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ZoHo – Online Office Applications

There has been lots of talk online about Writely, iRows and Google Spreadsheet lately that I though I’d take a moment and talk about the Zoho offerings. ZoHo is a company that makes an online word processor , spreadsheet application, polls, to-do lists, chat and more. Most applications are free and are all very good; and not invite only.

ZoHoWriter is basically the same as Writely. It’s a free online word processor that import & export Microsoft Word documents along with many other types of text files, export PDFs and it’s all web based. They deal with documents a little better though with a left hand menu that includes all your documents. All accessible from one screen and they can even open in tabs. Pretty sweet.

ZoHoSheet is a spreadsheet application like iRows or Google’s Spreadsheet. It can create, import and export Microsoft Excel documents and has many more features than Google’s current offerings.

ZoHoPolls & Planner I haven’t done much with but are a good offering. Polls allows you to add polls to your website or blog easily. My only issue with them is they don’t seem customizable enough. I’d rather have the ability to choose my own look and feel when I add it to my site. Planner seems to be the same as most to-do list applications . Nice, but nothing overly special. It does have iCal support though so maybe I just need to play with it more.

ZoHo has other paid programs too. They have Virtual Office, CRM and Challenge.

The main thing all the applications are missing is integration. I’d love to have one area to log into and be able to see my spreadsheets, text documents, to-dos and whatever else I’m signed up for. They say it’s in the works, but I’m still waiting.

Another great thing about ZoHo is they are listening. Shoot them and email and you’ll more than likely hear back in a few hours or days. They are very responsive to suggestions and are happy to hear from you.

Keep your documents online and access them anywhere, share them with friends and enjoy the freedom of a cross platform, multipurpose, free, online office software.

Thanks ZoHo and what’s next?


7 Responses

  1. Cliff says:

    Besides Google spreadsheets and your mentioned product, zoho, there are various online spreadsheets working in different directions, includes EditGrid and Numbler which you may wish to put on the list. They incorporated reat-time-update which distinguishes themself from the others.

    You may visit EditGrid_v._Google which shows a comparison between EditGrid and Google Spreadsheets.

  2. Thomas says:

    One thing about all these ‘office’ offerings is that the authors are constantly watching blogs and putting comments if their software isn’t mentioned. 😉 Thanks for the info, I’ll have to check them out.

  3. Arvind says:

    Thanks for the cool post on Zoho, Thomas!

    We just released Zoho Show, the third online Office product after Writer & Sheet. Zoho Show allows you to create & give presentations online.

    Check out Zoho Show at http://zohoshow.com

  4. kvd says:

    There are many other Online office service providers which provide more than what zoho or infact Gooooooogle or any other online office suite provides, Its seems like no other online office suite allows u to track your portfolio online and also maintain your accounts also…..

    http://www.edeskonline.com

  5. Ruz says:

    i think that speed wise zoho is much slower than its other counterparts. At No. 1 i will rate edeskonline.com in speed, No. 2 will be google docs and zoho will take 3rd place. Shouldnt the focus be on speed as well? Edeskonline has an online Accounting package as well as an Online Tax Calculator.
    https://www.edeskonline.com/index_online_office.asp

  1. 8/2/2006

    […] I’m loving this transition to web based applications as it keeps all your data online for easy access to it wherever you are in the world and, it saves us money as we don’t have to pay someone like Microsoft $400 for an Office suite. […]

  2. 8/16/2008

    […] Another article about Zoho that gives you a better idea on the office applications:https://www.twistermc.com/blog/2006/06/20/zoho-online-office-applications […]

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