Shopping list of tools and services for new startup
I'm looking for good-value, top-class applications and tools to support a new software startup. What recommendations do you have in the following categories?
- Domain name / hosting / website / blog
- Documents
- Bug tracking
- Project planning / estimation / tracking
- Version control
- Development environment
- CRM
- please add more if I've missed something useful
I have in mind to use Google for email and documents, FogBugz for issue tracking and planning, GitHub for version control and MS Visual Studio from BizSpark for development environment.
Software Planning Tools CRM Hosting
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Welcome to the site! Your question is a bit hard to answer because you have too much in one question to reasonably answer. Please see http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/how-to-ask. I suggest you break this up into several smaller questions - you will get better results that way. Also please search our site before reposting your questions. We have already answered some of your questions in previous posts. For example, see http://www.brightjourney.com/q/best-free-resources-startup and http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/tagged/crm. – Zuly Gonzalez 13 years ago
2 Answers
Here is what I could tell (from experience):
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Domain name / hosting / website / blog Take a good one since the beginning. Migration is extremely costly and time-consuming. Saving on hosting is a bad idea on the long-run.
Depending on your website/web apps, there are many great hosting companies out there. Take your time and choose a great one. - Mail Depends on your hosting provider. Or take GMail...
- Documents We use Google docs for the most part. It works great. Anyway, we do not have time to use Word and/or Open Office to do beautiful documents and presentation anyway...
- Bug tracking We use Assembla. We have been using our own bug tracker at the beginning. It was a mistake: we waste our time setting everything up and optimizing everything. Now, we do not care, we just use Assembla and we can focus on what is important: coding.
- Project planning / estimation / tracking See above.
- Version control See above.
- Development environment It depends on what you want to do and what IDE (etc) you are the most confortable with.
- CRM Excel files + Evernote.
plus:
- Dev Wiki To avoid reinventing the wheel. To precisely know how to deploy your app. We use Assembla too.
- Community Management Facebook + Twitter + Seesmic.
- Feedback from user No experience on that yet. We simply use a forum. But GetSatisfaction and UserVoice seem great. A little bit pricey maybe.
Overall, what I learnt: Cheap is always too expensive. You waste your time (and your money) trying to run your own "free" software instead of buying and using what is already there...
Assembla (or any other competitor) => 1 day max and you are up and running.
How long will it take (and how much will it cost) if you install and run your own "free software"?
Best regards.
I'm Bradley Starr, CEO of Bizantra and this is a biased answer. Bizantra is an all in one management software suite for startups and small business. It contains a simple CRM module and has secure document and information sharing in its Shared Spaces. It also has order logging, employee record keeping and Finance. Finance is UK at the moment but will also be US shortly. Bizantra also works offline as well as online so you can do business anywhere.
