I am going to say it here and now.  Podio is the most fun I have had in a while using a business application.  Needless to say one shouldn’t have fun using business apps, now should they?

This is serious stuff – we are trying to work here folks.

But Podio is fun – and it is so super easy. You can now even bring all your work into your iphone with their new iphone App.

In a nutshell,  Podio allows you to create a “space” for you and your colleagues to share out information such as meeting notes, documents, photos, baby pictures (no kidding, there is an app for babies) and much more.  After you sign up for a space, you can download as many free apps as you like and there are a jillion like meeting notes, timesheets, a praise tool to send kudos to your team, Twitter campaign apps, tools for sharing out pertinent links with your team, designing your own apps and more.  You can then invite people to view your space, use the apps as appropriate and respond to the correspondence and documents  you populate your space with.

The Basics:  What does it look like

Navigating Podio is super easy – the interface and directions are clear and simple to follow.   After signing up (no credit card is necessary), Podio ask you create a name for your space – it can be a project name like New Marketing Campaign or in my case, Michele’s Place.  Then, it allows you to shop for free apps in its apps store.  This is the most fun – here you have dozens of apps to choose from and add them to your space.

Once you develop your space and start adding in apps, you can also invite your colleagues to join up.

Features:

Spaces:

Podio spaces are basically your dashboard where all of your apps will live.  You can have as many spaces as you desire and use one space per profect for instance.

You can open and work on apps at any time as well as continually add apps to you space.  Within your space, you can create tasks, set up a calendar for meetings as well as host all of your contacts.

Apps:

As I mentioned previously there are dozens of apps in the free apps store.  You can find the apps you need by looking on the left column that lists the apps out by function such as human resources, marketing and management.  You can also search out industry-specific apps such as accounting, education, law firms and more.

You can click on the app and take a sneak peek at it to see if the app is really what you are looking for.  You can then download it to your space or disregard it and go to the next.

Since there are so many apps, it is a good thing to first consider what you are looking for before downloading a bunch of apps you may or may not need.

Mobile:

Podio has an iPhone and Android app that allows you to post images and text directly from your phone, as well as send and receive private messages, stay on top of important notifications, invitations and more.  You can also view your contacts.

Pricing:

Companies can use Podio for free – but you are only allowed fewer than  10 users; if you need more than that, you will have to pay $99 per month for a 25-user license.  Over 25 is $4 per user and companies that want a 100 or more users will have to contact Podio for pricing.

Is it for you?

Anyone who owns or manages a small business or a team for that matter, will get a lot out of product.  The solution is easy to use and provides you with tools and templates you need to complete or track a project.  I found a lot of apps that gave me some good ideas on how to better manage products and share out information with colleagues.

Ratings: ease of use 5/5, features 3.5/5, value 5/5 and ease of deployment 5/5

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Video: Podio – Collaboration Tool