What I actually use.
The handful of services I keep paying for, year after year. Honest opinions. Some links below give you a bonus when you sign up — I would recommend these regardless.
Manus
The general-purpose AI agent that actually finishes the task
Manus is the only general-purpose agent I have stopped second-guessing. Hand it a research brief, a coding task, or a multi-step automation, and it comes back with a working result, not a list of things it tried. I use it for ad-hoc research and one-off scripts that would otherwise take half a day. Free credits when you sign up via the link below.
v0
The fastest way to scaffold a React UI from a prompt
v0 is Vercel's React generator. Type what you want, get production-grade Tailwind + shadcn output. I use it to skeleton dashboards, marketing pages, and admin UIs in minutes. Output drops cleanly into a Next.js project with no rewrites. Worth the subscription on weeks I am shipping multiple UIs.
IONOS
Cheap, reliable domain registrar with bundled hosting
I move my domain registrations to whoever offers the best transfer-in pricing each year. IONOS has been the cleanest experience for UK and EU domains, with no hidden fees on renewal. Their VPS plans are also fine for side projects you do not want to host on a serverless platform. Affordable, no-frills.
DigitalOcean
My default for self-hosted services and small databases
DigitalOcean is the cloud I reach for when Vercel or Supabase is the wrong shape. Spinning up a Postgres instance, a Redis box, or a Docker host takes about 90 seconds. Pricing is predictable, the dashboard does not gaslight you with seven sub-services like AWS. Used DigitalOcean droplets in production for years.
Rest of the production stack.
Other services I rely on every week. No affiliate links on these, just things that work.
Vercel
Where most of my Next.js projects live. The free tier is genuinely useful, the paid plan is worth it the moment you have one production app.
Supabase
Postgres + auth + storage + realtime + edge functions in one panel. I default to it for any new project that needs a database.
Resend
The cleanest transactional email API I have used. Three thousand emails a month free, no card required, deliverability has not let me down.
Cal.com
Open-source Calendly alternative. Self-host or use the hosted version. The free hosted tier covers more than most people need.
Cloudflare R2
S3-compatible object storage with no egress fees. Storage costs are similar to S3, but you do not get burned when traffic spikes.
GitHub
Where the code lives. Actions for CI, Pages for static docs, Wiki for project documentation, Codespaces if you do not want a local toolchain.
Need help wiring this stack together?
I build with these tools every day. If you want a production setup that uses them properly, let's talk.
Get in touch