The following is a list where I am collecting my personally preferred technologies, but they are not THE answers, just SOME answers to the questions “what should I use with my next project”. Don’t agree? make a suggestion and change my mind!
Productivity
Simple time tracking. Free version will work, but the paid version is worth it because you can create PDFs of your invoices and they serve as line-item explanations for clients.
FREE / $5 per month
Project Management
Create board for project, simple to use, ideal for communicating between teams.
FREE
Api Testing
Build, test, and maintain direct calls to APIs. Very useful in testing out an API before developing against it, and can be used to run collections of calls against APIs for confirming that they continue to work. Free version works great, but the teams version is powerful in the sharing of your work.
FREE
Api Documentation
Swagger is a great tool for creating auto-updated documentation for your APIs.
FREE
Process Flow / Design
More powerful than Google Drawings and cheaper than LucidChart. This is a very simple tool that I have yet to find a need to buy, but I would order a beer for the developers! Great for discussions about project flow, or for UML drawings on the cheap! Saves to Google Drive.
FREE
UI/UX Tool
Pretty powerful UI builder, though there may be better ones out there. Seems decent for designing UIs and can produce code snippets for React
FREE
SSO Providers
Control all you User authentication in one place and never write your own Auth again! The free version will cover all your prototyping needs (7000 users for free)
FREE / Cheap
Source Control
Never ever EVER keep copies of your code in a different folder “just incase you mess up”. You are DOING IT WRONG if that is our approach! Use Github to keep you code, either it public of private repos, and never go back to the dark ages!
FREE / Worth the cost!
DB/Datasource
The cute and cuddly lovechild of Google Sheets and Postgres with automatic support for API calls. This is NOT a heavy weight solution, but it has all you need to rapidly prototype with some back end data.
FREE / Affordable
Continued Learning
Keep learning with well curated lessons and bit size tracks to keep it sweet and to the point.
$29 monthly
Hosting
Simple and cheap hosting for most kinds of apps. There are other options, but for quick and dirty prototyping along with basic db hosting, this is a real contender. It also has a REALLY nice tool chain that integrates with Github very nicely.
FREE / Scaled up pricing.
Language / Framework Sites
ReactJs companion technology
Did I miss something? Probably.
If you have a favorite that is not on this list, I would love to hear about it!