The free toolkit our team actually uses

Eight tools, zero affiliate links

The "must-have tools 2026" lists are half truth, half referral commissions. Here's what we actually keep open eight hours a day. No affiliate links. Nothing that didn't survive a year of daily use.

1. Cron — calendar for brains that don't keep one

Free (premium €36/yr for advanced features). What it does that Google Calendar doesn't: command-K driven, multi-account view without tabs, timezone awareness for calls with RO and EU clients.

The booking links we send clients go through Cron. The UX feels less enterprise-y than Calendly.

2. Linear — issue tracker for teams under 20

Free tier is enough. Linear isn't just for engineering — for us it's the creative + ads + production board. Three tags: `to-shoot`, `in-prod`, `live`.

Team velocity climbs visibly when every deliverable is tracked instead of floating in a Telegram chat. Linear forces structure that Notion doesn't.

3. Figma — for anything visual

Free tier handles 80% of needs. We pay €15/mo for two seats that collaborate live.

Moodboards and final static ads both come out of here. Figma is the most democratised tool in the team — client services, design and the founder all share the same canvas.

4. CapCut — video editing in 2026

Free, owned by TikTok. CapCut Pro is €8/mo but free covers reels under 60s.

The native templates are a shortcut: from brief to result in 30 minutes. Premiere Pro stayed in the arsenal only for cinematic cuts.

5. ChatGPT Plus — for research, not writing

€20/mo. We use it for competitive research (YouTube transcript summaries), long-article digests, sanity-check on headlines.

Why not writing: LLM-generated copy reads predictably and the social algorithms pick it up. ChatGPT accelerates the research; final copy is written by humans.

6. Notion + Notion AI — for drafts and the knowledge base

€10/mo per seat. Notion stores client briefs, post-call notes, project specs. AI helps with SQL-like reports over our databases.

We have dozens of historical client briefs. Notion's search is good; AI is better as a FAQ over the archive.

7. CleanShot — frictionless screen recording

€34 (one-time). Mac only.

Screen recordings for ads and client tutorials. macOS's default capture is too ugly to ship; Loom adds its own brand chrome. CleanShot lands in between.

8. PostHog — analytics for people avoiding Google Analytics

Free up to 1M events/mo. Self-hostable.

GA4 is too complex for client deliverables. PostHog gives us funnels and retention in a friendlier UI. Pixel tracking for clients stays on Meta + GTM.

What we dropped last year

Slack. Switched to Telegram for internal chat, Linear for work. €0/mo.

Mailchimp. Migrated to SendFox (€5/mo flat). Local-client newsletters don't justify Mailchimp at €100+/mo.

Adobe Photoshop. The subscription stopped earning its place. Figma + Affinity Photo (€80 one-time) covers 95% of needs.

That's the list. No affiliate links. No tool picked because a vendor pays a commission.

Key takeaways

- Cron for calendar, Linear for the production board, Figma for anything visual. - CapCut Free covers reels under 60s; Premiere Pro only for cinematic cuts. - ChatGPT Plus for research, not writing — LLM-generated copy reads predictably. - Notion + Notion AI for the client-brief archive; CleanShot for screen recordings. - Dropped this year: Slack, Mailchimp, Adobe Photoshop.