My current tech stack
I get the question sometimes, so here’s my tech stack. I should preface this by mentioning that I’m a fanatic minimalist, which might influence my choices here.
Development environments
For my development environment, I use my favourite code editor, Zed, combined with GitHub and Railway. I love how fast Zed is, and it has really interesting built-in AI Assistant features. I build and test locally, and then push to different GitHub branches (staging, production, features, etc.) which are all connected to separate 'environments' in Railway. For this setup I use Nix to manage dependencies, and Nix Flakes (with `builtins.currentSystem`) to spin up environments at any stage of the pipeline. Using Nix instead of Docker makes a lot of sense, especially since Railway developed and focuses heavily on Nixpacks. If you don’t like Zed, Sublime Text is really good too. I'm also experimenting with GitHub Copilot's new Agentic AI features within VS Code, and it's looking very promising so far.
Front end
Web development
I usually start with really simple wireframes to simply think about the structure of a website or app, for which I like to use Octopus, or sometimes Google Sites to make it slightly more visual and interactive. Further developing the wireframe into something truly visual (and functional if desired) is something I do with Figma.
For building quick and simple front-ends I use Webflow, which is also great for creating quick and functional prototypes. With its ability to add custom code, and combined with Relume’s component library and Finsweet’s Attributes, you can make some really good front-ends while maintaining full flexibility. I also think that Finsweet’s Client-First naming conventions for classes should be used everywhere, not just in Webflow.
I am aware that Webflow is low-code and some of you hardcore developers have strong opinions about this not being the "real deal", but get over yourselves, it’s great. Webflow exports code that I would say is semantic but not super clean (lots of Webflow-related attributes everywhere), but certainly good enough for most projects. I’m holding out hope for Webstudio (together with Radix UI), an open-source alternative to Webflow. It's currently clearly not as good, but it might provide an ultimate low-code solution for front-end development in the future, with truly clean, semantic code output.
For the more advanced projects where I need even more flexibility I prefer to go with Svelte as a front-end framework, or SvelteKit as a full-stack framework. I find it much easier to learn and use than the other major front-end frameworks, and I have yet to encounter any limitations. If you like PHP (I love PHP even though it's not reactive) I would go with Laravel, although I tend to go hardcore plain PHP :)
For handling forms there is a native option in Webflow, although I have experienced several issues with this in the past. To improve form handling within Webflow I can wholeheartedly recommend Basin, it’s a really well-built product with an amazing team behind it. For handling form submissions in custom-coded projects I use a PHP script that I wrote myself. It's pretty comprehensive, so feel free to contact me if you'd like to use it - I'd be happy to help building this! I have a lifetime plan with MXroute, which I use as the mail server in these cases, and I prefer Cloudflare Turnstile as a more user-friendly CAPTCHA alternative. Pretty multi-step forms are often made with Typeform, but I recommend using Tally instead, it’s basically free. If you want to make such forms natively in Webflow you should give Formly a try.
Vector, photo, video and other design/editing work
For basic vector design work I use Figma. I also use it together with LottieFiles for Lottie web animations, which I believe is the single best way to animate simple vector stuff for the web. Pixelmator Pro is my favourite tool for basic photo editing, as well as for more advanced vector work. Although I don’t use it much anymore, I do strongly recommend the Affinity suite (Designer, Photo and Publisher) for more all-round design and publishing work.
For 3D design work I typically use Vectary, it’s quite easy to learn and works great with Figma, LottieFiles and Webflow. If I need something for a more custom project, I go with Spline because it works great with custom code and Three.js, which is just that little extra level of professional. Even more advanced 3D work I think has to be done with Blender, a tool I haven’t fully mastered yet but I think is very professional and impressive. For CAD work I quite like Onshape, which I use on my iPad. And while I haven’t had any VR/AR projects yet, I’ve been playing around with A-Frame a little bit which allows for HTML-based VR/AR development, which I think is really neat.
Lastly, I don’t do a lot of video editing, but when I do, I think there’s nothing better than Final Cut Pro, especially when combined with Motion for simple animations, or After Effects for more advanced animations (although I hate Adobe's subscription pricing). These tools all have a pretty steep learning curve, but they are really solid.
Data visualisation
For visualising data I think D3 is truly amazing, the sky is the limit with this library. You can use Observable to easily build data dashboards with D3 data visualisations. For more simple and quick data visualisations I like to use Datawrapper, it has a really easy integration with Google Sheets. Use Mapbox for anything related to maps, it’s amazing.
Mobile apps
For mobile apps, I don’t think anything beats building native iOS and Android apps (with Swift and Java respectively) to get the most perfect user experience. That said, Flutter is really amazing in my opinion for cross-platform mobile app development (and even web development). It allows for having one common codebase for different deployments, and ensures a consistent user experience across platforms. If you’re familiar with React you might want to consider React Native instead, but if not, I think Flutter is better. FlutterFlow is decent for quick-and-dirty prototypes, but I wouldn’t recommend it for large-scale production.
Back end
Databases
One of my favourite backends to use is Airtable, it’s like a database-meets-spreadsheet hybrid. It’s powerful, easy to use, and has a great feature for building visual interfaces that your client can use to easily work with the data in the database. Baserow is a pretty good open-source alternative, although I don’t think it’s as good as Airtable.
For more advanced projects I tend to develop locally (described at the start of this post). I use PostgreSQL databases a lot, often combined with Beekeeper Studio (lifetime plan) for even easier management. For truly professional deployments I like to use Directus. It's more like an all-round backend solution, and I just haven't found anything that comes close to it.
If you just want to turn your static website into something with a simple CMS for your client, check out Couch, Perch and Kirby. They’re really neat tools that allow you to create something more dynamic with an admin area for the client. Still beats Wordpress if you ask me!
Data syncing and automations
My data flows tend to be more custom-built for professional apps, but there are a few data sync tools out there that I recommend for connecting your backend and frontend without too much hassle. Whalesync is a really great and powerful product that allows you to sync much more than just your frontend and backend. For a more manual approach that integrates perfectly with Webflow you should use Wized, it’s a bit harder to learn but really powerful. But again, the really professional stuff typically calls for more manual custom-coded solutions.
That said, Zapier is quite useful for simple automations and has an incredible amount of supported connections, but I think it’s a bit limited. Make is a lot more powerful for building more complex automations. If you want to go even more pro, n8n is the way to go. If you’re dealing with hardware connections and automations (like IoT stuff), Node-RED is perfect.
User authentication
For custom apps I *only* use the open-source, self-hosted version of SuperTokens now. It's incredibly robust, secure, and gives me full control. I combine it with Stripe for payment processing whenever I'm monetizing something I build.
Email server
As mentioned before, I recommend the lifetime plan by MXroute to have an email server. Keep in mind that they have a strict policy that you’re not allowed to use it for spamming people, but if you’re a good person I assume you wouldn’t do that anyway. For a more flexible per-employee subscription I would recommend using ZOHO Mail, I think it’s the most affordable one that is also reliable. You can use their ZeptoMail for transactional emails.
Other stuff
This isn't exactly related to my web development tech stack, but I did research these options for hours on end, so I thought I’d share them too.
I like to use reveal.js for presentations, which is really great for creating pretty, animated presentations with mere basic HTML and CSS animations.
On the topic of finance, I love Fintech. If you live in Scandinavia, I can only recommend Lunar (I currently live in Norway). However, if you need a bank that also provides a Norwegian BankID, I would say that Bulder is the best option. If you're a nomad who wants something that works well across borders, I would recommend Wise, Revolut, or N26. There is also a lot of budgeting software out there, but Toshl is the best one I've found, and it connects with many, many banks.
Finally, regarding news sources, I've made it a mission to only receive objective, unbiased news, and to filter out sensationalist and politically motivated news as much as possible. To start, I think you should only look at the global news wire services: Reuters, AP and AFP. OurWorldInData is also a great source for data-driven news; they have a strong focus on trends rather than sensationalist single events. Axios and the Economist are also pretty good and seem to be quite objective. If you want a one-in-all news solution, I think Inkl is the most amazing news service out there. You can fully customise the 'algorithm', listing which topics you are interested in and which news sources to include/exclude.
In terms of academic writing, my ideal setup is a combination of VS Code, Quarto, and Paperpile. I've connected VS Code to GitHub for proper version control of my writing. Quarto allows me to write in Markdown, which means I no longer need to worry about formatting, and I can then easily export to various formats like PDF and DOCX. Paperpile (especially when connected to your institution's EZproxy URL) is my favourite reference manager, although Papers by Readcube is a strong competitor. Paperpile's GitHub integration provides a live BibTeX file, dynamically managing references within my Quarto documents. I have one YAML file with optimal export settings for every export format that automatically applies to all of my Quarto documents. For a more all-in-one approach, I would consider Typst, which is a superior LaTeX alternative in my opinion, or Curvenote, which is great for both academic writing and publishing (and can be dynamically connected to Paperpile). If you'd like help setting up any or all of this, or if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.