Recommended resources for your website

Good software makes everything easier. Here is a list of digital tools that I recommend.

Some of the links on this page are affiliate links. Thanks so much for your support!

Hosting & Domain

Siteground shared hosting (best choice for most websites)

Siteground is the most loved (from most reviews) hosting provider worldwide. They aren’t the cheapest but deliver top notch performance.

They are recommended by WordPress themselves as a good and safe choice.
Their support is amazing. With 24/7 chat, phone and ticket support.
They have a 1 click WordPress installer. Easy for everybody.
Easy to use interface (recently updated).

View their pricing

Hostinger shared hosting (the cheapest hosting I could find)

I have searched for the cheapest hosting plan that I could find online. This is perfect for anybody on a budget that doesn’t need all the premium options. Also they give you a free domain for 1 year from 12 month plans.

Use the discount code: LIVINGWITHPIXELS to get an extra 10% discount.

WordPress pagebuilders

Elementor is the most popular WordPress pagebuilder in the world. It has over 3 million downloads. This is what makes it so great:

Elementor makes it super easy to build up a page by allowing users to drag and drop elements onto a page.
You are not limited (as with a theme), so you can design your page pixel perfect. Just how we like it as designers.
It’s built for performance, so the code is very clean.
With their Pro version you can even design the header, footer, blog posts, webshop etc.
One of their pro plans has a licence for 1000 websites. This makes it perfect for webdesign client work.
It’s popular so they are a lot of tutorials to find about it.
It has amazing animation and scroll effects built in.

Get Elementor

Design software

Adobe XD is the new standard for UI / UX design. It’s part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud, which makes it perfectly to combine with other Adobe tools like Photoshop and Illustrator.

Adobe XD makes it super fast to prototype an idea for a website or app.
It has an amazing ‘repeat grid’ feature which allows you to create and adjust grid layouts really fast.
You can save different styles for your colours, fonts and elements. With 1 click you can change something on all artboards.
You can share your prototype with other people via a link and get quick feedback.
It has a developer share feature which allows developers to measure and export all styles.
It has cool animation effects built it.
It’s free! (if you pay you get more prototype sharing features)

Get Adobe XD

Elementor addons

Missing plugins/addons for your dynamic Elementor website. You want this one if you are serious about doing client work.

It comes with the amazing Jet Engine. Create your own custom lists, grids and advanced custom fields. All in 1 plugin (this also replaces ACF and CPT UI).
Customize almost every part of your WordPress webshop with JetWooBuilder.
A powerful Search feature to add to a website with Jet Search.
Comes with JetSmartFilters, which is great for creating a filter for your dynamic content.
Pretty fun visual effects (like parallax effect) with Jet Tricks.
You will get lot’s of predesigned Elementor templates that you import with 1 click and sell to other companies.

Pro tip: Check their pricing. Unlimited websites is a much better deal than 1 website.

Check it out

Use the coupon code: LivingWithPixels10 to get 10% discount. Important: it only works if you use the exact link that the button will link you to.

A very well designed library of unique Elementor Widgets to add more functionality and flexibility to any WordPress website.

Very well designed widgets that don’t need a lot of adjustments to impress your clients.
Very customisable (if you want to).
You will get lot’s of predesigned Elementor templates that you import with 1 click and sell to other companies.
Their starter package is for unlimited websites (you don’t see that often).

Check it out for yourself

Security plugins

Before one of my client website got hacked I thought that free security plugins were enough. Now I know better. iThemes is affordable and protects your websites a lot better.

It’s the second most popular security plugin in the world.
It keeps your website faster (faster than Wordfence).
It has 2 step authentication, which keeps people with fake emails out.
It’s affordable because there is an unlimited website package.

Check out iThemes Security

Payment providers

Stripe is the payment provider that most people use in the west (USA & Europe). It’s has a very easy to use and beautiful interface and will give you a lot of data graphs to check your stats.

Perfectly integrates with Woocommerce on WordPress.
Has lots of payment options (even Apple and Google Pay for example).
It’s popular, so there is enough info about it online.

Check out Stripe

Management software

ManageWP is a tool that allows you to manage all of your client websites in 1 simple dashboard. This makes managing your web design business a lot easier.

Update all of your client plugins with 1 click.
Login to your client websites without remembering passwords.
Create client report PDF’s that you can send to your client.
It’s free!

Get ManageWP

Handy WordPress plugins

In this part I’ve compiled a list of plugins that I use and make it a lot easier to manage your websites.

Rank Math SEO > Optimize every page for Google (more features than Yoast for free)
Duplicate Page > Duplicate a page, post or template with a click
Post Types Order > Change the order of blogposts or products without changing their date.
ManageWP Worker > Easily manage multiple websites in 1 dashboard (my tutorial: https://youtu.be/IVJHCqq58MU)
Antispam Bee > Simple and light Antispam plugin
iThemes Security > Simple and powerful main security plugin (lighter than Wordfence)
Elementor Custom Skin > Create a custom design with Elementor for your dynamic content)
Custom Post Type UI > create custom blogposts that can be used for things like a portfolio or repeatable content in a list.
Google Analytics Dashboard for WP > Still a good choose to display Google Analytics in your dashboard (also your client’s)
reSmush.it Image Optimizer > Super simple plugin to automatically compress images when somebody uploads it via WordPress.

Some of the links on this page are affiliate links, where I earn a commission if you make a purchase via my link. This helps me continue to create the free content that I put out. I will only promote companies that I really believe are worth your money. Thanks a lot if use my links to make a purchase.