A while back, I put together a list of 10 free tools to enable you to build an online business for free. (Actually, it ended up being 21, but who’s counting.)
Anyway, I already have another 10 that I just have to tell you about, that are not only free but actually really very useful.
(Just click on the headings to go straight to these services.)
1: Ning:
If you need a website or have clients that need a website without too many complex services and programming, then it’s hard to go past Ning. It’s free and can be set up in about five minutes. (No, I’m not kidding.) It allows you to implement all sorts of social media tools, connect with friends and business colleagues, upload videos, podcasts, blogs, forums, jobs boards and a whole host of other features too numerous to mention.
It’s also dead easy to use; no complicated signing in to the backend and configuring an admin panel. Once it’s set up you can do it all from the front end.
One of my clients, the Aquaculture Council of Western Australia set up half a dozen different websites within a few days.
If you don’t need the features of a full-blown content management system, then it’s hard to go past Ning.
2: Modxcms:
This was a toss up for number one with Ning, but Ning won out simply because it’s free and so easy. However, if you’re looking for a great CMS, then Modx is well worth a look. It’s free, open source, very well featured and has a very professional backend. It’s easy to install, and once you understand how it works, it’s a dream to manage sites with. It also has a very vibrant support community, and if you have any problems you can usually get answers within a day.
3: MailChimp
There are lots of great Email Campaign and List Managers out there, but MailChimp is currently my favourite. Again, very easy to use and has all the features you would expect from such a service. You even get your first hundred emails per month for free.
4: Piwik, Woopra, Histats and Quantcast.
Four free analytics services.
is cute, quick and easy to use. It’s similar to Google Analytics but without the clunky dashboard.
Woopra looks simply gorgeous and must have one of the best looking dashboards. It provides similar information as the other analytics packages but everything just seems easier to access.
Histats: Another freebie, it provides the standard analytics information in a fairly straightforward interface. Worth a look if you’re tired of Google Analytics.
Quantcast: This is something different. While it collects the usual data, it is more geared towards defining your audience demographics so that you can sell your reach to other advertisers. It’s much more sophisticated than the other free analytics packages, and if your into segmenting and defining your audience then it’s a great service. The Quantcast blurb:
Quantcast is a team of web analytics experts building powerful statistical technology to understand digital media audiences. Quantcast helps publishers of all sizes understand the composition of their audiences and attract higher advertising rates, and helps marketers and agencies find elusive online audiences wherever they might be. This web site allows anyone to view audience reports on millions of digital media properties.
Like almost any online service, you have to experience and play with these tools to see what they can do and offer you. As they’re all free, you have nothing to lose.
5: Clicktales:
Almost another analytics service, Clicktales allows you to record “movies” of what your customers actually do on your site.
Sort of like a visual click analysis.
It also provides heatmaps, link and form analysis enabling you to see just how your customers are interacting on your site.
You can start with 400 page views recorded per month for free. If you want to record more then the price goes up to $99 per month for 20,000 page views to $790 for 240,000 page views.
6: Yahoo Pipes
A feed aggregator that lets you integrate feeds from any site into your own site.
You can combine and customise feeds to display the information you want. See the front page of http://www.aquaculturecouncilwa.com/home for an example.
In the centre section the Latest from ACWA Net and the jobs listings are fed via Yahoo Pipes.
You could use it to display local weather info, stock quotes whatever you like.
Plus you can also put the feed on other people’s sites, if they like it.
7: CiviCRM:
A customer relationship management system. Free and open source, CiviCRM has been hugely popular with the non-profit sector. That doesn’t mean it isn’t well developed.
If you’re looking for a free CRM solution then this is worth checking out.
8: ZoHo:
So is ZoHo. Another free CRM solution. Probably easier to set up than CiviCRM and more tailored to the business and marketing sector.
It starts with a free addition for three users and goes up to $25 a month for a full featured edition for 25 users, which lets face it, is still unbelievable cheap. (Actually there’s a host of other applications on the ZOHO site that you may find useful.)
If you’re into CRM then there’s also Freecrm snd even the global king of CRM solutions, Salesforce has a free edition
9: Scribd:
The PDF viewer you’ve been waiting for. Instead of forcing your customers to download chunky PDFs they can now read them online like a book. See ACWA’s Annual Report page for an example
You can control the size, layout and numerous other display options to give your browsers a much more interactive and enjoyable experience of your documents and brochures.
10: BT Buckets:
For the serious marketers out there, BT Buckets is a site segmentation and behavioural targeting tool. What does that mean? You can get a better understanding of your customers and develop the site content accordingly.
Again, you need to experience to understand it.
11: (Oops, did I pass 10 already?) Photo Dropper
If you find yourself short or in need of just the right image for your blog or website, then Photo Dropper will scour the web for available images you can use. The only requirement is that you include the photographer’s credit. See this blog for examples. Comes as a plugin for WordPress.
12: Mippin, Mowser and Mofuse.
If you haven’t already discovered these, then they turn your blog into a mobile phone (cell phone) ready feed. If you use WordPress for your blog, then you don’t even need to sign in, it’s all done automatically. If someone browses your site with a mobile phone, they will only see the mobile phone version.
OK, that’s actually 19 all up, am I good to you or what? Together with the previous 21, that’s 40 free services that you can use today for free. That should keep you occupied for the rest of the year.
Riders
As many of the products are open source, you may need the help of a technically competent friend to get them installed and set up, particularly CiviCRM and to a lesser extent Modx. Even so any mildly technically accomplished friend should be able to get them set up and running in the time it takes you to make them a cup of tea or coffee and supply a few biscuits.
Others such as Scribd, Mail Chimp, Ning etc just require you to sign up online.
Some such as Woopra are betas.
Any questions, comments or other free suggestions, just fill in the form below.
PS Don’t forget to share this if you think it’s useful.
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Good list – strongly agree with civicrm being in there as it offers lots to commercial clients and of course has a great mailing component along with the event management tools. My own recommendations to clients also extends to the planning and collaboration arena – namely mindmapping (especially FreeMind or MindMeister if you want online sharing), webhuddle (online training that allows all participants to share their screens – not all at once!)and mywebspiration (for more complex flowcharting work).
Pete Davis’s last blog post..CiviCRM 2.2 good news for fundraising and service providers
Pete,
ah yes I forgot about FreeMind, thanks for reminding me.
I’ll definitely check out the others.
At this rate I’ll have a list of about 100 in no time.
Do you get a spam trouble here; I also use Blog Engine, and I was wondering about your experiences; we have produced some good practices and we are looking to share practices with others, please Email me if you are interested.