*** From the Archives ***

This article is from July 23, 2013, and is no longer current.

Free For All: the Grand Finale

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…number of individuals in your organization who can access the account, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid account. Prices range from as little as $14 per month for 25 clients and one staff member account on up to the “Time Machine” plan of 5,000 clients and 20 staff members for a still very reasonable $149 per month.

Upon visiting FreshBooks you’ll find tags saying “Try it for FREE,” which usually means the service isn’t free past 14- or 30-days. That is not the case with Freshbooks. Despite what it looks like, the free account is free forever. Of course, FreshBooks wants you to upgrade to a paid account, which is what the subtle “try it for free” language is about, but the basic service is still free.

4. Online Collaboration, Document Sharing, and Proofing

Acrobat.com, released concurrently with Acrobat 9, Adobe’s first free suite of hosted applications included a quartet of very powerful tools you should probably have used. Unfortunately not enough people used them, despite my advice in the original “Ten Free Online Tools Every Designer Should Know,” so many of them have been discontinued. The rest are now either fee-only or too limited in their free versions.

That’s okay. Along came Google to give us great online collaboration, document sharing, and proofing on par, and in many cases better, than Acrobat.com. Just check out Drive.Google.com on any Internet-connected device. There you’ll find the ability to create Word-compatible word processor documents, Excel-compatible spreadsheets, PowerPoint-like presentations, forms, and more. Each document lives in the cloud and is accessible from any Internet-connected device, either through a standard browser or through dedicated apps released for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android. Files and folders can be shared for collaboration and review, and even actual Microsoft Office files from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint can be uploaded to Google Drive for Cloud-access and collaboration. Even better, many apps such as MindMeister mindmapping software, LucidChart diagraming software, and hundreds of others can integrate into Google Drive, letting you store, share, and collaborate on their native files through the service.

To use Google Drive free all you need is a Google account, which you already have if you have an account on any of the following services: GMail, Google+, YouTube, Picasa, or an Android mobile device.

5. Project Management

Liquid Planner is a tremendous hosted project management that, when I wrote the original “Ten Free Online Tools Every Designer Should Know,” offered a free plan with a respectable 2GB of file storage, up to three team members, and an unlimited number of projects and tasks. Sometime since, Liquid Planner did away with its free account option, electing to make the lowest cost account $29 per user, per month, with a 50% discount for qualifying non-profit organizations. The service is still good, and probably worth the money, but my job is to point you to free tools.

The aptly named FreedCamp is an excellent browser-based project management application that really is free. At least, with the free account you get 20 MB of storage for your projects and their attached files. There’s also a cap of 200 KB per file, which is not so good if you wanted to attach PSDs or something else big, but works just fine if you won’t be attaching files to your project management sheets. If you need more storage or larger uploads, FreedCamp starts the upgrades at a very reasonable $2.49 per month account with 1 GB storage, 100 MB per file limit, and moves up through four other tiers to the $39.99 per month 100 MB per file and unlimited storage account.

6. Understanding Your Pay Rate

Are you being paid what you’re worth? Heh. Dumb question. But, how do you know if you’re being paid what you’re worth? What is the average pay rate for someone in your position, at similarly sized organizations, in your city or region? Would it benefit you to move? Find the answers to these and other burning questions with the ultra useful Design Salary Calculator. Choose your position, type and size of organization, client base, and location(s) to generate a report based on the information AIGA, Aquent, and Communication Arts magazine collect annually from 50 thousand of our creative peers.

7. File Storage and Synchronization

FolderShare was a Microsoft service for Windows and Mac that was a complete solution for keeping two or more computers in synch—in total or just specific folders—as well as for sharing documents with individuals and accessing the files on any of your computers from any place with an Internet connection.


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Pariah S. Burke is the author of many books and articles that empower, inform, and connect creative professionals.
  • dblatner says:

    We want to thank Pariah for all his awesome work on this column over the past five years. Of course, Pariah will (we hope!) continue writing his other great articles on the site! And the site will continue to offer more free resources for creative professionals as time goes by. Everyone loves freebies!

  • jklm2866 says:

    Thank you for this, and all your hard work over the years. I am super bummed this is your last “Free for All” column — it was my favorite : (

  • triadcom says:

    Thank you, thank you, thank you for the great tips you’ve provided over the years. The moment I see the “free for all” headline, I take time to peruse your info. Even if I haven’t used it, I’ve valued the exposure to another resource that I might tap in the future. Thanks again, Pariah!

  • JohnSBrandt says:

    CreativePro kidz: Come on, keep Pariah & this column. It’s a big attraction, would be sorely missed. Surely you can work it out.

  • Ralph Schoonebeek says:

    Sorry to see it go. I always looked forward to the new offerings. Certainly the best most fun part of the site. (oh well, can’t have anything nice)

  • MoyerDesignWorks says:

    I’ve been using a number of these free tools for several years. But now I remember how I first started using them – it was your alpha article! Thanks, Pariah.

  • Jim Kidwell says:

    Thanks for your years of articles Pariah!

  • Angela Evans says:

    Another great project management tool we use is Trello. It doesn’t really have file storage like others, but integrates perfectly with Google Docs and Dropbox. Is free, unlimited, robust and super easy. I didn’t even read the how-to and had my project board migrated over and set up in an afternoon. Give it a look.

  • Ann Farr says:

    Thank you so much Pariah for all the wonderful freebies you found, and for all the time you must have spent researching. Truly useful and very much appreciated.

  • Walt Bobrowski says:

    Thanks Pariah for all those fabulous freebies for so many years!

  • Terry Veiga says:

    Always liked the well thought out recommendations and will miss them. Thank you! Pariah.

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