So is Feng Office worth the price of admission? To some extent, that will always depend on your available budget, but here are my impressions.

Interface

I’m partial to the Feng Office interface, because it’s clean, simple, and works well on any platform that I’ve tried thus far (Windows and Mac, IE, Chrome and Firefox). It also reminds me of Office 2007’s look, which is great for at least visually integrating with my existing workflow, which involves using Office in a virtual machine via VMware Fusion.

The interface uses a tabbed control screen, without the need for continual page refreshes whenever you update, which means response time is super snappy. Menus are dynamic and load without delay, and are organized as you would expect them to be, especially if you’re familiar with Office menus and command locations. The degree of polish on the interface alone shows me why Feng Office costs $10 per month when compared with some of the free options I’ve tested in the past.

Features

Feng Office packs most of the features you should require for most project management duties. In addition to basics like calendars, contacts and email, it also provides milestone and task management, and a built-in time-tracking function.

All of the above are well-implemented, although some users may actually find the similar interface design of all the functions more confusing than helpful, since it’s often not clear which function you’re using at any given time without looking at what tab is highlighted. I like the uniformity, though, since it gives each feature a sense of connectedness to the others and adds to the feeling that Feng Office is a holistic solution.

Notes, Links and Documents features also bring much to Feng Office’s overall value proposition, and each is well-executed. You can even create new Word docs and PowerPoint HTML documents and presentations directly from within Feng Office using its own built-in editors, both of which retain UI elements from Microsoft’s own suite. That means less time switching from browser to standalone apps, which adds up to better productivity.

Tags can also be applied to anything and everything in Feng Office, which really helps keep things organized. On the left-hand side of the screen, persistent menus allow you to change workspaces and filter by tags, so that you can drill down and find things quickly if you’re working on a larger project, or multiple projects with many team members.

Pricing

As mentioned, Feng Office offers no free option. You can try it out free for 30 days, which is what I did for the purpose of this review. After that though, if you like it, you’ll have to choose one of its five tiered plans to continue. Plans start at $10 per month for a single user account with a 300 MB storage limit, and range up to $179 per month for 40 users sharing 15 GB of space. The longer the term of your subscription, the larger the discount applied to that fee, up to a maximum of 10 percent. Both onsite (self hosted) and online (hosted by Feng Office) options are available, depending on your needs.

It isn’t free (normally a dealbreaker for me, given the number of free apps available), and it isn’t really cheap either, but it definitely is a very well put together piece of software. In fact, no free alternative I’ve come across offers quite the level of professional, bug-free service that Feng Office provides. It’ll probably ultimately depend on your project’s budget, but don’t pass up at least the free test run of this little gem.

Let us know your thoughts on Feng Office in the comments.

Wouldn’t it be grand to have everything in one place? The folks at WORKetc think so, and with a signifcant upgrade to their Veetro service, they are making the declaration that “Single Purpose Web Apps Are Dead!“

It’s a bold claim and while I don’t necessarily believe that to be the case, there is a compelling argument to be made for consolidating everything into one place, including a consistent look and feel, reduced training times, and cost consolidation.

As mentioned, WORKetc is an upgrade and refresh of an existing service called Veetro, and along with the name change comes a significant interface update. I recall evaluating Veetro in the past and finding the interface lacking, but this new version 2.0 brightens things up considerably and adds improved navigation and lots of obligatory AJAX to make things easier to use.

WORKetc does take an everything but the kitchen sink approach to this suite, integrating time sheets, project management, billing, help desk, task management, CRM, and more all together into one application. The fear with this sort of approach is that the individual apps might not stand up to their standalone counterparts but I certainly didn’t feel that I was using a “lite” version of anything. Features vary even in standalones and in most instances I found that the individual WORKetc apps are really quite feature rich.

In working with the app for even a short time, the advantages of consolidation become apparent. Time and tasks are logged against clients and projects, and are automatically figured when billing time comes along. In fact, the linking of just about any activity to another works really well and provides for amazing flexibility.

Screens are clear and information is presented well.  Tags are everywhere for easy categorizing and the dashboard and reporting options are plentiful and provide some insight into all of the data you are collecting.

The service can be opened up to your clients who can be given access to log support tickets and check on their invoices, but a glaring omission is their inability for them to interface with the project management portion of the app. This is a real shame and I imagine it might be a deal breaker for some – unfortunately it is for me.  It was mentioned to me that this is a planned feature but no time line was given.

I found the online help to be good, albeit a bit sparse, but my support request was answered almost immediately.

Version 2.0 is light years ahead of Veetro in usability and overall I am really impressed with the breadth of functionality that is built into WORKetc.. If you’re starting from scratch I would certainly glance over the tour and features.   I think with just a little more polish, and a client facing Project Management module, it really might be a contender to replace the standalone apps for a lot of small businesses. I’ll certainly be watching it closely.

Monthly subscriptions start at $29.95 for a single employee, $44.95 for two employees, and $10 additional for each employee above the first two. There is no free trial available but there is a 14 day guarantee if you subscribe and the product doesn’t meet your needs.  More information can be found on their sign up page.

Would you give up your standalone for an integrated suite? Are single purpose web apps really dead?