This is number 4 in our four-part series covering Ways for Small Business to Save Money.

Ways for Small Businesses to Save Money: Part 1

Ways for Small Businesses to Save Money: Part 2

Ways for Small Businesses to Save Money: Part 3

Today’s post focuses on online web apps that you can use to save money and create efficiencies in your work flow.

Collaboration

Finding easy-to-use tools to communicate and collaborate with clients and staff can create more cost-efficient processes.

Zoho – Zoho provides a whole host of ways to work and collaborate online. I’ve tried many of their products in my own business and I mentioned their project management tool in Part 1 of this series. Prices vary by product, all have a freemium level to try out.

OfficeMedium – A web-based collaborative suite built with efficiency and convenience in mind. $6 per user per month, $1 per GB per month.

Basecamp – One of my favorites for collaborating on and managing projects. Pricing starts at $24 a month, first month free.

Wizehive – Another file-sharing, project-managing, collaboration portal that gets high marks from the likes of TechCrunch and Lifehacker. First workspace is free.

Google Wave - Innovative way to have small team discussions and develop documents. Free.

Meeting and Presentations

Clear communication between all parties and coordinated focus from all levels is a big win in getting actual work done. Nothing really gets done in meetings, but sometimes they are a necessity. Many modern products facilitate the ability for remote conversations to happen in real-time, making them more informative and saving time.

TinyChat – It’s simple. TinyChat is awesome. Meet with clients or friends in your own browser-based video chatroom. Just create a room and invite people. You can even require Twitter/Facebook ID for login. Save yourself a drive, a flight, or many unnecessary phone calls. Free.

WebEx and GoToMeeting - I think most people are familiar with these sort of online meeting tools, but it’s worth making sure.

Dimdim – Claims to be the iPod of web conferencing, by which they mean to say that it’s the easiest way to have online meetings. They also claim that “Dimdim Pro – our flexible, professional version for up to 50 participants – or Dimdim Webinar – our powerful, event version for 1000 participants is available for about 1/10th the cost of WebEx.” That’s a mouthful, but it sounds good. Dimdim Free is (you got it) free, and let’s you meet with up to 20 people. Paid upgrades (for meetings with more than 20 people) start at $19 a month.

Marketing

Need a website? Business cards? Don’t have much to spend? Here’s the cheap way to ride in style.

Squarespace – This platform is becoming hugely popular with businesses large and small. Create your own website and host it for $8 a month. They look good and do good.

Wix – Oh, did you want to build your own Flash website? Oh, and you want to be able to design it with a simple drag & drop interface? Okay. Wix lets you do that. Or, designers can use it to give their sites a little something-something. Free entry level site.

Moo - Make your own business cards — and make them memorable. Customized business cards start at $21.99.

FreeCRM.com – Free Customer Relationship Management and sales team automation tools.

Highrise - Another product brought to you by 37Signals, the makers of Basecamp. Highrise is a popular CRM platform for managing leads, contacts, and deals.

Chatter – Salesforce.com’s innovative new social network and brand monitoring tool, that simultaneously lets sales teams and customer service teams engage in social media while also providing business managers with ways to track those teams. Pricing hasn’t been released yet, but the guess is ~$50 per user per month.

Promote

If you want to take advantage of social media channels to get the word out about your business, here are 3 awesome and affordable ways to do so.

Emma - Create, send, and track email marketing campaigns and online surveys. Pricing varies by business size.

Wildfire Interactive – Get more leads by creating a social media campaign to engage with online audiences. Pricinge starts at $5 per campaign.

Animoto – Create stunning, ‘killer’ videos that are automatically generated via your images and a couple of clicks. Use them to explain or promote your service. Create a personal account and spend $3 per full-length video, or $30 to create an unlimited number of full-length videos. For higher quality, upgrade to the business solution for $249 a year, or $99 for a 3-month trial.

Research and Knowledge Sharing

If you’re a researcher or have ever been part of a collaborative research group, you know how much time you can save by have the right approach to organizing and documenting research. With the proliferation of online content, this is especially true.

Diigo – Provides powerful research and sharing tools to analyze, organize, and archive. Price = free. Plus, free upgrades to premium accounts for educators.

MindMeister – real-time brainstorming and mind-mapping tool with offline and mobile access. Free Basic account, upgrade for unlimited mind-maps, enhanced security, and business-level solutions.

File Sharing Tools

For when you need to share really big work files that are too big for email.

Dropbox – I love Dropbox. It’s the easiest way to share and sync files ever. Get 2GB of space for free and use it to sync files on Windows, Mac, Linux, and iPhone.  Upgrade to the Pro 50 for $9.99 a month or $99.00 a year and get 50GB of space.

SendSpace – Unlimited uploads and downloads of a file, secure exchange, use for files up to 300MB. Ad supported Free version works great, Premium levels are ad free and faster.

Finance and Timetracking

Outright – Like Mint, but for small businesses. It’s free! Provides online bookkeeping, help managing taxes, 1099 e-filing, tax estimates, and support services for entrepreneurs and bookkeepers.

Freshbooks – A terrific way to track time and invoice clients. Send estimates, track contractor and employee hours on projects, track expenses, build reports, and bill your clients with professional invoices. Upload your logo and customize with your company’s branding. Manage up to 3 clients for free, or upgrade to manage additional clients or give access to staff.

Harvest – Great time tracking device for freelancers, small business, and professional services. Nice design, easy to use. Pricing ranges from $12 – $90 per month.

LessAccounting – Stress-free accounting for small businesses. Invoices, taxes, accounts receivable, accountant access, and integration with Highrise, Paypal, and Basecamp. Plans start at $12 per month and up.

Feedback and Surveys

Wufoo – Makes forms easy, fast, and fun. Create application forms, contact forms, registrations, surveys, and more. Free for up to 3 forms, $9.95 per month for 10 forms.

Usabilla – Usability testing without all the drama — and expense. Free for 5 pages and up to 25 participants per test, then it goes up to $49 a year for 10 pages and 250 participants per test.

Development

Atlassian - Collaboration and code development tools, $10 per product for 10 users.

Komodo - Open source multi-language code editor. 21-day free trial.

And That Ain’t All

There are so many great web apps out there that can be helpful to small businesses — there’s no way we can cover them all here. Please feel free to share your additions to this list with a comment.