Luckily in the context of building a web startup there are a plethora of tools available, but just staying aware of what’s out there can help you make better decisions about what to tackle yourself, and what to try to grab off the shelf.

Here are some tools that I have used personally (not in rank order, btw) in the last year:

Brainstorming / Mindmaps

1. mindmeister.com – great when you’re rambling off lots of ideas in lots of directions and you want to write them down and group them somewhere for later reference

Checking Names (yes, a decent, memorable, spellable, and pronounceable name can be helpful!)

2. nxdom.com – search recently expired domain name lists for names that start with or end with certain words

3. ud.com – checks domain names and popular social networks for reserved name availability all at once

Prototyping user interfaces

4. balsamiq.com – throw together screen concepts to help communicate your idea to others

Screen sharing, conferencing, feedback

5. vyew.com – great for getting feedback remotely . . vyew even lets you mark up a screen shot collaboratively

Project Planning and Story/Task tracking

6. Pivotal Tracker - Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize. Drag-and-drop prioritization and automatic velocity calculations to help you improve your estimates.

Usability testing

7. usertesting.com – cheap independent feedback on your web site which includes video-capture of user using the site and talking out-loud about their reactions.

Cross-browser,email testing

8. litmusapp.com – screenshots of a url in a laundry list of browsers, cross-email client testing too!

Build and keep in contact with your following

9. madmimi – build that initial e-mail list and keep in contact with a newsletter, or announcements

Price-scalable hosting

10. appengine – pay for what you use, for most apps it’s free until traction

Gathering feedback / mkt. research

11. survey.io – broad swath feedback on what people think of your product/value.

12. ask500people.com – poll general web population for opinion – i.e. – find out which logo people like better, etc

If there’s something you feel should be on the list and particularly if you have used it personally, please chime in!

What’s New and Noteworthy?

Easily invite people you have invited before

If you’re logged in, and you’ve invited them before, we’ll give you autocompletes when typing e-mail addresses to help you invite them again.

Repeat Events

With just a few clicks, you can now create an event using a past event as a template.   Great for regular/recurring get-togethers.   It’s perfect for book clubs, monthly dinners, poker groups, and staff meetings.

E-mail replies go directly to you

If some-one [e-mail] replies to the invite we send on your behalf, the e-mail will go directly to you (instead of to invitations@flexvite.com)

[screenshot left to your imagination]

More noticeable button for importing contacts/e-mails

Undeliverable invites

If one of your invites bounces (invalid e-mail, etc), we’ll let you know right away.  This usually happens due to a typo in an e-mail address.

International support

International timezones and characters are now supported.  This was requested by our first overseas users.  You can now use unicode characters in event names, locations, and user passwords.  Also, added a  Sun-Thu timeframe for Israeli users.

More obvious address and map

You can now see the complete address, phone, and map link clearly on the event page.

Simplifying the Event page

Simplified event page: more concise, less wording in title, no repeating information, flag the organizer as such in the guest list, sort them to the top, etc)

Time left to vote countdown

Ask first time users to set their name and photo

Bug fixes:

Many bug fixes…. some notable ones:

-Fix bugs in parsing e-mail addressees with extra spacing in the create screen

- Fix bug with named e-mails not generating named user accounts

The most prominent of which is a 1 minute demo video of Flexvite’s currenty functionality:

Visual Highlighting of the options that are winning

We’ve added a slight highlight for the option or options which are currently leading the pack in votes.

inspired by several large events with slightly overwhelming visual vote distributions

inspired and requested by everyone with an iPhone

Edit comments

Great for correcting typos!  (Not like we ever make any!)

requested by everyone that ever made a typo in a comment

Change your rsvp on the guestlist

Just click the -/+ on the right of your guest list entry to change whether you’re attending

requested by Molly

No more confusing disabled checkboxes in advanced options

Let’s not embarrass ourselves with a screenshot of how bad this was.   Let’s just say it’s better.

requested by Rod

Unquoted e-mail addresses

This has always worked:   “Joe Schmoe <joe@schmoe.com>”

This works now too:   Joe Schmoe <joe@schmoe.com>

requested by Cone

Allow editing event after the day is set

requested by Kathy

No more dupe comments on refreshing event page

requested by Kurt

Tooltips get out of your way and are easier to discover

‘who voted yes/no’ tooltips get out of your way, and are easier to discover (hover anywhere over the entire day instead of just over the tiny smilies)

requested by Matt, Blake

Edit Advanced options before the event finalizes (inspired by realizing sometimes people don’t vote as quickly as you would like)

requested by several peeps

The improvements detailed below were driven based on 14 getsatisfaction requests, 10 pieces of e-mail feedback, many opportunities discovered from interviewing our users directly, and issues we identified in aggregate when analyzing what made event voting and resolution more successful.  We’re extremely excited to share these with you!

What’s New and Noteworthy?

Date Ranges

We’ve added the ability to negotiate within a date range.   Now you can set up an event for the month/week you will be in town, over the holidays, or during the week/month you know you’ll have availability.

requested by Scott and others

No more cancel and resend.   Now you can edit most of the event details (even extending the votable set of days if necessary) after creating it.

requested by Richard, Molly, Jay and others

This business week.

Pick Mon-Fri, and select the ‘this week’ preset to automatically set a date range for the remainder of the week.

requested by Don and others

Give people more time to vote by default -and- change the vote deadline advanced option

The default voting deadline/cutoff is now 3 days instead of 2 days.   We’ve also added an advanced option to allow you to override that cutoff to be anywhere from 1 to 5 days given your knowledge of the event and attendees.

requested by Kathryn and others

Guests can invite other guests advanced option

Need we say more?

requested by Brian and others

Individual reminder feature -and- advanced option to send reminder automatically x days before an event

requested by geek4christ and others

It comes from _you_ — E-mail improvement

instead of

requested by Derek and others

Pick single days

‘Tuesday’ in the next 4 weeks’

requested by Ben and others

Block off days from voting — advanced option to disable days the organizer votes against.

requested by Lisa and others

Set your own title for a location w/an address.  i.e. - Scott’s House’.

requested by Scott and others

Who has seen this?   Who has voted?  Who’s coming?   – guest list improvements

Before a day is chosen . . .

And after a day is chosen . . .

requested by Don and others

Remove an invitee (usually for typos, or out-of-date e-mail addresses)

requested by everyone that ever typed an e-mail incorrectly once

Other:  Numerous bug fixes and other improvements:  Double e-mail bug, IE8 done voting issue (requested by Don),  sort events on account page, various IE compatibility issues, consistency in layout/wording/imagery,  wider hover target for ‘who has voted’ on each day — requested by Kathryn, Andrea.