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 n8n and Make.com, 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.
- n8n: n8n is an extremely powerful system. It has also become very popular 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.
- 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.
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.
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.
