I am well on my way to replacing my Microsoft office software with the on-line business tools offered by Zoho, and I wanted to write about my experiences so far.
Zoho’s office suite prices seem to be very competitive, with the first three users signed up to the business service free, and then $5.00 per user thereafter. The tools included are as folllows.
- Mail Hosting and Instant Messenger
- Contacts Manager, Tasks Manager and Calendar
- Word processor, Spreadsheet and Presentation
- Notes, Links and File Storage
- Users, Groups and Domain Management and more
Zoho also allows you to add other applications into the buisness service such as Zoho’s Customer Relationship Management software.
After setting up your account and logging in the first time to Zoho Business for the first time you can set your Time Zone, and Language/Country.
- Create Portal URLs
- Create Organization Locations
- Add Users/Import Users
- Register Domain
- Create Groups
- You can also customize the company logo, add/invite users and much more
A few screen shots to give you a visual tour of Zoho office suite, a an alternative to the costly Microsfot Office, and we will be covering these applications in upcoming articles. Click on the images to view full size.
This first screen shot is the dashboard, which contains widgets to your calendar, tasks, address book, and documents.
Another shot of the dashboard showing a few of the widgets.
This screen shot is of the toolbar in the word processor called Zoho Writer which is similar to Microsoft Word, Apple Pages 09, and OpenOffice Writer.
This screen shot is of the toolbar in the spreadsheet application called Zoho Sheet which is similar to Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, and OpenOffice Calc.
The next screen grab is of the sidebar, which reminds me a lot of the sidebars added to Lotus Notes 8!
So far the Zoho Office suite looks quite promising. Over the next few days, we will be adding more Zoho office related articles for your use.
Have you ever considered SSuite Office as a free alternative to MS Office?
Their software also doesn’t need to run on Java or .NET, like MS Office and so many open source office suites, so it makes their software very small, efficient, and easy to use.
http://www.ssuitesoft.com/index.htm
Hi Georgie,
“Have you ever considered SSuite Office as a free alternative to MS Office?”
No we have not considered SSuite Office, and after looking through your site we like what we see, but we are migrating to a “cloud” service which will work into our mobile lifestyle!
If we get some free time we may return to you site and test your software, and possibly post a review.
Thanks for posting.
Matthew
I would recommend checking out Dooster. As an alternative to Zohohttp://www.dooster.net
Much more recently than this article appeared here we looked at Zoho when we were researching collaborative software and we liked it. We also looked at some other packages at the same time and finally our boss preferred Dooster. I couldn’t say why because I thought they were all quite similar but what I have been able to see is the difference that using Dooster has made to my working life. So pleased we got it.