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!

Your New Business: Start-up Basics, Part One

A lot of BlueTie Free companies are start-ups. That's not surprising given that setting up email, contacts and files are all important 'day one' activities for a new business. Here's a start-up checklist to help you get your business up and running ASAP:

• Web Site URL. This is the website address for your new company. Choosing the right one is critical as you'll want to use it for the life of the company. In fact, you really can't settle on a name for your business without making sure you can get a related URL. You don't need a website to get a URL- you can register as many as you want and then build your website when you're ready. You will want a URL on day one because you're going to want a business-specific email address for you and your employees. BlueTie offers this (known as domain support) but you need a registered domain URL (name.com). Go for a .com address. It's still the gold standard for business because most searchers will automatically look for .com rather than .net or .us or .biz. If you can afford it, register all four for your name. You register by going to a domain registrar and doing searches for your preferred URL. Your best bet is a word combination of 8-12 letters and/or numbers. Virtually every address with less is taken. Avoid dashes and underscores. It will take a few tries. Be patient as this decision will be critical to the success of your business going forward.
• Organize Your Contacts. Your Contact list is the lifeblood of your business. Set up Groups in your Contacts for Customers, Sales, Vendors, Friends and Family, Investors, Mentors, etc. Get some names in there and keep adding as you meet new ones. You've got a business card right? (Another day one activity- of course you need your email address and website for your card, so get BlueTie set up and get that domain.) Always trade cards with new people you meet and get them entered into your Contacts and matched to the appropriate Groups. A little time spent each morning maintaining your Contacts means that you can quickly and easily communicate with everyone interested in your business with a single click.
• Do you have sales literature, contracts, forms, presentations and other docs that you may need access to wherever you are? Upload them to Files so you can access them from any location. Here's a valuable tip: When you name these files use this format: year-month-filename.type. An example is 2006-12-sellsheet.doc. If you do this you can easily sort by name and see the most recent versions of your files.

We'll be continuing this series to help your start-up get organized and to help you and your people communicate effectively. Being consistent, easy to reach and organized can make a huge difference as you embark on the often chaotic process of starting a business. Good luck!

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.

100GB of Free Online Storage?

I've seen a little confusion about how storage works in your free BlueTie account. Each user in your account has 5GB of combined storage for email, files and contacts. This is a lot of free storage, however it actually gets a lot better. Each account supports up to 20 users, each with 5GB of storage so you're actually getting a potential of 100GB of online storage for your business!

So what do you do with this huge amount of space? Save all your email (except the contents of your junk folder of course). The reason you want to do this is email is a business record. It includes information on agreements, transactions, customer information and more. From a security POV, its also a good idea to retain email.

Use Contacts to track customers, vendors, employees, partners...anyone associated with your business.

And Files...I keep any docs I'm working on in my BlueTie file storage so I can access them from home. I also keep presentations and other files that I may need for an offsite meeting in BlueTie so I can easily access them from any computer.

You've got the space- use it!

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.