Friday, September 27, 2013

Logo Garden $25 Discount Coupon And Review

Crazy Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com

http://logogarden.com ($25-$75 off LogoGarden discount coupon)
When starting a business, there's a whole laundry list of things you'll need to get set up. That said, there's a chance you may think a logo is the least of your concerns, especially if you're starting with very little cash to spare for the “little” things.

Then again, if you're aiming for a brand that stands out from a sea of businesses that offer the same products or services as you do, you have to realize that your business should have a visual identity, an image your potential customers can easily recognize and point back to your brand, something that spells trustworthy, that your business is legitimate and credible, to say the least.

Logo Garden is an online designing platform that aspires to provide affordable and quality logos even to entrepreneurs without designing experience. With Logo Garden, you can conveniently forget about designing professionals who charge by the hundreds or thousands of dollars to capture the identity you're rooting for. In as little as eight minutes and three clicks, you can already have a professional-looking logo design for free.

To start, choose the industry your business falls under. Next, choose a symbol from the tens of thousands of ready-made custom symbols Logo Garden has in its arsenal. You may enter keywords for specific searches, like “butterfly,” “pencil,” or “dog.” Last but not least, choose your symbol's color and text effects, and you're ready to save your logo. You may also create matching business cards and/or a website for that added professional feel.

If DIY isn't your thing, Logo Garden has a team of creative professionals to handle the logo design and customization for you. Aside from logos, websites and business cards, Logo Garden offers premium services such as domain registration, email accounts, web hosting, SEO and other design services.
[Via - Webiot.com

$50 Off iPage Coupon And Review

 Crazy Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com





http://iPage.com ($50 off coupon)

If you're running a website, you know what a reliable web hosting service can do. Aside from ensuring your site is up 24/7, at speeds that doesn't prompt a site user (and potential customer) to click on the back button, never to be seen again, it also guarantees that all your SEO, website design, optimization and marketing efforts are put to good use. (What good is a website if it's always down, unavailable or painfully slow, right?) Needless to say, a reliable web hosting service is critical to your company's online presence, and eventually, success.

Hosting since 1998, iPage is a low-cost web hosting solution that offers unlimited data transfer and hosting space for unlimited domains. It offers round-the-clock customer support and basic marketing and shopping cart tools with PayPal integration. You also get free advertising credits that can be used for Facebook ads, Google AdWords, Bing or Yahoo! and more. Plus, if you don’t already have a domain name, you get a free one for one year.

iPage's drag-and-drop website builder comes free with the iPage Essential package. The site builder is template-based, with blog and gallery setup wizards. You also get unlimited email addresses (yourname@yourdomain.com) that you can check online, with features such as mail forwarding, autoresponders, spam filters, virus checking and POP3/IMAP accounts.

If you think this is all too good to be true, iPage's anytime money-back guarantee should put you at ease – no questions, no time limits. If you choose to get your money back during the first 30 days, iPage refunds your hosting fees in full.

[Via - Webiot.com]

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Sunday, September 22, 2013

Hot Startups - SimpliLearn Review

Crazy Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com

http://simplilearn.com ($50-$100 discount coupon)

If you're planning to move up the career ladder or make a career out of the job you have now, one way to do so is through professional certification. A certification from an accredited certifying body is like a stamp of approval attached to your qualifications. Some people can be qualified in certain fields, but without professional certifications, more often than not, their chances of snagging the careers of their dreams are cut into half.

Think about it from the perspective of a recruiting professional. If, say, an IT company is to hire an SAP consultant today, between two qualified candidates, it is more likely to hire the applicant with SAP certification or equivalent, equivalent being an extensive career overseeing SAP implementations.

But what if getting certified means jumping through hoops given your work schedule? Or the nearest training venue happens to be miles away?

SimpliLearn may just be the answer you're looking for.

Accredited by 10 global bodies with an exam pass rate of over 96.2%, SimpliLearn provides professional certification training globally – at your own pace, at your own place. Depending on a student’s preference, training comes in the form of classroom instruction, online courses, virtual classroom and exam practice tests, all tailored to address the specific needs of working professionals.

Courses currently being offered are Project Management, Agile and Scrum Certification, IT Service Management, Big Data and Cloud Computing, IT Security Management, Finance Management, Quality Management, SAP Certification, CompTIA Certification, Microsoft Certification and Cisco Certification.

SimpliLearn is a risk-free investment offering a 100% money-back guarantee (to dissatisfied students and, in some cases, for rescheduled classes), evidence that it believes in the quality of its courses and timeliness of its classes.

[Via - Webiot.com]

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$50 Off iPage Coupon And Review

Best Free Hosted CRM Software For Small Businesses

Any business comes to a point when keeping a list of clients in an Excel file becomes counterproductive. Getting an expensive CRM system, like SalesForce, which costs $60 per user per month is out of the questions. A number of great free opensource CRM systems are available, but this option is limited only to those who have strong coding skills. Otherwise you'd have to pay $50-$100 an hour to an IT guy to set it up properly for you. A free hosted CRM is the only option available. A hosted CRM, as the name implies, is a customer relationship management system that's being hosted by someone, usually in the cloud. All you have to do is go online, log in and you have access to all your client data. No deployment, no set up, no coding. And advantage of this service being available for free - well, I take it you can figure it out on your own.

Companies offer free online CRM not out of their good will. For them it's a 'recruiting' strategy. Every free online CRM has with some sort of limit - either by the number of users, or by the number of contacts you are allowed to have or some critical function being unavailable in the free plan (usually it's invoices or e-mail integration). Sturgeon's law ("90% of everything is crap") certainly applies to hosted CRMs as well. However, there are some vendors who's free plans are quite generous (may be overly generous as is the case with Bitrix24), so here are three that are in my personal and no doubt biased view are the best free hosted CRM currently available to small business owners.

1. Bitrix24

Free users - 12. Number of contacts in free plan - unlimited. Core CRM functions available for free - most or all (access rights, sales funnel, e-mail from CRM (Send'n'Save), click to call and IP telephony integration, workflow (business processes), invoices, sales reports, file shareing, mobile app - free, fully functional Android and iPhone, automatic lead import from your website - yes. Data import/export - yes (csv, Excel, etc). Not available in free edition - quotes, self-hosted version, extended customization. API available - yes. Social CRM - no.

Other bonus features - activity stream, task management, working with documents, group calendars, basic HRIS (human resources information system).

2. Insightly

Free users - 3. Free contacts - 2500. Core CRM funcations available for free - most (address books, customm role fo contacts, milestones, sales pipeline, email tracking, tags, notifications, following). Workflow integration - limited. Massmail - MailChimp integration (paid). Data import/export - yes. Mobile app - free for Android and iPhone, read only. Not available in free edition - customer support, extended custization, social CRM, full API access. Self-hosted version - not available.

Other bonus features - file sharing, basic task management.

3. AmoCRM

Free users -2. Free contacts - 250. Core CRM functions available for free - most, but no analytics is available in the free editions. Lead management, contact management, access rights, tasks. Mobile app - free Android and iPhone app, almost fully functional. Data import/export - yes. Social CRM - no. Not available in free edition - any analytics.

Other bonus features - none really.

Do you know of other great free hosted CRM that's small business friendly and should be included along these three? Make sure you leave a commend with the URL and which free feature you think is worth talking about.

Source - Free Hosted CRM Software

Saturday, September 21, 2013

iContact discount coupon and review

http://icontact.com

Icontact.com is a website that was made to facilitate the needs of people wishing to get into email marketing. Icontact simply provides the tools that are necessary to initiate an email marketing campaign, track its effectiveness as the emails are sent out to customers and last but not least improve on your campaign so as to attain better results. The degree of ease that you will experience when using icontact may make you believe it is a tool for beginners. However icontact is more than that and will provide more than enough to satisfy even the needs of the more experienced email marketers.

First and foremost icontact simplifies the process of designing your marketing campaign. It's step by step process allows you to utilize plain text, HTML, templates or a web page in the creation of your campaign. Icontact also allows you to create an email that matches your website. This is especially useful if you would like to maintain a certa in theme in your products. Should you make use of a template you can store it for future use and you can also preview your email after you have completed the design process.

Marketing is only useful if it effectively reaches the customers. This is why icontact has one of the best tracking systems that can be used in email marketing. Icontact provides up-to-date reports on all the messages that have been sent or forwarded and also tell you which messages have been delivered and which ones have bounced. There are also many other statistics useful to marketers that icontact provides using tables and charts that can easily be read even by marketing beginners. You can also use icontact to track your marketing campaigns in social media sites such as Facebook and twitter.

Apart from the necessities, icontact also provides various features that can further boost your marketing campaign such as making and sending surveys so you can know customers' reactions to y our products. Icontact also assists in adding forms for signing up on your website and this is useful in gathering recipients for your emails. You can also upload recipients from excel/CSV files. The ability to define various target markets, adding social media features and autoresponders are just a few other features availed by icontact. The spam test feature is also quite useful for checking your email and ensuring it doesn't contain elements of spam/junk mail.

One of the best features of icontact.com is the fact that it is so easy to use. It has multiple features for accomplishing each function so that both those who are versed in marketing and coding and those who are new to it will be comfortable as they make their campaigns. The user interface is quite friendly and well designed so it's easy to navigate the site. For the more experienced individuals there are various features that they can use to further improve their marketing effectiveness such as being ab le to customize the HTML code.

When you run into any problems while using icontact you can sit pretty knowing there is a wide variety of tools at your disposal to help you with anything. From the user manual, articles and the knowledge base to the video tutorials and the webinars (live or recorded), there is plenty of information around the website to get you out of any fix. The step by step instructions will ensure that you always get it right.

When all is said and done, icontact has managed to bring the idea and capabilities of email marketing down to the inexperienced individual while also empowering the experienced ones. For those who make use of it, icontact will prove decisive in taking their marketing efforts a step further.

For iContact coupons, discounts and promotions, follow this link.

[Via - NicheGeek.com]

Resources:

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Need Free Human Resources Information Software (HRIS)?


Free Online Marketing Tools Every Marketer Should Be Using


1.    PickyDomains.com
OK, so we are touting our own horn here. But every marketing director had been in a situation where he or she could not come up with a cool domain, product name or slogan. PickyDomains is the only risk-free branding service that allows you to pay for brand ideas only if you like them enough to use. Shameless self-promotion mode off.

2.    Bitrix24.com
Bitrix24 is an awesome free marketing tool, no matter if you are a CMO or a marketing consultant. By design, it’s a private social network and collaboration suite to be used inside marketing departments or digital agencies, as well as with clients (via extranet). But it can also be used as a free CRM or a free online project management solution. You pay only if you have more than 12 people in your marketing department, which covers 95% of companies and agencies I know of.

3.    Trello.com
Trello is a free idea tracker and To Do list. While not as powerful as Bitrix24 (and lacking Android app), it’s a great task manager for small organizations that don’t like complex project management solutions, like BaseCamp. The paid version of Trello ($25/mo) supports Google Apps integration. If you like Kanban, you’ll love Trello.

4.    Hootsuite.com
If you work with social media a lot, having Hootsuite is a must. Hootsuite allows you to automate (schedule) posting to social networks (Twitter, Facebook, G+, LinkedIn), get notified when your company or product is mentioned and ‘listen’ to certain conversations that you or your company might be interested in. A classic example of using Hootsuite would for a CRM consulting company to get notifications each time someone in LinkedIn or Twitter asks about which CRM is best for small business. (We use it to listen to conversations about naming and branding). Hootsuite is free when used solo with 5 social media profiles.

5.    HelpAReporter.com
HARO is probably the best free PR tool out there. After all, where else are you going to find journalists from mainstream media asking YOU to give them information. Help A Reporter Out is designed to enable journalists to connect with people who have expertise or experience in particular issues, so that journalists can obtain tips, advice, feedback and quotes for stories they are covering. All yo uhave to do is to wait for an appropriate journalist request.

Source - Free Marketing Tools For Marketers.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Hot Startups - Front Desk Review

Hot Tips - The Best Free Enterprise Social Network (Probably) Don't Know About.
https://frontdeskhq.com/

There's this new startup, called Front Desk, that aspires to become the next Zillow or Expedia. In today's technologically-driven world, as long as you possess guts, talent and a winning strategy, that doesn't come as a surprise, usually. But what's interesting is that this Zillow/Expedia wannabe has very little to do with vacations, airline tickets, apartments and real estate. As a matter of fact, Front Desk is a software-as-a-service platform that takes care of customer signups, scheduling and billing for companies engaged in personal services (also, see Bitrix24 review and TribeHR review for more SaaS startups).

Before Front Desk, Jon Zimmerman and Nicki Violetti managed Crossfit gyms. Because spreadsheets, paper and pencil, some clunky outdated desktop software, and even Square, weren't enough to take care of their back-office needs, they decided to create their own system. Together with Zimmerman's former Expedia colleagues, Front Desk came to be.

Front Desk has a diverse range of paying customers, from mom-and-pops to larger entities like the chain of gyms operated in the Midwest by football quarterback Peyton Manning. Front Desk also has raised $3.2 million in seed money via Rich Barton, Expedia’s founder, Lloyd Frink who co-founded Zillow with Rich Barton, and Second Avenue Partners, a venture capitalist based in Seattle. The funding, according to Zimmerman, will be used to beef up Front Desk’s engineering and account management teams, as well as to start investing in marketing.

Officially launched in March, Front Desk still has ways to go in terms of on-boarding new customers, which Zimmerman says had been intentional because they wanted to do everything right.

Front Desk is available in six languages and can be used through a browser or as a mobile app. Instead of charging its customers per person, customers pay Front Desk 1% of processed transactions up to $10,000. After which, for every $1,000, they get charged $2.

Zimmerman has big expectations for Front Desk. Yes, you guessed right – to become as huge as Zillow and Expedia.

[Via - Unusual Business Ideas Blog]

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Sunday, September 08, 2013

Obamacare Startups - Q4intelligence

Crazy Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com

http://www.q4intel.com/
For Kevin Trokey, who spent 17 years as an insurance broker, Obamacare has been a double-edged sword.

The new law, which requires states to launch their own insurance exchanges on which businesses can directly buy insurance or enroll in public programs, leaves little room for traditional insurance brokers.

But there have been new opportunities created as well. In April 2009, Trokey launched consulting firm Q4intelligence, which helps insurance brokers diversify their offerings so they aren't solely dependent on health care.

The St. Louis-based firm teaches brokers to advise clients on such issues as corporate communications, employee retention and job performance.

So far, the firm has signed on 35 insurance agencies nationwide and is on track to generate nearly $1 million in revenue in 2013.

"While the Affordable Care Act threatens the future of independent insurance brokers, it also gave me an opportunity to create a niche business and become very successful," said Trokey.

[Via - CNNMoney.Com]

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Startup A Day - FreeshBennies Review

Crazy Startup Of The Day - PickyDomains.com

http://www.freshbenies.com/
Fears that out-of-pocket costs would skyrocket as a result of Obamacare had Reid Rasmussen looking for ways to offer consumers discounts on their health care needs.

The former insurance broker came up with Freshbenies, a subscription service that sells non-insurance concierge-like medical services. For $10 a month per family, Freshbenies gives members access to six bundled services, including 24/7 access to a doctor on the phone, discounts on dental, vision care and prescription medication, and access to medical billing specialists.

"If you're uninsured, the benefits of our service are obvious," said Rasmussen. "If you already have insurance, our 24/7 call-a-doctor service can still still save you time and money because it doesn't require an additional co-pay."

Launched in October 2009, the service has 20,000 households as members. That quantity allows for bulk discounts, which helps keep Freshbenies' costs low. The startup generates $2.4 million in annual gross revenue.

[Via - CNNMoney.Com]

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Jive Software Alternatives - Bitrix24 (Free)

I came to believe that Bitrix24 and not Yammer or Chatter is the best Jive Software alternative with a bit IF - if, being that your company is under 1000 employees and you need ESN not just as 'corporate Facebook', but as a social productivity environtment (sounds confusing, but I will explain).

Before I get to explain my reasoning, let's start with same basics, there are actually two different enterprise social networks called Bitrix24. One is 100% free(mium) hosted enterprise social network that comes with free CRM, free PM and free DocManagement, available at http://bitrix24.com. It also comes with some HR and Enterprise tools in the paid plans. Paid plans are $99 and $199 a month with UNLIMITED users. Yes, this is not a typo - you can have 500 employees and it'll cost you only $199 a month (until you run out of 100 GB of disc space, after that you'll have to pay additional $50 a month for extra100 GB). This makes Bitrix24 SaaS insanely cheap when compared with Jive, Yammer or Chatter. So if your organization is cost-sensitive, I suggest you take a look at the cloud offering, but keep in mind that integrations and customizations for the SaaS version of Bitrix24 are not as rich as the self hosted version.

Confused? You should be. There is actually a second intranet offering called Bitrix24, available through http://bitrixsoft.com. It's actually what the cloud version runs on. The self-hosted version which, as the name implies you get to host on your own servers and customize/brand it in any way you want, because it comes with it's own CMS and source code. This intranet software is available in two interfaces, classic and social (as seen in cloud Bitrix24) and has a ton of features - employee directory, portal dashboards, company structure, new employee orientation, video accouncements/polls and surveys, company photo gallery, absence chart, meeting room reservation, idea management module, service request forms, intranet instant messaging and intranet video chat, task management, time management, business process/workflow management, e-Learning and knowledge management, ticketing and helpdesk, integration with Outlook, Active Directory/LDAP, MS Exchange Server, SharePoint connector, mobile intranet and so on. If you want to try that 'second' version, you have to download a trial version and install in on your PC/server.

While there is a big overlap between the cloud and the self-hosted versions of Bitrix24, the best feature of the self-hosted version (in addtion to all the integrations and API available) is the multidepartment edition of Bitrix24 called BizPace Enterprise, which allows you to create any number of independent intranets for different branches, departments or divisions of your company. If you have offices in New York, London, Sydney, Moscow, Berlin, San Paolo, etc - each office can have own intranet, and they will all be managed from a central command and control hub. With all the other vendors you'd have to pay for each intranet based on the number of users.

The self-hosted version of Bitrix24 costs anywhere between $2300 and $9990 flat one time free. Each version comes with 25 intranet users. Each extra user is $40. Unlimited user license costs $30,000 but here's a little trick - the self-hosted version, even the basic $2300 edition, comes with unlimited EXTRANET users. So if your workforce is mobile or you work with a lot of contactors, Bitrix24 will be essentially free for all the practical purposes, because you won't have to buy all those extra users.

Now, cost advantages aside, let's get to the point why Bitrix24 makes a better alternative to Jive than Yammer or Chatter. The first reason is a really really good CRM that comes with it - complete with Send'n'Save email intetration, invoices, vitrual telephony support, sales funner and mobile CRM.SalesForce CRM is $60 a month per user and Microsoft Dynamics isn't much cheaper. The fact that Bitrix24 comes with own CRM makes incredibly appealing to sales and marketing centric companies. Project Management module is another really powerful addition. But Document Management is where Bitrix24 really shines. It's no secret that Microsoft bought Yammer to sell Office 365. While Bitrix24 integrates with MS Office and Office 365, it's true intention is to make your company MS Office free (and MS Office suite is quite pricy) by letting you work with your documents through Google Docs, Open Office or LibreOffice. Bitrix24.Drive, which is a free Dropbox alternative, is another useful tool IMHO (Bitrix24 works with SkyDrive and GoogleDrive too).

When is Bitrix24 not best Jive alternative option? If your complany is very, very large. I found no information about SAP integration for instance or integration with IBM products. Yammer may be a better option if you don't want your ESN to have any worktools and only serve for internal communication purposes. Yammer and Chatter also seem to have more languages available (the cloud version is only available in Russian, English and German, while the self-hosted version supports only 13 different languages).

Still, the free cloud version of Bitrix24 is pretty darn impressive and I suggest you give it a serious consideration.

Hot Startups - Duda Mobile

Site of the day - PickyDomains.com, world's first risk free naming agency



http://dudamobile.com

In February of this year, Mashable reported that for the first time in history, smartphone sales overtook PC sales in terms of units, the real story being the popularity of the smartphone rising relentlessly.

The smartphone, as we know it today, means information at your fingertips, flexible working, better organization, faster communication, better sharing of information, among other things. Industry experts agree that the smartphone is yet to see a sharp decline in its upward trajectory. And the way things are going for the smartphone, that won’t be anytime soon. As a matter of fact, people are now browsing the Internet via a smartphone more than via a desktop.

With that as a backdrop, if you’re a website owner, you’ll do good to know that ensuring your website is mobile-optimized can be profitable for your business. To help you do that, here’s a brief review of DudaMobile, a do-it-yourself service that converts regular websites to mobile sites that can work with all smartphones.

Here’s your step-by-step do-it-yourself guide to get that website rocking the smartphone as well:

- On DudaMobile’s homepage, type in your website’s URL and click on Make My Site Mobile.
- Next, you’ll be given a number of templates to choose from.
- Once you’ve made up your mind on a template, within minutes, DudaMobile imports all of your site’s content – text, images, links, everything!
- You can then edit different things, including taking out text, links, images or other stuff that look out of place.
- When you’re ready to test things out, simply add a code (or install a plugin) to the main site for a mobile redirect.

What’s remarkable about DudaMobile is that you don’t have to be on the techie side to get things done. All in, average time to get setup is about 10 to 15 minutes. And what’s even more impressive is that whenever you make changes to your main site, your mobile site is automatically updated – for free!

DudaMobile’s basic package, which is free, can let you customize up to 10 pages. The premium package, which costs $9 per month, allows you to work on unlimited pages, offers unlimited bandwidth, ads-free and customizable footer, your own mobile URL (m.yourcompany.com), phone and e-mail support, mobile site analytics, maps and directions.

[Source - Webiot.Com]
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