Recommended resources for your website
Good software makes everything easier. Here is a list of digital tools that I recommend.
Black Friday - Cyber Monday deals
Elementor finally has a pretty big discount. They normally only offer 10 or 20%, but with Black Friday it’s 25% on the Expert plan (which is the plan that I recommend for your web design business). Click on the button to see the deal.
Crocoblock also offers a 25% off on their most expensive package (which I use for more complicated websites). I would advice people to buy the lifetime option and let your clients pay $250 per advanced website because then you will earn it back overtime and have unlimited access.
Still recommended number #1 hosting by a lot of people. Now offering 40-50% off their WordPress hosting plans.
If I wouldn’t have hosting yet and I want something cheap that’s also good. Then take the $1.89 black Friday deal that can be found on the Shared Hosting page.
Use the discount code: LIVINGWITHPIXELS to get an extra 10% discount.
This is a discount for my own Adobe Xd course. Learn how to use Adobe Xd to take your design process to the next level. Click on the link to see the trailer and the automatically applied discount link. Only 100 coupons available.
Or just apply the discount code at the checkout: LWPXDBASICS60BFW2020 to get 60% off.
Hosting & Domain
Siteground shared hosting (best choice for most websites)
Siteground is the most loved (from most reviews) hosting provider worldwide. They are affordable and 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. 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 populair so they are a lot of tutorials to find about it.
- It has amazing animation and scroll effects built it.
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
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 populair, 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
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.
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
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.