Stack

What I actually use.

Twelve years in marketing and everything I ship still needs the same 20-odd tools. This is the current list — not the tools I’ve tried, the ones I open on a working week. Kept short on purpose.

Disclosure.I work at Zoho Malaysia. The Zoho tools here earn their place — where a competitor was the right call, I’ve made it.

Writing & publishing

  • GrammarlyCatches the tired sentences before I do — the pattern flags, not the AI rewrites.

  • MailerLiteWhere the newsletter lives. Chose it over the fancier options because the email builder stays out of the way.

  • BufferTwo social schedules a week. Been on it long enough that switching costs more than it'd save.

Marketing & SEO analytics

  • Google Search ConsoleSource of truth for what search actually sends. Free — no reason to skip it.

  • SemrushThe keyword and competitive research that Search Console can't do.

  • UbersuggestCheap second opinion on volumes and difficulty when Semrush feels overkill.

  • Umami AnalyticsSelf-hosted, PDPA-clean. Every site I run points at the same instance.

Building the sites

  • Visual Studio CodeStill the editor. Every AI extension gets loaded here first.

  • GitHubEvery repo, every deploy triggered from here. Been paying since before it was cool.

  • VercelHosts most of what I ship. Preview URLs alone earn the price.

  • SupabaseDatabase, auth, storage on Postgres without the DevOps tax.

  • CloudflareDNS and CDN for every domain. Also does most of my email routing.

  • AWSWhat Vercel can't do. Kept small on purpose.

  • DockerLocal repro of anything that isn't a static site.

Sending & scheduling

  • Zoho MailEvery domain email at naven@ lands here. Been on it a decade.

  • Zoho CalendarCalendar of record. Powers the /advisory booking flow via API.

  • ResendTransactional email for the sites I build. Zoho catches the replies.

AI coworkers

  • Claude CodePair-programs everything in this list. Wrote most of the booking system on navenpillai.com.

  • CodexSecond opinion when Claude and I disagree. Different priors, useful check.

  • Zoho MCPNative access to Zoho Calendar and Mail from inside Claude Code. New — still tuning what to trust it with.

Missing something obvious? Every one of these tools has been swapped in or out at some point — the list moves. If you’re curious why one isn’t on it, ask me.