39 Web Developer Tools You'll Want To Take With You Into 2021

Jira

• Different versions of Jira available depending on usage: Jira Core, Jira Software, and Jira Service Desk.
• Ability to plan agile work from project backlog to sprints.
• Ability to estimate time for issues.
• Flexibility to bring information from version control tools.
• Reports — pie charts, burndown charts, burnup charts, and more.

• Automate tasks and processes.
• Easy task tracking.
• Fully customizable Kanban and Scrum boards.
• Extensions to use applications like Outlook for sending mails.

• Unsatisfactory mobile application.
• Complex migration and integration from other ALM (application lifecycle management) systems.
• Limited file size upload.
• Graphical reports in Jira cannot be downloaded as images. Using other methods alters the resolution of the images.

Codegiant

• Kanban and Scrum dashboards.
• Functionality for tags, mentions, and comments.
• Performance tracker.
• Documentation editor.
• Time tracking and estimates.

• Easy to get on board.
• One-click import for Jira.
• Hosted git repositories.

• Customer support could be better.
• Integrations could use some work.

Monday.com

• Team management tool.
• Allows visual planning, progress tracking, and advanced weekly view across multiple projects.
• Conversations, files, briefs, checklists, and spreadsheets in one place.
• Used as CRM software to track sales contacts through the pipeline.
• It can be integrated with popular apps and services such as Dropbox, Excel, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Slack, and Trello.

• Can customize dashboards to display required workflow information.
• Informs users when tasks are completed.
• Easy navigation and project creation.

• You gotta pay more to get more functionality.
• Steep learning curve.
• More plan diversity and options for small scale businesses is required.
• Inability to upload spreadsheets on dashboards.

GitHub

• Provides codespace to code, build, test, debug and deploy.
• Link issues and pull requests to track project updates.
• Review and collaborate on open source and private projects.

• Git makes it fast and easy to develop projects in versions/branches. You can roll back to previous versions easily.
• Easy collaboration with multiple team members makes merging easy.
• Easy to identify contributors as all are tracked.

• A bit harder to push unresolved merge conflicts.
• Be careful with merge operations; bad merge can be painful to reverse.
• Hard to migrate repositories to other services.

Bitbucket

• Code access control.
• Pull requests with in-line commenting for collaboration on code review.
• File storage services, tracking of issues, Wikis, integrations, and add-ons.

• JIRA integration for full development traceability.
• Unlimited private and free repositories for teachers and students.
• Faster and powerful search mechanism.
• Comes with an easy-to-use integration for Trello.

• The dev community is smaller compared to GitHub’s.
• A bit rough code management UI.
• Does not have simplified PR management tools as other competitors.

Jenkins

• Self-contained, platform-agnostic, Java-based program, ready to run with packages for multiple popular operating systems.
• Multiple plugins available to help you integrate other tools in the CI/CD toolchain.
• Distributes work across multiple machines for faster builds, tests, and deployments.
• Community support.

• Flexible for creating jobs in freestyle or pipeline.
• Support cluster to increase build performance.
• Lack of authorization rule as separate users or groups cannot be assigned to separate views or jobs.

• It can be difficult to configure.
• Not cloud-based.
• No analytics on the end-to-end deployment cycle.

Trello

• Detailed & Quick Overviews of Front/Back Cards.
• File Attachment provided.
• Provides Deadline Alerts and Notifications.
• Automated Email Notifications.
• Individual/Group Task Assignment.
• Ability to collaborate.
• Progress meter checklist.

• Easy to use with Drag-and-Drop.
• Easy for uploads (Local Devices, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box).
• Easy Organization with Labeling, Tags, and Comments.
• Less complex pricing structure.

• Lower storage limit.
• No calendar integration.
• No Gantt charts to visualize the project in landscape mode.
• Clunky manual setup.

Asana

• It provides a timeline feature to display all work slots together and link all due dates, tasks, and team members.
• It provides a portfolio to keep track of all projects and teams in one place.
• A wide range of workflow templates to address specific use cases that anybody can use.
• Each task can be assigned to an individual team member with a due date.
• Offers a broad range of integrations with third-party services such as Slack, Google Calendar, and Gmail.
• You can make teams and projects private to create a safe space for sensitive work.

• The user interface is easy to navigate through.
• It is versatile as it allows various layouts to accommodate a multitude of programs and projects.
• Team members can receive real-time updates for task completion.

• Limited functions in the mobile app.
• Email notifications may get confusing.
• Inability to merge calendars.

TestRail

• Manage test cases, runs, and plans.
• Start the test runs and capture their results.
• Push bug reports to Jira and link the Jira issue IDs.
• Track test results, activity, and progress.

• Equipped with a powerful array of integrations and testing tools.
• A simple and easy user interface that provides teams with a fast and intuitive web experience.
• Utilize issue trackers like Bug-tracker or FogBugz to report bugs or issues obtained from monitoring each test case’s functionality and usability.
• Automatically run test cases of any complexity.
• Support the management of comprehensive test cases.

• Automated tests and manual test cases are difficult to keep in sync.
• Manual test cases and automated tests need to be designed and implemented.

Rollbar

• It provides error tracking that completes feedback loops to detect errors as soon as new code is deployed.
• Deployment integrations: make it easier to guess which deployment introduced the bug.
• Debugging.
• Proactive customer support: notifies you of any unnoticeable errors.

• Easy setup.
• Very advanced querying capabilities.
• The telemetry feature is quite powerful.
• Integration with slack with a native experience.
• Integration with Git.

• Limited capabilities for filtering slack notifications.
• Automatic grouping doesn’t work so well.
• Front-end error tracking can get noisy as it also detects errors provoked by browser extensions, bots, and non-supported browsers.

Figma

• A pretty modern pen tool that lets you draw freely.
• Automated tasks via plugins for repeated elements.
• Auto adjustments for spacing, arrangement, and organizing.
• Drag and drop accessible libraries.
• Smart animation to connect objects and transitions.
• Embedded commenting.

• Easy export feature with a live link.
• From design to prototype, you get one platform for everything.
• Edit together with teams in real-time in shared design spaces.
• Quick and easy file sharing.

• No Timestamp feature to track iterations.
• Global colors are absent.
• Search is not available within local components.
• A decent graphic card and the right amount of RAM is needed for this program to run properly.

Confluence

• Provides real-time editing and publishing updates that highlight changes, tracked with version history.
• Allows in-line and page comments, likes, and visual elements such as images, GIFs, and emojis.
• Gives alerts when a user is tagged or assigned to a task. Everyone stays in the loop.
• Provides full-text searching of all content, including pages, comments, and space descriptions.
• Pages or spaces can be imported from plain text files, or exported to PDF or HTML.

• Track and share project status easily.
• Automatic daily backup feature.
• Collaborative editing options.
• Updates on the latest documentation.

• Not a free application, but it has a free trial.
• Users can’t see real-time edits made by other users until the page is refreshed.

Keka

• Employee Database.
• Performance Management.
• Employee Profiles.
• Payroll Management.
• Recruitment Management.
• Time & Attendance Management.
• Compensation Management.
• Self Service Portal.
• Timesheets.
• Leave Management.
• Employee Finances.
• Loans and Bonuses.

• Streamlines the workflow while enabling your team to turn tedious tasks into more simple ones.
• Equipped with a customizable, complete payroll system.
• Supports modern applicant tracking systems that empower HR to find the right talent.
• Provides functionalities such as reviews, continuous feedback, and goal management.

• Difficult to navigate through the payroll information.
• Customer service isn’t as good as it needs to be.

Loco

• Allows managing statuses for assets.
• Offers both free and paid subscriptions according to the needs and the size of the project.
• Import and export translations in a variety of different file formats.
• Tools for tracking progress and assigning tasks to other team members.
• Built-in WordPress translation editor.
• Allows for direct creation of language translation files into your theme or plugin.

• Filtering translations based on their status simplifies the work.
• The dashboard offers a convenient user interface for translating texts.
• Offers localization tools for extracting strings and generating templates.

• You’ll have to upgrade to the paid version if you want better functionalities.

Mixpanel

• Focuses on users’ website actions.
• A simple and easy to use interface that makes it easy to understand how people engage with your app.

• Robust event-based analytics.
• It has flexible plans that work for smaller startups as well.

• Customer support responds slowly.
• A steep learning curve.
• The platform security is not that great and needs some work.
• It cannot integrate with other data sources that well.

Postman

• Scalable API testing tool.
• Streamlines the process of API testing.
• Helps in releasing reliable services by building API before deploying code.
• It helps in exploring APIs by sending different kinds of data.
• Create collections for API calls.

• Improves the testing time and quality of the project.
• It helps in the early detection of bugs that might cause much more damage to the system later.
• Reduces time to production by eliminating dependencies between front-end and back-end teams by having them work in parallel.
• Automates manual tests and integrates them into the CI/CD pipeline.

• The number of requests is limited in the enterprise version.
• It is a difficult task to move a folder from one collection to another.

Embold

• Analyze, diagnose, transform, and sustain the software efficiently.
• Provides re-factoring support and debug before deployment.
• Finds critical code issues before they become roadblocks.
• Integrates seamlessly with GitHub, Bitbucket, and Azure.
• Provides the functionality of automated pull request reviews.

• Uncovers hard-to-detect anti-patterns.
• Makes code maintainable and less error-prone.
• You can run it within the current Dev-Ops stack, on-premise or in the cloud privately or publicly.

• Design issues are not recognizable for some languages like C/C++, C#, Objective C, and Java.

Phalcon

• Implements ORM in the C-programming language.Loosely coupled framework.
• It allows users to build projects with a directory structure as per the application requirement.

• Optimized for high performance.
• The framework is always memory resident.
• Less code is required for task implementation.
• Provides equal support for the non-relational and relational databases.

• Requires good programming skills.
• Debugging requires knowledge of C.

Datadog

• Provides visibility on application performance for enterprises.
• It allows users to create effective strategies to improve their services, apps, and tools.
• Provides team collaboration tools.
• Provides alert notifications.
• Presents real-time dashboards with mix-and-match events and metrics from linked services, containers, hosts, and apps.

• It allows seamless workflow regardless of the platform, geographical positions, and language by pre-integrating with third-party apps.
• Can trace requests automatically across several frameworks and libraries.
• It has an easy-to-use search tool.
• Offers an integrated view of the services and programs.

• Limited reports and analytics.
• A good amount of work needed upfront to install and configure across your entire application or software stack.
• Steep learning curve.

Forticlient

• It can be used as a VPN Client, AV client, and host of vulnerability scanners.
• Integrated firewall, VPN, and vulnerability detection.
• Identify and remediate vulnerable or compromised hosts across your attack surface.

• Real-time protection against malicious websites and malware.
• It is easy to set up on Windows 10.
• Provides secure remote access with built-in VPN, single-sign-on, and two-factor authentication for added security.

• It works on Windows and Mac, but there’s no Linux version.
• No alerts show up when issues are detected.
• No automatic update feature.

NetBeans

• Excellent support for JAVA technologies.
• Cross-platform support; it works for all major OS.
• Easy project management with different views from multiple project windows.
• Support for versioning tools like Git and SVN.
• Neat and simple UI.
• Helps in writing bug-free code.

• Good for beginners.
• Great support from the community.
• One of the best web dev tools.

• No support for modeling.
• It’s heavier in size compared to other IDEs.
• It takes a lot of time to load, especially when multiple projects are open.

Atom

• Cross-platform compatibility and support.
• Simple and easy to use.
• Support for multiple languages.
• Comes with a built-in package manager.
• Direct integration of git and GitHub.
• Find, replace, preview texts in single file, multiple files, or across all projects.

• We can split the interface into multiple panels, which helps in comparing codes and editing files.
• Very flexible and smart autocomplete.
• Real-time collaboration to work and edit code together in teams.

• No option to run code directly.
• Slows down the PC if too many packages are installed.
• Lags a bit when connected to the server.

IntelliJ IDEA

• Multiple language support.
• Integrated Version Control.
• Smart auto and chain completion.
• Intelligent text editor for Java, HTML and CSS.
• Debugging and deployment tools for most application servers.

• Test Runner UI.
• Code Coverage.
• Cross-language re-factoring.
• A lot of available plugins.

• There’s a steep learning curve that can be overwhelming.
• Heavy size installation and slow start.
• The ultimate version is priced at $500/year; it can be more expensive than other similar solutions.

Visual Studio

• Support for many languages, frameworks, and technologies.
• Integration with version control systems.
• Ability to organize and structure large or enterprise-level software.
• Rich toolbox for interface design.
• Great collaboration support with live debugging and code editing.

• Tools for manual, performance, and automated testing.
• Excellent integration with the Azure apps.
• Great online community support.

• Uses a lot of memory and resources.
• Licensing is costly.
• There’s a steep learning curve.
• Might lag at times.

Eclipse

• Multi-Language support.
• Integration with SVN and Git.
• Integration with Maven.
• Smart autocomplete and re-factoring.
• Automatic error reporting.
• Error debugging.

• A large number of plugins available from the marketplace makes it one of the best Java development tools.
• Great community support.
• Fast Startup time and performance compared to other IDEs.
• JUnit integration.
• Excellent options for JEE projects.

• The Project Explorer is not that good.No theme customization.
• The UI has an outdated look.

Sublime Text

• Cross-platform support.
• Multiple languages are supported.
• Color-coordinated highlights.
• Project-specific preferences.

• Very lightweight and fast.
• Great level of customization through the JSON settings file.
• A good number of plugins available.
• Split editing.

• It’s stacked with blurbs prompting you to buy the paid version.
• A steep learning curve.
• No print option.
• Only one single console is available.

Linx

• Easy to use with drag and drop.
• Instant setup with a one-step installation.
• Build back-end processes and web services, and host them.
• Live debugging.

• Thousands of drag and drop programming functions for rapid application development.
• Automate back-end processes via various ways like directory events, timers, and message queues or expose web services, and call APIs via HTTP requests.

• Supported for Windows OS only.
• Fewer tutorials and community help.
• Have to pay to use the most wanted features.

Cloud9

• Code from anywhere.
• Multi-language support.
• Smart code completion and suggestions.
• Clone entire development environments.
• Built-in Terminal for a command-line wizard.
• Unlike other IDEs, it has a good debugger for JS/Node.js.

• Real-time code collaboration.
• Create multiple split views by simply dragging a file.
• Easy to use interface.

• It runs slow for larger projects.
• Not as many plugins and extensions.

phpDesigner

• Built-in integration with Git and SVN.
• It’s easy to use.
• Syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS and PHP.
• Multiple themes.

• Inclusion of JavaScript and PHP frameworks makes it a pretty good website development platform.
• Work with files over FTP/SFTP.
• Faster than compared to other IDEs.

• Available only on Windows.
• No integration for test libraries like PHPUnit.
• Version control integration is not up to the mark.

Zend Studio

• Intelligent code editor which provides smart code completion, intuitive code assist, re-factoring, and real-time error validation and analysis.
• Installation as an Eclipse plugin.
• Multiple PHP frameworks are supported.
• Tools for API integration.

• Built-in tools for PHP unit testing.
• Deploy PHP applications on any server for Azure and AWS.
• Support for development tools like Docker and Git Flow.

• Costlier than other alternatives.
• Heavy sized software.
• Slow runtime performance compared to others.

CodeLobster

• Cross-platform support.
• Code highlighting for all the supported languages.
• Simplifies the web development process.

• Advanced autocomplete option for PHP.
• The inspector makes it very simple to find HTML elements.
• Support for many software development frameworks and CMS like AngularJS, WordPress, and Joomla.

• The UI is a bit outdated.
• The free version is quite limited in features.
• A bit slow for larger projects.

CodeCharge Studio

• You can convert any database into a web application quickly.
• Visual IDE and code generator.
• Print data in detailed and grouped formats, with automatically calculated fields.
• Master templates for pages and panels.

• Pre-built solutions.
• Built-in full-page design templates.
• Good options for database operations like data dictionary, visual query builder, and security management.

• The price is a little too high.
• It only runs on windows.
• The UI is outdated.

Zoho Creator

• Build applications visually.
• Automate routine tasks.
• Host the application anywhere you want.
• Centralized access control.
• Collaborate across teams.

• Critical features like Artificial Intelligence help in tasks such as language detection.
• Launch native multi-device applications without re-coding.
• Create insightful reports.
• Integrate all applications.

• Limited GUI customizations.
• A non-programmer may not fully understand the capabilities of Zoho Creator because it has its own scripting language.

Adobe Dreamweaver

• Preview sites and edit in real-time from any device.
• Supports many markup languages like CSS, XML, HTML.
• Multi-monitor support.Git Integration.

• Plenty of plugin templates.
• Advanced features like syntax highlighting and code completion.
• Create dynamic pages and sites by connecting to the database.
• Code validation and accessibility checks.
• One of the best Javascript dev tools for beginners.

• It is pretty costly.
• Steep learning curve.
• Bulky and complicated code in dynamic sites.

Axure

• Create diagrams, customer journeys, and wireframes.
• Make rich, functional prototypes with dynamic content, conditional logic, and adaptive views.
• Inspect layout, get CSS snippets, and download assets.
• Create and maintain widget libraries.

• Integration with other services like Figma, Adobe XD etc.
• Quickly convert the static images into interactive prototypes with Axure Cloud.
• It boasts various integrations.

• Steep learning curve.
• The user interface lacks intuitiveness and modernization.
• It’s somewhat cumbersome to use as it doesn’t have many key shortcuts.

Quixy

• Build a user interface with drag and drop.
• Model, automate, monitor, and optimize business processes.
• Simulator to test what is built.
• It can be used from any browser, Android or iOS app.

• It is a no-code platform, so anyone can use it without any programming knowledge.
• Ready to use templates and components.
• Document generator.
• Excellent support from the customer team.

• Online documentation tools lack clarity and in-depth coverage of features.
• Costly when compared to other alternatives.
• Certain dashboard features like charts and graphs need improvement.

Azure

• Multiple operating systems are supported.
• Offers services like mobile, storage, data management, messaging, media services, CDN, caching, virtual network, business analytics, migrate apps & infrastructure, etc.
• Multiple programming languages are supported.

• Very useful software for training and deploying machine learning models.
• Hybrid and cross-cloud infrastructure.
• Good security with detection and mitigation of threats.

• The UI feels a bit complicated.
• There’s a bit of a learning curve.
• It’s a bit costly, even for smaller projects.

Amazon Web Services(AWS)

• Host dynamic websites on the cloud.
• Computing power, database storage, content delivery.
• Comprehensive security capabilities.
• Multiple languages are supported.

• Excellent tools for machine learning and artificial intelligence.
• Good online tutorials and documentation.
• Highly reliable and fault-tolerant.
• Very scalable with few clicks upgrade and downgrade.

• Due to the large number of services offered, it can be confusing for beginners.
• It can create a huge pile of bills if not managed and monitored properly.
• The initial setup is time-consuming.

CodeEnvy

• Develop with any IDE.
• Agile driven.
• Integration with version control.
• Modern user interface design.
• Cross-platform support.

• Collaborate with teams easily.
• Customer service is very quick and responsive.
• Share complex dev environments with a single click.

• Not that good for large projects.
• It takes a while to load projects.
• Not many keyboard shortcuts.

Conclusion