I Got Rid of All of My Paid Creator Tools Except These (Our App Recommendations for 2026)

Some tools are essential to being a confident Christian creator, but what should you pay for and what can you go without?

In this episode, we share the tools and apps that we found worth the investment even when budgets were tight in our creator business. 

You'll hear which apps have a high return on investment in both the personal and professional areas of your life, so that you spend your money in the right areas. 

Some of these apps / tools contain affiliate links and we do receive commission if you purchase - as always, we are proud to recommend apps and tools that we use and trust. 

RECOMMENDED APPS / CREATOR TOOLS in this episode

Streaks (Apple) https://streaksapp.com/

Todoist - https://todoist.com

Clay https://godandgigs.com/clay

Refresh.me https://godandgigs.com/refresh

Canva Pro https://canva.com

Hurdlr https://godandgigs.com/hurdlr

Kit https://godandgigs.com/kit

Nav.com

MeetEdgar https://godandgigs.com/meetedgar

Riverside https://godandgigs.com/riverside

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Productivity Tools
• 5:10 Habit Tracking and Task Management
• 7:32 Relationship Management and Networking
• 9:01 Financial Management for Creators
• 11:17 Design and Branding Tools
• 12:52 Design and Branding Tools
• 14:36 Email Marketing and Community Engagement
• 17:02 Building Business Credit
• 18:29 Social Media Management
• 22:45 Content Creation and Recording Tools
• 25:46 More Support in the Membership

Transcript

Allen C. Paul - God And Gigs (00:00)
So at the end of 2025, I experienced what many creators face, a cash crunch. I had to make some serious decisions on what I would pay for, invest in, the tools that I will continue to use.

Well, at the beginning now of 2026, things have gotten a little better. So I have re-added some of the most important tools to my tech stack as a creator. But there's only a few that made the cut. Some I decided not to add back to my tech stack. And instead I focused on just those tools that were worth the expense and worth the cost and made the biggest impact on my life as a Christian creator. So I'm going to share with you today, those tools that I felt were worthy to invest in so that you can also find the right tools to make your Christian creator lifestyle more effective, more profitable, and more engaging for your community and your audience.

Hello, I am Allen C. Paul. I'm the host and founder of God and gigs. Thank you so much for joining us today and making this podcast a part of your creative day. This is where we help you to become the creator that you were created to be by combining the worlds of the spiritual life and the creative life so that you can integrate this in every area of your life as you design your unique creator lifestyle. And as I mentioned, we found ourselves at one of those crossroads at the

to 2025.

Let's be honest, it's not easy out here for any of us as creators, as we try to figure out what tools to buy, what do we need to invest in? What do we need to let go of? And I faced that very same issue. Now there are some tools that are simply indispensable. The things that you have to have in order to have a creator business of any kind. This counts, even if you're just doing this as a part-time or a side hustle, something that you're just trying out, you still have to have some tools

just to be a creator. And then there are other things that help you level up professionally. And what I had to do is figure out which things were essential to my creator lifestyle. What were the tools that I couldn't do without? And if I didn't have them and didn't invest in them, honestly, I would have no chance of making my business or my lifestyle successful. So I'm going to tell you the tools that made the cut, the things that I'm still investing in, the things that I'm paying for, the things that I feel really make

the difference in my creator lifestyle. And they may help you in 2026 and beyond to continue your creator lifestyle, to level it up, to find more people, to connect with the people that you're called to reach. That's what I believe this episode is here for. And if you like any of these tools, there'll be links in the show notes and the description so that you can check them all out. Some of them are affiliate links, which I am proud to share because whenever there's a tool that I really believe in, I do try to stand behind it and we try to promote it to our community.

Allen C. Paul - God And Gigs (03:04)
So the first tool I'm gonna mention really isn't an app that normally you would consider in the creator lifestyle or the creator genre. But this is seriously helping me to keep my productivity, my lifestyle, my habits, all of those things that help me actually be a better person. It's helping me a lot and it's called Streaks.

Now I have to apologize to those of you who are on Android. It's not available on Android as far as I can tell. There are surely other apps that are daily habit trackers that you can find on Android, but honestly, I am not as familiar with those. So I didn't feel comfortable talking about them, but streaks is just one of those apps that works for me. It's basically a habit tracker with this familiar rings that everybody knows from Apple, where you simply tap a button and it tracks whether or not you

followed a certain habit, whether you've eaten enough that day, whether you had your water, your vitamins, whatever habit that you want to build, you put it inside the app and it basically gives you an easy way to track it. And of course, as you can tell from the title, the whole point is to build up a streak of actually accomplishing the thing that you're trying to accomplish. Now, as I'm recording this at the beginning of 2026, clearly we're all thinking, how can I build better habits?

throughout the year, exercising, eating right, reading my Bible, whatever those things are that will help you to accomplish the goals that you are trying to reach. That's what you put in a streaks app. Is it a paid app? Yep. But I feel like I need to invest in things that will help me better my life. And so I had to make sure that I paid the annual subscription.

for this app. Actually, I don't think it's an annual subscription. If I remember correctly, check me if I'm wrong and you can look at the link for the Apple store in this description, but it might be just a one-time payment. So it's actually not a subscription at all, but it is a paid app. So I wanted to mention that because once again, it touches on what makes my life better. How do I continue to improve as a person and as a creator so that I can accomplish all that God has put in my heart to do in 2026.

The second tool is another one that I've used for years. And yes, I re-upped and went ahead and did the annual subscription again. And it's called Todoist. Now, many of you once again may have your to do list, your apps where you have certain things that will help you track what you're supposed to do that day, the project that you're doing, your productivity, all of that again, goes into all of this genre of productivity apps. Todoist is just the one that has worked for me the best because it's

Pretty much simplicity. It's the simplicity of the app where all I have to do is go in load it on PC or Mac or on my phone it works and synchronizes through all of those different places where I will be tracking myself I can easily update it with when something is done checking it off. I can add reminders I can add the different color codings when it comes to priority and what I really liked about it, honestly

has been its ability to continue to innovate and find new ways to integrate with different other apps that I use. Like my calendar, my Google calendar outlook, it can integrate with those things, even Gmail, and send reminders through the same app so that I see things pop up and I know exactly what's on my agenda for that day. And once again, this is not necessarily just for creators. This is for anyone who wants to improve their life and keep things organized.

I've even worked out where I have a system where it reminds me to put things in my paper planner, because yes, I still use a paper planner. And sometimes I realize those things have to be synced up. And so I have something in my to do list app, which reminds me to sync it with what I'm writing down in my paper planner. So those are two tools for particular productivity that I would highly recommend. And I am using and paying for myself because I believe it's worth the investment.

The third tool is one you may not have heard of. And this now starts to move into the relationship slash customer management systems that some of us have for our personal lives and other of us, other of us have for our businesses. And that is clay. Now the actual website is clay.earth. So be careful. Look at the link in the show notes, cause there's other apps and software that have that same name. But the one I'm talking about is a personal contact management system.

which actually brings up ideas for people that you need to reach out to and contact and helps you kind of remind yourself of the relationships that you've built over time. It can sync with your contacts. It syncs with all of my, whether it's Facebook contacts or Instagram or LinkedIn, and it can pull those people in, help kind of connect the dots between who they are, when their birthdays are, what they've been doing, when they have a status change.

in their bios and it helps me to see who am I interacting with and who do I need to reach out to in order to continue to cultivate these relationships. It even has an AI component where you can say to put it in the AI, hey, what kind of gift would this person like or what should I send them or what kind of message should I start with? And it researches the person based on their publicly available data. And you're able then to see what

that person in your database, in your contacts might need, might like, might be a opener or icebreaker or a way to connect with them. So I seriously like this tool. I went in and I said, you know what? I got to have this. So I am paying the annual and the monthly subscription to it because I feel like relationships are the glue of my business and my creator lifestyle. Therefore I should really invest in knowing the people.

that are in my network and how can I do that? By investing in a tool like Clay. You can find that at gottinggigs.com slash Clay, if you wanna check it out or just look at the link in the show notes. Another tool that once again kind of crosses the line between your personal life and your creator life is this new tool that I'm trying out for my finances and it is quickly becoming indispensable. It's called Refresh. Now, those of you who are my age or older,

You might remember something called mint now mint went out of business a little while ago So some of us had mint and it was helping us track our finances well Refresh to me is pretty much a new version of mint where it doesn't necessarily need you to put in a lot of data what it does is it tracks your finances and tracks your transactions and helps you budget by seeing what's actually happening and as I've you we've as I've used refresh

As I've used Refresh over the past few months, I've really been impressed by how accurately it's catching which transactions are which and helping me see exactly what I'm spending and where. Why am I mentioning this in a creator tools episode? Well, because if you're not managing your finances, most likely you're going to struggle with this very issues that I'm talking about. Knowing what you're spending, knowing what's going out, what's coming in and keeping your finances.

Always top of mind in an easy to access way. So Refresh.me is the website You can go to Godandgigs.com slash refresh if you want to use our code to check it out But again, I'm really enjoying just seeing the snapshot of what my finances look like each week each month and knowing that there's nothing that's slipping through the cracks because it is Analyzing constantly what I'm spending and I can see where I need to cut back

where I can spend a little more in how to budget in a responsible way. Now, let's go to the creator tools that are really, really focused on what you do as a creative, whether it's promotion, whether it's graphic design, whether it's sharing your work through video, whatever that is, most likely you have heard of Canva. And Canva is one of those go-to apps that I simply had to pay for. Now,

I've honestly been paying for Canva for a long time. I think I've always had a pro subscription. And the difference for those of you who have the free version is pro allows you to use so many more of the new features that are in Canva. You get all the access to the photos without having to pay for individual photos that are sourced from Unsplash and all of the other creators that they get their photos from. So you get all that royalty free imagery.

And there are so many new features in Canva Pro that once again, it was like, okay, I cannot do what I do without having this pro subscription. Now I'm not an affiliate for Canva. I'm just telling you that if you are serious about promoting yourself and having a clean image when it comes to all of your professional imagery, your branding, your colors, your logos, all of that, if you're not paying a graphic designer, your best bet is to have Canva Pro.

use the templates, use the thumbnail designers, if you're on YouTube and find the looks that work for you and make sure that you're getting the best out of that subscription by using all the features that are available in Canva. It is definitely one of those tools that if you're a creator, most likely, if you don't have that, you're missing something in your toolbox. Now we're moving back into the finances. And once again, this tool is not something that you think of when it comes to creators, but

I'm highly recommending it to all of our community. And for me, it's been a lifesaver when it comes to taxes. Yes, the dreaded T word taxes creators. We all have to deal with it. If you're in any way, shape or form doing business as a creator, you need to be paying attention to your expenses and your taxes and your driving mileage records because all of that is deductible. I've been using an app called hurtler for years. That's H U R D.

L R K hurtler, but with no E in there. So don't try to spell it. Just look in the link in the show notes and you'll see where to go there. But I am a fan of hurdler because it has been helping me to keep an eye on my deductions, my mileage at the end of each quarter. I can go back and see where have I driven. It has automatic mileage detection. So when you drive, you just know where it goes. And what I really love about hurdler is that it has this automatic rule setting where you can find out, Hey,

Every time I buy from this person or this thing or I buy from this store, catalog it as such so can send it straight to my tax preparer and they can see all of my records without having to go through receipt after receipt after receipt. It automatically catalogs it and figures out where those expenses should be put for eventual deductions. That is one of the main reasons I use Hurdler. The deduction is definitely one reason for tracking my finances.

And then tracking my mileage, which again, if you are driving anywhere for business, you should be getting a deduction on those trips for the gas and the mileage that you are using it for. Okay. So Hurdler is another one of those apps I'm paying for no matter what, because having that subscription helps me save money on my taxes and the long run. Now, for those of you who have been following God in Gives for a long time, you know that our basic email operating system is kit.

And it was never a question that I was going to have to make sure that I was still keeping kit as part of our tech stack and making sure I was paying the subscription because it's worth every dime kit has been the way that we put our landing pages. are a part of their creator network, which allows us to connect with other creators who recommend our newsletter to their audience, their community. So when someone subscribes to say someone like our friend, Rachel Scott's email list, they also see us.

Recommended and so many over a thousand subscribers have come over from Rachel's Recommendations through the creator networking kit into God and gigs and giving us a chance So that goes as a no-brainer our emails everything that has worked for us in terms of sharing our Our resources all of it runs through kit and so that's really a no-brainer If you've been following us for a while again, you know that kit is our preferred

Email source for anything when it comes to landing pages and all the like so you can find that link at gotting gigs comm slash kit to check it out for yourself Annual subscription is a great way to go if you can afford that or simply do the monthly subscription for the creator pro account that we have I think at times that I'm speaking it's under $60 a month and again Highly worth it when it comes to the things that actually help you connect with your community

Oh, and let me just mention quickly, they have so many awesome integrations, including with mighty, which is another one of those subscriptions that we definitely wanted to keep. Mighty networks is where we built our community, God and gigs 360. That's where all of our courses and our community hub lives were no longer on Facebook. We closed down a Facebook group because we want everybody to come into our God and gigs 360 group and mighty, which is where we built our community is integrated with kit. Another great reason why I said, Hey,

no reason for us to go anywhere else. This is the app we'll use for our email, our landing pages and our connection with our community. One more financial tool that I want to mention to you that again is a new tool that I'm trying out. And this is something that I've never done before. Never talked about business credit on the gotten gig show. But as I have gone through almost 10 years now of this particular platform, the book came out 10 years ago, the podcast is almost 10 years.

So this is kind of like our 10 year anniversary, but I've never really been a big proponent of credit, but I've realized that I need to make sure that we are watching out to build a strong credit rating as a business. And so I'm now trying out nav.com. And once again, I decided to purchase it because having the purchase of this particular subscription is actually allowing us to build credit by having our payments actually reported to business credit and

credit agencies, which I didn't even know was a thing. Now I know it's possible. And so we are taking advantage of this. And I would highly recommend to all of you, if you're not trying to build credit in with credit cards and all that kind of stuff, using something like nav.com can really help you to build a credit history of paying your bills and paying things on time in a way that reports to business agencies like Dunn and Bradstreet, some other different agencies that actually look at how you function as a business.

and it just helps you get more professional. So this is one of those areas that again, I didn't really feel comfortable talking about before, but now I feel like it's worth it because I can share what's working for us. And I'm just really feeling good knowing that we're starting to show potential loan officers, potential investors that we do pay our bills, that we do have good credit and nav.com is helping us to do that. So I would highly recommend them, check them out, simply look for the link in the show notes.

Now I am now going to switch over to our social media tool. This is a tool that I stopped using for a second and then realized how much we really needed it. And yes, it's worth the investment, the monthly investment and it's called MeetEdver. Now, if you've seen our social media posts over the last few years, even over the last few months, you might've seen that one thing that I love to do as a podcast,

is I love to bring back old episodes. I don't like the fact that a certain episode goes out and then you don't hear about it ever again. A great episode, a great guest. We have this great talk. You see a couple of clips on social media and then we're onto the next one because we have another episode next week and you don't really hear about it again. That has always bothered me. When we have such a great back catalog and God in this case, we have over 350 episodes of amazing content.

And I don't want it to just slip into the back of a podcast app that no one will ever scroll down all the way to see and hear what's great evergreen content. That's what Meet Edgar has been a lifesaver and why I recommend them to anyone who has any kind of social media presence, especially if you're posting consistently and posting things that can be shared again. What Meet Edgar does is that it not only creates a library and help you schedule your posts to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, which I do.

And I'm actually using the light version, by the way, you can go all the way up to, think 10 or 20 accounts. We went down to the light version because I said, Hey, let me just focus a little more. I used to have a ton of accounts and now we only focus on four accounts, but either way, meet Edgar sends them out automatically to all of these different places, but also create a reoccurring post where they come back after a certain time.

either randomly or you can schedule them. You can find different categories and it repurposes those same posts again. Again, for a podcast or for a YouTube channel that you have great content or maybe blogs that you've done and you wish that people could see them again or read them again. And let me tell you, this is one of the biggest keys for 2026 in terms of social media and promoting ourselves as creators. Social media is totally going.

to the route of you're only gonna see maybe 1.5 % of people actually seeing your posts, which means 99.9 % of the people aren't gonna see the post the first time or maybe even the second time or the third time. So it makes sense to invest into a tool that brings things back up automatically so you don't have to think about having to tell people two, three, four, five, six, seven times about your podcast episode.

or your YouTube video or your new sale or your new book or your album. It makes sense to create a reoccurring post where over and over that thing will come back into your feed and more people will have the chance to see it the second or the third or the fourth or the fifth time because they didn't get a chance to see it the first time. And so this is why Medecker is one of our highest recommended tools. I had to put it back in the tool belt for God and gigs. You can find out how to get a look at it yourself.

at Godendgigs.com slash meet Edgar. That's E E T E D G A R. Just check the link in the show notes. And I would highly recommend that one. Cause once again, once you see that you get so many more post opportunities from me, that girl, you're going to really, really, really be blessed and happy because you're doing less work and you're sharing your work that you work so hard on more than once. So once again, highly recommend me that girl.

It's an essential part of a tool belt and we had to put it back in, invest in it and keep it as part of our subscriptions that we use in God and gigs. All right. We've gone through a lot of different tools. I'm to come to this last one because I'm literally using it right now to make this episode. And it was once again, a no brainer to keep. And that is Riverside. Now, if you are a content creator, podcaster, YouTuber, anyone that's using video or audio to record, you're probably

going to realize that you have to have a tool that functions in all of these areas. It should do video. It should record your audio. It should make it easy to edit. And Riverside, even though years ago I felt like, hey, this is not an app I really need. I've learned that this app honestly is becoming a creator's best friend. I'm able to do my podcast episodes. I'm able to live stream. I'm able to...

go to different other, I'm able to, what did they call that? Now I'm forgetting the word. I'm able to stream to different platforms, right? Restream or live stream to different platforms at the same time from Riverside. It's also doing clips for us now. So I am able to get rid of other apps that were costing me money because Riverside actually does all the things that I needed to do. Now, I will be honest, sometimes when apps start doing a lot,

they tend to get a little bit worse at the core benefit of the product. But the core benefit of Riverside has always been recording video and recording audio and doing remote interviews. That's still working great. Plus they have all the other features where I can edit and do all of my work inside of Riverside. So all that to say, I highly recommend if you are podcasting, content creating, or doing any kind of video and audio, Riverside is the place to go.

We are using it. decided to keep investing in it and you can find out more about how you can check out Riverside at Godandgigs.com slash Riverside. Well, my friend, I hope that has blessed you because I really felt like I should be honest with you and tell you, hey, we're not spending money on everything. There's some apps that I am still using the free version. I didn't mention those. Maybe we'll talk about those in a future episode where I'll talk about the free tools and ways to get access to tools that you don't need to pay for.

But these are the ones that I said, Hey, this needs to be part of our tech stack, even if it requires an investment, because it's worth the money to invest in what God has put in our hands to do. And that means, yeah, you got to open up your wallet. You got to decide to invest in your craft. Like we say in our book, investing in your craft is the seventh. think, no, I'm sorry. is the fifth part of our entire service agenda.

in our book where we talk about the seven service steps. It starts with stay connected to God, then talks about establishing your priorities, respect the business, visualize your goals, and then it gets to right there investing in your craft. So if this has helped you, if you think any of these tools are beneficial or you think of some other tools, please comment and tag God and gigs. Let us know that you heard this episode. Let us know you checked out any of these tools.

If you're in Gotting Gigs 360, of course we ask you to share this episode inside the membership. We talk about tools all the time inside our Gotting Gigs 360 membership. As a matter of fact, we actually have a section of the app where all we do is share tools and discounts and different ways that you can use the new tools that are coming out. So we kind of have like a lab where we share the best creator tools inside the membership. So if you're listening and you are a Gotting Gigs 360 creator,

definitely share what your experience is with those apps. And definitely if you are not in the membership yet, it's a great time to get in, especially if you are at the beginning of the year and listening as we're releasing this, go to godandgigs.com slash app, and you can get all of the information directly from the people who are using these apps, who are working on creating their unique creator lifestyles and thriving and becoming the creators that God created them to be, as well as access.

to our upcoming workshops from the Creator Resource Center. We have all of our ⁓ workshops from 2025, whether it was on prayer, on content creation, using AI, on profitability, all of these things, making newsletters that can pay you. Like there's so much stuff there that you don't have to go to chat GPT for. Come on, let's talk to the real experts instead of looking for a app that will somehow find what you think is the right answer.

I think, ⁓ God and gigs 360 is kind of like the anti check GPT. We have real people that are showing you how to do the things that will help you build your unique creator lifestyle and to embrace that and do it in a way that works for you as a person. Okay. So definitely check that out. Once again, you can find all of our community resources and how to join the membership at God and gigs.com slash. ⁓

Well, my friend, I hope this has blessed you and been beneficial to you. We want to really focus on both the audio and the video presentation. But whether you're listening or whether you're watching, I appreciate you for being a part of the God and guest community. And until next time, continue to become the creative that you were created to be. God bless and we'll see you next episode.