🏆 The Top 50 Developer Tools of 2018

Want to know exactly which tools should be on your radar in 2017? Our 3rd annual StackShare Awards do just that! We’ve analyzed thousands of data points to bring you rankings for the hottest tools, including:

It took a bit of time to comb through the data, but there are some killer insights in here. To piece this list together, we aggregated usage from 40K+ tech stacks, over a million unique visits, and thousands of developer comments, reviews, and votes across all of 2016 (more on methodology below). Through it, we found some of the top tech trends coming into 2017 and what should be on your bucket list. Let’s get started!

Application & Data Tool of the Year

#1: JavaScript The age of JavaScript has come. It's been a few years in the making, but 2016 has solidifed the once what-jQuery-runs-on language into the most popular language today. There's been a huge shift towards front-end frameworks (like React and Angular) combined with Node's scalability on the back-end. Of course, the price of JavaScript comes with the hundreds of dev tools needed to launch a simple "Hello World" app.



» Follow JavaScript | » See recent tech decisions about JavaScript

#2: Bootstrap Coming in at close second is our most-beloved responsive framework. As we speak, the Bootstrap community is hard-at-work on Bootstrap 4, which will boast improved rem support, a move to SASS (see ya, LESS), and even an optional flexbox layout. We're currently in alpha, but keep your eyes peeled in early 2017 for the release!



» Follow Bootstrap | » See recent tech decisions about Bootstrap

#4: Speedy nginx outshined other web serving solutions (sorry Apache) to take the coveted crown. Ngninx has come a long way since release in 2002, especially in the last few years. More

#5: AngularJS For all you front-end ninjas out there, you may be surprised to see AngularJS as the top JavaScript framework—we know we were. Despite strong competition from the React camp, the release of Angular 2 along with cost of switching frameworks kept Angular on top for a second year running.



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The Verdict: 2016 was the year of the front-end, and on the front-end, JavaScript reigns supreme. 6 of the top 10 application & data tools live on the front-end, with 5 of those being JavaScript-based. Data tools didn't quite make the cut, with MySQL sitting at #11 followed by MongoDB and Redis. If you're looking at new tools to consider for 2017, you'd be in good company brushing up on your JavaScript skills by picking up either Angular 2 or React.

Utility Tool of the Year

#1: Google Analytics That's right—the internet's most cherished (and free) analytics platform takes the cake as this year's Utility Tool of the Year. Ever since it launched in 2005, GA has become the most used tool by a significant margin. You just can't beat free when it comes to analytics (though there are tons of great alternatives lower down on the list). As is, GA is one of the first tools to install on any project.



» Follow Google Analytics | » See recent tech decisions about Google Analytics

#2: Postman Have you ever had a massive library of curl commands just to test your API? Trying to piece together multi-line requests with authentication, data, and unique content types? Postman is for you—it makes API development easy (even on a team). With the shift to SPAs and API architectures, Postman has become an API developer's best friend and a strong contender for 2017.



» Follow Postman | » See recent tech decisions about Postman

#4: Transactional email? Check. Since MailChimp acquired Mandrill (and increased prices), SendGrid's become the affordable email option with high deliverability and a simple API. Beyond that, their new Marketing Campaigns allow non-developers to take advantage of the platform without needing a developer. More

#8: Mandrill If you use MailChimp, you probably use Mandrill for your transactional email (or maybe you were lucky enough to get their free plan). Unfortunately, earlier this year MailChimp announced that Mandrill would become a MailChimp add-on, and the standalone service would no longer exist. In order to keep using Mandrill, users need a MailChimp account. While the strong backlash from the Mandrill community hit developers hard, it still sits on our Top 10 for popularity.



» Follow Mandrill | » See recent tech decisions about Mandrill

The Verdict: With 3 of the top 10 Utility tools represented by transactional email services (and AWS SES falling in the Top 20), we're looking at email to continue as a significant medium for developers in 2017. As for other channels, Twilio fell just outside of the Top 10 (#12) for their messaging APIs. And with all these APIs flying around, it's no wonder why Postman's clean UI secured a #2 spot on the list.

DevOps Tool of the Year

#2: Docker 2016 brought containerization into the light, and Docker stepped even further into the spotlight as the go-to tool. As microservices become popular in app architecture, containers are delivering consistent environments from development to production. Docker launched plenty of new tools and services in 2016 to further support their core container technology (one of which even made the Top New Tools list).



» Follow Docker | » See recent tech decisions about Docker

#9: GitLab Amazing to see GitLab make the list, especially since it only launched in 2014 (6 years after GitHub and BitBucket). The interface may feel familiar to GitHub, but the pricing is why developers flock—GitLab has unlimited free public and private repositories, plus it's open source with a public roadmap. Enterprise companies can get LDAP and Active Directory support out of the box.



» Follow GitLab | » See recent tech decisions about GitLab

The Verdict: The rise of git and team collaboration (along with distributed teams) brought version control platforms like GitHub, BitBucket, and GitLab to dominate the rankings. Look for containerization to continue to grow in 2017, with tools like Docker, Vagrant, and Ansible making the Top 20. And developers never forget to show some love for their trusted text editors, where we expect Atom to continue as a winning option in 2017.

Business Tool of the Year

#1: Slack Slack's knock brush sound is unmistakable. Blowing all other team communication solutions out of the water, Slack has achieved nirvana the likes of which haven't been seen since AOL Instant Messenger. With 5.8 million daily active users and a cool $3.8 billion valuation, Slack's revamped clients (including the lightning-quick Slack 2) and the brilliant move to open up the bot ecosystem has made Slack any team's best friend.



» Follow Slack | » See recent tech decisions about Slack

#5: Ever since the old GreenHopper days, JIRA has been a strong force in the Agile development arena. As more and more teams use Agile methodologies in their day-to-day task management, JIRA has set itself up as one of the top choices. More

#6: Need to send a newsletter? MailChimp is what most teams use thanks to its simple interface and pain-free list management system. More

#10: Intercom 2016 saw the mass adoption of chat bubbles for Sales and Marketing teams—those little chat windows that pop up every time you hit the pricing page of every product ever created. Intercom's taken advantage of the trend by making live chat and customer engagement ridiculously easy.



» Follow Intercom | » See recent tech decisions about Intercom

The Verdict: As we move into 2017, communication tools are paramount among teams. 13 of the Top 20 tools are related to communication, either for internal planning, customer engagement, or whatever else might fancy your boat. Task management tools will continue to vie for market share in 2017 as Trello (#3), JIRA (#5), Asana (#11), and Pivotal Tracker (#21) all make a showing in the top rankings.

New Tool of the Year

The Verdict: New tools are easy to build, but hard to grow. These tools have run the gauntlet and are gaining traction fast. As if a harbinger of what's to come, this year's list reinforces the verdict for containerization and microservice trends in 2017. And while open-source tools have always been well-loved by developers, our rankings show 7 of the top 10 tools backed by open-source teams. If you aren't contributing to open-source, you should consider helping out the community (and your portfolio).

Top 10 Stacks

Over 18,000 new stacks joined the StackShare ranks in 2016, ranging from unicorns to small agencies across 149 countries. We originally wanted to give this award to our entire community, but that would turn into a long list. So instead, we picked out the Top 10 stacks (based on favorites & views), most of which you'll surely recognize. If you've ever wondered what tech medium.com runs on, wonder no more!

Top 10 Developers

And where would we be without our lifeblood—our amazing community of developers? Probably crying in a corner somewhere. It doesn't matter where. There wouldn't be anyone to judge us. Fortunately, a few of our users have been extra-awesome this year by contributing votes, one-liners, and reviews (ranked by weighted score). We wanted to give these developers a special shout out for helping strengthen the entire community!

Newsletters You Should Be Reading

If you were paying attention above, you'd remember that email is one of the key channels coming into 2017. Not only that, but a few brave teams have gone through the effort of curating some of the finest newsletters in the world. While we couldn't find a succinct way to rank all the newsletters statistically, these are a few of our favorites from the community that produce amazing content week-in and week-out. If you aren't receiving any of these, you should consider checking them out in 2017.

JavaScript Weekly Working the front-end and need to keep up with the latest javascript news? Look no further—Javascript Weekly has been delivering curated weekly insights for over 6 years. We've had some pretty amazing (and surprisingly smart) talks on our front-end team thanks to these articles. Check it out

The Smashing Newsletter Smashing originally challenged their community to launch this newsletter: it would only be lanched if they hit 10,001 subscribers. Since 2010, they've now grown to 230,000. Geared at developers and designers, their twice-monthly newsletter is packed with useful tips and resources. Get smashing

Hacker News{letter} Who doesn't love HackerNews? Their weekly newsletter brings the best articles on startups, technology, programming, and more to your inbox. Unleash the hacker

Dev Tip Gifs We love this one. If you're the kind of person who learns by seeing, check out Umar Hansa's newsletter. You'll receive a gif each week with a cool developer tip to try out. Useful and funny

Software Lead Weekly Whether you're leading a dev team or considering a move into leadership, this newsletter covers soft topics for those who care about people, culture, and leadership. Learn more

Coming into 2017, macro trends like microservices, JavaScript growth, API development, and containerization have fueled a whole network of tools to consider for your next project. As always, we urge you to consider not just the tool, but the problem that the tool is solving. And 2017 will have plenty of problems to solve, so keep your eyes open for new tools to make your life easier and your projects succeed!

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Methodology: For tool rankings, we built the popularity score from a weighted average of verified stacks, votes, favorites, and pageviews. To account for high variability between different award categories, each score was calculated relative to the median value for each data point within that category (e.g. if the median number of verified stacks for Utility Tools was 1,000 and Tool X had 2,000, that would yield a score of 200%). Beyond that, New Tool rankings were chosen from tools that were created in the StackShare platform in 2016.

Interestingly, we removed Git from the #2 spot (behind GitHub) in the DevOps rankings since the placement didn't make sense—unless people started using SVN with GitHub all of a sudden. We chalk the placement up to selection bias as some developers mention GitHub, but not Git.

If you have any questions about the rankings, drop us a line at team@stackshare.io!