1. Invoice-Generator.com
Invoice-Generator.com is probably one of the fastest and simplest websites for generating invoices there is. One thing that I value a lot is that the main feature is available with no account. You can go to the website right now and just fill out a form and download your pdf.
In order to get the invoice saving feature, you have to create an account. All the invoices are saved in the browsers local storage, so you don't need to worry about data privacy. Bad part about that is if you switch browsers, or you need to check your invoices from another device, you will not be able to access all of your invoices.
Another cool feature they have is that they provide an API endpint for you to generate invoices programatically. This is not a free feature, which makes sense.
Pros of invoice-generator.com
- Very good free tier
- PDF generation is fast
- Your data is secure and not visible to them
Cons of invoice-generator.com
- You can not access your data from other browsers
- Clearing your browser storage will wipe all your data
- Not open source
2. Invoice Generator (invoicegenerator.com)
Invoice Generator is another good option for small to medium businesses. It resembles invoice-generator.com a lot visually. The green style and drop shadows can make it seem like this was made by the same person. What invoicegenerator.com does a tad better is allowing users to add nice digital signatures and there is more details in the form such as adresses, client websites and shipping adresses.
One thing that I am not very fond of is the fact that free tier (no account) only allows invoices up to the amount of 1000$ invoiced. This is a very weird and a non logical constraint since it surely doesn't cost the company (invoicegenerator.com) more if users add more items in the invoice.
Another big con for me is that that if a user wants to download an invoice, the email is required. Something that we and invoice-generator.com understand is not a very polite thing to ask for like that.
The invoices and other settings are stored in the browser local storage up untill the user creates an account. It is not clear how the user data is stored after one creates an account. Their privacy policy only talks about IP tracking and cookies, but nothing is mentioned about sencitive invoicing data.
If the busincess owners have more details on this they can let me know and we will update this list.
All in all a good and solid website packed with usefull features. Visually it is probably the best on this list. Stuff lacking is focus on user privacy and seemingly weird free tier constrains.
Invoice Generator Pros
- Good UI
- A lot of available invoice details
- Good dashboard with nice charts
Invoice Generator Cons
- Unclear data storing policy
- No way to download anonimously
- Seemingly weird and anoying free tier limits
3. Invoice Maker (invoicemaker.com)
Invoice Maker is a very simple to use invoice generating website. The website itself is very nicely designed. Form is simple but good enough for any kind of invoice.
This website offers a very nice value for the free, no account tier. You can create an invoice anonimously and download a pdf, after which they will politely ask for your email address, you can of course reject this offer (invoicegenerator.com could learn something from this).
Invoice maker also has a very bih asortment of free pdf and excel templates that are surelly useful even by themselves.
Generated invoice looks good, except there is a big ugly "Made with Invoice Maker" tag at the bottom. I don't think anyone will see that and head over to the website (maybe I am wrong tho). There is no way to customize the invoice with the accountless tier.
Everything they did good in the accountless tier, they ruined with the free account tier. This one gives you 0 invoices. So while you had no account you had more rights on this website. Totally weird behaviour. Why punish me for wanting to sign up to your service?
All in all a good experience while not signed in, only thing is that there is no way to save your invoices up untill you start to pay some of the subscription plans.
Invoice Maker Pros
- There is a preview you can use before download
- No need for an account to generate an invoice
Invoice Maker Cons
- Made with "Invoice Maker" tag at the bottom of invoices
- Free account tier totally useless
- No invoice saving untill a paid tier
4. Invoice Simple (invoicesimple.com)
Invoice Simple is an option with maybe the largest amount of features on this list. Invoice Simple goes a couple of steps forward and adds estimates, expenses tracker and recurring invoices.
The thing holding this website back in my opinion is this bulky feeling that there is too much unnececary junk there. First off upon going to the page, user is presented with a landing screen with Subscribe Now and Try It Free buttons. This step is not necesary in my opinion. If I got on your page from google, I probably want to just create an invoice. This will make a lot of users leave right then and there.
Then I need to create an account to even get in the app part of the website. I did that but when I clicked on Create Account there was a good 5 seconds delay until I finally got to the desired create new invoice page.
Form itself was not very responsive. Felt like a big task filling it out.
One thing I have to say that is positive is the digital signature on this page actually makes you draw your signature by hand (or mouse more preciselly).
There is this feature that lets you add images with descriptions to the ind of the invoice. I have never had a need to add images in my invoices personally but there are probably people that need that.
The application needs to be tested more as well. For instance when I logged out, It kept me in the app part of the website that is supposed to be for auth users only. Then it says something went wrong. I asume that there is more buggs on the website since I encountered like 3 of them in the first 5 minutes of using it.
Invoice Simple Pros
- Multiple templates to choose from (four of them free)
- Can choose any color for the invoice
- Images in the invoice
- Signature is free hand
Invoice Simple Cons
- Very slow and bulky website
- UX is not good. Confirm modal after every change. Why?
- In order to download a pdf you need a subscription
- A lot of bugs
5. Invoice Fly (invoicefly.com)
As a wise man once said in a French accent "I am not impressed by your performance". This is a good way to describe my experience with Invoice Fly.
So from the get go, upon entering the url, there is a landing page. In my opinion this is never a good thing if we are talking about software that is just supposed to be a simple feature.
When I clicked on "create an invoice" button, they required me to create an account. I did it and created an account using the Google provider. After this I got to the screen that told me to wait "Just a second...". I don't know how many seconds are there in "just one" but I am stuck here for maybe 15 minutes as of writing this blog.
After waiting some more I decide to refresh the page. A couple of minutes later we were in. They should definetely change the "Just a second..." title of the waiting page.
So when I got in the app itself I got presented with a tutorial. The interactive type, one that goes like: "Click on this and then fill this out". I don't think it is a good sign when you create a tutorial for a feature that is a glorified form. Something must be wrong here.
I will be honest, app itselft is not that bad. I don't like how every field I have to fill opens up another modal - totally not nececary. But beggars can't be choosers at this point.
There is this whole video tutorial section with some guy named "Mark" explaining to users how to use the application. I don't really trust this guy, he seems to be in front of a green screen, but anyways these guys are really big on tutorials. The whole website tries to be more than it needs to be in my opinion.
Oh and by the way, downloading the invoice as a pdf is not free.
Feel of the website is very bulky and slow. I have a suspission that they are taking my clients data, asking for non necessary information about them. I would want to know how my invoicing data is stored and other policies about privacy but there is no obvious way of reading the privacy policy.
Invoice Fly Pros
- Nice looking
- A lot of templates it seems
Invoice Fly Cons
- No accountless tier
- Very slow and bulky
- There is a landing page
- Downloading a pdf is not free
- No privacy policy
6. Free Invoice Generator
Free Invoice Generator is a very easy to use, intuitive and fast website. Let me be clear, it is my website and you are reading a blog on it. I will try to be as honest as possible. It is my baby after all.
Good thing about it is that you don't need any accounts to easily create and generate pdf invoices. There is no landing page similarly to other before mentioned good invoice generating websites on this list. The accounts as a feature doesn't exist yet. It is planned to be implemented in some future version if we figure out a way to do it safely and securelly.
Security and data privacy is a big concern for me. This is why you can find the whole source code for Free Invoice Generator right here. The project is open source and will stay open source. Anyone that is wondering if we are secretly stealing your clients data can check the code and see for themselves.
There is currently no way of saving the invoice, planned for the future as well.
Another thing that is not very good about Free Invoice Generator is that currently there is no customization options. There might be some implemented in the near future.
Pros of Free Invoice Generator
- Easy to use
- No account needed
- Open Source
Cons of Free Invoice Generator
- No way of saving the invoices
- No customization
7. Make Invoice App (makeinvoiceapp.com)
Make Invoice App is very different in terms of style from the rest. There is a live preview on the right side that allows the user to see excactly how the invoice will look like.
Refreshing thing about this application is that there are no actual accounts. Everything you need is avaiable right then and there, just by entering the website.
One thing about the design that I don't really like is that the form is not very compact. I needed to scroll down quite a bit down in order to finish it. Then I needed to scroll all the way up in order to actually download the pdf.
I must say that the pdf generating part (the most important feature) does not work well. I entered one line item and a couple of business details and they did not apear on the final pdf. Very sad for a promising application like this one. I hope that the developer will try and fix this soon.
All in all the idea behind this website is pure and good. You can see that the developer wanted to create a good user experience that would solve one problem and solve it good. But of course the most important part of the process is broken as of writing this blog so we cannot put this application any higher than this.
Developer can reach out to me when the bug is fixed, maybe we will put the app higher then.
Pros of Make Invoice App
- Easy to use
- No account needed
- Live invoice preview
Cons of Make Invoice App
- PDF generation is broken
- No way to store the invoices
8. Zoho.com Invoice Generator
As far as invoice generating as a side feature on larger websites goes, this Zoho.com one is pretty good in my opinion.
You can generate an invoice and download it as a pdf easily. You have three templates at your disposal plus a couple of colours you can mix in. There is no obvious way of saving your invoices, you might need to create an account for that but honestly I was too lazy and was afraid of invoking zohos automatic marketing emails.
One thing I will say that I don't like is similar to Invoice Maker, putting your tag on the bottom of the freely generated invoices. Nobody wants to see that, I promise. Especially clients, why would they need to care how I created my invoice? It is not professional.
I like this app, it gets the job done if you can handle the shame of their tag at the bottom of your invoices.
Pros of Zoho.com's Invoice Generator
- Simple to use
- No account needed
- Good customization options
Cons of Zoho.com's Invoice Generator
- Company tag at the bottom of invoices
- No way to save invoices in the accountless tier
9. Any spreadsheet software
This is not a website but I wanted to mention that any type of spreadsheet software will most probably get the job done. Most of these excel like apps can export a part of the spreadsheet as a pdf. I recomend the libre office one since it is totaly free to use offline and is open source.
At the end of the day, a invoice is just a table, spreadsheet software is preety much built for stuff like this.
Pros of spreadsheet software
- Unlimited potential, people write games in excel
- Free software available to use offline
- Totaly private and secure if used offline
Cons of spreadsheet software
- Might be complicated to use for older users
- Might be too big of a hammer for simple invoices
10. Canva, Figma, Adobe Design Software
Last but surely least is all the different "design" software. This category includes all the software that looks and feels like Canva.
You maybe typed into google "generate invoices" or something similar and got a link to one of these apps titled "Invoice Template" or similar.
I don't recommend these types of apps. Figma is owned by Adobe as of writing this blog and I am not sure about canva but there are good reasons to avoid this software at least for tasks such as creating a simple invoice:
- Adobe is notorious for spying on its users, your sensitive data is not safe.
- Canva is privately funded, not safe either. Wouldn't trust them.
- These websites are too junky and heavy for such a trivial task anyway.
Figma will require you to open up an account and Canva will have limited usage accountless. Don't bother with these software in my opinion. If you really want this level of controll, I would go for something like Inkscape. It is open source and runs on your machine.
Closing words
Thanks for reading up untill the end. Hope it was worth it for you and that I helped you pick the right invoicing software for your needs. If you have any feedback or questions feel free to reach out to me at [email protected]