tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42502623241111183022024-03-13T10:35:34.065+00:00Solutions for Small BusinessSolutions for Small Business: Marketing, Security, RM, Blogs and Website, Online advertising campaigns, google Apps for Small Business Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-85474310046910488812022-07-03T14:47:00.012+01:002022-08-06T22:27:12.830+01:00Effectiveness of your marketing campaign: How to track campaign performance in Google Analytics?<p></p><a href="https://solutionsforsmallbusiness.blogspot.com/2022/07/Effectiveness%20of%20your%20marketing%20campaign%20How%20to%20track%20campaign%20performance%20in%20Google%20Analytics.html"><img height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRKg9ENCtlPJ-4xuxy6Jb0wQ0rL1lesbmAV9j-Sy486QUstPoQBBtYpk47aTRSNFe67YBlnn87g4kXpplBkl86dTx5x3mjPP2aVx5Divo4cIx2Hh3wQk5P91uLJgbriWPIl_DwpKZOyQ8Kj7iif53xJ9EpSTI2eBLwJ1cQTVajwozHQGuleDTCLtpA=w521-h277" width="521" /></a><br /> <br /><br />All you have to do to track campaigns automatically is use Google’s campaign URL builder ( https://ga-dev-tools.web.app/campaign-url-builder/ ) to create a trackable URL. While you can also add UTM parameters manually to any link, this tool makes it really easy to build your URLs with all the relevant information. All you have to do is enter the URL you want to track, along with the parameters to track it by.<br /><br />Once you fill out your campaign details, Google will give you your trackable URL. <br /><br />Once you have the URL, you can copy it and use it to begin tracking a marketing campaign.<br /><br />Since the reports for the links are your own and only really need to make sense to you and your marketing teams, there’s technically no wrong way to label your tracked URLs.<br /><br /><div>However, there are a few suggestions to keep your reports cleaner and your attribution data easier to parse for insights:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Consider a standard naming convention upfront. Because each URL will have multiple parameters, things can get messy and difficult to read later, unless you adopt a similar style upfront for naming everything.</li><li>Keep in mind that anyone clicking on the link will be able to see the parameter’s label, so don't write anything you wouldn’t want your customers or your competitors to see.</li><li>Parameters are case-sensitive. If you want to keep it simple, just default to lowercase letters and avoid spaces or dashes.</li><li>Because these tracked URLs tend to be long, if you’re displaying them publicly, like in ad copy or a social media bio, you can consider using a link shortener service like bit.ly to make them shorter.</li><li>Only create parameters that are necessary.Redundant parameters only serve to split your traffic unnecessarily.</li><li>Utm_source and utm_medium must always be used together. If you’re missing either one, the traffic won’t show in your reports.</li><li>Without UTM parameters, the traffic from a link may still be assigned a default source and medium, or it may get attributed as general direct traffic.</li></ul></div></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-87208324692274346812021-02-23T20:38:00.000+00:002021-02-23T20:38:16.251+00:00The Best Free Website Builders 2021<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://solutionsforsmallbusiness.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-best-free-website-builders-2021.html" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="762" data-original-width="1807" height="270" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-crZwuMMK_74/YDVmqAFUXwI/AAAAAAAAViE/pezPVSbZnJkZj9rDnOgrC-STCYkwTZ6MACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h270/web%2Bsite%2Beditor.png" width="640" /></a></div><br />It's usually quicker, easier and more efficient to create and edit a site entirely online with a WYSIWYG editor, but if you want complete control over every aspect of your site's design and web hosting, you'll need a desktop-based free website builder.</div><div><br /></div><div>So whether you're looking to create a site for your business, a new blog, or you just fancy creating an online presence for yourself, here are the best free website builder services to help you out.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>* Ucraft – Connect Your Domain for Free</div><div><br /></div><div>This is an interesting product as they are the only ones that allow you to connect an existing domain name for free! They also include SSL security at no extra cost but note that you will be limited to 15 pages on the free plan. Their cheapest paid plan is called Pro, starts at $10 per month and includes pro features such as multilingual sites.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ucraft is a relatively advanced website builder, allowing you to fine-tune your styles such as fonts, colors, and spacings. Overall, we found it more complicated, though, than other free website builders as the editor isn’t quite as self-explanatory.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let’s hope that this business model can work long-term. They are giving away quite a lot for free (which is great!) but it makes us wonder if this is sustainable.</div></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div><div>*Jimdo – Website Editing Powered by AI</div><div><br /></div><div>The good thing about Jimdo is that it won’t cost you an arm and a leg even if you decide to go premium one day. Their cheapest Jimdo Dolphin plan at $9 per month and will allow you to use a proper domain. But even if you have no intention of ever upgrading your Jimdo website you’ll enjoy their very smooth website setup experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not only is Jimdo the fastest loading website builder we found, but their designs are also mobile responsive and look generally pretty good. Jimdo is pretty limited when it comes to features: there is no blog, no app store, or any fancy tools like that. But if you are a beginner and just want to get that website live on the web, you’ll appreciate the simplicity that Jimdo provides.</div><div><br /></div><div>*Weebly - The quick and easy free website builder</div><div><br /></div><div>Weebly offers you two ways to build your website. Both involve creating it online, and both are as quick and painless as possible.</div><div><br /></div><div>The simplest option is to use the basic editor builder which will guide you through a series of questions before automatically creating a site for you. There is scope for customization, but the focus here is really on fast results for anyone who is terrified of designing websites.</div><div><br /></div><div>A more hands-on approach is available if you decide to use the standard Editor. There are literally hundreds of stylish templates to choose from – and, yes, they are genuinely impressive – which you can tweak and tailor to your needs using a beautiful WYSIWYG editor.</div><div><br /></div><div>Despite being a cloud-based website builder, Weebly gives you a great degree of control over the look of your site and placement of page elements. You can also liven it up using additional features such as a newsletter and live chat. This power and flexibility make Weebly a good, free website builder to consider.</div><div><br /></div><div>*Webflow – An Editor That Feels like a Cockpit</div><div><br /></div><div>Take a heap of functions, add a pinch of visual design and garnish your creation with a nice CMS topping – tadaaa! Your Webflow site builder is ready.</div><div><br /></div><div>Webflow is a system that falls a bit out of line with all the other regular website builders. This one specifically targets designers, developers and advanced users who want to create a website, but require more design freedom than traditional site builders like Squarespace or Weebly can offer. Although it’s a complex tool with loads of customization options, Webflow still attempts to make it as easy as possible for their users – coding isn’t necessarily required, you get to see your designs immediately thanks to their visual editor, and they offer tons of help material.</div><div><br /></div><div>*Mozello – Free Multilingual Websites</div><div><br /></div><div>This Latvian company is one of the smaller players worldwide. What strikes us about Mozello is that they allow you to create a multilingual website for free – something you won’t get anywhere else. The range of features includes a blog, an online store and decent SEO options. Fortunately, the advertisement is just a link in the footer that most of your visitors won’t even notice. 500MB of free storage is included and should be enough for most of us.</div><div><br /></div><div>The downside is that the editor, albeit easy to use, is really limited compared to its competitors’. Certain elements like a gallery can only be added to a specific gallery page-type, for example. This makes Mozello rather inflexible.</div></div>
*Mobirise – Installable Website Building Software
Usually, we’re big advocates of hosted site builders that run in your web browser. But we do of course acknowledge that some of you are more comfortable with an installable Windows or Mac website software. Mobirise is such a program: you install it on your computer and within minutes you’ll be able to start dragging and dropping a free website together – even when you’re offline.
Their templates look quite fresh and offer lots of functionality. The choice is limited to a handful of designs. Also, most of them are paid ones that will set you back $19-$39 (as a one-time payment). It’s also a pity we couldn’t find any blogging functionalities. Once you are happy with your result, you need to publish the site to your own web space. Of course, that’s a lot more complicated than with a hosted website builder as it requires you to set up a FTP connection and upload it to your own web space.<div><br /><div><br /></div><div>*Mobirise – Installable Website Building Software</div><div><br /></div><div>Usually, we’re big advocates of hosted site builders that run in your web browser. But we do of course acknowledge that some of you are more comfortable with an installable Windows or Mac website software. Mobirise is such a program: you install it on your computer and within minutes you’ll be able to start dragging and dropping a free website together – even when you’re offline.</div><div><br /></div><div>Their templates look quite fresh and offer lots of functionality. The choice is limited to a handful of designs. Also, most of them are paid ones that will set you back $19-$39 (as a one-time payment). It’s also a pity we couldn’t find any blogging functionalities. Once you are happy with your result, you need to publish the site to your own web space. Of course, that’s a lot more complicated than with a hosted website builder as it requires you to set up a FTP connection and upload it to your own web space.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div><div>*CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor</div><div><br /></div><div>For people who code, and those who don't.</div><div>Site Designer's code-free controls allow you to experiment with high-level features without needing to know how the markup is written.</div><div>Your creativity can run wild! Build utilizing a drag-n-drop workflow in a live browser environment. Then style your content in super speed using clickable controls.</div><div><br /></div><div>CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor is one of a dying breed of web building programs that don't use a CMS (content management system). While not in the same league as the likes of Adobe Dreamweaver, Free HTML Editor packs quite a professional punch. With split screen code/preview views, it's possible to see the effect the changes you make have straight away.</div><div><br /></div><div>To help you get started quickly, there are a number of templates built into the program, and there are some very nice features such as tag and code suggestions as you type.</div><div><br /></div><div>For absolute beginners, the program might seem a little overwhelming to start with, but it's worth sticking with – assuming you have some HTML knowledge. There is one slight issue; a number of features, such as spell-checking and code optimization, are only included in the paid-for version of the program. Otherwise, it can make for a simple alternative to a free website builder.</div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-67635543459968907892021-02-23T19:54:00.007+00:002021-02-23T20:39:28.888+00:00How to get a Free domain name ?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://solutionsforsmallbusiness.blogspot.com/2021/02/how-to-get-free-domain-name.html" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="941" data-original-width="1885" height="320" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nGJZGjUNZJ8/YDVdo_YJ27I/AAAAAAAAVhc/swOWryX-NaEm36pVXKCTaXvqLEX4vqo2gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h320/image.png" width="640" /></a></div><br />Freenom is the world's first and only free domain provider. Freenom mission is to bring people online and help countries develop their digital economy.<div> <div>You won’t get a proper domain name, because .com or .net domains always come at a cost. As you have seen, most providers will give you a subdomain such as yourname.providername.com.</div><div><br /></div><div>A free subdomain may be fine for a personal website, but it is not recommend for professional or commercial sites for the following reasons:</div><div><br /></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>It looks unprofessional.</li><li>You’re not doing yourself any favors in terms of search engine rankings (more on this below).</li><li>It’s not easy to remember such a long name</li><li>There is actually a place where you can get free domain names that aren’t subdomains. At Freenom you can get a few (admittedly, obscure) domain names for free: .tk, .ml, .ga and a few others. So you could name your site mycoolsite.ml, for example. Now, I wouldn’t recommend building your business on top of such a free domain name.</li></ul></div><div><br /></div><div>But if it’s just for a personal project that’ll be completely fine. Freenom allows you to forward your domain name to a URL (such as your free website’s subdomain) or to point it to a website, which is a bit of a technical process. Pointing your domain is actually the professional way as then it will entirely run on this domain and no one will ever see the subdomain.</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div><div>By breaking barriers and integrating free domains with the latest website building and hosting technologies, Freenom makes it easy for any business or individual to build websites and content, at no cost.</div><div><br /></div><div>Using the latest AnyCast Cloud technology, Freenom guarantees the stability and performance of all the domains it manages. And with strategic trusted security partners such as Twitter, Internet Identity, Kaspersky and more than 40 others, we can deliver state of the art anti-abuse technology to keep free domains safe and secured for all internet users.</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>A win-win for partner countries</div><div>With the free domain model, partner countries can offer their local internet population the tools to get online quickly and at no cost. This proven and innovative model dramatically encourages the creation of local content and stimulates the registrar.</div><div><br /></div><div>All Freenom partners benefit from12 years of experience and receive the latest DNS technology. Upon request, Freenom will also organize a comprehensive Competency Transfer Program and provide advice on organizing the national registrar industry.</div><div><br /></div><div>Backed by experienced venture capital firms</div><div>Freenom recently closed a $3M in Series A funding from a group of investors led by Kima Ventures (KIMA), the most active angel investor in the world. Freenom will use the funds to expand its top level domain management operations, to expand its AnyCast cloud network and the development of commercial initiatives combining country top level domains with local communities.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Kima Ventures fund was started in 2010 by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs with the goal to support and finance innovative companies with seed capital all over the world. Since 2010, Kima Ventures has made investments in 205 companies in 23 different countries all over the world including companies such as Sparrow, Rapportive, FreshPlanet/SongPop, FormLabs, MovableInk, Powtoon, Weekdone, ShareDesk and BoatBound.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-34498588938452821262020-10-09T00:33:00.007+01:002020-10-09T00:35:04.366+01:00TOP best Bootstrap Editors<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://solutionsforsmallbusiness.blogspot.com/2020/10/top-best-bootstrap-editors.html" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="844" data-original-width="1500" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WOmJGFYHkIU/X3-hxDfylKI/AAAAAAAAVGM/EuDoydgYPPoTSoPdb396zQVkt-VPyFVGACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h360/bootstrap%2Beditor.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />In simple words, Bootstrap editors are handy tools that allow you to easily select the components that you need and use them. Website developers who are not familiar with Bootstrap editors will be probably wondering why they should use these editors.
Several expert web developers love to use Bootstrap editors because they make testing, prototyping, and building websites a lot easier. Most of the Bootstrap editors out there are also equipped with several handy features.
Each and every Bootstrap editor available in the market are unique. However, most of them do contain a drag and drop functionality that is built using the huge component library of the Bootstrap framework. Some of the best and most popular Bootstrap Code Editors that you should give a try while working on web design or development projects are the following. <span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>
<b>Bootstrap Studio</b></div><div>Bootstrap Studio is actually a desktop app that incorporates the use of the Bootstrap framework to build responsive websites that look great on different types of devices. Developers who use Bootstrap Studio will be able to make use of an abundant number of built-in components. The stunning and extremely powerful interface of Bootstrap Studio makes it suitable for creating apps and web pages.
Developers who choose Bootstrap Studio will be able to make use of different types of slideshows, galleries, footers, and headers. In addition to that, multiple numbers of elements that include divs and spans are available with this excellent tool. The real-time preview feature available with Bootstrap Studio will enable you to instantly view the changes that you have made. </div><div><br /></div><div>
<b>Codeply</b></div><div>
The highly responsive design playground, Codeply is also a stunning frontend editor that is available to website developers for free. One of the fascinating aspects of the Codeply Bootstrap editor is that it enables users to run and preview JavaScript, CSS, and HTML code from any modern internet browser. This tool also offers support for several other frameworks that includes Skeleton, Materialize, and Foundation.
Another interesting aspect of Codeply editor is that it comes with over 50 micro-libraries. In addition to that, multiple numbers of other components are available with this Bootstrap editor. Finally, users should also note that Codeply is available for free, but you will need to register an account to use it. </div><div><br /></div><div>
<b>Bootstrap 4 Editor</b></div><div>
You will be thrilled to realize the fact that the Bootstrap 4 Editor is an online emmet enabled editor that is available for free. One of the attractive features that are included in the Bootstrap 4 Editor, Snippet search, can be activated by simultaneously clicking the Control, Shift, and F key.
This excellent feature allows developers to easily and quickly insert the snippet instead of searching for them in Bootstrap 4’s official documentation. There is also a Class and Components button within this editor that can be used to easily locate the components and classes that you are looking for. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>
<b>Pinegrow</b> </div><div> Pinegrow Web Editor, website builder for professionals
Pinegrow is a Mac, Windows and Linux web editor that lets you build responsive websites faster with live multi-page editing, CSS & SASS styling, CSS Grid editor and support for Bootstrap, Tailwind CSS, Foundation and WordPress.
Pinegrow is a desktop website builder that opens and saves standard HTML and CSS files. That means:
You won’t be locked into a proprietary file format.
Just open and edit your existing projects.
Use Pinegrow alongside other web development tools.
Build websites offline, without internet connection.
Create as many websites as you want.
Pinegrow Web Editor is another choice available to web developers who are looking for a stunning Bootstrap editor. Building web mockups at a rapid pace and developing and designing web pages in an attractive way is all easily possible with the Pinegrow Web Editor. The best thing about this Bootstrap editor is that it is relatively a lot easier to use.
Pinegrow Web Editor offers CSS styling and multi-page editing options to web developers. In addition to that, an abundant collection of smart components for WordPress, AngularJS, Foundation, and Bootstrap are available with this tool. The live and multi-page editing features of Pinegrow are also worth mentioning.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>
<b>LayoutIT</b> </div><div> If you are looking for a Bootstrap editor that will enable you to easily create HTML Bootstrap layouts, then you should certainly check out LayoutIT. LayoutIT is actually a simple Bootstrap interface builder that is capable of making the front-end coding of your project a lot easier.
However, you could either start the project from scratch or use a base template to save time and effort. All you need to do is to drag and drop the necessary Bootstrap elements to the canvas, integrate it, and then add styling.</div><div><br /></div><div>
<b>Pingendo</b> </div><div> Pingendo, a modern Bootstrap editor is an ideal choice for developers who are looking for a cost-effective and lightweight Bootstrap editor. You will be easily able to drag and drop elements with the help of the code editing pane in this Bootstrap editor. Moreover, Pingendo even supports a wide variety of open-source tools.
Both free and premium versions of this Bootstrap editor is available in the market. You will need the premium version only for commercial purposes. If you are focusing only on non-commercial purposes, then it is best to settle for the free version. Customization is a lot simpler when you are using the Pingendo Bootstrap editor. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>
<b>Bootply</b> </div><div> Bootply, which is often called as the playground for the Bootstrap framework, is a free Bootstrap editor. It is not just a Bootstrap editor and builder instead, Bootply is also home to a fascinating extensive code repository. Developers who are using Bootply will be able to drag and drop the components they want and make necessary changes by editing them.
The integration of Bootply with other frameworks, micro-libraries, and Bootstrap plugins will also surely come in handy. Bootply also offers both hand-coding and visual interfaces to developers. Lastly, it is also home to a fascinating collection of snippets.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-6806834151564611462020-09-13T08:23:00.004+01:002020-09-13T08:27:00.174+01:00free website building tool that requires no coding skills: Webflow vs Mobirise vs Nicepage<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://solutionsforsmallbusiness.blogspot.com/2020/09/free-website-building-tool-that.html" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="709" data-original-width="1043" height="272" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bqCpihW9fSw/X13IdUoOsQI/AAAAAAAAVDg/v7Ijf_I_azUu5Y9L8eKVrSD2iB6Q2owXQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h272/free%2Bwebsite%2Bbuilding%2Btool.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />Webflow is a web design tool that allows users to create web pages without code. The application contains finished websites or, if requested by the designer, exports clean and ready-to-use codes for other hosting sites. With this platform, designers can unleash their creativity. The website builder software is extremely flexible and can support HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It also offers many design elements and animations. The web builder software (WBS) also saves websites. While web designers previously outsourced coding, they can now design and create websites themselves. Therefore, the application makes the process less demanding and less expensive. For design teams, cooperation is essential to meet customer specifications. The WB software provides a platform where team members can meet and work together to create stunning websites. Also, customers can access work in progress so they can be edited and updated at any time. Webflow Editor, allow publishers or writers can easily insert textual content into the design. In minutes, they can structure new or organized content as they see fit.<span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>Mobirise is a free offline app that is available on both Windows and Mac that helps users create websites, landing pages, online resumes, and portfolios. It comes with more than 1500 elegant website blocks, templates, and themes. Through these, users can get going within minutes without a single line of code. This makes Mobirise perfect for non-tech users who may not know the nuances of web development. And even designers can use it to work visually instead of focusing on the code. But it can also be used by professional coders to prototype quickly. Its minimalistic and easy to use interface makes it stand out, with the latest website blocks and techniques included. Blocks are a part of the visual builder that are used to add new elements to the page. And the best part, it is free to use for both commercial and non-profit use.</p><p>Nicepage is a free website building tool that requires no coding skills and integrates seamlessly with all leading CMS systems. This includes the Joomla, Wordpress, Mac OS, and even web app infrastructure. It comes packed with a simple drag-and-drop editor that enables users to implement and test ideas on the go. Any web element can be customized within minutes. The best part about the tool is that it comes packed with web design 3.0 capabilities along with thousands of designer-made web templates spanning hundreds of use cases. With a mobile-friendly interface and a responsive design, the websites look great on all modern devices. Developers have developed the tool after an analysis of trending web designs on Pinterest, Behance, and Dribble to enable the creation of virtually any modern web design. This allows users to play around with theme settings, such as colours, fonts, typography, header, footer, blog, and post templates.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-83671011551732830512020-08-08T13:58:00.006+01:002020-09-13T08:16:14.361+01:00The best desktop cloud sync apps<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://solutionsforsmallbusiness.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-best-desktop-cloud-sync-apps.html" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="689" data-original-width="1283" height="215" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Bnl8YqI5WDE/X13GrV6OGTI/AAAAAAAAVDU/Xd4ia4kMolYF84ez2rEyy_9vzEsfprc8gCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h215/cloudsync%2B%25282%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div><br />Allway Sync uses innovative synchronization algorithms to synchronize your data between desktop PCs, laptops, USB drives, remote FTP/SFTP and WebDAV servers, various online data storages and more. Data compression and encryption are supported. It combines bulletproof reliability with extremely easy-to-use interface. Allway Sync also can synchronize your PC data with a Mac via Sync Gateway.<div><br /></div><div>Insync is, by far, the best of the best for syncing Google Drive to your desktop. Not only can you sync multiple Google accounts (each account will require a separate license for a one-time fee of $29.99), but you can determine what is synced, where it is to be synced, as well as work with teams (requires a team account, which is a one-time fee of $49.99 per Google account), get notifications on your desktop, preserve directory structure, merge folders, share files/folders from the desktop, and so much more.<span><a name='more'></a></span><br />
The Insync app comes in the form of a single window (Figure A), called up from the notification (or system) tray. Insync also offers seamless integration for most default file managers. For certain file managers (such as Nautilus on Linux) a plugin must be installed from the Insync Downloads page. Insync file manager integration allows you to add folders outside of your configured sync destination. Insync is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows<br />
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Dropbox is one of the cloud sync leaders on the market. And with a desktop app that's hard to beat, Dropbox absolutely belongs on this list. With the Dropbox desktop app (Figure B), you can view notifications, get share links for files, open either your local or remote Dropbox folders, open files, pause syncing, snooze notifications, and gain access to Dropbox preferences. The Dropbox desktop client integrates seamlessly with your file manager and lives in your desktop system (or notification) tray. Dropbox doesn't offer too much in the way of bells and whistles, but if you're a user of this particular cloud service, you cannot beat the reliability and ease of use found in their client app.<br />
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Duplicati is a bit different than most desktop sync apps. Instead of being a standard desktop client, it acts more like a web-based app (running on its own, built-in web server), and allows you to sync/back up to a multitude of hosts (such as SSH, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon, Azure, B2, Box, Dropbox, Google Cloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, and many more). How you set up a sync connection (Figure C) depends upon the service you use, but most configurations aren't terribly challenging.<br />
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The other issue is that Duplicati really only works one way--from the desktop to the cloud. Because of this, you'll most likely use this particular client as more of a backup. However, because Duplicati allows you to connect to so many different cloud services, this could easily be considered a must-have for users who work with multiple clouds.<br />
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GoodSync is an incredibly powerful desktop syncing app that can work as either a backup or a sync tool. In fact, GoodSync is so powerful, it can pretty much fill any desktop sync/backup need you have. GoodSync features real-time data transfer, block level transfer, unattended service, end-to-end encryption, version control, copy-locked files, file/folder move/rename detection, security attribute propagation, bandwidth throttling, and more.<br />
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GoodSync can sync/backup in numerous ways, such as computer to computer, computer to NAS, computer to cloud storage (such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Azure, Office 365, etc.), and over network share protocols (such as FTP, SFTP, and WebDAV). Setting up a sync might be a bit of a challenge for newer users (Figure D), but it's not impossible.<br />
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GoodSync outshines nearly every other desktop cloud sync app on the market--regardless of price. GoodSync can be installed on Linux, macOS, and Windows. The one caveat for Linux users is that GoodSync only offers a command line option. GoodSync isn't free (although you can test the app free for 30 days). A single license is $49.95 for a personal desktop user, $1,194 for servers, and $2,995.00 for GoodSync File Server.<br />
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*<br />
<br />
Odrive is a powerful sync client that supports many popular cloud services (such as Google Drive and Dropbox) as well as file sharing protocols like FTP and SFTP. The Odrive client exists as a system tray pop-up menu (Figure E) and offers plenty of options from that easy-to-access window. Odrive features end-to-end encryption, network drive support, unlimited cloud connections, odrive folder relocation, auto download, bandwidth throttling, large file splitting, auto empty trash, user authorization, and more.<br />
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As with most good cloud sync desktop apps, Odrive seamlessly integrates into the desktop file manager. Odrive does a great job of bridging the gap between the overly simple (such as Dropbox) to the overly complex (such as GoodSync). Odrive is free unless you want to include end-to-end encryption. The non-free client costs $8.25/month.<br />
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<span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-21909530277815968502020-07-08T20:37:00.001+01:002022-08-06T22:29:05.982+01:00The Best Free Podcast Cloud Hosting Services 2020<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://solutionsforsmallbusiness.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-best-free-podcast-cloud-hosting.html" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fzSSIm8s0Uo/Xoo1lRtLToI/AAAAAAAATgg/YfnSnHbJRAwEnQG5TZT2mwQCR7MiG6v4QCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/podcast%2Bsmall%2Bbusienss.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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Podcast hosting is different than website hosting because it offers specific tools built to optimize the subscriber experience (we’ll explain more later in the article).<br />
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Choosing a reliable podcasting hosting platform is crucial for your podcast because it will help you grow your audience faster while making it easier to manage your podcast files.<br />
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A podcast hosting service acts as the home for your show. Just like a website needs a hosting provider, podcasts also need some way to help store and distribute the podcast audio files. Though most have cost tiers associated with them, and you can read about our favorite podcast hosting services here, several have more affordable options and some even provide free podcast hosting. Below is a list of the pros and cons and reviews of the best free podcast hosting services.<br />
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In general, podcast hosting services:<br />
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Create an easy method to upload audio files<br />
Generate an RSS feed to describe the files as well as establishes file locations for download<br />
Distributes your podcast RSS feed to iTunes (Apple Podcasts), Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and more<br />
Provides a server where listeners can go and find the audio files<br />
Another way to look at hosting is it serves as a vehicle that transports the show from its upload to its storage to its distribution and finally to its analytics as well as potential money-making opportunities. The host helps simplify everything in the creation and management process.<br />
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What to Look for with a Free Podcast Host<br />
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Best Practices and How to Start a Podcast<br />
In addition to its means as a platform that stores your important mp3 files and data, free services are also geared toward startup shows and traditionally has a lot of extra features and resources. These services may provide valuable tutorials and other reading material to learn more about what makes a good podcast and how to improve the overall quality of the audio recording. If you’re just starting out, make sure to check out our guide on how to start a podcast.<br />
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Podcast Analytics<br />
Though the analytics for a podcast are basic at the free level, they can still help deliver important information and where and how your generating an audience as well as build upon that audience. The goal is to eventually have enough listeners that you can turn a profit on the podcast, though many still do it simply for the hobby of podcasting.<br />
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Pitfalls of Free Podcast Hosts<br />
There are many other advanced features that are sometimes included with a free version and other times only granted to podcasters with paid accounts. These include a blog or website for listeners to stop in and visit, methods for listener feedback, automatic uploads to popular directories (Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, etc.) and customer service for any questions or problems you run into regarding the hosting or RSS feed.<br />
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The same rule applies with podcast hosting with any product: you get what you pay for and once again the old adage is true, “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product.”<br />
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If after some time your podcast outgrows the free host tier, there is always the opportunity to upgrade to a paid subscription. Many are reasonably priced between in $10 to $20 per month. Until then you can expect the upload time and bandwidth to be limited, which not only impacts the number of hours you can upload each month but also the playback speeds. Advanced metrics and potential money-making opportunities are usually restricted to paid subscribers as well.<br />
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In the end, free versions are basic means to an RSS feed and file hosting, but as your audience grows you’ll want to consider an upgrade. When you get to that point, make sure to read our best podcast hosting services review. For now a free account is sufficient for most new podcasts.<br />
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Best Free Podcast Hosting Services<br />
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Podbean<br />
Podbean is self-described as an “easy and powerful” way to podcast. The podcast hosting service provides four different plans for users, including one completely free version. As your podcast grows it also offers two paid versions.<br />
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Podbean currently hosts over 240,000 podcasters with more than 7.4 million episodes combined. The site also boasts around 6 billion downloads.<br />
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Strengths<br />
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Provides excellent resources for sharing and building audience<br />
Features an app for Android and iPhone users<br />
RSS Feed and iTunes Support included even with free plan<br />
One of the largest podcast hosting platforms available<br />
Will scale as you grow<br />
Weaknesses<br />
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Free version is limited to 5 hours of storage<br />
Cannot use your own domain name for a podcast through free subscription<br />
Podbean advertises as a service that presents everything you need to create, manage, and promote a podcast. The website features everything from custom domains to upload and publishing tools, methods to promote a podcast, as well as embedded players for the episodes.<br />
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The provider is like a lot of the podcast hosting companies featured in the article in that little programming knowledge is necessary to record, produce, upload and share your new podcasts. It is also mobile-ready which is a must for any podcast hosting service these days.<br />
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Though the three paid options do deliver unlimited bandwidth, the free version is capped at 100GB monthly, and five hours of storage space. The hosting is described as reliable with a robust network that is flexible based on where and how your viewers listen.<br />
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Podcasters may connect their own website to the hosting provider or embed a player on their own domain for easy playback. Sharing tools enable listeners to connect with you on social media, while other types of audience engagement like enabling feedback are nice additions.<br />
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Podbean presents a breakdown of how the podcast is performing, and also provides advertising sponsorship opportunities for its members. The website can help introduce premium subscription services to your podcast as well as crowdfund.<br />
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Related reading:<br />
<br />
Libsyn vs. Podbean Podcast Host Review<br />
Blubrry vs. Podbean Podcast Host Review<br />
Plan Bandwidth Storage Analytics Monetization<br />
Free 100 GB 5 Hours Basic ☓<br />
$9 month Unmetered Unlimited Advanced ✓<br />
$29 month Unmetered Unlimited Advanced ✓<br />
Deal: Get your first month free if/when you upgrade for a paid account. Click here.<br />
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Buzzsprout<br />
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Buzzsprout is a hosting service that features a basic, free plan along with affordable monthly options that require no contract or credit card to sign-up. Buzzsprout currently works with notable podcast directories like Apple/iTunes, Spotify, Google Podcast and Stitcher.<br />
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The website has worked to provide hosting for over 50,000 people since the website was launched in 2009. It boosts several 5 star reviews from satisfied customers.<br />
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Strengths<br />
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Subscription includes your own custom website and ways to sync with popular directories<br />
250 GB of bandwidth each month for paid plans, even less for the free version<br />
Supports multiple audio file types then optimizes the quality of the file<br />
Easily migrate a podcast from another source onto Buzzsprout with minimal effort<br />
Weaknesses<br />
<br />
Unlimited storage for free plan, but can only upload 2 hours each month<br />
Only 90 days of hosting for a free podcast before Buzzsprout wants you to upgrade to a paid version<br />
Buzzsprout is promoted as one of the easiest ways to host, promote and track a podcast. Like a lot of providers it includes detailed analytics to learn more about the audience tuning in.<br />
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The website is designed to make it easier to upload and publish once an episode is recorded. Publishing can take place within minutes of an upload, or even get scheduled days or weeks in advance.<br />
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It supports a number of different audio files. Not only that but the website optimizes the file based on if it’s more spoken word, or a show that also incorporates a lot of music. A purchasable add-on will event boost audio to 128k stereo.<br />
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One great feature on the dashboard is that it provides a notification of how much upload time is left in the current cycle, so you do not have to guess approximately how many more minutes you have left to upload each month.<br />
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Podcasters may learn everything about where and how listeners are connecting, what device or directory they are using to play the episode, and more advanced stats.<br />
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Buzzsprout helps get you listed on popular podcast directories and is also mobile-friendly. An embedded version is provided for your own domain. The hosting provider also includes your own website upon sign-up.<br />
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The free subscription delivers 2 hours of upload time each month and the episode is hosted for 90 days before its removed. The next step up costs $12 per month, and only one more hour of upload time each month yet is hosted indefinitely.<br />
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Plans Storage Hosting Bandwidth<br />
Free 2 hours 90 days Limited<br />
$12 month 3 hours Indefinitely 250GB<br />
$18 month 6 hours Indefinitely 250GB<br />
$24 month 12 hours Indefinitely 250GB<br />
Deal: Get a $20 Amazon gift card when you sign up. Click here.<br />
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Spreaker<br />
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Spreaker is a well known provider for podcasters as it’s an all-in-one system for new as well as established shows. It provides a versatile program that helps you create, distribute, as well as potentially make money on your podcast.<br />
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Spreaker was launched in 2010, and now hosts thousands of publishers along with millions of active listeners. It includes apps for Android and iOS as well.<br />
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Strengths<br />
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The best recording studio of any free hosting service for podcasts<br />
External tools like broadcasting software and mixers supported for advanced audio production<br />
Unlimited bandwidth on all subscriptions including the free version<br />
Live streaming, including up to 15 minutes per episode for users not paying a dime<br />
Weaknesses<br />
<br />
Lacks any type of tool to earn income through your podcast on the free version<br />
Advertisements are included with free plans, you’ll have to pay to remove them<br />
Spreaker is unique in that it also features an onboard recording and editing system on its platform. Users may record a podcast and post at a later date, or even broadcast live. Content may also get migrated from an existing service through its RSS importer. The studio app is extremely resourceful and easy to use.<br />
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After you record or upload an audio file, it’s time to distribute. Spreaker supports various forms of social media for uploads as well as mainstream directories like Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Like most podcast hosting services, you may also embed a widget onto your own website for immediate playback.<br />
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Analytics are crucial to the success of any new podcast and Spreaker provides basic statistics for its free and $5.99 per month plans, as well as more detailed stats for the higher priced monthly subscriptions. The analytics for the free plan is good but not great, about what you would expect as well as comparable to other free hosting providers.<br />
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The free plan also includes 5 hours of audio storage and 15 minutes of max live streaming (in a single session). However, the podcast monetization tool is not available with the free sign-up. Bandwidth is unlimited on every type of subscription.<br />
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Plans Storage Bandwidth Monetization Analytics<br />
Free 5 Hours Unlimited ☓ Basic<br />
$5.99 month 100 Hours Unlimited ✓ Basic<br />
$19.99 month 500 Hours 3 Unlimited ✓ Advanced<br />
$49.99 month 1,500 Hours 5 Unlimited ✓ Full<br />
Deal: First month free with code “discoverpods”. Click here.<br />
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Podiant<br />
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Update: Podiant’s free podcast host tier is currently only hold.<br />
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Podiant offers a well-rounded list of features as its dedicated to everyone from beginning podcasters (that are likely seeking a free version) and seasoned, well-established pros.<br />
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The provider services nearly 20,000 uploads daily and almost a million minutes consumed by listeners. Podiant claims they are smaller than some of the other publishers, which is true, though at 4 million downloads and growing it is far from tiny.<br />
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Strengths<br />
<br />
No bandwidth limits and unlimited storage space for new podcasts that are eligible for the free program<br />
Consulting service and community support forum can help newbies get adjusted to the world of podcasting<br />
Compatible with Apple and Spotify podcast directories<br />
Weaknesses<br />
<br />
Not everyone will qualify for the free offering, next available plan costs $12.99 per month<br />
Audio editing is a nice addition yet not quite as in-depth as Spreaker<br />
Podiant hasn’t lost sight on what podcasting is first and foremost, a craft and hobby for those that want to get the word out about something. Fittingly, while it also endorses analytics and ways to monetize your podcast, it’s also just as much dedicated to newbies looking to produce their own show for fun.<br />
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The dashboard of Podiant is very good and interactive. It’s arguably not quite as good as Buzzsprout, yet they provide the best one on the market. You can get a quick overview of stats as well as helpful pointers to expand your audience.<br />
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Podiant features a production consultant service which is unique yet something those new to podcasting may want to take advantage of. The consulting does cost extra, but they can help get you on the right track if you are completely new to not only the production process, but also distribution and promotion.<br />
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The website is compatible with social media like Facebook and Twitter, and broadcasters may also integrate comments with Disqus. File uploads are also compatible with Dropbox.<br />
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The free version is kind of unique in that new podcasters are asked to submit their new recordings for review and those that are deemed eligible receive free hosting. If you do pass their upload standards, you receive unlimited bandwidth and storage for no cost which is exceptional.<br />
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However, their guidelines are a little more stringent than your typical hosting service. But if you get into the “Podiant Community” you have a great launching pad for a new podcast. The free plan also includes a blog and static page for the podcast, along with community support.<br />
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Plans Storage Website/Blog Analytics<br />
Free Unlimited ✓ ☓<br />
$12.99 month Unlimited ✓ ☓<br />
$29.92 month Unlimited ✓ ✓<br />
Deal: First month free with code “discoverpods”. Click here.<br />
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Anchor<br />
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Anchor is advertised as being 100 percent completely free and insists that most other services get away with murder for charging its users to host their podcasts through them. Like the other providers, it’s a complete all-in-one package for podcasts of varying skill levels and audiences.<br />
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That said, it still remains to be seen what will happen to the service after Spotify acquired them in February 2019. They also came under fire in 2018 when their terms and conditions claimed they own any content you upload through their app, in essence they own your podcast. They have since revised their T&Cs to remove any mention of ownership.<br />
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Anchor was founded on the principle of “democratizing” audio. It believes that everyone should have a voice and not restricted by paid subscription services that cap a limit to the number of hours or bandwidth you can use in a given month.<br />
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Strengths<br />
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100% free to use with unlimited storage and no cap on number of shows<br />
Earn income through a couple of different sources, both provided through Anchor<br />
Great hosting partner for podcasts that feature a co-host or lots of guest speakers through the app’s recording function<br />
Weaknesses<br />
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May not have the esteemed connections of some of the other hosting services yet still works with Apple Podcasts, Google, and Spotify<br />
Basic analytics yet a small price to pay for all the other great features provided for free<br />
May not be the best podcast host to scale as you grow<br />
Future of the service may be questionable after the Spotify acquision<br />
Anchor is a platform that provides a place to create and distribute an unlimited number of episodes, as well as delivers tools to help turn a profit. Unlike other free accounts, Anchor charges absolutely nothing for unlimited storage as well as no cap on the number of different shows you seek to host.<br />
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Distribution is provided on everything from Apple Podcasts to Spotify and Google Podcasts. The monetizing tools are also top notch as most hosting services require a monthly subscription in order to provide means to make money from the podcast.<br />
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Podcasters are presented with two options: 1) get paid for the number of episode plays or 2) collect monthly payments from listeners that subscribe to the station. You can also earn income through both methods.<br />
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Anchor is also really great for collaboration for shows that feature a number of guest speakers, or even like interjecting audio comments from listeners. The collaboration is available via Anchor’s app (supports Android and iOS) which is a really cool feature.<br />
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The analytics are basic and mostly straightforward yet still provide some insights into what is working (and not working) with a new podcast.<br />
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Plans Storage Distribution Monetization Analytics<br />
Free/Basic Unlimited ✓ ✓ ✓<br />
Comparing the Best Free Podcast Hosts<br />
Although Anchor and Podiant may stand out for their unlimited bandwidth and storage space for a free version, neither have been around nor have the resume that Buzzsprout, Podbean, or Spreaker have. It’s difficult to say Anchor will be a good podcast host once your podcast gains a following.<br />
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Furthermore, Buzzsprout and Podbean may limit the storage space for the free plans yet they are well regarded for their connections to crucial podcast directories as well as their thriving online communities and ability to earn income.<br />
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Here is a table the compares the five different podcast hosting services based on the free version of the platform:<br />
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Podcast Host Bandwidth Storage Submit to Apple, Spotify, and Google Analytics Monetization<br />
Anchor Unlimited Unlimited ✓ ✓ ✓<br />
Buzzsprout 250 GB 2 hours ✓ ✓ ☓<br />
Podbean 100 GB 5 hours ✓ ✓ ☓<br />
Podiant Unlimited Unlimited ✓ ✓ ✓<br />
Spreaker Unlimited 5 hours ✓ ✓ ☓<br />
Which podcast host is the best?<br />
It really depends on your individual needs: Do you already have professional audio equipment and recording or are you starting from scratch? Are you looking for hosting that provides the most storage or has comprehensive directories? Are you seeking a service that is more dedicated to earning income and distribution or also serves as a second-party recording platform?<br />
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These are all important questions to answer and will help dictate which popular podcast hosting platform is the appropriate provider for you<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-38202235516325818422020-06-18T14:49:00.001+01:002022-08-06T22:30:34.287+01:00The best Desctop virtual machines for personal and Small BusinessThe virtualization concept can be simply considered as one computer within another. It will allow us to use multiple operating systems on a single computer or machine. This, in turn, makes the work much easier as we cannot change the operating system as per our requirement every time. For IT Professionals or Developers it will be an easier option to use virtualization software.<br />
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Virtual machines offer the ultimate hack: an alternative OS experience without a significant investment. You might think that once you select an operating system, you can’t change your mind unless you want to buy a new computer.<br />
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VMware<br />
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VMware has been in the virtual machine game since 1998 and offers three different pieces of virtualization software: VMware Workstation Pro, VMware Fusion, and VMware Workstation Player.<br />
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The Workstation Pro package is ideal for professional users who desire a powerhouse virtual machine capable of simultaneously running applications on multiple guest operating systems. VMware’s Fusion, meanwhile, is a simpler application designed for home users who want to run Windows on their Mac machine and it supports iMac displays.<br />
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On the other hand, the VMware Workstation Player, known until recently as VMware Player, is an interesting entry-level option: If you are using it for personal use (not commercial, not nonprofit), you can download a free version. It’s a great solution for a single home computer, and it’s often used by people who want to get more familiar with a different operating system, or those who want to add some extra security to their computer activities — available for both Windows and Linux. The professional version, which is enabled by entering a license key, starts at $150.<br />
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Speaking of pricing, VMware has an interesting pricing model with a number of different options for all its virtual products. There’s a sliding scale for support level and support terms that businesses can choose from, as well as a discounted option if you’re upgrading from an older version of the software to the latest model. None of the options are particularly simple to use, but the installation is quick, integration between operating systems is seamless, and the guest software runs at near-native speeds. Best of all, they remain the most stable and reliable options out there. Note that the downloads do require a 64-bit operating system.<br />
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Parallels Desktop 15<br />
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When it comes to delivering the Windows experience to Mac users, Parallels Desktop 15 is, well, unparalleled. The latest incarnation of the software is compatible with the most recent version of MacOS, allowing you to emulate Windows XP, 7, 8, and 10 as a guest operating system (although since support has ended for Windows XP and 7, you’ll want to be careful what you do with those). You can also conveniently run Mac and Windows applications side by side without rebooting, while also providing tools for quickly moving files between operating systems, launching programs directly from your Mac dock, and accessing cloud storage.<br />
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The newest version adds a number of other tricks, such as the ability to send email attachments directly from the Finder, sharing screenshots between operation systems, compatibility with Sidecar and the Apple Pencil, and many other welcome new capabilities.<br />
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The software features a simple setup wizard for beginners and supports Retina displays and advanced 3D graphics with DirectX 9 through 11. Parallels can also emulate the Linux and Solaris operating systems, but the tightest integration is when it’s coupled with the latest version of Windows. In addition to the basic version of the software, there’s also a professional version with better integration, support and networking options, and a business version for enterprise-level management. <br />
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VirtualBox<br />
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VirtualBox is powerful, brimming with terrific features and, best of all, it’s free. It’s a lean piece of software requiring little more than a recent Intel or AMD processor that boasts seamless integration and switching capabilities within the host desktop. It’s also available on all major platforms and features plain-text XML files for easy navigation. It remains coupled with special software packages designed to aid users with sharing folders and drives among guest and host operating systems.<br />
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The software functions nearly identically regardless of the host platform, and even offers 3D virtualization, multi-screen resolutions, and laudable hardware support, among other features. The latest updates include new compatibility with virtual machines for Oracle Cloud (VirtualBox is managed by Oracle, so this kind of compatibility is important for the software), support for nested hardware virtualized on Intel CPUs, and additional 3D support. It’s not the quickest or most industrious when compared to similar offerings, but then again, you often get what you pay for. Fortunately, support and updates are both very good — although you may need some tech knowledge to get everything working just the way you like.<br />
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Gnome Boxes<br />
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Boxes from Gnome is a creation and management tool for virtualization that’s designed for Linux and can help you customize all kinds of virtualization tools, from specific workstation setups to enabling operating systems. The simple, elegant interface makes it easy to see what virtualization systems you have at any point, and how they are performing. If you’re looking for a user-friendly virtualization solution for Linux, give Gnome Boxes a shot: It plays especially well with QEMU and Virt Manager, which are ideal tools for more back-end work.<br />
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Note that Boxes will automatically allocate resources for virtualization based on vendor recommendations. If Boxes cannot find any recommendations or virtualization info from the processor, it will automatically allocate 20GB of storage and 500MB of RAM, so be prepared for this.<br />
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Boot Camp<br />
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Apple’s Boot Camp isn’t a virtual machine in any sense of the word, but it’s worth a mention given people researching virtual machines are often curious about it. The software, which is included on all Macs, allows users to dual boot both MacOS and Windows. Instead of emulating an operating system, Boot Camp helps you set up a partition on the hard drive so you can install the Windows operating system of your choice. Since it’s running directly off the hard drive, running Windows via Boot Camp leads to a far better experience than any virtual machine offers.<br />
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However, your disk space will be split in half, and you’ll be unable to run the best Mac applications and Windows apps side by side considering the software requires disk partitioning. You’ll also need to restart your computer every time you want to switch operating systems.<br />
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It’s worth noting that, while Boot Camp itself is not a virtual machine, you can run your Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine with Parallels 14 (outlined above). This gives you quick access to Windows when you want it within MacOS, and full performance when you’ve got enough time to restart your computer and boot up Windows directly.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-58361991942970610632020-05-18T14:16:00.001+01:002022-08-06T22:35:46.946+01:00The Best Cloud Virtual Desktop Solution for Small BusinessVirtual client computing (VCC) solutions, a.k.a. Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), have come a long way in recent years. Instead of having to purchase software in order to deploy an on-premises backend server infrastructure, you can now simply subscribe to a cloud-based VCC provider and provision virtual desktops and applications directly from the cloud. But while the technology has gotten simpler to implement, for several reasons it can still feel daunting for smaller businesses to consider deploying cloud-based remote desktop delivery solutions.<br />
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Desktop virtualization has been looked upon as a solution for enabling central management security of your user’s desktops and with less IT management overhead.<br />
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Using virtual desktops which has a Windows operating system, you can access it from an iPad and Android device desktop or a laptop. You have access to your personalized desktop environment or a workspace. This means I can work at home, at the office, from a hotel or anywhere else. And from each device, I will have access to my data and applications.<br />
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Now, this approach separates your operating system’s data and apps from local hardware, running them instead separately on a remote server.<br />
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Creating a desktop virtualization environment internally has been expensive and complicated. Users have often lacked the productivity experience of a locally provisioned desktop, and it can take weeks and sometimes months to get a successful implementation up and running.<br />
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Microsoft Azure<br />
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Windows virtual desktop by Microsoft Azure is a perfect cloud solution for desktop virtualization. You can access it from any of your devices. It offers native client support for Windows, Android, Mac, and also HTML5 so that you can access remote desktops and apps for almost any modern browser.<br />
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It gives you a remote desktop infrastructure that contains the roles that you would have had to manage. All your VMs in the Windows Virtual Desktop Service communicate over a secure outbound connection, and you benefit from unlimited capacity. Based on the workload, it also gives you more choice and how you can distribute users across those VMS.<br />
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It has support for modern apps like OneNote and Office 365 apps. You can deploy a full desktop, remote apps, or both and also scale up or scale down as needed, and you pay only as per usage.<br />
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You can assign multiple users to a single VM using a client OS, not a server OS. Windows Virtual desktop uniquely breaks away from the one user per VM and delivers the only Windows 10 multi-session experience.<br />
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It also provides an option to load balance users on your virtual machine host pools. So for best performance, you can configure breath mode. It evenly allocates your users across the host pool for your workload. It also has pre-built Azure resource manager templates available to create and update your host polls consistently.<br />
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Now the combination of the virtual machine infrastructure hosted Microsoft’s cloud, and the connection to unlimited OneDrive storage is both fast and bottomless.<br />
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Windows 7 desktops offer the unique advantage of allowing you to run them in the cloud for up to three years without having to pay for extended security updates all passed the January 14th, 2020, and of support date, you can also migrate your existing RDS.<br />
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Amazon WorkSpaces<br />
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Amazon workspaces is a DaaS (Desktop as a Service) solution. It is securely managed cloud desktops that make it easy for users to access applications documents and resources from anywhere on any supported device.<br />
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You can provision Windows or Linux desktops in minutes to deliver on the promise of “bring your device.” It enables remote, mobile, and contract employees and streamlines test and development processes. Since the data is streamed to your devices in an encrypted format and not stored locally, Amazon workspaces help in improving your security. It enables you to reduce costs and complexity by eliminating the need to build out the on-premises infrastructure for legacy VDI deployments.<br />
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Amazon WAM (Workplace application Manager) makes deployment and management of you your applications on amazon workplace flexible, faster, and secured. It takes care of all the updates, patch, and removal of apps on the virtual system. It can quickly provision desktop applications to your virtualized system as containers. <br />
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With the help of Amazon Workspaces, you don’t need to over-buy desktops and laptops. You can have access to cloud desktops on-demand to meet your user’s needs. So, the cost gets reduced by a good margin.<br />
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All the administrative tasks like provisioning, maintaining, recycling desktops are taken care of by Amazon Workspace. You can access Amazon Workspace from any windows or mac computers, iPads, Android tablets, and Chrome and Firefox web browsers.<br />
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Kamatera<br />
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You can choose a customized mode which gives you options to host your server in any of the 13 data centers. Kamatera supports Linux, Windows, and custom operating systems.<br />
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They are probably the fastest cloud on the planet because of below offerings:<br />
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Fastest Intel Xeon Gold Processors<br />
40 Gbit Public & Private Networking speed<br />
Solid-State Drive (SSD) Storage for no I/O bottlenecks<br />
Guaranteed Dedicated Resources for each server<br />
The user-friendly cloud management console for deployment in seconds<br />
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OVHcloud<br />
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OVH is a French company that provides virtual cloud desktops and other web services. With a desktop, you will get a machine that you can access from any web browser or a workstation. You can access your Desktop, applications, content from any device.<br />
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Below are the key features:<br />
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Even if your laptop is lost, your data and applications are secured on OVH Cloud<br />
Access your desktop from home, office or any hotel; the experience remains identical<br />
Save cost by assigning virtual desktops to new employees, and delete them whenever required<br />
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V2 Cloud<br />
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For small, medium-sized businesses setting up a cloud-based desktop infrastructure can be expensive and difficult to manage securely. V2 Cloud workspace can help.<br />
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V2 cloud workspace is a desktop as a service offering. It enables you to securely access data, business applications, documents, and other resources from anywhere on any device.<br />
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It features a multi-user window operating system with Microsoft Office. Your employees and consultants can access all your business applications from any computer, phone, or tablet from anywhere.<br />
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With V2 Cloud, you don’t need to write any code to have a cloud version of your software. You can easily leverage the subscription-based model instead of Perpetual licenses.<br />
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V2 Cloud workspaces provide secure cost-effective in high-quality desktop experience with live monitoring and 24/7 technical support. In your V2 cloud virtual desktop, you can add up to 250 members, and they can share files and applications among each other while having their session.<br />
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It securely hosts your Cloud computers, so they are always optimal and accessible. Everything is automatically backed up each day, and you have all the admin control. As the admin, you can install any software you need and add as many users as you want. Once users are added to the workspace, they can access their desktop and all your business applications from Personal devices using just a web browser, no plug-in required. So, the data never leaves the workspace, and everything remains securely hosted in the cloud.<br />
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Microsoft Active Directory is compatible with V2 cloud workspaces. It can support multi-factor authentication using AD Connector. You don’t need to replicate them to V2 Cloud to use your existing directory and corporate credentials.<br />
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You can choose on which secure data center location you want your workspace to be located in, the data will never leave that location. You don’t want to rush your data on V2 Cloud, purchase V2 Cloud license, and have your data on any other Cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure Amazon AWS or Google Cloud platform for software vendors.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-19089196367735247902020-04-18T13:51:00.001+01:002022-08-06T22:38:04.553+01:00Top 10 Free VPN Services for your Small BusinessWhile it’s easy to find a free VPN, finding a trustworthy one with no hidden costs that will actually let you access Netflix and torrents, plus keep you secure? That’s a lot more challenging. I tested and ranked hundreds of elements across 45 VPN services that claimed to be free, to bring you the ultimate list of the 10 best free VPNs.<br />
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Almost every free VPN comes with a catch. In most cases, vendors will limit your data, bandwidth, connection speed, available server locations, and even block you from streaming services. In fact, some free VPNs could endanger your privacy. And this is why I’ve researched so many; the list you’re about to read has only secure FREE VPNs, with no hidden costs, risks, or headaches.<br />
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ProtonVPN – Unlimited Data and Servers in Three Countries<br />
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ProtonVPN offers a limited free version of its strong premium service. One of its biggest advantages over most free VPNs is that it comes with unlimited data. It is also ad-free, which is a big plus. With the free plan, you get access to servers in only Japan, Netherlands, and the US.<br />
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With all of ProtonVPN’s free users connected to one of just three locations, its servers are often overloaded and your connection speed could be slow. You will need to upgrade to a paid plan to stream or torrent with ProtonVPN, but you can still use the free virtual locations to bypass censorship and access geoblocked social media platforms and messaging apps.<br />
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ProtonVPN features an easy-to-use, intuitive interface and multi-platform compatibility. The Quick Connect feature connects you to the fastest nearby server. The VPN also offers strong security, including powerful AES encryption and an automatic kill switch. Other features include DNS leak protection and split tunneling support.<br />
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One thing I liked about ProtonVPN was how straightforward its privacy policy is. This VPN has a clear zero-logging policy that is strictly enforced. The company is based in Switzerland, outside the jurisdiction of the 5/9/14-Eyes Alliance, which is great for privacy.<br />
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ProtonVPN’s Key Features:<br />
Unlimited free data<br />
No-log policy and Swiss privacy laws to protect your anonymity<br />
Robust encryption and an automatic kill switch<br />
Works with: YouTube, Spotify, Kodi<br />
Compatible with: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux<br />
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NordVPN – Risk-Free With 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee<br />
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NordVPN isn’t usually free. It’s actually a premium VPN packed with some of the most advanced features. So why are we listing it here with our top-rated free VPNs? With NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee, you can use its premium VPN service for an entire month risk-free. I tested the guarantee myself – there’s no catch.<br />
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This is a great option if you only need a VPN for a short period while traveling, or to stream. NordVPN’s security is tough to beat. Unlike most free VPNs that will limit your streaming, NordVPN lets you stream your favorite shows from anywhere. This VPN can access geoblocked content from 400+ compatible streaming platforms. NordVPN actively finds ways to get around ever-developing geoblocks and even works in China.<br />
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Other useful features include torrenting support with high-speed dedicated P2P servers, ad blocking, Onion Over VPN, dedicated IP addresses, Double VPN, and more. Of course, NordVPN isn’t free forever, but there’s a lot you can do with it in 30 days. Plus, if you decide you don’t want to give it up after a month, NordVPN offers some of the cheapest long-term VPN plans out there.<br />
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Want to know more? Explore our NordVPN review to see the full results of our research and testing.<br />
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NordVPN’s Key Features:<br />
Get 30 days of unlimited data with NordVPN by using its money-back guarantee<br />
5,400+ servers in 59 countries<br />
256-bit encryption, kill switch, and malware protection<br />
Operates outside 5/9/14-Eyes Alliance for total anonymity<br />
Works with: Netflix, Hulu, HBO, BBC iPlayer, Showtime, Amazon Prime Video, Sling TV, and hundreds more<br />
Compatible with: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Android TV, Linux, Firefox, Chrome, routers<br />
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Windscribe – 10 GB of Free Data Every Month<br />
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Windscribe’s generous data allowance makes it one of my top free VPNs. It’s enough to stream in high definition for just over three hours. You can get an extra 5 GB by tweeting the company. You can also “win” an extra 1 GB of free data every month by referring friends. Windscribe boasts state-of-the-art security, with robust AES encryption and support for multiple VPN protocols.<br />
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Both paid and free users can access all Windscribe features, including its ad and malware blocker. It’s pretty rare to find a free VPN with this feature, so this is a big bonus. Windscribe also comes with a firewall that blocks all traffic outside the VPN’s secure tunnel in order to prevent unexpected leaks.<br />
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Other useful features include port forwarding and split tunneling. The company has a detailed privacy policy that clearly explains what data they store, as well as a no-logs policy to protect your privacy. Windscribe offers a desktop app and browser extension. The program has a user-friendly interface, with a choice of customer support options including live chat and setup guides. Single-click connect makes it super easy to get started.<br />
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As well as limiting your data, a free Windscribe account restricts you to servers in only the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, and Switzerland. A limited selection of servers means you can’t use Windscribe to unblock content from outside these regions.<br />
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Want to know more? Explore our Windscribe review to see the full results of our research and testing.<br />
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Windscribe’s Key Features:<br />
10 GB of free data every month<br />
Access blocked content in 10 countries<br />
Robust encryption, malware protection, and ad blocking<br />
Torrenting support<br />
Works with: Netflix, Hulu, HBO<br />
Compatible with: Windows, macOS, iOS, Firefox, Chrome, Linux<br />
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Hotspot Shield – Torrent-Friendly VPN<br />
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Hotspot Shield offers reliable connections and military-grade encryption. My tests didn’t reveal any DNS leaks, which means it effectively masks your IP address to protect your privacy online. Hotspot Shield is compatible with all major operating systems, has a no-logs policy to protect your anonymity, and offers dedicated tech support. It also offers P2P support for both free and premium users.<br />
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Its user-friendly, dedicated apps offer one-click connect, so you can get started without a hassle. The free version comes with limitations. It is supported by ads and gives you only 500 MB of data per day. While this is far too little for downloading large files, you will have no problem checking your email or browsing social media.<br />
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Unfortunately, you can’t use the free version for streaming.<br />
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Although Hotspot Shield has 3,200+ servers in 70+ countries, the free version only gives you access to the US virtual location. You will be blocked by a Premium Payment Wall if you try to access streaming content with the VPN enabled. Even with only one virtual location, Hotspot Shield can still help you escape government censorship and bypass content filters at school or work so you can access your favorite websites and social media apps from anywhere.<br />
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If you like Hotspot Shield Free and want to try the premium version, you can test it out with a 7-day free trial.<br />
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Want to know more? Explore our Hotspot Shield review to see the full results of our research and testing.<br />
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Hotspot Shield’s Key Features:<br />
500 MB of free data every 24 hour period, which means 15 GB per month<br />
Simple, user-friendly interface makes it easy to get started<br />
Military-grade encryption protects your internet activity<br />
Stable connections ensure lag-free browsing<br />
Works with: YouTube and Spotify<br />
Compatible with: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Chrome<br />
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hide.me – Fast Speeds and 2 GB of Free Monthly Data<br />
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hide.me offers a stripped back, reliable free service. You’ll get 2 GB of free data every month and all the benefits of hide.me’s user-friendly dedicated apps and tough security. This VPN’s strong AES encryption, automatic kill switch, and strict no-log policy will make sure your browsing remains both private and secure.<br />
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With hide.me, you can connect to unsecured public WiFi networks without worrying about spying eyes. hide.me supports multiple VPN protocols so you can optimize your connection and choose the best fit for your device. Other features include IP leak protection and support for split tunneling. You’ll also have 24/7 access to technical support and ad-free browsing.<br />
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The free servers are located only in Singapore, Canada, Netherlands, US East, and US West. You won’t be able to access geoblocked content from any other countries, like BBC iPlayer. You can use this VPN to get around content filters at your workplace or school, and even bypass tough government censorship.<br />
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Unfortunately, hide.me won’t give you access to Netflix. However, it supports torrenting for both free and paid users.<br />
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You won’t be able to do too much file sharing with the 2 GB monthly data cap, but the option is still nice. A free account also limits you to one device connection at a time. So, if you’re browsing on your laptop, your phone or tablet won’t be actively protected.<br />
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Want to know more? Explore our hide.me review to see the full results of our research and testing.<br />
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hide.me’s Key Features<br />
2 GB of free data per month<br />
Free servers in 5 countries<br />
Strong encryption and multiple available protocols<br />
Good connection speeds for quick loading and browsing<br />
Works with: Hulu, iPlayer, Amazon Prime Video, HBO GO<br />
Compatible with: Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, Chrome Firefox, Amazon Fire TV, routers<span><!--more--></span><span><!--more--></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-49301446176360624322020-03-19T09:04:00.002+00:002020-03-19T10:20:17.029+00:00Work from home: How to set up a VPN. Best Business VPN Services 2020. First, what is a VPN?<br />
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A VPN is an encrypted tunnel for your internet traffic that goes through the open internet, often from your home office or coffee shop to your work network at the office. You can connect across a VPN no matter what network you’re on and “appear” to be sitting at your desk at work using all the resources you could if you actually were there.<br />
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It’s called a virtual private network because it creates your own personal tunnel no one else can access. If all your team members are working remotely from their home offices, this is how you can work as a virtual team without all being at the main office, or gathered together in some other location. Due to COVID-19, this is a newly found desire – even a requirement – for many right now.<br />
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If you’re newly working from home because of the COVID-19 outbreak, you probably have to learn some new tools and tricks very quickly now. Here we look at virtual private network (VPN) technology. Later this week, we’ll dive into other security tools such as Two-Factor Authentication (2FA, or Multi-Factor Authentication – MFA).<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mGl4WUNsfy8/XnM1eEmpo0I/AAAAAAAATcw/htmpUTm1HKknUS7puLEBZFgpfde6iJqPACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/vpn%2Bsolutions%2Bfor%2Bsmall%2Bbusiness.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="249" data-original-width="738" height="215" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mGl4WUNsfy8/XnM1eEmpo0I/AAAAAAAATcw/htmpUTm1HKknUS7puLEBZFgpfde6iJqPACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/vpn%2Bsolutions%2Bfor%2Bsmall%2Bbusiness.gif" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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Do I need to set up a VPN?<br />
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To make such VPN connections, you need to initially set up both ends of that connection – the one on your laptop or home desktop, and the one in the main office. Sometimes, if you have an IT department, they’ll tell you what app to download to your personal device(s) and then give you some VPN credentials for your specific situation – problem solved. Once you install that app and configure it, you can click a button and the link will establish itself and let you know you’re connected.<br />
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If you don’t have an IT department, you might have to set up your own VPN connections. Don’t worry, it’s not as daunting as you might think.<br />
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Many business-class routers (some under US$100), and some small office/home office (SOHO) ones, have built-in VPN capability, so cost shouldn’t be an issue. In fact, you may already have such a device, so you’ll only need to configure it!<br />
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Perimeter 81<br />
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If you work at a small to medium size business, or happen to own one, Perimeter 81 is the best business VPN available. It's the one we recommend to look at for a variety of reasons, including the company's willingness to customize plans for your needs. There is, however, a five person minimum for teams, so if you don't have five employees this may not be the best for you.<br />
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Perimeter 81's services are all based in the cloud, which means scaling up and down is super simple and more affordable for your business. You don't need to worry about changing out hardware or anything like that, it's all handled on Permiter's side. There are three different plan options to pick from, with prices starting at just $10 per month for each team member.<br />
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Unlike some other business software, Perimeter 81 has a great app that's available on a variety of different devices to ensure maximum compatibility. You can use it on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebook, iOS, and Android. Permiter 81 has tight security protocols and uses OpenVPN, IKEv2, L2TP, and PPTP backed by WireGuard connector. There's an automatic Wi-Fi security and it offers a software-defined perimeter (SDP) that limits network access via a system control.<br />
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The two-factor authentication is both easy to use and reliable. It works well whether you are using a mobile device connected to a public network or your home PC connected to your network.<br />
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Should you run into any issues while using Perimeter 81 you'll be happy to hear that the company offers great support, and if you are unhappy with the purchase you have a 30-day money-back guarantee.<br />
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Encrypt.me<br />
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Much like Perimeter 81, Encrypt.me can be scaled based upon the needs of your business so that you're always paying for what you are actually using. What sets it apart, though, is that the minimum number of team members required for the business plan is only two, and the company allows you to use it on an unlimited number of devices for each account. This is great for those who are juggling between their phone, tablet, and PC during the day to get things done.<br />
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Encrypt.me is available on all the major platforms, including Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android, and even Amazon. All you have to do is download the app and walk through the set up procedure, and you'll be good to go.<br />
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On the security front, Encrypt.me offers all the standard stuff you'd expect from a VPN along with a few other features that are nice to have. Some of them include private endpoints, an Auto-Secure feature, DNS protection, and more. This will make it easy for employees to remotely connect to the information they need while not in the office.<br />
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Something worth noting is that Encrypt.me does keep some session logs, which is something most other VPN providers are not doing these days. This isn't to say it's monitoring your activities or anything, just that it does have records of who is connecting, and when.<br />
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Pricing starts at $15.98 per month, and like we previously mentioned you do need two team members to get started with this. If you're looking for an option to try out in the short-term while your employees are working from home, this may be the way to go.<br />
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ExpressVPN<br />
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ExpressVPN is our best VPN pick on the consumer side, and while the company doesn't offer a specific "business plan," that doesn't mean it can't be a great pick for some situations. If you're running a small business, or happen to be self-employed and want to protect yourself, ExpressVPN can do great things for you. It does have a maximum of five devices that can be connected to each account at one time, which is less than some other providers.<br />
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The ExpressVPN app works on all major platforms, including Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Fire TV, Chromebooks, Nook, Firefox, Chrome, and more. It's super easy to set up, and connecting to the VPN is as simple as clicking one button once you get started.<br />
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By default, ExpressVPN offers great encryption, split tunneling, and operates with a very clear no-logging policy. There are dedicated DNS servers available, and while you may pay a bit more than some other consumer VPN options to use ExpressVPN, it's worth every penny.<br />
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Right now, if you sign up for the 12-month plan you can save 49% on the purchase and score an extra three months of service at no cost to you. ExpressVPN offers a 30-day money-back guarantee as well, so there's no risk in trying it out today.<br />
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NordVPN Teams<br />
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On the consumer side, NordVPN has always been a popular choice, and the company hopes to achieve the same on the business side with NordVPN Teams. Like other options, NordVPN Teams can be customized to meet your needs, though there is a minimum of five users to get started.<br />
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What sets NordVPN Teams apart from the rest is that it offers a double encryption, which is something that other companies are simply not offering. This means that if someone were to be able to get their hands on what you were doing, there's no possible chance that they could figure out what was actually taking place, and instead it would all just be a jumbled mess. In addition, Nord offers a kill switch that helps keep your sessions secure, even if your connection drops out for some reason.<br />
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NordVPN has a strict no-logging policy, and when you sign up for a business account you actually get a dedicated business VPN server. This is key because it offers a dedicated IP address for your team to connect to so they can access the sensitive documents that they need for work.<br />
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Pricing is done on a per-company basis, which means that you'll need to reach out to NordVPN via a support form to get started<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Work from home: How to set up a VPN. Best Business VPN Services 2020. <a href="https://t.co/YwJw8Hs71J">https://t.co/YwJw8Hs71J</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/vpn?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#vpn</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Security?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Security</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/privacy?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#privacy</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/homeofice?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#homeofice</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/workingfromhome?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#workingfromhome</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/workingfromhometips?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#workingfromhometips</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/workingremotely?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#workingremotely</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/workingtogether?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#workingtogether</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WorkingFromHomeLife?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WorkingFromHomeLife</a> <a href="https://t.co/yuK9P8rCzw">pic.twitter.com/yuK9P8rCzw</a></p>— 🔝 𝔼𝕦𝕣𝕠 𝔹𝕦𝕤𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕤𝕤 💫 (@HUBbusiness) <a href="https://twitter.com/HUBbusiness/status/1240567185132736512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2020</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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VyprVPN<br />
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If speed is what you are looking for in a business VPN, you'll want to look no further than VyprVPN. The company manages all of its own servers, and when you start to check out the performance of them you'll understand why that is important. In testing, we've noticed that using VyprVPN could actually provide better download speeds for some people than their standard connection could without using a VPN.<br />
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In terms of security features to match the speed, VyprVPN offers OpenVPN support, NAT Firewall, and its own Chameleon technology that helps add an extra layer of security to the mix. There is also 24/7 support in case you run into any issues while using the VPN, which is great since odds are most of your employees will be new to using a VPN.<br />
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The company doesn't give as much information publicly about its business VPN plans as some of the others, but there is a bit we do know. You can sign up for a Business or Business Cloud package, with prices starting at $299 or $349 for the year respectively. You'll need to reach out to VyprVPN customer support to get the exact details based on your business' needs, though the company does offer a free trial which is something you should definitely take advantage of.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-62467325277997111642019-12-04T09:48:00.001+00:002019-12-04T10:28:06.373+00:00Top Google Analytics Alternatives<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Are you looking for website tracking features that go beyond what Google Analytics can do? New and established tools have dozens of features you won’t find in Google Analytics designed to fit a specific need, such as recognizing which businesses are visiting your site or monitoring brand mentions throughout the web. In this article, we look at top Google Analytics alternatives that either replace or complement the features offered by Google Analytics. </div>
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Every online marketer knows that analytics are crucial to understanding why your visitors behave the way they do. If you don’t closely monitor how users interact with your website, you won’t know how you can improve it. In the field of web analytics, Google Analytics reigns supreme. It’s free, widespread, and incredibly popular. But Google Analytics can also be hard to use, and a little invasive. You need to hand over mountains of data to one of the biggest corporations in the world. If you don’t like that Google has access to all your data and you need additional functionality, you can look for alternatives to Google Analytics.</div>
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FoxMetrics</div>
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FoxMetrics gives you an option to create a detailed profile for the target audience and increase your sales. This is one of the best event tracking web analytics tools and can be very helpful to any business site. FoxMetrics offers you a number of different products and each one of them are focused on increasing the revenue of your business.</div>
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SE Ranking</div>
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SE Ranking is a very powerful tool that gives you with comprehensive website analysis. Find out exactly who’s visiting your site, and where you’re getting traffic from.</div>
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It also has a bunch of useful features such as custom reports, the ability to track website rankings and traffic, the depth of information, a Google Analytics integration (if you just can’t quit GA), competitor monitoring, social media activity, paid web analytics solutions, and backlinks monitoring.The tool lets you build better websites and provides data points to your clients about their own websites. It also has a very clean and streamlined interface that makes understanding data easy. The tool has graphs and diagrams for many different types of information that’s simple to digest for visual people. And the marketing plan from SE Ranking offers valuable tips and tricks based on your site analysis.</div>
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Piwik</div>
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Piwik is another great alternative that offers a lot of the same features and other solutions, although the setup is not quite as easy. If you use the paid version, you’ll need to install the software on your server. So a little technical know-how is necessary. To help, the company is available whenever issues arise. The team is responsive concerning bugs found in the system, and tend to fix them quickly. Piwik offers a range of great features like the customizable dashboard, goal tracking, a detailed log of individual visitors, and a marketplace plugin. My biggest criticism is that the interface can get very congested if you have too much information, which can make it tricky to use.</div>
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Kissmetrics</div>
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Kissmetrics is a great analytics solution focused on web analytics at the individual level. In other words, it tracks your visitors. The tool lets you optimize conversion rates by giving you detailed visitor actions, unlimited funnel reports, A/B split tests, data segmentation, and more. The setup process is complicated, but they provide plugins for most popular systems. The software offers solutions for mobile apps, Saas, e-commerce platforms and more.</div>
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Woopra</div>
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Woopra provides an attractive web dashboard with many analytics features to help you instantly see what’s happening on your website. The tool shows you how many visitors are online and what they are reading. I really like the behavioral profile that the software creates for each customer and user. This information can be essential to your online business. Woopra includes a range of interesting features like tracked categories, comments, blog authors, custom tagging, advanced segmentation, real-time stats, advanced reporting, and live chat feature. An integration with your online store is available, and you can track what visitors do there.</div>
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Chartbeat</div>
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Chartbeat is a great content intelligence solution that shows data for desktop and mobile users, traffic sources, top pages, Twitter links and mentions, server load, and more. You’ll instantly know how your content is performing and how to optimize it for reader engagement. The tool also offers scroll mapping and the option to see how visitors are connecting with your content, and why they’re on your site in the first place. Chartbeat gives everyone a detailed overview of content performance, editorial KPIs and video content analysis. </div>
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Gauges</div>
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Gauges is another affordable alternative source to Google Analytics that helps you focus on the most important website traffic stats in real time. The tool works similarly to Google Analytics. The idea behind this software is to provide with the most important and actionable data through an easy-to-understand interface. Similar to the tools mentioned above, Gauges shows you how many users come to your website, where they come from and where they go. The tool has a few useful features like real-time analytics, an API and 100% Flash-free dashboard for mobile viewing.</div>
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Mention</div>
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Mention is a great media monitoring tool that quickly shows positive and negative mentions of your brand and competitors with sentiment analysis, gives you detailed analysis of your competitors, and reveals serious communications problems. The tool enables getting in-depth brand intelligence and compelling reports to share results with clients and colleagues easily. The tool gives you helpful data like reach and shares, and the influencer dashboards find the top people talking about your brand. Plus, if you don’t have enough time to check Mention every day, you can receive email digests with top mentions.</div>
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Clicky</div>
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Clicky is a well-known and widely used alternative. It comes with a beautiful, user-friendly interface that will give you a detailed view of your site traffic. Clicky will help you to understand your visitors better because it offers you an option to click through any column of the report and have a complete review of which parameters are working great and which need to be improved. Clicky is known for its real-time traffic tool; you can have a great view of the real-time engagement on your site. Clicky can even track of every action by a single visitor in detail. The heatmaps help you to have a detailed review of per page sessions as well as the activity by each individual visitor. Overall, this is one of the best Google Analytics alternatives.</div>
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Mixpanel</div>
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Mixpanel is slightly different from the traditional web analytics tools because it was created on the philosophy that the action taken by a user speaks more than the actual page views. If you are selling products or services, Mixpanel is probably the best alternative of Google Analytics for you. They track user action so that you can clearly identify what is working what is not. Mixpanel makes it easy for you to track what your users are doing on your site as well as your iOS and Android app. You can carry out many testings to make sure you're making the right choices to increase your revenue.</div>
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W3counter</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WnvGexT0LDo/XeeD8cziYWI/AAAAAAAAQUw/U6fh-VAN8PgBgz_oVRkcD5KY2o-C8mtKgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/w3counter%2Bsolutions%2Bfor%2Bsmall%2Bb%2Busienss%2Banalytics%2Bwe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" data-original-height="418" data-original-width="650" height="205" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WnvGexT0LDo/XeeD8cziYWI/AAAAAAAAQUw/U6fh-VAN8PgBgz_oVRkcD5KY2o-C8mtKgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/w3counter%2Bsolutions%2Bfor%2Bsmall%2Bb%2Busienss%2Banalytics%2Bwe.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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W3counter offers you over twenty real-time web statistic reports to provide you with detailed information about the incoming traffic to your website. With this system, you can identify the most engaging pages of your site so that you can improve them further to increase the revenue of your site. You can sign-up for W3counter for free and can continue to use it free if your site gets less than 5000 page views per day.</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QSvYqEgXpEQ/XeeENyV6-4I/AAAAAAAAQU4/GQ06Eax5JycP6JFfoYCGJK9D613M7_eJgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/solutions%2Bfor%2Bsmall%2Bbusiness.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="113" data-original-width="920" height="39" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QSvYqEgXpEQ/XeeENyV6-4I/AAAAAAAAQU4/GQ06Eax5JycP6JFfoYCGJK9D613M7_eJgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/solutions%2Bfor%2Bsmall%2Bbusiness.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Though Google Analytics is the most widely used and comprehensive reporting system for websites, there are a number of Google Analytics alternatives you can try. If you are a blogger or small business owner, Google Analytics is good enough to keep track of the traffic details of your site. You can track traffic details, traffic sources, conversion rates, keywords, landing pages, and you can also have a look at the real-time traffic. If for some reason you don't want to use Google Analytics, there are a number of alternatives you can use for your site.</div>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Top Google Analytics Alternatives <a href="https://t.co/MjArbnx6mO">https://t.co/MjArbnx6mO</a> Are you looking for website tracking features that go beyond what Google <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Analytics?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Analytics</a> can do? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DataAnalytics?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DataAnalytics</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/webdevelopment?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#webdevelopment</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SmallBusinessSaturday?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SmallBusinessSaturday</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SmallBusiness?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SmallBusiness</a> <a href="https://t.co/CWFY4tRb0e">pic.twitter.com/CWFY4tRb0e</a></div>
— 𝕋𝕠𝕞𝕒𝕤 🔝 𝕰𝖚𝖗𝖔𝖕𝖚𝖘 (@TomasEuropus) <a href="https://twitter.com/TomasEuropus/status/1202166983069974529?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-34702620614516607002019-07-02T16:33:00.002+01:002019-07-02T18:31:27.388+01:00The Top alternatives to Google products (office, drive, mail, documents, domains, search, analytics, etc.) for Small Business<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://solutionsforsmallbusiness.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-top-10-alternatives-to-all-google.html"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4b4otPChw5g/XRt45j8LkaI/AAAAAAAAO7U/1lAsuMojOWQgbDwFYkcZEFCyJIRwYnQvACLcBGAs/s640/google%2Balternatives%2Bfor%2Bsmall%2Bbusiness.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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With growing concerns over online privacy and securing personal data, more people than ever are considering alternatives to Google products. After all, Google’s business model essentially revolves around data collection and advertisements, both of which infringe on your privacy. More data means better (targeted) ads and more revenue. The company pulled in over $116 billion in ad revenue last year alone – and that number continues to grow.</div>
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But the word is getting out. A growing number of people are seeking alternatives to Google products that respect their privacy and data. This guide aims to be the most exhaustive resource available for documenting alternatives to Google product. So let’s get started (in no particular order or preference)...</div>
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<b>1. Google search alternatives</b></div>
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When it comes to privacy, using Google search is not a good idea. When you use their search engine, Google is recording your IP address, search terms, user agent, and often a unique identifier, which is stored in cookies.</div>
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Here are ten alternatives to Google search:</div>
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StartPage – StartPage gives you Google search results, but without the tracking (based in the Netherlands).</div>
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Searx – A privacy-friendly and versatile metasearch engine that’s also open source.</div>
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MetaGer – An open source metasearch engine with good features, based in Germany.</div>
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SwissCows – A zero-tracking private search engine based in Switzerland, hosted on secure Swiss infrastructure.</div>
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Qwant – A private search engine based in France.</div>
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DuckDuckGo – A private search engine based in the US.</div>
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Mojeek – The only true search engine (rather than metasearch engine) that has its own crawler and index (based in the UK).</div>
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YaCy – A decentralized, open source, peer-to-peer search engine.</div>
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Givero – Based in Denmark, Givero offers more privacy than Google and combines search with charitable donations.</div>
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Ecosia – Ecosia is based in Germany and donates a part of revenues to planting trees.</div>
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Note: With the exception of Mojeek, all of the private search engines above are technically metasearch engines, since they source their results from other search engines, such as Bing and Google.</div>
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<b>2, Gmail alternatives</b></div>
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Gmail may be convenient and popular, but there are three major problems:</div>
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Your inbox is used as a data collection tool. (Did you know Google is tracking your purchasing history from the receipts in your inbox?)</div>
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Rather than seeing just emails, your email inbox is also used for ads and marketing.</div>
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The contents of your inbox are being shared with Google and other random third parties.</div>
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When you remain logged in to your Gmail account, Google can easily track your activities online as you browse different websites, which may be hosting Google Analytics or Google ads (Adsense).</div>
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Here are ten alternatives to Gmail that do well in terms of privacy:</div>
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Tutanota – based in Germany; very secure and private; free accounts up to 1 GB</div>
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Mailfence – based in Belgium; lots of features; free accounts up to 500 MB</div>
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Posteo – based in Germany; €1/mo with 14 day refund window</div>
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StartMail – based in Netherlands; $5.00/mo with 7 day free trial</div>
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Runbox – based in Norway; lots of storage and features; $1.66/mo with 30 day free trial</div>
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Mailbox.org – based in Germany; €1/mo with 30 day free trial</div>
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CounterMail – based in Sweden; $4.00/mo with 7 day free trial</div>
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Kolab Now – based in Switzerland; €4.41/mo with 30 day money-back guarantee</div>
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ProtonMail – based in Switzerland; free accounts up to 500 MB</div>
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Thexyz – based in Canada; $1.95/mo with 30 day refund window</div>
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More information on these providers is available in the secure and private email services guide.</div>
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<b>3, Chrome alternatives</b></div>
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Google Chrome is a popular browser, but it’s also a data collection tool – and many people are taking notice. Just a few days ago, the Washington Post asserted that “Google’s web browser has become spy software,” with 11,000 tracker cookies observed in a single week. Here are seven alternatives for more privacy:</div>
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Firefox browser – Firefox is a very customizable, open-source browser that is popular in privacy circles. There are also many different Firefox modifications and tweaks that will give you more privacy and security. (Also check out Firefox Focus, a privacy-focused version for mobile users.)</div>
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Iridium – Based on open source Chromium, Iridium offers numerous privacy and security enhancements over Chrome, source code here.</div>
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GNU IceCat – A fork of Firefox from the Free Software Foundation.</div>
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Tor browser – A hardened and secured version of Firefox that runs on the Tor network by default. (It also does a good job against browser fingerprinting.)</div>
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Ungoogled Chromium – Just as the name says, this is an open source version of Chromium that has been “ungoogled” and modified for more privacy.</div>
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Brave – Brave is another Chromium-based browser that is rather popular. It blocks trackers and ads by default (except for “approved” ads that are part of the “Brave Ads” network).</div>
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Waterfox – This is a fork of Firefox that is configured for more privacy by default, with Mozilla telemetry stripped out of the code.</div>
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Of course, there are other alternatives to Chrome, such as Safari (from Apple), Microsoft Internet Explorer/Edge, Opera, and Vivaldi – but these also come with some privacy drawbacks.</div>
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<b>4, Google Drive alternatives</b></div>
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If you’re looking for a secure cloud storage option, you can check out these Google Drive alternatives:</div>
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Tresorit – A user-friendly cloud storage option based in Switzerland.</div>
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ownCloud – An open source and self-hosted cloud platform developed in Germany.</div>
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Nextcloud – Nextcloud is also an open source, self-hosted file sharing and collaboration platform, based in Germany.</div>
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Sync – Based in Canada, Sync offers a secure, encrypted cloud storage solution for businesses and individuals.</div>
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Syncthing – Here we have a decentralized, open source, peer-to-peer cloud storage platform.</div>
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Of course, Dropbox is another popular Google drive alternative, but it’s not the best in terms of privacy.</div>
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<b>5, Google Calendar alternative</b></div>
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Here are some Google Calendar alternatives:</div>
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Lightening Calendar is an open source calendar option developed by Mozilla, and it’s compatible with Thunderbird and Seamonkey.</div>
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Etar, an open source, basic calendar option.</div>
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Fruux, an open source calendar with good features and support for many operating systems.</div>
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For those wanting a combined solution for both email and calendar functionality, these providers offer that:</div>
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Mailfence</div>
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Kolab Now</div>
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Posteo.de</div>
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Mailbox.org</div>
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<b>6, Google Docs / Sheets / Slides alternative</b></div>
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There are many solid Google Docs alternatives available. The largest offline document editing suite is, of course, Microsoft Office. As most people know, however, Microsoft is not the best company for privacy. Nonetheless, there are a few other good Google Docs alternatives:<br />
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CryptPad – CryptPad is a privacy-focused alternative with strong encryption, and it’s free.<br />
Etherpad – A self-hosted collaborative online editor that’s also open source.<br />
Zoho Docs – This is another good Google Docs alternative with a clean interface and good functionality, although it may not be the best for privacy.<br />
OnlyOffice – OnlyOffice feels a bit more restricted than some of the other options in terms of features.<br />
Cryptee – This is a privacy-focused platform for photo and document storage and editing. It’s open source and based in Estonia.<br />
LibreOffice (offline) – You can use LibreOffice which is free and open source.<br />
Apache OpenOffice (offline) – Another good open source office suite.<br />
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<b> 7. Google Photos alternative</b></div>
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Here are a few good Google Photos alternatives:<br />
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Piwigo – Piwigo is a great option that you can self-host. It is also free and open source.<br />
Lychee – Lychee is another self-hosted, open source photo management platform.<br />
Shoebox was another alternative, but it closed operations in June 2019.<br />
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YouTube alternatives<br />
Unfortunately, YouTube alternatives can really be hit or miss, with most struggling to gain popularity.<br />
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Peertube<br />
DTube<br />
Bitchute<br />
invidio.us<br />
Vimeo<br />
Bit.tube<br />
Dailymotion<br />
Hooktube<br />
Tip: Invidio.us is a great Youtube proxy that allows you to watch any Youtube video without logging in, even if the video is somehow restricted. To do this, simply replace [www.youtube.com] with [invidio.us] in the URL you want to view.<br />
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<b>8. Google Translate alternative</b></div>
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Here are a few Google translate alternatives I have come across:<br />
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DeepL – DeepL is a solid Google Translate alternative that seems to give great results. Like Google Translate, DeepL allows you to post up to 5,000 characters at a time (but the pro version is unlimited). The user interface is good and there is also a built-in dictionary feature.<br />
Linguee – Linguee does not allow you to post large blocks of text like DeepL. However, Linguee will give you very accurate translations for single words or phrases, along with context examples.<br />
dict.cc – This Google Translate alternative seems to do a decent job on single-world lookups, but it also feels a bit outdated.<br />
Swisscows Translate – A good translation service supporting many languages.<br />
If you want to translate blocks of text, check out DeepL. If you want in-depth translations for single words or phrases, then Linguee is a good choice.<br />
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<b>9. Google Analytics alternative</b></div>
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For website admins, there are many reasons to use an alternative to Google Analytics. Aside from privacy concerns, there are also faster and more user-friendly alternatives that also respect your visitors’ privacy.<br />
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Clicky is a great alternative to Google Analytics that truncates and anonymizes visitor IP addresses by default. It is lightweight, user-friendly, and fully compliant with GDPR regulations, while also being certified by Privacy Shield.<br />
Matomo (formerly Piwik) is an open-source analytics platform that respects the privacy of visitors by anonymizing and truncating visitor IP addresses (if enabled by the website admin). It is also certified to respect user privacy.<br />
Fathom Analytics is an open source alternative to Google Analytics that’s available on Github here. It’s minimal, fast, and lightweight.<br />
AT Internet is a France-based analytics provider that is fully GDPR compliant, with all data stored on French servers, and a good track record going back to 1996.<br />
Many websites host Google Analytics because they run Google Adsense campaigns. Without Google Analytics, tracking performance of these campaigns would be difficult. Nonetheless, there are still better options for privacy.<br />
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<b>10 . Google Maps alternative</b></div>
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A map alternative for PCs is OpenStreetMap.<br />
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A few Google Maps alternatives for mobile devices include:<br />
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OsmAnd is a free and open-source mobile maps app for both Android and iOS (based on OpenStreetMap data).<br />
Maps (F Droid) uses OpenStreetMap data (offline).<br />
Here WeGo provides good mapping solutions for both PCs and mobile devices with their app.<br />
Maps.Me is another option that is free on both Android and iOS, but there is a fair amount of data collection with this alternative, as explained in their privacy policy.<br />
MapHub is also based on OpenStreeMap data and it does not collect locations or user IP addresses.<br />
Note: Waze is not an “alternative” as it is owned by Google.<br />
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<b>11. Google Play Store alternative</b></div>
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Currently the best Google Play Store alternative is to use F-Droid and then go through the Yalp store. As explained on the official site, F-Droid is an installable catalog of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. After you have installed F-Droid, you can then download the Yalp store APK, which allows you to download apps from the Google Play Store directly as APK files.<br />
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See the F-Droid website or the official GitHub page for more info. Other alternatives to the Google Play Store include:<br />
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TechSpot – We have an Android section in Downloads full of safe and verified downloads.<br />
Aptoide – An independent marketplace for Android apps.<br />
APKMirror – This is a large library of APK files uploaded by different users (be careful).<br />
Aurora Store – A fork of the Yalp Store.<br />
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<b>12 Google Chrome OS alternative</b></div>
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Want to ditch the Chromebook and Chrome OS? Here are a few alternatives:<br />
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Linux – Of course, Linux is arguably the best alternative, being a free, open-source operating system with lots of different flavors. With some adjustments, Linux Ubuntu can be run on Chromebooks.<br />
Tails – Tails is a free, privacy-focused operating system based on Linux that routes all traffic through the Tor network.<br />
QubesOS – Recommended by Snowden, free, and also open source.<br />
Of course, the other two big operating system alternatives are Windows and Apple’s operating system for MacBooks – Mac OS. Windows, particularly Windows 10, is a very bad option for privacy. While slightly better, Apple also collects user data and has partnered with the NSA for surveillance.<br />
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Android alternatives<br />
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The biggest alternative to Android is iOS from Apple. But we’ll skip over that for reasons already mentioned. Here are a few Android OS alternatives:<br />
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LineageOS – A free and open-source operating system for phones and tablets based on Android.<br />
Ubuntu Touch – A mobile version of the Ubuntu operating system.<br />
Plasma Mobile – An open source, Linux-based operating system with active development.<br />
Sailfish OS – Another open source, Linux-based mobile OS.<br />
Replicant – A fully free Android distribution with an emphasis on freedom, privacy, and security.<br />
/e/ – This is another open source project with a focus on privacy and security.<br />
Purism is also working on a privacy-focused mobile phone called the Librem 5. It is in production, but not yet available (estimated Q3 2019).<br />
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<b>13. Google Domains alternative</b></div>
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Google Domains is a domain registration service. Here are a few alternatives:<br />
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Namecheap – I like Namecheap because all domain purchases now come with free WhoisGuard protection for life, which protects your contact information from third parties. Namecheap also accepts Bitcoin and offers domain registration, hosting, email, SSL certs, and a variety of other products.<br />
Njalla – Njalla is a privacy-focused domain registration service based in Nevis. They offer hosting options, too, and also accept cryptocurrency payments.<br />
OrangeWebsite – OrangeWebsite offers anonymous domain registration services and also accepts cryptocurrency payments, based in Iceland.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>14. Other Google alternatives</b></div>
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Here more alternatives for various Google products:<br />
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Google Forms alternative – JotForm is a free online form builder.<br />
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Google Keep alternative – Below are a few different Google Keep alternatives:<br />
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Standard Notes is a great alternative for a note-taking service. It is secure, encrypted, and free with apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android (web-based also available).<br />
Joplin is another great option that is open source and works on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android.<br />
Zoho Notebook from Zoho, with apps for desktop and mobile devices.<br />
QOwnNotes is an open source file editor with Nextcloud integration.<br />
Google Fonts alternative – Many websites load Google fonts through Google APIs, but that’s not necessary. One alternative to this is to use Font Squirrel, which has a large selection of both Google and non-Google fonts which are free to download and use.<br />
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Google Voice alternative – JMP.chat (both free and paid)<br />
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G Suite alternative – Zoho is probably the best option<br />
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Google Firebase alternative – Kuzzle (free and open source)<br />
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Google Blogger alternatives – WordPress, Medium, and Ghost are all good options.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-45319046785519830992019-03-22T11:16:00.001+00:002019-03-22T11:43:12.221+00:00Let’s Encrypt ! Get free, automated, and open Certificate Authority.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://solutionsforsmallbusiness.blogspot.com/2019/03/lets-encrypt-get-free-automated-and.html"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="583" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0Vs0VOjc8mM/XJTEGxTn5mI/AAAAAAAAN4A/2FvhznPumgIkUUzCzscKVja5LUKuGK9zgCLcBGAs/s1600/Letsencrypt%2BSolutions%2Bfor%2Bsmall%2Bbusinesss.jpg" /></a></div>
Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority (CA), run for the public’s benefit. It is a service provided by the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG).<br />
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We give people the digital certificates they need in order to enable HTTPS (SSL/TLS) for websites, for free, in the most user-friendly way we can. We do this because we want to create a more secure and privacy-respecting Web.<br />
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The key principles behind Let’s Encrypt are:<br />
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Free: Anyone who owns a domain name can use Let’s Encrypt to obtain a trusted certificate at zero cost.<br />
Automatic: Software running on a web server can interact with Let’s Encrypt to painlessly obtain a certificate, securely configure it for use, and automatically take care of renewal.<br />
Secure: Let’s Encrypt will serve as a platform for advancing TLS security best practices, both on the CA side and by helping site operators properly secure their servers.<br />
Transparent: All certificates issued or revoked will be publicly recorded and available for anyone to inspect.<br />
Open: The automatic issuance and renewal protocol will be published as an open standard that others can adopt.<br />
Cooperative: Much like the underlying Internet protocols themselves, Let’s Encrypt is a joint effort to benefit the community, beyond the control of any one organization.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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<b>Advanced Options</b></div>
<b><i>Free Wildcard SSL Certificates</i></b><br />
Wildcard certificates allow you to secure any subdomains under a domain. If you wanted to secure any subdomains of example.org that you have now or in the future you can make a wildcard certificate. To generate wildcard certificates add an asterisk to the beginning of the domain(s) followed by a period. Wildcard domains do not secure the root domain so you must re-enter the root domain if you want it also secured under one certificate. For example to create a wildcard domain for example.org enter *.example.org example.org. To create a wildcard certificate for multiple domains such as example.org and example.com enter *.example.org example.org *.example.com example.com. Manual DNS verification will be required.<br />
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<i><b>Multiple Domains or Subdomains or Wildcards</b></i><br />
Multiple domains or subdomains are allowed and should be separated by spaces (e.g. "subdomain.domain.com domain.com otherdomain.org *.wildcarddomain.com"). If the multiple domains or subdomains pertain to multiple directories then you must use manual HTTP verification and upload verification files to the correct directories or use DNS verification.<br />
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<b><i>Prevent WWW from being Added</i></b><br />
We automatically add the www version of the domain to the certificate (the www. domain may need separate certificate installation for it to work) if not already added as most users want that implicitly. To remove the www just submit the domains you want to verify then on the verification page near the top click on "Add / Edit Domains" and remove it and submit again.<br />
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<b>Frequently Asked Questions</b></div>
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Is this free for commercial use?<br />
Yes, it is free for all usages including commercial usage.<br />
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Can I use my own CSR?<br />
Yes, just choose one of the manual verification methods and there will be an input at the bottom before the generate certificate button to provide your own CSR.<br />
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Do these SSL certificates work for IP addresses?<br />
No, certificates can only be generated for registered domain names.<br />
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Special Characters and Internationalized Domain Names<br />
For domain names with special characters or international characters we automatically convert it to the punycode representation.<br />
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Can Verification Files or TXT records be deleted after verification?<br />
Yes, all verification files or records can be deleted after verification. It is used only once for each verification.<br />
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My website gives a security error after installation<br />
If your website shows a security error then installation was not done correctly. You can try going to https://www.ssllabs.com/ to check SSL certificate installation issues and fix. If you need help with this your best bet would be to contact your host, professional developer or admin for help.<br />
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My website works but shows a red "Not Secure" or "Insecure" in the address bar after installation<br />
Your website most likely has insecure content which needs to be remedied. You can try going to https://whynopadlock.com to see issues and fix. If you need help with this your best bet would be to contact your host, professional developer or admin for help.<br />
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My website is still not going to HTTPS or Secure after a successful installation<br />
Web servers do not redirect to HTTPS by default. If you want to force it you will have to configure it to force a redirect. This configuration will depend on your server setup. If you need help with this your best bet would be to contact your host, professional developer or admin for help.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-34984867106373600872018-03-01T17:38:00.002+00:002018-03-01T17:41:10.094+00:00SEO - Checking Google Keyword Rankings for your Small Business<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.smallbusines.co.uk/2018/03/seo-checking-google-keyword-rankings.html" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1097" data-original-width="1600" height="218" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qs92Jvd61x0/Wpg6jdelTsI/AAAAAAAAKUY/3XZRSn4NWqoiS4yt6jz7pmzScUG5_Z5MQCLcBGAs/s320/seo%2Bsmall%2Bbusiness%2Bsolutions.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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One of the essential elements of SEO is picking the right keyword, making them rank & track the keyword position in search.</div>
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It is absolutely necessary for a blogger or SEO professional to check their Google keyword ranking for target keywords. One of the most common mistakes bloggers and website administrators make is that they write and publish articles without targeting any keywords at all.</div>
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It takes only 10-15 minutes to use a keyword research tool like SEMRUSH or the Google keyword search tool to find which keywords to use. Make sure you take advantage of these tools in order to accomplish this very important step!</div>
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Once you are finished writing a SEO-optimized post using your target keywords, your next task is to keep track of its search engine rankings and to continue building backlinks with the proper anchor text.</div>
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Proper keyword selection is one of the main factors involved in achieving a better ranking in Google’s search engine</div>
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Every blogger must aim to use the keywords which users search the most, especially those keywords which will help your website show up on one of the first few pages of search results.</div>
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If you accomplish proper on-page SEO, chances are good that you will appear in the first 50 search results.</div>
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To improve your SEO, you must manage keywords properly so that you can find out which keywords are strong for your particular domain and which are not. This information allows you to work on using the strongest keywords, thus increasing your likelihood of getting a better ranking in Google and other search engines.</div>
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In order to accomplish this goal, you need a tool which can tell you where a specific keyword ranks in Google’s search results without manually going through 100’s of search results and pages.</div>
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To help you to do this, we have compiled a list of some excellent free online tools to use to check your target keyword position in Google.</div>
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Useful Google Position Checker Tools:</div>
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* SEMrush</div>
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Keyword position checker Google</div>
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SEMrush is my favorite tool on this list as it is a complete solution for keyword checking.</div>
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You can enter your website URL or the individual URL of a blog post, and it will show you which keywords you are currently ranking for. You can further click on any resulting keyword to check keyword competition and other details.</div>
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It supports Google (you can select Google Search based on your target geographical region) and Bing.</div>
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SEMrush is professional software that is easy to use, and you can try it for a couple of weeks for free before deciding whether you want to subscribe.</div>
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You can use this link to get a free 14-day trial of SEMRUSH.</div>
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Overall, SEMRUSH is an amazing tool for checking the position of keywords in search engines.</div>
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* Ahrefs</div>
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Ahrefs</div>
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I’m pretty happy with SEMrush, but if I ever have to replace it with anything else, it’s going to be Ahrefs.</div>
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This one is loaded with tons of great features. It automatically detects what keyword your website is ranking for & you can specify ranking based on country.</div>
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Check out Ahrefs</div>
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* SERPWatcher</div>
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I’m a huge fan of SEO tools offered by Mangools as they work great & offers great UI. SERPWatcher is the latest addition which let you track keyword position for any domain. You can rack keyword position based on Geo location & device.</div>
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SERPWatcher</div>
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You can get one of their paid plan to track more keywords. The pricing is most reasonable under the paid tool & will fit your pocket perfectly.</div>
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Join SerpWatcher</div>
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* Google Rank Checker</div>
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Google Rank Checker is an excellent free online utility which helps users track keyword positioning in Google search engine results.</div>
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In order to use this service, simply put in the keyword you want to search along with the domain name, and it will show you the position of that specific keyword in Google.</div>
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It’s that easy.</div>
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Google Position Checker</div>
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Check out Google Rank Checker</div>
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<br /></div>
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* SERP’s Keyword Rank checker</div>
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This one is another popular free Keyword rank checker tool which shows more than search engine position. Along with search engine ranking it also shows CPC and search volume data, for any keyword or phrase.</div>
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SERP's Keyword Rank checker</div>
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When checking the Keyword rank, you can select the search engine location & also desktop or mobile device. This tool is idle for checking one or multiple Keyword ranking.</div>
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Check out SERP’s Rank checker</div>
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* SEOCentro Rank Checker</div>
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SEOCentro is one of the best keyword checking tools I have found to date.</div>
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With Rank Checker you can check the performance of specific keywords in multiple search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. The result will give you complete details about a specific keyword including its rank in various search engines, along with a history of the keyword.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-59427290520322908702018-02-19T05:32:00.001+00:002018-02-19T05:36:24.165+00:00Small Business owner ? How To Accept Bitcoin ?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.smallbusines.co.uk/2018/02/small-business-owner-how-to-accept.html"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="630" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1_zrtrgSPrY/WophWw6VO1I/AAAAAAAAKTc/eWD58zod96UAmf6Yjii3OZ0NvlKnLdwHQCLcBGAs/s1600/how-accept-bitcoin-payments-small-business.png" /></a></div>
Get started with bitcoin payments. Accept bitcoin, store and spend bitcoin securely.<br />
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Accept bitcoin payments for your business. Use retail, ecommerce, billing, and donation tools to accept payments from customers anywhere on earth.<br />
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Receive settlement for bitcoin payments directly to your bank account in your own currency, with zero price volatility or risk.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Bitpay still allows businesses to accept payments while receiving fiat. Users of bitcoin transfer their payments using the company's payment platform. The firm locks in an exchange rate and delivers fiat to the seller's bank account. Companies can advertise to wealthy bitcoin owners and accept their payments without exposing themselves to the coin's volatility.<br />
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A number of other companies now offer a similar service. CoinGate extends the acceptance to more than 40 different kinds of altcoins with instant conversion to euros or dollars.<br />
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These tools, and more are surfacing, allow business to accept bitcoins risk-free. They can also allow businesses to receive their payments in bitcoin. While that brings back the risk, it's worth noting that if the Newport Beach car dealer had kept the bitcoin, he would have sold that Tesla for around $1.5 million in today's money. Some risks might well be worth taking<br />
<br />
There are options and smart businesses are making good use of them. In 2013, a man in Florida called a Lamborghini dealership in Newport County, CA and asked if he could buy a Tesla from them using bitcoin. Other dealers had already turned him down, he said. The dealership was cautious. The car cost $103,000. But the company didn't want to reject a sale so it accepted the payment using Bitpay. The buyer paid 91.4 bitcoins and the seller received the money in dollars. According to CNN, news of the sale prompted ten more potential buyers to call the dealership.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-989996405069263822017-10-07T11:15:00.002+01:002017-10-26T08:41:45.299+01:00Why do I love FireBase ? Firebase helps you build better mobile apps and grow your business !<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.smallbusines.co.uk/2017/10/why-do-i-love-firebase-firebase-helps.html" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="938" height="203" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cYOHq5yran0/WdipII6XHWI/AAAAAAAAJ34/ZTjvMUKmnK8vft9tESTQL_vK_DxMpcXXwCLcBGAs/s400/Firebase_Small_Business_co_uk_try_for_free.png" width="400" /></a></div>
Firebase is Google's mobile platform that helps you quickly develop high-quality apps and grow your business.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Why do I love FireBase ?</div>
<br />
Start for free, then pay as you go. Deliver web content fast: With Firebase Hosting, you can deploy a single-page web app, a mobile app landing page, or a progressive web app without all the hassle. SSD-backed hosting, around the globe: No matter where a user is, content is delivered fast. Files deployed to Firebase Hosting are cached on SSDs at CDN edge servers around the world. Free SSL certificates for custom domains: <br />
<a name='more'></a>Firebase Hosting automatically provisions and configures an SSL certificate for each site deployed (Connect a custom domain with painless verification). Deploy with one command: Deploying your app from a local directory to the web only takes one command. See deployment history and roll back to a previous version from the Firebase console.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xN2_sIfKYxA/WdioLnbAUyI/AAAAAAAAJ3s/jEvRYuXM9zAh-WMsaTNHtUfEgx8rwgVVgCLcBGAs/s1600/Firebase_Small_Business_co_uk_free.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1260" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xN2_sIfKYxA/WdioLnbAUyI/AAAAAAAAJ3s/jEvRYuXM9zAh-WMsaTNHtUfEgx8rwgVVgCLcBGAs/s640/Firebase_Small_Business_co_uk_free.png" width="502" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
A bit of History and Services of FireBase</div>
<br />
Firebase evolved from Envolve, a prior startup founded by James Tamplin and Andrew Lee in 2011. Envolve provided developers an API that enables the integration of online chat functionality into their websites. After releasing the chat service, Tamplin and Lee found that it was being used to pass application data that wasn't chat messages. Developers were using Envolve to sync application data such as game state in real time across their users. Tamplin and Lee decided to separate the chat system and the real-time architecture that powered it. They founded Firebase as a separate company in April 2012.<br />
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Firebase was acquired by Google.In October 2015, Google acquired Divshot to merge it with the Firebase team. Since the acquisition, Firebase has grown inside Google and expanded their services to become a unified platform for mobile developers.<br />
<br />
Firebase Analytics<br />
Firebase Analytics is a free app measurement solution that provides insight into app usage and user engagement.<br />
<br />
Develop<br />
Firebase Cloud Messaging<br />
Formerly known as Google Cloud Messaging (GCM), Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) is a cross-platform solution for messages and notifications for Android, iOS, and web applications, which currently can be used at no cost.<br />
<br />
Firebase Auth<br />
Firebase Auth is a service that can authenticate users using only client-side code. It supports social login providers Facebook, GitHub, Twitter and Google. Additionally, it includes a user management system whereby developers can enable user authentication with email and password login stored with Firebase.<br />
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Realtime Database<br />
Firebase provides a realtime database and backend as a service. The service provides application developers an API that allows application data to be synchronized across clients and stored on Firebase's cloud. The company provides client libraries that enable integration with Android, iOS, JavaScript, Java, Objective-C, swift and Node.js applications. The database is also accessible through a REST API and bindings for several JavaScript frameworks such as AngularJS, React, Ember.js and Backbone.js. The REST API uses the Server-Sent Events protocol, which is an API for creating HTTP connections for receiving push notifications from a server. Developers using the realtime database can secure their data by using the company's server-side-enforced security rules.<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CoQLxPGGA3Q/Wdiow3_co_I/AAAAAAAAJ30/gqky1VxDgLQjsQf7B9AdfWGj_aR5nfi_QCLcBGAs/s1600/Firebase_Small_Business_co_uk_plan_calculator.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1003" data-original-width="1600" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CoQLxPGGA3Q/Wdiow3_co_I/AAAAAAAAJ30/gqky1VxDgLQjsQf7B9AdfWGj_aR5nfi_QCLcBGAs/s640/Firebase_Small_Business_co_uk_plan_calculator.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Firebase Storage<br />
Firebase Storage provides secure file uploads and downloads for Firebase apps, regardless of network quality. The developer can use it to store images, audio, video, or other user-generated content. Firebase Storage is backed by Google Cloud Storage.<br />
<br />
Firebase Hosting<br />
Firebase Hosting is a static and dynamic web hosting service that launched on May 13, 2014. It supports hosting static files such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript and other files, as well as dynamic Node.js support through Cloud Functions. The service delivers files over a content delivery network (CDN) through HTTP Secure (HTTPS) and Secure Sockets Layer encryption (SSL). Firebase partners with Fastly, a CDN, to provide the CDN backing Firebase Hosting. The company states that Firebase Hosting grew out of customer requests; developers were using Firebase for its real-time database but needed a place to host their content.<br />
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Firebase Test Lab for Android<br />
Firebase Test Lab for Android provides cloud-based infrastructure for testing Android apps. With one operation, developers can initiate testing of their apps across a wide variety of devices and device configurations. Test results—including logs, videos, and screenshots—are made available in the project in the Firebase console. Even if a developer hasn't written any test code for their app, Test Lab can exercise the app automatically, looking for crashes.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-9510719197460994692017-06-16T13:18:00.001+01:002018-05-15T08:27:08.535+01:00Top Free CRM Solutions for Small Business<h4 style="text-align: justify;">
Free CRM comes in two categories – free, but limited (also known as freemium), and open source.</h4>
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So the free, but limited, versions set caps on the amount of free users, contacts, storage, extra features, or some combination thereof.</div>
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Open source, on the other hand, offers an unlimited, fully functional CRM to users. The caveat is that your company needs a person (or team) who can install and configure the CRM. Of course, because of this, open source CRM is extremely customizable, which is nice. Most open source CRM companies also offer a preconfigured version and/or installation and support for a price.</div>
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Check out the comparison chart below and read the details about the CRM systems that interest you :</div>
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Please note that CRM's placed these in any particular order. Each system is different and each one will serve some companies better than others.<br />
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SuiteCRM</h4>
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is an open source alternative to SugarCRM and is actually based on Sugar’s open source version, SugarCRM Community Edition, which will no longer be supported as of July 15, 2017. SugarCRM Community Edition was extremely stripped down to begin with, and as one reviewer put it “SuiteCRM is the best of all worlds. It’s based on Open Source Sugar, but uses Open Source add-ons to make it close to, if not better than, the ‘Pay’ Sugar.”<br />
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SuiteCRM offers free forum support, or paid dedicated support in three tiers based on response time and maximum hours of support, starting at about $2,000 per year. Version 7.9 looks like it will include some great new features, such as an updated email module, when it is released.<br />
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CapsuleCRM</h4>
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is free for up to two users with 10 MB of storage, and 250 contacts. To upgrade, it’s $12/user/month. With the upgrade comes two gigabytes of storage, 50,000 contacts, and integration with such applications as Mailchimp and Freshbooks.<br />
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Capsule’s best feature, according to its many glowing reviews, is its ability to integrate with at least 33 other software programs, including Mailchimp, Freshbooks, and Gmail.<br />
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In fact, according to the reviews, the only place Capsule is really lacking as a system is its customer support. While they have a FAQs section as well as helpful articles posted on their page, if you need any help after hours, you’re sunk. In addition, they offer no direct phone service. Rather, you must submit a form, though they do claim to call you back within a single business day.<br />
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Insightly crm</h4>
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claims on its homepage to be the “#1 online small business CRM.” I have no evidence to corroborate this particular claim, but I can tell you that they offer a great free program and a very friendly website.<br />
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Insightly offers their system free for two users, 2,500 records (which they define as any stored item from contact to note), 200 megabytes of storage and two custom fields. The freemium level also includes advanced reporting and 10 emails a day. You can upgrade to the Basic level for $12/user/month, and that gets you 25,000 records and 1 gigabyte of storage.<br />
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The feature that really sets Insightly apart from other CRMs is its built-in email marketing system. The freemium level has very limited access to the email marketing system, which is not likely to be a problem because a business that small probably won’t have the bandwidth for email marketing tasks. However, when your business expands, Insightly will save you money because you won’t need to spend extra on a second system for your emails.<br />
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As they say on their homepage, Insightly is great for small businesses. For many small businesses two users is really more than enough. However, many reviewers have mentioned that Insightly is not ideal for bigger businesses, particularly because its functionality is not capable of handling the demands of a larger business. One particular example cited is that the email integration lacks a lot of user functionality that other CRM platforms don’t think twice about. It should also be mentioned that Insightly only offers support via the online community.<br />
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Really Simple Systems</h4>
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claims to be the best CRM system for small businesses. (But it does not claim to be the #1 online CRM for small business, so there’s no rivalry with Insightly.)<br />
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Really Simple Systems offers a free two user system that includes 100 accounts (businesses that you deal with), unlimited contacts within those accounts, tasks, and 100MB of storage, along with free full customer support. When you’re ready to upgrade, Really Simple Systems has three different paid plans for growing businesses.<br />
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Customers love Really Simple Systems because it’s actually really simple and they offer excellent customer support. I honestly struggled to find the problems people had with this system, that’s how much users love it.<br />
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However, I did manage to dig up one con to keep in mind. Cloudpro’s review, while generally praising this CRM, does mention that Really Simple Systems has limited functionality, and so works best for small businesses compared to large or enterprise ones.<br />
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Version 5.0, which went live in March of 2017, includes a snazzy redesigned interface and a bunch of new features.<br />
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FreeCRM</h4>
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Here’s another CRM that claims to be #1 at something. This time its #1 at free CRM software (so again, technically no rivalry!).<br />
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This free version comes with 100 free users, 100,00 contacts, and all the basic features. The upgrade fee to CRM Pro is $29.95/user/month for more features, storage, and support. Two major drawbacks up front for the free version: you only get one year free, and no customer support.<br />
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So what makes FreeCRM worth it? First, their upgraded system is actually one of the most affordable CRMs on the market for mid to large sized businesses. Second, it’s a web-based solution, so you don’t need to create an expensive and time-consuming infrastructure to host it on, meaning pretty much anyone can get it up and running with ease.<br />
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Bitrix24</h4>
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I like Bitrix a lot because it offers really flexible price options. I like flexibility. For a completely free account you get 12 users, five GB of storage and the ability to do anything you want with that storage, which is already a pretty sweet deal.<br />
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This is how it gets better. The upgrade fee to get unlimited users and 50 gigs of storage is $99, but if you’re not feeling that cause really all you needed was a few more users, or maybe just more storage… Bitrix totally hears you! They offer an additional 12 users to the same program for $39/user/month. And/or if you want even more storage they offer an unlimited plan for $199/month.<br />
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If you’re looking for an installed CRM, Bitrix can do that for you as well (although it’s not free). For a one-time fee of $2,990, you can get their small-business installed CRM (good for 50-500 users).<br />
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So that’s the pricing.<br />
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Overall, reviewers find Bitrix to be a very easy-to-use system. In addition, its document management feature is well integrated and extremely useful. What makes Bitrix really stand out above the crowd is just how feature-rich it is. Check out this (very abbreviated) list of all the things the free version comes with:<br />
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Project management features such as: tasking, Gantt charts, and time tracking. (In fact, Bitrix is actually one of our favorite free project management software solutions.)<br />
Built-in email marketing<br />
Telephony features such as: call-recording, and dial-out from within the CRM.<br />
Sales automation<br />
Sales funnel + reporting<br />
Invoicing<br />
Sales team management<br />
The drawback that reviewers all point out is that Bitrix’ aesthetics are a little rough at points. One reviewer mentioned that they use a flashing clock in the corner to remind users to timestamp all activities, which I could easily imagine is quite obnoxious.<br />
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Raynet CRM</h4>
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Raynet markets itself as an easy-to-use, does-it-all CRM. Its free version allows for two users, 150 accounts, 50MB of storage, and full customer support. Upgrade to 20,000 accounts and one TB of storage for just $19/user/month.<br />
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Raynet’s system is very aesthetically pleasing and features an “account card” (featured above) where you can glean most of the information you need about a customer from a single glance, including how much they’re worth to your company.<br />
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All that said, Raynet is a fairly new company, and the fact that it’s headquartered in the Czech Republic may make support difficult for U.S.-based companies (though they have an office in Florida). Reviewers find Raynet to be very intuitive and easy on the eyes.<br />
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vTiger</h4>
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vTiger is an open source CRM, that is also based on Sugar. vTiger was actually originally a part of Sugar, but both have since gone their own ways.<br />
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While you can download and install the open source version of the software for free yourself, vTiger does offer a preconfigured Ultimate version for $30/user/month. In addition, vTiger also offers installation, support, hardware, and/or administration for for a price starting at about $700. The paid version integrates with MailChimp, Intuit and Paypal, among others.<br />
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One thing that vTiger does really well is offer a wide array of features for very cheap, even on the preconfigured level. These features include billing, inventory tracking, and project management capabilities, all of which are fairly unusual to find in any CRM system.<br />
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From reviews, it would appear as though a fairly important drawback to vTiger is the fact that it has had compatibility issues with PHP 5.6 and above.<br />
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ZohoCRM</h4>
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Zoho is one of the big dogs of business software, so it’s pretty cool that they offer a free program. This CRM version is free for 10 users and 25,000 records. It comes with a mobile app and social CRM among other things. Their first step upgrade (for more users, features, and 100,000 records) is only $12/user/month.<br />
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Zoho is well known for being easy to use with highly developed importing features.<br />
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Unfortunately, Zoho is not as feature-rich as other CRMs on this list and has some quirks that take getting used to. An example that one reviewer used was that, when exporting from Zoho, you have to be very careful to ensure that there are no commas in any records, or else it will split up the record when putting it into Excel.<br />
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Zurmo</h4>
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Zurmo is open source, and is unique on this list because it is also gamified. Zurmo was written on the principle that offering users incentives along the way makes users better employees. So the system sets goals, or ‘missions’ (which are different for different types of users) and then gives badges along the way to goal completion. It also allows coworkers to challenge each other to missions with set rewards at the end (like a gift card).<br />
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Currently, the biggest drawback to Zurmo is that it’s pretty new on the scene – which, being open source, can actually be a bit of a bother. Zurmo’s open source version lacks some fairly basic features such as social CRM. This, of course, is unlikely to remain a problem the longer it sticks around.<br />
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Zurmo’s preconfigured version has now been spun off as it’s own cloud-based, gamified CRM system called CRM.me. The upgrade fee starts at $35/user/month.<br />
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Hubspot CRM</h4>
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At the time that I originally wrote this article, I mentioned that Hubspot was coming out with a free CRM. Well, they finally have come out with their CRM so let’s talk about it.<br />
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It’s a 100% free CRM. They have a few “Sidekick” features, like click-to-call that you do have to pay for if you want them, but this is not a product Hubspot is interested in making much money off of. Why? Because Hubspot’s main product is their phenomenal marketing automation solution and this CRM is intended to be a gateway system to using Hubspot’s marketing automation software.<br />
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Having said that, let’s talk about what makes Hubspot’s CRM worth looking at. For starters, being designed by marketing automation specialists with the purpose of eventually convincing users to start using their marketing automation software, Hubspot’s CRM has some amazing data gathering abilities. Traditionally, all the data in a CRM must be entered by a salesperson. That’s slowly changing, but Hubspot really jumped in. They’ve got a leg up on the competition because they long ago figured out how to pull data about people from their internet doings and email engagement rates among other things. All those abilities are put to good use in their CRM, the point being, of course, to make their CRM an intuitive part of their marketing automation software. As a result, though, Hubspot’s data tracking features are head-and-shoulders above the competition.<br />
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It’s important to keep in mind that Hubspot’s CRM is extremely lightweight. It is really only an option for small to midsize businesses that have never used a CRM before. Of course, the solution is brand new on the market. There may come a day when this free CRM can compete swing for swing against a solution like Salesforce (who also has a companion marketing automation solution).<br />
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InStream</h4>
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InStream is a fairly new CRM, but it’s great for small businesses. It’s free for one user and 100 contacts, and includes unlimited lists, social integrations, and basic integrations. InStream’s upgrade price for the Basic plan is $10/user/month.<br />
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One feature that makes InStream great for small businesses is its suggestion feature. InStream is able to provide in-app suggestions on how to continue working on a prospect, which is a pretty cool feature for a sales team just learning the ropes.<br />
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InStream is so new that it’s still a very lightweight CRM, which makes it ideal for small businesses, but difficult to use for larger businesses.<br />
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Agile CRM</h4>
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Agile CRM launched in 2012 and has been gaining momentum and positive reviews since then. The free version allows up to 10 users, 1,000 contacts, and unlimited deals, tasks, and documents. It is also surprisingly rich in features, with custom data fields, lead scoring, and email tracking.<br />
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The free version even includes marketing and service features, which is why Agile CRM proudly calls itself the “All-in-One CRM.”<br />
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Agile CRM was “built with love for small businesses” according to the website. But growing businesses can upgrade to a paid plan, starting at $8.99/user/month if the free version reaches its limits of usefulness. Advanced features include telephony, gamification, and social media integration among others.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-14471428924909233632017-06-13T16:08:00.000+01:002019-03-22T11:17:42.745+00:00Tips to Choose Web Hosting for a Small Business<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Nowadays, when technologies are growing and developing so fast, owners of small businesses are moving from small local stores and markets to the cyberspace. As e-commerce shops allow much flexibility, many entrepreneurs are ready to take the next step in converting their local business into something completely different. </div>
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However, considering an online presence may raise plenty of questions for small business owners, such as: where to start? How to choose the right tools? How to launch the website? Who can assist with all the technical matters? </div>
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In this article, we are going to take a look at what is important in choosing a web hosting for your small business website. Also, we will take a tour of features that web hosting should provide.</div>
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<b>1. Choose a type of Web Hosting: Shared Hosting or VPS?</b></div>
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<b>Shared Hosting</b><br />
Shared hosting is one of the most popular options available for those who seek small business web hosting. For beginners, no matter what kind of site you own (a blog, portfolio, small e-commerce etc.) shared hosting is a great opportunity to start. Cheap and affordable, easy to manage, as everything is prepared for uploading your website. By choosing a shared hosting provider, pay attention to the following:</div>
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* availability of free SSL certificate</div>
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* allowed number of websites, email accounts, parked domains and subdomains on your selected plan</div>
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* how limited the website space is </div>
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* what the amount of bandwidth is</div>
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* if any spam protection is provided</div>
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* if the provider offers a website backup</div>
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* what the website building tools are</div>
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<a href="https://www.hostens.com/shared-hosting/" target="_blank"><b>Here you can find web hosting at best price >></b></a></div>
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<b>Virtual Private Server Options (VPS)</b></div>
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If you plan a huge traffic to your website, or you need a different server’s configuration for your CMS than the basic one in shared hosting, VPS hosting is an option for you. As most of VPS are self-managed, you have more freedom in software management.</div>
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Also, if you are not a techie, you have a choice of a managed VPS. However, keep in mind that the price of such a VPS will increase significantly.</div>
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<a href="https://www.hostens.com/vps-hosting/" target="_blank"><b>Check best offers for VPS hosting here >></b></a></div>
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<b>2. Check Web Hosting Provider's Reliability, Uptime, and Speed</b><br />
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<b>Reliability</b></div>
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Read reviews and testimonials from current and past customers. “ Hostadvice”, "Shopper Approved" or "Trustpilot" are the most popular websites that publish reviews for online businesses. All the reviews are written by real customers, so you can definitely trust them.</div>
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<b>Uptime</b></div>
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Search for a web hosting company that guarantees your website will be up 99.95% of the time. Furthermore, it is supposed to ensure that your website will be available all the time.</div>
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<b>Speed</b></div>
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Check the server's location as your website speed mostly depends on the distance from the server to the end customer. If you have plans to get customers in Europe, choose servers located in Europe, too.</div>
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<b>3. Test the Support of a Web Hosting Provider</b></div>
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When you run a small business online for the first time, one of the most important criteria to consider is customer service. The specialists working at a web hosting company are your first point of contact to answer any questions or assist you during the website upload process. So, make sure you can communicate with a web hosting provider via chat, email or phone calls. Furthermore, read the reviews not only regarding technical infrastructure - pay attention how qualified customer support is, too. </div>
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<b>4. Choose the Price Carefully</b></div>
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Do not fall for the cheapest web hosting plans. Also, free web hosting is not an option due to limited features, advertising, and high probability of downtime when you will not receive any assistance.</div>
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In conclusion, do not try to find the best hosting in the world. Plan your expenses and look for the best web hosting options by comparing plans and offers that meet your website's needs.</div>
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If you want to find more tips and best hosting offers check at hostens.com</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-45334654404271676772017-05-11T13:56:00.003+01:002017-10-26T08:42:18.308+01:00SemySMS is a free text messaging service. Create mass commercial SMS messages.<a href="http://www.smallbusines.co.uk/2017/05/semysms-is-free-text-messaging-service.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I6ozI3xCNR0/WRReITG4E_I/AAAAAAAAJLA/MS1TxPCyMCM7LfjElJO9EEnp5MRRa-8GACLcB/s320/Free-SMS-Chrome-Extensions.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://semysms.net/?referal=nexdkfoa91" target="_blank">SemySMS</a> is a free text messaging service. Create mass commercial text messages, inform about sales and special offers just after the registration!<br />
<br />
Send and receive text messages via WEB interface or API using any number of your smartphones based on Android.<br />
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Nothing can be as easy as texting messages!<br />
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To start using this service you'll need to install <a href="https://semysms.net/?referal=nexdkfoa91" target="_blank">SemySMS</a> application on your device first.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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Opportunities and benefits of <a href="https://semysms.net/?referal=nexdkfoa91" target="_blank">SemySMS</a> service</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://semysms.net/?referal=nexdkfoa91" target="_blank">SemySMS</a> provides solutions to send single and bulk sms messages</li>
<li>Receipt and storage of incoming sms messages that allows you to create two-way communication. For Example for carrying out social serveys or to report on work performed</li>
<li>With the help of the service your smartphones are combined into a single distributed network that provides high speed of sending</li>
<li>Status tracking of sending messages</li>
<li>Comfortable working with the contact list (import from excel files, grouping, etc)</li>
<li>Statistics tracking and the current status of the sent messages in real time</li>
<li>Detailed reports on mass texting</li>
<li>API for integration with any managment system (online stores, verification codes, notification of any status changes, upcoming events and much more)</li>
<li>Schedule setup service is available, you can set date, time, desired frequency and a number of repetitions of the messages to be sent later</li>
<li>One can set a limit on the number of text messages that could be sent per minute/hour/week/month</li>
<li>Use tags to generate text of the sms automatically, replacing the tags by relevant contacts data (such as using the recepient's name in the sms message)</li>
<li>Variable templating engine goes through different combinations of words, phrases and sentences that allows to generate various text messages as part of one mass texting</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Service operation principles</div>
<br />
<a href="https://semysms.net/?referal=nexdkfoa91" target="_blank">Register on the site</a><br />
Install semySMS application on your device based on Android. To download the application use the link to <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.semysms.semysms&hl=en" target="_blank">Google Play Store.</a><br />
Add your phone(s) to the list of the devices by entering the code from the application to the field "device code"<br />
Create list of contacts by uploading files from xls or export from the application by selecting the corresponding item from the menu<br />
Send text messages to a selected group of contacts<br />
<br />
<a href="https://semysms.net/?referal=nexdkfoa91" target="_blank">Highly recomennded for Small Business !</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-57128608618860107512017-04-02T21:51:00.002+01:002017-04-02T21:54:36.316+01:005 tips for making social media work for your organisation<a href="http://www.smallbusines.co.uk/2017/04/5-tips-for-making-social-media-work-for.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="249" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ECvMAHuCPvU/Ue_-ePsiCdI/AAAAAAAABNg/NCLMzGp1lcIjhqwwKKcu0ZjrTXtgyl0WQCPcB/s320/HiRes.jpg" width="320" /></a>Social media is a great tool for businesses, but just having a Facebook or Twitter account is no longer enough to make you stand out from the crowd. How you use social media is becoming increasingly linked with success, particularly with the increasing digitalisation of most target audiences.<br />
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A recent article on The Guardian website highlighted companies who are making social media work for them and this got us thinking about the top tips for businesses and organisations to get the most out of their social media potential.<br />
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Have a plan and stick to it<br />
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It’s widely acknowledged that having a social media strategy is an essential part of an effective social media presence. Such strategies allow you to focus on what’s important for your business, who you’re trying to reach and what kind of messages you want to convey. Setting up a social media content calendar is also advised as this allows you to plan your content in advance and anticipate any particular key events or occurrences that you can take advantage of.<br />
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Get to know your audience<br />
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Using social media research tools like Facebook Audience Insights and Facebook graph search, or influencer tools like Buzzsumo, Buzzstream and Tweepi, can give you a better understanding of your target audience’s interests and behaviours, and their connections on social media. The insights gained through these tools can then be used to help you develop more effective social media content.<br />
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Choose the right platforms for you<br />
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There are lots of social media platforms out there, with each offering different benefits and drawbacks depending on your requirements. It may be that it’s more effective for your organisation or business to focus on one or two, as maintaining accounts on all of them can be a time-consuming process. Consider what sites are popular among your target audience and which offer features that best meet your needs.<br />
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Perfect your engagement tactics<br />
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The importance of effectively engaging with your target audience can’t be understated and will also help to guide the content you develop. Certain topics may capture their attention more readily than others, while certain types of media in a post might be more popular. Humour can be a good approach (if appropriate), as can asking questions that will prompt a response. Keeping the conversation going will help to generate a sense of community related to your business or organisation.<br />
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<br />
Tailor your content<br />
<br />
It can be tempting to post the same content on multiple social media platforms – particularly with sites like Facebook and Twitter allowing you to do this automatically by linking accounts. By creating dedicated content tailored to each platform, you can maximise your reach and engagement with your followers. Twitter is good for asking questions and posting calls-to-action, while Facebook lends itself to videos and competitions. Instagram is a great home for photos and visuals, and LinkedIn is the platform for longer posts and discussion groups.<br />
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There are many more aspects of social media that we could have covered in this list, but we hope these five main tips have given you a good starting point. Social media has incredible communication potential, so make sure you take advantage of what’s available!<br />
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</script>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-60802162963588985842017-03-30T14:37:00.004+01:002019-03-11T20:36:21.311+00:00Google Open Source website<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.smallbusines.co.uk/2017/03/google-open-source-website.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="162" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3eSRIF2X1mQ/WN0KCP4cY7I/AAAAAAAAI7Q/4-oJiHgmEB8Rkilzq9CxtCFmau4YCqtPwCLcB/s320/open.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
This Google Open Source website has been debuted with the primary aim of bringing together the uncluttered mess of open-source technologies. The tech giant, in the press release, states that it has released thousands of projects through 100+ Github organizations and Google’s self-hosted repository. And sometimes it becomes difficult to recognize the scope and scale of the open-source projects.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Thus, the projects are now being brought together with the release of this directory, which will be the primary hub for all open-source releases. They will still continue to live on their respective channels, but will now be easily discoverable by developers. But, that’s not all. Google is also willing to provide you an insider look by detailing how the open-source technologies are used within their products. It also plans on updating each project with lifecycle and maturity details.<br />
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Will Norris, Engineering Manager at Google’s Open Source Programs Office describes the objective behind this release as under:<br />
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This new site showcases the breadth and depth of our love for open source. It will contain the expected things: our programs, organizations we support, and a comprehensive list of open source projects we’ve released. But it also contains something unexpected: a look under the hood at how we “do” open source.<br />
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In addition, Google is also providing a significant resource for other enterprises on its new open-source website. The tech giant has decided to make the knowledge of how it goes about working on open-source internally through a series of public documents. Such documents will shed light on processes followed to release new projects, submit patches to others’ projects and how the open source office manages any new code brought from outside into the company. This is important for contributing to the community when it helps you build your products.<br />
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Free and open source software has been part of Google technical and organizational foundation since Google’s early beginnings. From servers running the Linux kernel to an internal culture of being able to patch any other team's code, open source is part of everything. In return, Google released millions of lines of open source code, run programs like Google Summer of Code and Google Code-in, and sponsor open source projects and communities through organizations like Software Freedom Conservancy, the Apache Software Foundation, and many others.<br />
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Helping you find interesting open source<br />
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One of the tenets of our philosophy towards releasing open source code is that "more is better." Google don't know which projects will find an audience, so they help teams release code whenever possible. As a result, Google have released thousands of projects under open source licenses ranging from larger products like TensorFlow, Go, and Kubernetes to smaller projects such as Light My Piano, Neuroglancer and Periph.io. Some are fully supported while others are experimental or just for fun. With so many projects spread across 100 GitHub organizations and Google self-hosted Git service, it can be difficult to see the scope and scale of our open source footprint.<br />
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To provide a more complete picture, Google are launching a directory of our open source projects which they will expand over time. For many of these projects Google are also adding information about how they are used inside Google. In the future, they hope to add more information about project lifecycle and maturity.<br />
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How we do open source<br />
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Open source is about more than just code; it's also about community and process. Participating in open source projects and communities as a large corporation comes with its own unique set of challenges. In 2014, Google helped form the TODO Group, which provides a forum to collaborate and share best practices among companies that are deeply committed to open source. Inspired by many discussions Google have had over the years, today they are publishing internal documentation for how they do open source at Google.<br />
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<i>About Google and Alphabet Inc.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>About Google and Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate founded on October 2, 2015, by the two founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, with Page serving as CEO and Brin as President. It is the parent company of Google and several other companies previously owned by them. The company is based in Mountain View, California, at Googleplex. The reorganization of Google into Alphabet was completed on October 2, 2015.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Alphabet's portfolio encompasses several industries, including technology, life sciences, investment capital, and research. Some of its subsidiaries include Google, Calico, GV, CapitalG, Verily, Waymo, X, and Google Fiber. Some of the subsidiaries of Alphabet have altered their names since leaving Google—Google Ventures becoming GV, Google Life Sciences becoming Verily and Google X becoming just X. Following the restructuring Page became CEO of Alphabet while Sundar Pichai took his position as CEO of Google. Shares of Google's stock have been converted into Alphabet stock, which trade under Google's former ticker symbols of "GOOG" and "GOOGL".</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The establishment of Alphabet was prompted by a desire to make the core Google Internet services business "cleaner and more accountable" while allowing greater autonomy to group companies that operate in businesses other than Internet services.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-62422777501838154682017-03-14T18:31:00.002+00:002017-03-14T18:38:07.835+00:00Beautiful data visualization starts here - Google Data Studio<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2fFUPgQFwmA/WMg2S0w7BPI/AAAAAAAAIs0/DgcWDcFvElYmIRaQ8BM2fiVCu0PVIebVQCLcB/s1600/big%2Bdata.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.smallbusines.co.uk/2017/03/beautiful-data-visualization-starts.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2fFUPgQFwmA/WMg2S0w7BPI/AAAAAAAAIs0/DgcWDcFvElYmIRaQ8BM2fiVCu0PVIebVQCLcB/s400/big%2Bdata.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Google Data Studio turns your data into informative dashboards and reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable. Dashboarding allows you to tell great data stories to support better business decisions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Create unlimited Data Studio custom reports with full editing and sharing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Google Data Studio marks the birth of a new era of how organizations consume, share, and use analytics data to drive insights and create even greater business value</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Turn your data into beautiful, informative reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable. Data Studio lets you create custom reports with unlimited editing and sharing. All for free.</span></div>
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<h4>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Google Data Studio will help you and your organization:</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Put all your data to work. Easily access the data sources you need to understand your business and make better decisions.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Transform your data. Quickly transform raw data into easy-to-follow reports and dashboards — no code or queries required.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Build engaging reports and dashboards. Data Studio gives you the ability to create meaningful, shareable charts and graphs that bring your data to life.</span></li>
</ul>
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Leverage teamwork that works. Work together quickly, from anywhere by sharing reports via Google Drive.</span></li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oCvsfmenKoY/WMg4L0OVFyI/AAAAAAAAIs8/_ko6601-Ge0ugoV7lwDazjCRtzyLjw51QCLcB/s1600/analytic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oCvsfmenKoY/WMg4L0OVFyI/AAAAAAAAIs8/_ko6601-Ge0ugoV7lwDazjCRtzyLjw51QCLcB/s400/analytic.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">What is Google Data Studio?</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One thing that’s cool about Data Studio is that you can pull in more than just Google Analytics data – you can even import Facebook data, as long as you put that information into a Google Sheet. (That’s right. Any reporting information you have on a Google Sheet can be pulled into Google Data Studio — and your beautiful reports!) If you can get your data into Google Sheets, it can show up in your reports.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The reports are also dynamic, so when there’s an update to the data source, the updated/new information automatically shows up on any reports that reference the source. Additionally, the reports are shareable, so you can grant people permission to view the reports and/or allow them to make changes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Google Data Studio uses the same functionality as Google Docs and Google Sheets, so all you need to do is press the “Share” button to let your clients or other members of your team view or edit the reports.</span></div>
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<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">How to Access Google Data Studio</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To access Google Data Studio, visit https://www.google.com/analytics/data-studio and log in using your Google Analytics login information. Right now, if you’re using the free version of Google Analytics, you get a limited version of Data Studio. You can create up to five custom reports for free.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Google also provides you with a YouTube video that you can watch to get a quick overview of the tool, and it gives you a walk-through on how to connect your data sources and create your first report.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the upper left-hand corner of the home page, you will see Reports and Data Sources. Reports lets you create reports and data visualizations. Data Sources are reusable components that connect a report to your data, such as Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Google AdWords and so forth.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-15720445108267644802017-03-02T08:38:00.002+00:002017-03-02T08:44:56.407+00:00Bring your data to life - get Microsoft Power BI !<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="http://www.smallbusines.co.uk/2017/03/bring-your-data-to-life-get-microsoft.html" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-caJ0uvcWJcc/WLfZjrTK7_I/AAAAAAAAIkM/jx5FDhdDFSkOY1pd6gEg1PKOj7JeXV2MACLcB/s320/bi.bmp" width="320" /></a></div>
Power BI transforms your company's data into rich visuals for you to collect and organize so you can focus on what matters to you.</div>
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<h2>
What is Power BI?</h2>
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Power BI is a suite of business analytics tools to analyze data and share insights. Monitor your business and get answers quickly with rich dashboards available on every device.<br />
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Analytics solutions for your whole organization</h3>
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Your whole business on one dashboard : With Power BI on the web, monitor your important data from across your organization and from all of the apps you rely on.</h4>
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Create stunning interactive reports: Power BI Desktop gives you tools to transform, analyze, and visualize data. Share reports in seconds with your organization using Power BI on the web.</h4>
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<h4>
Consistent analysis across your organization: With SQL Server Analysis Services on-premises and Azure Analysis Services in the cloud you can easily build robust, reusable models over your data to provide consistency across reporting and analysis in your organization.</h4>
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Easily embed BI and analytics in your app: Deliver stunning interactive reports in your app with the Power BI Embedded service.</h4>
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Microsoft National Clouds</h3>
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Power BI is available in three separate national clouds. These clouds offer the same levels of security, privacy, compliance and transparency as the global version of Power BI, combined with a unique model for local regulations on service delivery, data residency, access, and control.<br />
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Visualize and analyze everything in one place</h3>
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In less than five minutes you can start creating personalized dashboards and reports on your data using natural language and drag-and-drop gestures to find answers to your most important questions.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ORQXTL6mYig/WLfZjt75M-I/AAAAAAAAIkQ/6jx57M70j1kml8RE_jip4ya3eaRNxgh0gCLcB/s1600/apps.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ORQXTL6mYig/WLfZjt75M-I/AAAAAAAAIkQ/6jx57M70j1kml8RE_jip4ya3eaRNxgh0gCLcB/s320/apps.bmp" width="320" /></a></h4>
<h3>
Experience your data. Any data</h3>
<div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Connect to what matters most to you. Excel spreadsheets, on-premises data sources, big data, streaming data, and cloud services: it doesn’t matter what type of data you want or where it lives, Power BI allows you to connect to hundreds of data sources.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<h3>
2017 Gartner positions Microsoft as a leader in BI and Analytics Platforms for ten consecutive years</h3>
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Across industries, organizations recognize the power and opportunity that comes with a fast and effective analytics and data visualization tool. Business intelligence (BI) is a must for uncovering valuable insights and staying ahead of the competition. To be successful, companies need a modern, easy-to-use BI platform that stands up as an industry leader and a vision that meets the needs of tomorrow.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4250262324111118302.post-6696643696789104742016-12-07T13:48:00.003+00:002016-12-07T13:58:06.256+00:00 App Maker - Build Your Mobile App with Google <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.smallbusines.co.uk/2016/12/app-maker-build-your-mobile-app-with.html" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vh9ngEvgg-c/WEgS9_lf5pI/AAAAAAAAHkk/WOl48b-pZggpylvm8d_W-huLJAjwbmbmACEw/s320/appmaker%2Bsmall%2Bbusiness.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;">App Maker - a new service that people inside organizations can use to easily develop custom applications based on their business needs. Google is now taking applications for early access to the tool from organizations that pay for the G Suite (formerly known as Google Apps) Business service tier.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The service lets users drag and drop widgets around on a user interface that complies with Google’s Material design principles. But they can be customized further with scripts, as well as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JQuery content. And once apps are live, it’s possible to monitor usage through Google Analytics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In being easy to use by default, App Maker will be useful for people who are less technically savvy — people other than full-time developers, in other words. Having this sort of thing available means that IT teams can spend less time dealing with requests from these types of people, who might not otherwise see their ideas ever fleshed out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We’re really targeting enterprise developers who need to build line-of-business solutions for an entire company but need there to be less (sophistication) than developers who might build Snapchat or external-facing applications,” App Maker product manager Ajay Surie told VentureBeat in an interview.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That means App Maker will compete with existing “low-code” application development services. That includes Salesforce’s App Cloud, as well as tools from Appian, Mendix, and OutSystems, among others.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">There’s no need to worry about maintaining the necessary infrastructure for running the apps. Apps built with App Maker run on the same data center infrastructure as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive. This is different from the cloud computing and storage infrastructure that people can pay for through the Google Cloud Platform.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">New data that’s generated inside Apps built with App Maker can be stored in a new service called Google Drive Tables, which is essentially a managed structured database that stores data in Google Drive. It’s simpler to set up and maintain than something like Google Cloud SQL from the Google Cloud Platform.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">App Maker lets users integrate their apps with many services, including Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Forms, Gmail, Google Groups, Google Translate, Google Maps, Google Sites, Google Sheets, Google BigQuery, and Google Calendar.</span></div>
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