Free Alternatives to Microsoft Office - Part 1: Google Apps

When we first started Rapid Intake in 2000, it was necessary to buy a license of Microsoft Office. So I shelled out the $300 back then to get a used copy off of eBay. There just weren't many alternatives that people were using and it was an important piece of software to have getting started.

If you're starting a business now, don't spend a dime on Microsoft Office unless you know that you need some of its specific features that aren't available in the free alternatives. Now before you think I'm a raving anti-Microsoft anarchist, I want to say that the money spent on Microsoft Office has been well worth it. We used it to self-publish four books on e-learning course development, among thousands of other smaller tasks. I get as angry about Windows as anyone, but MS Office has undoubtedly helped millions of companies be more productive in ways they wouldn't have been otherwise.

However, if you're starting a business today, there are at least three free alternatives you should look at, and experiment with, before deciding to pay for MS Office. I'm going to discuss each in a separate blog post. Let's start with Google Apps.

Google Apps
Free online software that has solid core functionality for:

• Email (a version of the popular Gmail email application that is a much better solution in almost every way than MS Outlook, and you can get it with your own business domain)
  
• Documents (many fewer features than MS Word, but it works, it's free, and you can export to MS Word if you need to)
• Spreadsheets (again, many fewer features than MS Excel, but still a solid spreadsheet that will meet most small business needs)
• Websites (called 'Sites' in Google, you can build your own sites, collaborative wiki style)
  
• Calendars (this is one of the best features because it makes calendar sharing and setting appointments with others so easy...just try getting MS Exchange set up properly and you'll see how easy Google makes it for you)
• Live Chat (this is integrated into your email or can be used as a desktop app and even includes excellent voice and video chat)

While the FREE aspect is, of course, attractive, the best thing about all of Google App's free tools is that it is all online. Why go online with software? Access from anywhere, access with mobile devices, and most importantly, it opens collaborative opportunities. No need to have a network drive to post your documents and spreadsheets on--simply create them in Google Apps. Everyone on your team can access them, update them, and you can even share them with customers or other external team members. You get complete control over access privileges.

You can also use your own domain for your email, websites, and more. For example, my garinhess@rapidintake.com email address is actually a Google Mail address.

At Rapid Intake, we still use MS Office for some things, but if I had to start over, I would start with Google Apps and try to avoid getting Office altogether. We've long since migrated our email permanently from MS Outlook, and we'll never go back.

Google Apps starts charging for businesses that have more than 25 employees, but that's a lot of growing room for small businesses just starting out. That growing room, combined with its online collaborative features make it get my number one vote for Smart Small Business Technology as an MS Office replacement.

In subsequent posts on this topic, I'll be addressing two other nice alternatives, OpenOffice, a desktop alternative, and another newer set of online applications from Adobe's Acrobat.com.