My current stack at a glance
The 8 tools that actually run WrayWest day to day. Everything below in this page supports these core eight.
Start Here: 5 Essentials for New Creators
If you are new and overwhelmed, ignore the other 17 tools on this page. These are the five I would start with if I were starting WrayWest over tomorrow. The rest can wait until month three at the earliest.
Cheap, fast, and reliable WordPress hosting. I chose it because it handled LiteSpeed Cache and SSL out of the box, and the uptime on my plan has been 99.98 percent across 4 months. Good enough for creators, overkill for hobby blogs.
The only all-in-one I recommend on the free tier. Unlimited emails to 2,000 contacts, funnels, and even a basic course builder. It is not as polished as ConvertKit, but for creators under 2,000 subscribers it is a no-brainer.
Every blog post on WrayWest starts as a Notion outline. It is the closest thing I have to a second brain. Free tier is more than enough for solo creators. Skip the fancy templates from influencers and build your own simple content pipeline first.
The tool that saves me roughly 4 hours a week. I use it to auto-post new blogs to social, send lead-magnet emails from form fills, and sync affiliate clicks to a tracking sheet. Free tier is 1,000 operations per month, enough for most creators starting out.
The anti-Canva. One-time purchase instead of a monthly subscription. I use it for featured images, social graphics, and lead magnets. Not as polished as Canva, but it pays for itself in roughly 4 months of typical Canva Pro pricing.
Automation & Workflow
Tools that give you back time. If you are building a creator business around a day job, these are the highest-leverage purchases on the page.
My primary automation engine. Non-coders can build multi-step workflows using a drag-and-drop interface. I use it to auto-publish, cross-post, sync data between tools, and trigger email sequences based on site events.
Turns a single piece of content into posts for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Twitter, and LinkedIn automatically. Not perfect, but cuts my repurposing time from 90 minutes per piece to about 20.
Takes a blog post URL and turns it into a short-form video with stock footage and auto-captions. The output is not viral-ready, but it gets you to 80 percent of a YouTube Short in 10 minutes instead of 2 hours.
Overkill for most solo creators. Worth it if you run client work, agency services, or multi-funnel marketing. Features include CRM, email, SMS, scheduling, and white-labeling. I use it for client-facing side projects, not for WrayWest itself.
Content & Design
Creating graphics and organizing what you publish. Keep this category lean. Subscriptions add up fast.
One-time purchase in a subscription-dominated space. Templates cover social, blog headers, lead magnets, ebooks. Interface is less polished than Canva, but if you are trying to escape monthly tool creep, this is a real alternative.
Everything WrayWest publishes passes through Notion first. I keep the editorial calendar, draft outlines, research archive, and affiliate tracker in one workspace. Free tier is more than enough for solo creators. Resist buying premium templates.
Email & Funnels
Email is the only audience you actually own. Pick one, set it up, do not switch providers for at least 12 months.
Email, funnels, a basic course builder, and landing pages on the free tier for up to 2,000 contacts. Not the most elegant, but genuinely the best free-tier option if you want everything in one place. I review it in detail in the full Systeme.io review.
The polished, creator-focused alternative to Systeme.io. Better deliverability, better analytics, more native integrations. Free tier up to 10,000 subscribers (without paid automations). Pick this if email is your primary revenue driver.
Not a polished tool, but useful if you are experimenting with affiliate funnels on a zero budget. Includes a built-in traffic exchange and basic page builder. Better as a second or third email tool than as your primary.
Only worth it if you sell something directly on your site (course, consulting, product). Chat widgets convert visitors who would bounce otherwise. Skip this one until you have an offer live. It does nothing for audience-building alone.
Hosting & Infrastructure
The plumbing nobody sees until it fails. Boring, but critical. Get this right once and ignore it for years.
What WrayWest runs on. Fast LiteSpeed-powered shared hosting, free SSL, and genuinely usable control panel. I have been on the Premium Business plan for 4 months with 99.98 percent uptime. Not perfect for high-traffic sites, but excellent for creator blogs under 50,000 monthly visits.
If you take affiliate commissions or client payments from abroad, Wise beats PayPal and most banks on exchange fees. I use it for all USD payments into my Jamaica-based account. Multi-currency account is free.
Investing & Money Tools
Whatever you earn from your creator business has to go somewhere. Below is a tier ladder for investing tools plus a short list of credit and budget helpers.
How the investing ladder works
Three investing platforms for three different stages. Start at Tier 1 if this is your first time investing. Graduate up only when your current tier feels limiting, not when a YouTube video tells you to.
Set and forget
Best entry point for first-time investors. Automated round-ups turn spare change into a diversified portfolio. Fees are high for small accounts but the habit-building is worth the cost early on.
Active, commission-free
The default upgrade when Acorns stops feeling useful. Commission-free stocks, ETFs, options, and crypto. Strong mobile interface. Lacks advanced charting but covers 90 percent of what solo investors need.
Similar to Robinhood but with better charting tools and research data included at no cost. Great sign-up bonuses for new account funding. Slightly steeper learning curve makes this better as a second brokerage than a first.
Serious charting & research
Not a brokerage. A charting and analysis platform that pairs with any broker. If you are doing your own research on stocks, crypto, or forex, TradingView is the community standard. Free tier is generous. Paid unlocks multi-chart layouts.
Supporting money tools
A credit-builder loan that reports to all three bureaus. You pay yourself a monthly amount that unlocks at the end as savings. Useful for rebuilding or establishing credit while your creator income ramps up.
If you have been denied by big banks because of thin credit history, Oportun offers personal loans based on broader financial signals. Rates are higher than prime lenders. Useful for emergency bridging, not a growth tool.
I use Klarna for business tool purchases when I want to split costs across 4 pay periods without interest. It is not a wealth-building tool. Treat it as cash flow smoothing, not free money. See my full Klarna review for when it helps and when it hurts.
Freelance & Gig Income
Platforms for earning income while your main creator business is still ramping up. Freelancing is underrated as a bridge from day job to full creator.
Better for higher-value, ongoing client work than one-off gigs. Upwork suits writers, designers, developers, and virtual assistants building a real freelance book. I cover the full Upwork vs Fiverr comparison in detail.
Better for productized, one-off gigs than deep client relationships. Easier to get started than Upwork if you are new to freelancing. Margins are tighter but volume can be higher if you master Gig SEO.
Solid YouTube alternative with less algorithm volatility. Revenue per viewer is generally lower than YouTube, but payouts happen faster and moderation is more hands-off. Worth considering as a second video home, not a replacement.
Low-cost front-end affiliate training. Decent starter content, but the business model depends heavily on a steep upsell ladder. I have kept my full honest review up even when it cost me commission. Read the caveats first.
A CPA affiliate network I use for specific offers where I can earn per lead instead of per sale. Not suitable for every niche. Approval process is stricter than traditional affiliate programs. Better for intermediate affiliate marketers.
What I tested and dropped
Trust goes both ways. Here are 3 tools I tried and stopped using, so you can decide without repeating my mistakes.
Great tool, but I swapped to ClickDesigns after calculating how much I would have spent on Canva Pro over 3 years. For purely in-app template use, Canva still wins. For “I want to stop paying monthly,” ClickDesigns wins.
Migrated to Make.com. Zapier is more polished and has more integrations. Make.com is significantly cheaper at equivalent volume and its visual editor makes complex flows easier to maintain. Solo creator: choose Make. Agency: Zapier might still win.
Zero control over subscriber list, no native product sales, and Substack keeps 10 percent of paid revenue. Moved the newsletter to Systeme.io after 6 weeks. If you want a newsletter and nothing else, Substack still makes sense. I wanted more.
Resources FAQ
The 6 questions readers ask most about this page and affiliate reviews in general.
Do you get paid when I click these links?
Yes, on most links. When you sign up through an affiliate link on this page, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Every affiliate link is tagged with rel="sponsored" per Google guidelines. Non-affiliate links like Notion, Kit, and TradingView (free tier) are marked as plain outbound. Full policy on the scoring methodology page.
Can I use the free versions of these tools?
Yes. Most tools listed have a free or freemium tier I have tested. Systeme.io, Make.com, Notion, Kit, TradingView, Robinhood, and Moomoo all have usable free tiers. Start on free, upgrade only when free stops serving the work.
Which tool should I start with if I only buy one?
Hostinger, if you do not have a site yet. Systeme.io, if you already have a site but no email list. Make.com, if you already have both and are drowning in manual work. Every other purchase on this page can wait.
Why do you list non-affiliate tools alongside affiliate ones?
Because the goal of this page is to actually help you, not to route every click through a commission. Notion, Kit, and TradingView (free tier) do not pay me. They are on the page because they are genuinely the right answer for certain readers. That is the whole point.
How often does this page get updated?
Quarterly at minimum. Every 90 days I audit my own stack against the 45-Minute Stack test (see The Second Income Engine framework). Tools get dropped when they stop earning their place. The “Last Updated” stamp at the top of this page tells you when I last refreshed the content.
What if I want a tool reviewed that is not on this list?
Send me a note through the contact page. I only review tools I actually use for at least 30 days, but I am always adding to the testing queue. If enough readers ask about the same tool, it jumps up the list.
Recommended reading by topic
Cornerstone articles from the blog, grouped by the question they answer. Start wherever matches what you are trying to build this month.
Getting Started
Making Money
Content Strategy
Start with the Framework
The Second Income Engine is the foundation everything else builds on.