Milanote is a web-based tool that enables you to organize all of your ideas and projects onto visual boards. You can create moodboards, brainstorm ideas with visuals, sticky notes, plan your calendar, and loads more.

The company is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.

About Milanote

The company started operations in 2017. Milanote is based on the idea that behind every great piece of creative work, there is a lot of research and ideas that led to that final piece.

You can moodboards, brainstorm ideas, jot down notes, visually plan projects, create storyboards, plan out mind maps… and visually arrange just about anything that involves various digital materials.

It’s also just a really handy tool for anyone that is a little disorganized and has sticky notes or bits of paper with important bits of information all over their desks.

Milanote gives you a digital place to store, arrange, and work with all your notes and images. This way, if you’re disorganized you’ll never lose any important information. For creatives, it makes arranging boards and other visuals quick and easy.

How Milanote Works

To get started with Milanote, you need to either log in with your Google account or sign up via email.

Once you have an account, you can log in and start using the web app on your desktop, download their mobile app, and install their web clipper extension.

You’re presented with a blank canvas/board when you first log in. But don’t worry, it’s super easy to get started. Most elements are drag-and-drop, and Milanote provides loads of templates to help you get started.

There is a wide range of different boards you can create. Once you select the type of board you want to create, Milanote does a great job of guiding you through building out a smooth, professional-looking board.

Once you’ve finished a board, or even if you haven’t, you can publish it for anyone to see. You can also share your work with others and give them access to make changes and collaborate with you.

Milanote Services

Milanote is used to create a wide range of creative boards, the main ones are:

• Moodboarding
• Brainstorming
• Visual note taking
• Storyboarding
• Design collaboration
• Creative briefs
• Mind mapping
• Project management

You can create boards on your own, or by collaborating with others.

Milanote Plans and Pricing

Milanote has a fairly generous free plan, and three monthly paid plans based on how many users you want.

Their pricing plans at the time of publishing were:

• Free – You can use up to 100 notes, images, or links, 10 file uploads, and unlimited shared boards.
• $9.99 per mo – This is a license for one person, and enables unlimited notes, images, links, and file uploads.
• $49 per mo – This enables up to 10 user accounts with full access to all features.
• $99 per mo – This enables up to 50 user accounts with full access to all features.

Milanote Alternatives

There aren’t a lot of creative tools that do as much as Milanote does, and in a similar way. Evernote is one of the best tools for arranging ideas, so I recommend checking it out if that’s your goal.

For team collaborations, I recommend checking out Monday.com, which  is a project management-based tool.

Check out our tools/resources page for more inspiration!

Your Turn

Have you used Milanote? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.

SavvyCal is a calendar scheduling app that makes scheduling meetings easy for both parties by populating an interactive calendar and generating scheduling links.

The company is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN.

VAA Exclusive: Get $12 off your first month by clicking here!

About SavvyCal

SavvyCal was developed by Derrick Reimer. Derrick is a serial entrepreneur and has been involved in successful projects such as Drip, Codetree, Level, and StaticKit.

When creating SavvyCal, Derrick was well aware that there were a lot of scheduling tools on the market. He felt like they were all lacking something in the same area, however – they were not convenient enough for the person receiving the scheduling link.

Derrick himself says he frequently used to go back and forth up to 10 times with people trying to mutually agree on a meeting time.

I’m sure this is something that resonates with a lot of people reading this!

So, he designed SavvyCal to be as simple and efficient for the other person to agree to a meeting time as possible.

He did this by making it easy for people to see your calendar, and choose a meeting time that works for them. As well as generating custom links they just have to click once, and offering flexibility around the date and time someone can select.

How SavvyCal Works

SavvyCal is an app that you can access via logging in through a portal on the SavvyCal website.

You can get started for free, all you need to is sign in via your Google or Microsoft credentials, or create an account.

Then you can download and access the SavvyCal calendar. You can now select which days and times you’re available, and leave those time slots open for people to book a meeting time with you.

You can also schedule meetings yourself, and generate a link to send to the other attendees. All they have to do is click the link, and it’ll populate their information in both your calendar and theirs.

If you want to see how easy it is to select and book a timeslot on a calendar powered by SavvyCal, you can use their test calendar on the homepage of their website.

SavvyCal Services

SavvyCal is a calendar scheduling tool, some of the standout features are:

• Generating and sending out personalized links to meeting attendees.
• Allowing recipients to overlay their calendar on top of yours.
• Offering multiple meeting durations to help recipients book a time slot that works for them.
• Providing a 1-click experience so it’s quick and easy for attendees to schedule a meeting with you.

SavvyCal Plans and Pricing

You can try SavvyCal for free for 7 days. The best part is, there is no cost for setting up the product, and your 7-day trial only starts when you start sharing your meeting links.

When your 7 days are up (and you love the tool) SavvyCal has two monthly pricing plans as follows:

1. Basic Plan – $12/mo per user – This plan enables you to schedule unlimited links, calendars, and events.
2. Premium Plan – $20/mo per user – This plan includes everything in the Basic Plan, plus it lets you remove all the SavvyCal branding attached to your links and calendar.

VAA Exclusive: Get $12 off your first month by clicking here!

SavvyCal Alternatives

Some of the other popular calendar scheduling tools worth checking out are SimplyBook.me, Calendly, and X.ai.

Each of these tools offers a free trial, so you can test them out before committing to a plan and get a feel for which is the best fit for you.

Your Turn

Have you used SavvyCal’s scheduling tools? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

Moosend is an email marketing platform with a wide range of powerful marketing and automation features to help you manage and engage with your email subscribers.

The company is headquartered in the UK, and they also have offices in Greece.

About Moosend

Moosend started operations in 2011 and was co-founded by co-founders Yannis Psarras and Panos Melissaropoulos.

Thousands of individuals and companies use Moosend to manage their email lists. From entrepreneurs and startups to huge global brands like Domino’s, Vogue, and WWF, Moosend has plans that scale with businesses of any size.

The core of Moosend’s platform is email marketing. This means they provide all the tools you need to send out emails to your list of email subscribers.

Their list of features runs a lot deeper than just emailing your list, however. Moosend leverages intelligent marketing automation and website tracking to help you exceed your marketing goals and increase your conversion rates.

For a lot of businesses, an email list is a huge asset and accounts for a large portion of their revenue. Being able to increase open rates, upsell, set email automation sequences, and track engagement all helps to increase the amount of revenue you’re bringing in from your list.

How Moosend Works

To get started with Moosend, all you have to do is sign up for an account and you can start using their platform and tools for free.

You’re limited to emailing 2,000 subscribers with their free plan. But this is more than enough to test out their features and see what you think of Moosend.

If you have a list much larger than 2,000, just segment out a small number of your subscribers. Or, you can even just run some test email batches.

Moosend has support on hand if you have any questions. It’s a self-serving platform for the most part though, you can manage your list and send out as many campaigns as you wish.

Moosend Services

Moosend is a complete email marketing platform. From email templates and newsletter editors to creating landing pages, A/B split testing, and powerful reporting and analytics on the backend. It does it all.

Some of their key services and features include:

• Email Marketing
• Marketing Automation
• Landing Page Builder
• Subscription Form Builder
• Campaign Management
• Reporting and Analytics
• Tracking

Moosend Plans and Pricing

Moosend currently has three pricing plans to choose from. A free plan, so you can test their platform before committing to a monthly subscription. A monthly plan starting at $8 per month based on the number of email subscribers you have, and a custom plan for large users.

At the time of publishing, their plans looked like this:

1. Free – You can use all of their core features free forever, with the limitation being 1,000 subscribers.
2. Pro – Moosend’s Pro plan starts at $8 per month for up to 2,000 subscribers. The price then scales up as you add more subscribers up to a cap of 200,000 which costs $608 per month.
3. Enterprise – If you have a subscriber list of more than 200,000 emails, Moosend’s customer support team will work out a custom plan that best suits your expected usage.

Moosend Alternatives

Two of the biggest alternative email marketing campaign platforms to Moosend are MailChimp and ActiveCampaign. Both of which also offer free trials if you want to test each platform.

Your Turn

Have you used Moosend for your email campaigns? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

JotForm is an online form builder and survey maker that enables any number of users to create and work on any type of form, survey, and various other templates.

The company is headquartered in US based in San Francisco, CA, and JotForm also has offices in Turkey.

About JotForm

JotForm has been operating for more than 15 years and was founded by current CEO Aytekin Tank.

Aytekin created JotForm to provide a solution for people looking for quick, easy ways to create online forms. You can create professional-looking forms with no coding or special skills, and JotForm has loads of templates and uses a simple drag-and-drop builder.

The main reason to use a form builder is to create robust forms that you can easily share and use to collect information.

Some of the most common uses of JotForm are to create surveys, send out forms for job applications, collect online payments, and basically create interactive forms for any purpose.

One of the best things about JotFrom is that they offer 24/7 support. If you get stuck for any reason or just have a question, you can reach out to them any time of day or night.

How JotForm Works

After signing up for an account, you get access to JotForm’s database of more than 10,000 templates to get you started building a form. Or, you can start from a blank screen, of course.

Once in the form builder, JotForm is mostly drag-and-drop. You can simply pick up widgets and elements from their library of options, and drag them onto forms where you want them.

As long as you’re not using the free version, you can add your own branding to forms. Or your client’s branding if you’re creating forms for clients This is easy to do and gives your forms a professional look.

JotForm Services

JotForm provides services for building forms and surveys for just about any purpose you can think of.

Some of their most popular forms are:

• HIPAA Forms
• JotForm Tables
• JotForm Approvals
• Smart PDF Forms
• Secure Forms for online payments

JotForm also integrates with more than 100 other tools. You can embed widgets and connect with PayPal, MailChimp, DropBox, Adobe Sign, Zoom, and many more.

JotForm Plans and Pricing

JotForm has a free plan, and three paid plans based on the number of forms and data usage you need.

A complete list of their pricing plans at the time of publishing are:

• Starter – FREE – With this plan, you can create up to 5 forms and have limited data usage.
• Bronze – $24 per month – With this plan, you can create up to 25 forms and have an increased data usage limit.
• Silver – $29 per month – With this plan, you can create up to 100 forms, have further increased data usage limits, and you can create HIPAA compliant forms.
• Gold – $79 per month – With this plan, you can create unlimited forms and have unlimited data usage for the most part.

*The Bronze, Silver and Gold plans are billed annually.

You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time. If you cancel your subscription within 30 days of paying you can request a full refund.

JotForm Alternatives

For alternatives to JotForm, I recommend checking out other form building companies like Typeform.

JotForm told me that what separates them from other form builders is the wide range of templates, widgets, and other features they offer. They told me they offer one of the most diverse user experiences and have one of the largest template databases.

Your Turn

Have you used JotForm? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.

SimplyBook.me is an online booking and scheduling solution for small to medium-sized businesses.

This software provides all the tools you need to manage bookings, handle payments, and various other subsystems all through a central admin interface.

About SimplyBook.me

The company is headquartered in Cyprus and is headed up by a management team of Mike Benkovich who is the CTO, Ingvar, the Founder-VP Sales, Rut who is the CRO, and Mike, the current CTO.

SimplyBook.me started operations in 2009, and underwent some changes in 2011 as the booking system used today was fully rolled out.

The company and its software have gone from strength to strength since then as they continue to add new features and build on their product.

SimplyBook.me is a booking system on the surface, but has a wide range of features under the hood. If you’ve reached a point where taking manual bookings from clients is taking up too much time, SimplyBook.me is going to save you a lot of time and reduce the chance of double booking and other errors.

Once set up, receiving bookings can be completely hands-off for the most part. Your clients or customers can use the SimplyBook.me platform to select a date and time you’ve made available, answer any questions you set, and reserve a time slot in your calendar.

This software integrates with all the major platforms you probably already use to communicate with customers, like Facebook, Google, and Instagram. It also has built-in payment processing tools, so you can accept payments at the time of booking.

From personal trainers and doctors to booking online classes and live events. SimplyBook.me is used by thousands of individuals and businesses around the world to streamline and automate their online booking and payment processing.

How SimplyBook.me Works

SimplyBook.me has a simple 3-step onboarding process;

Step 1 – Sign-up for an account.

Step 2 – Input all of your business details and go through the quick setting up phase.

Step 3 – ‘Click the magic button’ as SimplyBook.me puts it.

After clicking the completion button you’ll have a fully operational booking system you can integrate into your website via a customized widget.

You can start taking bookings and syncing them with your calendar and other tools you use in your tech stack within minutes.

SimplyBook.me Explanatory Video

SimplyBook.me Services

Some of the features SimplyBook.me provides are:

• Accept online bookings.
• Set reminders for staff and clients so they don’t miss appointments.
• Provide clients with a personalized app.
• Wide range of integrations and API access.
• Accept payments online.
• Customizable features.

SimplyBook.me Plans and Pricing

SimplyBook.me has a free plan and three monthly paid plans ranging from $9.90 to $59.90. A complete list of their plans at the time of publishing was:

1. Free – You can get started for free and take up to 50 bookings a month.
2. Basic – $9.90/mo, with this plan you can take up to 100 bookings and use some additional features.
3. Standard – $29.90/mo, with this plan you can take up to 500 bookings a month.
4. Premium – $59.90/mo, with this plan you can take up to 2,000 bookings a month.

If you’re interested but undecided, they offer a 14-day free trial without the need for credit card details. This is a generous amount of time to see if SimplyBook.me is the right fit for your business.

SimplyBook.me Alternatives

The closest alternatives to SimplyBook.me are calendar scheduling tools like SavvyCal and Calendly.

These tools enable you to quickly and easily schedule meetings and take bookings. However, they do not offer the range of features SimplyBook.me does to help you take payments, provide client apps, and so on.

Your Turn

Have you used SimplyBook.me to handle your bookings? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.