Tool Friday — Q1 Recap: Every Tool I Reviewed in 3 Months
Every Friday for the past 3 months I’ve reviewed one tool I actually use. No sponsorships. Some affiliate partnerships happened after the reviews (Netlify, Gamma, Fathom). Just honest takes on tools that made my work better — or didn’t.
Here’s all of them, ranked by how much I still use them today.
The ranking
Tier 1 — Use daily, can’t live without
Netlify (TF#3) — 9/10 Deploy anything. Pay nothing. 9 siti, zero hosting cost. Push to GitHub, live in 30 seconds. I became an Ecosystem Partner after writing the review — that tells you how much I believe in it. The free tier is genuinely free. The only friction: 300 build credits/month means you batch deploys.
Astro (TF#6) — 9/10 The framework behind every site I build. Zero JavaScript by default. Lighthouse 100/100 without trying. Content collections for blog posts. Every client site, my own site, the academy — all Astro. If you’re building content-heavy sites and using React, you’re overcomplicating things.
Fathom (TF#5) — 9/10 Record. Transcribe. Never forget a call. AI notetaker that joins your meetings, gives you a transcript and action items before you’ve finished your coffee. I became a partner here too. The tool I didn’t know I needed until I tried it — now I can’t do a call without it.
Supabase (TF#8) — 9/10 Postgres database + auth + storage + realtime. The academy runs on it. Row Level Security is the killer feature — per-user data isolation without writing middleware. The learning curve is real, but once you get RLS it changes how you build.
Tier 2 — Use weekly, solid tools
Gamma (TF#1) — 8/10 Full presentation deck in under 60 seconds. I use it for client proposals, pitch decks, internal strategy docs. The AI understands structure — not just text on slides. Became a partner after the review. Weak point: export to PPTX loses some formatting.
UptimeRobot (TF#9) — 8/10 Nine monitors, all free. 30 seconds per site to set up. I know when something’s down before anyone else does. The UI looks like 2015 but it works. The tool I think about least and value most.
Senja (TF#7) — 8.5/10 Testimonial collection and display. Embed widgets on your site, collect reviews from one link. Simple, effective. I use the wall-of-love widget on stratega.co. Limited customization on the free tier, but the core product is solid.
Tier 3 — Use occasionally, good for specific tasks
Mapbox (TF#4) — 8.5/10 Google Maps but you control the design. Beautiful custom maps. 50,000 free loads/month. I used it for a client project with store locations. If you need maps and care about aesthetics, it’s the move. If you just need a pin on a map, Google Maps is fine.
Hemingway Editor (TF#2) — 8/10 Paste your text, it highlights complex sentences and passive voice. I run every blog post through it before publishing. Simple, free, does one thing well. Not a daily tool but a reliable quality gate.
Honorable mentions (pre-series)
Before Tool Friday became a weekly series, I reviewed a few tools in one-off posts: Ollama (local AI), Endel (focus music), Raycast (Mac launcher), Chrome Scrapers (data extraction). All still in use but reviewed before the format was established.
Patterns I noticed
The best tools disappear. Netlify, UptimeRobot, Fathom — I don’t think about them. They just work. The moment a tool demands attention, it’s fighting for its spot.
Free tiers are real. Every Tier 1 and Tier 2 tool has a free plan I haven’t outgrown. I pay for Fathom (worth it) and nothing else. As a solo builder, most free tiers are generous enough.
Partnerships came from honesty. Netlify, Gamma, and Fathom all offered partnerships after I reviewed them honestly. I didn’t ask. The reviews included criticism. Turns out companies prefer honest advocates over people who say everything is perfect.
The stack matters more than any single tool. No tool changed my business by itself. But Astro + Netlify + Supabase + UptimeRobot together? That’s an infrastructure that lets me ship fast and sleep well.
Q2 preview
The series continues. Coming up:
- Brave Search (TF#10) — the invisible search API inside Claude Code
- Typefully (TF#14) — scheduling tweets without opening Twitter
- More tools from my daily workflow as I find them
If there’s a tool you want me to review, reply or DM. The only requirement: I have to actually use it.
Tool Friday is a weekly series where I review one tool I actually use in my workflow. Just tools that made my work better.