DNS & Network Tools
MXTOOLBOX
MX Toolbox has a selection of great tools for performing anything DNS related. The site was original focussed on email but has now expanded to DNS lookups, Blacklist checks, Analyzing email headers, whois, spf generator and more.
DNS Propagation Checker
whatsmydns.net lets you instantly perform a DNS lookup to check a domain names current IP address and DNS record information against multiple name servers located in different parts of the world.
This allows you to check the current state of DNS propagation after having made changes to your domain’s records.
DNS STUFF
dnsstuff.com is similar to MX Toolbox, but has a few extra advanced tools you might need. Domain tools, IP tools, email tools and networking tools.
IP SUBNET CALCULATOR
Working out subnets and CIDR is not something most of us can do in our heads.
The IP Subnet Mask Calculator makes this much easier and enables subnet network calculations using network class, IP address, subnet mask, subnet bits, mask bits, the maximum required IP subnets and maximum required hosts per subnet.
AbuseIPDB
AbuseIPDB is a project dedicated to helping combat the spread of hackers, spammers, and abusive activity on the internet.
It provides an easy way to Report abusive IPs engaging in hacking attempts or other malicious behavior and help fellow sysadmins!
CentralOps
CentralOps provides a number of simple and advanced tools. Best of all they are free. One of the best tools here is the “Email Dossier” which can dig up important information about an email address and even test a connection to an email server.
HostedWhere
A handy tool to find all the info about any website. Where it is hosted, what it runs on, plugins, CMS etc.
Website Testing & Monitoring Tools
GTMetrix
Analyze your site’s speed and make it faster.
GTmetrix gives you insight on how well your site loads and provides actionable recommendations on how to optimize it.
- Get a summary of key performance indicators
- Track performance with monitoring, graphs and alerts
- Test your page from multiple regions
- Analyze your page on an actual Android device
- MORE
Pingdom
Pingdom offers cost-effective and reliable uptime and performance monitoring for your websites. We use more than 70 global polling locations to test and verify our customers’ sites 24/7, all year long. With Pingdom you can monitor your website’s uptime, performance, and interactions for a better end-user-experience. Your customers will thank you.
DNS & Network Tools
WebPageTest
Run a free website speed test from multiple locations around the globe using real browsers (IE and Chrome) and at real consumer connection speeds. You can run simple tests or perform advanced testing including multi-step transactions, video capture, content blocking and much more. Your results will provide rich diagnostic information including resource loading waterfall charts, Page Speed optimization checks and suggestions for improvements.
Siege
This http load-testing and benchmarking utility was designed to let web developers measure code under duress, to see how it will stand up to load on the Internet. Siege supports basic authentication, cookies, and HTTP and HTTPS protocols, and lets the user hit a web server with a configurable number of simulated web browsers. Those browsers place the server “under siege.”
Browser Stack
Live, Web-Based Browser Testing
Instant access to all real mobile and desktop browsers. Say goodbye to your lab of devices and virtual machines.
Test on a range of physical Android and iOS mobile devices and tablets for the most accurate results.
Sitespeed.io
Sitespeed.io is a set of Open Source tools that makes it easy to monitor and measure the performance of your web site.
Measuring performance shouldn’t be hard: you should be able to have full control of your metrics, own your own data and you should be able to do it without paying top dollars.
Website Design Tools
Use this handy tool to quicky resize all your images for your website.
PicResize.com was created in March 2005 and is the original picture editing tool on the Internet. The service has always remained free to use and has processed more than 150 million pictures since its launch.
DNS & Network Tools
TinyPNG
TinyPNG uses smart lossy compression techniques to reduce the file size of your PNG or JPG files. By selectively decreasing the number of colors in the image, fewer bytes are required to store the data. The effect is nearly invisible but it makes a very large difference in file size!
HTML Cleaner
When you copy content from Microsoft Word and other WYSIWYG editors, you also get a whole bunch of other messy code, meta data and CSS that you cannot see, which then gets pasted into your website. This creates bloat and can also messup your web page/styling as well.
HTML cleaner will clean up all that crap and make your content safe to paste into your website.
Security
QUALYS SSL LABS
This SSL testing tool by Qualys will analyze the SSL certificate on your website, check it is working properly, test encryption cyphers etc and generate a report with a security score.
Online Penetration Testing Tools
Pentest-Tools.com is an online framework for penetration testing and vulnerability assessment which allows you to quickly assess the security of websites and network infrastructures from a remote location.
ScanMyServer
provides one of the most comprehensive reports of varieties of security test like SQL Injection, Cross Site Scripting, PHP Code Injection, Source Disclosure, HTTP Header Injection, Blind SQL Injection and much more.
Why No Padlock
Are you pulling your hair out trying to find out why your secure page is not fully secure? Here’s a simple tool that will tell you about any insecure items on your SSL page!
Sucuri
Sucuri is one of the most popular website security platforms. They provide a FREE scan service, but also offer an advanced web application firewall and security service as well as caching and performance improvements to your site. Securi is a popular and cheaper alternative to CloudFlare.
Hardest PW
This handy tool not only generates strong passwords, but provides you with a one-time link to send to soneone to view the password. A handy tool for generating passwords for clients so that you do not send them via email.
File Management, Editing & Sharing
HTML Online
This free HTML WYSIWYG editor program allows you edit your source code online without downloading any application. Guaranteed the best visual webpage builder software you can find out there!
Net2FTP
An online FTP client allowing you to upload, down and edit files via your browser. Very handy if you need to make quick changes to your websites, without having to install an FTP client.
Cometdocs aims to provide a complete online solution for all your document management needs. Everything is web-based and completely secure. Privacy is guaranteed. Your personal data, including files, emails and everything else is never shared with anyone. And best of all for users, Cometdocs is available free of charge.
We Transfer
Send files up to 2GB in size for FREE. A handy service for sharing files which are too big to send via email.
Database Tools
The 2 most popular RDBMS systems are MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. The former has the free MySQL Workbench as standard, but this has had numerous problems with reliability for many years and there are better tools available.
Users of the latter have in contrast been spoilt with Microsoft’s SQL Management Studio, which is a slick and well-written tool and all most devs need. There are however some alternatives for MSSQL which have some greater features and functionality.
MySQL
Sequel Pro
Price: FREE (donations accepted via PayPal)
License: GNU GPL 2.0
Supported platforms: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or newer
Sequel Pro is an application used to manage MySQL databases (locally or over the Internet). It lets you add and remove databases and tables, change fields and indexes, view and filter table content, add, edit and remove rows, perform custom queries, and dump tables or entire databases.
It is compatible with MySQL 3.x, 4 or 5 and now comes in 5 additional languages, including Russian, German, Swedish, French and Japanese.
SQLYog
License: A full range of licensing options are available ranging from one to unlimited user commercial licenses with one year of free upgrades.
Supported platforms: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 10
There have been many complaints that MySQL Workbench hangs or fails to respond when put under a heavy load. SQLyog is a more robust product with many additional tools. It’s available in three major versions: Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. The main difference between the three versions is the number of included features. These include data migration, profiling, visual designers, analysis, batch scripting, backup scheduler, user manager, and database copy tools.
At this time, SQLyog is only available for the Windows platform, but, some of the community uses it on MacOS, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and Mageia using WINE.
A single user license costs $99 for the Professional Ed, $199 for the Enterprise Ed, and $299 for the Ultimate Ed. Multi-user packages are also available. A 14-day trial version of SQLyog is available for download from the Webyog’s website.
DBForge Studio
Price: FREE for express edition, $59.95 (non-commercial standard edition), $124.95 (non-commercial professional edition), $119.95 (commercial standard edition), $249.95(commercial professional edition)
License: Commercial and non-commercial licenses available. Subscriptions are also offered as an efficient and quickest way to deliver product upgrades and technical support.
Supported platforms: Windows XP/7/8/8.1/10
dbForge Studio for MySQL offers visual MySQL development and administration.
There are three editions: Express, Standard, and Professional
HeidiSQL
Price: FREE (donations accepted via PayPal)
License: GNU General Public License
Supported platforms: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 (can be run on any Linux with Wine)
HeidiSQL, previously known as MySQL-Front, is a FREE and open source client developed by German programmer Ansgar Becker and a few other contributors in Delphi. To manage databases with HeidiSQL, users must login to a local or remote MySQL server with acceptable credentials, creating a session. Within this session users may manage MySQL Databases within the connected MySQL server, disconnecting from the server when done. Its feature set is sufficient for most common and advanced database, table and data record operations but remains in active development to move towards the full functionality expected in a MySQL Frontend.
PHPMyAdmin
Price: FREE (donations accepted via PayPal)
License: GNU General Public License, version 2
Supported platforms: Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, PHP 4 – 5 and MySQL 3 – 5
phpMyAdmin is a FREE browser based tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Internet. phpMyAdmin supports a wide range of operations with MySQL, the most frequently used being the managing of databases, tables, fields, relations, indexes, users, permissions. You still have the ability to execute SQL statements directly as well.
Most hosts provide this tool as standard, but if you have your own server, you can install this on your own website.
MyDB Studio
License: freeware
Supported platforms: Windows, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10
Another studio containing a complete collection of tools for MySQL Server administration. Developers will appreciate its ability to create/edit/drop database objects, DB synchronization, and data export/import. DBAs can also use MyDB Studio to perform database migration, as well as backups and restores. It supports SSH tunneling to secure your connections, which allows you to connect even if your host doesn’t allow you remote access connection, user and privilege management, and PHP script creation.
EMS SQL manager
Microsoft SQL Server
SQL Server Management Studio
SSMS is an integrated environment for managing any SQL infrastructure, from SQL Server to SQL Database. SSMS provides tools to configure, monitor, and administer instances of SQL. Use SSMS to deploy, monitor, and upgrade the data-tier components used by your applications, as well as build queries and scripts.
Use SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to query, design, and manage your databases and data warehouses, wherever they are – on your local computer, or in the cloud.
SSMS is free!
SQL Server Data Tools
SQL Server Data Tools is a modern development tool that you can download for free to build SQL Server relational databases, Azure SQL databases, Integration Services packages, Analysis Services data models, and Reporting Services reports. With SSDT, you can design and deploy any SQL Server content type with the same ease as you would develop an application in Visual Studio.
SSDT 15.5.2 is a standalone web installation experience for SQL Server Database, Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Integration Services projects in Visual Studio 2017 15.5 or later.
EMS SQL manager
ApexSQL Free Tools
Killer free tools for SQL Server that improve database developer productivity.
- Auto complete statements
- Improve productivity with snippets
- Keep track of all your tabs
- Format SQL
- Formatting profiles
- Obfuscate SQL
- Search SQL objects
- Edit extended properties
- Rename SQL objects safely
- Qualify objects & expand wildcards
- Encapsulate SQL into procedures
- Add surrogate keys
- Replace one-to-many relationships
- Change procedure parameters
- Locate & highlight unused variables
- SQL Server object compare
- SQL script compare
- Object decryption
Suggestion Form
If you know a useful tool that should be added to this page, send me the details below.