7 Online Applications that improve our web business
There are a few applications that we incorporate into our daily working lives for internal use, and for clients which allow us to be more than competitive and still offer an edge technically. The one thread that ties all of these things together for us is that they all have API’s…
Wufoo - Online Surveys
Wufoo, is neat. You can build a questionnaire and deploy it in minutes. We’ve used it for our “Client questionnaire”
Basecamp - Project management
Most of us know about Basecamp by now, and it’s no secret that I’m actually having a mildly passionate affair with it. The more projects we take on the more indispensable it becomes.
Freshbooks - Invoicing
Freshbooks pretty much changed our universe. Recurring payments for hosting, easy to manage invoices, a great interface and constantly being updated. They’ve just added taxes for expenses, soon we won’t need Sage at all (thank god).
Shopify - Hosted shopping solution
If you’re looking for an easy to use e-commerce solution then Shopify is great. Rapid setup and flexible layouts make this our first choice for most small shops.
Wordpress - Blogging platform
Not much to say really. Wordpress is pretty much the blogging platform of choice for most of us. Easy to use, easy to set up and massively customisable.
Vanilla - Forum
Wow. Vanilla is another new one to me, but already I love it. Highly extensible, solid and with an excellent array of options for getting it to do what you want.
Mailchimp - Broadcast email
So simple to use. If you need to send out an email to a few thousand people then Mailchimp really makes it easy. The support is great and the template editor really is a breeze.
The only problem with having so many disparate applications is there is no easy way to manage them from a central location, which isn’t too much of a problem for us but it is for our clients. Which is why we’ve come up with SWiM, a kind of aggregator for online applications… More of that later.
Comments
Tom
said on 28 May 2008I’d just like to add dnsstuff.com
This is an essential website for trouble shooting domain issues. I’m just slightly frustrated in this day and age that they feel the need to charge so heavily for API access.
mathew
said on 29 May 2008would be really interested in your feedback on blist - we are finding a lot of people who are interested in our generalized, easy cloud database idea and then want to use it to solve a lot of these specific use cases that the apps above do a really slick job of in a single-use case way.
mathew
http://www.blist.com
Tom
said on 29 May 2008Hey Mathew, I had a look at blist today for 30 mins or so. It’s an interesting application and I really like the concept. Unfortunately, I was left feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the user interface.
The idea is cool, and clearly there have been some serious hours invested in to the development of the product. Unfortunately it’s not something I can see myself using right now.
One thing we’re trying to do with SWiM is iron out a lot of the simple usability issues by using it within our sister company The Web People. Already issues are becoming apparent and we hope by the time we put it in to public beta things are rocking.
All the best with Blist though, I will check it out again soon.
Simon WJ
said on 6 June 2008I’d add google apps (http://www.google.com/a/) which are more than just OK-Cool.
I like the idea of blist. I suppose I have an inate fear of Silicon Value startups taking due care of my databases. Hmmm….
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