Joyce Roberts

I run a Print-on-Demand T-shirt business, and Placeit is mandatory. The mockups look real, diverse, and high-res. Dragging and dropping my design onto a model takes seconds. They also have great gaming logos and video intros. It saves me from having to do photo shoots or learn Photoshop smart objects.

Even on the Starter plan, the automation capabilities blow Mailchimp out of the water. Being able to tag users based on link clicks and trigger specific follow-up sequences has doubled our email engagement. The visual automation builder is intuitive once you learn the logic. It's definitely more of a 'pro' tool, so expect a learning curve, but the power you get is incredible.

I'm a long-time user, and the recent redesign that merged DMs, Mentions, and Activity into one tab is a mess. It's much harder to find things now. The core functionality is still great, but the UI changes feel like a solution in search of a problem. I wish they would give us an option to go back to the old layout.

Circle is sleek and professional. It's perfect for paid memberships. However, it lacks some of the deep gamification features (leaderboards, complex badges) that platforms like Skool or Mighty Networks have. If you want a calm, professional vibe, Circle is it. If you want high-energy gamification, look elsewhere.

Asana excels at 'who is doing what by when.' It's super clear and keeps everyone accountable. However, the native reporting dashboards are a bit basic. If you need deep insights into resource allocation or time tracking, you'll need external plugins or a different tool. For pure task execution, though, it's top tier.

Font Awesome has been my go-to for years. The library is massive, the icons are stylistically consistent, and it's incredibly easy to implement. The Pro version with its duotone icons and larger set is well worth the money for any serious developer. Using the SVG + JS method makes them incredibly sharp and easy to customize with CSS.

For any kind of CSV or database table, H2O is a beast. It handles classification and regression tasks beautifully. However, for NLP or computer vision tasks, it's not the right tool. You'd be better off with a dedicated library like Hugging Face or PyTorch. But for 90% of business problems (churn, fraud, forecasting), it's perfect.

I used to love Mailchimp, but the constant price hikes are pushing me away. For the features you get on the Essentials plan, competitors like MailerLite or Brevo offer much more for less money. The support is also spotty—sometimes great, sometimes copy-paste answers. It feels like they are focusing more on becoming a complex marketing cloud than just being a great email tool.