A database of free online tools, apps and resources for multimedia production! Know of something awesome that’s not here? Slack it to Richelle Szypulski!
Must-Have Tools
Canva
Canva is an online design and publishing tool with a mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere. The Girls Write Now team uses it for all of our designs! Here’s a great rundown of the features and capabilities.
Free accounts have access to:
- 250,000+ free templates
- 100+ design types
- Hundreds of thousands of photos, graphics, and fonts
- Real-time collaboration
Canva also has a free Design School full of helpful videos and extensive library of Tutorials.
Storyboarding & Project Planning
Milanote
Milanote is an easy-to-use tool to organize your ideas and projects into visual boards.
Free accounts are limited to:
- 100 notes, images or links
- 10 file uploads
- Unlimited shared boards
Notion
Notion is like a superpowered Google Drive that’s very customizable and clean. Just drag and drop to craft the dashboard, website, doc, or system you need. Here are some awesome use case demos.
Personal accounts are free.
- 100 notes, images or links
- 10 file uploads
- Unlimited shared boards
Audio Production
Anchor
Online podcasting software with built-in uploading, recording, and editing tools so you can easily create and publish episodes for free.
Free Music & Sound Effects
Pixabay Music
Thousands of music and audio tracks, free for commercial and non-commercial use.
Free Music Archive
Thousands of music and audio tracks, free for commercial and non-commercial use. Make sure to check the Creative Commons type when you download.
Video Production
Vimeo
Simple tools to create, edit, manage and share high-quality videos.
With the free Vimeo Basic membership, you get access to:
- 500MB per week of upload space, up to 5GB total account storage
- Basic embedding features
- The ability to download converted video files
- Limited video creation (up to 30 seconds, up to 10 drafts, some templates, includes Vimeo watermark)
- The ability to upload up to 10 videos per day
Animation
Stock Photo, Vector & Illustration Sourcing
Creative Commons
Browse over 500 million images, available for reuse.
Pixabay
Stunning free images & royalty free stock
Over 2.4 million+ high quality stock images, videos and music.
Screen Recording Tools
Vimeo Record
A free screen and webcam recorder that lets you share video messages quickly and easily. Install the Chrome extension to get started. No time limits that we know of. This feature is new, but works well once it gets going!
Loom
Screen recorder for Chrome, Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. It’s quick to install, easy to use, and free.
Free accounts are limited to:
- 5-minutes/video
- 25 videos/account
Design Software
Piktochart
Infographics, presentations, and reports maker. Quickly turn any text- or data-heavy content into a visual story that your audience will love.
Coding Tools
Replit
Use our free, collaborative, in-browser IDE to code in 50+ languages — without spending a second on setup.
W3 Schools
W3Schools is a simplified and interactive school for web developers, covering all the aspects of web development:
Editing Tools
Grammarly
Compose bold, clear, mistake-free writing with Grammarly’s AI-powered writing assistant.
Free accounts will check:
- Spelling
- Grammar
- Punctuation
Cliché Finder
This free cliché finder finds and highlights clichés in your writing so you can remove them.
Copyright & Attribution Guide
Guide to Creative Commons/Public Domain License Types
Attribution
“Furggelen afterglow” by Lukas Schlagenhauf is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
This is an ideal attribution because it includes the:
- Title: “Furggelen afterglow”
- Author: “Lukas Schlagenhauf“—with a link to their profile page
- Source: “Furggelen afterglow“—with a link to the original photo on Flickr
- License: “CC BY-ND 2.0”—with a link to the license deed
How you attribute authors of the CC works will depend on whether you modify the content, if you create a derivative, if there are multiple sources, etc.
If you need more help, reference the CC Wiki for best practices for attribution.