🧰 Smart tools. Useful tips. Weekly.

Hola friend 👋,

I’m Josep. Each week, I hunt down practical tools and digital hacks to help creators like you do more with less effort.

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This week: stay safe online.

You don’t need to be a cybersecurity expert to care about security. And ignoring it can hurt. I’ve learned that the hard way, usually after breaking a site or losing important documents because I clicked the wrong button 💣.

This week’s tools are all about staying protected: from shielding you against lawsuits to backing up your files before it’s too late.

Plus: one random tool to boost your videos, and a SaaS that turned on us 💔.

NordVPN

NordVPN is more than just a VPN: it started as a secure way to encrypt your internet connection, but now includes extras like ad and malware blockers, meshnet for private device connections, and optional tools like a password manager and encrypted cloud storage.

I use the Basic plan, which covers the essentials: secure browsing, threat protection, and access across several devices. It’s reliable and fast enough most of the time; though like any VPN, some servers can be slower now and then. I really like how clean and intuitive the interface is, and I think the long-term pricing is more than fair.

🔁 Alternative to: ExpressVPN, Surfshark and CyberGhost

Visit 👉 nordvpn.com​

💰 From $3.39/month (2-year deal) | No free plan

Iubenda

Legal security is another piece of the puzzle. Iubenda makes it ridiculously easy to get it right. It handles your website’s privacy policies, cookie banners, and terms automatically, keeping everything aligned with GDPR, CCPA, and other ever-changing confusing regulations.

Just copy a small code snippet from their site and paste it into your website. Or, if you’re on WordPress, just download their free plugin 🧩.

I set it up once for my site and haven’t touched it since. It runs quietly in the background and gives me peace of mind that I’m covered; no need to hire a lawyer or dig through legal templates. Honestly, it solves one of the Top 3 most boring (but necessary) parts of running a site.

🔁 Alternative to: Scrut.io, manually writing policies, or paying a lawyer

Visit 👉 iubenda.com​

💰 From $3.49/month | Free plan available

IDrive

IDrive is a secure backup service that helps you protect everything: from computers and phones to external drives and even cloud services like Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox 💾.

I use a bunch of devices, and my files are often scattered across old phones, work laptops, cloud storage, and hosting accounts. It gets messy fast. I wanted a way to back everything up in one place, and IDrive feels like the perfect fit. I’m just getting started with it, but I’m already thinking about backing up my hosting account too.

It’s a small step that could save me from the next “oops, I deleted the wrong thing” moment.

🔁 Alternative to: Google Drive + Backblaze + Time Machine

Visit 👉 idrive.com​

💰 From $2.95/year | Free 10 GB plan available

✨ Totally Off-Topic… But Brilliant

CapCut is a powerful video editor with a surprisingly generous free plan, built by the folks behind TikTok. It’s designed for speed and social content, with loads of ready-made templates, auto-subtitles, transitions, and effects that make it easy to create polished videos in minutes ⌛.

While I use Descript more often for desktop editing and longer videos, CapCut is a top choice for editing on the phone and quickly pushing content to socials (something I don't do so often). It’s fast, intuitive, and honestly hard to beat when it comes to creating Shorts or Reels on the fly.

🔁 Alternative to: Descript, InShot and Adobe Premiere

Visit 👉 capcut.com​

💰 From $12.85/month | Free plan available

⚡This Week’s Productivity Hack

This one’s from Robert, who recently overwrote a JPG file accidentally, and he thought it was gone for good. Until he discovered something surprisingly useful: Google Drive has full version control, for most files like images, PDFs or zipped files 🗂️.

Here’s how it works:

1. Right-click on any file in Google Drive
2. Go to File information > Manage versions
3. Restore a previous version

So if you ever mess up an image, re-export a video too early, or just want to roll back a file you changed, this can save your day (and maybe your job).

🍿 Plot Twist of the Week

Again, credit to Robert (founder of Tooltester). He had been a happy Spanning Backup user for years, until they got acquired by Kaseya. That’s when the fun ended.

Without warning, his bill jumped from $40 to over $160/year. The reason? He was backing up too much data, which was apparently a violation of their fair use policy (ironic, right?).

He declined the price hike. But instead of letting it go, Spanning came at him with automated reminders, contract threats, and scary emails from actual humans.

Legal tone. Bad vibes.

So Robert did what any of us might: he asked ChatGPT what to do. The AI's verdict?

By the way, we’re now looking into alternative backup solutions like Afi from Cyrrus.cloud, which seem to have clearer ToS and fairer pricing. Stay tuned.

Moral of the story: have a reliable backup plan with transparent terms of use, and don’t underestimate AI as your business coach.

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! Next time, we’ll look at how you can talk to your clients / users, so you get more conversions and build a healthier business.

Cheers,

Josep

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