Reposted from PixelBit Lab

Over the last few months i’ve been looking into various web apps to use over at PixelBit. After looking over many, testing a few and reading reviews i’ve formulated a small list of the top tools. We use others as well but these are the ones that shine.

Basecamp
Project and client management. The Suite is a good deal.

Sortfolio
Good advertising opportunity for little cost.

Quickbooks Online
Perfect tools for managing the business, paying employees and contractors. Also integrates with our accountants systems.

Beanstalk
Hosted SVN for secure, offsite backups. While we don’t use this for all code (contract restrictions) it works quite well for our small team.

TestFlight
iOS Developers “new best thing”. It makes testing a breeze and makes it possible to push builds in minutes with a clear communication with our testing pools.

Dribbble
While not really a web tool it really is nice to get feedback in realtime as a project is being developed.

MediaTemple
I have a love/hate for this host, but so far they’ve allowed PixelBit to scale (internally) and provide solutions for our clients.

MailChimp
Excellent newsletter and one-off mailing. Clean, Fast and Intuitive. Plus it has chimps, whats not to love?

There you have it, a little list of the tools we use. I will post some more “company information” in the future as we continue to grow. For now we are focused on our brands and clients, so much that we haven’t even finished our own website. Its the “cobblers children” effect for sure.

What tools and services do you use?

Note: NONE of these recommendations were paid or compensated to be added.

I have yet to hear back from the guys at Spoono Host (spoonohost.com) or Spoono (spoono.com) in general, but now I am calling on the community to shed some light on potential legal action!

Another friend of mine, Ryan, just told me his sites domain has expired and he is in the process of a marketing campaign. This isn’t script kiddies here, this is hurting people that are fathers and adults and most importantly, business people.

I may sound a bit agitated, well thats good because I really am.. this is complete and utter bullshit in the highest form. I really hope the hosting company smartens up because this is just wrong.

Note: Hosting and company URLs intentionally unlinked

Update: I recommend MediaTemple or RackSpace as a great alternative.

We all have to start somewhere in our profession, smaller computers, less toys and often times, a lesser host. Problem with this idea is you almost always get burnt. Smaller hosts do cost less, but they also come with less reliable systems and in this next case, a very horrible support staff.

A while back I was a supporter, “grapevine” author and forum admin for Spoono. Heard of it? Most likely you have. Problem is as they got more popular, they decided to offer hosting with all the popularity and “name” behind the Spoono community.

Well fast forward a few years and the Spoono community has faded away, the forums were shut down from an overload of spam. Returning with electronic tumbleweed replacing the once thriving community and the hosting has just failed.

One of the latest forum posts really paints a bad picture. Seems one of their customers “h4xnoodle” has not only had great trouble contacting, but even more serious just lost her domain name after paying it on time. At the time of this posting Spoono Host has still failed to respond and if they do so I will update this post.

Basically I am making this post to warn others about “cheap” hosting, not specifically Spoono Host, but any of them. Just ask other professionals old & new.