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Becoming a freelancer might fill some people full of dread, just the idea of the huge initial spend to get the software you need to work puts so many people of becoming a freelancer.

There are many great tools available online or to download for free, and for very little money, So I have listed 15 tools that will allow you to spend very little but get all the tools you need to successfully freelance, whether your a new freelancer of an established one who wants to save some cash.

I have tried to list alternatives for PC, MAC and Linux under each category so most readers can find something compatible, all listed software is free to use, but some have paid versions which allow more features and such.

Image Manipulation

Pixlr

Online photo editor, very flexible and easy to use.

Gimp

Image Manipulation software, lots of features, probably the best open sourced photoshop alternative for PC, Linux and MAC.

Pixelmator

Image Manipulation software for MAC, very flexible software with great features.

Text Editor Software

Text Wrangler

Text editor software for use on MAC.

Notepad ++

Text editor software for use on PC.

jEdit

Another cool notepad type tool for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Web Design Software

Coda

Top MAC web design software that uses the Apple WebKit to enable a safari preview as you work, its also got an array of plugins making it a fantastic tool.

Aptana

Great web dev software for PC, MAC and Linux, it has various plugins including MooTools, YUI, supports PHP, Ruby etc.. and allows you to create AIR Apps.

Invoicing Tools

CurdBee

This is an online invoicing tool, there are free and paid options, the paid options are very modest, but you can always upgrade from the free package.

FreshBooks

Another online invoicing tool, again has a free option, the paid version is a little more expensive than CurdBee, but has a few more features.

The Invoice Machine

Finishing of the online invoicing tools is The Invoice Machine, again this has free and paid options, very pleasing on the eye and is a very easy to use tool.

Local Testing

MAMP

MAMP stands for: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP, it allows you to setup a local testing environment on your MAC. It has a free and paid version.

XAMPP

PC tool that will allow you to setup a local testing ground for LAMP.

FTP Software

FileZilla

Open source FTP software for PC, Linux and MAC, very straightforward to use.

Browser Testing

IETester

PC Software that allows you to test web pages on Internet Explorer 5.5, 6, 7 and 8.

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