Top Seven Powerful Google Apps Add-Ons for Business

Let's find out seven powerful Google Apps add-ons for business that can be found at Google Apps Marketplace, and most of them are free or offer a free edition.

TripIt Travel Organizer

Integrating flight and hotel booking information into Google Calendar and Gmail is the major function of the TripIt Travel Organizer app for Google Apps. Users can authorize TripIt to import travel itinerary confirmations from Gmail automatically with a Google Apps e-mail and a TripIt account.

Furthermore, TripIt for Google Apps also adds travel details to Google Calendar like online check-ins, maps, the weather, travel delays, directions and local time. Employees can view others' travel plans and share their own in Google Calendar by joining their company's workgroup on TripIt Groups.

The TripIt Travel Organizer app is free

CloudLock

CloudLock is a data protection app that tracks the life cycle of Google Docs, protects the documents and particularly helps meet compliance regulations. Besides, it allows IT admins to transfer ownership of Google Docs to a different account on a company domain as well as has a data analytics feature to inventory documents and monitor capacity usage.

The CloudLock is free for up to 10 users and then it starts at $4 per user per year

YouCanBook.Me

With a Google Apps add-on called YouCanBook.Me, clients can add appointments to your Google Calendar. After adding YouCanBook.Me to Google Calendar, you are given a unique URL, which you send to trusted clients and customers. The URL opens to a Web page containing your schedule where clients can click a time slot and fill out a short booking form that you customize. When a client confirms the appointment, the event appears in your Google Calendar and you get an e-mail alert.

The add-on is free for Standard edition, but $2 per user/per month for Premium edition

Zoho CRM

Thanks to Zoho CRM, businesses can use Google Apps to synchronize Gmail and access other Google Apps information within its suite. The such features include exporting events to Google Calendar, adding contacts from Google Contacts, attaching documents from Google Docs and capturing leads from Google Sites using Web forms.

The Zoho CRM is free for up to three users while its paid edition starts at $12 per user/per month

Google Docs Backup

The Google Docs Backup allows admin users of Google Apps Premier and Education Editions to download documents to a local folder, network drive or Amazon S3 while maintaining the folder structure used in Google Docs. Using the add-on means documents can be accessed during Internet downtime, shared with those who don't use Google Docs, and archived for retrieval at a later time.

The Google Docs Backup is free for individual Gmail users and $10 per user, per year for multiple mailboxes or entire Google Apps domain

Tungle.me

Syncing with Gmail and Google Calendar, the Tungle allows users to share scheduling and calendar data with people using different calendaring systems like Outlook, Entourage or Lotus Notes. It is noted that only one of the two parties using Tungle to sync calendars and schedule a meeting must be a Tungle user. As for non-Tungle users, Tungle permits them to see free/busy information as if everyone was on the same calendar system.

The add-on Tungle.me is free

Gbridge

An extension of Google's Gtalk network service, Gbridge, permits Google Apps users to access desktops remotely, share and back up files, securely sync folders and chat. The add-on is also able to automatically form a peer-to-peer VPN between users' computers if they are logged in under the same Gtalk user account.

The add-on Gbridge is free