20+ Free Web Design Tools for Designers and Developers

  • by

Do you want to create the best website in the world? Either to enhance your personal brand or to give greater visibility to your business, when building a website, it is essential to know the best tools for designing web pages and blogs in order to obtain a completely professional result.

But not only that, but they will also help you to take less time in the creation process and be more efficient in all your projects.

And the best of all is that it does not matter if you use WordPress, Joomla, Prestashop or another CMS to create websites, since many of these free tools listed below can be used in any project .Let’s go with them!

Best Free Blog and Website Design Tools

Colorzilla

Maybe it happened to you sometime. You enter a website with a combination of colors that you like so much that you want to start using it on your website. The problem is that sometimes it is not easy to discover the exact color code even if we look at the CSS. Or if?

To know the exact color code of any element of a web there is a tool that makes this task much easier. I speak of Colorzilla.

ColorZilla is an extension for browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox very simple to use. Just select the eyedropper that appears next to the address bar and pass the mouse over the item you want to find the color.

When you have it, you only have to copy the code and take it to the elements of your website that you want to color.

Adobe Color CC

The choice of the tonalities of your website should not be taken lightly. It is one of the fundamental pillars of your project, as each color combination conveys a different first impression . That’s why, and because combining colors is not always easy, Adobe Color CC is one of the web and blog design tools that every web designer should know.

It is a platform where you can see thousands of combinations that have been made by professionals in the sector and that you can order by their popularity. In this way, you will never make a mistake in choosing your website’s palette.

Google Fonts

Tired of the classic typefaces? If you want to stand out above your competition, you should choose a good source. Forget the typical ones that everyone uses and be original when you go to choose them.

The best thing is that you put a typography on the titles and another different content to make contrast and thus facilitate the reading of your texts. It is not necessary that they are very different from each other, although it is recommended that one be with serif and another without it.

And what is the best tool for it? Without a doubt, Google Fonts.

It is one of the largest free fonts of the world in which you can find fonts of any style: Monospace, Handwriting, Display, Sans Serif and Serif. No matter what style you want to give your website, with Google Fonts you will always find a font that suits it. For Aula CM, these are the best Google Fonts that will help you to improve the design of your website.

WhatFont

Surfing the internet, or perhaps reading a blog, you may have found a typeface that you liked a lot and want to use in your designs. However, you do not know his name and you want to find out what source it is.

Do not worry because in this list of web and blog design tools I bring you one to solve this small problem. It’s WhatFont.

WhatFont is an extension of Google Chrome that will allow you to select a text and know what typography the author is using. As simple as activating the extension and clicking on a text.

Page Ruler

In case you did not know, in order to improve the speed of your website , it is very important that you upload the images to the exact size to which they will later be displayed.

If your images are going to show them in dimensions of 800x500px and you upload them to 1600x1000px, you are making the browser work more and at the same time you increase the weight of the images. This makes your website load more slowly affecting the user experience and, therefore, worsening your SEO positioning.

So that this does not happen, it is best to measure each image before uploading it. For example, if we have a blog and we want to know what is the space destined to the header images of our entries, with Page Ruler we can know exactly the dimensions and save a few kb along the way.

MockFlow

MockFlow is one of the most used web design tools in the first phases of any project. Thanks to it, you will be able to create drafts of the structure that you want your pages to have, being able to present several sketches to the client before starting with the design of the web.

In this way, if you ever run into a customer who is not clear about how you want the design of your page, you can do with it a small draft and then design on a structure already defined.

But MockFlow not only serves to create sketches for the customer, it is also very useful when you want to restructure the contents and pages of your website. Before putting things to change without strategy, it is best to build a small draft to optimize the structure and enhance the conversions of your website.

Pixabay

If there is any element that causes a web page to fail and look mediocre, that is the one related to the images.

It does not matter that you have a good structure and very well chosen colors, if the images you have chosen are not in line with the rest of the web or their quality is bad, the impression that users will take will be that of an amateur website.

And where can you download quality images for your website for free? On Pixabay.

Pixabay is one of the platforms with the largest number of photos from all over the internet. It has a wide collection of free photographs of all styles and sectors, so it will be easy to find the photo you are looking for.

Canva

If you have a blog, you should know that the header images for your posts are very important.

It is the first thing that users will see when they enter your blog, so it is essential to make a good impression. Also, if someone shares any of your entries in social networks, the image that will appear will be the one that you have uploaded as a prominent image. Therefore, if it is striking, you will get many more visits.

To make good images for your articles you do not need to use tools such as Adobe Illustrator or be an expert in graphic design. There is a very useful tool when creating content for your website or blog, which is free and online.  It’s called Canva.

Upon entering the tool, the first thing you will see is a huge list with predetermined templates. Once chosen, you will reach a canvas with the chosen dimensions in which you can drag and drop various elements to design the piece: backgrounds, icons, illustrations, photographs, titles, stamps, etc. You will have endless possibilities to make the images of your website or blog unique and mark the difference with your competition.

Tinypng

Continuing with the web design tools focused on the images, now we have an essential when optimizing: Tinypng, a compressor that will reduce the weight of your graphic content.

It is very simple to use, since you only have to drag the images to the box that appears on the screen and Tinypng will automatically optimize them. Undoubtedly, an advantage that your users and Google will appreciate.

IconFinder

One of the best ways to present the services you offer on the home page of your website is through an icon and a brief description. It is very professional, brings closeness and is much easier to read.

The icons are also very useful when it comes to giving a touch of creativity to your blog content. You can put them next to the titles to break the monotony of the text or to be more original when you write entries with many points to try.

And what is the best source of free icons? Iconfinder

It is a huge icon base where you can find all the icons of the world in various formats and colors. And the best of all is that it has a search engine that will allow you to filter the icons by style or typology. Flat type, 3d, handdrawn, cartoon type, etc.

Stylebot

If you want to start personalizing your website using CSS code but you do not dare to modify it directly, Stylebot is one of the best web and blog design tools to lose your fear of it.

It is an extension for your browser with which you can visually modify any web at your whim, and then take out the CSS code of that modification. In this way, then you will only have to copy the code that has been generated and paste it into the style sheet of your web page.

Sublime Text

If you are a developer and want to create your web page with label and programming languages ​​such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript, your tool is called Sublime Text.

Sublime Text is a simple to use code editor that is designed to program without distractions . It has a very intuitive interface with many options and the ability to configure documents in many languages ​​of labels and programming.

One of the advantages is that Sublime Text will mark each label, attribute, value, etc., in a different color so you can identify all the elements faster and your code is more organized.

In addition, it is possible to configure the tool in several dark colors to take care of the eyes and to tire less sight during those long days of web development.

Undoubtedly, it is another of the great web design tools that exist today.

Notepad ++

Like Sublime Text, Notepad ++ is one of the best web design tools for programmers who want to create pages without the need to use a CMS like WordPress or Joomla.

Some of the features that make it a good tool is its syntax and coloring system . Notepad ++ is able to identify the expressions of the language used and highlight them in a combination of colors that facilitate reading and scanning by the human eye.

GTMetrix

While it is not a tool for designing web pages and blogs as such, it is very useful when optimizing a website after finishing its design.

GTMetrix allows you to analyze the load time of your website so that you know exactly what it takes to display. And best of all, it tells you what is causing your website to load slowly and gives you a series of recommendations to improve it.

As a general rule, your website should load in the shortest time possible, with 4 seconds being the maximum time desired.

And why is it so important that your website is fast? Mainly for two reasons.

On the one hand, it is important that your website loads quickly because users have become somewhat impatient and, if we see that something takes time to load, we go back and go to another page.

On the other hand, from time to time, Google takes into account the loading speed of your website when positioning in your list of results. Therefore, the less time it takes to load, the better SEO positioning you will have.

Website design tools for WordPress Blog

Visual Composer

If you use WordPress as the main web design tool, Visual Composer is your best ally.

Visual Composer is a visual layout plugin that allows you to choose from a multitude of creative elements that you can embed anywhere in your page to give it a totally professional design with a few clicks.

It has a very intuitive interface and provides you with a huge list of options such as text blocks, images, icons with text, dynamic counters, tabs, interactive Maps of Google Maps, buttons, and much more.

Because of its versatility, and because it is the most used and extended WordPress visual designer, it is undoubtedly the best choice when creating web pages.

Bloom

Have you noticed those cool subscription forms that are fashionable lately? They serve to capture users who have liked the content of the web and then be able to notify them that there is new content and bring them back. Also to send them offers and discount coupons in case of being an ecommerce.

Before there was WordPress and the plugins, making a subscription form to a mailing list or newsletter was a somewhat tedious task. It was necessary to create the HTML code, then modify the appearance through CSS code and later make the link to email marketing services via programming. Nowadays, with WordPress + Bloom, it is possible to create fully customized subscription forms with a couple of clicks.

Bloom allows you to design subscription forms combining images, text blocks, small animations and everything that you can think of. After designing it, you can easily link it with all email marketing platforms such as Mailchimp and place it anywhere on the web.

Personally, I think it’s one of the great web and blog design tools of the moment.

Ninja Forms

Whether to hire a service, buy a product or to report a problem or suggestion on your page, it is essential that there is a good contact form that creates a communication channel with your users. If you use WordPress to design your pages, one of the best options is Ninja Forms.

It is a plugin that greatly facilitates the design and insertion of contact forms.

You can insert forms with all the fields you can think of, from the typical e-mail, telephone and name inputs, to the more advanced ones such as drop-down options lists, checkboxes with multiple selections and even fields to attach documents (for example, so that users want to attach their CV if you have section “Work with us”).

Contact Form 7

The classic among classics. Contact Form 7 is the most used WordPress contact forms plugin in the world. So much so, that it comes by default in many templates.

Like Ninja Forms, you can create contact forms with all the fields you want and embed it in any page or entry through a shortcode that is generated automatically when you create a form.

Templates or premium themes

If you use WordPress to create your web pages, one of the great advantages it has over any other CMS is the huge number of templates available. These allow you to create a well-structured web page, with very well chosen colors and demonstration content that you can take advantage of so that the process of creating your website is quick and the result is completely professional.

The WordPress templates are the ones that determine the structure and appearance that your website will have. Normally they bring several predetermined designs so you can choose the one that best suits what you want to transmit on your website. Thanks to the templates, you can design a complete web page in a matter of hours.

WordPress Theme Detector

Surely it happened to you at some point. You enter a website made in WordPress that you like so much that you want to know what template and what plugins you are using to implement some of those elements and functionalities in your web. However, if you do not know the owner of that page, perhaps you can ask or simply the designer does not want to tell you so you do not copy. But do not worry, because I have the definitive tool: WordPress Theme Detector.

You just have to insert the web you want to analyze and let the tool work for you. After a few seconds, the theme and the plugins that the web uses will appear as long as it is done on WordPress. Simply awesome

Do you know more web design tools and blogs?

If you use any additional to those exposed here, leave us in a comment which are the most used in your projects. In this way, we can increase the list to become the best collection of web and blog design tools in the world. You dare?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *