Best Christmas Software Promos for 2013

Business software probably isn’t the first thing that springs to mind come the holiday season, but you’d be surprised. Christmas software promos and deals abound.

For every unresponsive, un-attentive software vendor out there’s another who has a legitimate interest in taking care of customers and prospective customers. With that in mind we set out to find some of the best discounts, deals and free trials on offer right now. Holiday-themed or not, these promos make great gifts for you, the potential software customer.

The Deals

Kiri
If your company is looking for ways to extend functionality while reducing your 2014 budget, you might want to consider switching to a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system. VoIP business phone systems can dramatically reduce telecommunication costs, may extend functionality on the software you’re already using and require little up-front costs. These business phone services also support BYOD policies and increase customer support uptime, especially for small companies.

Celebrate the holidays and the start of the new year with discounted services from RingCentral, a leading provider of VoIP business phone services. RingCentral offers a 30-day free trial to new subscribers with at least two subscribers. With zero commitment or risk, this free trial of RingCentral’s standard, premium and enterprise editions will allow your company to get a taste of the benefits you and your employees will receive by switching to VoIP.

Kristin
In the spirit of good ol’ holiday cheer, my colleagues and I are gifting you, our readers, with our picks for noteworthy software apps. And because we understand that true holiday merriment is that which comes in the shape of a present without a price tag (to give your barren wallet a break), I’d like to introduce one of the most exciting – and yet equally useful – software products offering a free edition as well as a 30-day free trial. Woopra is a customer analytics platform that extends beyond your traditional client analytics solution, providing real-time data on each customer’s actions on your website or app to help you review what users are up to and identify weak spots in your services pipeline.

Heading into the new year is the ideal time for your business to re-evaluate not only how you track and respond to your customer behaviors, but how valuable the information gleaned is. Implementing a tool like Woopra will help you take your analytics to the next level – from a mess of numbers to actionable, insightful details about how users interact with your site or application. Besides, nothing says happy holidays quite like a shiny new (and relevant!) software platform for your team to test out, especially when it comes at absolutely no cost to you.

Ashley
Chances are you’ve already got the basics covered for software applications- this Christmas I suggest checking out Mural.ly,  a visual collaboration tool. Mural.ly has been used by the creative minds at Autodesk, Evernote and even Dreamworks to help develop products and projects in a unique and collaborative way. Pull together research, notes, links, photos and more to create murals and idea boards with up to 50 team members.

Mural.ly is free for your first two collaborative murals, after which you can look into their range of very affordable paid plans. The software provides a unique way to bring ideas together and help your team imagine bigger and better projects than ever before.

Miranda
At the end of the year, our computers have taken a lot of abuse: files clutter our desktops, notes get buried in the wrong places, and more often than we like to admit, we hope our memory can keep us afloat while tracking documents. In every office’s life there comes a time when it hits us: since when has our shared office files been unnavigable?

To start the new year fresh, invest in a document management system like M-Files. This DMS searches the full text and metadata of documents, helping you intuitively navigate your files without an entire document revamp project. The document management software will help you better know what your teammates are doing, strengthening communication and collaboration. M-Files comes with a 30-day free trial, so you can begin your 2014 resolution for “better organization” right away.

Mark
Say what you will about Microsoft Office 365 or its much-discussed move into SaaS delivery–a well-established solution delivered over the cloud is one of the best gifts you can give to an office with a cluttered pile of apps lying everywhere. The Microsoft Dynamics CRM team seems to understand this and is harnessing the wide proliferation of Office 365 to promote their product.

Dynamics CRM brings a really robust package of both relationship management and sales force automation features in an interface that’s going to be familiar to anyone who’s worked with recent Office suite versions. Until March 31 next year Microsoft is offering a generous 40 percent discount on Dynamics CRM for any team of 50+ users who’re current Office 365 subscribers. There’s also a 30 percent discount for teams of less than 50 users.

For more information on specific solutions try checking out our selection of segment-specific Top 10 Software reports.