For new projects, your time is often more valuable now than later. Here is a list of Free tools to get going fast.

As you work on new tech projects, you might be tempted to start something from scratch, because you just know how to do it, and it will be cleaner if you implement it yourself, rather than if you use an already available solution.

Let me advocate against that for a moment.

Your time is most precious at the start

Let's say that a company's productivity is the sum of the productivity of all its members (I know it's more complicated than this, but let's do it like the physicists, and simplify some shit).

Now, if you are just starting a project, alone or with a small team, your productivity accounts for a big chunk of the company's total productivity. And as you add people to your team, your own productivity will become a smaller fraction of the company's total productivity.

Which means the smaller your company is, the more impactful your own time is for the company, so you want to make it count. And for that, do not start things from scratch if you don't have to. Save as much time as you can, as early as you can.
Even if it means that you'll have to redo it later. Because redoing it later might take you twice as much time, but it will account for way less time loss in the whole company's perspective.

Perfect is the enemy of quick

I've always been the one saying: "I'm not building a POC (Proof of Concept), so I need to build the best version possible right away". And although it's not completely stupid, I now believe I didn't have the right mindset.

Even if you don't plan on building a POC, and you are aiming the long run for your new project. Your first goal is to build something that works well and looks good, and your second goal is to save as much time as possible while doing it. Even if it means having to redo stuff down the line.

Perfect is the enemy of quick. When taking a decision at an early stage in your project, don't simply go for the one that will work best. Always consider the one that will work the quickest.

Some free tools to save time quickly

Now lets go over some free tools that really can make you save some time:

Productivity tools

• Notion: Having a good KMS (Knowledge Management System) is huge, even for a team of one. Keep your ideas organized, and plan your work ahead. Onboarding your first members will be all the easier for it.
• Whimsical: It's a good enough prototyping tool, and a great schema tool. Don't work on something that you haven't prototyped first. Make sure that it will work well and look good before you invest your time in anything! (You may also consider Figma, although it will be better suited for slightly bigger teams).

Dev tools

• Firebase: A backend that is production ready in less than a minute, with a great emulator for local development. With a CLI that will make deployments super simple.
• Vercel: A server side rendering hosting solution for front end (mostly suited for NextJs) web apps, with pre implemented Github Actions for automated deployments.
• Material UI: Or any other design library. I know it's tempting to build your own components, and sometimes you have to do it. But doing it later rather than sooner is almost always the way to go! Plus, you want accessibility on your website, don't loose time on this if you don't have a dedicated team for it.

With these tools you can build, for free, a well organized project, with a fully accessible, SEO friendly, scalable, production ready website with Google Analytics and a user friendly authentication, local and dev environments, automated deployments, excellent log and performance monitoring.
All this in less than a week.

If you had to implement all this as a single individual, with non managed hosting solutions, it would take you months, if not years.

Oh and by the way, if a Wordpress website can do the job for you, it's even better, go for it!!

Cheers, and keep building stuff !