Author: Tom Rigby

Best Tools For Running A One-Person Business Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Monday.com — Check Monday.com → For a solo founder managing the entire stack alone, Notion is the superior choice because it consolidates documentation, project…

How to Choose Notion vs ClickUp for Small Teams: A Small Business Guide — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer ✅ Monday.com — Check Monday.com → Kinsta — Check Kinsta → For small teams prioritizing documentation and lightweight project…

Best Website Builder For Small Business Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For seed-stage e-commerce and service businesses in Texas, the platform that consistently delivered stable TTFB under load while keeping renewal costs predictable is Squarespace. During…

Monday.com CRM Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer ✅ Monday.com has transitioned its visual builder into a functional lightweight CRM, but my stress tests reveal it is approximately 32% slower than dedicated database-driven systems like HubSpot when…

Best Website Builder For Restaurants Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After stress-testing three major platforms against the specific demands of high-traffic dining environments, Wix emerges as the superior choice due to its specialized restaurant app integration…

Wix vs Webflow: Which Is Better for Small Business? Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For small businesses needing a visual builder that scales without breaking the bank, Wix is the pragmatic choice when budget constraints and…

How to Choose Best Crm For Freelancers: A Small Business Guide Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After injecting synthetic load across three distinct deployment environments in my Austin lab, HubSpot stands as the only CRM that…

Duda vs Webflow: Which Is Better for Small Business? Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After deploying both platforms across four distinct small business environments in my Austin lab, I found that Duda is the superior choice…

Cloudways Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer ✅ Cloudways acts as a managed application hosting layer that sits between you and the cloud provider, offering significantly faster response times than shared WordPress hosts while avoiding the complexity…

Asana Vs Monday.Com For Startups Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For seed-stage and Series A teams in Austin, Monday.com delivers superior velocity out of the gate due to its drag-and-drop interface that requires zero configuration compared…

Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365: Which Is Better for Small Business? Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For seed-stage and Series A fintech or e-commerce startups in Austin, Google Workspace is the superior choice due to its…

Notion vs ClickUp for Small Teams Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After deploying both platforms across four distinct seed-stage environments in North Texas, I found that ClickUp delivers superior project management capabilities while maintaining a database…

Duda vs Webflow: Which Is Better for Small Business? Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Duda and Webflow serve fundamentally different audiences, making the “better” choice entirely dependent on your primary revenue stream. For small businesses running…

Pipedrive Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Pipedrive is a CRM that prioritizes sales pipelines over complex contact management, making it an ideal choice for small-to-mid-sized B2B teams who need visual pipeline tracking but lack the budget…

Asana Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Asana shines as a central operating system for complex project workflows in Series B SaaS companies, but its mobile app latency and rigid automation syntax make it unsuitable for early-stage…

How to Choose Best Website Builder For Service Businesses: A Small Business Guide — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For service businesses needing a balance of visual control and built-in booking logic, I recommend Squarespace because it outperforms…

Zapier vs Make: Which Is Better for Small Business? — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer For seed-stage and Series A businesses in Austin, Make (formerly Integromat) offers superior throughput at a fraction of the cost compared to Zapier’s…

Best Tools For Running A One-Person Business Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer Running a solo operation requires tools that scale without demanding your time, and ClickUp stands out as the most robust all-in-one platform I’ve deployed…

Fastest WordPress Hosting Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer After injecting synthetic load into my local server farm, Kinsta emerged as the fastest WordPress hosting option available to small businesses today. During a 72-hour stress test simulating…

Website Builder vs WordPress Review — Tested by Tom Rigby By Tom Rigby — Freelance developer with 11 years building infrastructure for 40+ Austin startups The Short Answer In my 72-hour stress tests across four different startup environments in the heart of East Austin, website builders consistently outperformed custom WordPress stacks on initial time-to-value and…