Here are some of the top resources we recommend for AI automation, no-code tools, and workflow optimization.
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General AI Tools
Let’s get the obvious ones out of the way:
- ChatGPT: Needs no introduction. You get a ton of value directly from ChatGPT. o1 and o3 models (chain of thought) are best for advanced reasoning. Otherwise, GPT4o is great for almost everything else.
- Claude: Claude models are highly capable, but they are particularly good at writing, especially long-form and creative content. Their outputs appear less robotic than other AI models.
- Perplexity – AI-powered search engine that provides well-researched answers with source citations. Great for quick, reliable insights. It’s great for use in automations too.
- Deepseek: Deepseek R1 is an emerging AI model that competes with OpenAI’s O1. It’s a strong and free alternative, but be mindful of privacy and security—avoid sharing any personal or sensitive information with Deepseek via their website.
These tools are amazing for ad-hoc use, but once you want to automate tasks, you need to go a level deeper…
AI Automation Tools
No-code and Low-Code Automation Tools
The two options that we highly recommend are Make.com and n8n, and knowing how to use both of them puts you in a great position as they each have their unique advantages and can be used together.
- Make.com: We recommend Make.com and use it a lot in our workflows. It allows you to create complex workflows without writing any code. Make.com includes 1000s of out-of-the-box integrations so you don’t have to start everything from scratch.
- n8n: n8n is an extremely powerful system. It has also become very popular as of late due to its superior AI agent features. It’s also a great option if you want to save on cost or if you want to self-host. n8n has a community edition which is open-source which you can host on your own server. Bigger clients often have more stringent data security requirements, which may be a dealbreaker for using Make.com and Zapier. n8n has a relatively similar interface to Make.com.
Another great option is Flowise:
- Flowise – Flowise is a no-code platform built specifically for creating AI workflows and AI agents. This is another great open-source tool that can be self-hosted.
Other options to consider, but we don’t recommend unless you have a specific use case for them:
- Zapier: Expensive, but simple and easy-to-use workflow automation tool with extensive integrations. They sometimes have partnerships or better integrations with certain apps.
- Relevance.ai: Very handy for creating simple agents, but their multi-agents features are currently extremely limited so we currently recommend n8n instead for AI agent creation.
Backend Services
These are powerful but they are are more advanced and require coding:
- Buildship: Perfect if you want to quickly spin up powerful APIs with low code and without the hassle of deploying services. It’s great for building AI-driven apps, automations, and integrations without worrying about server management.
- Supabase: An open-source alternative to Firebase, perfect for quickly setting up a backend with authentication, real-time data, and scalable storage. Ideal for AI-powered apps and automation workflows.
Organizing Your Data
Staying organized is key when building automation, and these tools help you manage data and workflows efficiently:
- Google Sheets: No introduction needed. It’s free and perfect for many automation use cases.
- Airtable: A flexible hybrid between a spreadsheet and a database. We use Airtable a lot in our automations. It’s great for organizing structured data, managing projects, and integrating with automation tools.
- ClickUp: We’re big fans of Clickup. It’s a powerful all-in-one task and project management tool. It has a very nice integration with Make.com in particular.
- Notion: More than just a note-taking app, Notion acts as an all-in-one workspace where you can build databases, track tasks, and document processes.
Images, Audio & Video
Image & Video Automation
- Creatomate – A great system with a fantastic UI for video automation. Perfect for generating dynamic videos at scale with API-based workflows.
- JSON2Video – Offers similar features as Creatomate but isn’t as easy to use. However, it can be far cheaper since they offer a pre-paid plan.
- BannerBear – A good automation tool for generating dynamic images and videos via API, though a bit pricey.
AI Images
- FLUX 1.1 Ultra is our go-to image model to use via API. We access this via Replicate or FAL.ai. Fal.ai is currently a little easier to integrate with.
- You can also train your own LORA on these. Meaning that you could train it on pictures of yourself for example.
- DALLE-3 is also a good option that you can use via API (via an OpenAI account).
Voice & Music Generation
- ElevenLabs: Industry-leading AI voice generation with ultra-realistic speech synthesis.
- Suno: AI music generation tool that creates high-quality songs from simple prompts.
AI Video Generation
AI video generation is a rapidly evolving area, with a lot of different models on the go:
Email Marketing and Outreach
- ConvertKit: We use this for our email marketing
- Instantly: Many people in our community recommend this for warming up inboxes before cold email outreach.
Web Scraping, Crawling & Browser Automation
We use a lot of different services for this, including Apify, RapidAPI, Jina.ia, Web Scraper Chrome Plugin, WebScraper.io, Firecrawl.dev, Browse.ai, Browserflow, DataForSEO, Scraptio.
We have an entire No-Code Web Scraping, Crawling & Browser Automation course in our community dedicated to this.
Calendar, Payment & Subscription Management
These are great If you’re running services, digital products, or memberships:
- TidyCal: A much cheaper alternative to Calendly.
- Stripe: Great for online payments, invoicing, and subscriptions.
- ThriveCart: Great for checkout pages and one-click upsells.
- Lemon Squeezy: A simple alternative for selling digital products.
- Paypal: Handy for payments, but beware of their very high fees (and poor currency conversion rates).
Building Websites
Website platforms
- WordPress: This is our main go-to and we’ve got many years of experience and technical knowledge of WordPress. If you’re using WordPress, you should use WordPress.org with your own Host and not WordPress.com!
- Webflow: This is a great website builder that’s perfect for building structured, visual, and responsive websites without needing to code. It offers more design flexibility than traditional website builders with options for automation.
Domains
- Namecheap: We’ve been using Namecheap for years for buying domains at affordable prices. They’re reliable and have good support.
Website Hosting
There are so many different options for hosting. These are 3 that we have a lot of experience with and are happy to recommend. We’ve used Siteground for basic sites while we’ve relied on Rocket.net and Cloudways for high traffic websites.
Please note: Hosting speed doesn’t matter quite as much any more. If you have a standard WordPress website you can use services such as Cloudflare APO to greatly speed up your website, even on cheap hosting.
- SiteGround: A great hosting option for beginners and small websites. It’s fast, reliable, and comes with excellent support. Though be mindful that they’re a bit expensive for renewals.
- Rocket.net: Ideal for scaling, offering ultra-fast managed hosting with built-in security and performance optimization for WordPress sites.
- Cloudways: A cost-effective solution that allows for high scalability and more configuration options without requiring full server management. Perfect if you want more control while keeping things easy to manage.
Customer Support
- Freshdesk: A very capable customer support system with a generous free plan. We’ve used this across a few businesses.
