We often get asked what tools and resources we use to design, build, scale, market and monetize niche websites.
So we’ve put together the following list of tools and resources that we have personally used and are very happy with and/or have researched in-depth and feel that they would be useful to our readers.
Please check the respective product and service provider’s website for their current prices and subscription plans as these can change.
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Web Hosting: GreenGeeks
Environmentally Friendly Web Hosting plus Free Domain Name for 1st year (from $2.95/month for 1 website)
We enjoy using GreenGeeks as our web hosting provider as they offer 99.9% uptime, super-fast speeds using the LiteSpeed web server, top security and 24/7/365 support.
We’ve used GreenGeeks web hosting for over 1.5 years now and are very happy with their service. They offer 24/7 support which was especially helpful when we were first setting up our account, transferring some domain names over, setting up WordPress for our websites and email accounts.
We signed up to the Pro plan from the beginning, at the intro discount price of $4.95/month (regular $15.95/month) for 3 years to maximise our savings. This plan offers you features including: unlimited websites, web space, email accounts, databases, free domain for the 1st year, free SSL certificate, free CDN, free nightly backup, and more. There is also a lite plan at $2.95/month if you want to test out their hosting with one website first.
Two Additional Features We Particularly Like Are:
- Account isolation. “Utilizing a container based approach, accounts are provisioned with their own dedicated computing resources and secured virtual file system (Secure vFS). This ensures no single user can impact another regardless of site traffic or computing resource demands.”
- 300% Green Hosting platform. GreenGeeks work with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) in Portland, Oregon as a Green-e Partner and purchase Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) 3x as much as much as they’ve consumed, and put that energy back into the grid. They also work with One Tree Planted to plant trees across the world. They plant one tree for every web hosting account they service on their platform.
We’ve used GreenGeek’s services for over 1.5 years now and have found them to be very responsive to answer any questions, and have found no problems so far with building multiple websites on their platform.
Domain Names Registrar: Namecheap
You find yourself brainstorming new business ideas all the time. You generate a list of possible domain names for your business ideas. You do a domain name search and see that one or more of them are available, so you decide to buy them for when you have time to build your next business idea and website.
You may also like buying cool domain names to sell/flip sometime in the future.
We’ve found Namecheap to be competitively priced, starting from US$8.95/year for a new .com domain name. Scroll down to their current deals section on their home page and you’ll often see discount offers around 21% off for renewals, transfers and new .com domain names. We also like how they include free Whois protection and private domain registration as part of the domain registration price.
WordPress Theme: Blocksy
Blocksy is a great free WordPress theme that is easy to use without needing to know how to code. There are 13 starter website designs you can choose from. These include designs already tailored for various categories including: a business, portfolio, travel, recipe, interiors, product reviews, ecommerce store, or news website.
You can install the starter website you like and use it for free. The design interface using blocks is intuitive to use, enabling you to customize the layout, header, footer and sidebar options to achieve the design you want quickly and easily.
The theme is light and fast resulting in faster load times, eCommerce ready, and is also a fully responsive theme. It is also compatible with WordPress editors like Gutenberg, Elementor and Brizy so you can build your site using a drag-and-drop visual interface.
You can get access to more features such as: multiple conditional sidebars, content blocks (hooks), custom fonts, custom code snippets and more with the Pro version of Blocksy if needed. We have built websites using the Blocksy News starter site and found the free version of Blocksy as more than sufficient.
