Francesco D'Alessio

Francesco D'Alessio is a UK-based software reviewer, YouTuber and maker best known as the founder of Tool Finder, the productivity software directory and YouTube channel formerly called Keep Productive. He has spent more than a decade testing note-taking, task, calendar and AI apps, and has built a small media business and several apps on top of that audience.

D'Alessio studied at the University of Plymouth and started making YouTube videos about productivity apps while still in college. Tool Finder dates its reviewing work to 2012. Under the Keep Productive name, the channel became one of the best-known places to compare tools such as Notion, Todoist and Evernote, and D'Alessio regularly appeared with software companies, for example in a Todoist Office Hours AMA. The brand was later renamed Tool Finder, and the company behind it is still Keep Productive Ltd.

Today Tool Finder is both a YouTube channel with more than 450,000 subscribers and a website listing over 1,400 tools, with reviews, curated lists, buyer's guides and alternatives pages. The site says it gets more than 2 million visitors a year, its weekly email reaches about 23,000 people, and its social accounts have over 500,000 followers. The business earns from paid tool listings, a Vendor Pro plan that lets software makers control their own pages, labelled sponsorships and consulting on positioning and tool stacks.

D'Alessio also builds his own software. Bento is an iOS focus timer that limits each focus box to three tasks, inspired by Japanese calm, and Tool Finder runs Scrum Planning, a free online planning poker tool for agile teams. He invests in or advises productivity startups such as Mem, Blockit and Phase, and discloses those interests wherever they appear.

D'Alessio is a good example of a niche YouTuber turning a review channel into a directory business and then into a maker of small apps for the same audience.