The Best Free (mostly) Online Office Apps For Your Business
If you have started or are about to start your new venture, but don’t want to outlay on expensive desktop office software to run your business, there are plenty of online office applications available to help you manage nearly every aspect of your business operation.
Advantages of Online Office Applications
What are some of the advantages of using an online office application?
- Cost - online applications are generally less expensive, especially upfront.
- Availability - aside from a major server problem, the application and your business data is available from any Internet enabled computer.
- Sharing - many of the applications have the ability to be shared amongst users, which can be a real advantage, without having to go to the expense of running your own business server.
- Ease of use - the learning curve for most online applications is considerably less then the equivalent desktop based application.
- Free - Many of the applications provide a free version, while most also provide a free trial period for you to evaluate other features to see whether it meets your requirements. If you don’t like it, simply choose another application. Likewise, if you are paying a subscription for a particular service and find a better one, just cancel the existing service and make the switch; you have not lost any significant outlay as you would have with a desktop application.
This symbol indicates that the applications is a subscription service, while
This symbol indicates the service is free.
Online Office Suites
Ajax13 - Ajax based office suite, that includes ajaxWrite, ajaxSketch, ajaxXLS, ajaxPresents & ajaxTunes - word processor, spreadsheet, drawing, presentation and music.
GoogleApps - All the usual google reliability and free for upto 2GB of storage, includes Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Start Page, Docs and Spreadsheets, and Page Creator.
Zoho - Zoho provides some of the most complete office applications available, with the company continually adding to their list. Most of the applications are free.
ThinkFree - The online suite of applications looks and behaves just like Microsoft Office and consists of ThinkFree Write (word processing); ThinkFree Calc (spreadsheet); and ThinkFree Show (presentation software) that you can use anytime, anywhere on any connected computer. Includes 1GB of storage.
Zimbra - Create, share, and publish rich Documents online, includes and excellent replacement for Microsoft Outlook.
Zimbra Collaboration Suite features a state-of-the-art Ajax web client. By outpacing traditional desktop application performance and working on the web browser, Zimbra gives you a better messaging and collaboration experience plus zero desktop lock in.
In future articles, I will cover other online tools and applications for managing your business.
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[...] Use free resources - If you use a computer for your business, which you probably will be, at least for quoting, invoicing and such, there are numerous free resources for running your business, such as these examples. [...]