Ask HN: Tools of the trade, 2013 edition

SendGrid (http://sendgrid.com) - transactional emails (sending digital issues to subscribers).

MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com) - newsletter.

Linode (http://linode.com) - VPS hosting.

Harvest (http://getharvest.com) - invoicing (for corporate customers + advertisers).

FetchApp (http://fetchapp.com) - digital delivery (for single issue purchase). Previously used E-Junkie.

PayPal - payment gateway (sadly, one of the only choice for Malaysian).

Gumroad (http://gumroad.com) - I use this as a 'PayPal alternative' for customers who wish to pay directly with their credit card (and refuse to have anything to do with PayPal).

Pivotal Tracker (http://pivotaltracker.com) - project management for HM's backend app

ODesk (http://odesk.com) - finding and managing my remote team (currently in the size of 4).

Sendgrid (http://sendgrid.com/) - Sending emails

Braintree (https://www.braintreepayments.com/) - Payments

Deployd (http://www.deployd.com/) - Quickly design and build APIs

Github (https://github.com/) - Project hosting and issue tracker

It's like using a smart piece of paper that just gets out of your way and let's you create, assign, toggle, set dates, etc really intuitively.

I'm a freelancer - and for my usage I typically have a Workspace called Freelance Projects. In that workspace I have many projects, each for each freelance gig I land. I then invite my client (YOU CAN INVITE UP TO 30 PEOPLE PER PROJECT FOR FREE HOLY BALLS) and collaborate intuitively from there.

He/she can upload photoshop files, images, text files, edit desriptions and I can comment on them and we go back and forth. Better than email. I used to procrastinate a lot. It was my achille's heel; but since Asana I enjoy working because there's something deeply psychological in ticking things off and seeing them grayed out.If you haven't checked it out.

There's also Trello but I kind of dislike it when there are more than 5 items in a list. It gets unwiedly.

Trello (http://trello.com) - task/project/team management

Stripe (http://stripe.com) - credit card payment processing

Helpscout (http://helpscout.net) - email support system

Plus the usual suspects: AWS, GitHub, Mailgun...

BitBucket: just like github (git, wiki, issues, pull requests etc) only priced that makes sense for private repos. We just use it for git however because...

JIRA: Way better issues/bugs/feature tickets, built in optional time tracking. Good support for Agile teams with GreenHopper

Confluence: A real wiki

Bamboo: continuous integration/deployment. When you commit to git with a JIRA ticket number and a build fails its easier for everyone (non-technical people) to see what is causing the failed build

The other big plus is user management to all of the above, you can create client accounts if needed and they can create/close tickets or work on wiki with you.

HipChat is nice because your non technical people participate easier, irc previously had just been developers

You can probably get all of these things free individually but its worth the small $ to have them all work together seamlessly, plus 1 account vs many is always a big plus for adoption

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SplunkStorm: https://www.splunkstorm.com/ log practically anything server related and put it into dashboards/timelines. Alerts in the works