Comments:"25 Apps That Our Startup Loves To Use | Groove Blog"
URL:http://blog.groovehq.com/post/46934390013/25-apps-that-our-startup-loves-to-use
If we had a nickel for every time we’ve heard “man, the folks at Groove are great AND devastatingly attractive”, we wouldn’t have any money. Nobody’s said that to us (yet).
BUT if you gave us a nickel for every time someone’s asked us what SaaS apps we use every day, well, we still wouldn’t have any money, but it would be a perfect prompt for this post, which covers the SaaS apps we use every day.
Check ‘em out…
To stay on track
Perhaps the most-used project management app in startup circles (and elsewhere), our devs and designers love Basecamp for its easy collaboration and comprehensive tracking tools.
Another project management solution, we prefer Trello’s super-visual UI for marketing and content roadmaps, which are a lot more fluid and less deadline-driven.
A must for agile startups, Pivotal helps our developers stay on track with their tasks and goals, and make sure we’re always on the same page.
When it comes to document creation and sharing in the cloud, this one is the, well, Google of the marketplace. Ubiquitous, ridiculously simple to use and an infinitely superior alternative to the competition.
Massive amounts of space for files without taking up any of our precious local storage? Easy choice. And when our team can share files with each other without worrying about tracking emails and size-restricted attachments, everyone wins.
Whether we’re collecting inspiration for this blog, our Twitter account, our own business or just about anything else, Pocket lets us clip articles, posts, videos and more from anywhere on the web and save it in one central place.
There’s no better way to capture screenshots and highlight what you need people to see than with Skitch. We use it to request changes from our designers and developers and continue improving our product.
Basically a Skitch that moves, Jing is our choice for motion screen capture and sharing when we need to record more than a single snapshot.
New Relic is by far the easiest way we’ve found for app monitoring, and we love how easy it is to set up and use. While you work to make sure your app stays up and running, and they won’t hesitate to let you know if it’s not.
When we push an update, we don’t have to worry about testing it on a bunch of virtual machines with different operating systems and browsers. Why? Because BrowserStack handles all of that for us.
To stay in touch
A group chat platform that lets our whole team keep in real-time contact from all over the world, HipChat is absolutely vital to our process. If you’ve got remote workers in another part of the world (or even another part of the building), you’ll love this one.
Another collaboration platform, join.me lets us talk while sharing our screens, making it easy for devs and designers to work together and show each other bugs, designs, interaction flows, etc…
Our go-to for VOIP calling, Skype puts us all in touch without having to bring phones into the mix. We’re already staring at our screens all day, this just makes it seamless to keep our conversations there, too.
To stay in business
You have to drink your own Kool-Aid. Luckily for us, our Kool-Aid tastes delicious and keeps our customers very happy, so we’re glad to drink up.
A really simple, functional CRM from 37signals that helps us stay in touch with leads so we can get more customers and continue to grow.
We’re not a payments company, and going through the process of building your own payment processing systems is a nonstarter for many small businesses. But with Stripe’s simple integration, we don’t have to worry about not being able to accept credit cards.
We like automation. It makes our business run more efficiently, and helps us take the guesswork out of marketing. That’s why we use Hubspot for our inbound marketing efforts.
There’s not a more useful analytics platform out there, and their own words tell the story perfectly: Google Analytics tells you what happened, KISSmetrics tells you who did it. KISSmetrics has been invaluable in helping us optimize our website.
While lots of metrics products tell you what your visitors are doing, Crazy Egg shows you. The app generates heat maps that visualize exactly where your visitors are clicking, scrolling and hovering, which is powerful stuff when it comes to optimizing your design.
Social media is important to us, and Buffer helps us feed great content that’s useful to our followers. Just clip anything you find on the web, and use Buffer to schedule a Twitter or Facebook post.
A video hosting solution for businesses that don’t want pre-roll ads and distracting sidebars on their corporate videos, Wistia is simple, elegant and most importantly, reliable.
Sharing links with your audience is a great way to build your brand. Tracking link performance lets you see which of your links are most valuable to your readers, and that’s exactly what bitly offers.
To stay sane
Our favorite way to discover music that our friends love, Rdio isn’t just useful, it’s damn beautiful.
When we need music but don’t want to do anything about it, Pandora comes to the rescue in a single click with an unlimited stream of songs from artists we know and love, mixed with stuff we’ve never heard before.
What good is living in Rhode Island if you can’t enjoy the surf? When we clock out after a long week of making awesome support software, or even when we need a break, Surfline makes sure we know where the waves are.
Did we miss anything? Let us know about your favorites!