The Tability tech stack: Tools we use to work smarter

Operating as an efficient remote team requires having the right mix of scalable software that facilitates seamless collaboration. At Tability, our fully distributed team of six relies on a customised cloud tech stack that allows us to build rapidly while communicating and collaborating effectively across locations. 

When evaluating our tooling options, we typically consider the following criteria:

• Access and permissions - Does it offer role-based access levels and customisable permissions to meet security protocols?
• Core functionality - The tool needs to fully meet the core functional requirements it is being selected for. All key features and capabilities expected should be covered.
• Cost - Does the pricing model offer monthly and annual subscriptions? Is there a free trial available? How many users does the subscription allow? 
• Customer support - What channels of customer support are offered should issues arise? Are self-serve support resources also available through community forums or online knowledge bases?
• Customisation - How customisable and configurable is the platform to tailor it to unique team needs and processes?  
• Data integration - What core integrations does the tool offer out of the box? Can it connect easily to existing infrastructure and applications?
• Ease of use - How intuitive and easy is it for admins and end users? The platform should not slow down users with steep learning curves.
• Reporting and analytics - Does it provide key activity monitoring, helpful analytics and customisable reporting across the functionality?
• Scalability - As teams and data volumes grow over time, how readily can the tool scale up additional capacity, storage, seat counts etc.

While mobile functionality - in the form of a native app or responsive web page - is nice to have, it is not essential. 

In this post, we’ll explore the core tools we use to keep Tability running smoothly. 

Analytics & SEO

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO suite that provides robust tools for link analysis, content research, rank tracking, and website auditing. Some of the key features and functions of Ahrefs include:

• Backlink analysis - A central piece of the Ahrefs toolkit is its rich link analysis capabilities. This helps us identify new link-building opportunities by analysing up-to-date backlink profiles and metrics for any website.
• Keyword research - The keyword research tool provides expansive keyword data and metrics to identify high-value, low-competition opportunities to target to increase organic visibility and traffic.
• Site audit - Ahrefs' crawler analyses on-page elements, including metadata, URLs, HTML tags and more to identify issues that might hamper performance. Site Crawl provides insights for SEO optimisation and allows us to make on-page SEO improvements. 
• Content Explorer - Helps us discover the most shared and trending topics to create optimised content that maximises organic search visibility and social engagement.  
• Alerts - We can get notifications for changes like new backlinks, keyword ranking fluctuations, loss of pages and traffic, and new competitors appearing for critical keywords. This is useful for site monitoring.
• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools - This is a suite of additional SEO tools to help research advertising opportunities.

Amplitude

Amplitude is a comprehensive analytics solution that helps us understand user behaviour in Tability and identify opportunities to drive growth. Some key capabilities and features include:

• User behaviour analytics - Tracks user actions to allow deep analysis of behaviours across user journeys, funnels, retention cohorts and more. 
• Feature adoption - We can analyse product usage trends to see which features drive engagement, retention and other key metrics. This helps us remove guesswork on where to prioritise efforts.
• Segmentation - Dynamic segmentation tools make it easy to analyse behavioural metrics across different user groups to uncover insights.
• Funnel analysis - Visual mapping of key user flows enables optimisation of conversion funnels. 
• Retention analysis - Retention reports allow us to understand how different app experiences and features drive long-term user retention, which is critical for reducing churn.
• Amplitude Recommend - Uses machine learning to automatically detect patterns with the most impact metrics like conversions, retention, and engagement. It recommends user segments to focus on.

Canny

Canny is an all-in-one customer feedback management and product analytics platform that helps us collect user insights, manage our product roadmap, and build a better product. Some key features include:

• User research surveys - Create engaging surveys to gain actionable insights into customer pain points, needs and feature requests. 
• Feedback management - Collect and manage customer feedback/requests in one place. Prioritise high-impact requests.
• Roadmap management - Visual roadmap to communicate plans and progress towards delivering customer-driven product priorities.
• Change log - Automatically generate and maintain a product change log based on a roadmap to keep customers informed.
• User behaviour analytics - Understand how customers use our product with behaviour tracking tools.
• Notifications - Update customers when we’ve addressed their specific feedback and requests to close the loop.
• Integrations - Ties into popular tools like Intercom and Slack (which we also use), and other apps to centralise all customer feedback and requests.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics service that tracks and reports website and app data to help understand visitor behaviour and acquisition. Key features include:

• Traffic reports - Provides detailed statistics on visitors, page views, bounce rates, channels, acquisition sources, site speed and more to analyse traffic trends.
• Acquisition - Analyse which channels, campaigns, keywords and other sources drive visitors and conversions using reports on paid search, social, display, email marketing and more. 
• Behaviour - Graphical analysis of how visitors navigate our website, which links they use, what pages they access, engagement metrics and repetition. 
• Conversions - E-commerce tracking shows sales performance data like transactions, revenue, and conversion funnels.
• Audience - Reports help segment visitors by demographic, interests, engagement levels, devices, location and other attributes to better understand the audience.  
• Customisation - Custom dashboards, charts, segments and reports can be created to focus on key metrics and data unique to our business needs. 

Collaboration

Confluence

Confluence is a flexible team workspace designed to help teams collaborate more efficiently on content creation and knowledge sharing. Its key features and functions include:

• Content creation - User-friendly WYSIWYG editor and markdown support for creating pages, blogs, status updates, meeting notes and more.
• Content organisation - Spaces and pages can be structured into team workspaces. Page history and versioning maintain content integrity.  
• Team collaboration - Commenting, @mentions and assignments facilitate teams editing content together. Live preview editors keep everyone on the same page.
• Knowledge sharing - Powerful search, user dashboard, and quick links provide quick access to relevant content. 
• Integration and automation - Confluence integrates with hundreds of apps, including Slack, Jira, Dropbox, and more. 
• Templates and blueprints - Reusable page templates, blueprints and macros enable standardisation for common document types like status reports, meeting notes, product requirements etc.
• Access controls - Sophisticated permissions at space, page and user level. View, edit and restrict access as needed.

Google Workspace

Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) combines cloud-based apps to help teams communicate, collaborate, organise content, and boost productivity. Core tools include:

• Gmail – Full-featured business email with custom email addresses to represent brands. Provides unlimited storage. 
• Drive – Cloud document storage that enables file sharing within teams for central access and collaboration. Offers unlimited cloud storage space.
• Docs – Real time collaborative word processor to create, edit and store documents. 
• Sheets – Web-based spreadsheet software that supports collaborative editing with teams.
• Slides – Enables teams to collaborate on building presentations together with shared access.
• Calendar – Shared team calendars to schedule meetings, create events, and view teammate availability. Fully integrated with Google Meet video conferencing.
• Meet – Simple high-definition video meetings integrated seamlessly into Workspace. Record meetings and share externally if required.

Loom

Loom is a video communication tool that enables recording, sharing and tracking short, asynchronous video messages to replace live meetings or long email threads. Key features include:

• Quick capture - One-click to instantly record webcam video messages or narrated screen share walkthroughs from desktop or mobile.
• Smart sharing - Share video messages instantly viaa generated URL or embed in any website or application. 
• Tracking - See metadata on video shares, views, and viewer engagement like playbacks.
• Video transcription - Auto-generated text transcripts are available for every video to make the content searchable.
• Reactions - Viewers can react and comment with feedback as the video plays.
• Playlists and folders- Organise videos into shareable collections and folders to store related videos.
• Integrations - Embed capabilities across workplace apps like Asana, Jira, Slack, Gmail and CRMs to attach videos directly in relevant tools.

Loom is a time-saving tool that allows our team to share and record short videos instead of scheduling additional meetings.

Slack

Slack is a channel-based messaging platform that brings all workplace communications together for seamless team collaboration. Key features include:

• Channels - Channels help organise conversations, projects and topics. Custom channels can be set up in seconds.
• Direct messaging  - Enables sending private messages or files to individuals or groups. Great for ad hoc talks without disrupting public channels.
• File sharing - Share files, spreadsheets, and presentations from cloud storage providers like Dropbox and Google Drive.
• App integration - Integrates with hundreds of popular workplace apps like Trello, Confluence, Intercom and Loom natively so notifications and updates automatically sync with channels.  

We think Slack is a critical tool for remote teams, as it enables asynchronous communication and allows us to keep internal emails to a minimum. 

Tandem

Tandem is a videoconferencing tool built for small teams. Key features include:

• Virtual Rooms - Rooms are always on themed meeting spots that you can join with a click of a button to connect spontaneously with your team. Rooms work great for collaboration sessions, casual chats, long-form co-working, or getting real-time support from your team.
• Video calling - Face-to-face video meetings with screen sharing and annotations can be launched in one click.
• Presence indicators - Provides availability status without disruption. Private mode is also available. 

Customer engagement

HubSpot (CRM)

HubSpot CRM is an all-in-one sales and marketing CRM that helps businesses organise, track and nurture leads and customers across the entire customer lifecycle journey. Key features include:

• Contact database - A centralised database to store all information on leads, contacts and customers with the ability to segment and organise records based on properties.
• Activity tracking - Log emails, calls, meetings and internal team communications activities on each contact record so the entire team has visibility.
• Lead scoring - Automatically track and score leads based on behaviours like site visits, downloads, email opens, etc. to identify sales-readiness.
• Email automation - Create customised drip email campaigns with sequences tailored to different lead stages and statuses.
• Form builder - Drag and drop forms for lead captures, surveys, registrations, orders and more. 
• Analytics - Visual reports on deals pipeline, sales forecasts, customer lifecycle stages, lead conversions and other CRM metrics to guide sales and marketing.
• Integrations - Seamlessly integrate popular marketing, sales and support apps like MailChimp, Shopify, Stripe, and Slack.

Intercom

Intercom is a conversational relationship platform that helps businesses communicate with prospective and existing customers across their preferred channels - web, mobile and social media messaging. Key features include:

• Messenger - Have targeted, context-aware conversations with customers directly on your website and mobile apps.
• Inbox - Unified inbox to manage conversations across multiple messaging channels like email, chat, WhatsApp etc. 
• Campaigns - Visually design customised messaging campaigns targeted to different customer segments.
• Automation - Create triggers and workflows to send personalised messages when customers meet certain criteria.
• Analytics - Analyse real-time conversation metrics on volume, response times, CSAT scores, lead response rates and more to optimise performance.  
• Integrations - Integrates natively with popular tools like Salesforce, Shopify, Stripe, Facebook so conversations automatically sync.

DevOps

Bitbucket

Bitbucket provides developers with invaluable source code collaboration features to build better software with their teams. The code hosting and project management capabilities make it a go-to DevOps tool. Key features include:

• Code collaboration - Facilitates collaboration among developers by offering features such as pull requests, which enable code review and discussion before changes are merged into the main codebase.
• Integration with CI/CD: Integrates with various Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD) tools, allowing developers to automate build and deployment processes.
• Issue tracking: Manage and prioritise tasks, bugs, and other project-related issues.

Documentation

Gitbook

GitBook is a platform for capturing and documenting technical knowledge — from product docs to internal knowledge bases and APIs. Some key features include:

• Markdown support - GitBook uses simple markdown syntax to author content easily without the complexity of traditional word processing software.
• Version control integrations - Deep integrations with Git and GitHub allow teams to seamlessly sync documentation changes along with code changes.
• Real-time collaboration - With multi-cursor editing support, teams can co-author documentation together in real time.
• Publishing and updates - Multiple output formats supported, including websites, ebooks, and PDFs published via continuous delivery of content changes.
• Granular user permissions - Admins can configure fine-grained access controls and permissions for internal visibility or public publishing.
• Integrated search - Powerful search makes it easy to find information quickly across all documentation. 
• Custom domains and branding - Publishers can configure and apply custom branding like logos and styles for a personalised documentation portal.

We use GitBook for our Tability product guides and documentation. 

Email marketing

Mailer Lite

MailerLite is an intuitive email marketing solution that helps small businesses, online stores, and bloggers build customer relationships through email campaigns and automation. Key features include:

• Audience management - Simple interface to capture leads via forms, integrate with CRM or import contacts in bulk to build segmented mailing lists.
• Email builder - Drag and drop email editor with mobile optimisation, A/B testing capabilities, hundreds of customisable templates, and branding customisation.
• Automated workflows - Visually map out and automate post-signup welcome sequences, behavioural sequences, and complex segmentation based on customer data and activity. 
• Campaign analytics - Detailed stats on opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and subscriber engagement over time, which enables us to optimise campaigns and improve conversions.
• Landing pages - Easily create landing pages that convert subscribers by picking from readymade templates and integrating forms for lead capture.

Graphic design

Canva

Canva is a user-friendly online graphic design and publishing tool that allows individuals and teams to create high-quality visual content without the need for advanced design expertise. Some of the key features and capabilities of Canva include:

• Drag-and-drop interface - Enables anyone to easily drag, resize and position images, shapes, charts, icons, fonts, and design elements to create custom designs.
• Template library - Provides access to an expansive library of professionally designed templates for presentations, social media posts, ads, posters, resumes, cards, banners, infographics, reports, and more.
• Photo library - Gives users free access to an image library with over 1 million photographs, graphics and illustrations that can be inserted into designs.
• Design tools - Powerful functionality like photo editing, sizing, cropping, transparency, borders, frames,and background removal make it simple to customise visuals. 
• Brand Kit - Companies can build a customised brand design system, including fonts, colours palettes, logos and templates that align all visual content to brand style guidelines.
• Team collaboration - Enables multiple team members to collaborate on designing, editing and exporting visuals. 

Figma

Figma is a cloud-based design platform that allows teams to collaboratively design, prototype and gather feedback all from one place. Some of Figma’s key capabilities include:

• Interface and prototyping - Figma is built for interface design, allowing designers to quickly draft, layout and prototype entire user journey flows for apps and websites. 
• Design systems - Centralised libraries enable the creation of component-driven design systems containing all fonts, colours, logos and common UI elements in one source of truth. This helps ensure consistency at scale.
• Multiplayer design - Allows multiple designers to simultaneously work in a live collaborative space complete with co-editing, commenting tools and version control for real-time team collaboration.
• Interactive prototyping - Prototypes function like real apps, allowing teammates and stakeholders to click through, test and give feedback directly in the prototypes.
• Inspect mode - Inspect mode allows designers to view design specs, export assets, and ensure alignment with engineering requirements as part of the handoff process.
• Integrations - Plugins integrate Figma directly into company workflows, including Jira, GitHub, Slack and more. 

Project management

Jira

Jira is an agile project management tool development teams use to plan, track, and release software. Some of the key features include:

• Issue tracking - Flexible issue types allow capturing and tracking bugs, tasks, features, requirements and more. 
• Agile boards - Kanban boards with flexible workflows help visualise work, constrain work-in-progress and maximise efficiency.
• Roadmaps - Provides high-level visual plans for multiple projects aligned to business objectives spanning quarters/years. 
• Reports and dashboards - Real-time reports on team workload, velocity, and cycle times, and visual dashboards providing data insights.
• Release management - Plan product releases, group issues, assign dependencies/tasks to issues, and map progress throughout release.
• Workflows - Highly-configurable workflows route issues to appropriate people, automate repetitive tasks, and transition issues through status stages.
• Integrations - Over 1,000 app integrations with GitHub, Jenkins, Tableau, Slack and more to fit diverse tech stacks.

Trello

Trello is a visual collaboration platform that helps teams organise projects and tasks into flexible Kanban-style boards and lists. Key features include:

• Boards - Boards contain vertically scrolling customisable lists used to structure workflows specific to different projects or processes.
• Lists - Lists group tasks and cards across the workflow stages - great for categorisation. Due dates can be set at the list level.
• Cards - Tasks, ideas and requests can be captured as highly customisable cards with attachments, members, labels, comments, checklists and more. 
• Views - Board views, including calendar view and dashboard view, provide strategic vantage points, which are helpful when prioritising work.
• Butler automations - Self-service automation builder allows creating triggers like email notifications, RSS alerts, and Slack messages when preset conditions are met. 
• Power-ups - Integrate top apps like Google Drive, Salesforce, GitHub, Zendesk and more. 

At Tability, we use Trello for planning and managing our content publishing schedule. 

Security

1Password

1Password is a password manager that allows users to securely store passwords, login credentials, and other sensitive information in an encrypted digital vault that is unlocked with a single master password. Some of the key features and functions of 1Password include:

• Vaults - 1Password allows the creation of multiple password vaults to organise items and share vaults securely across teams. 
• Secure password generator - The app has a built-in password generator that creates strong, random, and unique passwords for all your accounts.
• Autofill - 1Password can automatically fill login credentials into websites and mobile apps for seamless login. 
• Browser and app extensions - Browser extensions allow directly filling passwords from the 1Password vault into any web page login. App extensions do the same for mobile app logins. 
• Biometric unlock - On supported devices, biometric authentication like fingerprint or face unlock provides easy access to 1Password without having to input your master password constantly.
• Travel mode - Temporarily removes devices, identities, and sensitive data from watch devices while travelling to keep data safe.
• Security audits - Runs security audits on password health for weak, reused, or vulnerable passwords and suggests ways to improve account security.

Social media marketing

Loomly

Loomly is a social media management tool that allows you to create, schedule, and publish social media posts, monitor their performance, and keep a check on engagement. Some of the key features include:

• Scheduling - Schedule social media posts for publishing at a later date or time. Loomly allows automated publishing for Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
• Calendar view - The calendar view makes it easy to see what will be published and when, so you get an overview of what’s coming up for each channel. You can even move posts around to reschedule them by using drag-and-drop.
• Analytics -  Measure the performance of your posts in real-time. Recognise what content types and topics are resonating with your audience. 
• Interaction - Reply to messages, reactions, and comments of your followers on social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. 
• RSS feeds - With the Assistive RSS Feeds setting, you can connect your website RSS feed to Loomly. All entries from this feed are automatically converted into draft posts in your calendar.

Team goal setting and tracking

Tability

Of course, we’re going to eat our own dog food! We use our product every day to keep our remote team aligned and progress on track. 

Tability is a collaborative goal-tracking platform designed to help teams achieve their goals faster by keeping everyone aligned and focused on what matters the most. Key features include:

• AI-powered goal setting - set better goals and build a detailed plan in seconds. Browse our library of OKR templates and find goals that work for you. Drag, drop and modify your plan using our easy-to-use Plan Editor.
• Intuitive goal tracking - Focus on all your most important goals. Tability’s automated reminders and progress charts make it easy to stay on track. 
• Task management - A Kanban view of your tasks makes it easy to plan and prioritise. Get a daily to-do list in your inbox to help you stay focused.
• Strategy Map - A simple way to see what every team in the company is focused on and how your team's efforts are aligned.
• Simple reporting - Instantly share your OKRs and progress reports with stakeholders and team members.
• Powerful integrations - Tability integrates with dozens of other apps you already use to help streamline your workflow. Check out the full list here.

Web design and publishing

Webflow

Webflow is a visual web design tool that enables designing, building and launching responsive websites without coding. Key features include:

• Drag & drop builder - Intuitive drag and drop editor to quickly prototype and build web pages using prebuilt components like text, images, sliders, and tabs.
• Custom animation - Animate components with different effects like fade in, move, scale and apply scroll triggers. No JavaScript required.
• Responsive design - Visual breakpoint editor ensures pixel-perfect responsive design across all devices - web, tablet and mobile. 
• CMS integration - Built-in CMS for creating dynamic templates and reusable components.
• Style editor - A centralised style manager makes styling completely visual with typography, colour, gradient and effect controls. Speeds up branding.
• Deployment & hosting - Hit publish to deploy live sites to a global content delivery network. No server configuration is needed.

Writing assistance

Grammarly

Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistance tool that helps check for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style errors across communication like documents, emails, messaging apps and social media posts. Some key Grammarly features include:

• Context-based grammar checking - Uses Natural Language Processing algorithms to scan text and identify and flag 250+ grammar rules based on the context of complete sentences and paragraphs.
• Spelling and punctuation checks - Highlights misspellings and punctuation mistakes, including easily confused words and common typos. Checks for proper use of hyphens as well.
• Vocabulary enhancement - Identifies repetitive, overused or vague vocabulary and suggests clearer, concise alternatives to improve writing style.  
• Citation checking - Assists with properly formatting in-text citations and bibliographies, ensuring compliance with APA, MLA and Chicago formatting styles.
• Readability scores - Assesses reading level using Flesch–Kincaid grade formulas and provides feedback on making writing more scannable and consumable.  
• Browser extensions - Seamlessly integrates corrections into popular apps and sites like Google Docs, Medium, Gmail, LinkedIn, plus Office apps.
• Summary reports - Provides overall summaries on categories of mistakes identified and writing enhancement opportunities to continue sharpening skills.

Reviewing and optimising our tech stack

We periodically review our tech stack for several reasons:

1. Technology advancements: New tools and technologies are constantly emerging. Regular reviews ensure that we stay abreast of the latest developments and can leverage advancements to enhance efficiency, security, and competitiveness.
2. Optimisation: As our business grows and changes, our needs evolve. Periodic reviews help identify areas where the current tech stack can be optimised or streamlined. This can lead to cost savings, improved performance, and better alignment with our business goals. 
3. Value: We need to ensure that we are always getting value for money out of every tool. Value does not necessarily mean the lowest cost. If it increases our efficiency, it is valuable. If it helps our customers, it is valuable. If it helps us innovate, it is valuable. If it provides actionable insights, it is valuable. 

We at Tability strongly believe that small teams have the potential to achieve great things, provided they have access to the right technology. We are a prime example of this ourselves! Our team has carefully selected a range of tools and software that help us to work smarter, not harder. By using this tech stack, we can optimise our productivity and efficiency, keep our customers engaged, manage our workflows seamlessly, and make data-driven decisions effectively. This enables us to ship our products quickly and frequently, without compromising on quality or the customer experience.