DEV Community: FIRAT

How to turn a photo into a short AI video with Nano Banana Pro and Veo 3.1

FIRAT — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 05:16:55 +0000

The short AI clips that do well on Shorts, Reels and TikTok are usually made in two steps: first a strong still image, then a few seconds of motion. Nano Banana Pro is good at the first step and Veo 3.1 at the second. This guide does both on NanoPhoto.AI, which puts the two models behind one credit balance, and follows the tool names and options in NanoPhoto.AI's own documentation. Credit costs were read on nanophoto.ai on 1 November 2026.

What you need before you start

A NanoPhoto.AI account. Free accounts get a limited usage quota, which is enough to test the workflow once; paid plans start at Basic, $15 a month or $7.50 a month billed yearly, with 150 credits (pricing page, read 31 October 2026).

An idea that fits a few seconds. The clips that travel well show one surprising thing happening: an object turning into something else, an animal doing something human, a material behaving in an impossible way. Write it down in one sentence before you open the tools, because both models work best with a single clear subject.

Step 1: make the still image in Nano Banana Pro

Open Nano Banana Pro from the NanoPhoto.AI menu (the tool lives at /nano-banana-pro). The documentation lists three resolutions, 1K, 2K and 4K, and four aspect ratios: 16:9, 9:16, 4:3 and 3:4. Choose 9:16 if the clip is for Shorts, Reels or TikTok, so you don't have to crop later.

Describe the scene the way you want the first frame of the video to look: the subject, where it is, the light and the camera angle. You can also upload your own photo and ask for an edit, for example placing a product on a kitchen table at sunrise. On 1 November 2026 the tool page showed 4 credits for a Nano Banana Pro image.

Generate two or three versions and keep the one with the cleanest subject and background. Motion models copy every detail of the first frame, including mistakes, so fix extra fingers, warped text or odd edges now rather than after the video is made.

Step 2: get help with the prompt if you are stuck

NanoPhoto.AI has three prompt tools. The Prompt Generator turns a topic into a detailed video prompt. The Prompt Market collects prompts other users shared for Nano Banana Pro. Video Reverse Prompt takes an existing video (a YouTube link, a direct .mp4 link or an uploaded MP4 of up to 30 MB) and breaks each shot down into framing, camera movement, visual description and audio, which you can then adapt.

Reverse Prompt is the most useful of the three for short-form video: find a clip in your niche that did well, see how its shots are described, and write your own version with your own subject. Use it to learn the structure, not to copy someone else's video.

Step 3: animate it with Veo 3.1

Open Veo 3.1 (at /veo-3). The documentation lists three generation types: Text to Video, First & Last Frames, and Reference Video. To animate your still, choose First & Last Frames and upload the Nano Banana Pro image as the first frame. If you also made a second image showing how the scene should end, add it as the last frame; Veo then fills in the motion between the two.

Pick the aspect ratio (16:9 or 9:16) and resolution (720p or 1080p), then describe only the movement: what moves, in which direction, how fast, and what the camera does. Keep it to one action. On 1 November 2026 the tool page showed 5 credits for an 8-second Veo 3.1 clip, and the documentation says Veo 3.1 on NanoPhoto.AI supports videos up to 168 seconds.

If the motion is wrong, change one thing in the prompt at a time, for example the camera move or the speed, so you can see what made the difference.

Step 4: download and post

Download the clip when it is ready. NanoPhoto.AI's pricing page lists a commercial licence from the Pro plan up, so check your plan before using a clip in an ad or for a client.

When you post, use the platform's AI-generated label. YouTube, TikTok and Instagram all ask creators to disclose realistic AI content, and labelled clips are not limited for being AI, while unlabelled ones can be. Add a line in the description saying which tools you used; viewers of this kind of clip often ask how it was made.

What it costs in credits

Using the costs shown on 1 November 2026, one finished clip made from two Nano Banana Pro tries (8 credits) and two Veo 3.1 attempts (10 credits) uses about 18 credits. The Basic plan's 150 monthly credits therefore cover roughly eight such clips a month, and Pro's 800 credits about forty (our calculation; your number of retries will vary).

On 31 October 2026 the plans were Basic $15 a month (150 credits), Pro $39 (800), Max $80 (2,000) and Ultra $888 (25,000), with yearly billing shown at half the monthly price.

Tips that save credits

Fix the still image before you animate it, because a Veo retry costs more than a Nano Banana Pro retry. Describe one subject and one action per clip. Use 720p while you test the motion and switch to 1080p only for the final version, if the credit cost differs on your plan. And use the free quota to test the whole workflow once before you pay.

FAQ

Can I use Nano Banana Pro and Veo 3.1 with one subscription?

Yes, on platforms such as NanoPhoto.AI that sell one credit balance for several models. On 1 November 2026 NanoPhoto.AI's tool pages showed 4 credits for a Nano Banana Pro image and 5 credits for an 8-second Veo 3.1 clip.

How do I turn a still image into a video with Veo 3.1?

Choose the First & Last Frames generation type, upload your image as the first frame (and optionally an end image as the last frame), pick 9:16 or 16:9 and 720p or 1080p, and describe only the movement you want.

How many clips can I make on NanoPhoto.AI's Basic plan?

About eight finished clips a month if each one takes two image tries and two video attempts (about 18 credits each, from 150 monthly credits). This is our calculation from the credit costs shown on 1 November 2026.

Originally published on Kuponaut, where the guide is kept up to date with current credit costs.

How to Build Your First App with Base44: Prompt, Data, Login, Publish (and How Credits Are Counted)

FIRAT — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 23:29:35 +0000

Base44 turns a plain-language description into a working web app with its own database, user login and hosting. The hard part is not getting a first version, which arrives quickly, but shaping it without spending your credits on vague requests. This walkthrough follows the steps and feature names in Base44's official documentation, explains how message credits are counted, and helps you pick a plan. Prices were re-checked on base44.com on 31 October 2026.

Step 1: describe the app, or plan it first

Sign up at base44.com before you start, because Base44 only saves your work to an account. On the home prompt you can describe the app in plain language, or open the mode drop-down, which shows Build by default, and choose Plan. You can also attach files from the + menu: Base44 says images and PDFs inform the visual design, while spreadsheets and CSVs inform the data structure. Other starting points are an existing website URL, a Figma design, or connectors such as Google Workspace, Slack and GitHub.

A useful first prompt names who uses the app, what they need to do and what information it stores. For example: a booking tool where clients pick a time slot, staff confirm bookings and an admin sees all bookings in a table. If details are missing, the AI asks one question at a time, and you can answer, click Skip question, or choose Use a placeholder for things like a business name.

Plan mode is worth using for anything with more than one type of user. The conversation works through intent and goal, audience and roles, core flows and design, then you review the plan and click Start Building. Base44 says plan messages cost a fraction of a credit each, and the first build uses about 1 credit however long your prompt is, so detail at this stage is cheap.

Step 2: review the pages, data and login it built

Watch the app appear in the preview and click through every page before asking for changes. Clicking around in the preview is free. Make a short list of what is wrong or missing so you can fix it in a few precise requests rather than many small ones.

Then open Dashboard and go to Data. Base44 stores information in tables, with fields such as Text, Number, Date/Time, File and Reference. Check that the tables match your idea: a booking app should have something like bookings and clients, with the fields you expect. You can add, edit and delete records here, import a CSV, and export any table as CSV. Each table has read and write permissions under Permissions, which decide who can see or change its data.

Login is built in. Base44 says new apps come with login, register, forgot password and reset password pages. Under Dashboard, Settings, Authentication you can turn on email and password, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple sign-in. App visibility, custom roles and access rules are set in the dashboard too.

Step 3: change it by chat, Discuss or Edit mode

There are three ways to make changes, and they cost different amounts. In Build mode, the default in the AI chat, Base44 acts on your request straight away and charges message credits based on how complex the change is and which model runs it. Discuss mode is for questions and planning: it proposes changes and builds nothing until you click Approve, and Base44 puts it at about 0.3 message credits per message.

Edit mode is switched on with the Edit button at the top of the editor. You click an element and change its colour, text, font, spacing, corners or opacity from a toolbar. Base44 says these manual edits use no credits, so use Edit mode for wording and styling, and save the chat for changes to features, data or logic. AI edits started from Edit mode, through Edit Element, do use message credits.

If the preview shows an error, Resolve with AI does not count towards message credits, according to the chat documentation.

Step 4: test before you publish

Use the preview as an end user would: fill in every form, create a record, then check it appears in Data. Base44's quick start suggests the Act as a user option in the More actions menu to see the app as a specific person or role, test profiles with different roles, and an incognito window to see what a first-time visitor sees. Check the layout on mobile as well as desktop.

On the Builder plan and higher you can switch on Test Data under Settings, Advanced Capabilities. This gives you a separate, empty database, so test bookings or fake users do not mix with real ones. A testing link from the Publish panel lets other people try unpublished changes against test data only.

Step 5: publish and add a custom domain

Click Publish in the top bar. Every app gets a free address ending in .base44.app, and you can change the part before it. The Publish panel also has Share your app, App visibility and a Security status check; Base44 says the security scan warns about risks but does not block publishing. After later edits, click Publish again to push them live.

To use your own address, click Get domain in the Publish panel, or go to Dashboard, Domains, where you can buy a domain through Base44 or connect one you already own. Custom domains need the Starter plan or higher, and the pricing page lists a free domain for one year on Starter, Builder, Pro and Elite.

How credits are used, and how not to waste them

Base44 uses two kinds of credit. Message credits pay for your AI chat requests. Integration credits pay for built-in services your app calls, such as sending email, uploading files or generating images; Base44 says database reads and writes do not use them. Its credits page estimates about 0.5 message credits for a simple text or visual change, about 1 for a small feature, about 2 for a complex module and about 3 to 4 for a large app-wide change. You can see what each message cost under More actions, Credits Used.

On the Free plan you get 25 message credits a month with a limit of 5 per day, and AI features pause when the daily limit is reached. On paid plans credits reset monthly and unused credits expire, and Base44 does not refund credits for AI mistakes.

To get more from them: plan first in Plan or Discuss mode, group related changes into one clear request, make text and colour fixes in Edit mode, and change one feature at a time so a bad result is easy to spot. Choosing a pricier model or Compare models, which builds your message twice, spends credits faster.

Which plan to choose

On 31 October 2026 base44.com listed these prices billed annually: Starter $16 a month with 100 message credits and 2,000 integration credits, Builder $40 with 250 and 10,000, Pro $80 with 500 and 20,000, and Elite $160 with 1,200 and 50,000. Base44 says annual billing saves 20%; monthly billing is $20, $50, $100 and $200. The Free plan has 25 message credits, 100 integration credits and up to 5 apps.

Start on Free to see whether Base44 suits your idea. Starter is the cheapest way to publish on your own domain. Builder adds choosing the AI model, GitHub and the Test Data option, and fits anyone building something they will keep changing. Pro and Elite are for heavy monthly use. Students and educators can apply for discounted pricing.

Base44, Lovable or MeDo?

All three build apps from a prompt. Base44's strength is that the database, login and hosting are part of the platform, which suits non-technical builders, though apps built on its backend are harder to move elsewhere, even with the GitHub option on Builder and higher. Lovable is friendlier to developers, with GitHub sync and code export, and suits people who expect to work on the code later. MeDo, presented as Baidu’s international AI app builder, takes a similar prompt-to-app approach.

Originally published at kuponaut.com, where prices and plan details are kept up to date. Official pricing: base44.com/pricing.

GitHub Copilot Fusion vs Claude Code: which is cheaper per task? (Oct 2026)

FIRAT — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 18:48:17 +0000

On 28 October 2026 GitHub made Copilot Fusion generally available. Instead of choosing a model, you choose an effort level and Copilot decides which models handle each task. GitHub's announcement also quotes a benchmark that puts Fusion Max close to Claude Code at about half the cost per task. This guide separates what is official from what is one source's measurement, and lays out what each option costs today, using GitHub's and Anthropic's own pages read on 28 October 2026.

What Copilot Fusion is and how it routes tasks

GitHub's changelog describes Fusion as a system you pick in the model picker in place of a specific model. For each prompt it decides which models to use and how they work together, and you only set the effort: Fusion Standard prioritises versatile models for everyday coding, Fusion High prioritises capable models for harder tasks, and Fusion Max prioritises the most capable models for the most demanding work.

Behind that sit three workflows. Single: one model solves the task. Cascade: an efficient model drafts, a quality check accepts it or escalates to a stronger model. Critique: one model drafts, another reviews, and the first revises. Fusion only uses models enabled in your plan and your organisation's policies. The Copilot plans page lists models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, Microsoft and others, but GitHub does not publish which ones Fusion picks for a given task.

Fusion works in VS Code, the GitHub Copilot app, Copilot CLI and JetBrains IDEs. GitHub's documentation table shows Fusion Standard on every plan, including Free and Student, while Fusion High and Fusion Max need Pro+, Max, Business or Enterprise.

Cost per task vs quality: what the benchmark says

The headline figure comes from the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index, as reported in GitHub's changelog of 28 October 2026: Copilot Fusion Max scored 60, "within two points" of Claude Code with Opus 5.5 Max. GitHub says it got there at about half the average API cost per task, with about half as many tokens and about 40% less time per task.

Treat this as one source's measurement on one index. GitHub's post gives the score and relative figures, but not a dollar cost per task, the task set or how the Claude Code run was configured, so we do not quote a dollar number. "Half the API cost" compares costs at API rates. Neither a Copilot subscription nor a Claude subscription bills you per task that way, so your real bill depends on your plan and how much you use it. Results on your own repositories can differ.

Pricing: Copilot plans vs Claude Code access

Copilot Fusion has no separate fee. GitHub's documentation says you are billed for each model it uses, at that model's standard rate, out of your GitHub AI Credits. Through 30 November 2026, users on paid Copilot plans get a 30% discount on model costs when they use Fusion. Claude Code, for its part, is included in every paid Claude plan and shares one usage pool with Claude chat; the alternative is pay-as-you-go API billing. We keep these prices, with the date each was read, in our AI tool price index.

Option	Monthly price	What you get for coding	Limits and billing
Copilot Free	$0	Fusion Standard, agent mode, Copilot CLI, 2,000 inline suggestions a month	Limited chat and agent usage
Copilot Pro	$10	$15 of AI Credits ($10 base + $5 flex), Fusion Standard, coding agent, code review	No Fusion High or Max; extra credits can be bought
Copilot Pro+	$39	$70 of AI Credits ($39 base + $31 flex), all Fusion effort levels, delegation to Claude and Codex agents (preview)	Credit use varies by model
Copilot Max	$100	$200 of AI Credits ($100 base + $100 flex), all Fusion effort levels	Flex allotments may change over time
Claude Pro	$20, or $17 a month billed yearly ($200 up front)	Claude Code plus Claude on web, desktop and mobile	One usage pool, 5-hour session limits and weekly limits
Claude Max	From $100	Claude Code with 5x or 20x Pro usage, $100 to $200 a month in API credits	Billed monthly
Claude API	Per token	Opus 5.5: $4 input, $20 output per million tokens; Sonnet 5.5: $2 and $10	You pay for every token you use

Sources: github.com/features/copilot/plans, GitHub Docs "About GitHub Copilot Fusion" and claude.com/pricing, all read on 28 October 2026, USD before tax. Copilot Business, Enterprise and Student prices and the separate Claude Max 20x price were not shown on the pages we read, so they are left out.

Which one to pick: four scenarios

You already pay for Copilot Pro and mostly do everyday edits, tests and small fixes. Try Fusion Standard first. It is on your plan, it draws on the same AI Credits, and the 30% discount until 30 November makes this the cheapest time to see how far $15 of credits goes.

You run long, hard agent tasks and want the setup GitHub benchmarked. Fusion Max needs Copilot Pro+ at $39 or Max at $100. Compare that with Claude Max from $100, which is built around Claude models only. If you mostly want Claude anyway, Pro+ can also hand tasks to Claude's agent (in preview).

You work in the terminal and also use Claude for chat, documents or research. Claude Pro at $20 a month, or $17 billed yearly, covers Claude Code and the rest of Claude from one pool. The trade-off is limits instead of credits: when you hit the 5-hour or weekly limit you wait, upgrade, or turn on usage credits at API rates.

You automate coding in CI or scripts. Pay-as-you-go API pricing is the easiest to predict per task, because you can count tokens. At Opus 5.5 rates, a task that uses 200,000 input tokens and 20,000 output tokens costs about $1.20 (our calculation: 0.2 x $4 + 0.02 x $20). Sonnet 5.5 would halve that.

How to pay less

Use the lowest effort that does the job. Because Fusion bills each model at its own rate, Standard for routine work and Max only for hard problems is the simplest saving.

Measure before you commit. Run a week of real tasks on Fusion during the discount window, note the credits used per task, then compare with what the same work costs you on Claude.

Pay yearly if you keep Claude Pro: $200 up front instead of $240 over twelve monthly payments saves $40 (our calculation). Our AI subscription savings calculator shows what yearly billing saves across your other tools. On the API, prompt caching helps: cached input reads on Opus 5.5 cost $0.20 per million tokens instead of $4.

FAQ

Is Copilot Fusion free?

Fusion is available on every Copilot plan, including Free, where you get the Standard effort level. There is no separate Fusion fee: on paid plans each model it uses is billed at its standard rate from your AI Credits (GitHub Docs, read 28 Oct 2026).

Is Copilot Fusion better than Claude Code?

On the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index, as reported by GitHub, Fusion Max scored 60, two points below Claude Code with Opus 5.5 Max, at about half the API cost per task. That is one benchmark from one source, so test both on your own code.

Does Claude Pro include Claude Code?

Yes. Claude's pricing page says Claude Code is included in all paid plans and shares the same usage limits as the rest of the plan. Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly (read 28 Oct 2026).

How long does the 30% Copilot Fusion discount last?

GitHub's documentation says users on paid Copilot plans get a 30% discount on model costs when using Fusion through 30 November 2026.

Sources (read 28 Oct 2026)

Originally published on Kuponaut, where the prices are kept up to date.

How to give an AI agent live web search and scraping with Dumpling AI (MCP, n8n, credits explained)

FIRAT — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 10:42:16 +0000

An AI agent is only as current as the data it can reach. Dumpling AI puts web scraping, crawling, structured extraction, search and document tools behind one API key, and also exposes them as a hosted MCP server that Claude, Cursor and n8n can call directly. This walkthrough follows Dumpling AI's own documentation, read on 26 October 2026: creating the key, testing a scrape, extracting structured fields, wiring the MCP server into an agent, and working out what each call costs in credits. It ends with the prices shown on the pricing page that day.

When Dumpling AI is the right tool

The use case is an agent or automation that needs fresh information from the open web: reading a product page, pulling the text of an article, collecting a few pages from a documentation site, or turning a page into clean fields such as title and price. Dumpling AI handles the fetching, JavaScript rendering and cleanup, and returns Markdown, HTML, a screenshot or structured JSON.

Its documentation describes a Unified API that gives "one API key and one control surface for multiple managed providers", and names Firecrawl, Serper, Perplexity and DataForSEO among them. If you only scrape one site occasionally, a small script may be enough. Dumpling AI starts to pay off when several tools (scraping, search, document extraction, YouTube transcripts) would otherwise mean several accounts and several bills.

Step 1: create an API key and test in the Playground

Sign in to the dashboard at app.dumplingai.com and open the API Keys page to create a key. Store it like a password: every request sends it as a Bearer token in the Authorization header, together with Content-Type: application/json.

Before wiring anything into an agent, the getting-started page recommends the Direct Endpoint Playground in the app. Try one page you care about there first, so you can see the output format and the credit use before an agent starts making calls on its own.

Step 2: scrape a page into clean Markdown

The first call in the docs is the scrape endpoint, a POST /api/v1/scrape with a url in the body. Three optional settings matter most: format (markdown, html or screenshot; markdown is the default), cleaned (true by default, strips page clutter) and renderJs (true by default, so JavaScript-heavy pages load before they are read). The docs note that turning renderJs off can be faster for simple static pages.

curl -X POST https://app.dumplingai.com/api/v1/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DUMPLING_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://example.com/pricing", "format": "markdown", "cleaned": true}'

The response gives you the page title, the final URL after redirects, the content in the format you asked for and a metadata object. Each scrape costs 10 credits according to the endpoint reference. Responses also carry X-RateLimit-Limit and X-RateLimit-Remaining headers, which are worth logging once an agent runs unattended.

Step 3: crawl a small section of a site

When one page is not enough (a pricing page plus its FAQ, say), the crawl endpoint (/api/v1/crawl) follows links from a starting URL. Its limit defaults to 5 pages and depth to 2, and output can be markdown, text or raw.

Crawling is billed per page: the docs say it "uses 10 credits per crawled page". Keep limit and depth low until you know how many pages a site really has; the scraping tutorial's own advice is to "be deliberate about which pages you fetch to keep usage efficient".

Step 4: extract structured fields instead of raw text

If your agent needs specific values rather than a whole page, the extract endpoint (/api/v1/extract) takes a url and a schema, for example a title as a string and a price as a number, and returns a results object in that shape plus a temporary screenshot URL.

{
  "url": "https://example.com/product/123",
  "schema": {
    "title": "string",
    "price": "number",
    "inStock": "boolean"
  }
}

Extraction is the expensive call: 250 credits per request in the endpoint reference, against 10 for a scrape. Content is capped at 100,000 tokens and the result is a single object, so a list of products needs separate handling. A practical pattern is to scrape first, check the Markdown, and use extract only for the pages where you really need typed fields.

Step 5: connect the MCP server to Claude, Cursor or n8n

Dumpling AI runs a hosted MCP server at mcp.dumplingai.com/mcp, with no installation required. You pass the same API key as an Authorization header with the value Bearer <your key>. The tutorial gives set-up steps for Claude Code (claude mcp add with the http transport), Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json), Cursor (~/.cursor/mcp.json), Windsurf, and VS Code with Copilot.

claude mcp add --transport http dumplingai https://mcp.dumplingai.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $DUMPLING_API_KEY"

In n8n, the documented route is an AI Agent node plus an MCP Client Tool node, with credentials set to Connection Type "HTTP Streamable", Authentication "Header Auth" and Header Name Authorization. Once connected, the agent can call tools such as scrape, crawl, extract, search, search_news, get_youtube_transcript and doc_to_text by itself. That convenience is also the main cost risk, so give the agent a clear instruction about how many pages it may fetch per task.

Step 6: Make.com, HTTP nodes or the v2 Unified API

If you prefer fixed workflows to an agent, the getting-started page says the current Make.com module uses /api/v1 and needs only the API key, and that n8n and other automation tools can call the endpoints through ordinary HTTP nodes.

For technical users there is also an /api/v2 lane. Its run endpoint (POST /api/v2/run) takes a type (capability or endpoint), an id such as google_search or firecrawl.scrape, and an input object, so you can either use a standardised capability or call a specific upstream provider endpoint. The v2 reference we read does not list credit costs per capability, so test a few calls and check the usage and transactions pages in your account before scaling up.

What Dumpling AI costs (read 26 October 2026)

On 26 October 2026 the pricing page showed three plans billed annually, labelled "2 months free": Starter $40 a month (1,200,000 credits a year, 30 requests per minute), Pro $124 a month (4,200,000 credits a year, 60 requests per minute) and Business $249 a month (9,600,000 credits a year, 120 requests per minute). Monthly billing was recorded on 11 October 2026 at $49, $149 and $299. Plan credits do not roll over, and extra credits are sold as auto-recharge packs.

To put the credit figures in context using the endpoint costs above: at 10 credits per scrape, Starter's yearly 1,200,000 credits cover about 120,000 scrapes, or about 4,800 structured extractions at 250 credits each (our calculation).

A budget rule that has worked for us: decide the maximum credits per agent task (say 200, which is 20 scrapes or less than one extraction), put it in the system prompt, and check the transactions page after the first week.

Sources

Dumpling AI: get started (official docs)
Scrape endpoint · Crawl endpoint · Extract endpoint
MCP server set-up · v2 run endpoint
Dumpling AI pricing, read 26 October 2026

Originally published on Kuponaut, where the version with the current partner offer and dated price record lives. Kuponaut is an affiliate of some of the tools it covers; this article contains no affiliate links.

How to set up website live chat and a shared inbox with Chatwoot (inbox, widget, canned replies)

FIRAT — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 09:46:07 +0000

Originally published at kuponaut.com, where prices and plan details are kept up to date.

Chatwoot puts website live chat and your other messaging channels into one shared inbox, where a small team can reply to, assign and resolve conversations. This walkthrough covers the first setup on Chatwoot Cloud: creating the website inbox, installing the widget, adding agents, setting business hours and a pre-chat form, and writing canned responses. The steps and field names come from Chatwoot's own user guide.

When Chatwoot is the right tool

Chatwoot suits a website or app where visitors ask questions and more than one person answers them. Every agent sees the same inbox, along with who is handling what and each contact's history. Website live chat is included on every plan. Paid plans also bring email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, SMS and other channels into the same view.

If you are a solo founder who gets a handful of messages a week, a contact form is probably enough. Chatwoot earns its place once two or more people share the work, once you want canned replies and labels, or when the same customer writes to you on more than one channel. It is also open source, so a team with a server can self-host it for free. This guide covers the hosted Cloud version.

Step 1: start the trial and create the website inbox

Sign up for the 15-day free trial of Chatwoot Cloud. The pricing page doesn't say whether the trial needs a card, so check the signup screen. Once you are in, go to Settings → Inboxes, click Add Inbox and choose the Website channel.

The user guide lists the fields on this screen:

Website name, shown inside your inbox
Website domain, the URL where the widget will live
Widget color
Welcome heading, the greeting visitors see
Welcome tagline, the line under it
Channel greeting message, an optional message sent automatically when a visitor starts a chat

Then click Create Inbox.

Make the heading and tagline specific to your site. "Questions about pricing or setup? Ask here" tells a visitor what the chat is for. "How can we help?" doesn't.

Step 2: add agents to the inbox

Right after you create the inbox, Chatwoot asks you to pick agents from a drop-down and click Add agents. Don't skip this step. According to the user guide, conversations are routed only to agents linked to the inbox, and that includes administrators: if you don't add yourself, you won't see the inbox.

To invite colleagues first, go to Settings → Agents and add each person as an Agent or an Administrator. Then link them on the inbox's Collaborators tab. The same tab has an automatic assignment toggle. When it is on, new conversations are handed straight to the inbox's agents instead of sitting unassigned.

Step 3: install the widget on your site

After the agents step, Chatwoot shows a snippet with a Copy button. Paste it into your site's main template so it loads on every page. In most setups it goes just before the closing body tag. To find it again later, open the website inbox's settings and go to the Configuration tab.

Chatwoot also publishes guides for specific platforms such as Webflow and React Native, plus a website SDK for passing a visitor's name and email from your own app.

To check the install, open your site in a private window. The widget bubble should appear in the color you chose, and a test message should reach your inbox within seconds.

Step 4: business hours, a pre-chat form and CSAT

Go back to the inbox settings.

Business Hours: turn on business availability, then set the hours for each day and your time zone. Add an off-hours message so visitors know when to expect a reply.
Pre Chat Form: ask for a name, email and phone number before the chat starts. For other fields, create a custom attribute first under Settings → Custom Attributes.
Email collect: on by default. Visitors are asked for an email address when a conversation starts, so you can follow up after they leave.
CSAT: sends a short satisfaction survey every time a conversation is resolved. The results show up under Reports.

Click Update after each change.

Step 5: canned responses for your most common questions

Go to Settings → Canned Responses and click Add canned response. Each one needs a Short Code, at least two characters long and unique in the account, plus the Content you want to send. In a conversation, type a slash in the reply box, pick a response or type its short code, and press Enter. The text fills the reply box, and you can still edit it before sending.

Canned responses can include variables for the contact's first name, the agent's name, the conversation ID and your custom attributes. If a value is missing, the placeholder is left blank, so write each sentence to read naturally without it.

Five good first responses:

pricing
where to find a feature
how to cancel
a greeting
a closing line

Step 6: labels and teams

Labels are the easiest way to see what people ask about. Add them from the conversation sidebar, or select several conversations and label them in bulk. Labels also work as filters, and you can save filters as custom views.

Teams, automation rules and voice are Business-plan features, and only administrators can create teams. To set one up:

Go to Settings → Teams and click Create new team.
Give it a name and decide whether to allow auto assign.
Add its agents.

With auto assign on, the team's conversations are spread across its members. With it off, they wait in the team queue until someone picks one up.

What Chatwoot Cloud costs

I read the pricing page on 26 October 2026. Every Cloud plan is priced per agent per month, and no annual prices are shown.

Plan	Price	What you get
Hacker	$0, up to 2 agents	500 conversations a month, live chat only, 30-day data retention
Startups	$19 per agent	Unlimited conversations (fair use), all channels, 300 Captain AI credits, help centre, 1-year retention
Business	$39 per agent	Adds voice, teams and automation rules; 500 Captain credits, 2-year retention
Enterprise	$99 per agent	SSO/SAML, audit logs, 800 Captain credits, 3-year retention

Extra Captain AI credits cost $20 per 1,000 and can't be refunded, so budget for them separately if you plan to use the AI assistant. Open-source projects can apply for the Startups plan for free, and the self-hosted edition costs nothing to run on your own server. In practice, the number of agent seats moves your bill far more than anything else, so count who really needs a seat before you subscribe.

How to make a step-by-step how-to guide from screenshots with Snagit (Step Capture, annotations, sharing)

FIRAT — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 10:30:56 +0000

Originally published at kuponaut.com, where prices and plan details are kept up to date.

A good how-to guide is mostly the right screenshots in the right order, each with one clear instruction. TechSmith Snagit can do much of that work for you: its Step Capture feature takes a screenshot at every click and lays the results out as a numbered document you can edit. This guide covers the capture modes, Step Capture, the annotation and redaction tools, templates and the export options, using the feature names in TechSmith tutorials, and ends with which plan to buy. Prices are from techsmith.com on 15 October 2026.

Step 1: pick the right capture mode

Everything starts in the Snagit Capture window, which has three tabs: All-in-One, Image and Video. Click Capture or press the default shortcut, Print Screen on Windows or Control+Shift+C on a Mac, and orange crosshairs appear. Drag to capture a region, hover over a window and click when the orange dashed border appears, or click Fullscreen. The capture opens in the Snagit editor.

For a long web page or document, use a scrolling capture. On the All-in-One tab, click Capture and move the cursor over the window. If the app supports automatic scrolling, arrows appear, and you click one to capture the vertical area, the horizontal area or the whole page. If no arrows appear, drag to select an area, click Scrolling Capture in the toolbar, scroll yourself and click Done. TechSmith suggests scrolling in one direction only, using the scroll bars rather than the mouse wheel to avoid hover effects, and leaving ads and blank margins out of the selection.

For a short demo, use the Video tab. Pick a region or Fullscreen, then switch Cursor, System Audio, Camera and Microphone on or off in the toolbar. Click Record, and Stop when done (Shift+F10 on Windows, Control+Shift+V on a Mac). The video opens in the editor and can be saved as an MP4. TechSmith warns that recordings longer than an hour can fail, so record short clips.

Step 2: record the process with Step Capture

Before you start, open the app at the point where your reader begins, close unrelated windows and use test data rather than real customer records. Then, in the Capture window, click Presets and the capture button next to Step Capture. You can also choose Steps in the Selection dropdown on the Image tab.

Wait until the Capturing steps message disappears, then work through the task at a normal pace. A small toolbar shows how many steps have been captured, with Pause, Record to resume and Stop. Clicks on the toolbar itself are not captured.

Step Capture records mouse clicks and drags. It does not record typing or keyboard shortcuts, so add those as steps later. There is no step limit, but TechSmith says more than 50 steps on Windows or 100 on a Mac may slow things down, so split a long process into shorter guides.

Step 3: edit the guide in the Snagit editor

When you click Stop, the guide opens in the Snagit editor as a list of sections, one screenshot and numbered step per click. Use the Delete Section icon to remove mistakes, and the Add Section icon to insert a header, a text section, a footer or a new image section with a step number. Section options lets you Duplicate a section or Move Up and Move Down. Steps renumber themselves when you add, delete or reorder them.

Rewrite the generated text so each step is one action, and name buttons exactly as they appear on screen. Add the typing and keyboard steps that Step Capture skipped.

To adjust a screenshot, use the zoom buttons in the corner of its frame, or double-click it to resize and reposition the image inside the frame. To replace one, drag a newer capture from the recent captures tray onto the frame. To change the colour of every step number at once, click a number, choose Select All (Step) in Tool Properties and pick a Quick Style; this needs Snagit for Windows 2026.1.0 or Snagit for Mac 2025.3.0 or later.

Step 4: annotate with arrows, callouts and step numbers

The same tools work on single screenshots and inside a Step Capture guide. If a tool is not visible in the toolbar, look under the More dropdown. The Arrow tool draws from where you start dragging to where you release, so start at the tail. The Callout tool draws a text box with a tail; drag the yellow handle to point the tail at a button. The Shape tool frames an area, the Highlighter marks a rectangle and Magnify enlarges small details.

The Step tool places numbers as you click: 1, 2, 3 and so on. Change the Type dropdown for letters, use Restart Sequence to start again, or right-click a step (Control-click on a Mac) and choose Edit Value to change one label.

Pick one Quick Style for each tool and use it throughout the guide. One arrow or numbered marker per screenshot is usually clearer than several.

Step 5: blur or redact private details

Select the Blur tool and click Smart Redact in the Actions panel. TechSmith lists nine kinds of data it looks for: addresses, credit card numbers, dates, email addresses, faces, IP addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers and URLs. Turn off any category you want to leave visible, choose Blur, Pixelate or Solid shapes in the Type dropdown, then click Done. TechSmith says the image is processed on your computer and not uploaded.

TechSmith warns that some third-party tools can reverse blur and pixelation, so use Solid shapes for anything confidential. Check every screenshot by eye as well, because automatic detection can miss things such as names, account numbers or internal project titles. You can draw extra redactions with the Blur tool by hand.

Finally, flatten the image so redactions cannot be removed: right-click and choose Flatten All, or save a copy as PNG, JPEG, GIF or PDF. An editable SNAGX file still holds the original pixels.

Step 6: use a template for one-page guides

If you already have a handful of screenshots, a template can arrange them on one page. Choose Create, then Image from Template, pick a layout and open Settings to decide whether images should fill each area or fit inside it. Click Create and drag captures from the tray into the image areas. Alternatively, select several captures, right-click and choose Combine in Template, which lets you set the order, captions, title and step numbering before Snagit builds the page.

TechSmith suggests templates for before-and-after comparisons, process overviews and timelines. More layouts come with a separate TechSmith Assets subscription. Save the result as a SNAGX file if you want to edit it later.

Step 7: share or export the guide

Share Link uploads the guide to TechSmith Screencast and copies a link. Viewers do not need a TechSmith account and can ask questions or leave feedback. For a file, choose File, then Save As, and pick PDF, or use File, then Print. The Share dropdown also sends the guide as a PNG image to Microsoft Teams, Slack, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive.

To keep editing in another program, the Share dropdown can send the steps to Microsoft Word (Snagit for Windows 2025.3.0 or Mac 2025.1.0 and later) or PowerPoint (Windows 2026.1.0, Mac 2026.0.0 and later). On a Mac you can also send them to Keynote or Pages, or use File, then Export, to save Markdown or HTML for a help centre. Fonts, text colour and step colour are not kept in these editable exports.

To turn the steps into a video, the Share dropdown offers Camtasia Editor and Camtasia Online, which add animations, transitions and narration.

Which plan, and how it compares with free tools and Camtasia

Since 1 January 2025 TechSmith sells Snagit only as an annual subscription. On 15 October 2026 the Individual plan cost $39 a year and Business $48 per user a year, with volume pricing from 10 users. Students pay $19.99 a year, and verified educators, military and charity workers in the US, UK and Canada get 30% off. Try it first: the 15-day free trial is long enough to build one real guide, and purchases have a 14-day money-back guarantee.

The tools built into your computer, Snipping Tool on Windows and the Screenshot app on a Mac, are free and handle region, window and full-screen screenshots with basic markup. They are enough for the odd screenshot. They do not turn your clicks into a numbered guide, redact data automatically or export steps to Word, which is where the time savings in TechSmith Snagit come from.

TechSmith Camtasia is a full video editor for polished tutorials and courses. Every Camtasia plan now includes Snagit, so if you also need edited video, compare the Camtasia plans before buying Snagit separately. For written guides alone, the Snagit Individual plan is the cheaper choice.

How to let an AI agent log in without giving it your password (1Password for Agents, Oct 2026)

FIRAT — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 00:14:43 +0000

AI agents can now order groceries, book trips and fill in forms for you. To do that, they need to log in to your accounts, and the easy way is to paste your password into the chat. That is also the risky way: the password can end up in chat history, agent memory or logs, and a prompt-injection attack or a breach at the agent provider takes it with them.

On 22 October 2026, 1Password launched 1Password for Agents, a way for supported agents to sign in for you while the password stays in your vault. Here is what it does, what it doesn't, and a checklist I'd follow before approving any agent login.

How it works

The agent asks. At a sign-in page, the agent identifies itself to 1Password with its own digital key and requests the login for that site.
You decide. You see which login it wants and why, and approve or deny on your own device. If several logins match, you pick one.
1Password signs in. 1Password fills the password or one-time code directly into the form ("Agentic Autofill"). The agent only learns that access was granted. It never receives the password and can't browse the rest of your vault.

Which agents support it (as of 24 Oct 2026)

Agent	Made by	Status on 1Password's page
Muse	Meta	Rolling out over the coming days
Grok Bot	SpaceXSI	Rolling out over the coming days
Claude Duet	Anthropic	Coming soon
ChatGPT Work and dots	OpenAI	Coming soon
Townie	Town	Coming soon

1Password says it works only with supported integrations, not every AI tool, and there is a waitlist for other agents.

What it costs

There's no separate price. 1Password says it's included in all Individual and Family plans. On 1Password's pricing page (24 Oct 2026, USD, billed yearly):

Individual: $3.99/month.
Families (up to 5 people): $5.99/month.
New customers buying directly: first-year prices of $2.99 and $4.49.
Free trial: 14 days, no card required.

The catch: it hides the password, not the account

1Password's own FAQ says an agent may be able to see information or take actions inside an account once it's signed in. If you approve a login to your airline account, the agent can do whatever that account allows. Banks are uneasy too: TechCrunch cited an Axios report that US banks are seeing agent activity they can't attribute to the customer.

Checklist before you approve an agent login

Use the narrowest account. Pick one with no saved card, or a low-limit card.
Keep 2FA on. Let the password manager fill the code instead of disabling it.
Approve per task, not forever. Deny anything you didn't ask for.
Keep email and banking out for now. Email can reset every other password.
Check the account afterwards. Look at orders, sent messages and connected apps.

The full guide, with sources and an FAQ, is on Kuponaut: 1Password for Agents: how to let an AI agent log in without giving it your password.

Sources: 1Password press release and product page (22–24 Oct 2026), TechCrunch, MacRumors, 9to5Mac. No affiliate links in this post.

Free plan or free trial? What 257 AI and SaaS tools give you before you pay (October 2026)

FIRAT — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 14:43:56 +0000

"Free" on a pricing page can mean three different things: a plan you can use forever, a trial that turns into a bill after a few days, or a demo that only lets you look. I went through the official pricing pages of 257 AI and SaaS tools for Kuponaut's October 2026 dataset and recorded what each one actually gives you before you pay. Here is what the numbers say, and what to check before you type in a card.

The numbers

112 of 257 tools have a free plan you can keep using without paying.
20 clearly say there is no free plan.
125 don't make it clear on the pricing page, which is a finding in itself.
67 tools offer a free trial. The most common lengths are 7 days (27 tools) and 14 days (23 tools). Only six offer 30 days.
Only 24 of those 67 trials say whether you need a card. 18 say no card, and 6 ask for one.
13 tools offer both a free plan and a trial of a paid tier.

So the first rule is simple: if the page doesn't say whether a card is needed, assume you'll be asked for one.

A free plan is not the same as free

Most free plans are limited in one of five ways. Knowing which one applies tells you quickly whether the plan is useful or just a sample.

1. Watermarks. This is common in video tools.

Opus Clip's free plan gives 60 credits a month, adds a watermark, caps exports at 1080p and deletes exports after three days.
Synthesia allows 10 minutes of video a month, with a watermark and no downloads.
Creatify gives 10 watermarked credits a month.

2. Commercial use.

ElevenLabs gives 10,000 credits a month on the free plan, but without a commercial licence.
Photoroom's free plan is for personal, non-commercial use only.

If you're making something for a client, the free plan may not be enough even if the credits are.

3. Tiny output caps.

Piktochart's free plan allows two PNG downloads in total, not per month.
Zeemo gives 120 credits a year, with captions up to one minute and 720p export.
Murf gives 10 minutes of generation and no downloads.

4. Visibility limits. Weblium's free sites have up to three pages on a subdomain, and they aren't opened to search engine indexing. That's fine for testing a design, but useless for being found on Google.

5. Credits that reset or expire. Daily and weekly allowances push you to spread work out, and unused credits usually don't roll over.

UX Pilot gives 80 credits a day.
InVideo's free credits reset weekly.
HomeDesigns AI refills three free credits every 24 hours.

Some free plans are generous for what they cover:

Omnisend: 500 emails a month to 250 contacts, with no card needed.
Teable: 1,000 rows per space, 100 automation runs and 200 AI credits a month.
LogMeOnce: unlimited passwords on its free tier.

What to check on a free trial

A trial is a countdown, so the details matter more than the headline length.

Card or no card. Shopify runs a 3-day trial with no card, then charges $1 a month for the first three months on most plans. Moz Pro's 7-day trial and DocHub's 30-day trial both ask for a card up front.
What the trial unlocks. PDFelement's 14-day trial watermarks files when you save and blocks conversion and OCR. You're testing the interface, not the full product.
Trial vs money-back guarantee. These are different safety nets. Parallels Desktop has a 14-day free trial of Pro and also a 30-day money-back guarantee on direct purchases. A refund window can matter more than a trial if the tool only proves itself after real use.

A quick checklist before you enter a card

Is there a free plan at all, or only a trial? Look for "free forever" or a $0 column, not just a "Start free" button.
If it's a trial, does the page say "no credit card required"? If it says nothing, plan for a card.
Write down the trial end date and the first charge. Set a reminder two days before.
Check whether free output can be used commercially and whether it carries a watermark.
Check what happens to unused credits and whether exports expire.
Compare the monthly price with the yearly price per month. Many tools discount yearly billing by 20–40%, but you pay it all up front.

The full table

I've put all 112 free plans in one sortable table, with what each free plan includes and what the cheapest paid plan costs. You can filter it by category:

👉 AI tools with a free plan: 112 tools and their limits

Pricing pages change often, so check the current terms before you sign up.

PHP2Shell (CVE-2026-109618/109619): a practical checklist if your sites run PHP

FIRAT — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:27:08 +0000

PHP2Shell is the nickname for two critical PHP flaws disclosed on 21 October 2026: CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619. Together they can let an unauthenticated attacker run code on a server that runs PHP, with a single request. If you run WordPress, WooCommerce, Joomla, Drupal or Magento, or look after client sites that do, this is the checklist I put together from the PHP advisory and the security write-ups published since.

What the bugs are

CVE-2026-109618 (CVSS v4.0 9.2): if PHP runs out of memory while request data is only partly initialised, cleanup later treats that data as valid.
CVE-2026-109619 (CVSS v4.0 9.2): state from one request survives, after its memory is freed, into the next request handled by the same worker (a use-after-free). An earlier circulated score of 10.0 was corrected by the PHP Foundation.

Every web SAPI is in scope: PHP-FPM, Apache mod_php, php-cgi, FrankenPHP and LiteSpeed. mod_php is rated highest risk, because the demonstrated exploit fires before any application code runs.

Timeline: Amazon's honeypots saw an exploitation attempt on 17 October, four days before disclosure. CVE IDs leaked on 20 October, and PHP shipped fixes on 21 October at 14:00 UTC. Amazon now describes exploitation as broad and suggests looking back to 17 October, not the disclosure date. Over 100 "exploit" repos appeared on GitHub on day one, and some of them are themselves malicious.

Fixed versions

Branch	Fixed in
8.5	8.5.12
8.4	8.4.27
8.3	8.3.36
8.2	8.2.35 (security support ends 31 Dec 2026)
7.4 / 8.0 / 8.1	No official release: source backports only, ask your host or vendor
5.4 to 7.3	End of life, no fix

Distro and LTS packages got the patches early (Ubuntu shipped on 21 October), so a distro package can be patched even if its version number looks old. Only your vendor can confirm a backport.

Check what you run (2 minutes)

WordPress: Tools → Site Health → Info → Server shows the PHP version and the SAPI. apache2handler means mod_php, the highest-risk setup.
cPanel: MultiPHP Manager. EasyApache 4 release 25.91 ships ea-php82 8.2.35, ea-php83 8.3.36, ea-php84 8.4.27 and ea-php85 8.5.12.
Anything else: drop a temporary file that prints PHP_VERSION and PHP_SAPI, load it once in a browser, then delete it. The web server's PHP can differ from php -v over SSH.

If you can't patch today

These are stopgaps, not fixes:

; CVE-2026-109618 – set in the main php.ini so apps can't override it
memory_limit = -1
; CVE-2026-109619
session.upload_progress.enabled = 0
; PHP 8.5 only
fatal_error_backtraces = 0

Restart every PHP worker after changing them. Cloudflare has WAF rules for known vectors on all plans, including free, but they only cover traffic that actually goes through Cloudflare. On shared hosting, .htaccess and .user.ini tweaks are not a reliable mitigation, so your host has to patch. The UK NCSC and CERT-EU both advise isolating or taking offline anything that can't be patched or mitigated.

After patching: four things to check

New or changed admin accounts in your CMS.
Recently modified or unknown PHP files, especially in upload directories, and new cron jobs.
Unexpected scripts or redirects on checkout and login pages.
Secrets on the box (DB, payment, mail, cloud keys): rotate them once the patch is confirmed.

How countries reacted

On 21 October several public bodies took sites offline as a precaution, including NCSC-NL and parts of the Dutch government, Finland's state IT provider Valtori, Denmark's Kombit, French prefecture sites and several German federal sites. CERT-EU issued advisory 2026-018. CISA recommended patching, and the NSA advised taking unpatchable systems offline (per Reuters). The full table, with sources, is in the original guide.

The full version, with a "which setup are you?" table for shared hosting, VPS, site builders, static sites and agencies, is on Kuponaut. Sources: Help Net Security, Tenable FAQ, Sansec, Safeguard on shared hosting. This is general information, not advice for your specific setup.

Which AI tools actually have a student discount in 2026? I checked 25 official pricing pages

FIRAT — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:51:52 +0000

Originally published at kuponaut.com, where the table is kept up to date.

If you are a student building something with AI tools, the subscription bill adds up fast: a video editor here, a voice tool there, a writing assistant, a VPN for campus Wi-Fi. Many of these tools advertise a "student discount" somewhere, and many search results promise one that does not exist.

I checked 25 popular AI and creative tools against their own pricing, education and help pages on 21 October 2026. Here is what actually exists, how you verify, and where the honest answer is "no student price, but there is a cheaper way".

The short version

An official student or education price exists for 19 of the 25: Camtasia, Snagit, Descript, ElevenLabs, Filmora, PDFelement, Recoverit, Dr.Fone, UniConverter, EdrawMind, FlexClip, Piktochart, Jenni AI, Murf AI, NordVPN, Parallels Desktop, StrataScratch, Wispr Flow and (through schools only) Pixlr.
It depends: Speechify, Julius AI and Movavi.
No student price: Synthesia, OpusClip and Gamma.

Tools with a real student price

Screen recording and video editing

Camtasia: verified full-time students pay $45 a year through TechSmith's education store, against a $179.88 list price. Student Beans handles verification, and TechSmith limits the student offer to the US, UK and Canada.
Snagit: $19.99 a year for verified full-time students, against $39. Same store, same country limit.
Descript: students, educators and non-profits can subscribe to the EDU/NFP plan at $8 per editor per month billed annually, or $12 monthly.
Filmora: up to 50% off for students verified through Student Beans.
FlexClip: up to 40% off the Plus and Business plans after verifying student or educator status. It cannot be combined with other discounts.
UniConverter: up to 60% off through Student Beans, from $7.99 a month according to Wondershare's education page.

Voice and audio

ElevenLabs: eligible university students can get the Creator plan free for 3 months, plus a free year of ElevenReader Ultra. The offer page lists students aged 18+ in the US, Canada, the EU, Australia and the UK.
Murf AI: 20% off for students, educators and non-profits. Murf issues it as a personal coupon after you email proof from your institutional address.
Wispr Flow: verified students get student pricing, and selected student accounts get an annual plan at $0.

Writing, research and data

Jenni AI: 60% off the annual plan for students verified through Student Beans. It is the only published student rate.
StrataScratch: up to 20% off Premium for verified students and educators. The free plan stays free.
EdrawMind: education plans from $7.95 a month or $49 a year, against a regular $59 a year.
Piktochart: the Education plan is $39.99 per member per year with an educational email.

PDF, files and recovery

PDFelement: Student Beans lists up to 63% off, and Wondershare's education store says up to 79%.
Recoverit: 30% off 1-year licences, from $48.99 a year on Windows.
Dr.Fone: 50% off 1-year toolkit licences; the Full Toolkit is $69.98 a year on Windows.

Mac, privacy and images

Parallels Desktop: 50% off a 1-year subscription for verified students and educators. This is the cheapest legitimate way to run Windows on a Mac as a student.
NordVPN: the student deal is 78% off the 2-year plan plus 3 free months, with an extra 15% for eligible groups through Student Beans.
Pixlr: Pixlr for Education is free, but a teacher or school administrator has to apply. Individual students cannot apply on their own.

"It depends"

Speechify: US K-12 students get Premium free. For university students and anyone outside the US, there was no live student offer on the verification partner's page when I checked.
Julius AI: the official pages disagree. A Julius comparison page describes a 50% academic offer that you request by email before subscribing, but other official pages do not confirm it. Email first and get the answer in writing before you pay.
Movavi: there is a separate academic edition, but for a single student the regular annual plan on sale is often similar in price. Compare both totals.

No student price, but a cheaper way

Synthesia offers no student, education or non-profit discount. Annual billing is the main saving.
OpusClip has no student discount, but annual billing roughly halves the price of Pro.
Gamma has no student-only offer. Its free plan and referral credits are the practical route for occasional decks.

How verification usually works

Most tools use Student Beans or UNiDAYS: you create an account, verify with your student email or a document, and get a link or code that only works for you. A few, like Murf, ask you to email proof directly, and Piktochart works from your educational email address. Some education offers are limited by country (TechSmith's is US, UK and Canada only), so check that before you plan around one.

Two things that save money no matter what

Do not try to stack a student price with a promo code. Education prices are already discounted, and most stores accept one discount per order. Compare the education price with any public offer and take the lower total.
Check the renewal price. Several student deals apply to the first year or the first term only. Put the renewal date in your calendar and decide then.

I keep the full table, with the verification route, the regular price to compare against, and the date each tool was checked, on Kuponaut: student discounts on AI and creative software. Prices and offers change, so treat every number here as true on 21 October 2026 and confirm on the vendor's own page before you pay.

Sources (all read 21 October 2026)

How to make a pitch deck with Gamma, from a one-line prompt to an investor-ready export

FIRAT — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 09:26:56 +0000

Originally published at kuponaut.com, where plan details are kept up to date.

Gamma makes a deck from a prompt, from pasted notes or from a file, and you edit the result in a card-based editor rather than a slide canvas. The quickest route to a pitch deck is to write the story first, let the Agent build a draft, then spend your time on the three or four slides investors actually read. This guide follows the steps and names in Gamma's help centre (read 20 October 2026), and ends with what the free plan's 400 credits do and do not cover.

Step 1: write the deck in ten lines before you open Gamma

Gamma builds around what you give it, so the prompt matters more than the theme. Write one line for each of the usual pitch sections: the problem, your solution, why now, the product, the business model, traction, market size, competition, team and the ask. Keep the numbers in. A traction line that says "412 paying customers, $38k MRR, 11% month-on-month" gives the Agent something to build a chart from; "strong growth" gives it nothing.

If you already have a memo, a Notion page or an older deck, you do not need to retype it. Gamma's help centre lists three ways to start: Generate (a topic or prompt), Paste (your own text, which Gamma formats) and Import (a PowerPoint, a document or a URL). For a pitch deck, Paste with your ten lines is usually the best balance between control and speed; Import is the right choice when a previous deck already has the story and you want it restyled.

Step 2: start with the Agent and pick Plan, Express or Research

On the dashboard, describe the deck in the prompt bar. You can attach files, choose a template or add your own images: click the + button and Upload Files, and Gamma will use your images instead of sourcing its own, which is the right move for product screenshots and team photos.

Then pick a mode. Plan (the default) asks a few questions about your goal, audience and priorities, shows a plan covering the story, the style and the look, and waits for your approval; the help centre is explicit that the Agent will not start building until you approve it. Express skips the questions and the plan review and goes straight to a first draft. Research pulls web sources before writing and only works with Plan. For an investor deck, Plan is worth the extra minute: say the audience is seed investors, that the deck is for a 20-minute meeting, and that every slide needs one headline sentence. You can answer each question with a tappable option, type your own guidance, or choose Decide for me.

If you prefer the older flow, the dashboard still offers Use classic generator, where you choose Generate, Paste or Import directly. Either way the Agent researches, writes, designs and generates images while narrating progress; slides appear in a live grid, and the browser tab shows a yellow badge while it is building and a green check mark when it is done.

Step 3: fix the deck with the Agent, one slide at a time

The first draft is rarely the deck you send. Gamma's own pitch-deck guide describes two ways to change text: click the Agent icon in the top right and describe the change for the whole deck (shorter text, a more formal tone, a different audience), or navigate to one card first and then use the Agent so only that card changes. The help centre notes that targeted revisions leave other slides and your manual edits untouched, and that asking for a restyle keeps your content.

For images, click the sparkle icon on the image and prompt for a different one, or replace it with an upload. For layout, the Smart Layouts button on the right-hand bar previews the same card in different arrangements, which is the fastest way to turn a wall of text into a two-column or a stat block. Typing / opens the slash menu for formatting, embeds and other commands, and pasting a link (a YouTube demo, a Google Sheet, a Loom) embeds it where you paste it.

Spend the editing time where investors look: the problem slide, the traction slide and the ask. Gamma can add a chart or a table if you ask the Agent for one, and the "use this text as-is" instruction in your prompt tells it to build around finished copy rather than rewrite it.

Step 4: set the theme and hide what you do not want investors to see

Theme sits in the upper right of the editor; changing it applies your fonts, colours and backgrounds to every card, and a saved custom theme (title and heading fonts, background images, accent colours, a logo) keeps later decks on brand. Custom branding beyond the standard theme editor is listed under the Pro plan on Gamma's pricing page.

Three sharing settings matter for a pitch deck and all live under Share and its Advanced Settings: Hide "Made by Gamma" (Plus and higher), Require a password to view (Pro and higher, for Gamma docs rather than sites) and Make discoverable on the web (Pro and higher, and for a pitch deck you want this off). Access levels for the link are No access, View, Comment and Edit; workspace settings override the link, so if your workspace is set to "Members can edit", members keep editing even on a view-only link.

Step 5: share a link, export a PPTX, or both

Gamma's own recommendation for pitch decks is to share the live link: click Share in the top right and copy it. Recipients always see the latest version, and there is no file to re-send after an edit. In Present Mode, pressing S switches on spotlight, which highlights one element at a time; it is useful in a live meeting and does nothing in an emailed file.

Investors who ask for a file get one from Share then Export (or the three-dot menu then Export). Formats are PDF, PNG and PowerPoint; the download starts automatically and a copy is emailed to you. In the dialog, choose All cards in the dropdown, otherwise only the current card may export, and leave the Editable tables toggle on if you want the tables to stay editable in PowerPoint. Exports follow Present Mode, not Edit Mode, so check the deck in Present Mode first. There is no Google Slides button: export PPTX and upload it to Google Slides. Word is not supported on any plan.

The "Made by Gamma" badge appears on PDF and PPTX exports made while the workspace is on the Free plan. Upgrading removes it from future exports but not from files you already downloaded, and if a subscription lapses the workspace drops back to Free and new exports carry the badge again. Printing from the browser (Ctrl+P or Cmd+P) while signed in does not add the badge on any plan, which is a workable route to a clean PDF on Free.

Analytics: see which slides investors read

If you share a link rather than a file, Gamma can tell you what happened to it. Open the gamma, click the three-dot menu in the top right and select Analytics: it shows relative time spent per slide, the percentage of views per slide, how far viewers got and unique viewers for the last 30 days. Only collaborators with full access can see it, and the help centre states that full analytics access is only available on the Pro plan or higher.

What the free plan covers, and what it does not

Gamma's Free plan costs nothing and asks for no card. New accounts get 400 credits at signup, and on Free those credits do not refill; once they are gone, you earn more through referrals (200 credits per completed signup, up to a 2,000-credit balance) or upgrade. Credit cost is metered per slide and per image when you create with AI, and editing with the Agent, adding cards with AI and trying new layouts also use credits, with the exact cost depending on the model and the length of the output; image generation shows its credit cost before you confirm. AI errors and clarification questions are not charged.

Free also limits each prompt to 10 slides, which is enough for a short teaser but not for a full 12-to-15-slide investor deck in one pass; you can generate the rest card by card or on a second prompt. Exports work on Free (PDF, PPTX, PNG) but carry the badge, the badge-hiding toggle needs Plus, and password protection and analytics need Pro.

On Gamma's pricing page on 19 October 2026, Plus was $12 a seat a month or $9 a seat a month billed yearly ($108) with 1,000 credits a month and up to 100 slides per prompt; Pro was $25 or $18 billed yearly ($216) with 4,000 credits, premium image models, custom branding, analytics and the API; Ultra was $100 or $90 billed yearly. Unused plan credits roll over up to twice the plan size, and paid plans can buy extra credits that never expire while the plan is active. Refunds close three days after subscribing and only if credit use is under a threshold, so build the deck on the free 400 credits first and upgrade when you need the badge gone or the analytics on.

How to recover deleted or formatted files from a hard drive, USB stick or SD card

FIRAT — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 09:05:30 +0000

Originally published at kuponaut.com, where prices and plan details are kept up to date.

Deleted files are usually still on the drive until something new is written over them, which is why the first few minutes matter more than the software you pick. This guide walks through recovering files from a hard drive, USB stick or SD card with Donemax Data Recovery, using the steps and feature names on donemax.com, and explains when no software can help. Prices are from the Donemax store on 15 October 2026.

Step 1: stop using the drive

When you delete a file or format a drive, the data is not wiped straight away. Donemax explains that a quick format only erases the file system's address table: the files disappear from view and their space is marked as free, but the contents stay on the disk until new data overwrites them. Every file you save, download or copy to that drive can land on top of what you want back.

So stop using it. Do not save, move or create files on the affected drive. If it is an SD card, take it out of the camera and do not take more photos. If it is the drive Windows or macOS runs from, keep use to a minimum: close programs that save in the background and avoid downloading anything to it.

Check the easy places first. Open the Recycle Bin (or the Trash on a Mac) and restore from there if the files are still listed. If you use File History on Windows, Time Machine on a Mac or a cloud service, a backup copy may already exist. Recovery software is for when those are empty.

Step 2: install Donemax on a different drive

Download Donemax Data Recovery from donemax.com on a working computer. Donemax warns that installing recovery software on the drive you are recovering from can overwrite the very files you need, so install it on another partition or an external drive. If the lost files were on your only internal drive, the safest option is to install and run the program on a second computer and connect the problem drive to it.

The Windows installer asks for a language, the licence agreement and an install folder; that folder is where you choose the other drive. The Windows version supports Windows 11, 10, 8/8.1, 7 and Vista plus Windows Server editions, and reads NTFS, ReFS, FAT, exFAT and ext file systems among others. There is a separate Mac version.

Step 3: select the drive and scan

Connect the device and open the program. SD and microSD cards go in a card reader, USB sticks and external drives plug in directly. Select the drive or card where the files were lost. For files deleted from the Recycle Bin, Donemax says to select the drive the files were originally on, not a separate Recycle Bin entry. If an external device does not appear, Donemax's user guide points to fixing recognition first.

Click Scan. Donemax's user guide describes a single Scan button that uses its deep scan mode to look for every recoverable file, and its guide on formatted drives says the software runs a quick scan first and then a deep scan. In practice you do not have to choose between them: start the scan and let it finish. You can pause or stop it, and the Mac version lets you browse files found so far, but Donemax recommends waiting for the full scan, which can take a long time on a large drive or a slow card.

If you need to stop, the user guide describes exporting the scan result to a .dmef file and later choosing Resume Recovery to load it, so you do not have to rescan the drive.

Step 4: preview, then recover to another drive

When the scan ends, use the filters and the preview to check the results before recovering anything. Previewing a photo or document is the quickest way to tell whether a file came back intact or only as a damaged fragment; Donemax lists previews for common formats such as JPG, PNG, TXT, DOCX and PPT.

Select the files you want and click Recover. When asked for a save location, choose a different drive: an external disk, another partition or a second USB stick. Donemax repeats this on several pages, because saving to the original drive can overwrite other deleted files still waiting to be recovered. For SD cards, do not save back to the card.

The program also has a Disk Tools section with a Repair option for file system errors, and access to disk management. Recover your files first and only then repair or reformat the drive, since either step writes to it.

Special cases: formatted SD card, emptied Recycle Bin, Mac

Formatted SD card or USB stick: the steps are the same. A quick format leaves most data in place. A full format overwrites the disk, and Donemax says only some data may come back after one. If Windows asks you to format a card it cannot read, decline; Donemax notes that files on a corrupted card may still be recoverable, and formatting it first makes that harder.

Emptied Recycle Bin or Shift+Delete: select the drive the files were on and scan it. Act soon, since every hour of normal use writes new data to that drive.

Mac: Donemax Data Recovery for Mac supports macOS from 10.11 up to the current release on Apple silicon and Intel Macs, including Macs with the T2 chip. For files emptied from the Trash, Donemax's guide says to check Time Machine first, then select the startup drive in the program, click Scan, preview and recover to another location.

When software cannot help

Recovery software reads what is still on the drive, so it cannot help once the data is gone. Donemax says recovery may fail if the data has been overwritten, if the drive is physically damaged, or if it is encrypted and you do not have the key.

SSDs are the big exception to the advice above. Donemax states that SSDs with TRIM enabled, which covers most modern SSDs, erase deleted data blocks quickly, making recovery from them extremely difficult or impossible. A scan still costs nothing to try, but expect less from an internal SSD than from a hard drive or memory card.

If a drive clicks, grinds, is not detected at all or was dropped, stop running scans on it. Repeated reads can make physical damage worse, and that is a job for a professional recovery lab.

Prices and plans

Donemax Data Recovery for Windows has a free version that scans, previews and recovers up to 200 MB of files. That is enough to bring back a few documents or photos, or to confirm that larger files open properly before you pay. On the Mac, Donemax describes the free download as letting you scan and preview; it does not state a free recovery allowance there.

On 15 October 2026 the Donemax store listed Data Recovery at $89.95 a year or $109.95 lifetime, both covering 2 computers, with Windows and Mac priced the same. An Enterprise lifetime licence for 100 devices was $499. For a one-off emergency the yearly licence works, but it costs only $20 less than lifetime, so lifetime is the better value if you might need it again. After buying, you click Activate in the program and enter the licence key.

Refunds are limited. Donemax's 30-day money-back guarantee covers cases such as duplicate purchases, technical faults support cannot fix, or a licence code not delivered within 24 hours, not a change of mind. That is another reason to scan and preview with the free version first.

Donemax or Recoverit?

Wondershare Recoverit does the same job and is the bigger brand. Recoverit's free version recovers 100 to 500 MB and it offers a 7-day refund window, while Donemax gives 200 MB free on Windows. Both work the same way: scan, preview, then pay only if your files are there.

DEV Community: FIRAT

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