Are you a Mr Stumble?

I know it's not particularly subtle but this humerous approach to explaining the benefits of a cloud-based productivity solution makes a refreshing change from some of the dry, corporate marketing videos that many of IQTELL's competitors use.  I haven't used IQTELL yet but the cartoon at least got my attention in this increasingly crowded marketplace.

What tools are in your GTD toolbox? - update 25 May

Following some requests on the LinkedIn thread for this discussion I have updated the chart showing which are the most popular tools used by GTD practitioners.  The picture has not changed much at the top end of the chart but there are a lot of new apps and tools at the bottom end.  On this post I've included a list of the tools that only had one user but which you might want to check out. My original post from April is HERE)

Click HERE to download a PDF of the chart.

Tools With One User

AceProject

Active Inbox (Firefox plugin)

ActiveInBox plugin

Adobe Ideas

AgendaOne

Alfred

Apple Mail

Aquacalendar

Bento

Calvetica

Checklist

Clippy

Close The Loop

Comapping

Confluence wiki

Curio Mindmap

DEVONthink

Diigo

Due

Ecco Pro

Echofon

Entourage

FastEver

GoToMyPC

GotToDo App

Gyronix Results

iAnnotate

iBlueSky

Insightly

Jotnot Pro

Justnotes

Licorize

ListPro

mail act

mail.app

mailplane

mailtags

Mental Case

Midnight Inbox Touch

MindNode

MobileNoter

MoesNotes

MS Project

MSN Mail

NoteLife

Noteshelf App

Notional Velocity

Pages

Pester

Power.me

Remind Me Later

ResophNote

REXconnect

Ribbit

Socialite

TaskSync

Thunderbird

Touchdown Sync

Ultimate To Do List

Viira 2

Vyew

Wunderlist

Yojimbo

YouMail

Project Management / CRM tools - price comparison

Every week seems to bring a new web-based project management / CRM solution.  Keeping track of prices and functionality is becoming difficult.   Several years ago when Basecamp and Highrise were the only serious contenders, choosing a hosted solution was relatively simple.  Now we're spoilt for choice. So what do you get for your money?  This table gives an overview of some of the tools I've recently been looking at (the lowest prices are highlighted in green).  I know I've missed some off and, in some ways, am comparing apples and oranges. Some are CRM and some are project management solutions and comparing them might not be fair.  I would have agreed with that view a few weeks ago before I started using Insightly, an app on the Google Apps marketplace.  Insightly does a good job of linking project management and CRM functionalities and, in my view, makes some of the other tools look a little restricted in what they can do. Apart from the 6 services compared here (Basecamp, Insightly, Dooster, Batchbook, Highrise, Zoho Projects) I would have also included NirvanaHQ but they have not yet released a pricing scheme. Insightly's prices were announced on their product blog a couple of weeks ago but have not been put up on the product website.

Observations

Users - there are wide variations in the pricing for users, from free for unlimited users on Basecamp and Zoho to $149 for 50 users for Insightly and Batchbook.  Once competition starts to heat up, I suspect these prices will come down.

Storage - this is relatively consistent and possibly reflects actual costs.  I'm not sure how many use Amazon S3.

Projects - wide variations here with Insightly offering free unlimited projects and Basecamp charging $149 for the same.  As with users this does not look sustainable in the medium to longer term.

Contacts - Batchbook offers competitive pricing here, charging $14.95 for unlimited contacts against $149 for unlimited contacts on Insightly.

Conclusions

This is a relatively immature market and the variations in pricing reflect that.  While Insightly offers the most functionality, it looks expensive for companies that have more than 5 users while is cheap from a project perspective.  Basecamp is almost a mirror image of that pricing model.  Choosing the best for your company will depend on how you plan to use it and I hope this table will help.  Don't forget that Insightly requires users to already be using Google Apps.  If they were able to offer a standalone version it could be a winner.

I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more entrants to this market over the coming year and the winners will be those that offer reliability, competitive pricing, a strong community of users and an intuitive interface.  Ultimately, prices will come down as commodification takes hold.  Let battle commence.

UPDATE - great review of some other CRM solutions HERE

Insightly - CRM & task management done right

I’ve been playing around with a variety of task/project management web services over the last couple of years.  Toodledo was my preferred option for most of the last 12 months until I started using Nirvana which is built on the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology and works well.  The problem with both those services is that they don’t have any CRM functionality.  Since last summer I’ve been using Batchbook as my CRM solution and it has worked well.  Batchbook offers task management functionality but I’ve not been able to get on with that part of the service.

However, I may have found a solution that solves both problems – Insightly.  This is a Google App which offers great CRM and task/project management capabilities.  The key things I like about Insightly are:

• Linking contacts to tasks, projects and opportunities is easy as is linking tasks to projects;
• It is fast – searching for contacts and screen refreshes are faster than most other similar services I’ve used;
• The interface is clean and intuitive – they’ve drawn some inspiration from 37 Signals in their design and presentation of data;
• Each account has a unique email address for emailing in stuff so it is a good capture system;
• Attachments are handled which is a great advantage over Nirvana (I believe Nirvana will be offering this functionality soon);
• It links to Google Calendar so tasks will show up on your calendar if you allow it.

I’ve only been using it for a week so I’ll probably find some issues with the service in time – I’ll update this post if that is the case.  However, so far I’m really impressed with Insightly and it has replaced Batchblue and Nirvana.  Mobile is the only issue but the Insightly developers claim that iPhone and Android apps are on the way.

NOTE: at the moment the service is free but looking at their terms of service they will be charging at some point.  Obviously, the pricing will be an important factor as to whether I stick with Insightly.  However, it is possible to take your data out in a compressed XML format.  As it is a Google App you will need a Google Apps account to run it – this requires you to have a domain name which you control but Google can set one up for you at $10 a year.

UPDATE: Insightly has released details of its upcoming prices - see HERE.  The jump from the free plan to the cheapest paid plan is a bit steep and the 100MB storage limit for free plans is rather small.

Evernote 4 - worth checking out

I'm pleased with the new version of Evernote - it certainly seems faster to load and looks cleaner.  If you've not tried Evernote yet I can recommend it.  It is my main tool for capturing information and managing projects.  The main benefits for me are:

• the free version offers a high level of functionality;
• it synchronises seamlessly across multiple computers;
• has a good web interface;
• the free Android mobile app is great for capturing photos, voice memos on the move;
• you can forward emails to it via a unique email address;
• it is intuitive to use via its notebooks and notes.

If you want a free virtual notebook for capturing ideas, images and files it's worth checking out.  You may already use Microsoft's OneNote which is similar.  I've tried both but prefer Evernote for it's synchronisation across multiple computers and web access.