Awesome

Awesome Side Project

Awesome Side Project is a curated collection of tools that make side project development much easier.

🎗 Support Side Project Kit, share a link to this page on Twitter:

The collection is split into 3 main parts:

• 👩‍💻 Build - resources that help building projects faster and with less effort;
• 🔁 Iterate - apps that allow iterating on projects faster and develop what really matters;
• 📦 Package - tools that make projects look cool and professional, and helpful while preparing for launch.

I faced these questions when worked on side projects over the last several years. During that time I tested, gave up on, searched again, and bookmarked plenty of tools that eventually helped me a lot! I hope you will find them helpful too. Good luck! 😉

✍️ How to Contribute

If you have found some great tool or app (😍), please, contribute to Side Project Kit collection. Simply submit a Pull Request with respect to our Contribution Guidelines 😎. We would love you to see your suggestions!

🔖 Table of Contents

• Build
  • Develop
    • Hosting
    • CI
    • Errors tracking
    • Backend
    • Headless CMSs
    • QA
    • Video and audio
    • Dev environment management
  • Design
    • Visual Prototyping
    • Graphic Assets
    • Graphic Design
  • Plan
    • Task management
    • Collaboration
  • Research
    • User research
    • Virtual whiteboard
• Iterate
  • Users tracking
  • Split tests
  • Link shorteners
• Package
  • Identity
    • Branding
    • Landing page
  • Reach
    • Email on custom domain
    • Email
    • Newsletter
  • Legal
    • Cookies
    • Terms of use, privacy policy
  • Finance
    • Payments
    • Banking
  • User support
    • Help center
    • Community
    • Chat

👩‍💻 Build

Develop

Hosting

• Github pages - free hosting for static sites.

  Pricing: Free.

• Vercel - an open serverless platform for static and hybrid applications.

  Pricing: free for individuals.

• Firebase hosting - fast and secure web hosting.

  Pricing: Free for storing up to 10GB and for transferring up to 360 MB/day.

• Netlify - platform for serverless functions and static websites deployments.

  Pricing: - up to 300 build minutes per month.

• Firebase functions - platform for serverless functions deployment.

  Pricing: Free for first 2M function calls every month.

• Cloudflare Pages - Cloudflare Pages is a JAMstack platform to collaborate and deploy websites.

  Pricing: - free plan includes up to 500 build per month.

• Zeabur: - a platform for deploying full stack apps and databases.

  Pricing: - free plan include 3 servcices and $5 credits per month.

CI

• Github actions - CI/CD workflow automations

  Pricing: up to 2K build minutes per month, free for open source.

• Azure DevOps - CI/CD for any platform

  Pricing: 1.8K minutes per month.

Errors tracking

• Rollbar - a cloud-based bug tracking and monitoring solution.

  Pricing: up to 25,000 error events monthly for free.

• Sentry - error tracking and performance monitoring.

  Pricing: up to 5K errors monthly for free.

• LogRocket - frontend monitoring and product analytics

  Pricing: up to 1K sessions monthly for free.

Backend

• Firebase - tools to get the project off the ground quick.

  Pricing: A bunch of things go for free, then "pay as you go" after reaching certain limits that are pretty generous.

• Supabase - open-source Firebase alternative relying on PostgreSQL instead of a NoSQL db.

  Pricing: A plenty of features included in Free plan.

• prisma.io - Node.js / Typescript ORM, migrations tool, visual database browser.

  Pricing: Free and open-source.

• Encore - Cloud Native Development Platform with code generation through static analysis. Built in CI/CD, databases, tracing, and secrets.

  Pricing: Free for hobby projects, paid plans for large scale commercial use.

• Hook0 - open-source webhook server to integrate into your project.

  Pricing: Free and open-source. SaaS version also has a free tier.

Headless CMSs

• Apisful - a cloud-based headless CMS.

  Pricing: All features are free. The free tier is limited by usage volumes.

QA

• Cypress - e2e testing framework and a dashboard.

  Pricing: Testing framework is free and open-source, dashboard includes up to 500 test results and 3 users for free.

• Cucumber - BDD testing framework and a dashboard.

  Pricing: Testing framework is free and open-source.

Video and Audio

• Daily - real-time video and audio APIs for developers.

  Pricing: up to 2K minutes monthly for free, and a startup program with $1k call credits and more.

• Video SDK - real-time video and audio API, Low latency live streaming, video on demand.

  Pricing: up to 10,000 build minutes per month for free, and and a startup program with 5 million minutes credits and free enterprise support plan.

• Loom: Record quick videos of your screen and cam. An essential tool for hybrid workplaces.

  Pricing: Up to 50 Creators Lite, 25 videos/person, 5 mins/video.

Dev environment management

• Daytona - The Open Source Dev Environment Manager.

  Pricing: Free.

Design

Visual prototyping

• Marvel - rapid prototyping tool.

  Pricing: 1 user and 1 project come for free.

• Invision - prototyping and wireframing tool.

  Pricing: free plan includes up to 2 docs and up to 10 users.

• Excalidraw - sketch and prototyping tool with minimalist hand-drawn design. It has a wide library of ready-to-use objects.

  Pricing: Free

Graphic assets

• Iconfinder - a search engine for icons and illustrations.

  Pricing: has a ton of free icons.

• Undraw - open source illustrations.

  Pricing: Free.

Graphic design

• Crello - animated graphic design.

  Pricing: 5 design downloads every month.

• Canva - a tool to create designs online.

  Pricing: has a pretty generous free plan.

• Screely - a tool to turn screenshots into browser mockups.

  Pricing: Free.

Plan

Task management

• Trello - Kanban task board.

  Pricing: Up to 10 boards for free.

• GitHub projects - project planning for developers.

  Pricing: Free.

• JIRA - Jira is a software application used for issue tracking and project management.

  Pricing: Up to 10 users for free.

• ClickUp - An all-rounded tool to handle projects and tasks.

  Pricing: Up to 100MB storage, unlimited tasks, memebers, 2FA for free.

Collaboration

• Slack - messaging app for work.

  Pricing: 10k searchable messages, 10 apps and integrations for free.

• Notion - The all-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

  Pricing: Collaborate with up to 5 guests for free.

• Google Meet - Real-time in-browser meetings by Google.

  Pricing: Up to 100 participants, up to 60 minutes per meeting for free.

• Taskade - Real-time task lists, mind maps, and calendars with built-in chat and video conferencing.

  Pricing: Free for teams. Collaborate with unlimited project editors and workspace members for free.

Research

User research

• Typeform - online forms and surveys with wide design options.

  Pricing: up 10 questions/typeform, 10 responses/month for free.

• Tally - Tally is a form builder that works like a doc.

  Pricing: 99% of Tally's features are available to all users for free and without limits.

Virtual whiteboard

• Miro - Miro is the online collaborative whiteboarding platform to work together, from brainstorming with digital sticky notes to planning.

  Pricing: up to 3 editable boards for free.

🔁 Iterate

Users tracking

• MixPanel - customer insights and analytics.

  Pricing: up to 100K monthly tracked users for free.

• Amplitude - Amplitude is a product analytics platform that helps businesses to track visitors with the help of collaborative analytics.

  Pricing: up to 10M actions per month.

• PostHog - Analytics with autocapture, session recordings, feature flags, heatmaps and more.

  Pricing: Up to 1M events per month for free, also has a self-hosted open-source version.

• Hotjar - behavior analytics and feedback data, has tools like Heatmaps, Session Recordings, Surveys, and an Incoming Feedback widget.

  Pricing: Capture up to 1,000 pageviews/heatmap, Manual data capture, Create 3 Heatmaps, Up to 300 Recordings, Create and store 3 Surveys & Incoming Feedback widgets.

• Smartlook - behavior analytics, has tools like Heatmaps, Session Recordings. Support both web and mobile applications.

  Pricing: Capture up to 1,500 sessions per month, 1 funnel analysis and 3 heatmaps.

Split tests

• Google Optimize - Optimize allows you to test variants of web pages and see how they perform against an objective that you specify. Optimize monitors the results of your experiment and tells you which variant is the leader.

  Pricing: up to 5 simultaneous experiments for free.

Link shorteners

• Kutt - open-source link shortener.

  Pricing: Free.

• Cuttly - URL shortener and analytics.

  Pricing: up to 3 branded domains for free.

• Short.io - Shorten, personalize, and share fully branded short URLs.

  Pricing - Free plan includes 5 custom domains and a total of 1000 Branded links.

📦 Package

Identity

Authentication

• MojoAuth - Easily offer passwordless authentication in your apps with MojoAuth.

  Pricing - All features including the live chat support are free.

• Clerk - Authentication and user management platform for React and Next.js.

  Pricing - Free plan includes 10,000 monthly active users, pre-built UI components, and custom domains.

Branding

• Google Domains - domain register by Google.

  Pricing: Free

• Namechk - domain and social handles checker tool.

  Pricing: Free

Landing page

• Unicorn platform - Drag & drop landing page builder for startups, mobile apps, and SaaS. 100% no-code.

  Pricing: 1 site, 10 blog posts, subdomain-only is on the free plan.

• Versoly - landing page builder for SaaS.

  Pricing: up to 3 sites with 3 pages per site, subdomain-only is on the free plan.

• Windframe - Drag and drop builder for Tailwind CSS websites.

  Pricing: 20 website exports on the free plan

Reach

Email on custom domain

• Yandex 360 for business - a set of tools for teamwork, including mail on custom domain.

  Pricing: up to 10GB of storage on the free plan.

• Zoho Mail - Zoho Mail Suite is a business - focused email service provider where you can add your own domain and create a custom and unique email.

  Pricing: Forever Free Plan includes Email hosting for single domain, up to five users, 5GB/User, 25MB attachment limit.

• Lark Suite: All your chats, meetings, calendars, docs, and emails in one place.

  Pricing: Free plan includes Unlimited video call minutes (up to 350 participants), 200GB cloud storage, 500GB email storage, Customizable workflows etc.

Email

• MailChimp - marketing automation platform and email marketing service.

  Pricing: free plan includes up to 2,000 contacts, 10,000 sends per month, daily send limit of 2,000, 1 audience.

• MailerLite - email marketing solution for all types of businesses.

  Pricing: 1000 subscribers, 12 000 emails per month.

• Mailgun - email service for developers.

  Pricing: 5K free emails for 3 months, then pay-as-you-go.

• EmailOctopus - easy to use and affordable email marketing platform.

  Pricing: Free plan includes up to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month.

• SendGrid: Email Delivery Service.

  Pricing: Send 100 emails/day forever, for free.

Newsletter

• Substack: Start a newsletter. Build your community. Make money from subscriptions. Publishing is free, with no limits. We only make money when you do.

  Pricing: Writers keep 90% of their revenue minus credit card fees (2-4%)

• Revue: Revue makes it easy for writers and publishers to send editorial newsletters — and get paid.

  Pricing: Revue charges only 5% of revenue + stripe charges if you start a paid newsletter.

Legal

Cookies

• Axeptio - Cookies consent management tool.

  Pricing: Up to 150k visitors per month for free.

• Cookiebot - CCPA, GDPR compliance tool.

  Pricing: Maximum 1 domain for free, with less than 100 subpages.

Terms of use, privacy policy

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Finance

Payments

• Paddle - payment processor serving as a merchant of record.

  Pricing (Ctrl + F: "Paddle Discount"): 5% + $.5

• PayPal - a way to send money, make an online payment, receive money or set up a merchant account.

  Pricing: 3.5% + 1.5% + $.049.

• Payoneer - a way to receive online payments.

  Pricing: 3% for credit card payments

Banking

• Wise - global business account.

  Pricing: .35% per transfer, incoming transactions are free.

• Revolut Business - borderless account for business finance.

  Pricing: up to 5 free local payments (.2 GBP outside the limit), 0 free international payments (3 GBP per each)

User support

Help center

• Notion - The all-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases. Has publicly shareable URLs feature, hence can be used as a wiki site.

  Pricing: Collaborate with up to 5 guests for free.

• DocsifyJs - a "magical" documentation site generator. Has addons and plugins.

  Pricing: Free and open-source.

Community

• Slack - messaging app for work, often used for hosting communities.

  Pricing: 10k searchable messages, 10 apps and integrations for free.

• Github discussions - GitHub Discussions is a collaborative communication forum for the community around an open source project.

  Pricing: Free.

• Discord - free voice, video, and text chat app that’s used by tens of millions of people to talk and hang out with their communities.

  Pricing: Discord is free to use, but Discord Nitro ($9.99 per month, or $99.99 per year) gets you bigger upload size limits, HD video for streaming and screen-sharing, animated avatars and custom emojis.

Chat

• Crisp chat - Provides realtime assistance with shared browsing and live chat. Crisp lets you co-browse with your customers without any other plugin than our live chat solution.

  Pricing: 2 seats, basic chat (Livechat, Team inbox, Mobile Apps, Notifications)