the job properly.

Opus Clip takes my long-form videos and automatically cuts them into shorts for YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. Saves hours.

Flickify which I very rarely see discussed handles slide-based videos — think explainer content where I don't need my face on screen.

Between HeyGen, Opus Clip, and Flickify I can push out close to 50 videos a month without a production team.

Social Media

Buffer for scheduling. Nothing fancy. I've tried a few others and Buffer is the least annoying. Posts go out, I don't have to think about it.

I also use manychat to reply to comments and capture leads.

AI

Claude. And it's not even close.

I've used ChatGPT, Gemini, and a ton of others. Claude is the best for writing, strategy, analysis, research, building out content frameworks, and basically anything that requires thinking. I run almost every part of my business through it — content plans, email sequences, technical builds, competitive analysis, you name it.

Where it falls short: image generation. It's genuinely bad at images. If I need graphics or visual content I go to Canva, but honestly even Canva is starting to feel like it's being overtaken and is now frustrating compared to the other better AI image generators.

Project Management & Planning

Notion. Everything lives in Notion — content calendars, project plans, SOPs, master business plans, the lot. The built-in AI is handy for quick tasks within documents. If my laptop caught fire tomorrow, Notion is the one login I'd need to rebuild everything.

Community

Skool. I use it to build a community around one of my sites. Free to join at the moment while I grow it. The interface is clean and it doesn't try to do too much. Once it hits critical mass I'll look at monetising it.

Lead Verification

This one's niche but if you're generating leads for partners — especially in finance or insurance — Twilio for SMS verification and TrustedForm for lead certificates. These prove your leads are real humans who actually opted in. If you're selling leads to anyone, having this infrastructure makes you look like a professional operation, not some bloke with a landing page.

File Management

cPanel for server stuff. FileZilla for FTP when I need to upload files directly. WP File Manager inside WordPress for quick edits. Not sexy, but necessary.

What I'd ditch

Honestly, nothing right now. Everything on this list earns its spot. If Canva keeps going the way it's going I might drop it entirely and just use AI-generated visuals once they stop looking like they were made by a robot having a stroke.

What I'd tell someone starting out

You don't need half of this on day one. Start with WordPress, AWeber or Mailchimp, Google Search Console, and Canva. That's enough to build, email, track, and design. Add tools as you hit problems, not before. Most people collect tools like Pokemon cards and never actually use them properly.

I have probably forgotten a bunch, but they are all the main ones. Hope it helps.

Would love to know what else different you guys are using that is different.