The company behind the software describes it as a social intranet with a built-in customer relationship manager (CRM) tool. In fact, this is a truly sprawling application that tries very hard to bring several disparate workflows into one application.

Pricing

Bitrix24 is available in two formats. Users can opt for a 30-day free trial of the self-hosted version. The cloud version, which is the one we’ll be looking at, is sold on three pricing tiers:

• Free, limited to 12 users and 5 GB
• Standard ($99/ month), unlimited users, 50 GB
• Professional ($199/ month), unlimited users, 100 GB

The Free and Standard versions are more limited in terms of features. It’s worth looking carefully at what’s included if you’re thinking about trialling any plan, since some of the things you’d expect to be included (e.g. time tracking) are only available on the Professional plan, and it’s quite pricey.

Getting Started

Once the workspace is set up, Bitrix24 gives new users a handy overview – this is a welcome first step, and something that all too many providers miss out or do badly. The software automatically fills in a few tasks to help get new users get started.

The dashboard itself is clearly designed to be open all the time, like a desktop application; it includes a clock, a list of alerts and a search bar, for example. It’s a bit strange the company name (Rated Cloud) doesn’t appear anywhere, but the layout is generally crisp and pleasing.

Layout

The application has a clear layout with navigation on the left and a timeline on the right. The drop-down arrows are ‘borrowed’ from Facebook’s timeline. Each one gives you the option of managing, deleting and editing posts on the timeline.

Clicking on a post opens the item in place of the timeline. This is the message Bitrix24 automatically generated in my name when I set up the account – I didn’t write it myself.

Note the phrase “transform the business information flow into an electronic course” here. Odd sentences like this crop up across the application; in  the introduction, the product is described as an “alloy” for example. It’s not a big problem, but anyone whose first language isn’t English may struggle to grasp some of the meaning.

Features

Many of the features in Bitrix24 don’t veer far from the well-trodden path of project management SaaS. There’s an activity stream, task lists, a calendar, a file storage area and a discussion forum. Nothing here will surprise you; for example, the calendar follows the same old Outlook calendar format that most applications replicate.

The file storage area looks uncannily like a Sharepoint Document Library.

There’s a separate storage area for photos as well, but this isn’t anywhere near as swish as the other workspace pages. It looks more like a simple WordPress plugin than a gallery tool and clearly hasn’t had the same investment of time put into it.

In the Conversations area, you’ll notice that you can post a Message, File, Poll or Appreciation. Appreciation is a strange idea for a corporate tool – it’s a badge of acknowledgement awarded to another user, complete with an icon. I can see this working in an educational setting, but I’m not sure if it would be used much in business.

Workgroups

Workgroups are effectively teams, and each workgroup gets its own project space within the console. Most of the features here are duplicates of the ones we’ve already looked at. There is one extra – the Wiki – which only members of the same team can see. Most Wiki tools look very similar, but there’s another nod to Sharepoint here nonetheless.

The CRM loads within the Bitrix 24 ‘shell’. I don’t have the space to look into it in too much detail, but I did notice that the interface looks quite different to the rest of the application. As an example, here’s the Settings page for the CRM. The basic layout is pretty much unique. That makes me wonder if the CRM has evolved separately and has been bundled in later.

Functionality

I’ve taken a few more screenshots than normal in this review and I still haven’t covered everything. Bitrix 24 packs a lot into one product; to be fair, for the price, it should.

Normally, in order to get all of this functionality, you’d have to subscribe to a few different SaaS products and integrate them. Bitrix24 attempts to keep everything, from tasks to HR, under one roof.

Keeping everything in one application is very tidy, and it will appeal to people who want a cloud-style solution that they can control as though it were on their desktop. However, it does mean that you can’t pick and choose the best service providers for the job – you’re locked into one ecosystem for everything.

Needless to say, there aren’t any integrations with other cloud tools. I can’t foresee a time when there would be.

Conclusion

On Rated Cloud, we review project management SaaS every other week. Every tool faces tough competition, hence we have to be fairly harsh to weed out the differences between them.

Bitrix24 desperately wants to be the ‘brain’ behind your business, but you’ll have to pay a weighty subscription fee for all of its features. I also found that the tool gives away its immaturity in some areas; on its home page, for example, a paragraph was punctuated with a smiley-face emoticon. No big deal, but inappropriate for a product that’s trying to compete with Sharepoint. The clarity of the English is borderline in places as well.

If you’re on the fence, consider the skew this SaaS has compared to other similar tools. Bitrix24 does more than promote collaboration; it promotes supervision to some degree. For example:

• Time Management is designed to “install discipline in the work schedule”
• Task Reports allow managers to monitor employees and check up on their work
• Work Reports give you the ability to automatically remind people to do things
• There’s an Absence Chart in the HR area
• There’s a way to reward employees with little medals

Is this relevant? Some business owners will be comfortable with this kind of functionality and feel it adds value. Some may find it inappropriate, or may feel it strays too far from the basics to be worth their time. I can see some value in consolidation, but I personally prefer project management tools with a clearer focus.

If something fails, Webmon automatically notifies a contact person via email and SMS (in some cases – read on for more details). It’s possible to add multiple users with different roles and permissions on some plans.

Webmon Pricing

A free version of Webmon is available on a trial basis for 14 days. After that, there are four pricing tiers offering progressively more features and capacity. To summarise, I’ve boiled it down to the three main features we’ll cover in this review:

• Personal (12 Monitors, 5 Triggers, 1 Escalation Policy) – $8.99 / month
• Business (40 Monitors, 20 Triggers, 5 Escalation Policy) – $34.99 / month
• Business+ (100 Monitors, 30 Triggers, 10 Escalation Policies) – $79.99 / month

Setting Up Webmon

Getting started with Webmon is really easy, and adding a new Monitor is the first step. On the Monitors screen, users simply select the type of monitor they want to add and fill in its details.

My first monitor will keep an eye on the Rated Cloud website. Most of the fields are self-explanatory.

Once my new Monitor is added, I can add more Monitors. To keep it simple, I’ll add a few more straightforward HTTP Monitors to keep track of other sites. I’ve set the check frequency to 30 seconds on all of them so that I can build up some data quickly.

As you can see, my four HTTP Monitors are now checking each website for errors and measuring the response time from the West and East Coast of the US. All of these graphs update in real time without any need to reload the page. After just a few minutes, you can see meaningful data building up.

It would be nice if I could get a response time from within Europe, though, since I’m in the UK and so are most of my clients and readers. Their experience is therefore more relevant to me. I couldn’t see an option to change that setting, so we can assume that Webmon only pings sites from servers within the US.

Notifications

Within the Escalations tab, users can set up multi-level notifications. (The users that appear within this screen must be defined in the Users tab first – this is also where you create user roles. It’s very simple, so no need to look at it here.)

Webmon doesn’t just ping out a notification to a set email address or number. It uses a policy builder, so you can fine-tune the notifications to your liking. Building a policy is easy enough.

I couldn’t build a multi-level escalation as the free trial is limited to just one level of policies.

In theory, notifications can be sent via email or SMS. However, Webmon only accepts US telephone numbers, so I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of this feature.

It’s fairly common for UK mobile numbers not to be supported within services like this, but it does restrict the feature somewhat. If you really wanted to work around it, you could probably cook up a notification recipe with a third party service like IFTTT, but it would be nice if there were more options here.

Triggers

The Triggers tab allows users to set up custom notification criteria. For example, you might want to alert someone if response time falls below a certain value in milliseconds.

I created a Trigger along these lines, although I encountered a confusing error message in the process (it turns out that Webmon wanted me to select 5 minutes or fewer). Nonetheless, the Trigger was easy to create and manage.

Other Features

As I’m a new Webmon user, I didn’t have time to build up a huge amount of data, but there is more to play with. There’s an Incidents page which keeps track of any problems the service has detected. In addition, users can build up their own custom Dashboard using the Monitors and Triggers available to them. I’ve added one custom dashboard in the screenshot below.

And these are the settings for that Dashboard. As you can see, this would be a more powerful example if I had a little more data to work with.

Support

If you do need assistance with Webmon, there are three support channels:

• A live chat service that is accessed through the browser
• An email form, which also appears automatically if live chat isn’t available
• A knowledgebase

Unfortunately the knowledgebase is currently empty, and there was nobody available on live chat. That’s a shame, and it doesn’t inspire confidence.

Had I seen a handful of help topics in the knowledgebase, I would have felt a little more reassured about the support experience. As it is, I think most users will have to rely on email to get the help they need.

The Verdict

Webmon is the kind of service I really like. I use some similar services, and pay for them. I like to keep an eye on my website throughout the working day, so this is a SaaS I could see myself subscribing to. The user interface is intuitive, attractive and speedy, and there’s no real learning curve involved in getting started.

My concerns are really threefold.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, I feel that Webmon is going to be more useful to people located within the US who will benefit from the SMS alerts and response time figures. Users in Europe will almost certainly be left wanting more. In addition, the Personal plan doesn’t include multi-tier escalation; this is the company’s USP and is prominently advertised on its homepage.

Finally, that empty support page is something of a concern.

Webmon is a SaaS I would make good use of, but for the level of service I would need, the price is prohibitive and it doesn’t serve users outside of the US well enough to sway me. More notification types, a better low-cost plan and a more mature support network could convince me to come back and give it another chance.

There are already some SaaS solutions for this problem. RightSignature immediately springs to mind. It’s good to see some more competition entering this field, as it’s clearly a task many businesses struggle with.

What is Inkdit?

Inkdit is a cloud application that enables users to maintain an online persona for the purposes of signing contracts, documents and other items which require a legally binding signature.

The Small Biz plan is free for individuals and small businesses with up to 4 employees, which instantly makes it a very interesting proposition. If your company has more than 4 employees, you’ll have to pay. There is a set price for the first 5 users, with a further charge for every additional user. Inkdit also offers an Enterprise plan for organisations that have over 100 employees.

On top of these paid options, there is a reseller plan and there are discounts for charities and non-profit organisations.

We are looking at the Small Biz plan for the purposes of this review. I’ve set up an account under the name Mathew Dixon, with Rated Cloud as the company name.

Getting Started with Inkdit

When you sign up for Inkdit, you are taken through a series of steps to help set up your account and your company account. These include uploading an image and creating a company ID, complete with a logo, address and other settings.

All of this information can be edited later, but the initial process is a great ‘no fuss’ way of getting up and running quickly.

After logging in, you’re also asked to choose to access either your company account or your personal account. Once you’ve selected an account, you’re directed to a page containing all of your contracts.

Contracts are broken down into those that you have already signed, contracts that are waiting for your signature and those you have rejected. (As I’ve only just signed up, only the Inkdit terms and conditions contract, which I signed when registering, is visible).

Working With Documents

You can view any contract by clicking on it. The document  is displayed in a neat online viewer and you can quickly share it with other users or companies. The document can also be downloaded, you can access the location where it is stored and take a look at your cryptographic signature.

Users can add a new contract from the contracts page. Click ‘New Contract’: you have several choices:

• create a new contract from an existing Boilerplate or Online Form template
• create a new Boilerplate or Online Form template
• create a single agreement in a text editor

Below is an example of the first option: a new contract created from an existing Online Form template.

You can customise the document on this page. For example, you’ll need to add signatory details, and specify whether it is a company, individual or group of people. The document can then be easily shared with the necessary individuals.

New Boilerplate or Online Form templates are created using a straightforward online editor. Once created, the templates are stored for later use.

Your contacts can be quickly accessed and edited. You can create a new contact and you also have the ability to create signing lists for regular use when sending documents to groups of people to sign.

Inkdit provides comprehensive customer support: a phone line, email and forum. I didn’t find it necessary to use any of the support systems as the product is really simple to use.

First Impressions

My first impression of Inkdit is great. The user interface looks clean, uncluttered and effective. It’s easy to get around the system, the application is friendly and intuitive, and there’s really no learning curve.

Looking beyond the core product, Inkdit provides an additional, very useful service. For a fee, it’ll convert your current forms and contracts into professional online versions that look good on desktops, tablets and mobile phones alike.

Integrations

For a product which involves signing documents, integrations with other cloud applications is a must. Inkdit already integrates with the Harvest time tracking and invoicing software, and there’s a Chrome and Firefox extension. Further integrations with Stripe, LinkedIn, Google Apps and SalesForce (CRM) are on the way but not yet active.

Inkdit; Good start but some catching up to do

As a SaaS product, Inkdit has definitely got off to a good start. The simplicity and ease in which the product can be used is its primary selling point. I’ve used similar services and found the process of actually building a ‘signable’ document to be a real pain; the recipients also struggled to understand what to do with them. Inkdit struck me as being a little more straightforward and user friendly.

The focus on designing forms to look good on tablets, desktops/laptops and mobile phones is the sign of a well thought out application. I really love the fact that you can ask website visitors to sign forms within a web page (this is something Gravity Forms offers for WordPress, but it’s a paid add-on to the plugin which is already quite expensive).

Inkdit does still feel like a newcomer to the industry, and it obviously has one very big rival – RightSignature – that’s already well-established. In order to compete, it needs to get those integrations up and running as soon as possible. But I really, really liked Inkdit and it will be good to see how the product develops and grows in the coming years.

Toolea is designed to make project management simpler, using cloud technology to promote collaboration and team working. The application’s functions cover broadly the same ground as other project management products we’ve covered. It can be used to make a company intranet, work on projects in teams, store and share files, set up tasks, diarise events and so on.

However, this is a tool with its own quirks – and not just in terms of its interface (although that is pretty unique too). Toolea tries to marry social networking and collaboration in a way I’ve not seen before. This is a bit of a risky strategy – after all, collaboration is based on a closed, invite-only system, and social tools are generally public. Toolea has some interesting features to get around this.

Pricing

Toolea is free and, according to its home page, offers users unlimited file storage. When I started using the application, I found that the storage I received was limited to 1 GB, and I could earn extra storage by inviting new users. So in theory you could ‘earn’ unlimited storage, but it’s not really unlimited by default.

There is a prominent link to a Plans and Pricing page, but this is currently missing.

Getting Started

Once logged in, I’m presented with a really attractive dashboard screen. Toolea looks really fresh, and, like Basecamp, its user interface is pretty unique, so it does take some getting used to.

As you move around the application, you’ll notice that tutorial pop-ups appear, but they then disappear very quickly. It can be quite difficult to use them as a guide, and a tutorial would be more useful.

Features

At the top of the screen, there are two semi-circles containing icons. The easiest way to understand its features is to follow the icons one by one to see how the application fits together.

First, we’ll start with the Toolea menu on the left.

The First Steps icon is intended to take a new user through the application in a logical order. Sadly it isn’t a tutorial as such; as previously mentioned, it would be good to see something like a video in its place.

The Calendar is essentially a clone of an Outlook calendar; this can be synchronised with a Google calendar. It’s a shame this part of Toolea looks so much like a Microsoft product really.

Profile is a simple profile page, and Contacts is an address book that can pull in LinkedIn and Facebook data. If you want to add a contact manually, you’ll have to invite them – you get extra storage space for doing so.

Under Experts, you can make contact with other Toolea users in different industries. This is an interesting idea – it’s a take on Quora and LinkedIn, and it’s something I’ve not seen in a cloud project management tool before. This is where the public and private areas of Toolea collide.

However, I don’t think it’s really clear enough that you’re being added to this network when you sign up. Also, if you invite others to join Toolea, you could also be signing them up to this network without them realising. In a way, this is a really big strength of Toolea but I think users need to be more informed about it (and be given the chance to opt out).

On the right, the Private Cloud menu holds most of the options you’d expect to see in a project management application.

My Job is a dashboard page that shows each user’s Files, Projects, Tasks and individual options. Workgroups are essentially teams that can collaborate on project, and workgroups can include both employees and third parties.

Within Tasks, you can see all items assigned to your job or your workgroup.

In the Files section you can upload files to share with a Job or Workgroup, or upload to your private file storage area. I tried both, but I didn’t find this feature particularly intuitive; you can see from the screenshot that only one of my two files is visible, and not in the centre of the screen – the area you’d expect to find it.

Conclusion

Overall, I love the way Toolea is genuinely trying something different. It looks fantastic, and its developers are clearly extremely creative and capable of giving cloud project management a new look and feel. There are some risks being taken with this SaaS, and that’s pretty brave. Most project management tools don’t stray very far from a template.

A couple of things did concern me. Firstly, the Quora-like element is great, but I’m not sure that it’s for everyone – some businesses may feel that employees could become distracted by yet another social network bombarding them with alerts. I’d also have preferred it if I could have opted in to this network, rather than just bring given a profile by default when I signed up.

Secondly, the unconventional user interface presents something of a learning curve, and I think Toolea needs more user testing to make it friendlier. For example, the ‘X’ close icons are at the bottom of pop-up windows. It’s not a big deal, really, but it’s something most designers wouldn’t do because people just aren’t expecting it. When I reset my password, I was rather alarmed to receive an enormous 40-character string as a replacement. Again, not the end of the world, but a bit odd.

Perhaps the biggest clue to a lack of testing is the constant presence of Google Chrome’s Spanish-to-English translation bar on every single page – this is distracting and irritating. Toolea is still a worthwhile application, but it needs more work before it’s really ready to compete with the big names in this crowded sector.

Cloud-based HR services are particularly useful in the modern world, especially when it comes to staff training and recruitment. More and more companies are turning to e-learning and online recruitment, so a good application to help manage a company’s employees can join the dots in any HR department.

Natural HR can boast having over 2,000 clients serving close to half a million employees, which is really impressive considering it has been in business just two and a half years. The largest company making use of Natural HR have 50,000 employees on their records, so there doesn’t appear to be any limit placed on the size of the company. The current version of the software has been online since mid-2012.

Is Natural HR Really Free?

The FAQ page on the Natural HR website is keen to stress that the software is completely free. However, the site also suggests that the free to use status may change at some point in the future.

Natural HR re-assures us that anyone who signs up now will not have to pay to continue using the application in its current form. However, this means that your company may have to pay to enjoy future upgrades and new features as the software evolves.

The Natural HR website suggests that a future payment plan will be based on the number of employees a company needs to keep records for, so it’s worth bearing this in mind before you commit. If you have 50,000 employees on record, you’d be looking at an enterprise licence, and that could well be pricey.

How Does Natural HR Look?

After logging in for the first time, I was greeted with a really impressive user interface. Natural HR is clearly a very broad product with a lot of functionality, but a quick look at the interface and I’m reassured. The design is neat and tidy and arranged in a logical way. Furthermore, it is nicely compatible with a tablet browser, without any of the usual compromises on features and functionality, which can sometimes make web apps frustrating.

The home page is essentially a dashboard with an overview of your employee/ user numbers, lists for time off, time sheet approvals and a calendar. The home page also includes any messages directly from Natural HR’s system admins, such as recent updates to the application. For first time users, the home page includes some useful links to help set up the settings for your company, whether it’s recording your office locations and year start dates or registering your employees and defining their job roles.

The only slight criticism I have is that the welcome message (the red box above) is very large on my desktop monitor, and it does push the rest of the content below the fold.

Getting started was easy, though. Creating a job role is simple and straightforward with sections to record job titles, descriptions, responsibilities, qualifications, competencies, experience, salary, benefits and manager details.

Natural HR benefits from a very intuitive user interface. All pages and functions are listed in menus down the left hand column of the page. The company page shows company and HR settings, such as the job titles I created above. There are page for events, holidays, recruitment, timesheets and many more.  The Employees page lists all of your past and present employees.

You can add new employees with a couple of clicks, and view an employee file. Here, you can see a wide range of records and data types, from personal details to training, holiday records and more.

There is a timesheet section where employee work time can be logged in a simple interactive sheet. This will appear in their employee file.

Natural HR offers more functionality, but there isn’t space to cover everything – I’d advise signing up for a free account and trying it for yourself.

Managed User Access

Users can be given different access levels by adding them to a user group, which is ideal for a busy company.

Employees can be given permission to perform simple tasks such as recording time or requesting leave, and that means less admin for team leaders and HR administrators. Finance officers can get access to financial reports, and a recruitment officer can be given access to the recruitment section.

What Don’t You Get?

Natural HR has such a huge scope, it’s hard to see what missing, but I did notice that it lacked a payroll system. Integrations are always important in the cloud since they make standalone systems so much more useful, and payroll could be a reason to integrate with something like FreeAgent (which has a very good payroll system of its own). In terms of time tracking, integration with a full project management tool like Teamwork Project Management or Basecamp would be a real plus.

Support

There is a neat little user guide available to download and some release notes for the latest updates. Natural HR is obviously keen to promote a good working relationship with clients, and the company makes it easy to request new features and suggest improvements. Let’s hope it can retain this customer focus as it grows.

A Great, Modern HR Application

All in all, I have a good impression of Natural HR. The current state of the software indicates that the company have been working hard; its developers have embraced the use of modern tools such as tablets, and the company is keen to engage with customers. The team has created a simple, effective and useful tool that gets the job done efficiently without compromising on functionality.

Integrations with other SaaS platforms would be welcome and be a great way to improve on what’s already available, particularly in the recruitment module, but it’s really hard to pick faults with something that’s already very well-rounded.  I can’t see the application remaining free for much longer, so sign up whilst you still can.

The developer says that the SaaS is based on the concept of Kanban boards: to-do lists that are used to shuffle tasks between different Lists (to do, done and in progress). It’s important to understand the basic idea behind Kanban boards before attempting to use the site, since it’s quite unique, and the tool won’t make any sense unless you realise what it’s trying to achieve.

SimpleProjectManagement Pricing

SimpleProjectManagement is currently in beta and no pricing has been published. The company offers a refund for the most recent month of service if the customer isn’t satisfied, but it’s not clear what the monthly fee actually is.

Getting Started

The developer claims SimpleProjectManagement is a flexible tool that can be adapted for a range of tasks. As well as basic project management, it can reportedly be used for recruitment, bug tracking and sales. There are a variety of use cases on the website that show the various ways in which SimpleProjectManagement has been adapted. However, on a basic level, this is a task organiser with a few extra features built-in.

After signing up, SimpleProjectManagement presented me with a quick tour. This is well worth doing since the interface is very plain before it’s populated. Some of the terminology is quite different to other project tools, due to the Kanban model, so it’s worth using the tour to get the hang of the language.

Kanban Terminology

In SimpleProjectManagement, projects are called Boards. It helps to imagine a Board as being a virtual whiteboard. Within a Board, users can add Lists, which are shown as columns. (On a whiteboard, a project manager would ordinarily draw these columns out according to the task lists they wanted to monitor).

Within a List, users add Cards. Cards are effectively Tasks. Offline, these would ordinarily be sticky Post-It notes. You can see these represented as squares in the screenshot below.

When editing a Card, users can add details, comments and milestones. People can also vote on the task, set a due date or archive the Card. This takes SimpleProjectManagement beyond the basic Kanban system and gives it some features more in line with cloud project management tools we’ve already looked at.

Once Cards are built up, you’ll start to see the traditional Kanban format taking shape. Cards can now be dragged from list to list, just as a sticky note would be moved into another column when actioned.

All user events are recorded and shown in a fairly basic activity log. There’s an example of this in the Users screen (see below).

Interface

The interface within the application is very bare – it’s basically modelled on a whiteboard, after all, so there isn’t much to see until data starts to build up.

There are plenty of forms and drop-down boxes to fill in, but not much to explain what they are. A little colour-coding or graphical guidance would make these forms far easier to understand. Even better, the software could have some context-sensitive help so that users found it a little easier to experiment with the features.

There are a number of other screens within SimpleProjectmanagement, in addition to the Boards screens above:

Activity shows a list of notifications for the user (not activity, strangely).

Within Charts, users can create custom reports based on the tasks that are outstanding. I couldn’t get the Charts screen to save or show any data at all – it may be that I hadn’t built up enough history for it to work properly.

On the Users page, additional accounts are created and assigned to an organisation. This is a pretty basic account tool; there’s no room to add metadata. I was also quite surprised to see a visible password screen on this page, since I can’t really see a reason for it.

Clicking on a user’s name brings up a detailed screen showing the user’s initials, email and so on. It’s possible to add a short bio on this page as well, but when I did this, it didn’t show up on the page after saving. Note that the user’s activity is also listed here.

Conclusion

As mentioned at the start of this review, project management in the cloud is a hugely competitive market. Any SaaS that’s going to gain traction needs to offer something that rivals, or improves upon, tools like Basecamp, Teamwork Project Management and the other really big brands.

In a way, SimpleProjectManagement really does offer something different: it’s the virtual equivalent of the sticky note system that many teams will be familiar with already. My enjoyment of the software vastly improved once I understood its niche and what it was trying to achieve.

The question is whether it’s enough of an improvement on sticky notes to make it worth using.

Although very intuitive on a basic level, I’m not sure SimpleProjectManagement is rounded enough to recommend. It does emulate the Kanban system well, but anything else on top of that is very convoluted and the interface is a little unfriendly. The software needs more features and polish before I can see a strong uptake, but I do like the way it’s evolving. At the moment, I’m sure most people would prefer to stick with their old-fashioned sticky-note system. With a bit of work, that might change.

Like several of the cloud tools I’ve reviewed recently, SimpleProjectManagement’s website copy could do with a thorough clean-up to make the product easier to understand. The home page is particularly dense, and had it been re-written and presented more effectively, I would have understood the potential of the product far more quickly. If the website, and the software, becomes more appealing, I can see this SaaS fitting into a niche all of its own.

Zoolz Pricing

Pricing is split in two. Users must choose between Instant Storage and Cold Storage. Instant Storage costs $16/month per 100 GB, and Cold Storage costs $3/month per 100 GB.

• Instant Storage is effectively the cloud backup service you’d recognise from services like ZipCloud and Mozy. Files are stored in the cloud and can be accessed and restored on demand.
• Cold Storage is Zoolz’ answer to traditional backups: storage of files which may be archived but rarely used. Zoolz stresses that its Cold Storage backups are cheaper than ‘on-site backups’ (in order words, a tape drive or traditional backup method). Cold Storage is much cheaper than Instant Storage, as you’ll have noticed, but files cannot be retrieved instantly. Users must wait up to five hours for their chosen file to be made available, making it no more or less efficient than traditional backups.

New users receive a trial account with 50 GB storage and unlimited users. The free trial expires after 14 days of use.

How Zoolz Works

The Zoolz website provides a ‘quick’ 15-point introduction to the service, although the description of each benefit is pretty impenetrable. In short, Zoolz does not impose limits on connection speeds or file sizes, although there is an overall storage limit for the account. Files are securely encrypted, and the service can be used by multiple clients worldwide. The administrator user can split space between users so that space is efficiently allocated.

The website claims that all devices are supported, but unfortunately I found this to be untrue. This is a Windows-only service at the moment. As such, I was unable to trial it on my Mac. This is the graphic that greeted me when I went to download the client for Mac:

The service can handle both user and server accounts. Note that ‘servers’ in this case means Windows servers. Again, there is no software client for Linux or Mac servers.

Backups are performed on a pre-set schedule, and only changed files are backed up. Users can alter backup frequency depending on bandwidth and hardware availability. For example, when a laptop computer is being used for presentation, or is running on its battery power, Zoolz can automatically scale back on processing power.

Storage and Backups

Zoolz uses Amazon’s AWS service to store data. If you follow tech news websites, you’ll probably be aware of several high-profile outages at Amazon’s cloud data centres which have taken out websites like Instagram, Netflix, Dropbox and Reddit. By using AWS, Zoolz’ availability therefore hinges on Amazon’s availability, which has been fairly patchy over the last 18 months.

On the plus side, Amazon’s servers offer strong encryption and failover capabilities – in theory, at least.

Users with masses of data can skip the upload process and send their backup media to Zoolz who will upload it to the Amazon cloud on their behalf. Zoolz says that users can do this multiple times; as far as I can tell, there is no extra charge for this service.

Through the admin area, the administrator can see the account bandwidth usage, the location of users backing up to their account, and they can access all of the files that have been uploaded to date. Individual users can log in and review their own uploads but cannot access uploads from other users within the same company.

Zoolz Interface

You might have already noticed that Zoolz looks very much like Microsoft SkyDrive. It has a Metro-like interface throughout.

Users are invited to back up via email; they can also be added directly or via CSV upload.

The administrator – in other words, the help desk or service desk in most cases – is responsible for administrating all users in the organisation, and must suspend users, reset passwords and add users’ computers through the admin area. This allows finer control over the backup process, but in a large organisation, this could be a demanding task for a busy help desk technician.

Administrators can also hook Zoolz up to a Windows server and use policies to control how backups are created. This might include filtering out files using wildcards, throttling usage for users(s) or globally excluding files which do not need to be backed up.

In the web interface, Policies determine the frequency of backups and allow files to be dealt with differently, depending on file type and other criteria.

Once a file has been uploaded, users can view files via mobile devices or edit them in Google Docs. Zoolz also shows preview thumbnails of images for easy review. Files can be shared with collaborators, as you would expect, providing they are backed up using Instant Storage. If you use Cold Storage, files cannot be shared.

Note that Zoolz does not provide the ability to drag and drop files into a backup or sync folder. If you want this kind of backup capability, you’ll need to choose something like Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft SkyDrive, either instead of Zoolz or as an add-on service.

Conclusion

On the Zoolz website, there’s an impressive client list: Oracle, Rolls-Royce, Microsoft and Dell are the four that stuck out immediately. I found that quite surprising since I found some of the text very difficult to understand; it didn’t strike me as a service which was particularly well-established.

I would personally be quite wary of relying on Amazon AWS as a complete corporate backup solution. For truly essential, business critical data, it may not be wise to put all of your data onto Amazon’s servers when the consequences of potential downtime are so severe. Companies would also need to weigh up the attractive pricing for Cold Storage vs the inconvenience of waiting more than half of a working day for a file to be restored.

The website is very keen to stress there’s a client for every device, yet when I went to download the Mac client, it simply didn’t exist. It’s quite misleading to encourage people to sign up when the software only really supports one platform. Nevertheless, for Windows users and large organisations, Zoolz is very well-priced, particularly as far as Cold Storage goes.

I’m not sure smaller companies would have the resources to administrate every single user through Zoolz. But as enterprises become more used to the cloud, services like this will find their feet. Unfortunately, for non-Windows or mixed platform users, Zoolz isn’t a viable option for the time being anyway.

ProjectManager.com is used by some very high-profile companies, including Volvo, the United Nations and NASA. But the cloud has come a long way since 2008 when the company was founded. Being established is one thing; being able to adapt and innovate in an increasingly competitive arena is another.

ProjectManager.com Pricing

ProjectManager.com is free to try for 30 days. After that, it’s priced on a ‘per user’ basis. This pricing model is commonly seen among project management applications, although it’s not used by all of them by any means.

On the basic Projectmanager.com package, 1-5 users costs $25 per user monthly. The price drops to $20 per user monthly for 6-10 users, and drops again to $15 per user monthly for 10+ users.

Compare this pricing to a couple of randomly chosen competitors; Podio charges a flat $8 per user per year. Teamwork Project Management’s plans all include unlimited users; the cheapest plan costs just $12 per month.

Even if your company is small now, 5 users will still cost $1,500 per year if you choose ProjectManager.com. A company with 12 users will spend $2,160 per year. Pricing is an issue for all businesses to consider early on. Project management software ingrained into business process and becomes the ‘brain’ behind everything employees do. That means it’s quite difficult to switch to a different system later, and the cost on a per user model can quickly mount up.

Interface and Appearance

In terms of look and feel, SaaS products generally fall into two camps. There are flashy new responsive sites with rounded corners and lots of white space, and there are sites that are more like desktop applications. ProjectManager.com definitely falls into the latter category.

Much like TimeTac, the structure and layout of ProjectManager.com is inspired by desktop applications – in particular, Windows XP. This is a double-edged sword: it inspires confidence in people who aren’t used to working in the cloud. However, it also makes software look a little dated next to some of the newer tools we’ve seen.

Getting Started

The ProjectManager.com website interface has two sets of tabs across the top of the screen. The first row contains a Welcome page, a Home page and some tabs for individual projects. On the second row, you’ll see icons relating to the tab you’re currently using.

I started off by following the Wizard presented on login. These icons are all clickable links, and they look pretty good. It’s a shame they’re all tucked away in the corner of the screen.

Tabs and Features

Once I’d created a project, the site invited me to set up some Tasks. This screen took me by surprise, mainly because a third toolbar appeared, and this one contains no less than 25 different icons. You can immediately see just how much screen space the toolbars take up.

The layout here looks very much like Microsoft Office 2010; great for orientation, if that’s what you’re used to, but not really something I expected to see in the cloud. While entering tasks, the software dynamically builds a Gantt chart in the right-hand pane, which is nicely done.

(Note that even the Menu icon in the above screenshot is very ‘Windows-like’, with blue, red, green and yellow icons on a blue background. The desktop layout is evident here too; even the divider between the two panes is borrowed from Windows.)

I couldn’t see an option to progress further through the Getting Started Wizard, so I had to abandon the setup procedure and go back to the Dashboard. I haven’t really entered any data at this stage, so most of the images here are static.

Again, this screen is incredibly busy, and you really can’t complain at the amount of flexibility offered. I’ve expanded the window for this screenshot, and you’ll see that much of the information in the default view is still below the fold. Widgets can be removed if you don’t need to see this level of detail.

In the Calendar view, you’ll notice that my tasks have been added as full-day appointments which is a nice touch. The calendar is quick to load and has all the familiar features you’d expect.

The Discuss tab is a kind of shared forum space. It’s very quick and straightforward, and adding discussions is easy for the novice user.

In the Expenses tab, I can mark expenses incurred and assigned them to Tasks. I can also copy Expenses and export records in Excel, Word and CSV format.

The Issues tab is a fairly typical red-amber-green (RAG) chart with the option to attach files and assign tasks to the Issue. In the Info tab, I can change fundamental project settings such as the name.

Capable But Dated

There’s nothing wrong with ProjectManager.com as a project management tool. However, it’s so much like a Microsoft product, it may as well be Microsoft Project. If it had featured in our comparison article, it would have been a real contender as a direct cloud replacement.

But when replacing Microsoft Project, you might not want a direct swap: you might want an upgrade. More modern tools have re-thought the whole project management process and redesigned it from the ground up. In turn, these newer tools make their software far more suitable for a browser.

Newer project management tools are still finding their feet, and ProjectManager.com is arguably the most capable, making it ideal for enterprise. Its client base suggests this is its target market. Additionally, the familiar layout means less investment in training, and the abundance of features makes it extremely capable. The cost is quite substantial, though, and it doesn’t have any integrations with other cloud products, making it a closed system.

Assuming you’re looking at a project management software for a small business, I’d recommend trying ProjectManager.com alongside a few alternative cloud project management tools so you can weigh up the interface and capabilities of each one. Certain large companies wouldn’t be able to live without a complex tool like this, but if you’re willing to experiment, or you want to integrate different SaaS products, there are other alternatives that are more fit for purpose.

Please take a look at our First Look video below.

However, there are a few features which concerned me – including a few important details which are not stated clearly enough on the sign-up page.

Let’s take a look at the prices first.

ZipCloud Pricing

The ZipCloud website advertises ‘unlimited cloud storage’, but this is actually pretty misleading. The number of files users can upload may well be unlimited, but the amount of space is limited in two of the three plans.

ZipCloud is free for 14 days. After that, you’ll need to choose from a variety of prices. The way these are structured makes ZipCloud look more like a web hosting company than a backup service:

• The Home plan offers 75GB storage. It costs £8.95 for one month, £47.70 for six months, £83.40 for 12 months or £142.80 for 24 months.
• The Premium plan offers 250 GB storage. It costs £9.95 for one month, £41.70 for six months, £95.40 for 12 months or £166.80 for 24 months.
• The Unlimited plan costs £12.95 for one month, £71.70 for six months, £119.40 for 12 months or £214.80 for 24 months.

For the sake of comparison, let’s look at the competitors in this area: Dropbox charges £62 for 100 GB and Google Drive charges around £38. CrashPlan charges £75 for unlimited storage over one year. That puts ZipDrive at the top of the tree, price-wise. But remember: it combines sync and backup into one product: the others arguably don’t cover both in the same way.

There’s an additional complication of a temporary 20 per cent discount for early sign-up, if you choose to pay before your trial ends.

Getting Started

Getting ZipCloud set up is quick and easy. As soon you sign up for the trial, you’re immediately invited to download its desktop application. Software for Mac, Windows and Linux is available.

Once installed, ZipCloud asked me to choose a folder to back up. It then triggered the backup from my Mac to the cloud.

Once the backup was complete, ZipCloud showed me a status report and some other options.

I clicked the Control Panel button to go to the website and confirm the backup had been completed as planned – everything was there, as I expected.

You might notice that ZipCloud’s website is less minimal than some other sync and backup services, but it’s still extremely usable. The interface is clean and intuitive, and it has plenty of options without being overly complex.

ZipCloud Backups

ZipCloud offers cloud backups, much like CrashPlan, although it also makes files accessible over the web.

Uploading the entire contents of your hard drive is likely to be extremely slow with any cloud backup provider, even over a fibre broadband connection. (In my experience, backing up 120 GB of data to CrashPlan took about two months). If your primary reason for choosing ZipCloud is the backup option, ensure your connection speed is fast enough to make it worthwhile.

ZipCloud’s servers are US-based, and as such, they’re covered by the US Patriot Act – as are other services which use servers on US soil. That may make it unsuitable for some types of confidential data, particularly in an enterprise setting. Thankfully, you can the backups feature selectively and only select certain directories for backup.

ZipCloud Sync

ZipCloud also offers folder syncing, and this is where it’s closely aligned with Dropbox, SkyDrive and Google Drive. After installing the software on each computer, users can simply drag files into the Sync Folder to see them appear everywhere.

Files are also accessible via a web browser and the software keeps a record of any changes, as it does with Backups.

File Sharing

ZipCloud allows users to share files and folders with other people. This is interesting, since Dropbox has only just opened up the entire folder tree for sharing (before last week, you could only share files in the Public folder). It seems that ZipCloud was a step ahead.

To share a file, hover over it and click the Share link.

You can then enter the email address of the recipient and send a message. (Incidentally, note that the file name it has picked up below is incorrect.)

Once shared, the recipient gets an invitation email from ZipCloud – in theory. I sent an invite to myself at another email address, and two hours later, it still hasn’t arrived and wasn’t in my spam folder.

If you want to remove permissions, you can click Kick Out to remove access from a previously authorised user.

Device Location

Location is an interesting feature which I haven’t seen in other backup or sync applications. On the website, under the Devices menu, you can view information about your registered device(s), including its online/ offline status, current ISP, country and city. The software also tracks IP addresses from previous logins.

Using the Maps button, you can find your device with near-pinpoint accuracy.

In theory, this is handy – it’s a similar feature that Apple offers through iCloud, and is designed to locate your gadgets if they’re stolen. But it seems like a bit of a mismatch to have this in a backup and file syncing service.

Most importantly, though, there’s absolutely no mention of this location tracking feature on the website. There’s no word of it on the company home page. No topics about Location in the Help Center. I did a search of their site through Google for ‘location’ and ‘stolen’, and not one single page referred to this feature.

Location tracking is tucked away in a tab within a menu in the application, and you might not even realise it’s there.

Final Thoughts

ZipCloud is attractive, despite being fairly expensive. It’s refreshing to see a combination of sync and backup in one product.

There are a few things that make me sceptical, though. That ‘unlimited’ claim on the home page is one. Another is a testimonial, supposedly from an anonymous British user, that uses a couple of American English words.

But the Location feature was the most revealing part of ZipDrive, because it highlighted the fact that the product isn’t really finished. Tracking someone’s IP address and location and displaying it online – right down to a Google Map display of their house – is important enough to warrant at least one mention. I tried really hard, but I couldn’t find any reference to this. In my opinion, it’s not good enough to tuck this away without (a) some kind of explanation, or (b) a way to easily switch it off.

ZipDrive is good at the basics, and it’s a good product in theory, but more needs to be done to inspire trust if it’s going to succeed.