Small businesses rarely have small problems or big budgets. I’m always on the lookout for technology that would make our lives easier. Unfortunately, clunky user interfaces and non-existent support means apps are often more trouble than they were worth.

Here are a few apps that I can’t live without. These five are easy to use apps are cloud-based and scalable, this means they can grow along with your company. The best bit is that each app has a free or nearly free version for businesses just starting out who need to control costs.

Zendesk

Zendesk simplifies and streamlines customer service. The app consolidates all customer communications like email, social media, websites, and even phone into individual “tickets” that all your team can access and respond to. You can automate standard responses, store customer histories, and create product forums where customers can interact and answer each other’s questions.

Zendesk offers a special “Starter Plan” for up to three users for $20 per year. Regular monthly plans start at $24 per user.

Google Drive

File-sharing is an important part of a growing business, and Google Drive makes it nearly fool-proof. Multiple users can collaborate in real time, creating, editing, and commenting on documents in the cloud. Revisions save automatically, and more importantly you can access your documents from any device. All of this represents a huge productivity leap over the old-fashioned approach: attaching documents to emails and sending endless versions back and forth in a game of email ping pong.

Individual users get 15 GB of free storage. Monthly business plans start at $5 per user and include 30 GB of storage.

Evernote

Say goodbye to post-it notes. Evernote is an indispensable vacuum cleaner-style app that sucks up all of the random data you encounter on the Internet and in your real life. Whether it’s excerpts from websites, photos, voice memos, documents, or handwritten scribbles, it all gets stored in the cloud as individual “notes.” You can then sort, tag, edit, and even share these “notes” with colleagues. All of this information is in turn accessible across all of your devices and syncs automatically.

Individual users can upload up to 60 MB of content per month for free. Evernote Business ($10 per user per month) offers 1 GB per month

MailChimp

While social media has proliferated, old-fashioned email marketing remains a critical way to reach clients and build connections. MailChimp is a no-nonsense, intuitive tool for creating email lists and keeping track of which customers are opening messages and clicking on links. You can easily import contacts and even segment your lists so subscribers receive only relevant emails. MailChimp also includes basic A/B testing features, for comparing which subject lines and send times work best.

Free users can send up to 12,000 emails per month to up to 2,000 subscribers. Unlimited plans start at $10 per month.

HootSuite

HootSuite is a valuable tool. Several million people and thousands of small businesses use HootSuite to manage their social media communications. A web-based dashboard lets you access dozens of social networks in one place. You can set up streams to monitor keywords and specific followers, as well as access detailed analytics reports showing who’s reading and responding to your posts.

HootSuite’s free plan allows tracking for up to 5 social profiles. The $8.99 per month pro plan offers tracking for up to 50 profiles and advanced analytics.

All five of these apps have healthy, growing user bases, which means they’ll be around for a long time, rolling out regular updates to keep things fresh and stay relevant as your business expands.

By using all or some of these apps, your business life will take a huge step forward in productivity and efficiency, and you’ll wonder how you ever managed without them!
And yes I do pay in $’s, the US is ahead of us in innovation when it comes to business apps.

What apps do you use in your business and couldn’t live without?

But perhaps the biggest benefit for small companies is the ability to concentrate on the business at hand and let the cloud-based service handle IT concerns as security, maintenance, backup and support.

With an increasing number of companies offering an ever-growing menu of cloud computing solutions, choosing one can be challenging. Here are 10 essential questions to ask as you screen potential providers to select the right one for your particular needs:

1. Which cloud services do you provide?
Knowing what your cloud computing needs are will dictate the type of service or services you choose, says Nicholas Bessmer, author of Cloud Computing for Small Business (Amazon, 2013).

There are software-based cloud offerings, such as SugarSync for online document, photo and video storage. Sage offers SageOne for online accounting. And there’s Salesforce for online customer relationship management (CRM).

If you need more than basic data storage, several vendors offer a range of general-purpose cloud computing services, including IT networking infrastructure with on-demand access to virtual servers, applications and software. These include IBM SmartCloud Enterprise, Amazon Web Services and GoGrid.

2. What is your pricing structure?
You should only pay for what you use, says Mike Foreman, a general manager at AVG Technologies, an Amsterdam-based internet and mobile data security provider.

Also, be wary of large upfront costs, which aren’t the norm for reputable cloud vendors, Foreman says. The pricing scheme should be pay-as-you go from the outset, with the ability to add services as needed. Fees can typically be charged hourly, monthly, semi-annually or annually, depending on the vendor. Pricing for cloud computing services can vary significantly, from as low as about £1 per month per user to £100 a month per user and up, depending on a company’s needs.

3. How secure is your cloud?
Security should be a major consideration when it comes to storing your company’s critical data in the cloud. Cloud providers should have several standard security measures in place and constantly update them, Foreman says. “You’ve got to be sure that you’re completely comfortable with your cloud provider’s approach to security.”

Security measures to look for include firewalls, anti-virus detection, multifactor user authentication and data encryption, and routine security audits. It’s also important to ask who at the cloud company will have access to your data in the cloud and whether the cloud provider does employee background checks to weed out potential cybercriminals or identity thieves.

Foreman says providers also should answer questions about compliance with government legislation specific to your industry. For example, if your business is in the healthcare industry, you’ll want to be sure your cloud provider is compliant with patient data privacy and security.

4. Where is your data centre and how safe is it?
The location and security of the data centres and servers where your company’s information will be stored are as important as online security, Foreman says. “You want to make sure you’re not doing business with a guy with a couple of servers in a spare room somewhere that could quite easily be accessed and compromised.”

To make sure that isn’t the case, Foreman suggests asking how a potential cloud vendor protects its data centre from natural disasters, including fires, floods, earthquakes and storms. Also, find out how the facilities are protected from thieves who could walk away with your sensitive data.

Perhaps the best indicator that a cloud vendor’s data centres can withstand a myriad of security threats is a Standards for Attestation Engagements 16 (SSAE 16) certification. SSAE 16 certification demonstrates that a company’s products, systems and data are compliant with the industry security standards for customer access and privacy, data centre physical security and data redundancy.

5. What happens if you lose my data?
On the off chance your cloud provider accidentally deletes or loses your precious data, you need to know how it will rectify the problem. Be sure to ask: What provisions are in the company’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) that address potential data losses? Will the provider compensate you for losses? What data redundancies does it have in place to mitigate the risks of data loss? It’s also important to ask if the company has experienced any significant issues resulting from the loss of customer data.

6. What customer support services do you offer?
Without exception, technical support should be available to you online or by phone 24 hours a day, every day, including holidays, Bessmer advises.

You should also inquire about the average response and resolution time, and whether you’ll be interacting with knowledgeable engineers or customer service reps reading scripts when you call the customer help line or use a live chat feature.

7. Can your cloud scale up to meet my business needs?
As your business grows, so will your cloud storage needs. To ensure that you’re choosing a flexible cloud provider, find out what additional storage capacity and other services can be offered over time and for how much. If you plan to increase your staff, you’ll want to make sure that you can easily add additional users to your account.

8. What’s your downtime history?
Downtime is when a cloud provider is inaccessible to users via the internet for a period of time. Naturally, the best answer to this question is never. However, even the biggest, best-known cloud providers occasionally experience downtime, as Amazon recently did during an outage that took down Netflix.

Because cloud outages can be disruptive and costly for your business, it’s best to choose a provider with as few as possible. Some vendors post their downtime history logs online. If not, be sure to ask for a cloud provider’s track record.

9. How will I get set up?
Once you choose and sign with a cloud provider, the next step is typically to log in to your user dashboard and begin configuring your account and adding employees as users. Some cloud vendors will walk you through how to install and set up their services, while others, such as Amazon and Google, simply provide online introductory guides.

10. How will I access my company’s cloud?
You should be able to access your business information in the cloud from anywhere at any time via the web simply by signing in to your provider’s client login page. You can use any device to log in, including your laptop, smartphone or tablet.

Clueful, created by Romanian security company BitDefender, ranks applications by looking at how much data they access on a user’s iPhone. It will look at certain security qualities too, such as what applications send data over Wi-Fi unencrypted.

“Clueful is the only way to really understand iOS apps, how they use your private data and treat your privacy. This one-of-a-kind product identifies intrusive applications and shows you what they do behind your back,” the marketing bumf on the app’s website reads.

Working with Apple

Catalin Cosoi, head of BitDefender’s Online Threats Lab, said the app had received around 2000 downloads since it was added to Apple’s App Store in May. But Apple decided to remove the app, for reasons as yet unknown.

“Now we are working closely with Apple to adjust the application in order to get it back on the App Store,” Cosoi said. “I’d love to tell you the reason behind [Apple’s decision], but Apple’s NDA [non-disclosure agreement] doesn’t allow us.

“We don’t want to go to war with Apple. We want to work with them, that’s the whole point with this.”

At the time of publication, Apple had not responded to a request for comment on the situation.

Removing an app like Clueful might not do Apple’s reputation any good in terms of privacy. Back in March Apple was one of a number of iOS app makers sent a letter from two members of US Congress, in a probe into application privacy.

That same month, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, was asked to send a representative to Washington DC for a grilling on privacy in the iOS operating system.

However, Apple has benefitted from privacy features it runs in its technology. This month, Google was said to be close to settling for $22.5 million over claims it was sneakily bypassing privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser, so it could track users’ activity with cookies.