Itโs that time of the year again! ๐ฅ The 6th Annual StackShare Awards have arrived! ๐
Check out the 2018 awards if you missed it
This year, we did things a bit differently. First, we lied. This isn't the Top 50 Developer Tools. We've actually outlined the Top 140 tools of 2019 ๐ฑ We analyzed over four million data points shared by you- the StackShare community- to bring you these rankings ๐คฏ
Based on your feedback from last year, this time we decided to extend the list of new tools and we've highlighted the top 50 tools that were released in 2019.
We also decided to break down the four major categories we usually divide the rankings by, into 18 smaller categories so you can get a better sense for where similar tools rank relative to competitors.
If this is your first time seeing the StackShare Awards, buckle up because you're in for a ride! ๐ข
ICYMI: we announced two new major products in 2019:
With no further ado, here are the categories for the winners of the StackShare Top Tools Awards 2019:
As always, this is our biggest undertaking of every year- we comb through our enormous data set to find the good stuff- the best tools that you should know about that could transform your workflow. This year we aggregated usage from 300K+ tech stacks , over 1.6M follows , and millions more developer comments, reviews, and votes throughout 2019 (more on methodology below) . Letโs dive in!
2019 was the Year of Kubernetes. The ecosystem around k8s has matured to the point that it seemed like a new k8s tool was popping up on GitHub every week (sign up for StackShare Weekly to keep up with this stuff). While Kubernetes itself didn't gain enough adoption to bump Docker or other devops tools that have been around for much longer out of the top 10, the tooling around Kubernetes blossomed in 2019.
The coveted top spot for New Tool of the year goes to k3s, a project from Rancher, that's basically a lightweight version of Kubernetes built for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances. Weighing in at less than 40mb, k3s is a fully compliant Kubernetes distribution.
You can check out the project on GitHub or visit the project site at k3s.io.
ยป Follow k3s
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ยป Tell developers why you chose k3s
Spreadsheets as a Backend
Create a mobile app from a Google Sheet in 5 minutes, for free
ยป Glide 's profile
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ยป Glide 's website
Container Tools
๐ถ Kubernetes CLI To Manage Your Clusters In Style
ยป K9s's profile
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ยป K9s's website
Serverless / Task Processing
Run stateless HTTP containers on a fully managed environment or in your own GKE cluster
ยป Google Cloud Run's profile
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ยป Google Cloud Run's website
JavaScript Framework Components
UI Components for Vue.js Based on Bulma
ยป Buefy's profile
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ยป Buefy's website
Machine Learning Tools
A code-free deep learning toolbox, by Uber
ยป Ludwig's profile
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ยป Ludwig's website
Spreadsheets as a Backend
Turn your Google Sheet into an API instantly, for free
ยป Sheety's profile
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ยป Sheety's website
API Tools
API request builder - A free and fast alternative to Postman
ยป Postwoman's profile
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ยป Postwoman's website
Database Tools
Version control for databases: save, restore, and archive snapshots of your database from the command line
ยป DB's profile
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ยป DB's website
Container Tools
A free and open source terminal UI for Docker and Docker Compose
ยป lazydocker's profile
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ยป lazydocker's website
Static Type Checkers
Static type checker for the Python language by Microsoft
ยป Pyright's profile
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ยป Pyright's website
Big Data Tools
A GPU-powered real-time analytics storage and query engine (by Uber)
ยป AresDB's profile
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ยป AresDB's website
Frameworks (Full Stack)
A framework that simplifies development of complex applications (by Facebook)
ยป Hydra Framework's profile
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ยป Hydra Framework's website
Translation Service
Translate your app to any language in under 30 minutes
ยป Lang's profile
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ยป Lang's website
Open Source Design Tools
Open source design language framework
ยป Diez's profile
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ยป Diez's website
Hybrid Cloud as a Service
Bringing the Google Cloud to you
ยป Google Anthos's profile
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ยป Google Anthos's website
SQL Database as a Service
An immutable double-entry accounting database service (by Square)
ยป Books's profile
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ยป Books's website
Cross-Platform Desktop Development
A library for building cross-platform native desktop applications
ยป NodeGUI's profile
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ยป NodeGUI's website
Code Review
Automate code reviews, Identify your most expensive lines of code
ยป Amazon CodeGuru's profile
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ยป Amazon CodeGuru's website
Diagramming
Draw beautiful cloud architecture diagrams
ยป Cloud Maker's profile
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ยป Cloud Maker's website
Web Service Automation
Open Source Alternative for Zapier
ยป n8n's profile
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ยป n8n's website
Javascript UI Libraries
Smooth animation library for interpolating numbers
ยป Ola's profile
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ยป Ola's website
Microservices Tools
An open-source project to make it easier to build microservices
ยป Dapr's profile
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ยป Dapr's website
UI Components
Collection of components that will reliably help you build your application in a snap
ยป React Rainbow's profile
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ยป React Rainbow's website
The Verdict:
In 2019, Square, Facebook, Uber, Microsoft, and plenty of independent developers released some amazing open source tools. This year's top new tools list was again dominated by free OSS. Two clear trends emerged: Kubernetes has officially taken over- with 2 of the top 3 new tools of the year being projects built for Kubernetes. Another trend was the No Code takeover. With two services built on top of Google Sheets and another no-code tool by Uber all in the top 10, it's clear that we're all getting tired of coding ๐
You can never have enough new tools. Okay, maybe you can (#stackbloat). But it doesn't hurt to do some window shopping. Below are the next 25 most popular new tools that were released in 2019. In 2019 we added over 1500 new tools (5X the number we added in 2018) to the StackShare database both open source and hosted software as a Service (SaaS). Same as last year, we're willing to bet the house on the fact that you can't get through this list without finding at least one tool you want to try out immediately ๐
Machine Learning Tools
Makes Apache Sparkโข Easily Accessible to .NET Developers
ยป .NET for Apache Spark's profile
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ยป .NET for Apache Spark's website
GraphQL Tools
Bulletproof your GraphQL API
ยป GraphQL Inspector's profile
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ยป GraphQL Inspector's website
Machine Learning Tools
A Python app framework built specifically for Machine Learning and Data Science teams
ยป Streamlit's profile
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ยป Streamlit's website
Low Code Platforms
All in One Prototyping Tool For Vue Developers
ยป PreVue's profile
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ยป PreVue's website
Shell Utilities
Extremely customizable prompt for any shell
ยป Starship (Shell Prompt)'s profile
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ยป Starship (Shell Prompt)'s website
Shell Utilities
Visualization for any shell command
ยป Sampler's profile
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ยป Sampler's website
Self-hosted, Node.js based analytics tool for those who care about privacy
ยป Ackee (Analytics)'s profile
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ยป Ackee (Analytics)'s website
Security
A tool that consolidates infrastructure assets and the relationships between them (by Lyft)
ยป Cartography's profile
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ยป Cartography's website
Database Tools
The Fastest PostgreSQL Client for Node.js
ยป Postgres.js's profile
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ยป Postgres.js's website
Languages
A compiled language for developing maintainable software
ยป V Programming Language's profile
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ยป V Programming Language's website
Browser Testing
Code-free Automated UI Testing
ยป PreFlight's profile
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ยป PreFlight's website
Big Data Tools
Reliable Data Lakes at Scale
ยป Delta Lake's profile
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ยป Delta Lake's website
Analytics Integrator
Minimize Human Errors When Implementing Analytics
ยป Avo's profile
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ยป Avo's website
Front-End Frameworks
A just-add-css collection of styles to make simple websites just a little nicer
ยป Water.css's profile
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ยป Water.css's website
Cross-Platform Mobile Development
A native React version of Ionic Framework that makes it easy to build apps for iOS, Android, Desktop, and the web as a Progressive Web App
ยป Ionic React's profile
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ยป Ionic React's website
Realtime Code Collaboration
Code, video and screen recording for developers
ยป GitDuck's profile
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ยป GitDuck's website
Realtime Backend / API
Microservice native message and event store for Postgres
ยป Message DB's profile
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ยป Message DB's website
Visual Collaboration
A virtual office for remote teams
ยป Tandem HQ's profile
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ยป Tandem HQ's website
Deployment as a Service
On demand staging environments for engineering teams
ยป Dockup's profile
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ยป Dockup's website
Performance Monitoring
Open-Source Web Performance Monitoring
ยป Falco's profile
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ยป Falco's website
Website Builder
Showcase your software development skills
ยป GitHub Personal Website Generator's profile
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ยป GitHub Personal Website Generator's website
JavaScript Compilers
An open source and lightweight JavaScript engine (by Facebook)
ยป Hermes's profile
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ยป Hermes's website
Deployment as a Service
Front-end review for the whole team
ยป FeaturePeek's profile
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ยป FeaturePeek's website
General Analytics
Enterprise-class web analytics.
ยป Follow Google Analytics
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Google Analytics
Funnel Analysis Analytics
Actions speak louder than page views.
ยป Follow Mixpanel
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Mixpanel
A/B Testing Analytics
Experimentation platform for marketing, product, and engineering teams, with feature flags and personalization
ยป Optimizely's profile
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ยป Optimizely's website
Analytics Integrator
A single hub to collect, translate and send your data with the flip of a switch.
ยป Follow Segment
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Segment
General Analytics
The ultimate open source alternative to Google Analytics
ยป Piwik's profile
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ยป Piwik's website
Cloud Hosting
Scalable, pay-as-you-go compute capacity in the cloud
ยป Follow Amazon EC2
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Amazon EC2
Realtime Backend / API
The Realtime App Platform
ยป Follow Firebase
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Firebase
Platform as a Service
Build, deliver, monitor and scale web apps and APIs with a trail blazing developer experience.
ยป Follow Heroku
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Heroku
Serverless / Task Processing
Automatically run code in response to modifications to objects in Amazon S3 buckets, messages in Kinesis streams, or updates in DynamoDB
ยป Follow AWS Lambda
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ยป See recent tech decisions about AWS Lambda
Deploy an SSD cloud server in less than 55 seconds with a dedicated IP and root access.
ยป Follow DigitalOcean
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ยป See recent tech decisions about DigitalOcean
Web Servers
A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.
ยป Follow nginx
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ยป See recent tech decisions about nginx
Web Servers
The most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996
ยป Follow Apache HTTP Server
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Apache HTTP Server
Web Servers
An open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies
ยป Follow Apache Tomcat
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Apache Tomcat
Web Servers
A web server for Microsoft Windows
ยป Follow Microsoft IIS
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Microsoft IIS
Web Servers
A Python WSGI HTTP Server for UNIX
ยป Follow Gunicorn
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Gunicorn
API Tools
Only complete API development environment
ยป Follow Postman
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Postman
Search as a Service
Open Source, Distributed, RESTful Search Engine
ยป Follow Elasticsearch
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Elasticsearch
Mapping APIs
Build highly customisable maps with your own content and imagery
ยป Follow Google Maps
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Google Maps
Static Web Hosting
Public webpages freely hosted and easily published.
ยป Follow GitHub Pages
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ยป See recent tech decisions about GitHub Pages
DNS Management
A highly available and scalable Domain Name System (DNS) web service.
ยป Follow Amazon Route 53
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Amazon Route 53
File Storage
A safe place for all your files
ยป Follow Google Drive
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Google Drive
File Storage
Build the power of Dropbox into your apps
ยป Follow Dropbox
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Dropbox
Content Delivery Network
The Web Performance & Security Company.
ยป Follow CloudFlare
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about CloudFlare
Content Delivery Network
Content delivery with low latency and high data transfer speeds
ยป Follow Amazon CloudFront
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Amazon CloudFront
Image Processing and Management
Open Source Computer Vision Library
ยป Follow OpenCV
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ยป See recent tech decisions about OpenCV
Spreadsheets Online
Create and edit spreadsheets online, for free
ยป Follow Google Sheets
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Google Sheets
Spreadsheets Online
A spreadsheet program included in the Microsoft Office suite of applications
ยป Microsoft Excel's profile
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ยป Microsoft Excel's website
Email Services
Secure email with no compromises
ยป ProtonMail's profile
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ยป ProtonMail's website
Payroll & Benefits
The #1 All-In-One HR Platform
ยป Zenefits's profile
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ยป Zenefits's website
Code Collaboration & Version Control
Powerful collaboration, review, and code management for open source and private development projects
ยป Follow GitHub
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about GitHub
Virtual Machine Platforms & Containers
Enterprise Container Platform for High-Velocity Innovation.
ยป Follow Docker
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Docker
Text Editor
Build and debug modern web and cloud applications, by Microsoft
ยป Follow Visual Studio Code
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Visual Studio Code
Front End Package Manager
The package manager for JavaScript.
ยป Follow npm
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about npm
Continuous Integration
An extendable open source continuous integration server
ยป Follow Jenkins
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Jenkins
Group Chat & Notifications
Bring all your communication together in one place
ยป Follow Slack
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Slack
Issue Tracking
The #1 software development tool used by agile teams to plan, track, and release great software.
ยป Follow Jira
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Jira
Project Management
Your entire project, in a single glance.
ยป Follow Trello
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Trello
Productivity Suite
Collaboration and productivity apps for Business
ยป Follow G Suite
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ยป See recent tech decisions about G Suite
Project Management
One place to share, find, and collaborate on information
ยป Follow Confluence
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Confluence
Voice and SMS
Bring voice and messaging to your web and mobile applications.
ยป Follow Twilio
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Twilio
Transactional Email
Email Delivery. Simplified.
ยป Follow Twilio SendGrid
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Twilio SendGrid
Transactional Email
Bulk and transactional email-sending service.
ยป Follow Amazon SES
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Amazon SES
The Email Service for Developers.
ยป Follow Mailgun
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Mailgun
Transactional Email
Send transactional, triggered, and personalized email, then track results.
ยป Follow Mandrill
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Mandrill
Databases
The world's most popular open source database
ยป Follow MySQL
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ยป See recent tech decisions about MySQL
Databases
The database for giant ideas
ยป Follow MongoDB
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about MongoDB
Databases
A powerful, open source object-relational database system
ยป Follow PostgreSQL
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about PostgreSQL
In-Memory Databases
An in-memory database that persists on disk
ยป Follow Redis
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Redis
Cloud Storage
Store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web
ยป Follow Amazon S3
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Amazon S3
Interactive Mockups
Prototyping & Collaboration For Design Teams
ยป Follow InVision
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ยป See recent tech decisions about InVision
Graphic Design
The collaborative interface design tool.
ยป Follow Figma
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Figma
Graphic Design
The industry standard in design, photography, video editing & more
ยป Follow Adobe Photoshop
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Adobe Photoshop
Graphic Design
Professional Digital Design for Mac
ยป Follow Sketch
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Sketch
Graphic Design
Create logos, icons, sketches, typography and complex illustrations
ยป Follow Adobe Illustrator
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Adobe Illustrator
Languages
Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions
ยป Follow JavaScript
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ยป See recent tech decisions about JavaScript
Languages
A clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.
ยป Follow Python
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Python
Frameworks (Full Stack)
A platform built on Chrome's JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications
ยป Follow Node.js
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Node.js
Languages
A concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, language specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible
ยป Follow Java
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ยป See recent tech decisions about Java
Languages
5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web
ยป Follow HTML5
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ยป See recent tech decisions about HTML5
Javascript UI Libraries
A JavaScript library for building user interfaces
ยป Follow React
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ยป See recent tech decisions about React
The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library.
ยป Follow jQuery
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about jQuery
Javascript MVC Frameworks
Superheroic JavaScript MVW Framework
ยป Follow AngularJS
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about AngularJS
Javascript MVC Frameworks
A progressive framework for building user interfaces
ยป Follow Vue.js
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Vue.js
State Management Library
Predictable state container for JavaScript apps
ยป Follow Redux
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Redux
Frameworks (Full Stack)
The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines
ยป Follow Django
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Django
Frameworks (Full Stack)
A PHP Framework For Web Artisans
ยป Follow Laravel
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Laravel
Microframeworks (Backend)
Sinatra inspired web development framework for node.js -- insanely fast, flexible, and simple
ยป Follow ExpressJS
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about ExpressJS
Frameworks (Full Stack)
Create Spring-powered, production-grade applications and services with absolute minimum fuss
ยป Follow Spring Boot
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Spring Boot
Microframeworks (Backend)
a microframework for Python based on Werkzeug, Jinja 2 and good intentions.
ยป Follow Flask
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Flask
Cross-Platform Mobile Development
A framework for building native apps with React
ยป Follow React Native
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about React Native
Frameworks (Full Stack)
An SDK that provides you the API libraries and developer tools necessary to build, test, and debug apps for Android.
ยป Follow Android SDK
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Android SDK
Cross-Platform Mobile Development
A beautiful front-end framework for developing cross-platform apps with web technologies like Angular and React.
ยป Follow Ionic
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Ionic
Cross-Platform Mobile Development
Cross-platform mobile framework from Google
ยป Follow Flutter
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Flutter
Cross-Platform Mobile Development
Create iOS, Android and Mac apps in C#
ยป Follow Xamarin
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Xamarin
Monitoring Tools
Explore & Visualize Your Data
ยป Follow Kibana
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Kibana
Exception Monitoring
Cut time to resolution for app errors from five hours to five minutes.
ยป Follow Sentry
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Sentry
Monitoring Tools
Open source Graphite & InfluxDB Dashboard and Graph Editor
ยป Follow Grafana
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Grafana
Performance Monitoring
SaaS Application Performance Management for Ruby, PHP, .Net, Java, Python, and Node.js Apps.
ยป Follow New Relic
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about New Relic
Cloud Monitoring
Monitor AWS resources and custom metrics generated by your applications and services
ยป Follow Amazon CloudWatch
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Amazon CloudWatch
Payment Services
Payments for developers
ยป Follow Stripe
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Stripe
Payment Services
Send Money, Pay Online or Set Up a Merchant Account
ยป Follow PayPal
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about PayPal
Payment Services
Accept payments in your app or website today
ยป Follow Braintree
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Braintree
Bitcoin Services
Integrate bitcoin payments into your website or application
ยป Coinbase's profile
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ยป Coinbase's website
Billing and Subscriptions
A set of tools for billing and subscriptions
ยป Stripe Billing's profile
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ยป Stripe Billing's website
Self-Hosted Blogging / CMS
A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
ยป Follow WordPress
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about WordPress
Email Marketing
Easy email newsletters
ยป Follow Mailchimp
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Mailchimp
Marketing Automation
All the software you need to do inbound marketing.
ยป Follow HubSpot
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about HubSpot
Help Desk
The leading cloud-based customer service software solution.
ยป Follow Zendesk
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Zendesk
CRM
The worldโs #1 CRM sales app
ยป Follow Salesforce Sales Cloud
|
ยป See recent tech decisions about Salesforce Sales Cloud
Gather around the ๐ฅ, it's story time! 2019 was another year full of heroic tales of scaling from nothing to billions of calls and flags. This year's top spot went to our friends over at LaunchDarkly. Not bad timing either- LaunchDarkly recently announced a new $54M round of financing to grow their feature flags platform. Similar to last year's top story from Stream, large tech companies like Facebook (Instagram), Twitter, and LinkedIn build their own feature flag management systems. But startups (like us) don't have time for that. Check out all the companies using LaunchDarkly. The other top stories came from some more awesome developer tool makers, including: Sqreen , Segment , CircleCI and RayGun .
These rankings are brought to you, by YOU. The StackShare community makes all of this possible by sharing not only your stacks, but your reasoning behind why you chose your stack. For this year's awards we wanted to recognize the community members that have gone above and beyond the call of duty to share best practices with other developers. The community members that have, in aggregate, taken hours to detail the important stack decisions they've made. While there's far more than 10 developers that contributed in a major way to StackShare- these ten are quite special. Thank you to everyone who took the time to help hundreds of thousands of developers decide on the right tools! Click each community member's link below to see all the Decisions they shared in 2019!
Methodology:
For tool rankings, scores are calculated using a combination of # of stacks a tool was added to, number of votes for one-liners contributed by the community, # of follows, and pageviews for the year. New Tool rankings were chosen from tools that were created and added to StackShare in 2019 with follows weighing more than other metrics since new tools donโt just enter stacks overnight. As usual, we removed Git from the rankings in the DevOps rankings since many developers don't list in their stack (and instead only list git collaboration services like GitHub). If you have any questions about the rankings, drop us a line at team@stackshare.io!