Top 10 Free Web Resources for Businesses

The Internet is great, isn’t it? You can do so much with it. More importantly, a lot of what you can do is free. Depending on your goals and requirements, some of these tools may require some knowledge of HTML but, for the most part, they do their jobs quite well. Some of the best “freebies”, listed in no particular order, are:

1. Google Docs – Online Office Applications (docs.google.com)

Google Docs is Google’s free web-based office application suite. It lets you create, use, and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms (for surveys and data collections).

2. AVG – Anti-Virus Tool (free.avg.com)

AVG offers a range of anti-virus and internet security software tools and compares favorably with other highly regarded players, like McAfee and Symantec. AVG’s free version is for individual users, which means you can’t technically use it for your business; see AVG’s web site for terms and other details.

3. Mailchimp – Email Marketing (www.mailchimp.com)

You’ve identified potential customers for your business. You also have a number of organizations that you’re doing – or have done – business with. If you need to get in touch with your customers and prospects and track how well your emails are performing, you’ll need email blasting software. Mailchimp does that — and more. An account with up to 500 email addresses is free.

4. WordPress – Blogging (www.wordpress.org)

Social media — in particular, blogging — is the rage not only for individuals, but also for businesses. If you want to blog without going through the hassles of installing software on your own website, go to http://www.wordpress.com. However, if you want to take full charge of the blogging process and make it part of your own website, WordPress, the open source and free blogging tool, is your best friend.

A brief side note about Wordress is warranted  here. Our own Bizmanualz Blog is also powered by WordPress, which is a remarkably easy tool as evidenced by the fact that even my 13 year old son uses it to maintain his Yugioh Cards blog. And he was only 12 when he started.

5. Gmail – (mail.google.com)

Online email that you can access anywhere, at any time — that’s Gmail. You can’t go wrong with Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, either, but I like Gmail, primarily because I have a Google account and I’m using it all day, every day. And, as long as I’m logged into Google, it just makes sense for me to use Gmail. Another Gmail plus, in my estimation — the filter setting and labeling features of Gmail are very intuitive and easy to use.

6. Xobni – Outlook Tool (www.xobni.com)

For those of you drowning in the flood of emails in your Outlook “Inbox”, Xobni works wonders. It not only indexes your emails for really quick searching — it also shows the “conversations” you’ve had with the sender of any email, let’s you view their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles (based on their email addresses), and shows interesting and potentially useful tidbits, like who you respond fastest to, or who sends you the most emails.

7. OpenOffice – Office Productivity Suite (www.openoffice.org)

Need something that pretty much does everyting that Microsoft Office does, only for free? Well, then check out OpenOffice – your new best friend (but don’t tell WordPress). This Open Source office productivity suite has robust word processing, spreadsheet, database, and presentation tools, without the enormous overhead of MS-Office. It has built-in Adobe PDF file export capability, too.

8. FeedBurner – RSS Feed Management (www.feedburner.com)

FeedBurner is another Google offering — one that makes managing and distributing RSS feeds a breeze! FeedBurner is invaluable for promoting your blogs and podcasts. It lets you see how many people subscribe to your feeds and it has a feature that updates readers via email each time you update your company blog.

9. Joomla! – Content Management System (www.joomla.org)

A very powerful Open Source content management system (CMS), Joomla! lets you build websites and web applications. It’s designed to help organizations of all sizes, whether they’re building a website, a news portal, or an e-commerce site.

10. Bizmanualz – Policies and Procedures Samples  (www.bizmanualz.com)

Call it a shameless plug, but the company I work for provides some of the best written — and most complete — policies and procedures manuals, handbooks, and documents. And, we provide free sample procedures from every one of our 12 manuals! If you’re looking to write new – or enhance your existing – policies and procedures, you’ll love what we have to offer.

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In addition to the ten resources listed above, there are many, many more on the web — free and low-cost — that offer tremendous value to businesses of every kind and size. Have you used any of the tools in this list? What’s been your experience – good, bad, or other? What free web tools do you use that aren’t listed here? Which do you find most helpful?

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About Bizmanualz
Bizmanualz has been at the forefront of deploying business best practices since 1995 delivering Policies, Procedures and Forms; quality systems implementation; and strategic business process improvement to help business owners achieve the growth and expansion they envision.

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Originally published in 2010 by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title Top 10 Free Web Resources for Businesses. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted with attribution only. www.bizmanualz.com