There are a bunch of tools to help you build a digital story. Every day, companies are launching new tools. That’s why we selected the 10 best free digital storytelling tools for journalists in the year 2018. Stop searching for the needle in the haystack: we already did it for you.

Piktochart – infographic tool

So far, the infographic category is the most popular one on our website. Piktochart is your favorite in this category: Piktochart is an awesome infographic tool with more possibilities than any other graphic tool on our Hackastory.tools list. You can customize a ton.

Timeline.JS – timeline tool

The Knight Lab foundation made a bunch of simple and easy to use tools for journalists. Timeline.JS is one of them. This tool is really helpful if your story is chronological. Process dates and events from spreadsheets. Easy to share and embed in your own websites or other mediums.

Juxtapose.JS – photo tool

We simply can’t ignore the cool tools from the Knight Lab. Juxtapose.JS is one of their other tools. The idea is simple and it’s really easy to use. Just compare two pictures interactively: between then and now or two versions of things. You only need two pieces of similar media.

JamSnap – photo tool

This is one of the tools we recently added to our photo tool category. Really easy to use: snap a photo and add sound with JamSnap. Add voice-overs, surround sound or soundtracks.

Adobe Spark – multimedia tool

The multimedia category is also a very popular one on Hackastory.tools. That’s why we couldn’t help but add three of our favorites in this list. One of them is the storytelling tool from Adobe. Spark is a very easy-to-use tool for building a one-pager with a lot of design possibilities. You can also make animated videos and social graphics.

Flourish.Studio – multimedia tool

Flourish.Studio was recently launched and won the 2017 Startup For News award from the Global Editors Network (GEN). It’s an awesome tool that turns your spreadsheets into stunning online charts and maps. Or create an interactive story with Flourish.Studio and combine them!

We created a list with examples from newsrooms who used tools. Check out multiple examples from Flourish.Studio and other tools here. 

Thinglink – multimedia tool

There’s a lot of talk about 360 and virtual reality. Thinglink lets you annotate 360 photos and videos. The free version allows you to add rich media links to your ‘flatties’, your non-360 degree photos and videos. In every production you can add different ‘call-to-action’ buttons to make it interactive.

Story Spheres – Virtual reality tool

Want to do more with 360? Add audio to 360-degree photos to create an interactive experience. Lead your user to the next video to create a multimedia story.

Anchor – audio tool

Podcasts are hot and happening. With Anchor, you can turn audio into a podcast with one simple tap. Call someone, let people call in, and capture the conversation.

Wirewax – video tool

Just upload a video and Wirewax will recognize tags. You decide if you want to activate them or ignore them. Engage your users directly.

More examples

Check out our blog with 10 inspirational digital stories made with tools. We also collected a bunch of interesting links in this spreadsheet.

Need another tool for your digital story?

We made a directory: Hackastory.Tools. It’s a list of our favorite tools in 15 different categories, such as multimedia, social media, infographics and video.

This list is an updated version of our 2016 article.