Best Tools for Creators, Reviewed and Ranked in 2023
Reviewed: John Glensy
Updated:September 17, 2023
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Being a creator means using your creativity to express yourself, build a following, and create something. No matter where you are in your journey, you'll need to create an online presence, make your images look professional and crisp, write content or edit videos, stay organized, and a hundred other things.
We've put together 10 areas that we think creators may search for tools, technology and services to help them achieve their goals.
But first, the world creator is used very broadly. For us, it means anyone who has creates online, builds a following, or wants to make money online. This broad definition captures influencers, freelance designers, fitness trainers, Shopify designers and so on. So some of these may relate to you as an UGC content creator, but others won't unless you're an up-and-coming artist navigating Spotify. But most of these should be relevant to most creators.
We'll cover the best in class tools for creators across the categories below. Let's get started.
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As a creator, whether you're posting on Instagram to your 100,000 followers, or you're a freelance photographer building a personal website, you might need to edit some images. Graphic design and photo editing tools have become incredibly advanced over the last decade. This is great for creators. Yet, now there's so many to pick from: Canva, PicsArt, Microsoft Designer. Let's not forget the old school Adobe Photoshop-type options.
So, how do you decide which tool to use in this ocean of options? We'll give you a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is that our best recommendation to you is to use Canva. It's powerful, easy to use, and extremely affordable. What's the long answer? This: Best Graphic Design Tools.
If you're trying to strike it big on YouTube, you'll need to either get good at video editing or find someone who can help you. Either way, you're going to need a great video editing tool.
What's a recommendation for the best video editing tool? InVideo. It's simple, not too expensive and easy to get started. If you start seeing success and need something more powerful, we recommend Animoto, but if you're getting started, InVideo will do the trick.
Here's the longer answer on all the different options: Best Video Editing Tools.
Audio isn't as mainstream as graphic design or video editing, but there's 11 million artists on Spotify. There's millions of people who are trying to craft their next tune, or edit a podcast. There's also the side hustle of doing a voice over, and you could potentially even record an audiobook.
In all of these cases, you'll need a audio editing tool. We recommend starting with Audacity. You might also need to purchase some premium beats. For that, check out Premium Beat by ShutterStock.
If you want to dive deep into what the Best Audio Tools are, knock yourself out.
If you have an online profile on more than one social network, then you probably could use a link in bio tool. Since everyone has multiple online profiles, it's not shocking that the link in bio tools have tens of millions of users collectively.
There's at least 20 link in bio tools. That's a lot, but thankfully, we can tell you the handful that are worth picking between. If you're looking for the safest options, you can't go wrong with either Linktree or Beacons. Linktree, with over 30 million creators as of 2023, is the market leader, but Beacons with about 10 million creators, offer a more robust suite of functionality for more savvy creators.
There are others too: Best Link In Bio Tools. We reviewed pretty much every single one, 64 of them, to help recommend which are worth considering.
You're not an influencer-type of creator? You need a full website since you need an online portfolio? There's tons and tons of platforms to help you build a site for yourself or your business. In fact, the entire Link in Bio space are effectively lite versions of building a websites. However, some creators need a full site.
Given how long this space has been around, the website builder space is very mature and the products are quite powerful. Our two top options are Squarespace and Webflow. Squarespace is perfect for creators who want an easy to manage site with a sleek design. You can almost can't make a Squarespace site look ugly. For creators looking for something more robust, Webflow is similarly design-friendly, but much more powerful. Webflow has a learning curve, but once you get it done, you can build rich sites that look like they were designed by professionals.
These are just two options. This space is saturated with options. Your ideal platform will depend on your specific needs: Best Website Builders.
AI is a really broad term, but depending on the type of creator you are, you might could benefit from the countless new artificial intelligence tools that are being released. So there isn't a best AI tool, but depending on your use case, there might be a great AI tool that could 10x your output.
You'll have to read the full entire guide on the best AI tools for creators where we'll go over all of the different exciting tools we think you should be aware of: Best AI Tools.
As you scale your efforts, it's essential to stay organized. Ask any successful creator what tools they use and they'll give you a list of 5 to 10 tools they use that have nothing to do with creating content or building. For this category, there's a list of essentials that every creator should consider for their work flow. We'll tell you our top 5 before we dive into a whole lot more in the full, detailed guide.
Our top organizational tools include: Notion, Asana, Slack, Google Docs and Google Business Suite. The last few people probably through you off since you weren't expecting an email platform like Google Business Suite, or a instant messaging platform like Slack. However, as most creators grow, they hire or collaborate with others. Collaborative tools like Google Docs and Slack become incredibly useful at that stage.
For good or worse, there's a ton more tons you should be familiar with. Read our full guide on the Best Productivity Tools.
This last section is for more mature influencers and creators that end up needing talent representation. If you get to 200K Instagram followers, or 70K YouTube subscribers, you might want to consider finding an agency that will represent you. These agencies can help you find brand deals, negotiate on your behalf, and even help you launch products. Each agency is different and targets different types of creators.
You can see our full directory of the Best Talent Agencies and decide if any are a fit for you and the stage you are at.
This is a frequently asked question on Google, so we thought we would share our thoughts. Being a content creator is not easy. Creators are differentiated based on their creativity and ability to connect with their audience. That means that it's easy to get started, but difficult to succeed.
This is a great question and deserve a full analysis.
The short answer is that YouTube is the most lucrative platform for influencers, but the longer answer is so much more interesting. Depending on your niche and how you monetize, the real answer is: it depends. For instance, a personal finance creator on TikTok using her channel to sell budget planners can make a lot more than a YouTuber that talks about his pet hamster.
It depends.
You have to first consider the various monetization models like affiliate, brand deals, subscriptions and so on. From there, you have to look at your niche, both in terms of the rates, but also how competitive the niche is. The higher the rates, the more competitive it likely is, which means it will take longer to build an audience and be able to make a meaningful amount as a beginner content creator. We'll dive into this much deeper in our monetization section.
This question is funny, but understandable.
When we think of content creators, namely influencers, we think of them posting once or twice a day or week. If that's someone's full time job, what are they doing the rest of the time? However, creators have to do a lot more behind the scenes. For instance, some creators create and maintain a content calendar. They might even schedule their posts using a social media posts scheduler. Likewise, they may be updating their links on their link in bio tools like Linktree, or they may be editing their post on Canva before they post. There's also outreach to brands, negotiations, and reshooting content if needed. Creators also have to track their expenses for tax purposes. There's a lot that goes on behind the final post followers see.
