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Website designing is not child’s play. It definitely helps to have a couple of smart tools to help you with the design process from time to time. You will especially feel the need of tools when you are designing a responsive website within a short period of time. Adding tools and plugins to your repository will make the designing process more precise and less time consuming.

That being said, here’s a list of the top 40 tools every designer must have to make the design process faster, smoother and error-free.

  • Atomic

 

    1. This website design tool helps you create website designs on your browser. You can also create designs on your PC and Mac and then share them on multiple mobile devices including the Apple Watch. You can import pre-made designs from Adobe Photoshop and Sketch for creating high-end website designs and layouts within a jiffy.
  • Form

 

    1. This free tool will keep you on top of the material design trend. You can create prototypes for various devices including iOS, and add animations to keep your websites lively and trendy.
  • Frontify

 

    1. This is a neat style guide tool. Frontify gives you a direct glimpse of your font designs, colors and other elements of your website design. This one comes with a prototyping tool called Workspace that allows you and your team to share designs and changes on your website framework.
  • Marvel

 

    1. The free basic version of this tool is ideal for prototyping and sharing website designs. You can use timers to handle transition effects between pages, photos and slides. The files are supported on Apple Watch as well.
  • Golden Grid System

 

    1. This is made for responsive designs. It splits the screen into 18 columns. You can access 16 columns as the two extreme ones are reserved for outer margins of the website. This is ideal for making product-based website designs that involves multiple columns.
  • Origami

 

    1. Origami is free for everyone. This tool was created by the Facebook team for design purposes. In fact, Instagram and Messenger were created with Origami. You can use this tool on Mac and iOS.
  • PowerMockup

 

    1. This is an add-on for all PowerPoint users. It includes over 800 UI features made from PowerPoint shapes. This tool has free trial versions and this will help you create amazing, PowerPoint presentations for demonstrating your app and website prototypes.
  • Relay

 

    1. If you have already been acquainted with Slack then you will find Relay quite interesting. You can run Relay along with Adobe CC web designer and Chrome. You can import design elements from Sketch and Mac OS X.
  • UXPin

 

    1. This is your complete design tool that will guide you through planning into execution. You can choose from hundreds of templates or you can start your design from scratch. UXPin helps you create high-fidelity mockups for your websites.
  • Wire Flow

 

    1. This helps you create wireframes on mobile devices. You can create a new UI from scratch using this Android-only tool.
  • Webflow

 

    1. This is a simplistic approach to wireframe designs. You can create prototypes using drag-and-drop elements. This is part-CMS. You can use it for free.
  • Bootstrap

 

    1. This is ubiquitous for all smart designers. Bootstrap is a smart and powerful front-end framework. It is maintained by Twitter.
  • Frameless

 

    1. This is NOT an actual framework. It is used for building layouts for uncountable number of viewports. You can add columns whenever required.
  • 320 and Up

 

    1. This is a tool most professional website designers use for content first designs. You can see a wonderful example of such a design at US bases site on the inner post of Debt Company. This is both lightweight and extremely easy to use.
  • Wirefy

 

    1. Wirefy is the go-to solution for all designers who build websites content first. This has a prime focus on layouts and base styles.
  • Gridless

 

    1. This is a platform cum tool for creating mobile responsive website designs in a short notice. This uses HTML5 and CSS3 for creating websites.
  • Adobe Edge Inspect

 

    1. If you want to inspect and browse website designs on the go, this is your tool. Adobe Edge Inspect also allows you to preview designs before publication.
  • Screenqueri.es

 

    1. This is a Pixel Perfect tool that can test the responsive nature of your design. You can select from pre-defined screen resolutions for your website.
  • Browser Calories

 

    1. When installed this tool places a small icon beside the address bar. The user can see the page weight and load time just in case they are on a poor Wi-Fi network.
  • Firebug

 

    1. This comes from the developers of Firefox. Firebug helps you debug codes and monitor HTML, CSS live and JavaScript for your website.
  • –prefix-free

 

    1. This is a wonderful tool that works behind the scenes. This allows you to add current browser’s prefix to all CSS codes and allows you to use unprefixed CSS codes.
  • Foundation

 

    1. This is a prototyping tool. Foundation is a blueprint for all website design projects. This judges the responsive nature and works with SASS and CSS.
  • Fontello

 

    1. This complete icon generator complies all icons into web fonts. You can edit and customize names and symbol codes on Fontello as well.
  • Cloud Comp

 

    1. This tool helps designers present their comps to client parties. This provides a realistic device shell for the presentation.
  • BLOKK

 

    1. This is a handy tool that replaces all demo texts with blocks inside the website layouts. This is amazing for “clients who don’t get Latin”.
  • Basecamp

 

    1. Just like Relay this tool help designers collaborate on joint projects. You can share your progress and discuss changes on your website design to keep clients updated via Basecamp.
  • FavIcon Generator

 

    1. This is an easy favicon generator for all kinds of websites. If you are a designer in need for creating “favorites icon” you need this one!
  • Load Impact

 

    1. This is a cloud-based tool that tests your website loading speed and optimization strategies before you launch the website.
  • Lorem Ipsum Generator

 

    1. This is a fun and must-have tool that can be used instead of BLOKK. It includes a random generator that replaces all demo with new text.
  • Typetester

 

    1. This is a browser tool that helps you compare different kinds of fonts and typeface. You can choose text color, size and size from a piece of text before applying it globally.
  • Pingdom

 

    1. If you want to track the uptime, downtime and the complete performance of your website, Pingdom is the tool for you. Test your website performance with this JavaScript, CSS and RSS ready tool.
  • CSS Sprite Generator

 

    1. You can reduce the number of HTTP requests using this tool. This will speed up your website loading speed. This includes all codes and images to judge the speed of your website.
  • Font Flame

 

    1. If you want your website fonts to be on fleek, this is the tool for you. You can see all chosen fonts at once so you don’t make any design mistakes when it comes to typography.
  • Codesign

 

    1. This is a platform that will enable you to get visual feedback of your designs. This provides complete, comprehensive feedbacks from other designers, experts and clients. It connects people and ideas that inspire innovation.
  • Drop.js

 

    1. This is a fast, dropdown library. You can create instant dropdowns and several floating elements for your websites using this tool. It saves tons of time and effort that would be otherwise required to create dropdowns from scratch. This is ideal for multiple grid-based designs like the one we see here at TopTenReviews. You can like compare plugins which has been used.
  • XposIt

 

    1. This is a HTML editing tool. This makes your HTML files dynamic without including any actual code. It is also an open-source CMS platform.
  • CodeDoodle

 

    1. CodeDoodle is one platform where you can find curated coding sketches. It includes awesome design elements and incredibly smooth animations for your website layout.
  • Wallop

 

    1. This is a fun and must-have slider. This is just 4 Kb in size and it comes with a small library for hiding and showing design elements.
  • CrazyEgg

 

    1. This is a web-based tool that you can use to analyze your website. You can log in to see website heat-maps or interest zones. You can see where your users are most likely to click and which areas will attract least attention using CrazyEgg before your website goes live.
  • Web-developer toolbar

 

  1. This is a comprehensive plugin from Firefox that provides a collection of tools for website designers and developers. You can use it for inspecting your XHTML and HTTP header on a daily basis.

These 40 tools are amazing for making the entire website designing process rewarding. Most of these tools are either free or they come with free trial versions. You can easily use a combination of more than one tool to create a perfectly working, responsive website within a couple of hours.

Forget hours of debugging and optimizing HTML codes. A couple of these tools can cut your work hours down to a bare minimum, by eliminating errors.

Author bio: Isabella Rossellini is an experienced web designer and freelance writer. She has worked with various clients. In her spare time, She likes to update her blog with web design and finance related articles.