How Businesses Can Stay Afloat During Coronavirus Outbreak

Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react, and reinvent.”

– Bill Gates!

Apart from the fact that this vicious Coronavirus is leading to a global health emergency & economic slowdown, it is also affecting people’s productivity. As it’s not easy to focus & stay motivated for daily tasks when you are surrounded by panic & fear.

Be it trading, investments, employment, growth, everything is majorly affected – especially small local businesses all around the globe. These small scale institutions are most crucial to our nation’s economy; their GDP Contribution measured $5.9 Trillion in 2014 (The most recent year for which GDP data is available.)

The current socio-economic crisis is forcing business leaders to remain agile & execute spontaneous plans to survive in such stressful situations. The sudden shift to remote working is undoubtedly an unprecedented challenge for all kinds of businesses. Still, it has majorly affected small scale companies who haven’t invested much in virtual workplace environments.

“In response to the pandemic, Zoom CEO, Eric Yuan took an initiative to remind everyone to stand together & help each other in their own ways. The video conferencing platform has proffered K-12 educators complete free access to their video calling app so that students can continue learning.”.”

Being inspired, several other business software & service companies have rolled out several free products & customer upgrades to their advanced tools, with an initiative to help businesses cope with during the crisis.

Since all the technology vendors of all shapes & sizes have come to the rescue with several free offerings, here’s a rundown to the best free tools & services to help organizations to navigate the pandemic.

Top Free Tools & Discounted Services To Support Small-Scale Businesses During COVID-19

These free tools & discounted essential programs can certainly help businesses to survive the upcoming few months. Hope this list comes handy when you work from home.

Note: (*) If Eligible

What These Free Tools & Discounted Services Have To Offer To Small Businesses?

1. Cloud Tuneup Pro

Even in these tragic times, no organization or enterprise is protected from cyber-attacks. Since several employees are working remotely, Cloud Tuneup Pro can certainly help IT Administrators & business leaders to monitor there’s no misuse of authorized access from the company’s systems & they can maintain security from a single portal. Read more about the product here!

2. Whooper

It’s an instant messaging platform, which allows enterprises to communicate with their teams in the most effective & secure way.  You can share & manage daily tasks & other media files easily & quickly. Check out more about the product here!

3. Kaspersky 

Offers are valid for healthcare facilities to provide them with complete 360-degree cyber protection.

4. 1Password

For easy & effective workforce management from anywhere, 1Password is offering their free services to share logins & other resources remotely safely.

5. Bitdefender

The company is offering its enterprise-grade security & end-to-end protection services for all healthcare organizations. Get more information here!

6. Google Ad Credits

For small & medium-sized businesses, those have been active Google advertisers or company’s partners since 1 January 2019. Google will be contacting them in the upcoming weeks to let them know if they are eligible.

Also Read: Best Marketing Apps To Grow Your Business

7. Facebook Ad Credits

To support small businesses, Facebook is offering Ad credits & other benefits to help them stay connected with their audience. The offer is eligible for up to 30,000 small businesses in 30 countries. For more information, you can check out their website.

8. Hootsuite

Especially for small businesses & nonprofit organizations, Hootsuite is offering free access to their professional plans to help companies to stay connected with their customers.

9. Salesforce

In response to Coronavirus pandemic, Salesforce is proffering free access to their platform for care management teams, health systems & emergency response teams. Know more about their key program here!

Also Read: Best Customer Relationship Management Software

10. Mailchimp

The email client started offering free standard service to eligible groups who are working towards spreading awareness & floating ‘critical public health information about COVID-19’. The offer would be valid until June 30, 2020. Additionally, the company has announced a $10M Price relief fund to support small business customers.

11. Microsoft Teams

A free version with limited features is already available for users. However, from March 10, Microsoft has lifted ‘user-limit’ restrictions from the free Teams version. Further, the tech giant is also making Teams tools available to the UK’s National Health Service’s employees free of cost.

12. Adobe

Adobe’s popular solutions like Web-based PDF products, Adobe Acrobat, Magneto & Marketo would be available to users for Free till June 30. You can read more about their eligibility criteria right here!

13. Zoho

Zoho is a popular marketing management tool & they are offering a complete suite of remote apps for free to everyone. These apps include tools for virtual meetings, storage, project management, training & other resources for work from home.

14. Docusign

Docusign brings an amazing suite of applications for automating the agreement process.  They are offering free tools to send, sign & succeed with eSignature.

15. Evernote

Trusted by 225 Million people worldwide, Evernote is a classy tool to take notes, keep journals, copy and save anything from the web & store/share information quickly. Small businesses can make the most out of their free basic plan.

16. Cisco

Offers are valid for Duo Security’s Two-Factor Authentication tool, for their Web Security tool Umbrella & VPN Solution AnyConnect. The company is also extending its services for its video conference tool, Webex, it’s primarily for their current customers.

17. Zoom

Seeing the wide adoption of the video conferencing tool, Zoom has built a library of tips, tricks & other resources to help users make the most out of the product. Small businesses can reach out to them if they are interested in their plans & models.

Also Read: Five Zoom Meeting Tips & Tricks

18. Atlassian

Enjoy free cloud products by Atlassian, designed for issue-tracking, project tracking & management, including Jira and Confluence.

19. 8×8

Not only free video meetings, but 8×8 is also offering over eight-plus local dial-in numbers from 55 countries. You can also conduct virtual meetings for up to 50 participants anytime without any restrictions.

20. Intermedia

One of the most popular communication & collaboration firms is offering their video conferencing & webinar organizing tool, AnyMeeting Pro for free till the end of the year.

Also Read: Best Video Calling Apps For HD Video Chat

21. Trello

Trello is a great online teaching tool for teachers & tutors to schedule coursework and other activities for Free.

22. Amazon

Since several schools have been closed down temporarily, Amazon is taking an initiative to reduce the impact on educational institutions. The company is offering Amazon Future Engineer, free online Computer Science classes for any teacher & students in the U.S.

23. LinkedIn

To help team members, managers & other business leaders, LinkedIn is offering free learning courses on how to stay productive remotely, managing time effectively, coping stress, building resilience & more such exciting topics. You can check out here!

24. McGraw-Hill

In support of remote & distance learning, McGraw-Hill is offering various program resources, digital components & dedicated platforms to make the most out of distance learning.

25. Epic

Epic is a leading digital library for kids 12 & under. Since schools are closed down temporarily, teachers can help students in learning at their homes. The company is allowing remote access to its library, which has more than 35,000 books, audiobooks, quizzes, video content & more.

26. Avid

Enabling unique remote workflow solutions, Avid is providing services to create, manage, store & distribute content for a limited time offer. Check out here!

27. Calm

Calm is a dedicated community to help people relieve mental stress & anxiety. With all the tension residing around us, Calm is taking an initiative to offer free resources, live streaming to connect with their community, tips, tricks, videos & whatnot to help people overcome stressful situations.

28. Brit.co

It’s a crazy time in the world. So, Brit.co is taking an initiative to help people stay inspired, creative & motivated. They are making all their online classes free to make this time more productive. You just need to use code SELFCARE at their checkout!

29. Peloton

The lockdown time can be very annoying, especially for fitness freaks, as all the gyms are shut down. For them, Peloton is offering a free 90-day trial subscription to classes such as Yoga, Meditation, Strength training & more.

30. UrbanSitter

For working parents, this time can be very challenging to manage work & childcare at the same time. For them, UrbanSitter offers trusted, in-home childcare. The platform provides as much information as possible to help parents make informed decisions.

31. Workable

Workable offers a dedicated video interviewing platform that can help HR Managers to keep screening candidates efficiently while remote. 

32. HR Acuity

The tool can help you keep an eye on employee’s issues remotely. HR Acuity is offering a limited edition to small businesses to manage employee documentation & tracking. You can manage the data for more than 100 employees with their free limited versions. Check out their offers here!

33. OutMatch

The latest Coronavirus has changed the company’s approach to hiring. Keeping in mind the safety of employees, OutMatch is offering its HD Video Interviewing solution for free for 60 days.

34. Harver

A fantastic platform to get all the pre-employment assessments done at a single place. Try Harver now; it has more several resources & useful tools to make the process efficient!

35. Nvidia

Individuals having access to NVIDIA GPUs can request to get a Parabricks license. It would be provided free of cost for 90 days & any researcher can get it to contribute to fighting novel coronavirus.

36. Autodesk

Autodesk’s popular solutions like BIM 360 Design, Fusion Team, BIM 360 Docs, Fusion 360 & more are available to access for free.

37. Expensify

It’s an excellent cashback app, which allows you to purchase food essentials & other groceries with a SNAP card & get up to $50 reimbursed on each bill. Next time, don’t throw away those bills & receipts; use Expensify to get cashback for significant savings.

38. Wave

Making Bookkeeping, accounting & invoicing super easy for small businesses. Wave is offering free financial software solutions to provide you with a sigh of relief during this economic turmoil.

Also Read: Best Accounting Software For Small Businesses

39. Kabbage

Launches an online hub to help people boost sales; Kabbage is launching a call-to-action initiative across the U.S., allowing anyone to purchase an online gift certificate & crucial financial support. Read about their business model here!

Tech Giants Tackling COVID-19, Together

Apart from their free offerings, the two most prominent names in the technology world, Apple & Google have collaborated to introduce APIs that will allow interoperability between iOS and Android products through apps form public health authorities. The idea is launching the “Contact Tracing method’, a tactic often used to control the spread of infectious diseases by finding the people who have contracted it.

The tech giants are focusing on integrating such methods with their official apps to warn individuals who’ve been exposed to such carriers so that they can take the required precautions to treat themselves. Read the complete story to understand how apps will work & what are their plans?

Above All, Number One Priority Should Be To Stay Safe

We hope the aforementioned list helps out small businesses who are overwhelmed right now & quite unsure of what actions are needed to be taken for bringing out the best in their businesses. But at the same time, we want to remind you that taking care of yourself should be your number one priority right now.

Before you rush into any action, if you’re struggling with stress, you should first look for some effective ways to alleviate it.

Hope our list helps you to make the work-from-home transition as smooth as possible. These tools can undoubtedly help businesses to stay connected with their teams & potential customers.

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