Google Analytics
If you want a complete overview of your website traffic, Google Analytics is a fantastic place to begin. Just paste a snippet of code into your website and you'll get an insight into your visitors, including page views, bounce rates, exit pages, conversions and more. No wonder it's everyone's favourite analytics tool.
Hotjar
If you've ever wanted to see how your customers use your website from their eyes, Hotjar is about the closest you'll get. Analyse the behaviour of your visitors with visitor recordings, heat maps and click maps. It's a fantastic way to discover what problems your landing pages/checkout pages are having, and where people are running into obstacles.
Drip
Drip is one of those tools that I just can't live without. In fact, if it wasn't around I'd have a whole lot of manual work that I'd have to do to automate my email marketing. Touted as the "world's first eCRM", Drip allows you to send automated messages to your customers based on workflows, meaning you can customise your sales funnels however you like.
OptinMonster
I'll come clean and admit that I haven't used OptinMonster yet, but I intend to check it out. It's an email subscriber list building tool that's popular with WP bloggers to help them build their email subscription lists quickly.
Leadpages
If you don't know how to code a landing page yourself, LeadPages can do it for you with their large suite of landing page templates, which are hosted themselves. It's simple and quick to build new campaigns, which can be linked to from social media, emails or your website.
IFTTT
One of my favourite automation tools, which I use not just for my marketing campaigns, but even my home automation too! IFTTT (if this, then that) gets apps connected to achieve millions of things, from email automation to customer follow-ups. Link anything that's supported together - the world's your oyster!
Marketo
Although Marketo isn't for the faint-hearted (it can get pretty complex), its a great platform that has some truly brilliant features that will automate many digital marketing activities - primarily email. Suitable for those who are looking for an all-round solution to marketing automation.
Loom
I'd been using Loom to record screen activity for a year or two, until I really started playing around with it properly. Then I began to realise that it's much more powerful than I originally thought. With a tonne of features enabling you to record not just your desktop but using your webcam at the same time, it's become my go-to tool for creating video tutorials.
Copyscape
Great tool for finding duplicate content. Enter some text or a URL and Copyscape will instantly tell you whether that exact content can be found elsewhere on the web.
Canva
All of a sudden, Canva changed how we create visual content. No longer did you have to get to grips with Photoshop - Canva was there to give you a helping hand. It allows you to create photos, infographics, social media covers, book covers and much much more.
Feedly
Collect, read, share and curate content from any RSS feed. This tool will really help you to discover new ideas for content, both on your website and on your social media platforms, all of which can be done directly from the Feedly user interface.
Trello
If you're fed up with sharing your desk with 1001 Post-It notes, then Trello will de-clutter your work. It allows you to organise and prioritise projects by saving text, links, images, lists and much more, which can be categorised for easy management.
Unbounce
If you're unfamiliar with HTML and want to quickly build new web pages, landing pages or content blocks, then Unbounce is ideal. It's really easy to use, even for those who have absolutely no idea about designing ages.
Pixabay
Struggling to find the perfect image for your blog, social media post or design? Pixabay is the perfect companion, allowing you to use photos, illustrations and vectors that you can use freely, without attribution.
Zendesk
A full suite of tools and features that will enable you to respond to your customers. Zendesk aggregates all your channels together to make it much easier to respond to your customer's emails, chats and phone calls into one place.
LiveChat
Touted as 'the fastest way to help your customers', LiveChat allows you to embed a live chat feature onto your website so that your visitors can ask questions as they are browsing your website. It'll also integrate with Facebook, Messenger, Dropbox, GA, pipedrive, etc. (Over 130 integrations available).
Stripe
When it comes to payment processing, there are few that can compete with Stripe. Not only can you embed payment processing systems onto your website with ease (just a few clicks), you can go much further and integrate all types of payment processing, including subscriptions. Definitely a blessing to have around.
Mailchimp
An absolute giant within the email marketing industry, Mailchimp sent more than 250 BILLION emails by its users last year. Although (in my opinion) there are more advanced tools out there (such as Drip, above), it's a great place to start email marketing, and their 'forever free' plan is great for beginners.
Xenu Link Sleuth
Despite the weird alien logo, Xenu Link Sleuth is a blessing when it comes to building a website, because it gives you an in-depth overview of the structure of your website. It'll tell you where there are broken links, duff code, missing titles/descriptions and much more.
Pagespeed Insights
Page loading speeds have been a ranking factor in Google for some time, and while speed isn't the be-all-and-end all to a successful website, it's best to pay attention to this took which will not only help you test the loading time and performance of your website, but tells you how to improve them too.
Google Search Console
Just a few years ago if something was wrong with your website and your search rankings started plummeting, you'd have to guess what the problem was. Now you have Google Search Console which gives you useful information (such as bugs, alerts, index issues) about your website. No more guessing.
Backlink Checker
This useful tool from Ahrefs allows you to check the top 100 backlinks to your website to find out who's linking to you. You can also use it to find link opportunities too: just enter your competitor's website to see where you can request a link too.
SimilarWeb
This is a great service that allows you to analyse a website's traffic, including source, location, rank, engagement and search queries. A really handy tool when undertaking competitor research, not just your own website.