Software and IT costs for any small business can soon mount up especially with so many providers charging on a user by user basis. Although not as well-known as the large software providers, there are dozens of open source or freeware alternatives waiting to help you with your business software requirements. The added bonus is they won’t charge you or your business a penny!

Email & instant messaging

Always being connected and contactable doesn’t have to cost you any money as a business. Google’s email services are widely considered to be amongst the best available and allow users to access their emails on multiple devices plus includes features such as real time collaboration and built in instant messaging. Obviously an email address such as “business-name56k@gmail.com” doesn’t portray you as a professional company or maintain a consistent brand. However, you can use your own domain name’s email addresses as well with Gmail. This “How to Use Gmail With Your Own Branded Domain” guide takes you through the necessary steps to set this up.

You can also use the likes of Talk, Calendar and Docs through “Google Apps”. To setup Google Apps for one of your domain names login to our control panel, click “Manage Domain Names”, select the domain you wish to update and then click “DNS Management”. On this page there is a new section called “Setting DNS for Google Apps”. Click the link in this section and all the settings will be made automatically for you.

Documents, spread sheets and presentations

Save on licensing fees by looking beyond Microsoft office. Open Office is a fully formed and professional suite of software, and they are all great alternatives to Microsoft’s products. The Open Office suite includes a word processor, spread sheet software, presentation software and database software. If you are worried about compatibility with other companies who use Microsoft, you can also open and save files in Microsoft’s file formats e.g. Word’s .doc.

Ecommerce & billing

In their own words “osCommerce Online Merchant is an Open Source online shop e-commerce solution that is available for free with a feature rich set of out-of-the-box online shopping cart functionality that allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain online stores with minimum effort and with no costs, fees, or limitations involved.”  [Available as a one click install for Home Pro, Business Pro & Reseller Pro customers]

No business can survive if clients aren’t paying on time, so to help chase those bills and keep records of payments use Simple Invoices, a free and open source invoicing system packed full of some great features.

Customer support

Whether it is by phone, email or web forms, If you offer customer support services to your customers you can use OSticket to maintain a centralised record of your customer contacts without having to pay a software supplier any monthly usage fees. [Available as a one click install for Home Pro, Business Pro & Reseller Pro customers]

Project management

As your business grows, managing all of your on-going projects can become increasingly difficult and inefficient. Rather than adapting your CMS software or using a spread sheet, to keep up to date you can use dotProject. dotProject is purpose built project management software and completely free. [Available as a one click install for Home Pro, Business Pro & Reseller Pro customers]

Web design & graphics

If you like to dabble with web design or add content to your site, you don’t have to buy the likes of Dreamweaver to do this. Aptana Studio is a HTML and CSS design suite also used by programmers who write in PHP, Ruby and others. You can also save on Photoshop licenses by using the likes of GIMP and Inkscape to draw and edit images.