Blog, Cloud
Small business enterprises are organizations with little or less capital. It is very important for such firms to work harmoniously in a proper manner that leads to their growth. Enterprises like these look for saving money and cutting the cost at every turn.
Small business enterprises have started showing a great interest in using various cloud services for their work. Cloud has various services that can help you store all your data, including your media files, documents, emails, contacts, and calendar information. They also let you access those items through the cloud service's desktop and mobile app, and via browsers, which is important whether you're running a small business, you're an entrepreneur or you're an individual. These services are secure, cost efficient and the easiest way to manage things across various spectrums.
We have curated some of the best cloud services that can act beneficial for both your personal as well as professional use. With various features that they have to offer you, you can choose what best suits your business type.
Building an IT infrastructure has always been an incredibly complicated task to be achieved by small and medium scale businesses. Very few of them can accomplish it due to lack of sufficient resources, specialties and time constraints.
Thankfully, Cloud services have overcome these shortcomings by either building specific tools, which are made for SMBs or provide necessary support to resolve their issues.
Cloud services help your business to access a broad range of devices, software, and applications on the basis of your requirements. Especially, for small scale businesses, the best cloud services have the capability to increase flexibility, security and appropriate savings.
Whether you want a stable data backup solution, immediate access to the files or simply share your files with the clients and colleagues - Cloud services are made for you.
Here we are sharing you some of the best Cloud based services for small businesses. All the below-mentioned services are the ones that are best suited for small and mid size enterprises.
1. Email Cloud Services
Email Cloud services have made your business communication much easier. Earlier, you had to build a separate emails setup and manage an email server in your organization. Now, you only need to purchase a number of mailboxes as required by your business and then, simply allocate it to your employees.
Gmail is one of the most powerful and finest Cloud emails based on Google’s platform. It is already used by millions of people across the globe. The best part of Gmail is that it allows you to optimize your domain name to create company’s business email addresses. That too in just $4.37.
‘’Gmail is a powerful and flexible business tool, which is acceptable for majority of small firms.’’, Says David Costa, CEO of an IT consultancy firm.
You can also choose from several other service providers, who provide Cloud email services and find the best package that suits your business requirements.
2. Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft Office 365 is another useful Cloud service that helps you with spreadsheets, word processing, PPTs and much more. Office 365 provides you the platform for your documents, calendars, and contacts. You can pick the best plans from different available packages according to your requirements.
There is no need of internet to use Office 365 as some packages even offer its desktop versions of Microsoft Office so that you can use it from your system at your home or any other place.
3. Dropbox
Dropbox business tool is among the best Cloud services used for collaboration with your teammates in the office. There are loads of benefits that you avail with this tool. Firstly, you can easily transfer any files through Cloud. Business needs collaboration for finishing projects; therefore you can leave comments on each document and synchronize with everyone to update it immediately.
You will get Team folders that give an individual access to share and edit the files related to different projects. Besides this, you can also use Team folders to pass information regarding team meetings, goals and other updates.
Dropbox has also included various security measures to keep your data and files secure. You can add passwords, expiration tasks and assign specific employees, who can access the documents.
The best part of Dropbox is its data recovery feature. You can quickly retrieve all your records for upto 120 days. The pricing of Dropbox entirely depends on how much storage you need for your business.
4. Microsoft’s OneDrive
Microsoft’s owned OneDrive offers Cloud hosting services. Anyone can go for 15GB storage for free, but if you want to expand your capacities such as 100GB, 200GB or 1TB, it can cost you $1.99, $3.99 and $6.99 per month respectively. Power searching and cross-platform synchronization are two of the key features of OneDrive.
OneDrive is backed up with its downloadable applications for synchronizing local and remote data. For seamless working with Cloud, it also supports many third party apps.
5. Google Drive
Google Drive is probably known by everyone, who has used Gmail. It’s personal Cloud based services offer you upto 25 MB limitation in email attachments, which is best for small business organizations. It has so many exciting features which promote collaboration.
Built-in Microsoft Word into the system allows you to create documents within your team and anyone on the team can edit, share and save the doc. You can also create spreadsheets, presentations, and much more other such productivity apps.
With Google Drive, you can store any files as per your need. Small businesses can also look at the previews of files if you don’t install the program.
6. Acronis Backup To Cloud
Are you fed up with losing data throughout in your day-to-day business? Some of those are surely your most sensitive business files. Who knows, when will your data get corrupted or deleted?
Acronis Backup is unique as it provides backup of the entire computer instead of some files or data. In case, your whole system has failed, you would not be disappointed if you are signed up with Acronis. However, if you desire to backup only a few files, Acronis has the capability too.
7. Box
Box is highly useful for small businesses due to its pricing. In just $15 a month, you will get unlimited storage. Box allows you to increase collaboration within the team. You can also synchronize and store your data. It also comprises some great features like the ability to share screenshots and screencasts. You can also find texts in the content.
For sharing an account, starter plan costs you $5 per month per user, and you will get 100 GB storage and upto 2GB upload size limit.
8. JustCloud
JustCloud is one of the best Cloud services that offers 50 plus unique features. It includes an admin control panel, access and permission management, network drives, geo-redundant storage and hourly backup.
The business plan costs you $ 35.94 per month and has 100 GB of storage space upto 5 computers. There is also an enterprise plan that costs you $ 71.94 per month and includes upto 500 GB storage for 20 computers.
9. Xero
If you have just commenced your business and want to achieve constant growth then it is mandatory for you to have a reliable accounting software. Especially, for a small organization, this is the best software as small startups do not have much workforce and budget to invest.
With Xero, you can easily run your invoicing and payroll, that too in great price. You will get a free trial to ensure its robust quality.
10. Zip Cloud
Zip Cloud provides online storage for documents, pictures, music and much more. Zip Cloud allows you to synchronize and share all the data and files across smartphones, tablets and desktop computers.
Zip Cloud offers unlimited user accounts, team collaboration, automated backups and 24/7 technical support. Its business plan ranges from $35.94 per month for 100 GB storage and $71.94 per month for 500 GB storage.
Final Words
So, these are some best quality Cloud services that anyone would want in their business. Pick one of them according to your business requirements. Whether you need it for collaboration, sharing or system backups, as small scale businesses, you are likely to find the service that will meet all your needs.
Although, there are plenty of options available for you, you must know thoroughly how can one benefit you more than the other.