Top Bitrix24 Alternatives

Good: Enterprise-friendly, secure, ease of use, Intranet and Extranet, booted productivity, feature-rich, reliable customer support, free version
Things to Improve: No extranet in free version, a bit costly, no time management and reporting features to Standard users, limited technical support, difficult backend administration
Overall: A one-stop solution for efficient content management and team collaboration

Introduction

Bitrix24 is a powerful software enabling you to create your social intranet quickly and easily. It is designed to make you create your own Facebook with the touch of Web 2.0. Catering to the needs of both small and big companies who wish to make their distributed employees and clients to work with collaboration, the tool is actually a meticulous Intranet solution rather than being only a task management application or social media platform.

Distributed teams are common these days, which has triggered the need for tools that allow them to communicate and manage online. This exactly forms the foundation of Bitrix24 that facilitates instant and real time interactive communications for sharing ideas. Through a Bitrix24 site, users can add comments and like content, which fosters a more collaborative environment.

Plans

The software is available in two versions namely, Cloud-based and Self-hosted. The cloud-based version comes with three plans namely, Free for 12 users, Standard, and Professional. While CRM is free, each of these plans differs in terms of features, number of employees and external users supported, storage, and special offers.

If a Cloud-based plan is not enough or restrict you somehow, you can go for one of the self-hosted offers: BizPace and BizPace Enterprise. Both offers support 25 intranet users, additional Intranet users for a fixed price per user, unlimited extranet users, and free 30-day trial but the Enterprise one also offers multiple divisions as per branches and web clusters.

Dashboard

After a quick initial sign-up, you see a fairly neat and plain dashboard that turns into a vibrant page when you populate it with team members and photos, discussions, and documents flowing in a Facebook-like mode. You can invite team members and assign them roles, permissions, and groups.

Whether you have 10 or 100 employees, organization and communication are essential for the right and timely flow of tasks. This software helps you do this easily through an intuitive and neatly organized dashboard full of intranet and extranet tools as well as ribbons to start up tasks, share files, create users, and more.

Product Features

Bitrix24 is not only a social media builder but also a project manager to automate all business related tasks as well. It comes with features that are split into social network, tasks & projects, document, chat &video, calendars, CRM, mail, mobile, drive, and telephony. With the integration of social and business features, the software is perhaps a one-stop enterprise solution for many types of businesses.

Project Management and Reporting

The online collaboration platform of the software offers useful task and project management options for created groups. It is obvious that a business needs a calendar for scheduling meetings along with emails and task creation ability. Britix24 offers all these utilities.

A central storage of all files and documents is accessible by group members if they have the permission. The software comes with version control utility and a Change Log to track content changes. For sharing and collaboration, uploaded files can be deleted or edited, stored in the Activity Stream, and saved in a library. There is also a clock in/out system for tracking the duration of work online, work reports reminder, and automatically included daily planner activities in reports.

While the Calendar is similar to Outlook calendar and integrates with Outlook, the Task button enables creating and assigning tasks to the desired members (employees) quickly, which you can later integrate into the group calendar. A simple Gantt chart shows how much of your project or task is completed, once you create a few projects, each with a dedicated group for storing relevant files, tasks, and discussions, and tasks.

Extranet

This one is extremely useful for those who wish to connect to their clients quite often for executing new or ongoing projects. All you have to do is create an Extranet account for each client and treat it as a private group that then integrates into your Bitrix24 Intranet such that no private information reaches out to them. You can even create projects in the Extranet for making your clients to participate in them.

CRM

Bitrix24 comes with the basic CRM tools to keep track of leads, customers, and meetings. Through these tools, you can store data such as meeting notes in each lead, share your CRM contacts, and create reports and mail them to contacts.

Document Management

Bitrix24 offers powerful document management features for apt collaboration. You can upload, share, and edit documents securely on your enterprise social network. Real-time collaboration is ensured via seamless integration with MS Office Online and Google Docs.

Telephony

The software allows calling to any landline or mobile phone, domestically or internationally without a dedicated IP-telephony equipment. All you need is an Internet connection and you can call instantly wherever you want. You can even record the call, rent numbers, and relay them.

Conclusion

Bitrix24 with a good functional design is a comprehensive solution acting as a project, CRM, and time management tool with Facebook-like functions. Although the customization options are not full-fledged, it has all the features essential for small business organizations that can use the tool for free for managing 12 employees.