ITDeptTools
Essential Software for IT Departments
Trusted solutions to manage infrastructure, automate tasks, and safeguard your corporate network
Tools for System Administrators
Software
Hypervisors and consoles for running virtual machines — on a desktop, on bare metal, or across a pool of hosts — with an honest note on what each licence allows.
VirtualBox runs VMs on your PC (the base package is free even at work), vSphere Hypervisor is free ESXi for labs and testing, XCP-ng Center manages open-source XCP-ng hosts from Windows, and VMmanager is a KVM control panel sold as shareware.
Firewalls and traffic tools for Windows: control which programs may connect, see where they connect, and limit the ones that take too much.
SimpleWall is a free, open-source outbound firewall built on the Windows Filtering Platform, Comodo Firewall Free adds HIPS and sandboxing, GlassWire shows traffic per application in its free tier, and NetLimiter (shareware) caps bandwidth per program.
Remote desktop and support tools for IT teams: unattended access to your own machines, attended help for users, and remote administration of Windows.
LiteManager Free covers up to 30 computers and allows business use, Remote Utilities Free has one of the broadest free feature sets, while ScreenConnect (self-hosted) and DameWare (Windows administration) are shareware you can evaluate first. Whatever you choose, keep remote-access software patched.
Free tools to see what is on your network, whether it is up, and where latency or packet loss begins.
NetXMS is a full monitoring platform with automatic topology maps, The Dude draws a quick live map (MikroTik has discontinued it), PingPlotter Free shows where along a route a connection degrades, and LANMonitor gives a fast view of the local network without installing anything.
Guides: Free network monitoring tools for Windows · Free bandwidth monitoring and traffic control · NetXMS vs Zabbix
Tools for reading, collecting and watching logs — from a fast log viewer on your desktop to central log management and Windows event monitoring — plus self-hosted web analytics.
LogExpert opens huge log files and tails them live, Graylog collects and searches logs from many machines, EventSentry Light watches Windows event logs and services on a few servers, and Open Web Analytics tracks website visits on your own server.
Guides: Security audit logs: free tools and what to collect · NetXMS vs Zabbix
File managers that fix what Windows Explorer lacks: two panels, tabs, folder comparison, batch renaming and portable use.
Explorer++ is open source and free for any use, FreeCommander XE is a full two-pane manager free for private users, and One Commander offers a modern column view, free for personal use. The classic FreeCommander page is kept for people who still search for the old version.
Guides: Free file managers for Windows · One Commander vs Total Commander
Software for running and keeping your own mail: self-hosted mail servers, a complete mail system on one Ubuntu machine, groupware, and a searchable archive of the mail you already have.
hMailServer is the classic free mail server for Windows, Mail-in-a-Box builds a correctly configured mail system on a dedicated server, MailStore Home archives personal mailboxes, and IceWarp is commercial groupware you can evaluate first (shareware).
Free backup tools for Windows workstations and small servers: scheduled file copies, mirrors, synchronisation and encrypted archives. All four here may be used in a business.
Choose by what you need to protect: SyncBackFree for guided scheduled backups on PCs, Personal Backup for encryption and detailed schedules, FBackup for standard ZIP archives, Iperius Backup Free when the machine is a Windows Server. None of them replaces an image backup of a whole system.
Guides: Off-site backup with free tools · How to verify backups · SyncBackFree vs FreeFileSync
Tools that take repetitive work off your hands — from recording a sequence of clicks to assigning hotkeys and building automation with conditions and image search. Everything here is free to download.
Pick by the job: TinyTask to record and replay a task in seconds, Actiona when the macro needs logic or must survive windows moving, Clavier+ for hotkeys and text you type every day. Project Mercury is listed for reference but has not been updated since 2017.
Guides: Free Windows automation tools · TinyTask alternatives for Windows and Mac
Updates for IT Professionals
