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🧰 Free Opensource Tools to Save BIG Money
Published about 8 hours ago • 5 min read
🧰 Smart tools. Useful tips. Weekly.
Hola friend 👋,
I’m Josep. Each week, I hunt down practical tools and productivity hacks to help digital doers like you do more with less effort.
This week: free, open-source tools that will save you hundreds a year.
Lately, it feels like you can't run an online (or physical) business without a handful of subscriptions: a professional email account, an AI assistant, a website builder, some sort of database tool... the list goes on.
I feel like I'm paying for too many of them. I thought the best things in life were free, but I guess they're just getting harder to find.
So today, I’m sharing three top-notch open-source tools that are not only free but also incredibly powerful.
Just a heads-up: you'll need to host them on your own computer or a hosting service (like a VPS).
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If you want to automate your business operations but find tools like Zapier or Make too expensive, n8n is for you. It's a powerful open-source platform that lets you connect different apps and create automated workflows with a visual, node-based editor.
You can build multi-step automations that handle everything from simple notifications to complex business logic. It has hundreds of native integrations: Slack, Google Sheets, Notion, and even AI models like Anthropic, Gemini or OpenAI. But if you are ready to geek around, you can potentially connect any app with an API to it.
I’ve been using it to make Tooltester more productive. So far I’ve created AI agents and automations that help us:
Creating a first draft for this newsletter
Generating metadata for our YouTube videos
Finding trending posts for our marketing team
Generating (drafts) content for our website
If you aren’t ready to get a hosting account and self-host n8n (e.g. with Hostinger), they also offer a cloud version that starts at $20 a month.
WordPress has been around for over 20 years, and sometimes, it shows its age. If you're looking for a more modern, streamlined platform for publishing content, you should check out Ghost. It's a powerful, open-source alternative designed specifically for creators.
Ghost's main strength is its focus on simplicity and speed. It has a beautiful, minimalist editor that lets you concentrate on writing. But its built-in newsletter tool and membership system can be a great plus for creators. You can easily turn your readers into subscribers (free or paid) and send newsletters directly from the platform.
Like WordPress, it has a paid, fully-hosted version, but you can also download the open-source version for free and install it on your own server. This of course, comes with a bit more technical hassle.
AI assistants are becoming essential, but they're often restrictive. You can't easily switch between models like ChatGPT and Claude and use them in the same interface. Moreover, if you have a team, the costs with extra subscriptions can add up quickly, especially if they only use it occasionally.
With Open WebUI, you can create your own AI assistant chat tool. You'll need to host it yourself (e.g. in Hostinger), but the big advantage is the freedom to use any AI model you want:
Want to create an article? Start a chat with ChatGPT.
Need help coding something quick? Ask Claude.
Are you checking a post for fact accuracy? Get Perplexity on board.
Need to analyze a lot of documents and data? Gemini is there for you.
You can do all of the above from the same chat interface. And you won't need a subscription to all these AI tools. Just get an API key (for each) and pay as you go (per use).
One of my favorite features is the ability to add users and assign roles with specific guardrails. And yes, you can even generate images. It also comes with RAG support – which lets the AI use your own documents and data so its answers are tailored to you and your business.
Docker has always been one of those tools that seemed incredibly intimidating. I've been trying to wrap my head around it for years, and while I'm still no expert, I’ve finally started to understand its power.
In simple terms, Docker lets you package an application and all its dependencies into a single container. This means you can run it on any machine without worrying about compatibility issues. It’s like having a mini-computer inside your computer, just for one app.
I know this is way too technical for this newsletter, but if you want to use all the tools I mentioned above and self-host them (e.g. not to pay a dime for them), you’ll need Docker to make it a bit easier.
I just want to tell you that Docker has a desktop app – bye bye Terminal – that makes the whole experience easier.
We’ve all been there. You hit “send” on an email, and a split second later, you realize you made a mistake – fuuuuuudge! Whether it’s a typo, a missing attachment, or sending it to the wrong person, it can be a real face-palm moment.
That’s why I highly recommend setting up a delay in your email client. I use Gmail (with Google Workspace), which has a built-in “Undo Send” feature. It gives you up to 30 seconds to cancel an email after you’ve sent it.
Here’s why it’s so useful:
Catching typos and grammar mistakes: A few extra seconds can make all the difference.
Adding a forgotten attachment: “Sorry, here’s the attachment” is an email no one wants to send.
Correcting the recipient list: Avoid sending sensitive information to the wrong person.
Avoiding getting fired: Because you sent that email talking (badly) about your boss to…. yes, your boss.
The only downside is that when you need to send an email quickly (it always happens to me when I'm at the copy shop and they want a Google Drive link), there’s a bit of an awkward pause while I explain that my email has a 30-second delay – they often looked very confused.
🍿 Plot Twist of the Week
A few weeks ago, another Cloudflare outage took down a massive chunk of the internet (source), yes again. A database bug at the web infrastructure giant knocked out major platforms like X, ChatGPT, Spotify, Zoom, and even parts of AWS. For hours, users everywhere saw errors instead of content.
This was the second major outage in a short period, and it underscored a hard truth: a huge portion of the web relies on the technology of just a few companies. When one of them has a problem, it can have a ripple effect that impacts millions of users and businesses.
If you ask me, Cloudflare has been having issues too often lately. I really wish there were a big enough competitor to put pressure on Cloudflare to improve its stability.
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! Next time, we’ll be looking at 3 amazing tools to make your presentations and proposals more fun (and productive).
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