- Google Apps (standard edition) - Free email and calendaring on your own domain name
- PivotalTracker - Free project management tool perfectly suited for managing development features for a small team
- Dropbox - Free "fileserver" for sharing any files across team. All team members get a "My Dropbox" folder in "My Documents" which is always up-to-date
- SliceHost - Incredibly cheap server-space -- lower-priced plans than Amazon for getting started -- $20/month with no setup cost for server that should handle most consumer internet sites until user traffic really takes off
- Viral Marketing Calculator - Amazing calculator for determining user growth
- Twitter - Every entrepreneur must be on Twitter to stay "plugged in" and to market his/her product
- VNC, Putty, Filezilla - Free tools for screen-sharing, SSH/telnet, and FTP respectively
Addendum: This post from Peldi Guilizzoni on the Balsamiq Company blog significantly extends the list above and provides very useful commentary. It's a must read for startup teams. Thanks to Jeremy Levine for pointing it out!
This is a good start! I'd add a few more that I've used at the startups I've been involved with:
ReplyDelete- Traditional project management: you can use the free version of Basecamp (in small text): http://basecamphq.com/signup
- CRM: you can use the free version of BatchBook: https://signup.batchbook.com/account/signup/3
- Billing: you can use the free version of Freshbooks: https://secure.freshbooks.com/pricing.php
- Group chat/collaboration: you can use the free version of Campfire: http://campfirenow.com/signup
anything for inventory management? sales tracking?
ReplyDeleteHi J, feel free to use our cloud ERP for dead simple inventory management and sales tracking
Deletehttp://megaventory.com
This is a fantastic post of the tools Balsamiq uses to run their company: www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/10/30/tools
ReplyDeleteWe @ www.StarStreetSports.com are using:
Yammer, Google Apps (Lots of Docs, a little Wave), Dropbox, Prefinery to manage our beta and Get Satisfaction for customer feedback
Jeremy: The Balsamiq post is really helpful - their list is much longer and the commentary on each app is rich. I've added an addendum to the post to make sure that people see it. Thanks!!
ReplyDeleteFogBugz has a free versions for a 2-person team - I much prefer it to Pivotal Tracker for managing development.
ReplyDeleteScreencast (TechSmith) and Skitch are great for quickly sharing screenshots with comments.
Last year Glance.net was free for students at HBS - it's been helpful for broadcasting presentations and demos.
Drupal is an open source CMS we use for our website.
Bazaar is an open source version control tool
Also have a look at Psoda Lite (http://www.psoda.com) for free personal timesheets.
ReplyDeleteSuccess of any project is dependent upon how the manager is leading the project. Employing web based project management tools are a way to assist you end-to-end with your project. Plenty of tools are there that enables punctuality of activities with effectiveness like search time widgets, account user number tools, and search groups.
ReplyDeleteThere’s enough to do (for most project managers) just keeping existing projects on track and moving, the additional burden of ongoing process improvement is more often than not pushed to the side since many consider it a nice-to-have/low-priority effort.
ReplyDeleteJust came across this from Quora -
ReplyDeleteGreat post and useful for start-up folks.
- http://www.quora.com/Lean-Startups/What-are-the-free-or-close-to-free-resources-for-entrepreneurs
Thanks for a great resource.
I love dropbox, though the free version only allows 2GB, it's a great app for business. I'm a photographer and I love using it for sharing pictures.
ReplyDeleteGood post but Slicehost isn't exactly free, and is expensive compared to Linode (linode.com), who offer the same thing for about half the price. I used to use Slicehost but moved to Linode about a year ago, and so far I'm very happy.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, thanks! I wrote a similar one a while back, and mentioned Freshbooks for invoicing, Outright for taxes, Billmonk for sharing expenses if you're on a smaller team, and the 37signals tools, all of which have free plans.
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.wizkidsound.com/blog/2009/09/running-a-small-business-free-tools
Heroku.com for Ruby/Rack application hosting. Free until you get traffic or more than 5 MBytes of data. Cheap and on-demand after that.
ReplyDeleteSkype for voice, video conferencing and screen sharing.
Github.com for code hosting. Not free but cheap.
Scriblink.com for shared online white board. Works best if you also have a pen device (e.g. Bamboo).
Paypal.com for payments and automatic activation of software after a payment clears.
It takes a lot of patience in managing a business, whether big or small. With the online project management, you can create a good working relationship with your workmates. And you can create a good working environment.
ReplyDelete