Online Collaboration Alternatives To Sharepoint For Small Businesses to Increase Productivity

If you want to run business in today's competitive economy, then you need to gain more flexibility, enhanced information exchange and collaborative teamwork. Well, this shows the importance of collaborative technology.

Today, Microsoft SharePoint is the most prominent solution for collaboration. It is an on-premise collaborative software model, but is more suited to big businesses with huge IT budgets and large number of employees. Microsoft Share-point also has some disadvantages like huge setup costs, no email functionality, software complexities, and costly training and support issues.

But, the SAAS (software-as-a-service) approach gives small businesses a viable alternative to access this software over the Internet at reasonable fees. Here are some packages that could offer valuable productivity gains for small businesses that host websites on 100TB servers:

1. HyperOffice: It is an alternative solution for the small businesses moving from on-premise software such as Microsoft SharePoint to the cloud. Small Businesses need only a broadband connection to access this robust software solution at low costs. Some other benefits includes HyperOffice  has that lack in SharePoint include email functionality, drag and drop portal publisher, an interactive Gantt chart in place of the static Gantt chart in SharePoint and forums.

2. Box.com: This is one of the best Business collaboration software alternative offers a scalable, affordable and simple alternative. Box.com provides small businesses with features such as file storage, file collaboration and content management on the cloud. Also, it is simple to synchronize your files on the desktop, receive feedback at a nominal price and share them with colleagues.

3. Huddle: This alternative is one of the best cloud collaboration tools. It is designed with ease and efficiency in mind, and thousands are using it for enterprise collaboration and content management. Small businesses can easily manage and exchange information or projects with others using Huddle. It also allows you to track project deadlines, view late projects, milestones, completed tasks and even reassign projects, thus making collaboration easy and efficient.

4. Google Apps: This is a free alternative to Microsoft SharePoint. Google Apps offers simplicity, efficiency and clarity, allowing small businesses to organize the day-to-day schedules, files, projects and teams securely. Some other features offered include easy navigation, advanced searches, email integration and free conference calls.

So, these were the four alternatives to Microsoft Sharepoint that small businesses can use and increase their productivity.

4 Insanely useful Collaboration Tools Your Team Should Know

Do you remember the first time when you saw the real-time collaboration feature for Google Docs first time? Now it seems obvious, but in 2005 seeing changes happen live felt nothing short of magical.

Today, after ten years, Google Drive continues to add improvements, Microsoft is offering real-time collaboration in their on-line version of Office, and Dropbox is working on a real-time collaboration app of their own.

But, still many people are stuck using the email-and-collect-revisions method of collaboration. Today, many cool websites and apps looks at four tools that fix that for you.

1. Fiddle.md: It is limited to writers in one key way, i.e. it offers a word processor. While for millions word processors are the default tool for writing, but for a growing number of people their paper-focused design is obsolete. And so the popularity of Markdown is growing, which is a quick way to format documents destined for the web.

Fiddle.md allows you collaborate on Markdown files. The interface features a real-time-preview, and also you don't even need an account to try the service.

2. GraphPaper: If you are looking for a way to combine a bunch of different collaboration tools, then GraphPaper is probably worth a look. This tool lets you quickly make a sheet combining images, text and even embeds from other websites.

3. Canavaniser: If you love the idea of brainstorming with your team and are looking for something simple, then try Canavanizer. This tool provides you a variety of brainstorming templates which you can use to think up ideas with your team.

4. Frame.io: This app looks to make collaborating on anything – from images to videos to sound – easily. In Frame.io, annotation tools, comments and the ability to upload various revisions of the same file all are there in one place. A free account gives you 2 GB to work with, for more than that you will have to upgrade.

These were the four insanely useful collaboration tools that your team should know. But, there might be chances that one of your favorite tools wasn't covered. So, share your favorite real-time collaboration tools with us in the comments below.