With software costs rising year over year and the growing desire of a mobile workforce to be able to access everything, from anywhere, at any time, many businesses are considering a variety of SaaS offerings as an alternative to expensive proprietary on-premise software. While organizations should do their due diligence regarding security concerns, many viable options are available.
In the Google App Marketplace, business users can find a wide array of applications for accounting and finance, administrative tools, calendar and scheduling, customer management, document management, productivity, project management and even security and compliance. Many of these apps come with a free trial period and then a nominal fee based on usage.
In this slideshow, we’ve pulled together a variety of apps from the Google App Marketplace that can help businesses, especially SMBs, gain a competitive advantage in innovation, strategy, integration and customer relations. Most apps provide strong integration with Google’s core SaaS offerings, such as GMail, Docs, Calendar and Drive.
Click through for 10 hot apps from the Google App Marketplace that can help businesses, especially SMBs, gain a competitive advantage in innovation, strategy, integration and customer relations.
MindMeister Mind Mapping
MindMeister allows your team to be more innovative by providing a shared collaboration and brainstorming environment using the mind mapping technique. Plan projects, manage meetings and sketch out business plans online with partners and colleagues, all in real time. Features include the ability to create, share and collaboratively edit mind maps, exporting to Word, PowerPoint or PDF, integrated live chat, task management, and applications for Android, iPhone and iPad.
Category: Productivity
Cost: Free 30-day trial (no credit card required) / $9.99 per user per month or $99 per year
Mavenlink
Mavenlink is an online project management workplace for clients and colleagues to conduct business and collaborate in real time. Features include online project management for unlimited projects, a visual interface for faster collaboration, integration with Google apps, and Gantt charts for task management and tracking deadlines and milestones.
Category: Project management
Cost: Mavenlink Teams: $6 per user, per month. $4 with annual subscription / Mavenlink Premier: Starts at $49 per user, per month
WiseStamp
WiseStamp email signature management lets you easily brand your emails, centrally manage your employees’ email footers, use professional signature templates and enforce your company policy.
Use WiseStamp to increase your sales and update your customers and contacts about the latest company news. Easily promote your company social profiles: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or Youtube, etc. Include ad banners, marketing taglines, latest company news and products, legal disclaimers, green email footer and more.
Category: Admin Tool
Cost: Free 14-day trial (no credit card required) / $2 per user per month
Yesware: Email for Salespeople
Yesware helps your sales team work more efficiently by unifying information stockpiled in CRM systems with email reply rate data and analytics. Features include email tracking (opens and clicks), scheduled email sends, Salesforce Sync, email reminders, custom templates and reports and analytics. Yesware integrates with a variety of CRM solutions including Batchbook, Base, SugarCRM, Pipedrive, Highrise, Relenta, Capsule, Nutshell, Nimble and Netsuite.
Category: Sales and Marketing
Cost: The base version of Yesware is free and includes 100 email events per month. Additional pricing plans are available.
AODocs
AODocs brings the power of document lifecycle management to Google Apps. Built as a natural extension of the standard Google Apps features, AODocs helps you better organize, leverage and secure your business content with its flexible metadata system, document security automation and advanced workflow engine. Features include 100 percent integration with Google Apps, a flexible metadata system that allows you to add any kind of metadata fields to your Google Docs, document list views, advanced search, rules-based security and automatic backups.
Category: Document Management
Cost: Free 30-day trial / Plans starting at $30 per month
draw.io pro
draw.io pro is a diagram editor built around Google Drive. The program provides many standard icons as well as the ability to upload additional images. All application data is stored only in Google Drive and only transmitted directly between the browser and Google Drive. draw.io works in any browser and does not require a login.
Category: Productivity
Cost: Free up to 499 users / Additional pricing available for 500 plus users
Wrike
Wrike is an online project management platform for making work fast, easy and efficient in co-located and distributed teams. Its flexibility enables multifunctional teams to collaborate and get things done successfully in one place. Schedule, prioritize, discuss and track progress in real time — all with a few mouse clicks. Features include the ability to manage an unlimited number of tasks, projects and collaborators; assign tasks, add comments and set reminders; and discuss projects and track progress in real time.
Category: Project Management
Cost: Free for unlimited collaborators plus five (5) power users. Additional pricing plans available.
Capsule CRM
Capsule is a simple, flexible CRM for small businesses and sales teams. Capsule makes it easy to keep track of your customers and other contacts, your sales opportunities and follow-ups. Capsule works alongside Google Apps to manage contacts for your business and share with users in your Google Apps account, track emails and notes in the history of a contact, get sales dashboards that track opportunities, and create tasks for customer or task follow up.
Category: Customer Management
Cost: Free 30-day trial / $12 USD per user per month
FlashPanel
FlashPanel provides Google Apps admins with the ability to manage and secure their domain from a single comprehensive interface. Features include the ability to create and manage users, groups, OUs and contacts, control oversharing and exposure of Drive documents, and the ability to create canned, customer or scheduled reports.
Category: Admin Tools
Cost: Free 30-day trial / Additional pricing plans available
Lucidpress
Lucidpress is a design and layout application that enables users to create beautiful print and digital documents. Features include an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface, collaboration with unlimited users, and the ability to create print or digital documents. Templates provided include newsletters, brochures, flyers, reports, posters and presentations. Lucidpress is able to access content from Google Drive, Youtube, Dropbox, Flickr and Facebook.
Category: Productivity
Cost: Free 14-day trial / Plans starting a $3.33 per month
