Free or low cost options that make you "big"

Project management, shared calendars, contact lists, and other collaborative software can be pricey. Companies such as Zoho, Yugma, and Google aim to provide cost effective solutions. Are they right for your business?

Working with others real-time via the Internet brings remote staff, contractors, and clients into the fold, making it almost like being right there in the office with whoever you're working with. However, until recently, access to software and networking capabilities that make this possible was an expense limited to larger companies.

The new crop of collaboration tools now on the Internet include some low cost offerings, as well as some completely free alternatives, bringing collaboration tools within reach of the smallest businesses, even solo contractors.

Using collaboration tools can save significant amounts of money and increase production. While many business products are fee based, some of the best ones are free. When you're trying to make ends meet as a solo or very small business, you can't easily spring for extras, so free is a very welcome word. While most offer the ability to pay a fee to eliminate ads or gives expanded capabilities, you can get a ton of good work done just by using the basic free versions. Here are some of the free options:

Zoho offers the most complete and comprehensive collection of online office applications and collaboration features. Besides the usual word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation tools, it also includes the ability to create a wiki, whiteboard, planner, Web and voice conferencing, chat, and even database creation and management -- all for free. Zoho also offers, for a fee, a complete customer relationship management (CRM) package as well as projects management software, both of which you can try out on a limited basis free of charge. Zoho keeps the security of their users' data as a top priority, using top level Tier 4 data center for their data, the same as Google and Microsoft.
Google is one of the top collaboration offerings, with it's Google Documents & Spreadsheets. The smooth integration with Google's other applications makes it an attractive choice for small and mid-sized business collaborators.

Another aspect of Internet based collaboration tools is their cross-platform capabilities. Any document you work on in all these collaboration tool sets is saved in their respective company servers, and can be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet. You can start a conference or even a document on one operating system -- say, an Apple computer -- and invite others in with a PC or Linux computer. The document will look the same, with most of the same functionality as commercial software. This is a big consideration.

Here is a short (and far from being complete) list of some of the useful online collaboration tools:

Zoho Office: http://www.zoho.com/

Google Docs: http://docs.google.com/

Microsoft Office Live: http://www.officelive.com/

WebEx’s WebOffice: http://www.weboffice.com/

ThinkFree Office: http://www.thinkfree.com/

Courtesy of Technology.Inc.com