There are numerous project management and process streamline programs available to help you, whether you are a freelancer or entrepreneur or a small business owner, to improve the ways in which you do business and thereby improve your bottom line. Some of these applications are free; some are not. A few are cloud-based. All are easy to use, and all of them are guaranteed to make your life as a businessperson or designer just a little bit easier.
Invoicing and financial apps
Nutcache is a free invoicing program designed to ease the workload placed on small business owners and designers. Not only will taking advantage of the many features Nutcache has to offer make life a little easier for its users with respect to its capabilities, but the application itself is an extremely easy to use tool. The program can serve an unlimited number of users and their clients. It can provide them with estimates as well as invoices and is an excellent tool to use in situations where time tracking or expense tracking are important. Frequent updates keep Nutcache up and running with optimum performance. This app is multi-lingual (10+ languages) and is fully capable of serving multiple users. Nutcache is a free program; you just have to sign up. No limited trial time, no limited tools that you can use, no catch. Make sure you make the most out of it.
Apptivo is an easy to use online invoicing system. It is a useful tool for freelancers and IT professionals in that it enables them to integrate their business processes seamlessly and thereby work a single, standard data model. This simple, online application allows the user to customize and brand their invoices. The many features include the ability to assign tasks and items to an invoice and send them over e-mail where they can be paid through PayPal or Google Checkout. In addition to this product, Apptivo boosts a total of 45 apps from project management to CRM tools. These apps are used by more than 40,000 small businesses in over 40 countries.
When you’re running a small business or freelancing, it’s important to know how much cash you’ve got coming in and going out. Pulse was designed specifically to help businesses that need to monitor and project their income and expenditures on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. We like that Pulse empowers you to make smart business decisions – if you’re not sure whether or not to make a new hire or turn down a project, Pulse lets you game out different scenarios to see the how your decision will impact you financially. Pulse has been around for a while, and they’re in the process of adding new features (like integration with Quickbooks and Xero).Potential users can take advantage of a 30 day free trial.
Wireframing and prototyping tools
Proto.io is a prototyping tool claimed to operate ‘silly-fast’ by its creators. This tool enables users to incorporate a variety of animated screen features like slide, fade, and flow into their program designs. With Proto.io, a fully functional prototype with interactive interfaces can be put together within minutes. This program can be used with all devices, including those that have just come on the market. Whether your goal is to create a smart alarm clock or make an improvement in your car’s navigation system, proto.io will help you reach that goal. The Proto.io tool is constantly updated with new and improved features; practically on a daily basis.
PowerMockup is a PowerPoint add-in that enables the PowerPoint user to turn the application into a wireframing tool. Ideas and designs that are being presented can be iterated and refined on a real-time basis, users and clients are provided with a means of better focusing on functionality and usability of a design or an idea, and not just on the aesthetics. The mockup capabilities provided can allow design errors to be uncovered and dealt with before they are incorporated into the design. Hundreds of stencils and icons are at your fingertips and PowerMockup’s quick search function makes finding what you need an easy task. PowerPoint with PowerMockup is a Powerful tool to have at your disposal.
Collaboration and project management tools
Comindware Tracker enables users to manage personal to-do lists along with team tasks and provides stunning cloud-based environment for efficient team collaboration in context of work. The tool lets you manually create and assign individual tasks when needed, as well as automatically generate workflow tasks with pre-defined due dates and priorities for effective group task management. You can also schedule recurring tasks to be created automatically, or easily reassign tasks when required. File sharing and threaded discussions streamlines scattered communications. Integrated Document Management and File versioning helps you easily find the right version of the same file, so you don’t lose time on working with the wrong one.
Freedcamp is a project management solution that web designers and developers can use easily and improve their workflow. This tool is suited for you if you want to keep the costs down but at the same time want to have the same quality as the most known project management apps.
Their goal is to offer a social and centralized project management system which encompasses task management, time management and social integration which all help businesses to be efficient and productive. Did I mention that all these are free?
If you’ll try Freedcamp today you’ll notice that some of the most interesting things you have there are represented by the fact that you have individual and group task assignment, forum like discussion groups, ability to set deadlines and keep your projects on track, invoice creation and live time tracking, an internal file sharing app, Google Drive integration and many more.
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Time management tools
Toggl is a time-tracking app that makes keeping track of multiple projects a snap. It is delightfully easy to use, and has proven to be popular among small businesses, consultants, and freelancers who need to keep track of the time being spent on various projects that in turn allows them to analyze and assess productivity. Toggl can help in preventing a multiplicity of smaller jobs from consuming more than their share of time or budget. Toggl is cloud-based and can become operational in less than a minute. Here’s a comprehensive review of Toggl for your reference.
An online tracking tool that is difficult or cumbersome to use will soon be discarded in favor of another. Such will not be the case with Timeneye, an application that is user-friendly to the extreme. With Timeneye you can track time spent on projects including billable hours, generate the necessary reports, register entries and more without wasting your own time in the process. In short, Timeneye is an extremely powerful project management tool to have at your disposal.
Email marketing
Omnisend
Built with ecommerce in mind, Omnisend is a powerful tool that empowers retailers with advanced features, in an intuitive package. Using a simple drag and drop visual email creator, you’ll be able to send beautiful email messages in just a few minutes. Easy-to-create automated email and SMS flows and smart segmentation mean that you’ll never be without the perfect message for your customers, no matter where they are in their purchase journey. Use smart pop up and landing page templates for easy email capture and list building. A perfect marriage of sophistication and user-friendliness, Omnisend makes omnichannel marketing automation accessible.
Sendloop is one of the easiest to use, if not the easiest to use e-mail marketing tools for a small business that you will find anywhere. This is an excellent tool for use with an affiliate business, to market your own products or services, or to assist you as a blogger or in your social media endeavors. With this tool at your side you no longer need to be constantly brushing up on your HTML skills; the drag-and-drop e-mail builder will do the heavy lifting for you. You can track your e-mail metrics in real time, add widgets where they will serve you best, and much more.
Mailigen is an easy to use, web-based application that you will find to be a highly useful tool in conducting your e-mail marketing campaigns. While this application is not free, it is nevertheless free to try, and you will quickly discover that its worth will far exceed its cost. With Mailigen, you will have professionally designed e-mail templates at your disposal, and the application will provide in-depth statistical analysis. Mailigen is suitable for use for nearly every type of business requiring the services of an e-mail marketing specialist and it can be integrated into more than 100 CRMs.
Form builders
If the standard forms or surveys you or your company produce and use leave much to be desired, Typeform can be the answer to your prayers. Once unattractive forms become things of beauty, providing a superior readability and ease of use. Typeform can assist you in designing everything from landing pages and event announcements to recruiting forms, brochures and surveys on all devices. Typeform provides unlimited usage at zero cost but you may soon find it to your advantage to upgrade to Typeform PRO, which offers a great deal more in the way of useful form and survey features.
FormAssembly is a form-building tool the web designer will find extremely useful, particularly when there is a need to incorporate HTML into the design. As an entrepreneur or small businessperson, you can use FormAssembly to create order forms, service requests, registration forms, and much more. Customers or potential customers are often turned off when confronted by forms that are ill designed or difficult to fill out this will not the case once a FormAssembly application has been put to use. Template samples are available online for you to review.
File sharing apps
Box is a cloud storage and file syncing service that can be accessed and used on any device. It is a secure system and one that has been scale to meet the needs of small businesses. Box features a powerful set of collaboration features than enable businesses, organizations, and individuals to share and edit documents. Aside from these useful features, Box is predominantly a web-based file storage system, and one that caters mostly to professional users.
While OneHub is only one of a number of secure file sharing services available to businesses it offers more in the way of granular controls in its file-sharing functions that most consumer services of this type. OneHub is a standalone system that enables users to share files in a secure environment, act as administrators, file creators, or simply as file viewers depending upon the manner in which permissions are set. Its capabilities include generating audit trails per user requirements.
Conclusion
If there is a certain amount of redundancy or similarity in how these web apps have been presented it is only because many perform similar functions, and all of them are worthy of your consideration. Those that are not free to use often have a free trial period enabling you to determine if the product is right for you.
