Website Development Tools
Our Top Picks For Website Development Tools
Building a high-performing website requires more than great design, it requires the right foundation. On this page, we share the website development tools we use to create fast, secure, SEO-friendly WordPress websites for local businesses and growing brands.
From reliable website hosting with daily backups to professional wireframing tools that streamline approvals, each platform we recommend plays a critical role in our development process. We prioritize speed, security, ease of maintenance, and client usability. Whether it’s compressing images for faster load times, implementing legally compliant privacy policy solutions, or building customizable WordPress sites with Elementor, these website development tools help us deliver both performance and flexibility.
We also value efficiency. Having standardized hosting environments, proven page builders, and structured prototyping systems reduces development time and improves collaboration between copywriters, designers, and developers.
If you’re building your own website or refining your current tech stack, these are the trusted website development tools we rely on to support local SEO, enhance user experience, and simplify ongoing management. Explore our top website development tool recommendations below to see what powers the sites we build.
Our Top Pick For Website Hosting
Why we recommend SiteGround: Speed is very important for local SEO. We have our own server. Daily backups are a must especially for clients with a zealous marketing manager that tries to do things themselves so it’s easy for us to fix the website they broke.
Since we like to do the hosting for all the websites we build we offer very affordable prices since for our server it’s really affordable. Keep all our clients on SiteGround makes it more efficient to do our job with website maintenance.
Our Top Pick For Privacy Policy Page Templates
Why we recommend Termageddon: It’s owned by a husband and wife team. You get peace of mind knowing that once you set up your privacy policy page it will automatically be updated every time a new law changes. Our team gets on a call to make sure you fill out the survey correctly then we do the website installation. But you can do it yourself. Robert loves that he can get on a call with the owner.
Our Top Pick For Website Wireframe and Mockup Prototyping
Why we recommend Draftium: I found this tool when I sold 5 StoryBrand Websites in the same month. This made it easy for me to create a black and white website wireframe so the client could approve the copywriting and the photos I was thinking of using for the page.
I spent a lot of time building a 10-page StoryBranded website prototype (template) but it was worth it. Now I just click “duplicate” and boom I’m ready to copy/paste everything I wrote in Google Docs.
This tool saved us time in hours that went to our website designer and even made our website developers hours drop down too since all copy and photos where already approved from the client.
What they could do to improve: They update or change blocks frequently. For example, I liked to use this 3-step process plan style but then when I duplicate the prototype it’s changed or not there. So it just slows me down some.
It also doesn’t seem to be intuitive for clients. I film a video showing them how to use the comment feature but they always seem to not get it. I think it’s really easy to use. I wish we had different users. I use this more frequently since I do pretty much all the StoryBrand copywriting but when I reply to the client’s comments it says “Robert Cortes” since he is the one who originally signed up for the account. This confuses clients.
Our Top Pick For WordPress Page Builder & Themes
Compared to the competition: Before we bought all kinds of WordPress themes such as Avada. Then Divi seemed to spend so much on advertising that clients would want up to keep building on that theme but we hate it.
We’ve built on Wix and Squarespace those are so limited for coding. They also aren’t as good for local SEO. If you want to get found on Google Maps or Google then you have to be on WordPress and Elementor is the page builder to use.
Our Top Pick For Image Compression
Why we recommend ShortPixel: It’s easy to use and has fair pricing. Plus they have a cool logo, right? We blog for most of our clients and there could be 4 photos in a blog. So manually resizing every image was time consuming. Now we can skip that work and it automatically gets done. All of our clients get added to our account and get to reap the benefits.
IMPORTANT: This page contains affiliate links to website development tools like SiteGround, Termegedon, Draftium, Elementor, and ShortPixel. We earn commissions for referring traffic to these sites. While we are careful to only recommend website development tools and products we actually use and like, you should know of our relationship with those companies.