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The Tools I Use to Manage My Life
Dario da Silva
April 01, 2025
Choosing a good tech stack is one of the best things you can do to streamline your operations in a small business. In this blog post, I explore a range of tools and platforms that have helped me in my business.
Note: Some of the links are affiliate links.
Writing, project management and content production
Note-taking and personal knowledge management: Logseq (Open-source – $5/month contribution)
Project management: Tana (currently free in early-alpha, but expected to cost $10/month)
Generative AI: OpenAI Plus subscription ($20/month)Claude Pro ($15/month annual purchase)
Writing edits: Quillbot ($49.95/ year)
Graphics & visualizations
Workflow diagrams: Draw.io (Open source – $2/month contribution) and Excalidraw (Miro $10/month)
Animations and graphics: Microsoft365 PowerPoint
Image creation: Midjourney ($10/month) Cancelled and replaced by OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 which is included in Plus subscription. Now using Grok via my X subscription
Video creation
Video recording and editing (now only using Descript for recording)
OBS for recording (Open source – $2/month contribution)
DaVinci Resolve 18 for editing (free)
Descript for all-in-one recording, editing and video hosting (Creator plan – $15/month)
Screen recording software: Screenpal for Screen recording software (much cheaper alternative to Loom)
Video compression: Handbrake (free)
Course and template sales
Course hosting and syllabus management: Systeme.io ($27/month)
Nowadays there are all-in-one course management platforms such as Thinkific, Teachable and Systeme.io that allow you to create a landing page for your course, integrate the payment processing and manage your syllabus all-in-one. I use Systeme.io because it offers course hosting at my domain (www.logseqmastery.com/school), simple sales funnel tools and campaign management. If you want to sell some digital product, the free plan doesn’t take any percentage of transactions, unlike some of the competitors mentioned.
Template sales: Lemonsqueezy (5% + $0.50 per sale)
Purchasing power parity automation: ParityDeals ($13.30/month with a parity discount applied)
Testimonial automation: FameWall ($11.99/month)
Domains, content management and websites
Domain name registrar: Cloudflare. They sell domain names at cost and provide great security, as well as some basic analytics
Websites:
Ghost for OneStutteringMind ($31/month) and Zoho Sites for this site (included in Zoho One) (updated below)
I moved all of my websites to Hugo static sites using Hugo, which generates HTML from Markdown. This was all hosted using GitHub and Netlify for free. Some other personal projects still use this approach, but I’ve consolidated my main websites.
I’ve since migrated this website to WordPress and I host it with Hostinger ($3.99/month) (In the process of migrating to Beehiiv)
Video hosting: Bunny.net (usage based) along with Systeme.io for some videos
Personal blog: Substack ($50 once-off to change domain)
Course blogs: Systeme.io – One of the easiest website builders I’ve come across. Their free version is one of the most generous offers you’ll find online, especially if you want to start a simple blog for free.
Workflow automation
Online relational database: Airtable ($24/month)
I use Airtable as my primary database to store all my transactions for ease of reference and to facilitate integrations.
Automation: Zoho Flow (included in Zoho One) and Zapier (Starter plan, $19.99/month)
Zapier does a lot of the heavy lifting for my integrations, and they have an impressive number of integrated apps. It is relatively expensive compared to Make.com, but there are many services that it integrates with that Make.com doesn’t, e.g. Systeme.io. The integration process and user interface also feel more refined.
Finances
Book-keeping: ZohoBooks (included in Zoho One) Replaced with Xero
Some of the popular alternatives in this area are Xero and Intuit Quickbooks, but my integration requirements and need for multi-currency transactions meant that these quickly became too expensive. Zoho Books has not let me down. It felt clunky at first, but now that I’ve set everything up and gotten used to it, it runs seamlessly. The invoicing process is simple, and it also integrates with my banking and payment providers.
Payments: Stripe and PayPal (both % based)
PayPal takes quite a chunk in fees, around 4% of the transaction and an additional 2.5% on currency conversion, so I prefer to use Stripe. However, I had a number of requests to add a PayPal option, so I’d rather take the hit on pricing, than not make the sale at all.
Direct payments from consulting clients: Zoho Pay (included in Zoho One) Now using Xero
Integrates with Stripe if I need to get direct payments from clients.
Banking: Wise (transaction based)
Most of my earnings are paid into my Wise account, which I then convert and send over to my South African bank account. The transfer fees add up over time, but I’ve found the service to be reliable and I have yet to come across a competitor with a better offering.
Customer management, emails and feedback
Thread-writing: Typefully ($96/year) Cancelled because I can use Zoho Social instead when my annual subscription runs out (included in Zoho One)
Platforms: X, formerly Twitter ($8/month) and YouTube Premium (~$5/month)
Social media