BlueTie Blog

Free Information From BlueTie

We've heard from many of our customers that they selected BlueTie because their small business is growing and they need email, calendaring, contact and files tools that can grow with them. Traditionally, small and mid-sized businesses have had little choice when considering advanced messaging systems. Microsoft Exchange was the only option for businesses seeking collaboration tools like shared calendars and contacts combined with true business class email, despite the complexity and high cost of implementing and maintaining Exchange. BlueTie changes this model by offering 'better than Exchange' functionality at a fraction of the cost.

Today BlueTie launched two new ways for finding out more about BlueTie and how it can help your growing business. The first is a Free Custom Evaluation. Simply complete a short online form and a BlueTie representative will call you to understand your business needs and interests in BlueTie. Following your conversation, a custom assessment of how BlueTie can help your growing business will be sent to you via email.

The second is a Free Webinar on Wednesdays at 11am or 2pm (ET). Once you sign up for a free Webinar an email with a link to the Webinar and information for the audio portion of the Webinar will be sent to you. Simply join the Webinar at your chosen time, 11am or 2pm ET and see how BlueTie can help your growing business.

We hope that you will take advantage of these new ways to find out more about BlueTie.

I'll 'see' you at the the Webinar on Wednesday!

Automated Scheduling of Meetings

Imagine you're scheduling a meeting that involves a half dozen people, possibly including customers or vendors that are not using BlueTie. Without BlueTie you'd probably email a series of timeslots to your invitees and make several calls to find a mutually available time. With BlueTie this process can be streamlined to the point where it only takes a few clicks to get the same result. This is where Shared Calendars demonstrates the power of our collaboration software.
To use this feature, click your Calendar icon and click the New Event button. A window opens the New Event form. Click the Contacts icon and you'll see all your BlueTie contacts including people outside of your business. Click the names of attendees and they will appear in the attendee list. Name the event, select a time and add any necessary descriptive notes. When you click Save a few interesting things happen. BlueTie checks the calendars of co-workers and tells you if they have a conflict. If they do, you can select another time. Once you've Saved an Event, BlueTie sends a meeting notification to other BlueTie users which they can Accept or Decline. It also sends a similar notification, via email, to non-BlueTie users. They can Accept or Decline by clicking their choice in the email. You can see who has responded by double-clicking on the Event in your Calendar.
When everyone in the meeting is using BlueTie you don't have to keep trying different times until you find one when everyone is available. Simply fill out your Event form and select First Available. The system searches everyone's Calendars and brings back the next time you're all free. If that time isn't good, simply click it again and it goes on to the next timeslot available. You can continue until you find the best time.
The real value of having an integrated application like BlueTie is this kind of functionality. It can literally save hours of time monthly for people with busy schedules. Considering that you can use it for free, that's not a bad deal!

Invite Your Friends and Colleagues to Open Free BlueTie Accounts

If you've opened a free BlueTie account you may have noticed that you have a number of Invitations available to you on the My Day page (the first page that opens after logging in). They're in the right hand column below the Universal Inbox. These are provided as an easy way to invite other business owners and anyone else who you think would like to check out BlueTie. They're very easy to use: just click on the Invitation, click a recipient from your Contacts to send it to and you're done. You can use our text or add your own. Your invitee can accept or decline the invitation as they choose. If they choose not to try BlueTie, they will not receive further contact from us as a result of your invite- we respect your privacy.

Help us spread the word about BlueTie Free- we think it's a great solution for any small business.

Independent review of the BlueTie application

Small Business Computing has a comprehensive review of our paid offering which is very similar to the free version launched today. The primary differences between our free and paid Pro versions are that Pro adds 5 more GB of storage for a total of 10, the Pro version integrates with Outlook and other desktop mail apps and live support is included. It also supports an unlimited number of users per enterprise.

Update: They have revised their review to reflect our new free distribution model.

Walk Softly….

This morning we launched a free version of BlueTie’s online business email, calendaring and collaboration suite. There aren’t any strings attached: Each account supports up to 20 users and offers full administrative controls, domain support and more. It's the latest version of the product we’ve been selling for years.

We started looking at free distribution models several months ago. We knew there was a need for a free software app that was designed for business use and that ours fit that need. And even though we’ve fine-tuned our ability to deliver at a low cost per user we still need to make money. So we brainstormed a bit internally and did research on various existing revenue models for free online Software as a Service (SaaS).

The results were not very encouraging. Everyone seemed to depend on either PPC ads, banners, up-selling premium products or more storage or adding a search bar to generate revenue. Our experience told us that none of these options would be sustainable in a business application. So we kept thinking.

We knew there were aspects of the way people use BlueTie that should lend themselves to generating revenue without ruining the user experience. Users of organization and communication software like ours spend a lot of time in the application on a daily basis (our users average 4.6 hours daily). They schedule and organize their business activities while using the application. And they can easily share those schedules and activities with others.

Eventually we figured out how to make it work and decided to go for it. Patents were filed, partners brought on board and engineering challenged. The result is something really different: a free application that earns money without intrusive text ads, banners or limited capabilities.

We‘re pretty excited about it.