Vendors offer free remote work technology for telecommuting
Cloud applications and services vendors who specialize in remote work technology are fast coming to the realization that if they don’t help customers — and their IT admins — during the global coronavirus work-from-home quarantine, some might go out of business.
In response, vendors are offering for free some of the products for which they normally charge, including productivity and management tools for remote work as well as security tools.
PandaDoc, which integrates with CRM platforms to process transactional documents such as contracts and proposals, made free a $25 per-user, per-month e-signatures package that includes payments processing. CEO Mikita Mikado made the call after reading an angry reply to a sales email a rep had forwarded from one of the company’s 17,000 enterprise and SMB customers.
“He said, ‘Are you nuts? Why are you trying to sell me now? You should be offering something for free,'” Mikado said, adding that the customer called his company’s sales outreach a “PandaDoc fail,” requested to be removed from mailing lists and canceled a free trial.
Mikado responded personally to the customer, agreeing that the sales outreach was tone-deaf. He also told the customer that his email spurred PandaDoc into action. The company had noticed an uptick in e-signature use as the coronavirus pandemic forced people to work from home and sales reps weren’t able to ink deals in person. E-signatures quickly changed from a convenience to a necessity. So, the company made that service free.
“We’re going to get into a recession,” said Mikado, who hopes his move will help, in some small way, keep vulnerable customers afloat. “A lot of people are going to be deciding if they’re going to cut a software tool, or fire somebody.”
Wrike supports remote work management
Companies such as Google, Dropbox and Zoom offer free access to basic document collaboration and meeting tools as a matter of course. But for many managers who aren’t used to managing teams remotely, work-management cloud applications such as Workfront, Trello and Wrike and can organize work and monitor team members’ progress.
Wrike made its $9.80 per user, per month professional subscription free for six months to new customers and eliminated user limits for its approximately 20,000 existing customers. Moreover, Wrike quickly realized that the company also needed to help its customers use work-management platforms. Even those who were accustomed to remote work technology underwent a massive change when the entire office suddenly had to work from home to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“A lot of our customers — some of them who already transitioned to distributed teams — are absolutely not ready,” said Andrew Filev, Wrike CEO. So, Wrike began documenting advice from lessons its own employees learned when they began working from home, such as a tips presentation that overflowed live Zoom participant limits.
A flash survey Wrike conducted of 1,000 workers at companies with 200 or more employees earlier this month showed that about half (49%) had never worked from home, and another 23% said they only worked from home during special circumstances such as extreme weather or to care for a sick child. More than half (52%) felt remote work would harm productivity.
“We want to be as helpful adopting and navigating the transition,” Filev said. “There’s a lot of work still to be done.”
Choose free remote work tech carefully
Just because something is free to acquire doesn’t mean it’s free to implement, points out Forrester Research analyst Andrew Hewitt. Companies scrambling to enable teams to work remotely should take into consideration the costs of security and usability.
“Almost every technology purchase has a long tail of RFPs [requests for proposals] where enterprises evaluate how secure the technology is, and how it integrates with their existing infrastructure,” Hewitt said. “With the free purchases, there’s not enough time to realistically evaluate how secure any of these technologies are.”
He advises companies to go with known vendors with a proven track record of enterprise security, as opposed to taking chances on cloud vendors they’ve never heard of. Usability testing with end users is crucial during normal times, but that might not be possible as whole companies suddenly pivot to remote work.
“This is less of an issue right now since speed is of the essence,” Hewitt said. “But enterprises may want to revisit these ‘purchases’ further down the road and see if they truly do fit the long-term business need.”
Vendor
Free Tool
Notes
Acronis
Cyber Files Cloud
File sync and share solution; free through July 31
Addigy
Addigy
Apple device management platform; free for 60 days
Atlassian
Jira, Confluence, Jira Service Desk, Jira Core
Free for teams of up to 10 people
Box
Box Business Edition
Unlimited storage, 5GB file upload and more, free for 90 days
Calendly
Free Zoom and GoToMeeting integrations
The previously Premium-Tier offerings are free through June
Charter
Spectrum WiFi Hotspots
Spectrum WiFi Hotspots will be free for public use for 60 days
Cisco
Cisco Webex
Now with unlimited usage, supporting up to 100 participants. Free 90-day licenses for non-users
Cloudflare
Cloudflare for Teams
Free seats for small businesses through Sept. 1, with a free onboarding session
Google
Google Hangouts Meet
Free for all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers globally until July 1
Igloo
Business Continuity Bundle
Communications platform to dispense information to employees; free until July 6
Intermedia
AnyMeeting Pro
Videoconferencing software free to all new users through Dec. 31, 2020
Librestream
Librestrem Onsight
Free business continuity package for qualified aviation, defense, manufacturing, energy and inspection companies
Lifesize
Lifesize video conferencing
Unlimited free licenses for cloud-based video collaboration tool for six months
LogMeIn
Emergency Remote Work Kits
Free organization-wide use for three months of certain LogMeIn tools including GoToMeetings
Microsoft
Microsoft Office 365 E1 Trial
Free six-month trial includes Teams
Okta
Okta for Emergency Remote Work
Free access to Okta Single Sign-On and Okta Multi-Factor Authentication
PandaDoc
Free eSign
Includes document uploads, payment processing
PC Matic
PC Matic Pro
Free cybersecurity and remote management tool to businesses with 10 or more remote workstations, until June 30
Ping
SSO and MFA
Free cloud sign-on and multi-factor authentication for six months
Pronto
Pronto
Free access to chat and video messaging tool for businesses and schools
Qualtrics
Remote Work Pulse
Tool to help organizations assess remote work readiness
RemoteDesk
RemoteDesk
Offering 10,000 free licenses for its AI-based remote workforce management tool
RingCentral
RingCentral Office
Free for educators, healthcare providers or nonprofits
Salesforce
Quip Starter
Documents, chat; free to Salesforce customers
SAP Ariba
SAP Ariba Discovery
Enables any buyer to post immediate sourcing needs and suppliers to reply; free until June 30
Support.com
TechSolutions
Remote tech support service; temporarily free
Tempered
Airwall
The VPN is free for 90 days; Tempered will also help deploy Airwall
TigerGraph
TigerGraph Cloud and Enterprise Editions
Free for applications with large data or high computation needs to analyze COVID-19 data
Vonage
Vonage Business Communications
Voice, SMS and team messaging, video collaboration and more is available free for 90 days
Vonage Free Conferencing
Standalong video conferencing service; free for 90 days
Wanido
Wanido
The workplace well-being software will offer free access April 1-Aug. 1
Wrike
Wrike Professional
Project management for marketing, operations; free for six months
Wundamail
Wundamail
Remote team management software; free for a month
Last updated March 23. Check back for ongoing updates.