Web Hosts

For low budget, quality and reliable uptime, I recommend GoDaddy. They hosted our business web site for over a year. I also use them for domain registrations. The cost is unbelievably low and the customer service is very good.

If, however, you choose to develop your website in Ruby on Rails (as I have done), then you will want to pick someone else to host it. I tried to get ours up and running on GoDaddy, but it was an initial offering for them and I had troubles. I went to another, smaller company. This smaller company specializes in ROR hosting and are responsive to email inquiries. Beware: No phone support. This is a major drawback, but thank goodness they answer their emails more than twice daily! :-) The company is Rails Playground.

Logo Design and Graphics

A few additional tools related to getting your professional image up and running! For our other business, we used the following and I was very impressed with the results.

LogoDesignPros.com

I was very hesitant at first. It cost us ~$300US and was well worth the expense. They gave several "drafts" of logo designs they came up with. We went back and forth a few times and were happy with our final revision. The logo is very professional looking and was designed quickly. The customer service and their system is setup very efficiently. I was very pleased with the outcome.

www.shutterstock.com

Shutterstock provided all the professional looking images for our website. They have a huge assortment of "stock" and we just picked out several that we liked. We then gave them to a graphic designer that worked on the overall layout of our site (color scheme, navigation, etc...) and he made them fit right in with slight modification. It's a pay service, but we thought it was great.

Open Source Software that I use

I mentioned Ubuntu and Asterisk in a different post, because it related to an easy and nearly free PBX solution. In addition, I find the following tools valuable:

• MySql - Open Source relational database software. It's fantastic and behind some of the largest internet sites in the world.
• FileZilla - Open Source FTP/SFTP software.
• Putty - SSH to a linux box from Windows. This is great for gaining access to your hosted servers from a client PC running windows.
• PocketPutty - Same as above, but from your Windows Mobile/Pocket PC device. In my case, Treo 700wx cell phone.
• Ruby on Rails - Open Source Web Development framework built around the MVC (Model-View-Controller) design pattern. Hey, it's great in my opinion and I built a solution for our company on it in no time.
• TightVNC - Like PCAnywhere, but Open Source. Remotely control other computers from this lightweight, low-footprint tool. Note: TightVNC is built upon VNC.
• OpenOffice - I use this to avoid licensing costs from Microsoft. When starting a small company, you have to save as much money as possible. This was a tough one for the kids - because they all use MSOffice at school. They have gotten used to it though! One very valuable feature that I like about it: I can save all my documents to PDF NATIVELY, without having to use Acrobat or some other print driver. It does a good job of preserving the format from MS Office documents. It's not just a writer, but also a spreadsheet tool that works very much like Excel, a presentation tool, etc...
• Thunderbird - An Open Source Mail client. Hey, this isn't as good as Outlook (IMHO), but it does the job. Besides, I don't have Outlook! I choose this tool over Outlook Express.
• RadRails (now Aptima Studio) - Development environment for Ruby on Rails development.
• Apache - Open Source Web Server. I don't know the current market saturation, but if not number one then number two behind IIS.
• ... If I come up with others, then I will make a new post for them. If too many others, then I'll consolidate into a new post. I think this is it for now. BTW, I'm ONLY putting down items for Open Source Software that I use, or use regularly! The list of tools available via OpenSource is AMAZING and my list doesn't even touch the surface of what's available.

Phone System for the poor...FREE, almost...

I'm a big believer in Open Source software, and some of the best software available today is open source (Linux, Apache, MySQL, etc...).

As we were starting our service business two years ago, which shouldn't be recommended to anyone :-), I needed a phone system that would work in my home. As mentioned in a previous post, we use AccessLine so that we can have a remote work force. However, I needed something that would allow me to have multiple lines within my home that would all be tied together, allow transfers, etc... Also, before I knew about AccessLine, I had already gone down this different path.

Asterisk - It's an open source PBX system! With very little money (just hardware which is very inexpensive), you can have your business up and running with a full-fledged PBX. We have one vonage line and four land-lines from our cable provider running into an old computer that's only purpose in life is to route phone calls. You can do some VERY fancy stuff with Asterisk. We use it for bare minimum functionality but it works great. You can also set it up so that it can support your entire remote workforce too, but I am just too afraid to put it on the outside of our firewall. Thus, the multiple systems (Asterisk and AccessLine). The actual software is found here: http://www.asterisk.org. You may want to check into Asterisk@Home as well. Apparently, it is now called TrixBox (as I found out when trying to get a linke to their website). Here ya go: Asterisk@Home

BTW, we have found success running it on the Ubuntu distribution of Linux. It gave us problems ONE time in TWO years and that's because I had debug logging enabled and didn't realize it and the disk ran out of free space! Other than that, it's been a great performer! An entire history of inbound and outbound calls are stored in a database for your archival purposes.

Hope this helps...

Remote Phone Service Provider / 800 Number Vendor

In the book,The 4-Hour Workweek, the author gives a list of tools that are very valuable when starting a business and/or trying to work remotely. During the other business we setup, I had to have a remote sales force and customer service department. For our business, we hire people to work out of their home. The goal was to not have people tied to our residence since it was a home based business.

We have used AccessLine for a few years via an OfficeMax partnership. With the exception of a few minor glitches along the way, we have been pretty happy with what their service offers. We can have up to 16 (I believe) extensions plugged into the automated system. When customers call our 800 number, they are presented with an IVR type of situation. Press 1 for this, 2 for that. If you know your parties extension, press XXX. For each of the automated options, you can supply a number for it to go to (cell, landline, etc...). They can be the same, or different. You can also have failover numbers. So let's say someone is trying to reach Sales Associate "Jane Doe." Jane Doe doesn't answer the phone in her office/home/whatever. I can configure this system (very easily) to let it ring her line "n" number of times, if no answer, ring to my backup line or go to voicemail.

With our service level, which I believe is $99 per month roughly, plus per-minute charges for the 800 line, we don't get extra voicemail boxes. Therefore, we have just one company voicemail box. As people leave voicemails, they get sent to an email address for our company.

This company is not listed in the book, but I can vouch for them and am happy with the service. When we have had problems, their tech support is pretty decent. During two years, we had one period of time where our phones were down for an entire day. Hopefully it doesn't happen again. While the silence was nice, it also meant no money coming in.

I hope someone finds this of value.