When people meet you for the first time, they look for ANYTHING that is a shortcut to knowing you better.  If you have a vintage email, like AOL, people assume you are not tech savvy.  Today, the most flexible provider is gmail.  You can get a free account ending in gmail.com, or for $5/month, if you have your own domain name, you can have email with your domain name through gmail like freddy@freddyfishes.com instead of freddy@gmail.com.  

Zoom wins my applause for combining the informality of Skype video with the controls of Go To Meeting.  At $15/month it's a great all-around choice for 1:1 and small group sessions. Boost to $40 if you want up to 100 person webinars. Participants can join with a simple link, and it drops the connection less frequently and reconnects automatically. 

This is the foundational web page system I use for marketing. You're looking at it right now! Pages can look like ANYTHING, but more than easy web pages, it lets you create an experience that users value by guiding them through to the information they want. It's less tech-y than Wordpress, but can do anything a designer can imagine, which Wix cannot.  It is pricey in the beginning when you build just one funnel, but cheaper in the end because once you start seeing marketing results, you will want more funnels, and this platform lets you build multiple in one account for the same price, vs. paying per website on other platforms. 

For videos you want everyone to see, you'll publish in Facebook and YouTube - they are competitors so they need to be treated separately.  But for private video available only after someone opts in or buys your stuff, you need a paid hosted video provider.  Vimeo is a solid choice, as it has updated its service with features that catch it up with newer products, and it seems to load faster for viewers.

If you like texting, your clients and customers probably do too!  Now you can engage people on text in your marketing.  How much easier is it to put up a phone number and a five digit code during a presentation or when you meet someone and say "If you want the slides, text this number with this code and my team will send them to you within the hour." You've set this up, automated. It can also integrate with Clickfunnels to connect them with your pages. Now you have an easy and personal way to follow up afterward too.

If you're using Clickfunnels you don't need a separate paid hosting account, except for any larger assets like PDFs. These can be hosted for a small pay as you need it fee rather than a monthly charge.

Most projects need a good looking but simple membership site where members can have access to specific content.  For this, we use ClickFunnels because it integrates so easily with the rest of your marketing funnel.  For projects where you need to confirm completion, testing and grades, you'll need to make a bigger investment in a more robust tech stack. Teachable and Kajabi are the next steps up, but more cumbersome so only go as far as you need to go!

You can't send 100 people an email through Gmail, the spam blockers block it. To send to a whole list, you need an email service designed for this.  Convert kit also lets you create really great looking opt-in forms - the forms that collect someone's email address. You can use this with any website. AND you can send the code so that someone can put it on their website as well. The pricing is also based on how many are on your list, which will save money when you're starting out.