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Zoho Online Office Productivity Software- Free

Oct 15, 2007
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Recently I was out of town and happened to be on a computer that did not have Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word. Not having access to these standard Microsoft office products is frustrating for any business traveler as I had a wee bit of work to do. Then I found Zoho.com with their incredible online line up of office productivity software, most of which is free to use and easily accessible online.

Who is Zoho?

Zoho is an office productivity suite from AdventNet Inc. Founded in 1996, AdventNet is headquartered in Pleasanton, CA with offices in North America, Europe and Asia. AdventNet focuses on building affordable software for businesses.

What does Zoho offer?

Zoho offers some amazing online collaboration tools as well as office products many of which are of no cost to the consumer. I have gained access to all of these with a free Zoho user account and must say what I see so far is impressive. Below are my favorite Zoho products there are many others and I suggest you check out all of them as they can be used readily by your company or office staff.

Zoho Writer - Online word processor you can access from any internet connection! Store documents, save them within your free account, edit everything without any downloads. Print your finished product or save to your account file for later.

Zoho Spreadsheets – Collaborative editing of spreadsheets, as well you can Import or Export Excel files Copy-n-paste from Excel or import an Excel file. You can also export back. You can also Sync up with remote data from the web or use our APIs to build mashups. What is super cool is that you are working in real time with the spreadsheet with all apparent functionalities of Excel live online without any downloads.

Zoho Meeting – Have an online live meeting with your colleagues, clients, or team mates. You can also embed Zoho meeting in your blog, wiki, notebook or any web page. Zoho meeting also supports demonstrations.

Zoho Show – Create quick online presentations, Zoho gives the option to embed the show online (Website or Blog) using iframes you can also save your show as .html document. What I really like about the Zoho show is that it allows you to import .PPS files (Power point show files) which then allows you the ability to quickly create an imbed script for the show to apply to your website or blog.

Zoho CRM - Customer relationship management features that rival some of the big players. This little jewel will surely cause a stir! The cost of using this application starts at $12.00 per month and includes everything you will need for lead management all the way to forecasting and reporting on your sales and marketing funnels. I really like the ability to upload my own lead sheet directly into my Zoho CRM account.

Zoho Creator - Intuitive drag-and-drop user interface to create customized database applications easily. You can create online database applications in minutes by creating a professional looking web form and embed in your website with simple copy/paste code! I really like the mini CRM function with this and the additional applications are easy to include as well.

Filed under: Sounding Off
  • http://adjungle.com Brad Waller

    Funny I’ve never heard of Zoho. I’ve been using Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/) for years and I’m very happy with it. The only time I was forced to use MS software was when I had to record my presentation for eComXpo and I knew how to do it in PowerPoint and had no idea of I could with Impress.

  • http://finaltag.com Pranav Chavda

    I’ve been using and very impressed with zoho’s suite of online apps over the past few weeks.

    Two other zoho products that are not mentioned in this post that I particularly like are the Zoho planner – an excellent personal productivity management application, and Zoho Wiki – that lets you create wikis and share them (or not) with either a group or make them public – In fact, I use the wiki app more than the word processor for writing and sharing documents. Of course, the wiki and planner are both also offered free of cost.

  • http://www.paulsonmanagementgroup.com Heather Paulson

    Yahoo Purchased Zimbra on 9/17/2007 – Google acquired Zenter around June 2007 – Neither of which I think were as particularly smashing as Zoho.(Why do they all start with a Z?)

    Office productivity software is a hot commodity and it will be interesting to see who makes a bee line for Zoho. Zoho offers the most complete suit out of any anything I have seen so far and yes funny Brad I also am newly introduced to this.

  • http://www.shopping-bargains.com/ Mike Allen

    Great post, Heather. I wasn't aware of this either. Very full suite of tools — they even have a Facebook app!

  • http://www.Paulsonmanagementgroup.com Heather Paulson

    Thanks Mike

    Amazing how many app’s and new competitor tools and such are coming out, very quickly too. Takes me 3 hours plus per week to stay updated on new tools..

  • http://blogs.zoho.com/ Arvind

    Thanks Heather, for taking note of Zoho and the appreciative post! Just a reminder – Zoho CRM is free for upto 3 users, the $12 / month charge is only from the 4th user.

    And thanks to Brad, Pranav & Mike as well!!

  • http://www.PaulsonManagementGroup.com Heather Paulson

    Hello Arvind,

    Yeah I am checking out the CRM to use for our company, I appreciate you posting and look forward to additional widgets etc from Zoho…

  • http://sitelead.com/blog Todd

    I occasionally use Open Office and it is pretty slick, but haven’t been too impressed with the offerings from Google such as Google Spreadsheets. I’ll have to check out Zoho too…thanks Heather. :)

  • http://www.Paulsonmanagementgroup.com Heather Paulson

    Thanks Todd,

    Appreciate the feedback, I am currently using this CRM tool. I can imagine in a few years additional multi product integration from companies like this concerning online tools, something to be watchful of in the coming years.

    Thanks
    Heather