10-second breakdown:
Podio dances to the beat of their own drummer, they offer the single most customizable system in the industry and it’s used in companies of all sizes to boot. Very intuitive and scalable, perfect for growing businesses.
Podio is used in small (0-50 employees), medium (51-1,000 employees) and enterprise companies (1,000+ employees).
The good:
Easy to get set up and get started. Wide variety of customizations that can scale with your business. Lots of apps available to help streamline your workflow.
The bad:
With so many customization options it may be overwhelming to those new to this kind of software. It doesn’t allow advanced user access control and doesn’t have an automatic time tracking tool which could be a deal breaker for some.
How it works:
Think of Podio like a social network – each user has an account that is unique to them. Workspaces are open, shared spaces among groups of users and each workspace can be customized with apps that can help with things like collaboration.
Everything you expect from a social network like forums or instant messaging are right there for you to implement in your workspace. You can even look up another user’s profile to learn their name and occupation.
Podio’s workplace apps are what make them stand out from the crowd. They are very easy to find through Podio’s ‘App Market’ and are sorted into categories like ‘Project Management,’ ‘PR & Communication’ and even ‘Praise & Work Happiness.’ When you decide on a category Podio will bring up a list of suggested apps. From there you can browse through or search if you went in with a specific app in mind. If you don’t see an app you would like, Podio provides tools you can use to build it yourself! You don’t even need to be a programmer, they let you drag and drop fields around to make your own custom app.
The apps themselves are highly customizable. After you install an app you can bring up a WYSIWYG editor so you can simply drag and drop parts of the app to make it better fit into your workspace plan. All of the apps in the marketplace have space down below where you can give the app a star rating out of 5 and a place where you can ask or answer questions from other users.
Unfortunately, Podio made pricing a little more complicated then it needs to be. When you look at the pricing page the numbers may look a little too low, not to spoil the moment but it’s not a flat rate, the amounts listed are per user per month. There is some sunshine behind the rain clouds, Podio offers a 20% discount to any package if you’re willing to pay annually instead of monthly.
The other downside is the cheaper packages tend to cut out a lot of features you would get in all plans offered by competitors. We’ll get to all of the specifics down below, but as an example, the two cheapest plans do not include any kind of visual reports and the cheapest doesn’t have automated workflows. Although it’s nowhere to be found on the pricing page, Podio does offer a free version of their software, on the free plan you can have up to 5 users.
The first option is Podio’s ‘Basic’ plan, it’s $9 per user per month or $7.20 a user per month if you pay annually. Basic comes with basic user management and task management.
Next up is ‘Plus,’ it’s $14 per user per month or $11.20 if you’re willing to commit to a year. Plus comes with everything basic does, but they add in the ability to add light users – users who can’t add, delete or modify apps, automated workflows and the ability to set read-only access to tasks.
‘Premium’ is next, it will cost you $24 per user per month or $19.20 if paid annually. It includes everything from the cheaper plans and tosses in a visual report writer. If you pay annually you can also get a live, interactive sales dashboard and your contacts synced with other tools you may use via PieSync.
The most expensive option is ‘Enterprise’ but Podio doesn’t list any prices for it, you have to reach out to their sales team to get a quote. It includes everything the other plans offer and tosses in encrypted file sharing, larger file storage, unlimited e-signature signing and priority support.
One interesting side note, no matter which plan you choose, including free, there is no storage limit. Go wild – the only limitation is each individual file has to be smaller than 100 MB, except for Enterprise plan holders. The file storage isn’t quite as robust or feature packed as other competitors but you can still attach files to different tasks or subtasks.
While it may not be the cheapest option due to it’s per user pricing, Podio offers a truly mind blowing amount of customization. A tech savvy manager could spend a nearly endless amount of time devising the perfect dashboard, customizing everything from the apps they include, to where they include them, to customizing the apps themselves. That’s just one workspace, you could do the same for other groups as well! Every team gets their own place to play around with and customize to their own individual liking, after all, marketing and support will prioritize very different things!
For complete rankings of all project management software, go here.
http://authority.org/project-management-software/podio/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/149454215272
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