Designers and developers need all the advantages they can get in today’s competitive market. Whether you’re working for a Fortune 500 company, a hot new startup, or just freelancing for yourself, odds are that you use and need a variety of software. Not everyone can afford to spend exorbitant amounts of money on a tool they might only need once, so luckily, there are tons of free tools on the internet. The problem with free tools is that many of them are unreliable, and the good ones are hard to find…until now.
In this post, we’ve gone around and spent hours making the ultimate roundup, 63 of the best free online tools for designers and developers. Whether you’re formatting code, editing images, or having a virtual meeting, these tools will help you get the job done right, and hassle free.
Some more posts On free online tools that you might like :-
Bespin is a Mozilla Labs experiment on how to build an extensible Web code editor using HTML 5 technology.
Bland Text Generator – This handy tool helps you create dummy text for all your layout needs.
BrowserLab – Preview and test your web pages on leading browsers and operating systems – on demand.
Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl
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Carbonmade is a free online portfolio service without the hassle.
Closr.it – A zoomable widget for images.
Colorcombos was built to help web developers quickly select and test website color combinations.
Colorotate – Browse color palettes, or create your own. Adjust, mix and blend to your heart’s content.
Color Scheme Designer – Convenient and easy to use color scheme designer.
COLOURloversâ„¢ is a resource that monitors and influences color trends.
Test the look and functionality of any website on multiple browsers and operating systems.
CSSFly is a web 2.0 tool for easy editing websites direct and in real-time in your browser.
CleanCSS is a powerful CSS optimizer and formatter. Basically, it takes your CSS code and makes it cleaner and more concise.
CSS Typeset is an online CSS generator for text.
Curdbee is a free online billing & invoicing system.
Dabbleboard is an online collaboration application that’s centered around the whiteboard. With a new type of drawing interface that’s actually easy and fun to use, Dabbleboard gets out of your way and just lets you draw.
Whether you want a short URL or something big, Domainr helps you explore them all.
EmailTheWeb.com is the only web-based service that allows you to email any web page to any one.
Embedit allows for seamless embedding of files into your website.
This lookup allows you to quickly find the entity based on how it looks, e.g. like an < or the letter c.
Display content from other blogs at your website with just one simple html tag
Five second tests help you easily identify the most prominent elements of your user interfaces.
Font Burner is a website enhancement tool that makes it easy for you to add new fonts to your website.
Fontstruct allows you to build, download and share custom fonts.
Gazup! is the leading website for social file mirroring online. By using Gazup!, you’ll be able to upload files to multiple file hosts in one go thus saving you time and bandwidth.
This is online image converter website for free. It supports over 100 major image formats.
Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.
HTML-ipsum generates dummy HTML code to demonstrate various features, including lists and tables.
IconFinder allows you to search through 115,827 icons or browse 276 icon sets.
Iconza is a collection of free icons that can be colored and reduced in size to your taste.
iPlotz allows you to rapidly create clickable, navigable mockups and wireframes for prototyping websites and software applications.
JsUnit is a Unit Testing framework for client-side (in-browser) JavaScript.
Kuler is a web-hosted application for generating color themes that can inspire any project.
Load Impact is an online load testing service that lets you load test your website with just a few mouse clicks.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.
myFontbook is a free and easy way to browse your font collection.
net2ftp is an easy to use web based FTP client.
Photoshop.com is an online photo editing and sharing site.
pForm allows you to create a simple HTML form in a matter of seconds.
PHPAnywhere is an online PHP editor that allows you to edit PHP code from anywhere.
PicMarkr lets you to add custom watermark (image or text) to your images online and free. It is useful when you need to protect your copyrights or if you want to add commentsto your photos.
Picnik makes your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools.
Pict is a free and easy to use online image hoster.
Pingdom allows you to monitor your site’s uptime and responsiveness.
Pixlr lets you quickly edit your photos and do quick fixes without any hassle.
Posterous lets you post things online fast using email. You email us at post@posterous.com and we reply instantly with your new posterous blog.
This is a source code beautifier (source code formatter), similiar to indent.
PX to EM conversion made simple.
Show Document is a Net Meeting platform for instantaneous and spontaneous online meetings where people can work together on the same document at the same time.
Sikbox allows you to easily get code for a live search on your site.
Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a powerful editing tool and photo manager.
Templatr allows you to quickly generate rough and dirty web templates.
TestEverything allows you to do just that…test your site with a variety of tools, all in one.
Tynt Insight tracks what’s being copied off your site and automatically adds a link back to your content with every paste.
Typechart lets you flip through, preview and compare web typography while retrieving the CSS.
The Typetester is an online application for comparison of the fonts for the screen.
Verb is a user focused task management and sharing application.
ViewLikeUs allows you to view your site in various resolutions.
The w3c validator allows you to valide your markup to ensure properly formed code.
Web Form Factory is an open source web form generator which automatically generates the necessary backend code to tie your form to a database.
WhatTheFont is a font identification tool that identifies fonts based upon uploaded images.
Xenocode, now BrowserSandbox allows you to package your applications in standalone virtual executables that run instantly on any desktop.
We will monitor your website 24X7 from our servers and notify you whenever your site goes down, so that you can quickly address the issue and keep your customers happy!
Very useful collection… thanks a lot for sharing…
-Deepu
You’re welcome Deepu!
great stuff, thanks
63? Is that all you got? We need at least a hundred! Maybe a thousand!
“1000 Best free online tools you MUST use NOW!!!”
Sheesh.
very useful tools
Thanks Jeff, glad you found them helpful! :)
Very very great tools!
Good at collecting!
Thanks!
Hey Eric,
This is one of the best (and easiest to browse) list of webmaster tools i’ve seen to date. Love the screenshots and brief descriptions. I’m sure this took some time, so the least i can do is bookmark it and share on our blog!
Thanks for the support Tyler! :)
Great round-up, nice job. I’ve seen or used a bunch of ‘em before, but you’ve definitely found some new gems. Thanks!
That was a brilliant round-up of great tools :) I loved reading it, and I agree @Tyler Stample, the screenshots and brief descriptions were really good to help make the list easier to browse.
Thank you :)
Glad you found the format helpful!
really helping tools for web designers and developers.
Nice collection!
Thanks!
One of the best lists of its kind I’ve seen in a long time. Thank you very much. :)
thx!!!
nice collection keep it up and try to provide alot ..
thanx buddies
Awesome list! Found loads of use out of it! Thanks!
I justed wanted to suggest a new and better icon search engine, FindIcons.com, which has larger icon collection and complete search filters.
To add up, I use iconfinder,net when I need some new icon for my websites. Anyway, that’s a very useful resource list and I am bookmarking it right away.
Thanks for sharing and keep up the good work
Nice collection, Eric. Thanks for sharing them.
And, do not forget to check your contents for probable copywrite violation; because you can not get good ranking for your page on different search engines, if it contains any sort of plagiarism. You can check them with AAfter Search. You need to paste your document in the search box as follows *** and click the web search button. The search engine gives the result in the form of percentage of similarity between the original document and re-written document so that one comes to know about possible copyright violation, if any.
Great collection thanks for the post
Appreciate the time in collecting and posting such a useful tools. Thanks.
Thanks for great collection of these helpful tools.
This is a great collection of tools and resources. Thanks so much for sharing!
Hi Eric, there are some interesting tools here, but don’t forget Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar. I think they are probably the most useful for any web designer/developer. ;-)
Another good list. Bookmarked for future reference.
Check this one http://www.online-toolz.com/
I’d suggest also to check my.origramy – a free web service for diagram/wireframe building, which is based on downloadable flash component, which may also be useful for developers.
Very complete and quite frankly I hadn’t heard of some of these prior to stumbling onto them.
check the new portfolio-service ALLYOU for creative – it offers great custom design possibilities and it has a very easy usability: http://www.allyou.net
Another portfolio service as well as carbonmade http://www.brushd.com
Approval Manager is a great online proofing tool. They have a free version and also a paid version here: http://www.metacommunications.com/products/approval_manager/editions