43 Top Tools for WordPress Freelancers, Designers, and Developers

Are you a freelancer, designer, or developer looking for the best tools to make your workflow easier?

According to recent surveys, freelancing is growing around the world thanks to the booming digital economy.

The best thing about being a freelancer (or remote work) is that you can work from home, set your own hours, and have more flexibility in your work life balance.

However, freelancing does come with a lot of challenges that people in regular office jobs may not come across.

For example, as a freelancer, you are responsible for managing your time, keeping yourself motivated, organizing your work, communicating frequently, and of course managing your finances.

Luckily, there are a lot of useful tools to help you stay on top of everything.

In this guide, we will share our top pick of the best tools for freelancers, designers, and developers.

We have organized the best freelancer tools into different categories with multiple options under each category.

• Communication tools
• Finance tools
• Calendar tools
• Project management tools
• Productivity tools
• Cloud storage tools
• Design tools
• Time tracking tools
• Writing tools
• Bulk email marketing tools
• Website builder tools
• Website hosting services

Ready? Let’s start with the basics first.

Best Communication Tools for Freelancers

Working on your own and setting up your own hours could create a communication gap between your team, clients, and yourself.

These communication tools ensure that you can effectively communicate and not miss anything important.

1. G Suite

G Suite is Google’s productivity suite that gives you professional business email with Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and video and voice conference.

You get a ton of storage (30GB to Unlimited depending on the plan you choose) and you can add new team members to your plan. All your work is stored in the cloud, can be accessed from anywhere, and from any of your devices including mobile phones and tablets.

Alternative: Office 365 (See our comparison of Office 365 vs G Suite to learn more).

2. Nextiva

As a freelancer, answering all the business phone calls can be a bit difficult. This is where Nextiva comes in.

It is the best business phone service on the market and allows you to get virtual phone number.

You can set up call forwarding, routing, voicemail greetings, business text messages, and more. This helps you never miss a business call and keep in touch with customers without spending too much money.

Alternative: RingCentral

3. Boomerang

Boomerang helps you unclutter your inbox, write effective email messages, and schedule your emails to be sent on just the right time.

It works with Gmail and Outlook, on both mobile and desktop. It also comes with an AI-powered email writing assistant called Respondable, which helps you write better emails that are likely to get a response.

Alternative: Front

4. Hunter

Need to get in touch with a company but don’t know who to email? Hunter helps you find email addresses behind a website. It uses various sources to collect those email addresses and scores them.

You can look for the generic addresses or switch to the personal addresses to connect with the actual people behind a business. Freelancers and developers can use this for cold emails, pitching ideas, or share your work some possible leads.

Alternative: Voila Norbert

5. Slack

Slack is a productivity tools for small teams, remote workers, and freelancers. It allows you to collaborate in real time, share work, progress, and manage teams.

You can switch companies, create channels, add new users, voice and video calls with screen sharing, and more. It works on any modern browser, desktop, mobile phone, or tablet.

Alternative: Skype

6. Zoom

Zoom is a conference calling app for professionals. It allows you to easily conduct one-on-one or conference calls with screensharing, recording, live chat, and more.

It works with Google Drive and Calendar, easily share meeting URLs, and runs on both mobile and desktop.

Alternative: Skype

Best Finance Tools for Freelancers

Freelancers are responsible for managing their own finances, taxes, invoices, and payments.

7. FreshBooks

FreshBooks is one of the top accounting software for small businesses, freelancers, and individuals. It helps you easily send invoices to clients, manage your accounts, recieve payments, and keep track of your finances.

Alternative: WPForms (see this guide on how to send invoices using WPForms plugin in WordPress).

8. QuickBooks

QuickBooks is a industry standard for accounting software. It makes it super easy to manage your finances, accept payments, send invoices, connect your bank account and credit cards, and more.

9. Bench

Bench is another popular bookkeeping app that helps you keep track of your finances.

You simply connect your bank account and credit cards and the Bench bookkeeping team imports your bank statements, categorizes transactions, and prepares financial statements. This makes it super easy to file your taxes at the end of the year.

10. Gusto

Gusto helps small teams and businesses manage payroll, time tracking, personal time-off, manage health, vision, and dental benefits, and more.

You can also get help from a certified HR professional to help you manage your team, keeping track of things, finding the right benefits and insurance programs for your budget and team size.

Best Calendar Tools for Freelancers

As your freelancing business grows, you will need to set up meetings, follow up on events, and manage your time more productively. Following are the best calendar tools that you can use to manage your day to day activities.

11. Google Calendar

Google Calendar is the popular calendar app that works on both mobile and desktop. If you are using G Suite, then you can use the calendar with your own domain name.

Google Calendar makes it easy to share events, schedule meetings, set up reminders, follow-ups, and more. You can also create separate calendars and share them with your clients and team members to collaborate.

Alternative: Microsoft Outlook Calendar

12. Calendly

Calendly helps you manage your calendar more efficiently. You can simply set up your availability hours and allow clients and team members to book an appointment without doing the usual back and forth via email.

It works with Google Calendar, Outlook, Office 365, and iCloud calendar. For remote teams, it automatically detects timezone and shows users local time.

Best Project Management Tools for Freelancers

As your freelancing business grows, you’ll need to keep track of your to-do lists to execute your projects in a timely and organized fashion.

Following project management tools help you manage projects by breaking them into tasks and collaborate with your team and clients.

13. Asana

Asana is the best project management tool for freelancers, designers, developers, and small businesses. It comes with powerful tools to set up your projects, add tasks, manage progress, and get notifications and reminders.

It integrates with all popular apps like Google Drive, Slack, Calendar, and many more. It is super flexible and allows you to customize views, import tasks, add attachments and comments for better collaboration.

14. Trello

Trello is powerful and intuitive project management tool for businesses, freelancers, and remote teams. It uses cards and boards to manage your tasks and projects.

This creates a unqiue visual experience with an interactive workflow that many users find easier and more productive.

15. Basecamp

Basecamp is another popular project management software suitable for businesses and small teams. It comes with the task management, projects, message boards, chat, and collaboration tools for easier communication between team members.

Best Productivity Tools for Freelancers

Apart from time management, you will need other tools to save time. These tools help you be more productive with your time by managing different aspects of your work and personal life.

16. 1Passsword

1Passsword is one of the best password managers on the market. It enables you to never use a weak password ever again.

It saves your passwords in an encrypted database and automatically fills login forms with a single click. It is available for all popular browsers, desktop, and mobile platforms.

Alternative: LastPass

17. Feedly

Feedly is the best news and blog reading app on the market. It allows you to simply add all your favorite blogs and news sites and then use one app to browse content from all sources.

It is available on mobile, desktop, and browsers, which gives you freedom to check your reading list from anywhere anytime.

Alternative: Pocket

18. TextExpander

TextExpander helps you save text templates, boilerplate responses, and content snippets to reuse later in any other app. Using a simple keyboard shortcut you can easily reuse your saved snippets anywhere.

It is great for answering customer support responses, documentation, business emails, and more. All your content is stored on the cloud and you can use it on any device.

19. Buffer

Buffer helps you automate social media by setting up queues of content to post on your social media walls.

You can connect your social profiles, add status updates, set schedule and frequency, and Buffer takes care of the rest.

Alternative: IFTTT

Best Cloud Storage Tools for Freelancers

Working remotely or as a freelancer allows you to work from anywhere. This means you are not bound to work from your desk computer. You can travel and work from your laptop on the go.

Cloud Storage Tools help you store all your work files on the cloud so that you are not bound to a specific physical device. These tools also ensure the safety of your data and keeping back up so this is one less thing for you to worry about.

20. Google Drive

Google Drive is Google’s free cloud storage service and every free Google account gives you access to 15 GB of free storage which is shared by all Google apps like Gmail, Docs, Photos, and more.

Signing up with G Suite increases this limit to 30 GB – Unlimited, depending on the plan you choose. You can also upgrade to Google One which gives you 100 GB of cloud storage across all Google apps for $1.99 per month.

21. Dropbox

Dropbox is another popular cloud storage app with free and paid plans. The free plan gives you just 2 GB of cloud storage but is good enough to try the product and see if it fits your needs.

Paid plans start from $9.99 (billed yearly) with 2 TB of cloud storage. It integrates with all popular third-party apps, works on browsers, desktop, and mobile, and makes it easier to share files with anyone.

22. OneDrive

OneDrive is Microsoft’s alternative to Google Drive. It comes with all Office 365, Outlook, and free Microsoft live accounts.

The free plan gives you upto 5GB of cloud storage. If you are using Office 365, then this makes it super easy to store and share files with team members and clients.

Best Design Tools for Freelancers

All freelancers and programmers need design tools to create their own marketing material, graphics, social media posts, and so on. These design tools help you create stunning graphics for your own business as well as clients.

23. Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud is the must have tool for any graphic designer or freelancer. This subscription model gives you access to Adobe’s design apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier Pro, and more.

Their all apps plan start from $52.99 per month which is a bit expensive if you are just starting out. You can also purchase the subscription for individual apps that you want to use for a smaller fee.

24. Canva

Canva is a design tool for non-designers. It comes with an intuitive interface with simple drag and drop tools and hundereds of templates for all kind of graphics.

It can be used to create social media images, website logo, promotional material, and more.

25. Invision

Invision is a powerful design and prototyping tool for freelancers and designers. It comes with an easy to use interface and allows you to import files from Sketch and Photoshop into the app.

Invision makes collaboration easier by allowing you to easily share files. You can also connect it to several third-party apps and import clip art, vector graphics, and images from other sources.

26. Affinity Designer and Photo

Affinity Designer and Photo are two powerful graphic design apps and a cheaper alternative to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. The Designer app allows you to create both vector and raster images, you can also combine raster elements to a vector image.

The apps use an intuitive user interface which is easier to learn even for beginners. You also get access to a ton of learning resources to help you get started.

Best Time Tracking Tools for Freelancers

Whether you work on hourly rates or charge clients for the complete project, you’ll need to track the time you put in work every day.

These time tracking apps help you track hours, find productivity killers, and analyze how to best use your time.

27. TimeDoctor

TimeDoctor is one of the best time tracking and productivity app on the market. It allows you to track time, manage tasks, save screennshots, monitor web and app usage, and view reports.

You can also set hours required, give access to clients based on projects, and add team members. It works on all platforms, gets out of your way as you work, and integrates with many of the tools already mentioned in this article.

Pricing plans start from $9.99 per month per user.

28. Hubstaff

Hubstaff is an excellent time tracking and productivity monitor for teams and businesses. It can monitor web and app usage, maintain time sheets, attendance and schedule tracking, simple payroll, and easy invoicing.

It comes with a GeoTracking feature useful for businesses that need to track employee’s locations along with their working hours. It also offers integrations with third-party tools like Asana, Quickbooks, GitHub, Trello, and many more.

They offer a limited free plan and paid plans start from $7 per user per month.

29. Harvest

Harvest is another excellent time-tracking app for both individual freelancers, teams, and businesses. It enables you to track time, manage projects, catch productivity killers, and send invoices to your clients.

It works alongside all popular tools mentioned on this list including Asana, Slack, G Suite, and many more. They offer a very limited free plan for 1 individual and two projects. Paid plans start from $12 per user per month.

30. RescueTime

RescueTime is a time-tracking software for teams and businesses. It does not save screenshots of what your employees are working on and focuses on privacy by putting the employees first.

It offers detailed activity reports highlighting app usage categorized by activity. You can set goals, projects, monitor productivity killers, get real-time alerts, set hours, and more.

RescueTime has a limited free plan and their paid plans start from $6 per month per user.

31. Toggl

Toggl is a simple and effective time-tracking app for individuals, remote teams, and businesses. It is available as a browser add-on as well as mobile and desktop apps and syncs your work across devices so you never miss a minute of your work.

As a freelancer you’ll like their billable rates feature which allows you to set hourly rates and track your hours to make sure that you are paid fairly. You can also see which tasks make you the most money and set your goals accordingly.

Pricing starts from $9 per month per user billed annually.

Best Writing Tools for Freelancers

Content writers, bloggers, and copywriters can benefit from additional tools to improve their workflow. The following tools help you write better and improve productivity as a freelance writer.

32. Grammarly

Grammarly is the best grammar checker tool on the market. It automatically checks grammar and spelling mistakes as you write and uses artificial intelligence to analyze your content.

It can check for punctuation, conciseness, tone, make word suggestions, and more. It works on the browser, as a standalone app, inside WordPress, Gmail, G Suite, and more.

33. Hemingway

Hemingway is a handy style checker app that allows you to improve the readability of your articles by making them more casual, simpler, and bold.

You can use it in the browser or download the desktop app. The desktop app directly integrates with WordPress, allowing you to publish directly to your website.

34. Dropbox Paper

Dropbox Paper is a note-taking app created by the folks behind Dropbox. It is a free app and allows your to easily take notes, share them with your teams, add annotations, give feedback, save ideas, and more.

It offers a clean intuitive interface that just flows as you write. Formatting tools get out of your way and reappear when you need them. It makes sharing and collaboration easier and fun.

Alternative: Evernote

35. SEMRush Writing Assistant

SEMRush writing assistant helps you write SEO optimized content, so your articles can rank higher in Google search results.

It analyzes your content against top ranking items for the specific keyword and make content suggestions, so you can write better content that ranks higher in Google.

Bulk Email Marketing Tools for Freelancers

Staying in touch with your clients can help you earn their trust and get repeat business. Bulk email marketing services can help you save time by sending personalized messages to the right people, at the right time.

36. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a leading email marketing tool for small businesses and freelancers. You can easily manage your contacts, create custom email templates, create a drip message sequence, and more.

Constant Contact offers unmatched support with live chat, phone calls, email, community support, and a vast library of helpful resources.

If you’re looking to create an email newsletter, then this is our #1 pick for small business.

37. SendinBlue

SendinBlue is a complete SMS and email marketing software for freelancers. They are one of the fastest growing email marketing tool in Europe.

It is an extremely easy to use platform with excellent tools to create beautiful and highly engaging emails. Their simple drag and drop tools are perfect for beginners with no experience in email marketing.

38. Drip

Drip is a powerful email marketing platform for eCommerce, bloggers, and developers. They offer a wide range of tools to make marketing automation, sales funnels, and personalization easy.

What sets Drip apart from the competition is their intelligent marketing automation tools, smarter email segmenting, list groups, and a visual workflow builder.

Best Website Builder Tools for Freelancers

If you’re serious about growing your freelancing business, then you need to create a website. There are dozens of website builder platforms that you can use, but we recommend you choose from one of the two below.

39. WordPress

WordPress.org (also known as self hosted WordPress) is the world’s most popular website building platform. Over 34% of all websites on the internet are powered by WordPress.

The self-hosted WordPress tops our list of best website builder due to its popularity, powerful features, scalability, and ease of use.

You can use WordPress to create any type of website including a blog, online store, membership site, and more.

40. Constant Contact Website Builder

Constant Contact website builder is an alternative to WordPress. It offers a simple website builder that you can use to create a website within minutes.

It is not as powerful as WordPress, but it has all the basic features you’d need.

Best Website Hosting Services for Freelancers

As a freelancer, you will likely need web site hosting for your own website or even your clients’ websites.

We have detailed comparison of the best WordPress hosting, best VPS hosting, best WooCommerce hosting, and best managed WordPress hosting companies.

Here are our top 3 picks of the best website hosting services for freelancers.

41. SiteGround

SiteGround is one of the most popular and highest rated website hosting provider in the community. They provide unique in-house WordPress speed and security solutions to make your site as fast and secure as possible.

They are known for the best 24/7 support in the industry which is why they’re an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider. SiteGround features include automatic upgrades, built-in WP caching, CDN, one-click staging and GIT version control. They are also one of the few companies offering location specific hosting with 3 data centers in USA, Europe, and Asia.

42. Bluehost

Bluehost is one of the oldest and most well-known web hosting brand in the industry. They are an official ‘WordPress’ recommended hosting provider.

They are offering WPBeginner users an exclusive 63% off discount, a Free Domain, Free SSL, and a free Site Builder with templates.

43. WP Engine

WPEngine is VIP WordPress hosting. Their hassle-free hosting offers fast and robust servers that can handle anything. Your website is practically hacker proof, and their mind-blowing customer service makes you feel like king.

They offer automatic security updates, daily backups, one-click restore points, automatic caching, top-tier security, one-click staging area, and more. WPEngine is like having an army of WordPress experts on your side for assistance.

Bonus: you also get all 36+ premium StudioPress themes and Genesis framework for free with all WP Engine accounts.

We hope this article helped you discover the best tools for freelancers, designers, and developers. You may also want to see our list of the must have WordPress plugins and best live chat software for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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December 13, 2019 at 06:09PM

Welcome Rymera and WholeSale Suite to WPBeginner Growth Fund

Today, I’m extremely excited to announce that WPBeginner Growth Fund has taken an equity stake in Rymera Web Co, the parent company of the popular Wholesale Suite plugin, Advanced Coupons plugin, and an upcoming WooCommerce inventory management plugin, Inventoroo.

This is the first investment of the Round 2 of WPBeginner Growth Fund.

About Rymera Web Co

Rymera Web Co specializes in WooCommerce extensions. Their popular wholesale suite bundle is the best solution for selling to wholesale customers using WooCommerce.

They also have an advanced coupon plugin which is the Swiss army knife of WooCommerce coupon plugins. It lets you create special offers like buy-one-get-one (BOGO), free gift products, loyalty bonuses, etc.

Last but not least, Rymera is working on an inventory assistant plugin for WooCommerce store owners called Inventoroo. I’m really excited to help get this product live.

Background Story

I have known, Josh Kohlbach, founder of Rymera Web Co for several years. He was the creator of ThirstyAffiliates, a popular affiliate management plugin, which was recently acquired by another one of our growth fund companies, Pretty Links.

After we opened the round 2 of growth fund application, Josh and I started talking about our vision for WooCommerce related products.

WooCommerce ecosystem has seen tremendous growth over the last few years, and it is something I have studied closely this year.

Going into 2020, I wanted us to expand our eCommerce solution offering, and an investment in Rymera Web Co made perfect sense. Josh has a great vision and a lot of exciting things in the pipeline to serve online store owners.

At Awesome Motive, we have several plugins that WooCommerce store owners use including OptinMonster, MonsterInsights, TrustPulse, and WPForms.

Sharing our knowledge and resources with Rymera Web Co will help both of us better serve the larger WordPress community.

I am really excited to be working with Josh and team to help them accelerate their growth in 2020.

We will be making more growth fund announcements in the coming weeks, so please stay tuned.

Thank you so much for your continued support of WPBeginner.

Sincerely,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

The post Welcome Rymera and WholeSale Suite to WPBeginner Growth Fund appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 12, 2019 at 07:59PM

How to Add a Preloader Animation to WordPress (Step by Step)

Do you want to add a preloader to your WordPress site? A preloader is an animation indicating the progress of a page load in the background.

Preloaders assure users that the website is working on loading the page. This can help improve user experience and reduce overall bounce rate.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily add a preloader to WordPress.

What is a Preloader and When You Should Use it?

A preloader is an animation or status message indicating the progress of page load in the background.

Normally when you visit a website, your browser starts downloading different parts of the content. Some parts of the website load faster (i.e. text, HTML code, CSS) whereas others load way slower (i.e images and videos).

If most of your content is text with very few images and videos, then you don’t really need to add a preloader to your website. Instead, you should focus on improving website speed and performance for faster page loads.

On the other hand, if most of your content is images, photographs, and video embeds, then your users need to wait a while before they can actually see all the content.

During these partial downloads, your website may feel slow. Sometimes users may even think that it is broken. Adding a preloader, fills this gap and shows the user a progress indicator during the page load.

You can see a live example of a preloader by clicking on the Preview button while writing a blog post in WordPress.

WordPress will open a live preview of your blog post in a new window, and it will display a preloader before it actually shows the live preview.

That being said, let’s take a look at how you can easily add a preloader to your WordPress website.

Method 1. Adding a Preloader in WordPress using WP Smart Preloader

This method is recommended because it is easier to implement and does not require any changes to your WordPress theme.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Smart Preloader plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » WP Smart Preloader page to configure plugin settings.

First, you need to choose a preloader style or page load animation. The plugin comes with six built-in animations to choose from. You can also upload your own custom HTML and CSS to create a custom preloader.

After that, you can make the preloader appear only on the homepage by checking the ‘Show only on Home Page’ option.

Next, you need to scroll down to the ‘Duration to show Loader’ section. You need to specify the duration for the preloader. The default option is 1500 milliseconds (1.5 seconds) which should work for most sites, but you can change that if you want.

You can also set the time loader takes to completely fade out. The default option is 2500 seconds or 2.5 seconds.

Finally, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save changes’ button to store your settings.

You can now visit your website to see the preloader in action.

Method 2. Adding a Preloader in WordPress using Preloader Plugin

This method is flexible but requires additional steps to properly implement it on your WordPress site.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Preloader plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Plugins » Preloader page to configure plugin settings.

First, you need to enter the Hex code for the background color you want to use for the loading screen. The default option is #FFFFFF (white). You can use an online color picker tool to find the HEX code for the color you want to use.

Next, you need to provide the URL of the preloader image you want to use. The plugin comes with a default animation image.

If you want to use other animation, then you’ll find a link to download an animated preloader image from a third-party website. You can then upload that image to your wp-content folder and paste the URL here.

Next, you need to choose where you want to display the preloader.

You can choose to display it on all pages of your website, or you can select a specific section.

Finally, you will see the instruction to add the following code to your WordPress theme’s header.php file.

<div id="wptime-plugin-preloader"></div>

Before you leave the page, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save changes’ button to store your settings.

We don’t recommend adding code to your WordPress theme because it will get wiped off when you update the theme.

If you are using a child theme, then it is ok to add the code to your child theme’s header.php file.

An even better solution would be to add this code using a separate Code Snippets plugin, or in a site-specific plugin.

Here’s the code you’d need to add:

function wpb_add_preloader() {
echo '<div id="wptime-plugin-preloader"></div>';
}
add_action( 'wp_body_open', 'wpb_add_preloader' );

Note: this method of adding code will only work on WordPress themes that are compatible with the wp_body_open() function added in WordPress 5.2.

This method of adding the code makes sure that your code stays there even if you update the theme.

Once you have added the code, you can visit your website to see the preloader in action.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add a Preloader to your WordPress site. You may also want to see our list of the most useful WordPress tips, tricks, and hacks for more cool ideas.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add a Preloader Animation to WordPress (Step by Step) appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 11, 2019 at 07:16PM

How to Monitor Your WordPress Website Server Uptime (Easy Way)

Do you want to monitor server uptime for your WordPress site? Monitoring server uptime allows you to get alert notifications when your website goes down or is inaccessible.

Keeping your website online ensures that your customers never have any issues visiting your website. An unresponsive site is not only bad for user experience, but it is also bad for your SEO rankings.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily monitor server uptime in WordPress. We’ll share multiple uptime monitoring solutions, and you can choose one that works best for you.

What is Website Server Uptime Monitoring?

Website server uptime monitoring allows you to track outages on your website. The server uptime monitoring tools notify you immediately if something goes wrong with your website, so you can get it fixed immediately.

Many WordPress hosting companies promise 99.9% server uptime. However, sometimes this is not the case.

The biggest sign of poor hosting service is that their servers go down frequently and remain down for several minutes or even hours.

Why You Need to Monitor Server Uptime?

Often users trust their web hosting companies and let their guards down. Sometimes you may not even know if your website experienced downtime specially if it happened in the middle of the night or during holidays.

Website downtime can severely affect your business, website reputation, and user experience.

1. More Downtime Means Loss in Money: If your website remains inaccessible for a long period of time you will inevitably lose revenue.
2. User Experience and Brand Reputation: Having your website down is sort of like closing your door in users’ faces even though you’re not doing it intentionally. It creates a bad impression and you may lose potential customers.
3. Search Engine Influence: If your website is frequently down, then search engines might assume that your website is insignificant or lacks consistency. Often they penalize those websites that fail to maintain 24/7 uptime.

Obviously, you cannot just sit in front of a computer and keep refreshing your website to see if it is up.

There are some really excellent and free tools that you can use to automatically monitor server uptime for your website.

These services will monitor your site uptime and will also promptly alert you via email, or SMS message when your server is down.

Let’s take a look at some of the best tools for monitoring server uptime for your website.

1. Monitor Server Uptime with Uptime Robot

Uptime Robot offers both free and paid plans to monitor your server uptime.

Their free plan checks your website every 5 minutes, and the paid plan every 60 seconds. Paid plan starts for $4.50 per month (billed annually), and it includes SMS, voice call, email, and other alerts.

The first thing you need to do is visit the Uptime Robot website and click on the Signup button.

Next, you need to select a plan for your monitoring service.

After that, finish the signup process and log in to your Uptime Robot account dashboard. From here, you need to click on the Add New Monitor button.

This will bring up a popup where you need to select a monitoring method (HTTP or HTTPS), and then add your website URL. In that same modal, you can also set alerts to be sent when your website is down.

Once you are done, click on the ‘Create Monitor’ button to save your changes.

Uptime Robot will now save your website and start monitoring your server uptime. You’ll see detailed stats on your account dashboard and receive alerts when your website is down.

2. Setting up Uptime Monitoring Using Pingdom

Pingdom is a popular performance monitoring tool that allows you to set up server uptime monitoring for your website. Pingdom is a paid service with plans starting from $42 per month. They also have a starter plan that’s $165 / year.

Pingdom is a more robust platform offering real-time uptime monitoring service. They offer detailed stats, logs, monitoring from various geographic locations, and more.

First, you need to visit the Pingdom website and click on the green button to start your free trial.

You’ll be asked to provide your email and password to create an account. After that, you will be asked to provide phone number, email, timezone, and website URL. Make sure to check performance and monitoring options, and then click on the ‘Let’s get started’ button.

Pingdom will automatically setup monitoring and will send you a test alert to your email address. That’s all, you have successfully set up uptime monitoring for your website using Pingdom.

You can set multiple alerts and tracking for various locations. Pingdom documentation and support can help you set that up, but their interface is fairly straight forward.

Pingdom also keeps your uptime history, so you can properly evaluate your web hosting company’s performance over time.

3. Checking Your Website is Up or Down

If you just want to know whether your website is really down, or you are facing internet issues, then you can do that quickly using IsItWP’s uptime checker tool.

Simply go to the IsItWP Uptime Checker tool and enter your website address.

Uptime Checker tool will quickly check your website and will show you whether your website is up or down.

What to Do When Your Website is Down?

If your website down, and you need to figure out what to do next, then here are the step by step instructions you should follow.

Step 1. Verify that it is down for everyone and not just you

You can start by checking your site with IsItWP’s uptime checker tool. If it shows that your website is up, then it is probably just your internet.

First, clear your browser cache and DNS cache. After that reload the website.

If that doesn’t work, then see if you can access your website from a different IP address. You can do so by using a VPN service or even just using your mobile phone internet.

If you can access your website, then this means that either your ISP or your hosting company has accidentally blocked your IP address. You can contact both service providers to resolve the issue.

If you recently changed your domain name‘s DNS settings, then this could also mean that the DNS has not updated in your particular geographic location.

There is not much you can do but wait till DNS is properly updated. This may take a few hours to a day.

Step 2. If Your Website is Down for Everyone

If you have verified that your website is down for everyone, then you need to immediately reach out to your hosting provider. They may be having issues with their server and can provide you more details.

Usually, hosting companies are quick to respond to such issues, and your website will be back soon.

However, if your website is frequently down, or you don’t get a satisfactory answer from them, then proceed to the next step.

Step 3. Move to a Better Hosting Provider

Due to tough competition in the hosting industry, some lesser-known companies cut costs by using outdated technologies, unskilled staff, and inadequate customer service.

However, if your website is frequently down and you cannot do much about it, then you need to move to a better hosting provider.

Here’s our list of reliable WordPress hosting providers:

• SiteGround
• WP Engine
• Bluehost
• Dreamhost
• Liquid Web

For more hosting options, see our list of the best WordPress hosting companies to choose from.

Next, you’ll need to transfer your website to a new host. We have a complete step by step tutorial on how to move your website to a new hosting provider (without losing SEO and without any downtime).

Some providers like SiteGround and WP Engine will offer free website migration service. You just need to ask their support.

We hope this article helped you learn how to monitor server uptime in WordPress. You may also want to follow our guide on how to keep your WordPress site secure to avoid any mishaps like data loss or hacking.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Monitor Your WordPress Website Server Uptime (Easy Way) appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 10, 2019 at 07:00PM

How to Track Link Clicks and Button Clicks in WordPress (Easy Way)

Do you want to track link clicks and button clicks in WordPress?

Tracking link and button clicks helps you uncover how users interact with your website. You can use the insights to improve your website and plan your strategy accordingly.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to easily track link clicks and button clicks in WordPress.

Why You Should Track Link and Button Clicks in WordPress?

Links and buttons are two of the most common ways users interact with any website on the internet. These are also the elements that lead website visitors to make purchases, sign up, and convert into a customer.

Tracking how your users interact with different elements on your website helps you learn what’s working on your website. More importantly, it helps you learn what’s not working and needs improvement.

For instance, If users are not clicking on the add to cart button in your online store, then you can investigate what’s stopping them from doing so.

Another great example is your affiliate links. You can track which links your users click more often than others.

These insights can help you make data-driven decisions for the success of your business.

Having said that, let’s take a look at how you can easily track links and button clicks in WordPress.

We have broken down this guide into the following sections, so you can easily follow along.

• Tracking link and button clicks in WordPress using MonsterInsights
• Tracking affiliate links in WordPress
• Tracking outbound links in WordPress
• Ecommerce tracking in WordPress
• Tracking file downloads in WordPress
• Tracking form conversions in WordPress
• Tracking any custom link in WordPress

Tracking Link and Button Clicks in WordPress Using MonsterInsights

The best tool to collect marketing data on your website is Google Analytics. However, despite Google’s best efforts many beginners and even experienced marketers find it a bit intimidating.

This is where MonsterInsights comes in. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress that allows you to properly setup Google Analytics, and make the most out of it.

MonsterInsights goes beyond just adding a tracking script in the footer. It adds automatically adds proper event tracking to all links, buttons, cart areas, and more. Most importantly, it also shows you human-readable reports right inside your WordPress dashboard.

Note: Our developers built MonsterInsights for WPBeginner content team. We released it as a plugin to help other small business owners. Today, over 2 million websites use the plugin to make data-driven decisions.

MonsterInsights has a free version, but you’ll need at least the PRO plan to take full advantage of all the powerful tracking features it offers.

Setting up MonsterInsights is super easy.

First, you need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to Insights » Settings page to enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on MonsterInsights website.

After verifying your license key, you need to scroll down a little on the settings page and then click on the ‘Launch Setup Wizard’ button.

MonsterInsights will launch the set up wizard which will connect your website to Google Analytics.

If you need detailed instructions, then see our tutorial on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress which will walk you through the entire setup.

MonsterInsights setup wizard automatically sets up all the right settings based on the type of your website. It truly is effortless.

Once you have setup MonsterInsights, you can resume this tutorial.

Now, that everything is up and running let’s start setting up click tracking.

Tracking Affiliate Links in WordPress

A lot of web publishers use affiliate marketing to make money online.

As an affiliate marketer, you’ll need to learn how your affiliate links are doing. Obviously, you can track your affiliate earnings from third-party resources, but that does not give you an accurate picture of how users interact with your affiliate links.

Most affiliate marketers use a link cloaking plugin like ThirstyAffiliates. This allows you to create shorter affiliate links and manage all your links inside WordPress. For example, https://ift.tt/2s6ANfd.

MonsterInsights makes it easy to set up affiliate link tracking in WordPress.

Simply go to Insights » Settings and switch to the ‘Publisher’ tab. From here, you can add your affiliate link prefix to start tracking.

Don’t forget to click on the Save changes button to store your settings.

Within few hours, you will be able to see your affiliate link performance in your Publisher reports located under Insights » Reports menu in WordPress.

Tracking Outbound Links in WordPress

Outbound links are the links pointing to external websites. These could also be uncloaked affiliate links, links to your partner websites, or other websites owned by you.

MonsterInsights automatically tracks all clicks on those outgoing links. You can view them by visiting Insights » Reports page under Publishers report.

Pro tip: If you see that you’re sending a lot of clicks to an external website, then you should contact them to work out a strategic partnership. This can be a sponsorship, cross-promotion, affiliate partnership, etc.

Ecommerce Tracking in WordPress

If you run an eCommerce business using WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads, then MonsterInsights comes with powerful eCommerce tracking features.

Let’s turn on eCommerce tracking on your website.

First, you need to visit your Google Analytics dashboard. From there you need to switch to the Admin view.

Next, you need to click on the eCommerce settings option.

After that, you will see the options to turn on eCommerce tracking and enhanced eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics.

Now that you have enabled eCommerce in Google Analytics, let’s enable the MonsterInsights eCommerce addon.

First, you need to go to Insights » Addons page. From here you need to install and activate the ‘Ecommerce’ addon.

After that, you need to head over to Insights » Settings page and switch to the eCommerce tab. From here, you can turn on enhanced eCommerce tracking. MonsterInsights will automatically detect your eCommerce software and turn it on for you.

That’s all you have successfully enabled eCommerce tracking on your website.

On top, you’ll see an overview of your eCommerce conversions. Below that, you will find your top referral sources and the exact conversions and revenue for each source.

This information helps you learn which referral sources to maximize, and which one of them are not doing so well.

MonsterInsights also sends a lot of useful data to Google that you can see under Conversions » Ecommerce section.

Tracking File Downloads in WordPress

If you have a membership site that sells digital downloads or offer downloadable content on your website, then tracking file download buttons will help you find how users interact with those files.

MonsterInsights automatically tracks file downloads for common file types like documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDFs, and zip files.

You can also add other file types that you may want to track. Simply go to Insights » Settings page and then switch to the ‘Engagement’ tab. From here, scroll down to the File Downloads to add the file type extension that you want to track.

You can view your file download stats by visiting Insights » Reports and switching to the ‘Publisher’ tab.

Tracking Form Conversions in WordPress

Forms play an important role in the success of any website. You use forms for email newsletter, shopping cart, purchase and order forms, and all your contact forms.

It is crucial to understand how users interact with your forms, which forms get more conversions and which forms are not getting enough attention.

Let’s start tracking forms in WordPress using MonsterInsights.

First, you need to head over to Settings » Addons page. From here, install and activate the Forms addon.

Once enabled, MonsterInsights will automatically detect the forms on your website and start gathering interaction data. It works seamlessly with all popular WordPress form plugins like WPForms, Formidable Forms, Gravity Forms, etc.

To view your form reports, you need to go to Insights » Reports page and switch to the ‘Forms’ tab.

Tracking Any Custom Link in WordPress

So far we have learned how to automatically track links and button clicks across your website. What if you wanted to track a specific link on your WordPress site, and create custom reports for it?

Luckily, MonsterInsights makes this easy as well. Its called custom link attribution feature, and here is how you can add that for any link on your website.

Simply switch to the HTML view in the block editor and add your link in the following format:

<a href="https://www.example.com" data-vars-ga-category="Call to action clicks" data-vars-ga-action="CTA link click" data-vars-ga-label="Homepage CTA clicks">My custom link</a> 

This link contains three new link attributes:

• data-vars-ga-category : Sets a category for your link
• data-vars-ga-action : Describes the action this link performs
• data-vars-ga-label : A label for your link which helps you identify it

You can find your custom link tracking report under your Google Analytics dashboard Behavior » Events section.

We hope this article helped you learn how to track link clicks and button clicks in WordPress. You may also want to see our complete guide on the website marketing data you must track on all your websites, and our comprehensive guide on how to increase your blog traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Track Link Clicks and Button Clicks in WordPress (Easy Way) appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 09, 2019 at 07:12PM

5 Best WordPress Business Directory Plugins

Are you looking for the best WordPress business directory plugins?

A business directory helps users discover service providers in a particular niche or category. At the same time, it helps those businesses find customers and opportunities.

As a website owner, you can even make money online by selling paid listings on your business directory.

In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress business directory plugins to help you save some time and money.

Best WordPress Business Directory Plugins

A good business directory plugin allows you to easily create lists of businesses organized by location, category, and other parameters.

Business directories help users find new vendors while helping businesses connect with customers and other businesses.

Unlike a Google Search, a business directory is made up of curated listings with description, reviews, and photos. This makes them more useful for users looking for specific businesses.

You’ll be looking for a business directory plugin that allows you to do all that. We will also highlight business directory plugins that allow your users to submit listings, integrate paid submissions, and search options.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress business directory plugins that you can use.

1. Formidable Form

Formidable Forms is one of the best WordPress form builder plugins on the market. It allows you to create advanced forms and add them to your website.

Using the real estate listings template, you can create a form that users will use to submit their entries into your directory. Then, you can display the business directory listings on a WordPress page.

It comes with many premium add-ons to add more features and functionality to your WordPress business directory. Formidable Forms fully supports MailChimp, PayPal, WPML, and WooCommerce.

For more details, check out our step by step tutorial on how to properly create a web directory in WordPress using Formidable Forms.

2. Business Directory Plugin

Business Directory Plugin is a free WordPress plugin to create a simple business directory. It comes with basic features required to run a web directory like customizable form fields, accepting payments for listings, etc.

It allows you to sort entries into categories and tags, create featured entries, and customize entry forms.

If you want to access more features and add-ons, then it has a pro version as well. The premium features include multiple modules, Google Maps support, user ratings, zip code search, file upload, and more.

3. Connections Business Directory

Connections is a powerful business directory plugin for WordPress. It comes with a set of custom fields that can be used to create almost any kind of web directory. In the privacy settings, you or your users can set privacy level for certain custom fields like business phone numbers or internal messages.

Displaying your directory on the front-end is very easy. You need to add a simple shortcode to your directory page. It offers custom shortcodes with extensive options to customize the appearance of your business directory.

Connections plugin also comes with template support so that you can choose a layout for your listings from pre-built directory templates.

4. GeoDirectory

As the name suggests, GeoDirectory allows you to create a location-based business directory like Yelp, TripAdvisor, YellowPages, etc. Using a simple interface, your users can submit listings to the directory. These listings or entries are pointed on the map, and your users can search for locations, businesses, neighborhoods, etc.

You can monetize your website by selling the directory listings. GeoDirectory also allows you to display event listings, create multi-location directories, and add payment gateways.

5. Name Directory

Name Directory is another free WordPress directory plugin. It allows you to create a business or personal directory easily. Using the configuration options, you can select a layout and customize plugin functionality.

It supports shortcodes to display directory listings on a WordPress post or page. You can sort the entries to show new listings on top of the page, allowing those entries to gain more exposure.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress directory plugins. You may also want to check out our list of the best email marketing services for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 5 Best WordPress Business Directory Plugins appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 06, 2019 at 06:00PM