Monday, November 04, 2013

Best Small Business Apps

AceProject
www.aceproject.com
Unlimited users on two projects for free? That’s a good deal, especially with the 250MB of free space and free time-tracking AceProject throws your way.
• Read PCMag’s review of AceProject.

AnyMeeting
anymeeting.com
Set up a free account and you could soon be having Web conferences with anywhere from two to 200 people (ads pay for it). AnyMeeting offers email invites and video broadcasting, and it can display your presentations to others via screen sharing. The audio portion can go VoIP over the Web or via a conference call number AnyMeeting provides. You can also record everything for posterity (or blackmail).
• Read PCMag’s coverage of AnyMeeting.

Asana
asana.com
Individuals will find Asana to be a strong to-do list organizer; teams of up to 30 people will see it as a full project management app (you’ll pay $100/month for over 30). Thoughtful design, fluid interface elements, and room for plenty of users make it a powerful tool.

• Read PCMag’s review of Asana.


Bitrix24 - Best In The Category
www.bitrix24.com
Ready to get your small business on the cloud? A 12-user team gets 5GB of online storage for the cost of nothing at Bitrix24. It’s like a small-biz social network with an activity stream page for all that’s happening within the company. It allows employees to collaborate and share informationmanage tasksmessage or chat in real-time, and schedule things on a shared calendar.
• Read PCMag’s coverage of Bitrix24 (Beta).
• Totally Free!

CanvasDropr
www.canvasdropr.com
This site allows collaboration among a team on just about anything. You create a “meeting room table” by dragging files of almost any time to the interface, which you can then move around and zoom in and out on. Team members (a max of five with the free version) can draw or write notes on the items on the table. You get three projects with 2GB of total storage for free.

Doodle
www.doodle.com
If you need a service just to schedule a meeting, visit Doodle. It will send out the invite with your suggested meeting times and then let others get back to you with a mutually agreeable spot on the calendar.
• Read PCMag’s review of Doodle.

Expensify
www.expensify.com
Expensify lets you track all your spending and receipts via a mobile app. The Web interface syncs with all the entries from the handheld and creates the reports you need to get paid back.

Groopt
www.groopt.com
Think of Groopt as project management for the non-business. With a Facebook-like interface for collaboration, it’s perfect for small groups of any kind, from families to neighbors to students. It has a special emphasis on fraternities and sororities. It supports full file sharing, tracking of what the group has done, communication tools, a group calendar, and even the ability to set up a Web storefront, though setting up a custom site will cost you.

LiveMinutes
liveminutes.com
Most of us want to forget meetings; LiveMinutes wants to make them
memorable. It’s for meeting and working on things simultaneously, in real-time, with up to 20 people. The excellent interface makes it easy to share documents or videos, and annotate them; everything you do is recorded (even the audio) for a report that goes to everyone who attended.
• Totally Free!


Meetings.io
meetings.io
If you can’t get people to sign up for Google+ Hangouts and they won’t install Skype, how can you video chat for a meeting? Flash-based Meetings.io doesn’t require an account (but it helps). Set up a meeting and mail out the invite to up to five attendees with your unique meeting URL. You can even embed a Meeting.io room on your webpage. Once inside, sharing documents and taking notes is part of the interface.
• Totally Free!

Scribblar
www.scribblar.com
With Scribblar, you can jump into quick whiteboarding with multiple users. Sign up, create a “room,” send invites, and you’re off and running. Make it public or private. The board itself has all the usual tools for making objects or text boxes and you can change the properties of all of them after they’re drawn, even if they were drawn by someone else in the room.

Vyew
vyew.com
Vyew lets you create online meeting spaces (up to 20) that are always active for sharing and annotating content. You can video chat with up to 10 people and ads cover your cost.

Wedoist
wedoist.com
The makers of the Todoist online task manager for individuals built Wedoist for team projects. Sign up is fast. So is inviting others to work on projects you create. (You can have a team of three for free.) You share updates in an interface like a Facebook wall, but with the option to upload attachments, add tasks for the group, assign tasks to individuals on the team, and chat with those who are online. It keeps a full, searchable history of what you have accomplished as you go.

WeWorked
weworked.com
Need free online timesheets with up to 25 users accounts for an unlimited number of projects? That’s what WeWorked provides (with some premium extras). For no cost, you can track balances and get approvals and reminders. Plus, it’s all kept secure online for access anywhere.
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