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With many Continuous Integration tools available in the market, it is quite a tedious task to select the best tool for your project. Following is a list of top 20 CI tools with popular features and download links.
Best CI/CD Tools: Top Picks
15-minute configuration in clear & telling UI/UX
Lightning-fast deployments based on changesets
Builds are run in isolated containers with cached dependencies
Supports all popular languages, frameworks & task managers
Dedicated roster of Docker/Kubernetes actions
Integrates with AWS, Google, DigitalOcean, Azure, Shopify, WordPress & more
Supports parallelism & YAML configuration
2) Jenkins:
Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration tool. It is written using the Java programming language. It is one of the best Continuous Integration tools that facilitates real-time testing and reporting on isolated changes in a larger code base. This software helps developers to quickly find and solve defects in their code base & automate testing of their builds.
Features:
Provide support to scale out to a large number of nodes and distribute the workload equally among them
Easily updated with all OS and versions of Linux, Mac OS or Windows
It offers easy installation as Jenkins comes as a WAR file all you need to drop into your JEE container and your setup up ready to run.
Jenkins can be easily set up and configured with the help of its web interface
It’s can easily distribute work across several machines,
3) TeamCity:TeamCity is a Continuous Integration server which supports many powerful features.
Features:
Extensibility and Customization
Provides better code quality for any project
It maintains CI server healthy and stable even when no builds are running
Configure builds in DSL
Project level cloud profiles
Comprehensive VCS integration
On-the-fly build progress reporting
Remote run and pre-tested commit
4) GoCD:GoCD is an Open source Continuous Integration server. It is used to model and visualize complex workflows with ease. This CI tool allows continuous delivery and provides an intuitive interface for building CD pipelines.
Features:
Supports parallel and sequential execution. Dependencies can be easily configured.
Deploy any version, anytime
Visualize end to end workflow in realtime with Value Stream Map.
Deploy to production securely.
Handle user authentication and authorization
Keep orderly configuration
Tons of plugins to enhance functionality.
Active community for help and support.
5) Bamboo:Bamboo is a continuous integration build server which performs – automatic build, test, and releases in a single place. It is one of the best CI tools that works seamlessly with JIRA software and Bitbucket. Bamboo supports many languages and technologies such as CodeDeply, Ducker, Git, SVN, Mercurial, AWS and Amazon S3 buckets.
Features:
Run parallel batch tests
Setting up Bamboo is pretty simple
Per-environment permissions feature allows developers and QA to deploy to their environments
It can trigger builds based on changes detected in the repository, push notifications from Bitbucket
Available as hosted or on-premise versions
Facilitates real-time collaboration and integrated with HipChat.
Built-in Git branching and workflows. It automatically merges the branches.
6) Gitlab CI:Features:
GitLab Container Registry is a secure registry for Docker images
It provides APIs for most features, so it allows developers to create deeper integrations with the product
Helps developers to put their idea into production by finding areas of improvement in their development process
It helps you to keep your information secure with Confidential Issues
Internal projects in GitLab allow promoting inner sourcing of internal repositories.
7) CircleCI:Circle CI is a flexible CI tool that runs in any environment like cross-platform mobile app, Python API server or Docker cluster. This tool reduces bugs and improves the quality of the application.
Features:
Allows to select Build Environment
Supports many languages like Linux, including C++, Javascript, NET, PHP, Python, and Ruby
Support for Docker lets you configure customized environment
Automatically cancel any queued or running builds when a newer build is triggered
It split and balance tests across multiple containers to reduce overall build time
Forbid non-admins from modifying critical project settings
Improve Android and iOS store rating by shipping bug-free apps.
Optimal Caching and Parallelism for fast performance.
Integration with VCS tools
8) Codeship:Codeship is a powerful CI tool that automates the development and deployment workflow. It triggers automated workflow by simplifying pushing to the repository.
Features:
It provides full control of the design of your CI and CD systems.
Centralized team management and dashboards
Easily access debug builds and SSH which helps to debug right from CI environment
Codeship gives complete control over customizing and optimizing CI and CD workflow
It allows encrypted external caching of Docker images
Allows to set up teams and permissions for your organizations and team members
Comes in two versions 1) Basic and 2) Pro
9) Buildbot:Buildbot is a software development CI which automates the compile/test cycle. It is widely used for many software projects to validate code changes. It provides distributed, parallel execution of jobs across different platforms.
Features:
It provides support for multiple testing hosts with various architectures.
Report kernel crashes of hosts
Maintains a single-source repository
Automate the build
Every commit build on mainline on an integration machine
Automate deployment
It’s Open Source
10) Integrity:Integrity is a continuous integration server which works only with GitHub. In this CI tool whenever users commit the codes, it builds and runs the code. It also generates the reports and provides notifications to the user.
Features:
This CI tool currently only works with git, but it can easily mirror with other SCM
This CI tool supports numbers of notification mechanisms like AMQP, Email, HTTP, Amazon SES, Flowdock, Shell, and TCP.
HTTP Notifier feature sends an HTTP POST request to the specific URL
11) Strider:Strider is an open source tool. Its written in chúng tôi / JavaScript. It uses MongoDB as a backing store. Hence, MongoDB and chúng tôi are essential for installing this CI. The tool offers supports for different plugins that modify the database schema & register HTTP routes.
Features:
Strider integrates with many projects like GitHub, BitBucket, Gitlab, etc.
Allows to add hooks to execute arbitrary build actions
Build and test your software projects continuously
Integrates seamlessly with Github
Publish and subscribe to socket events
Create and modify Striders user interfaces
Powerful plugins to customize default functionalities
Supports Docker
12) Autorabit:AutoRABIT is an end-to-end Continuous Delivery Suite to speed up the development process. It is one of the best Continuous Integration systems that streamlines the complete release process. It helps the organization of any size to implement Continuous Integration.
Features:
The tool is specially designed to deploy on Salesforce Platform
Lean and faster deployments based on changes supporting all the 120+ supported metadata types.
Fetch changes from Version Control System and deploy them into Sandbox automatically
Auto-commit changes into Version Control System directly from Sandbox
13) Final builder:FinalBuilder is Vsoft’s build tool. With FinalBuilder there is no need to edit XML, or write scripts. You can define and debug build scripts when it schedules them with windows scheduler, or integrate with Jenkins, Continua CI, etc.
Features:
It presents build process in a logically structured, graphical interface
It includes try and catch actions for localized error handling
It provides tight integration with the Windows scheduling service, which allows builds to be scheduled
FinalBuilder supports more than a dozen version control systems
It provides support for scripting
The output from all actions in the build process is directed to the build log.
14) Container Registry:Container Registry is a CI tool that automates builds and deploys the container. It is one of the best Continuous Integration servers which creates automated pipelines which can be executed through the command line interface.
Features:
Fully integrated with Github & Bitbucket
Use Container Registry CLI for faster local iterations
Execute builds concurrently to keep your team moving
Run parallel tests to reduce wait time of your team
Integrate with 100s of external tools
Receive system notification in product and by email
15) Buildkite:The buildkite agent is a reliable and cross-platform build runner. This CI tool makes it easy to run automated builds on your infrastructure. It is mainly used for running build jobs, reporting back the status code and output log of the job.
Features:
This CI tool runs on a wide variety of OS and architectures
It can run code from any version control system
Allows to run as many build agents as you want on any machine
It can integrate with the tools like Slack, HipChat, Flowdock, Campfire and more
Buildkite never sees source code or secret keys
It offers stable infrastructure
16) Semaphore:Semaphore is a continuous integration tool that allows to test and deploy your code at the push of a button. It supports many languages, framework and can be integrated with Github. It can also perform automatic testing and deployment.
Features:
Easy process for setup
Allows automatic parallel testing
One of the fastest CI available in the market
It can easily cover number of projects of different sizes
Seamless integration with GitHub and Bitbucket
17) CruiseControl:CruiseControl is both CI tool and an extensible framework. It is used for building a custom continuous build process. It has many plugins for a variety of source controls, build technologies which include email and instant messaging.
Features:
Integration with a many different Source Control systems like vss, csv, svn, git, hg, perforce, clearcase, filesystem, etc.
It allows building multiple projects on single server
Integration with other external tools like NAnt, NDepend, NUnit, MSBuild, MBUnit and Visual Studio
Provide support for Remote Management
18) Bitrise:Bitrise is a Continuous Integration and Delivery Platform as a Service. It offers Mobile Continuous Integration and Delivery for your entire team. It allows integrations with many popular services like Slack, HipChat, HockeyApp, Crashlytics, etc.
Features:
Allows to create and test workflows in your terminal
You get your apps without the need of manual controls
Every build runs individually in its own virtual machine, and all data is discarded at the end of the build
Support for third party beta testing and deployment services
Support for GitHub Pull Request
19) Urbancode:IBM UrbanCode Deploy is a CI application. It combines robust visibility, traceability, and auditing feature into a single package.
Features:
Increase frequency of software delivery by automated, repeatable deployment processes
Reduce deployment failure
Streamline the deployment of multi-channel apps to all environments whether on-premises or in the cloud
Enterprise level security and scalability
Hybrid cloud environment modeling
This CI/CD Tools provides Drag-and-drop automation
FAQsCI/CD Tools are the software applications that help users efficiently integrate the code and develop the software build. These tools help developers to automate the software development process with ease. CI/CD tools also allow teams to integrate with other tools for efficient teamwork and collaboration.
Here is a CI/CD tools list of the best tools which support Continuous Integration:
Buddy
Jenkins
TeamCity
BiG EVAL
Bamboo
Integrity
Wercker
IBM UrbanCode
Best continuous integration (CI/CD Tools)Name Features Link
Buddy • Supports all popular languages, frameworks & task managers Learn More
Jenkins • It’s can easily distribute work across several machines, Learn More
TeamCity • Extensibility and Customization Learn More
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What Is Ci/Cd? Continuous Integration And Continuous Delivery
What is Continuous Integration (CI)?
Continuous Integration is a software development method where team members integrate their work at least once a day. In this method, every integration is checked by an automated build to detect errors. This concept was first introduced over two decades ago to avoid “integration hell,” which happens when integration is put off till the end of a project.
In Continuous Integration after a code commit, the software is built and tested immediately. In a large project with many developers, commits are made many times during a day. With each commit code is built and tested. If the test is passed, build is tested for deployment. If the deployment is a success, the code is pushed to Production. This commit, build, test, and deploy is a continuous process, and hence the name continuous integration/deployment.
In this CI tutorial, you will learn:
What is Continuous Delivery (CD)?
Continuous Delivery is a software engineering method in which a team develops software products in a short cycle. It ensures that software can be easily released at any time. The main aim of continuous delivery is to build, test, and release software with good speed and frequency. It helps you to reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering changes by allowing for frequent updates in production.
What is the difference between CI and CD?
CI vs CD : Continuous Integration (CI) is an approach of testing each change to codebase automatically, whereas Continuous Delivery (CD) is an approach to obtain changes of new features, configuration, and bug fixes.
Development without CI vs. Development with CIHere are key differences between development using CI or without CI:
Development without CI Development with CI
Lots of Bugs Fewer bugs
Infrequent commits Regular commits
Infrequent and slow releases Regular working releases
Difficult integration Easy and Effective Integration
Testing happens late Continuous Integration testing happens early and often.
Issue raised are harder to fix Find and fix problems faster and more efficiently.
Poor project visibility Better project visibility
Difference between Compilation and Continuous IntegrationActivities in Continuous Integration
While compilation only compiles a code, CI does the following activities
DB integration:
Ensure DB and code in sync
Automated creation of DB and test data.
Code Inspection:
Ensures a healthy codebase
Identifies problems early and applies best practices
Automated Deployment:
Allows you to release product anytime
Continually demo-able state and it is works on any machine
Document generation:
Ensure documentation is current
Removes burned from the developer
Produces build reports and metrics
Compilation:Compilation is the process the computer takes to convert a high-level programming language code into a machine language that the computer able to understand. It ensures a code compiler on every target platform.
When do I build?
At every check-in
Every time a dependency changes
What steps are in continuous integration?CI process
Ideally, the build should come from the command line and should not depend on an integrated development environment (IDE).
The build should happen continuously using a dedicated Cl server, not a cron job.
CI built should be triggered on every check-in and not just at midnight
The build should provide immediate feedback and Require no developer effort
Identify key metrics and track them visually. More importantly, act on them immediately
What do you need to conduct CI process?Here, are the key elements which you need to perform the entire CI process:
Version Control System (VCS): It offers a reliable method to centralize and preserve changes made to your project over time.
Virtual Machine: You should have a spare server or at least one virtual machine to build your system.
Hosted CI Tool Solutions: To avoid servers or virtual machines, you should go for hosted CI tool solutions. This tool helps in the maintenance of the whole process and offers easier scalability.
Tools: If you select a self-hosted variant, you will need to install one of the many CI tools like Jenkins, TeamCity, Bamboo, GitLab, etc.
How Continuous integration work?You are surely aware of the old phone Nokia. Nokia used to implement a procedure called nightly build. After multiple commits from diverse developers during the day, the software built every night. Since the software was built only once in a day, it’s a huge pain to isolate, identify, and fix the errors in a large codebase.
Later, they adopted the Continuous Integration approach. The software was built and tested as soon as a developer committed code. If any error is detected, the respective developer can quickly fix the defect.
Example of Continuous Integration
Features of CIHere, are important features and benefits of Continuous Integration:
Allows you to maintain just a single source repository
You can test the clone of the production CI environment
The built environment should be close to the production environment.
The complete process of build and testing and deployment should be visible to all the stack holders.
Why Use CI?Here are important reasons for using Continuous Integration:
Helps you to build better quality software
CI process helps to scale up headcount and delivery output of engineering teams.
CI allows software developers to work independently on features in parallel.
Helps you to conduct repeatable testing
Increase visibility enabling greater communication
Helps develop a potentially shippable product for fully automated build
Helps you to reduced risks by making deployment faster and more predictable
immediate feedback when issue arrives
Avoid last-minute confusion at release date and timing
Best practices of using CI SystemsHere, are some important best practices while implementing
Commit Early and Commit Often never Commit Broken Code
Fix build failures immediately
Act on metrics
Build-in every target environment Create artifacts from every build
The build of the software need to be carried out in a manner so that it can be automated
Do not depend on an IDE
Build and test everything when it changes
The database schema counts as everything
Helps you to find out key metrics and track them visually
Check-in often and early
Stronger source code control
Continuous integration is running unit tests whenever you commit code
Automate the build and test everyone
Keep the build fast with automated deployment
Here, are cons/drawbacks of Continuous Integration process:
Initial setup time and training is required to get acquainted with Cl server
Development of suitable test procedures is essential
Well-developed test-suite required many resources for Cl server
Conversion of familiar processes
Requires additional servers and environments
Waiting times may occur when multiple developers want to integrate their code around the same time
Tools for CI processHere, are some most essential CI/CD tools:
Jenkins:Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration software. It is written using the Java programming language. It facilitates real-time testing and reporting on isolated changes in a more massive codebase. This software helps developers to quickly find and solve defects in their codebase & automate testing of their builds.
Bamboo:Bamboo is a continuous integration build server that performs – automatic build, test, and releases in a single place. It works seamlessly with JIRA software and Bitbucket. Bamboo supports many languages and technologies such as CodeDeply, Ducker, Git, SVN, Mercurial, AWS, and Amazon S3 buckets.
TeamCity:TeamCity is a Continuous Integration server that supports many powerful features. It maintains a CI server healthy and stable even when no builds are running. It provides better code quality for any project
Summary:
Continuous Integration definition: Continuous integration is a software development method where members of the team can integrate their work at least once a day
CI/CD meaning combination of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery or Continuous Deployment.
Development without CI creates lots of bugs whereas Development with CI offers Fewer bugs
Important activities of Continuous Integration are 1) DB integration, 2) Code Inspection, 3) Automated Deployment, Document generation, and Compilation.
The build should happen continuously using a dedicated Cl server, not a cron job.
Important elements of CI are 1) Version Control System 2) Virtual Machine 3) Host CI Tool solutions 4) Tools
Continuous Integration system allows you to maintain just a single source repository
CI/CD process helps you to build better quality software
The most important best practices of Azure Continuous Integration process is to Commit Early and Commit Often never Commit Broken Code
The major drawback of the CICD pipeline process is that well-developed test-suite required many resources for Cl server
Jenkins, Bambook, and Team City are some useful AWS Continuous Integration tools.
17 Best Mint Alternatives Apps (2023 Update)
Mint is an easy to use free financial budgeting software that helps you manage all incoming and outgoing money transactions in one place. It allows you to add your bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards, and other accounts.
Here is a curated list of the Top tools that are capable of replacing Mint. This list includes commercial as well as open-source tools with popular features and the latest download link.
Best Mint Alternative: Free & Low Budget AppsQuickBooks is automated accounting software that enables you to handle bookkeeping, sales tax, invoicing, etc. This software allows you to track bills and expenses with ease. This accounting software helps you to manage your business expenditure anytime, anywhere. It also provides customizable reports and dashboards.
#1 Top Pick
QuickBooks
5.0
Security: 128-bit SSL encryption
Multiple Currencies: No
Supported Platforms: Windows and macOS
Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial
Visit QuickBooks
Features:
QuickBooks keeps everything organized in one place.
It offers powerful invoicing with custom reminders and easy tracking.
Get a real-time view of your cash flow.
It helps you to stay up to date, anytime, anywhere.
You can connect your bank account and credit cards automatically.
Pricing: $7.25 per month.
#2
Xero
4.9
Security: Multi-layer security
Multiple Currencies: Yes
Supported Platforms: Windows, Mac, Android and iOS
Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial
Visit Xero
Features:
You can track bank cash flow.
It allows you to send online invoices with online payment options.
You can connect Xero to your bank.
Record and manage receipts and expenses.
You can follow an employee’s payroll information.
Xero provides financial reports to monitor the amounts.
It saves a snapshot of relationship history and contacts.
This free alternative to QuickBooks has one dashboard to check business performance.
Personal Capital is a tool that helps you to track your complete financial information. It provides a comprehensive snapshot of your most important financial metrics.
Features:
Provides excellent retirement calculator
Top-notch investment analyzer
Automatically tracks cash flow and investments
Allows you to compare your portfolio allocation to the recommended target.
It helps you create budgets and track your expenditure to save for the future.
Pricing: It is completely free.
Visit Personal Capital
4) YNAB (You Need A Budget)YNAB is another important Mint alternative that helps you to plan your spending ahead of time. This application is a good choice for those who are interested in zero-based budgeting.
Features:
It helps you to gain total control of your money.
This replacement for Mint offers an easy goal tracker.
This Mint alternative allows you to access real-time information from any device at any time.
YNAB offers 100+ free and live workshops for personal support to their users.
Data is completely secured with encryption and hashing of all passwords and encryption of user data.
Pricing: $11.99/month or $84/per year plan
5) Every DollarEvery Dollar is a good financial app if you are a beginner. This Mint alternative helps you to track your financial goals by integrating them into your budget. It is one of the best replacements for Mint, as it syncs easily with your banking accounts.
Features:
Every Dollar helps you create a monthly budget so you can achieve your money goals.
It helps you to add your monthly income and cost of expenditure.
Allows you to plan your expenses efficiently.
It helps you constantly track your spending.
Supported platforms: iOS, Android.
Pricing: $59.99 starting price.
6) AlbertAlbert is a financial management app that offers mobile banking, saving, and investing all in one place. This business finance app also allows you to buy stocks and build a guided portfolio.
Features:
It helps you view all of your accounts in one place, set up a budget, and see how much you have left to spend for the Month.
Guides you through various financial decisions and alerts you if you are overpaying for anything.
Pricing: Free Self-manage software and App.
7) TillerFeatures:
Allows you to use formulas, your favorite add-ons, custom reports, charts, and pivot tables.
It protects your data with 256-bit AES encryption and two-factor authentication.
This software is easy to get started with flexible templates.
It helps you save time with reliable, automated bank feeds.
You can see all your accounts, balances, and spending in one place.
It automatically categorizes your transactions as per your guidance and rules.
PocketSmith is a finance application that allows you to set your budget, analyze spending patterns, and generate projections about your finance based on your budgeting scenarios.
Features:
Get clarity over your money.
It provides safe and secure information.
It has excellent reviews for customer service.
It is cloud-based and has global support.
Quicken is a strong competitor of Mint, which helps you track everything related to your spending, rent, food, commuting, entertainment, and more. It also allows you to check monthly spending trends.
Features:
Offers free phone and chat assistance from official Quicken customer support.
You can view all your transactions and accounts in a single place.
This alternative of Mint allows you to search transaction history by amount, payee, or type of expense.
Allows you to see transactions across different household members.
This tool also helps you to predict your financial future.
10) Lunchmoney.appLunchmoney is a simple budgeting app for your business. This app offers multicurrency support like Dollar, Yen, Pound, BitCoin, etc. It also allows you to split, group, tag, and categorize transactions.
Features:
It helps you to easily track your net worth over time.
Provides analytics against your transactions
This alternative of Mint automates your processes using the rules engine.
You can track your net worth, set a budget, and even run analytics on your transactions
Offers multiple methods for importing transactions
11) WealthsimpleWealthsimple finance management app helps you better manage your investments. It allows you to build a portfolio based on your goals. It also helps you to file your income tax returns.
Features:
Provides encryption for handling your financial information and two-factor authentication (2FA) protection.
This Mint alternative allows you to send cash to your friend in seconds.
It offers state-of-the-art security measures.
It provides standard bankruptcy and deposit protection.
12) GoodbudgetGoodBudget is a financial app that helps you to digitalize the envelope system and allows users to break down expenses into various categories. It can be simultaneously accessed from multiple devices, making it a more viable option for household budgeting for couples managing shared income.
Features:
It helps you to remain on financial track with the time-tested envelope budgeting method.
This alternative of Mint helps you to Sync & share budgets.
Supported platforms: iOS and Android.
13) Bluecoins FinanceBluecoins is a simple finance app that offers expense tracker, budget, and money management tools. This Mint alternative is a complete reporting and analysis software to manage money, expenses, income, and budget.
Features:
Easy to understand reports and charts that you can easily generate within this app.
Allows you to securely access data on multiple devices with your family members.
Allows you to make changes in your Google Drive directly using this app.
14) Status MoneyStatus Money is a single platform to anonymously compare your financial situation based on your age group and location. This financial app also suggests reducing high expenses and alerts you for upcoming due dates and payments.
Features:
It helps you to easily track your budget and net worth.
It helps you to earn cash rewards.
You can check overspending in certain categories like paying high-interest rates or not saving enough.
Allows you to create a retirement plan.
It also offers cash flow projects and interest rate analysis.
15) MoneyPatrolFeatures:
Automatically imports financial information from your accounts.
It helps you to organize finances, monitor transactions, and track your Money.
Helps you monitor bank accounts, credit cards, loans, etc.
Provides alerts, insights, and reminders to help you easily keep an eye on your finances.
This alternative of Mint allows you to spot suspicious and fraudulent transactions as well as late fees.
Includes financial reports.
16) StrandsStrands is a free mobile app for budgeting, which is capable of replacing Mint. Its main features are automatic synchronization of financial accounts, personalized budgeting, and spending tracking.
Features:
You will get instant access to your account balances, financial transactions, spending habits, and budgets.
It helps you to achieve your financial goals.
Gives a complete analysis of your finance and budget.
17) PocketGuardPocket Guard is a finance management tool that is easy to use and helps you take control of your Money. It optimizes your spending and grows your savings automatically.
Features:
Allows you to check all your accounts in one place.
Helps you track and lower your bills
Allows you to reach your financial goal with ease.
Your data remains secured with 256-bit SSL encryption.
18) WallyWally is a budgeting management tool that helps you track spending and fully understand your budget. You can set an account according to different categories and track real time progress.
Features:
It helps you to reach your financial goals faster.
You can sync your bank account with encrypted end-to-end PCI compliant technology.
Allows you to plan your bills with reminders and lists.
Financial clarity and control.
Allows you to track joint accounts and household budgets.
FAQMint is an easy to use free financial budgeting software that helps you manage all incoming and outgoing money transactions in one place. It allows you to add your bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards, PayPal wallets, and other accounts.
Mint software gives alert messages to manage your bills so that you never miss your payment.
Here are some of the Best Mint Alternatives:
QuickBooks Online
Xero
Personal Capital
YNAB
Every Dollar
Albert
Tiller
PocketSmith
Quicken
Here are some important features that a Mint alternative should provide:
Ease of use.
Flexible with all sizes of businesses.
Great quality and customer support.
Lower license cost, if applicable.
Lower Hardware/Software requirements
Good support and updated policy
Good Reviews
Yes, it is possible to use Mint without linking accounts. Under the bill section, Mint provides you the option to add “offline bills,” which don’t need to be verified by linked accounts.
Moreover, you can manually create a per year budget in the budgets section of the site. This allows you to manually enter your income, monthly expenses, per year investments, taxes, and so on.
You need to allocate separate “budgets” for each of these items. For example, one budget for income and one for each category of expense. It is strange to do it that way, as all of these items will be added/subtracted from how much you have budgeted in the right pane.
So, here you should prefer to use Mint without linking accounts. It also has a feature of goal tracking, such as paying off credit cards, taking a trip, buying a home, etc. Per year goal tracking does not require account linking.
Following are the key differences between desktop and cloud accounting software:
Desktop Small Business Accounting Software: To use desktop software, you need to install the software on your computer and run it. All your business accounts data is also stored on your computer.
Cloud Small Business Accounting Software: This accounting software runs on the internet. To use it, you don’t need to install the software. Your business accounts data is stored on a cloud server. To access the Cloud software, you can visit the website of cloud software provider and sign up with your details. This means you can access the cloud accounting software from anywhere and any device.
Here are some drawbacks of Mint software:
Categorizing transactions can be clunky.
Too many Ads and suggested services.
Offers weak investment feature
Not a great tool for reporting
It lacks a running Register.
Weak customer support
Lack of report generation features
It does not support multiple currencies.
It does not allow you to assign multiple saving goals to one account.
Problems with account synchronization.
No, Mint does not sell your data. Mint accounting app uses consumer data to identify various information to give a better experience to the serve them.
Best Mint Alternative: Free & Low Budget Apps9 Best Grammar Checker Software & Tools (Updated 2023)
The young typist must have been embarrassed. It happened way back in the days when typewriters were still commonly used, and perhaps it was the client who pointed out the spelling mistake. Wanting to make up for it, she typed a quick note of regret: “I apologize for the typing errow.”
Have you had days like that? Too often I notice a typo just after hitting Send on an email or Publish on a blog post. Why is that? I think it’s because I know what I meant to type, and my brain just assumed that it communicated what I wanted to. It would be more effective to get someone else to look over the text first, but there’s not always someone else around.
That’s where grammar checkers come in. They’re a lot more sophisticated than the simple spell checkers of yesteryear. Those basic tools did little more than ensure the words you type are in the dictionary. They’re robotic tools with no intelligence, and miss all but the most basic errors.
Today’s grammar checkers have come a long way. Even if a word is in the dictionary, they can tell if it’s the wrong spelling in context. Grammar and punctuation errors are also consistently identified. The best tools even help you make your writing more readable and warn of potential copyright violations—all before you hit Send or Publish.
The best tool for the job is Grammarly. It includes all of these features and more, and often feels more like an intelligent human pointing out my errors than a computer program. It’s pricey, but many users find the money well spent. The company also offers significant discounts regularly and provides the best free plan in the business.
In this article, we’ll cover Grammarly and ProWritingAid. We’ll also analyze four full-featured grammar checkers, free web-based tools, and your word processor’s grammar checker. Which is best for you? Read on to find out.
Why Trust Me for This Guide?
The Premium plan goes further and offers to help you improve your writing. I’ve been using the free version for the last year-and-a-half, and according to Grammarly, it’s checked almost two million words that I’ve written.
In recent weeks I’ve thoroughly tested four other grammar checkers, and while writing this roundup, I’m checking two more. I tested them all on several platforms using the same test document for easy comparison of their accuracy and ease of use.
My conclusion? I discovered they’re not all the same. In this roundup, I aim to show the differences between them clearly.
Who Needs a Grammar Checker?
Who should consider using a grammar checker? Anyone who can’t afford to have their work go out with spelling and grammar errors, along with those who are on a mission to improve their English and the clarity of their writing. That includes:
Professional writers who make a living stringing together correctly-spelled words in grammatically precise sentences. Writers should consider a grammar checker an essential business expense.
Those who are serious about writing but not yet making money from it, including budding novelists, screenwriters, and bloggers
Professionals and business people who need to write as part of their job. That may include sending vital emails and other correspondence, writing proposals and applications, and updating the company blog. Errors can reflect poorly on your business, so it’s essential to avoid them.
Those who know they are not talented at spelling or grammar. The right grammar checker will help you find those errors before it’s too late and may help you become more confident.
Students can use it to check their essays and assignments before handing them in. Why lose marks if you don’t have to?
Those who are learning the English language. English is possibly the least consistent language in the world, and these apps can be valuable learning aids.
Best Grammar Checker: The Winners
Best Choice: Grammarly
You can download Grammarly from the official website (Mac, Windows, browser extensions). A generous free plan is available. Subscribe to the Premium plan for $139.95/year. Grammarly’s business plan costs $150/user/year.
Grammarly works on:
Desktop: Mac, Windows
Mobile: iOS, Android (keyboards, not apps)
Browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge
Integrations: Microsoft Office (Windows and Mac), Google Docs
Grammarly will check your text for correctness, clarity, delivery, engagement, and plagiarism. It works on most major platforms. The online version offers extensions for four browsers and supports Google Docs. There are native apps for both Mac and Windows. They also plug into Microsoft Office on both platforms. On iOS and Android, special keyboards are available that check your spelling and grammar in any mobile app.
It’s the only app to identify every error in my text document and correct it quickly and easily with just the free version. Its accuracy and reliability have given me great confidence over the last year and a half that I’ve used it.
I usually check my drafts using Grammarly once I’ve moved the document to Google Docs, just before submitting them. I prefer not to obsess about getting everything right as I’m writing—instead, I focus on maintaining momentum. If I want to use Grammarly with a program that’s not supported—say, Ulysses—I turn to the Grammarly keyboard on my iPad.
All of that is available with the free plan. The Premium plan gives access to several other significant features, starting with Style checking. Besides checking for correctness (errors marked in red), Grammarly Premium also checks for clarity (marked in blue), engagement (marked in green), and delivery (marked in purple).
I had Grammarly check one of my old drafts, and received high scores for clarity and delivery, but my engagement needed a bit of work. The app found the article “a bit bland” and suggested how I can spice it up.
Some of the adjectives I used are often overused; more colorful replacements were suggested. Some of these changed the tone of the sentence too much, and others were fitting. For example, Grammarly suggested replacing “important” with “essential,” a much stronger word.
Another Premium feature is checking for plagiarism. Grammarly is the only grammar checker I’m aware of that allows you to perform an unlimited number of these in the plan’s cost. Other apps require you to purchase more once you reach a limit.
That means that if you perform a lot of these checks, Grammarly offers excellent value for money. For example, while ProWritingAid starts at half the price of Grammarly, it will become more expensive if you perform over 160 plagiarism checks per year (about three a week).
To test this feature, I imported a couple of 5,000-word Word documents into the Mac app. One contained a few quotes, while the other didn’t. Checking each one for plagiarism took about a minute. The second document was given a bill of clean health.
The first document had already been published on SoftwareHow and was identified as virtually identical to that web page. The sources of seven quotes throughout the article were also identified.
The results aren’t perfect, however. As a test, I blatantly copied some text from several web pages, and these potential copyright violations were not always flagged.
Grammarly suits my needs better than any other grammar checker. I can use it without changing my workflow, and even the free plan compares well with the features of some of its competitors. While the published subscription prices are high, generous discounts are sometimes available that make it just as affordable as the other apps.
Also Great: ProWritingAid
You can download ProWritingAid from the developer’s website (Mac, Windows, browser extensions). A limited free plan is available. Subscribe to the Premium plan for $20/month, $79/year, or $299 lifetime (with a free 14-day trial).
ProWritingAid works on:
Desktop: Mac, Windows
Browsers: Chrome, Safari, Firefox
Integrations: Microsoft Office (Windows), Google Docs, Scrivener
Like Grammarly, ProWritingAid will check your documents for spelling and grammar errors, suggests how you can improve your writing, and checks for plagiarism. Both apps identified all of the spelling and grammar errors in my test document, but ProWritingAid is less opinionated about punctuation and didn’t make any corrections there.
Its interface is similar to Grammarly’s, and making corrections is easy. It integrates with Microsoft Word and Google Docs. Unlike Grammarly, it also supports Scrivener.
ProWritingAid suggests how to improve the style and readability of my writing, and points out unnecessary words that can be eliminated, adjectives that are weak or overused, and overuse of the passive tense. Not all suggestions are improvements.
Where ProWritingAid excels is by offering a wide range of detailed reports—20 in total, more than any other grammar checker I’m aware of. These can be studied when you’re not rushing to complete the current writing project, and identify how you can improve readability, where you’ve overused words or used stale clichés, have written sentences that are hard to follow, and more.
1. Ginger Grammar Checker
Ginger Grammar Checker offers browser extensions for Chrome and Safari and a desktop app for Windows users only, as well as mobile apps for both iOS and Android. It will pick up many of your spelling and grammar mistakes, but in my tests, it also lets some glaring errors through. My experience with the app left me not trusting that it will catch all of my mistakes. Read our full Ginger review here.
Download Ginger from the developer’s website (Windows, browser extensions). A free plan is available. Subscribe to the Premium plan for $20.97/month, $89/year, $159.84 biyearly.
Ginger works on:
Desktop: Windows
Mobile: iOS, Android
Browsers: Chrome, Safari
Integrations: Microsoft Office (on Windows)
Unfortunately, Ginger identified far fewer errors in my test document than Grammarly or ProWritingAid. I first tried the free plan and was so unimpressed I immediately subscribed to Premium, expecting to receive better results. I didn’t.
It flagged most of the spelling errors of my test document but missed “scene,” which should be “seen” in context. It also failed to find any grammar errors.
I was also disappointed with Ginger when checking a test email in Gmail’s web app. While it correctly identified many of the errors, it let the sentence “I hop you are welle” slip through. That’s unacceptable.
2. WhiteSmoke
WhiteSmoke seems to be designed for students rather than professionals and business people. I found it more accurate at detecting errors than Ginger, especially when using the latest version, which is currently only available for Windows. However, neither a trial version nor a free plan is available, so to test the app, you’ll have to purchase a full year’s subscription.
Download WhiteSmoke from the developer’s website (Mac, Windows). Subscribe to the Premium plan for $79.95/year (or $59.95/year for web access only). A Business plan adds phone support and an extended warranty and costs $137.95/year.
WhiteSmoke works on:
Desktop: Mac, Windows
Browsers: generic web app (no browser extensions)
Integrations: Microsoft Office (on Windows)
Rather than just underlining errors like most other grammar apps, WhiteSmoke displays the alternatives above the word, which I find helpful. On the Mac and online applications, both spelling and grammar errors were identified in my test document, but not all of them. It made the wrong suggestion for “errow” (the only app to do this), and also missed “scene” (which should be “seen”) and “less” (which should be “fewer”).
The Windows version is the latest version (the other platforms should be updated soon) and picked all of these errors correctly. That’s promising, but I also noticed that there were a few false negatives. For example, it tried to correct “plug in,” which is already correct.
A plagiarism checker is also available, but I can’t recommend it. First, it only supports documents up to 10,000 characters (roughly 2,000 words), which is impractically low. Second, the checks were unusably slow. I gave up on checking a 9,680 character document after four hours but did complete a test on a short 87-word document.
Third, there are far too many false positives. Almost any word or phrase found on other web pages is marked as plagiarism. In my test that included the phrase “Google Docs support” and the single word “Punctuation,” there’s no way they should be considered plagiarism—but they were.
3. LanguageTool
LanguageTool offers a free plan that can test 20,000 characters and a Premium plan that can test 40,000 characters. It works online in Chrome and Firefox, and plugins are available for Microsoft Office and Google Docs. To run it on your desktop, you need to use a Java app.
You can download from the developer’s website (Java app, browser extensions). Subscribe to the Premium plan for $59/year. A free plan is available.
LanguageTool works on:
Desktop: Java app runs on Windows and Mac
Browsers: Chrome, Firefox
Integrations: Microsoft Office (Windows, Mac, online), Google Docs
I ran my standard test document through LanguageTool, and it successfully found most errors. A message at the bottom states, “One more suggestion found—switch to the Premium version now to see all suggestions.” That’s because that version performs several additional checks that the free version doesn’t.
Although I haven’t fully reviewed LangageTool, I noticed there are add-ons for Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and LibreOffice. There is also a vast number of plugins created by the community that allow you to access the app from email programs, text editors, and IDEs.
4. GradeProof (Now Outwrite)
GradeProof (now Outwrite) is designed for students but is a useful and accurate tool for professionals and business people as well if it works where you do. It supports a limited number of platforms: the Chrome web browser and iOS devices.
Install the GradeProof Chrome extension from the developer’s website, or download the iOS app from the App Store for free (in-app purchases unlock all features). Pro subscriptions cost $17.47/month, $31.49/quarter, or $83.58/year and include 50 plagiarism credits per month. A free plan is available. You can access a free Pro trial once you submit your credit card or PayPal details.
GradeProof works on:
Mobile: iOS
Browsers: Chrome
GradeProof performed well when checking my test document. It found every spelling mistake and grammar error but doesn’t recognize company names. It marks “ProWritingAid” as an error, but has no problem with the misspelled “Gooogle.”
I appreciate the detailed document statistics in the left pane. A notice at the top of the screen gave me a discount code to receive 30% off a GradeProof Pro subscription.
I can see the Pro features listed at the bottom of the left pane and notice that it will check my writing by considering the efficiency, phrasing, vocabulary, and use of the passive tense in my text. Some experimental features, word targets, and plagiarism checks are also included.
A Pro subscription includes 50 plagiarism checks per month. I didn’t test the effectiveness of this feature.
Alternatives to Grammar Checker Software
There are tons of free online spelling and grammar checkers. Just paste some text into a text box on a website. Most of these pick up at least a few errors but may miss some significant grammar mistakes.
After the Deadline is free for personal use; however, it didn’t identify any errors in my test document.
Virtual Writing Tutor is a free online grammar checker that generates a report rather than correcting in-place. It correctly picked up most of the errors in my test document.
Scribens is also free and found many of my errors, but missed two significant grammar mistakes.
Nounplus is another free alternative, but lost the line endings of my pasted text and missed most of the errors.
GrammarChecker found a few basic errors but missed most of my grammar mistakes.
SpellCheckPlus picked up my spelling mistakes but missed the grammar errors.
In-App Grammar Checkers
Many word processors and writing apps include grammar checkers. However, they are not as comprehensive or helpful as the dedicated apps we review above.
Microsoft Office checks your grammar, spelling, and more and offers suggestions. It also checks for issues of style, including making your sentences more concise, choosing simpler words, and writing with more formality.
Google Docs offers basic spelling and grammar checking. It identified some of my spelling mistakes and one grammar error.
Scrivener also has a spelling and grammar checker, but on the official forum, users describe it as annoyingly laggy and “inadequate to the point of being useless.” It’s probably not as helpful as Microsoft’s tool. I found that one Scrivener user always checks their documents in Word afterward to make sure that nothing was missed.
Other Apps
Hemingway is a free online tool that doesn’t check grammar but does identify readability issues. However, it doesn’t offer solutions, and seems over-sensitive at labeling sentences “hard to read.”
Nevertheless, it is helpful and complements rather than competes with the grammar programs reviewed above—especially those that don’t check for style.
How Can a Grammar Checker Help?
What can you get from a grammar checker? Read on to find out.
Context-Sensitive Spelling Corrections
Traditional spelling checkers just made sure the words you typed were in the dictionary, not whether they made sense in context. They would miss errors like, “You didn’t spell that word write.” Since “write” is in the dictionary, and the app doesn’t understand the sentence, it doesn’t mark it as wrong.
Modern grammar checkers take context into account. They use artificial intelligence to analyze each sentence and identify when you’ve used the wrong word. If you never know whether to use “your” of “you’re,” confuse “then” and “than,” and are confused about the difference between “affect” and “effect,” you’ll find a grammar checker helpful.
Identifying Grammar and Punctuation Errors
Grammar checkers attempt to understand the structure and parts of each sentence to identify grammar mistakes (Grammarly claims to identify 250 types of grammar errors). They can help you with challenges such as:
the use of apostrophes (“whose” or “who’s”)
subject-verb agreement (“I seen,” “they kicks the ball”)
missing commas, unneeded commas
incorrect quantifiers (“fewer” or “less”)
subject vs. object (“me,” “myself,” and “I”)
conjugating irregular verbs (“hang” and “sneak” break the usual rules)
Suggesting How to Improve Your Writing
“It’s not what you said; it’s how you said it.” Mom accused me of being rude using those words more than once, and they equally apply to the way we write. Having excellent spelling and grammar isn’t enough. Your writing also needs to be clear, readable, and engaging.
Some grammar checkers go beyond the basics and offer to help you improve your writing. Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Ginger, and GradeProof all promise to “check your tone,” be a “style editor” or “writing mentor,” help you “find the perfect words to express yourself,” and “make sure your text is clear and of the highest caliber.”
Among other things, they warn of:
Checking for Plagiarism
“Give credit where credit is due.” You don’t want to take someone else’s words or thoughts and present them as your own. That’s plagiarism, and it’s unethical and may result in takedown notices initiated by those who legitimately hold the copyright to those words.
Plagiarism can be the result of you quoting someone else and forgetting to link to the source, or paraphrasing someone else’s words without changing them enough. You can even plagiarize unintentionally. Theoretically, it’s possible to accidentally write something identical to that written by a bunch of monkeys on typewriters.
Some grammar checkers offer to help you avoid the consequences of intentional or accidental copyright infringement by comparing your text with that of billions of web pages and databases of academic worksperiodicals. They will often identify the source of the words so that you can check for yourself.
Grammarly includes unlimited plagiarism checks as part of its Premium plan, while surplus plagiarism checks with ProWritingAid, WhiteSmoke, and GradeProof may incur additional fees.
Accessing Additional Writing Tools
How We Tested and Picked These Grammar Checkers
Platforms and Integrations
Which grammar checkers can you access when you need them? We considered the browsers, desktop operating systems, mobile platforms, and integrations that each one offers.
Browser plugins:
Chrome: Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Ginger, LanguageTool, GradeProof
Safari: Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Ginger
Firefox: Grammarly, ProWritingAid, LanguageTool
Edge: Grammarly
Generic web app: WhiteSmoke
Desktop platforms:
Mac: Grammarly, ProWritingAid, WhiteSmoke, LanguageTool (Java)
Windows: Grammarly, ProWritingAid, Ginger, WhiteSmoke, LanguageTool (Java)
Mobile platforms:
iOS: Grammarly (keyboard), Ginger (app), GradeProof (app)
Android: Grammarly (keyboard), Ginger (app)
Integrations:
Google Docs: Grammarly, ProWritingAid, LanguageTool, GradeProof
Microsoft Office: Grammarly (Windows, Mac), ProWritingAid (Windows), Ginger (Windows), LanguageTool (Windows, Mac, Online), GradeProof (Windows, Mac, Online)
Note that Ginger is the only full grammar app available on both iOS and Android (Grammarly provides keyboards that can do grammar checks on both platforms) and that LanguageTool’s desktop apps are actually Java apps. These differences are summarized in the table below.
Features
We covered the main features of a grammar checker under “How Can a Grammar Checker Help?” above. Here is a chart that summarizes the platforms supported and features offered by each program.
Note that each app provides the basic functionality of checking your spelling and grammar. If you need additional functionality, you need to make sure you choose an app that offers it. Grammarly and ProWritingAid are the only programs that do it all.
Test Document
When evaluating each app, it’s important not to simply list the features offered, but also determine how effective each app is at doing its job. I put together a brief test document containing intentional errors and had each app correct it. Here are the errors:
An actual spelling mistake: “errow.” All apps identified this error and gave the correct suggestion, except WhiteSmoke, which suggested “arrow” instead of “error.”
UK spelling instead of US: “apologise.” When set to US English, all apps identified the error except WhiteSmoke and LanguageTool.
Dictionary words that are wrong in context: “some one,” “any one,” “scene.” Each app identified “some one” and “any one,” but Ginger and WhiteSmoke missed “scene.”
A misspelling of a well-known company: “Gooogle.” Every app except WhiteSmoke identified this error.
A common miscorrection: “plug in” (used as a verb) is sometimes wrongly corrected to “plug-in” (which is a noun). Only Grammarly and WhiteSmoke incorrectly suggested I should change the correct wording.
A mismatch between the number of the subject and verb: “Mary and Jane finds…” Only Ginger and LanguageTool missed this error. The Mac and online versions of WhiteSmoke, which will receive updates very soon, missed it as well. This sentence is a little tricky because the word directly before it is singular (“Jane”), so the app has to check back further to determine that the subject of the sentence is plural. When I replace “Mary and Jane” with “People,” every app notices the error.
An incorrect quantifier: “less” where “fewer” is correct. Only Ginger and WhiteSmoke missed this error.
A sentence with an extra comma. Most grammar apps miss a lot of punctuation errors. Grammarly is an exception and seems quite opinionated about the subject. It’s the only app to pick up this error.
A sentence with a missing comma (assuming Oxford usage). Grammarly complains of the missing Oxford comma every time and was the only app to pick up the error.
A sentence with blatantly wrong punctuation. I thought that a sentence with a lot of blatant punctuation errors would be easier to correct. I was wrong. Some of the apps flagged double commas or double periods, but none corrected every punctuation error.
Real Document
I also wanted to get a more subjective sense of how helpful each app is in the real world. I ran one of my draft articles through each app to see which errors were picked up and evaluate whether its style suggestions would make the article clearer, more readable, and more engaging.
Ease of Use
How easy is the app to use? Are the corrections clear and easy to see? Are any explanations helpful and to the point? How easy is it to make the suggested corrections?
How easy is it to move your text into and out of the app? Ideally, it is best if the app is integrated into the word processor or writing program that you use. When pasting or importing documents, you usually lose something—typically styles and images, and sometimes formatting—so using the app that way can require a significant change in workflow, which isn’t always convenient.
At SoftwareHow, we submit our articles for editing via Google Docs, so I would naturally prefer an app that integrates with that environment. Other writers track editing changes in Microsoft Word, so Office integration is also highly valued. Some may prefer to check grammar where they write, so Scrivener fans may find ProWritingAid the best choice.
Price
Free Plans
Many grammar checkers offer free plans. These don’t offer every feature and are designed to let you get a feel for the app without spending money. Grammarly’s free plan is generous and offers full spelling and grammar checking. By contrast, ProWritingAid’s free plan is extremely limited, allowing you to check only 500 words at a time.
Grammarly: checks for grammar, spelling, and punctuation online, on desktop, and on mobile
Ginger Grammar Checker: use basic features online with limited checks
LanguageTool: checks 20,000 characters, no Microsoft Office integration
GradeProof: checks for words that are not in the English dictionary and grammatically incorrect phrases
ProWritingAid: limited to 500 words at a time
Premium Plans
LanguageTool: $59/year
ProWritingAid: $79.00/year not including plagiarism checks, which cost from $10 extra per year
WhiteSmoke: $79.95/year ($59.95/year online only), includes a limited number of plagiarism checks
GradeProof: $83.58/year (or $10/month)
Ginger Grammar Checker: $89.88/year (or $20.97/month or $159.84 biyearly)
Grammarly: $139.95/year (or $20/month)
Only ProWritingAid offers a free (two-week) trial period for their Premium plan. Their free plan is quite limited, though. They are also the only company with a lifetime plan, which costs $299 and includes all upgrades. The app is also included in Setapp, a Mac-based subscription service offering almost 200 quality apps for $10/month.
Discounts
The quoted prices aren’t the end of the story. Some companies offer significant discounts after the trial period or regularly, and you can save a lot of money by renewing your subscription at the opportune time.
Ginger’s current prices are listed as 30% off. I’m not sure if that’s a limited offer, so I didn’t adjust the prices above.
WhiteSmoke’s current prices are listed as 50% off. I’m not sure if that’s a limited offer either, so I didn’t adjust the prices above.
GradeProof currently offers a promo code for 30% off.
WhiteSmoke sent me an email offering 75% off (limited to the first 100 customers).
ProWritingAid offered me 20% off just as my free trial was finishing.
I receive emails from Grammarly offering typically 40 or 45% off every month. From time to time, it’s as high as 50 or 55% off.
20 Best Free Blogging Sites (Top Blog Platforms) In Jul 2023
Blogging platforms are online publishing software that allows authors to publish articles, opinions, or product reviews, post. You can also share this post using stand-alone websites, email, feed syndications systems, and social networks.
Following is a handpicked list of Top Blogging platforms, with their popular features and website links. The list contains both open source(free) and commercial(paid) software.
Top Pick
Wix
Wix is easy to use , beginner-friendly, drag-and-drop website builder. This web editor tool allows you to drop elements anywhere you want on any page. It allows you to create a personal blog to a portfolio website or even an online store.
Learn More
Best FREE Blog Sites & Platforms: Top PicksName Features Link
👍 Wix ✔ Track traffic with Google Analytics Learn More
WordPress ✔ Very customisable Learn More
Blogger ✔ Easy to use and free Learn More
Features:
It allows you to create a personal blog or a portfolio website or even an online store.
800+ themes and templates
Free SSL Certificates
Inbuilt DDoS protection
Built-in Backups to easily recover your data
Fully-manage services so you do not have to deal with technical deatils of setting up your blog.
Wix offers Good Security Features and encrypts Sensitive Data. It is GDPR, CCPA and LGPD compliant
Track traffic with Google Analytics and other powerful marketing, analytics, and SEO tools
#2) WordPressWordPress is the world’s most popular open-source and free to use CMS. It started as just a blogging platform, but now it has added features significantly over the years. Today it is emerging as the complete content management software.
Features:
You can design multiple pages with no coding skills using Page Builder plugins.
Option of WordPress hosting or self-hosting.
It is one of the best free blogging platform that allows you to create webpages for multiple functions for your blog.
Offers Backward Compatibility.
WordPress Plugins comes with excellent unofficial support other than the main help document.
WordPress offers a simple addition of posts or pages on the site.
#3) BloggerBlogger is a blog-publishing service that allows users to create and maintain their website. The functionality and design tools. It is one of the best free blogging platform that works seamlessly so that users do not need to buy, install, and manage separate applications for developing your webpage.
Features:
The drag-and-drop blog editing interface.
Allows raw Conversion.
Option to create private blogs.
Web feed options.
Link editing in compose mode.
Offers country-specific blogger addresses.
#4) MediumMedium is a content publishing platform where people can share their stories and insights. It is one of the best free blog platforms which allows users to post their original ideas and viewpoints and share them with member readers or with the broader public. This blogging platform also helps you find compelling ideas, knowledge, and perspectives.
Features:
It allows you to automate story descriptions.
Provide an option for URL customization.
Blogger.
It offers an easy-to-use editor that lets writers focus on their creation instead of formatting.
Offers partnership program for a firm or individual
Interests customization.
Weebly is easy to use drag-and-drop website builder. This blogging tool offers 50 customized templates that help you to create a customized blog for your business.
Features:
Weebly offers a free plan for a limited period, which allows you to try it out on a small scale before paying.
Offers built-in easy to understand SEO guides.
It allows you to change the blog template.
Features:
It allows you to build your basic website for blogging.
Offers SEO tools that give you a perfectly optimized blogging website.
Responsive web design and mobile-friendly website
It offers more than 250+ design templates.
It is visually pleasing and fits in many different industries.
Squarespace is a website builder tool that is known for its professionally designed templates. This tool offers blogging features that combine hosting, templates, themes. CMS, e-commerce, and technical support in one solution.
Features:
Modern design templates.
Adjust the styling of your sites along with fonts, colors, and page configurations.
Customizable content layouts.
It allows you to add your personalize CSS and other coding.
Simple, easy-to-use editor interface.
Social media supported.
#8) TumblrTumblr is one of the best free blogging platform. It allows you to post content, including multimedia on the micro-blogs and social channels from a single dashboard. Tumbler enables you to manage multiple accounts and keep a tab of your content calendar.
Features:
Page customization tools.
Automatically posts to Facebook and Twitter.
It allows you to schedule your post.
#9) GhostGhost is an open-source website builder and publisher platform for developers. It is one of the best free blogging sites which provides users with easy-to-use tools for creating and publishing their content.
Features:
Provide support for Content Editor and Content Management
It allows you to scheduled Posts.
Custom Domains.
Support for automatic Backups.
It allows you to do role-based permissions.
Offers tools for SEO optimization.
#10) Write.asFeatures:
It provides an easy option for writing and publishing.
It allows you to publish individual articles.
You can share your URL with other blogs, social media, or email.
#11) DrupalDrupal is an open-source blogging platform for creating an online content management system. It offers modules with attractive options for customizations.
Features:
Offer easy to understand and clean core code.
It helps you to manage complex, multi-domain management.
Numerous built-in site management options.
Access to thousands of modules and themes.
Allows you to customize every aspect of your experience
Deploy content across channels.
Connect with all of your marketing tools.
Enables users to access content on any device.
Monitor site content and campaigns in one place, ensuring brand consistency
#12) JekyllJekyll is a static site generator. It allows you to written text in your preferred markup language. It is one of the best free blogger platforms that allows you to use layouts to create a static website. You can adjust how you want your site URL to look, what data gets displayed on the site, and more.
Features:
It offers the quickest way to set up a blog.
Includes Sass and CoffeeScript support and collections.
It allows you to import your content from WordPress.
It provides free hosting with GitHub Pages.
Jimdo is a website builder tool. It helps you to create a free website, blog, online store according to your desired purpose. It is an ideal blogging tool for small businesses.
Features:
Easy to add elements to your page.
Not require coding knowledge to create a blog on this website.
Mobile optimized for all devices.
Friendly customer support to help with any questions
Unlimited storage on premium plans.
#14) JoomlaJoomla is another popular CMS which allows you to build a website and professional blog for your business. It is one of the best free blogging sites which runs smoothly on the most web serves without any issues because it is easy to use and highly extensive free to use CMS tools.
Features:
It allows you to choose when articles are published.
Joomla is suitable for blogging websites.
It offers a perfect balance between ease of use and complexity of functionality.
Edit content without any knowledge of code.
It offers a user-friendly admin interface.
#15) Postach.IoPostach.io is a website that helps you to turn an Evernote notebook into a beautiful blog or web site. It allows users to add new posts or pages and publish them even while they are using mobile devices.
Features:
Support for custom domain.
Social Media links.
Option for branding and customization.
Google Analytics, Disqus, Facebook, and Twitter Integration.
Easy access to source code.
#16) TypepadTypepad is a reliable blog hosting service used by large and small organizations. The platform offers control of site designs, web pages, and individual posts. It is one of the best free blog sites that allows you to select the most suitable method for your blog.
Features:
It makes it easy for you to compose new posts or add new pages to there with the help of their dashboards.
Typepad offers a tool that helps you to improve the SEO ranking of your site on Google.
It allows your readers and supporters to leave them a bit of money that is sent directly to their PayPal accounts.
It helps you to create content that are to attract readers and garner them new audiences.
#17) SvbtleSvbtle is a blog builder that helps you collect and curate ideas, develop them into your articles, and publish when you are ready. This blogging platform is built from the ground up to work the same way your brain does.
Features:
This blogging service provider published content will remain available on the web forever.
It allows you to create a separate design according to your business.
It is a publishing platform designed from the ground up to work the same way your brain does.
Supports hosted images, embedded videos from YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
Svbtle service and published content will permanently available on the web.
#FAQS: ❓ What is a blogging platform?Blogging platforms are a type of website or software that allows authors to publish articles, opinions, or product reviews, post. You can also share this post using stand-alone websites, email, feed syndications systems, and social networks.
✅ Which are the Best Blogging Sites?Here are some of the Best Blogging Sites:
Wix
WordPress
Blogger
Medium
Weebly
SITE123
Squarespace
⚡ What are the common features of the blogging platform?Here, are some common features of blogging platform:
Easy to use and setup
Low-Cost Web Presence
Helps you increased audience
Allows you to establish your business brand
Offers performance tracking
🆚 How is a Blog Different from a Website?The main difference between a blog and website, is that a blog is usually informal, informative, and educated in nature, while A business website is formal & professional.
🏅 What exactly is a self-hosted blog?The free blog sites like Blogger, Tumblr, Medium, or chúng tôi Basically, you do not need a hosting provider if the blog is self-hosted. This type of blogging platform never costs anything but also limits you in various ways.
❗ What are the tips for blogging?Here are some important tips for blogging:
Understand your audience.
Write for yourself first.
Respect your existing readers.
Get ideas from your audience.
It helps you to focus on building call-to-action.
Write amazing headlines
9 Best Free Smtp Server Providers (2023 Update)
SMTP is the set of procedures, rules, and principles to send emails/messages to an email server. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Most development frameworks support SMTP protocol. So, there is no need to install additional libraries to get the SMTP protocol.
Following is a handpicked list of Top SMTP Service Providers with their popular features and website links. The list contains both open source (free) and commercial (paid) software.
Best Free SMTP Service Providers for TestingSMTP is an SMTP email service that allows you to send and receive bulk emails without managing an SMTP server. This SMTP service is easy to set up and works with any WordPress website, and offers excellent scalability.
Features:
This free SMTP server for testing offers seamless integration with WordPress via the SMTP plugin
Responsive and helpful customer support
This one of the best SMTP service provider offers complete analytics and real-time feedback on every Email you send.
It has a globally distributed architecture
Technical and strategic assistance from real people
Pricing plans: Three pricing plans:
Essential ($25 per month) gives 50,000 emails per month,
Starter ($80 per month) gives 100,000 emails per month
Growth ($300 per month) gives 5,000,000 emails per month.
Features:
Allows you to schedule numerous email campaigns with various settings according to send time, scheduling, and more.
Allows scaling over 100 million emails per month.
It has a drag-and-drop editor to modify the template quickly.
You can easily connect it via HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) API.
Build your contacts list even faster with modern landing pages that help you grow your business.
Learn from your reports and get detailed statistics about your email campaigns.
Test and improve for better results.
Allows you to create an unlimited number of web forms
Pricing Plans: Two pricing plans
(Email API) $0.4 per day or 0.1$ per 1000 emails.
(Email API pro) $1 per day or 0.12$ per 1000 emails.
Visit Elastic Email
SMTP2GO allows you to send beautiful newsletters and provides a powerful API. It is used for sending transactional emails with no monthly commitments and limits. This SMTP software also allows you to test emails against spam filters.
Features:
This software automatically handles domain name.
This free SMTP server can send emails from a mobile app or outlook.
It shows full details of the emails you have sent.
Avoids arbitrary throttling
You can test your emails against major spam filters
It helps you to stay out of spam folders
This application offers easy to understand visual reports.
It sends Emails even during outages of the internet.
Get alerted about problems
Pricing Plan: Three plans
Starter ($15 per month) gives 40,000 emails per month,
Professional ($75 per month) gives 100,000 emails per month
Premier (Custom) gives 3,000,000 emails per month.
It helps you to solve mail marketing tasks like searching messages, lists management, and monitoring result.
Features:
It provides easy to use message editor.
Offers built-in templates.
This application gives you easy to read mail statistics.
You can verify email with ease.
Supports unlimited email lists.
Features:
Allows you to track and analyze your emails.
Offers built-in email templates.
This bulk mail service includes email spam checker.
Provides Google Analytics integration.
Enables you to import contacts in bulk.
MailerSend is a comprehensive tool that allows you to send invoices, delivery updates, forgotten password links. It also offers a drag & drops email template to create professional-looking transactional emails.
Features:
Provides a wide range of real-time analytics
Advance user management system
Integrate quickly with API documentation
Build personalized relationships at scale
Offers wide ranges of predesigned email templates
Pricing plans: One pricing plan
Basic Free (12,000 emails)
Premium $25/per month (50,000 emails)
mailjet is a global email service provider that enables you to track transactional and marketing emails via SMTP, API, etc. It allows you to create responsive emails using email builders.
Features:
You can integrate it with any server configuration easily.
It helps you to convert your company’s email data into segments.
Allows you to personalize your Transactional Messages
Helps you to track Email events in Real Time
Helps you to effortlessly create Email templates
You can get all the information you need from the comprehensive documentation.
This tool provides analytics to monitor your results and optimize performance.
Pricing plans: Three pricing plans:
$35 for 50,000 emails per month
$80 for 100,000 included
$90 for 100,000 email and additional features.
Brevo is a SaaS SMTP service provider solution for email marketing automation. It helps you to manage your customers using your current CRM. You can use this tool to set up your email campaign with custom design, engagement, and transactional messages delivery.
Features:
You can add your Facebook account and launch Facebook Ad from the Brevo account.
It enables you to build your own custom landing pages.
This tool helps you to automate your marketing messages.
It provides detailed statistics of your email campaigns.
Brevo allows you to connect plugins with various CMS like WordPress and Magento.
Powerful SMTP service for all your transactional emails
It is one of the best SMTP servers that offers all your transactional email statistics
Provides expert tools that you can trust
Pricing plans: Four pricing plans
Free (Free plan) gives up to 300 per day
Lite ($20.52) gives 100,000 emails per month
Premium ($54.15) gives 1,000,000 emails per month, Enterprise
You can contact from their site for this plan
9) SMTPProviderSMTPProvider is an email management and delivery software. It offers marketing emails, transactional emails, and individual emailing. This tool allows you to view the delivery report with ease.
Features:
You can easily discover the number of messages you have sent.
Dedicated IP addresses
The SMTP servers send your emails using a secure SSL connection.
Allows you to send the delivery error reports.
It offers security through a secure SSL connection.
Pricing Plans: Three pricing plans
Unlimited P1 ($400 per month)
Unlimited P2 ($700 per month)
Unlimited P3 ($1000/per month)
10) PostmarkFeatures:
It provides API for sending emails.
This SMTP email service provider delivers emails using SMTP.
This SMTP replay offers notifications about essential messages and events.
Track messages through their entire life cycle with custom metadata.
You can group common message types using tags.
Developer friendly SMTP documentation.
Globally distributed SMTP service.
It has a responsive and compatible email templates.
You can integrate user email replies into your application.
It uses two-factor authentication (2FA) for better security of data.
Pricing plans: Three main pricing plans:
$10 for 10,000 emails per month,
$50 for 50,000 Emails per month
$100 for 125,000 emails per month.
11) Amazon SESAmazon SES is a cloud-based SMTP service provider company that is widely used to send bulk emails. You can integrate this tool with your existing applications. It is one of the best SMTP service providers that helps you to keep your customers updated by sending automated emails.
Features:
You can send highly personalized messages to the customer.
It enables you to monitor the number of send and delivered messages.
This SMTP server offers higher deliverability and protects the sender’s reputation.
This tool provides features on the dashboard to help you track issues that can impact your email delivery.
You can accept or reject mail depending on the receiver’s P address, domain, or email address.
Offers various methods of sending emails, including SMTP, console, and SES API.
This free SMTP server can integrate with other AWS services, including AWS IAM.
Pricing plans: (As per selected plan)
12) MailifyMailify is the latest SMTP service provider that offers a drag-and-drop editor, which allows you to design attractive emails within a few minutes. It is one of the best SMTP services which has an automation technology which helps you to automate your certain email marketing tasks.
Features:
Mailfy offers additional services, including SMS marketing, automation software, landing pages, CRM, sign-up forms, etc.
Mailify’s artificial intelligence detects common errors in email addresses and fixes them.
This SMTP server free service allows you to send responsive campaigns through a bulk email SMTP server.
Allows you to set up campaigns to send emails with attachments
Allows you to customize your merge-tags
Pricing plans: (You can ask for the customized plan)
13) InboxroadInboxroad is a fast-growing SMTP service provider. This SMTP provides tools that meet all the criteria of an exceptional email marketing solution.
Features:
It helps you to scale your business at a higher level
All your email traffic is handled through a secure connection with the TLS protocol.
You can select various existing front-ends, or you can make your custom system.
Blacklist monitoring
Integrates easily with your website front-end
Provides multiple backup servers and guarantees your emails being delivered every day.
Pricing plans: Three pricing plans :
$69 (100,000 emails per month),
$139 (250,000 emails per month)
$349 (1,000,000 emails per month).
FAQ:SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is the set of procedures, rules and principles to send emails/messages to an email server. Most development frameworks support SMTP. Therefore, there is no need to install additional libraries to get the SMTP protocol.
Below are some of the best free SMTP servers:
SMTP
Elastic Email
SMTP2GO
Mass mail software
Mail Marketer
MailerSend
Brevo
mailjet
SMTPProvider
Here are the reasons of using SMTP service:
Helps to send more Emails per hour
SMTP servers help to save money by ensuring maximum email delivery
Helps you to keep your email list private and secure
Allows users to add custom features to their Email campaign
Supports Bulk Email Sending
The CAN-SPAM Act is a cyber law that sets the rules for commercial Email, that gives recipients the right to stop sending messages and emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.
It also includes Email, which promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for B2B Emails. For example, a message to former customers announcing new service or product lines must comply with the law.
Send Time Optimization (STO) is a method that uses data science to determine when your contacts are likely to engage and send your email marketing message at that time.
Here are important things that you should know before starting this process:
Based on your plan, you may not have access to Send Time Optimization. First, you should know what features are included in each plan.
You can use Send Time Optimization for plain-text, A/B testing, and multivariate email types. However, this feature is not available in automated emails.
You should use this method only when five hours left in a day in the time zone set for the account.
You should look at the following parameters while selecting an SMTP service provider:
Deliverability: A robust server infrastructure and proven delivery rate helps you to ensure that all your transactional and commercial messages reach to the recipient.
Delivery speed: Delivery speed is the number of emails sent per unit of time (minute/ hours). It is important to have a high delivery speed if your email list is large.
Dedicated IP: It is important that the SMTP provider assigns you a dedicated IP so that any spamming activity done on any other shared IP does not affect your deliverability.
Bounce back handling: A high number of consistent bounce back can hurt your email marketing campaign. To reduce this, your site should have a good sign-up form, regular updated information, and most important, regularly schedule your emails.
Feedback loops: A Feedback Loop (FBL) is a service offered by some ISPs that tracks the activity when a subscriber hits the spam or junk button in their inbox and notifies to senders. It is provided to aid senders in keeping the clean contact list.
Customization: It should provide the power if you want to change feature of a template so you can make it your own.
Define your budget: The last but probably most vital thing you need to look before selecting the email service provider is budget. While you have an option for selecting low, medium, and enterprise-level providers, selecting the right one for your needs helps you to lower the cost and ensures high Return On Investment (ROI) while still delivering the functionality you need.
Email deliverability is the ability to deliver emails to subscribers’ inboxes. It is important because some email marketers gauge the likelihood of their email campaigns reaching their subscribers’ inboxes.
For example, if you send 100 emails, and 50 emails didn’t reach to subscribers due to IP reputation, catch-all, stale emails, high bounces, etc. reasons, your open rate is already down by 50%.
Email deliverability is determined by the email delivery parameters like ISPs, throttling, bounces, spam issues and bulking.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a protocol for validating email, which is designed to find and block email spoofing.
DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is a method for authenticating email. It enables receivers to know that the email which was sent to them is authorized by the domain author.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is a protocol for email authentication. It is specifically designed to give email owners the ability to safeguard their domain from unauthorized use.
It is also important to set SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your email accounts to avoid spoofing and spam.
Step 1) Make sure you are using 2-factor authentication on the Gmail account you are using to set up the SMTP server
Step 2) Then, set up App password and choose Other as the option
Step 3) Once the App password is configured, you can now authenticate and use the free SMTP server
Step 4) Now, go to your website or application on which you want to set up the SMTP server
Step 5) Now, set the following settings to complete the process:
Authentication: Yes
Secure Connection: TLS or SSL
Username: Your Email Id
Password: The App password you just configured
Port Number: 587 for TLS authentication and 465 for SSL authentication
Step 6) Save the settings and add the account to complete the process
Best Free SMTP Service Providers for TestingUpdate the detailed information about 20 Best Ci/Cd Tools (2023 Update) on the Daihoichemgio.com website. We hope the article's content will meet your needs, and we will regularly update the information to provide you with the fastest and most accurate information. Have a great day!