Resources

Short, practical guides for choosing and switching to free tools, plus links to good documentation elsewhere.

Switching guides

How to switch from Quizlet to AnkiExport your Quizlet sets if the free export still works for your account, or copy terms manually, then import into Anki as a shared deck or CSV.

Stars: how many people have bookmarked the project on GitHub or GitLab. It is a rough signal of popularity, not of quality, and projects hosted on SourceForge, Savannah or Bitbucket have no star count at all.
Last commit: when code was last pushed to the project's repository. A recent date means someone is actively working on it. An old date isn't always bad: some mature tools change slowly.
Licence: the terms you get the software under. Copyleft licences (GPL, AGPL, LGPL, MPL) keep the code open when it's shared; permissive licences (MIT, BSD, Apache) allow almost any use. "Free, proprietary" tools cost nothing but you can't see or change the code, and some limit commercial use.
Not open source: shown when a tool has no public source code, so there is nothing to count.

Start from the job: list the handful of things you actually do in the paid tool every week, and test those first.
Check files in and out: make sure the free tool can open your existing files and export what your colleagues, supervisor or supplier needs.
Check where it runs: Windows, macOS, Linux or the browser, and whether your organisation lets you install it.
Look at activity: the last-commit date and recent releases tell you whether bugs get fixed.
Read the licence: especially for business use: some free proprietary plans are for non-commercial use only.
Trial it on real work: run one real but low-stakes project in both tools and compare the results before switching fully.
Find the help: official documentation, forums and community chat matter more than a feature list when you get stuck.

Participant limits: Live quiz tools often cap free players per game.
Content limits: Flashcard apps may gate Learn/Test modes or image uploads.
Student accounts: Check whether students need emails and what age/consent rules apply in your country.
Export: Confirm you can export questions and scores if you leave.

Privacy: Student data stays on school servers with Moodle, Nextcloud or ClassQuiz.
IT capacity: Self-hosting needs updates, backups and SSO — budget for it.
Hybrid: Use Google Classroom or Teams for organisation and Anki/H5P for learning activities.

Know a guide that should be here? Tell us.