Marketing Toolbox: Our Recommended Tech Stack
What’s the best tool for __? Tool selection is a common question. To help, we’ve put together our picks of the best online business tools.
Why Trust Us? We’ve been doing business online since 2007. We run numerous online businesses. As a marketing agency, we help many businesses with local SEO, SEO audits, and web design. And Bryan worked as an online business journalist for a New York Times property.
A note about pricing. Most service providers bill in USD. This is true even for companies based in Canada and Europe. Unless otherwise noted, the pricing below is in USD.
Marketing Toolbox
Toolbox Sections: Web Hosting | Email Tools | Business Management Tools | WordPress Plugins | Local SEO
Web Hosting
Choosing a stable web host is an important business decision. Here are our two recommended web hosts.
Cloudways
We currently host 30+ websites with Cloudways. And I love their versatility. As your traffic grows, you can add more hosting capacity.
Who is this for? If you have more than one site and some basic technical skills. Or if you have an agency that manages your website.
Monthly Cost: $14 to 28/mo (Digital Ocean, 1-2GB Plan).
- Pros: Cloudways is the least expensive option for stable hosting. It is especially ideal for hosting multiple sites or managing sites with traffic spikes during the year.
- Cons: There can be a learning curve.
Kinsta
We’ve used managed hosting for many years. And its a great option for both small businesses and larger
Who is this for? If you want to self-manage your web hosting, Kinsta is a great option.
Monthly Cost: $35/mo (Single site plan). Save on annual plans.
- Pros: Stable and managed. Their tech team makes sure that your server will stay up and working fast.
- Cons: Costs a little more.
Why Do I Need Hosting?
Web hosting is the space on a computer server where your website files reside.
Can Storyteller Media Host My Site?
No, we don’t provide hosting services.
We strongly believe that you should have full control of your business, including your website. With your own hosting account, you can hire any developer or designer to work on your site.
Risks of Agency Hosting
Over the years, many clients have come to us after having lost control of their website and domain name. Their previous agency ghosted them or went out of business. In many cases, they had to start over – new site and new domain name.
The Solution
The easy solution is to purchase your own plan and domain name.
Of course, we’ll work with you to manage your site and hosting, but you will own and control your business assets.
Email Tools
Here are the tools we use for domain-based email and email marketing.
Domain Based Email
To go from [email protected] to [email protected], you’ll need an email service.
- Google Workspace: Probably the most popular service for custom business email. Business Starter Plan is CAD$7.80 per month per user.
- Fastmail: A great Google alternative. The setup is easy, and the service works great. Plans are CAD$6.25 per month per user. Save 10% off your first year with this link.
We are currently using both of these services for our businesses. Both have desktop and mobile apps.
Email Marketing
These email service providers all include custom sign up forms, tagging, and great analytics.
- MailerLite: A clean and easy-to-use email marketing service. Cost ranges from free to $108/year for the first 500 subscribers. Get a $20 credit with this link.
- AWeber: Another great email option. Works well for running multiple companies within the same account. Cost ranges from free to $150/year for the first 500 subscribers.
- Kit: Cost ranges from free to $290/year for the first 500 subscribers. Formerly known as ConvertKit.
We’ve used all three of these services over the years. They are all user-friendly and have great deliverability.
Business Management Tools
We use these tools to run our business. Most of these tools integrate, increasing their function and saving more time.
Management Tools
Here are the tools and services we use to run our business.
- Calendly: Simple booking calendar.
- Copper: A Google Workspace CRM
- Zoom: Our video platform for client calls and our phone service.
- Sync: This service backups and syncs data across our computers and mobile devices.
- Xero: Our cloud-based accounting tool. Manages multiple currencies, does billing and all reporting. Integrates with Stripe for payments.
Domain Names
Domain registrars manage domains. Most offer a similar stack of benefits.
- GoDaddy: We have had domains with GoDaddy for 20 years. They are reliable and good to work with. GoDaddy is the largest registrar in the world.
- PorkBun: This is a less expensive option. We have recently moved half of our domain portfolio to PorkBun and are saving a lot of money – more than 50%. They have been great to work with and don’t have the aggressive upsells of other registrars.
We recommend using CloudFlare DNS for all domains.
WordPress Plugins and Local SEO
Here are the WordPress plugins we use in every site build. And the Local SEO tools that we use to improve clients search ranking.
WordPress Tools
Here are the WordPress tools and services we use to keep our businesses fast, secure, and ranking well.
- WP Rocket: We run this caching plugin on all our sites. It speeds up site performance, which is great for readers and SEO.
- ShortPixel: This plugin compresses and optimizes site images after you’ve uploaded them. We’ve run this plugin for many years on all our big sites.
- RankMath: We use this plugin on every site we build. It gives full control of all on-page and technical SEO factors.
- PatchStack: We keep our sites safe from malware and other vulnerabilities with this plugin.
- MalCare / BlogVault: The Malcare service protects sites from malware. It also provides a real-time firewall and daily backups of each site.
We also use WPForms and TablePress plugins for functionality.
Local SEO
Here are a few tools that we use on a regular basis. And many of our clients use these tools to improve their local SEO ranking.
- LocalReviews.app: We implement the Local Reviews App in our local SEO and marketing packages.
If you’re interested in collecting more client reviews, improve local SEO, and get more leads and customers, we can help. Schedule a discovery call to see what we do and how we can help your business. - Local SEO Audit: You’ll get a complete overview of your Local SEO performance, including Search Rankings, Local Listings, Reviews, On-Site SEO, and Social Media. Order your free Local SEO audit.
This local SEO audit is part of our 7-Step Local SEO System.
If you’re getting started online, be sure to consider these Google tools.
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
- Google Sheets
- Google Page Speed
- Google Workspace
Looking for more? Check out our set of SEO Tools.
