Karan Goyal

Posted on Mar 25

I Built 44 Free Developer Tools — Here's What I Learned

#webdev #shopify #tools #opensource

I'm a Shopify developer (Top Rated Plus on Upwork, $300K+ earned), and over the past year I've been building free tools on my personal site. Not as a business — just to scratch my own itches and help other developers.

Here are the ones getting the most love:

🛍️ Shopify-Specific Tools

Liquid Formatter

Format and beautify Shopify Liquid code. Handles nested loops, complex conditionals, and mixed HTML/Liquid. I built this because VS Code extensions kept breaking on complex templates.

Liquid Analyzer

AI-powered code analysis for Shopify Liquid. Finds performance issues (nested loops, N+1 queries), security problems (missing escape filters), and scores your code 0-100.

Shopify Theme Detector

Enter any Shopify store URL — instantly see which theme they're using, their tech stack, and store details.

Shopify App Icon Generator

Generate properly-sized app icons for Shopify App Store submission. Saves 20 minutes of resizing.

Shopify Featured Image Generator

Create optimized featured images for Shopify blog posts and collections.

Metafield Migration Checker

Check if your Shopify metafields exceed the new 16KB API limit (April 2026 deadline) + get migration code.

Ask Shopify AI

AI chatbot that answers Shopify development questions with code examples. Powered by Shopify's official docs.

🔧 General Developer Tools

JSON Formatter

Pretty-print, minify, and validate JSON. Handles large files without lag.

Regex Tester

Test regex patterns with real-time highlighting. Shows matches, groups, and provides common pattern presets.

Diff Checker

Compare two texts with LCS-based diffing and character-level highlighting.

JWT Decoder

Decode JWT tokens — see header, payload, and verify expiration.

Cron Generator

Visual cron expression builder with 11 presets. Shows next 5 execution times.

UUID Generator

Generate v4 UUIDs in bulk. Copy one or many.

Base64 Encoder/Decoder

Encode/decode Base64. Supports text and files.

URL Encoder/Decoder

Encode/decode URL components. Handles special characters properly.

Timestamp Converter

Convert between Unix timestamps and human-readable dates. Supports multiple formats.

CSS Minifier

Minify CSS with instant size comparison.

HTML Entities

Encode/decode HTML entities. Reference table included.

Hash Generator

Generate MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-512 hashes.

Password Generator

Customizable secure password generation.

Color Picker

Visual color picker with HEX, RGB, HSL conversions.

📝 Text & Content Tools

Markdown Preview

Live markdown preview with syntax highlighting.

Markdown to PDF

Convert markdown to downloadable PDF.

Word Counter

Real-time word/character count, keyword density, reading time.

Text Case Converter

13 case conversions: camelCase, snake_case, kebab-case, Title Case, and more.

CSV ↔ JSON Converter

Bidirectional conversion with custom delimiters.

📤 Utility

Share Files

Upload & share files with password protection, expiry dates, and QR codes.

What I Learned Building These

Tools beat blog posts for traffic. My Liquid Formatter gets steady daily organic visits. Blog posts spike and die.
Client-side processing wins. "Your data never leaves your browser" is a massive trust signal. Every image/text tool runs locally.
Scratch your own itch. Every tool started because I needed it. The Liquid Formatter exists because I was tired of manually indenting complex templates.
Keep it simple. No sign-ups, no paywalls, no tracking. Just open the tool and use it.
Shopify niche tools have almost zero competition. There's no web-based Liquid formatter. No theme detector that works this well. The niche is wide open.

All tools are free, no sign-up required. Built with Next.js + Tailwind CSS.

Site: karangoyal.cc/tools

I'm a Shopify developer by trade — if you work with Shopify or ecommerce, the Shopify-specific tools might save you real time.

What free tools have you built that you wish existed? Always looking for ideas.