Collaborative communications tool, Foldera, is going into public beta today with the release of their 3.0 version (Note: Michael Arrington is on the board of directors of the company). Foldera is aimed at small to medium sized businesses looking to aggregate all of their project related communications into collaboratively managed folders – think of it as Outlook online, but self-organizing by topic. It competes with Outlook/Microsoft Sharepoint, Live Office, and recently profiled Orgoo.
We covered last year’s private beta. The 3.0 version features simple search across all your content (contacts, emails, events, tasks, and files), contextual help, and an intuitive drag and drop interface.
Once your organization is on Foldera, you can trade information and bundle your projects into discrete folders. You get your group started by each signing up for accounts and importing your email and contacts from Outlook, Gmail, or Yahoo contact list on to the service. Editing and access to contacts can be managed through permissions. Foldera’s user interface looks very similar to Gmail’s AJAX interface. On the left hand side, you have a list of folders by subject containing your calendar, email, files, and tasks tied to that subject. The main pane on the right shows the content.
Folders are permission controlled workgroups, where you can send emails, assign tasks, trade files, and plan events on the calendar. All activity from that folder can be commented on by other users and is tied to that folder and the contacts it’s shared with. When you receive email replies to messages you sent from within the folder, they’re automatically filed in that folder for all members to see.
Within the folders you can also plan events, assign tasks, and share files (1GB of storage). When tasks are completed, the person who assigned them is notified by email. The calendar is a lot like Google calendar, with the ability to easily overlay events from other folders or users, but doesn’t allow exporting or importing feeds. The file system tracks versions of files as they are uploaded to the service and lets you easily attach them to emails.
Google’s addition of folders to Google Docs generated a great deal of conversation yesterday over the benefits of tags and folders. However, Foldera’s folders are a bit more flexible than traditional folders because they do allow files to linked to multiple projects (folders) in their drag and drop interface.
Foldera is Free for 5 users, but charges an extra $6 a month for each user beyond that.
Foldera is very late to launch, and some users who expressed enthusiasm over a year ago may now have moved on to other solutions. Give it a try and let us know what you think.
To – think google just launched folders /
– and has a powerpoint, coming – already excel and word – online.
– Also (off subject) can’t you use iphone to open your docs and edit them on – google docs? (so Iphone is able to edit documents)
– I woldn’t want to be a business – against google, microsoft and other things.
“Project communications” — we’re reasonably satisified with Basecamp for that purpose. The description of this doesn’t give me any reason to even check it out.
This looks awesome. I just filled out the sign up form. From the looks of this it will conquer basecamp and google docs. It seems seamless. I cant wait for the email with my account information. Thanks for letting us know about this.
We tried to get into the foldera beta over a year ago, and never received a invitation.
We are currently using Outlook for email and http://www.centraldesktop.com for project collaboration purposes. Works well enough for now.
Hmm, sounds a lot like TeamWork Live, except TeamWork Live was available a year ago. Foldera is still in beta and I still can’t sign up. What’s going on over there that they can’t get out of beta 18 months later?
I wonder when Arrington is going to stop writing about companies he has vested interests in. Quite frankly, I’m getting tired of techcrunch only covering companies/products/brands that are either well-established (e.g. Google, Apple, etc.) or those that Arrington has shares in. Seriously, are you (techcrunch folks) ever going to talk about real innovative companies/start-ups…. ever?!?!
I’ve been using Foldera for over a month now. What I love about it is that it automatically sorts your email into activity folders that you’ve set up ahead of time. And it really saves time. I can’t tell you how much of my day used to be spent going through emails and deciding where to put them. Now it’s all done for me. And everyone I’ve turned on to Foldera loves it. As far as it still being in Beta, so what, it works great. Have they spent a lot of time on it — yeah. They wanted to get it right and they did. Signing up is easy and you get access very quickly especially with this latest release.
I just got my credential a couple days ago. I absolutely love it. It took no time at all to figure out. Collaboration made easy. My employees are on it now as well. I love how windows open without having to open another browser window – so smooth.
I try to evaluate foldera beta for a long time but still can not so I decide to turn to http://www.letsprove.com and working fine for now.
My company is using foldera since March. We are an Italian company working in the IT sector with more than 100 employees spread over 5 continents. Folder is the ultimate tools to keep our work organized and keep our people in contact saving time and resources.
The capability to keep everything you need for a specific project in a single place and be able to share those info with your collegues is priceless.
We love this system and we are really happy to use it.
Foldera has turned out to be quite the useful little time saver and Johnny on the Spot for project info. I am in the high end residential design business. Initially, when I was faced with the decision to have our operations manager upload tons of project data to foldera for sharing I was hesitant- wanting to make sure it would be worth her time. It WAS… very much so. In fact I personally find myself checking it constantly to reference design agreements, scopes of work, and project communications during each day. Working remotely (from home) most of the time, I don’t have access to the next cubicle or office to just ask for this information from my associates. Having this otherwise dispersed information handy whenever I need it is a major convenience and time saver. Add the new drag and drop feature to boot and I’m hooked. The nice thing is that it is so straightforward in its usability, yet, robust in terms of its scope of organizing functions- especially keeping my emails, events and tasks in the context of each project folder. If others are having similar experiences with this it’s clear to me that there will be millions of users and this will be the next big thing for productivity.
The features in 3.0 are fantastic! I manage a worldwide sales organization in the technology sector where “being on the same page” is critical. Prior to Foldera, we were using Outlook along with other disparate solutions to communicate and manage our projects. By using Foldera, we can now collaborate by using one tool. The ability to manage different projects by discrete folders is very cool. If anything else, the system had made my team much more organized. I am a big fan.
Any salesforce integration in the works?
IT IS FREAKIN AWESOME. GOING TO BE HUGE. BEST THING ON THE MARKET. DRAG AND DROP, FOLDERA SEARCH. ORGANIZES AUTOMATICALLY WHILE YOU WORK. NOTHING STANDS A CHANCE. THIS IS WHAT SMALL-MID SIZE BUSINESSES NEED.
Having drag and drop throughout the whole program is really slick. I’ve been using the program for about 4 months now and with this latest upgrade I’m sold on it.
I have a real problem with Foldera. Over 18 months ago they went out to all the bloggers and said that they were months away from launch and that they already had 400,000 users – while Alexa and Comscore both didn’t even register for foldera.com.
At the same time, with every review you would see dozens of anonymous comments talking about how great foldera is – and the same thing has happen here on the TC post as well. I have never seen posts on any product receive so many positive comments in such quick succession.
Foldera is a public company, they are just pumping their stock, which is up 18% today after dying for so long:
http://finance....DRA.OB&t=3m
This isn’t a public beta – you signup to join a queue
problem with foldera guy,
let me just tell you that I use Foldera on a day to day basis. I use it for my business and it works great. Believe me, if this company wanted to pump their stock they would be doing a lot better of a job of it. This is not even close to a company that pumps their stock. They have a great product. Sure, they went through a few tough times in the beginning but now they are doing very well.
You might want to give it a whirl. You can sign up for free or just call in and you will get an account within seconds.
Am I reading infomercials in many of these comments??
I’ve been using it for a couple of projects I’ve been working on and its pretty cool. It’s simple and all of the features are great. I especially like the new drag and drop. I would recommend that people give it a try.
Is it only me or am i wrong when i ask why there never seem to be any critical focus on security in the Techcrunch articles?
Please start asking serious questions about security to every new ajax or web 2.0 new service that pops up every week.
It’s not good if everybody (believing its safe, or neglecting security) uncritically put all their stuff, projects, life, contacts, online
unless security is getting stronger focus in the companies launching the different services etc.
Even if there is a lot of good innovation out there we don’t have to be stupid neglecting security, do we?
Please Techcrunch, focus on security from now on, ask good and smart questions about security in new webbased services and communities.
Better functionality and UI is a result and extract of the web 2.0 wave.. however there is needed a better focus on security along with the current focus..
-Lars, Oslo Norway
Hello. This Blake Hunnel, CIO of Foldera.
Just a quick note… Everyone who signs up for Foldera will receive an account within 24 hours. A self provisioning tool will be available towards the end of the month.
Thank you for your comments.
Blake
Sounds like Basecamp.
what is the comparison with 37signals? Better, worse, different??? I dont’ want to get unorganized trying all these different organizational tools…. BAM new idea..lol
Wow. How in the world did this company go public? This isn’t simply, I am on the Board. This is, I have a vested interest in the day-to-day movement of this stock, which I have the ability to pump simply by writing about it. Here we have a pre-revenue company public for a year with a product that is coming into a crowded space. And those comments are so lame that they are obviously planted, maybe not by the company but certainly by shareholders who also have an interest in seeing the stock pop.
yep sure sound like infomercials. the pattern of comments here is very funny, all anon GLORIOUS comments!
There’s no way 90% of the comments in this thread are legit. Honestly, this makes TechCrunch look really bad.
First, let me say I have no financial ties at all with this company, and I am getting nothing for saying this, other than passing along some good information.
I have been using Foldera in beta for some months now and I truly do not think I could be managing the collaboration of a group of people quite as effectively any other way, especially since we are separated by hundreds of miles. We have been posting documents for comment and approval which works great.
A guest account feature has come in handy when it is necessary to allow an outsider access to a document or two without having to jump thru hoops to do it. In the past we would have just posted the document at an obscure web address for a few days rather than set up an account, along with the associated complications, on our server. (You don’t need a server- we have one, but that is completely separate from Foldera).
It is a piece of cake to set up different groups of folks that do different things, needing access to completely different sets of documents. For example, I have volunteers that give talks, these folks need to be sharing presentations and video files. Directors have no need to even see these documents, and have an entire set of documentation they need to look at and comment on, these documents should not be accessed by the volunteers. Foldera does this without any effort whatsoever.
I haven’t even mentioned the e-mail. That’s because it is all done for me. All I need to do is create an account to Foldera, done. Foldera even sends a notification to the user, I don’t even have to do that.
Is it perfect? Well it is still in Beta, so there is a small bump or two here and there, and really I mean a bump. Never has there been a show stopper, not even close. There is a feature or two that I would like to see, and I understand that they are already on the list of items to add so I am not too concerned about them either.
All in all this has been a big help getting my small organization off the ground and it has all the ear marks of being an even bigger help as time goes on. For me at least, I think the reason the comments are “Glorious”, as someone in a provious post says, is because I really cannot find anything bad to say. The botton line is this product works just as they say it does, no vaporware here.
So two big Thumbs Up here
Looks like TC turned into a bit of ragingbull.com up above. Problem with pink sheets is that the day to day pump/dump is enormous since you can instantly make thousands on the volatility.
Well, I don’t think Mike went “let’s write about Foldera so we can pump up the stock, and btw let’s have a bunch of people writing the wonders of Foldera so everyone else gets interested”. I don’t know Mike personally (I lie, I’ve met him) but that doesn’t sound like him at all. The guy is temperamental and sometimes may sound arrogant (those can be good qualities btw), but he’s not stupid to rally a crowd of nonsense infocomments that can be spotted a mile away by the TC readers.
Also, he doesn’t control what gets commented here either, so it’s not like he can stop all those lame info-comments from appearing, but this infomercial thing could actually happen with every company featured here, yet, it doesn’t, so imho this is showing a lack of class that doesn’t do this company, public or not, any good (it won’t drag it down to hell either).
I like reading comments here – sometimes they’re a waste of time, sometimes they’re insigthful. But if for every company featured here we were to see these kind of comments, TC will become a much less interesting place to visit, and I for one hope that doesn’t happen.
no, i didn’t mean Mike’s post, I meant the first set of commenters. Anyone who knows of ragingbull/yahoofinance will know what I mean. That’s all… no conspiracy theory here.
hooray for TechCrunch, Michael Arrington’s personal publicity machine!!
THIS IS MESSED UP! Earlier I posted a comment that was critical of Foldera and somebody deleted it. Freakin’ sketchy!
I’ve never seen to many glowing reviewers pop out of nowhere to post on a TechCrunch article. To me, it comes across as very inauthentic and makes me very suspicious.
There’s no doubt that Foldera occupies a space that has tremendous opportunity. BaseCamp is nice but only the opening salvo in the evolution of an important online product category.
Looking at the screenshots, though, I’m a little skeptical. It looks like a rip off from a sleep-inducing Google sytlesheet. And this comes from a company that almost 2 years ago was bragging about a revolutionary UI, which is certainly not the case.
I agree with the last poster. Unusal number of similar-sounding reviews by folks with no website or blog. No website or blog by those “reviewers” is the giveaway.
Not to mention the short firstnames(”Dan”, “Paul”, “Mark”, “Dave”). Can’t remember the last time I saw that pattern of comments on a TC post.
This does not reflect good on you guys, Foldera. Good luck.
I’ve worked in the web project collaboration application space for many years. I understand the “flow” of launching, betas, user feedback, metrics, features, evaluation / competition, etc. This post and most of the comments are a sham. I look forward to the time when a respected industry watcher evaluates the product (someone who is objective, credible and has a reputation at stake). Tricks are for kids. Foldera is a financial engineering exercise not a technology play. How many startup companies employ permanent staff to be “web advocates”. Not to worry folks. No one outside of Techcrunch is giving Foldera any time. Check it out for yourself. This is Mike’s sandbox.
Funny.. we already passed judgment without even trying the product out…
Heck, if the product works for some people – Great! It’s not for everyone.
But I wonder many who commented about the suspicious “glowing” post should be concerned. Ultimately, whether one will use a product is if it works for him, not because of someones comments!
Seems like quite a few people here must have a vendetta against Arrington because the “against” posts are *just about* as biased as the “for” posts. Just because he’s on the board of directors doesn’t mean he’s trying to sham people just to make a quick buck (as if he would even need the money).
Get real – not every solution is right for everybody so what’s the harm in going on a (free) test drive? To the neutral observers out there: don’t let a bunch of talking heads on a comment page sway you (that applies to both sides: for and against). Who are you going to believe: the peanut gallery or your own solid research and experiences? Anybody who answers the former is not playing with a full deck.
Does it integrate with applications like Outlook at all?
#38
Your attempts to make this a mike vs. anti-mike war is just as lame as the sham comments in this thread–especially when some of us who’ve pointed out the dubious comments loyally visit TC dozen times a day.
Nice try. Now stop with the dummy comments.
-Zaid
I don’t think any of the comments here have been aimed at Mike, more aimed at Foldera. I would be surprised if Mike even new this post was going up, considering that he is in Turkey at the moment and not spending much time online
I have a couple of comments – first, some of these comments are obviously planted. When you’ve been blogging as long as I have, they stick out like a sore thumb. They are probably overzealous employees or friends. Second, I do not have any stock in Foldera, or any rights to buy stock (stock options).
I have a couple of comments too:
Regarding Mike’s involvement in this post:
I demoed Foldera for Nick not Mike. Mike had nothing to do with this post.
Regarding Mike’s involvement in Foldera.
Mike’s involvement with the company is disclosed in the second sentence of this post and in the “About Us” section of Techcrunch too. Mike has never sought to keep his involvement with Foldera a secret.
Foldera didn’t ask Mike to help us so he could get us publicity. We asked him to help us because we thought that he could help us shape the product in a positive way.
He has.
In fact drag and drop and integrated search across email, tasks, events and files (that was released yesterday) was his suggestion.
Mike has gone out of his way to show no preference to Foldera over any of the companies you guys and others are building.
Regarding “Infomercials” and “planted posts”
Call them what you like, but they are real customer testimonials from actual Foldera users. When Nick said “let me know what you think”. I put the call out to the Foldera team to speak with some of our customers and have them go to Techcrunch and let you know how they are using Foldera. Simple as that.
Regarding pumping the stock.
Anyone that has followed the company in the Yahoo message boards knows that exactly the opposite is true. Go back and look for yourselves.
Regarding “Salesforce integration”
Please send me an email. I’d love to hear how you would find this useful. rlusk at foldera dot com.
Regarding “Outlook integration”
Yes. With Foldera you can POP your mail into Outlook. IMAP functionality is coming later in the year. We also have an import tool that makes it possible for you to import your contacts from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook etc.
Regarding Foldera is “very late to launch”
Yes we are. Early last year we thought we had a product that was ready to ship. We were wrong. We did the blogger and press tour got many of you excited, and we did not deliver. Yesterdays release was the first step in trying to win back your confidence. If we’ve lost you forever. We know that it is our fault.
Hopefully this clears the air enough that we can refocus these discussions on the Foldera app. If not, I’m happy to answer your further questions.
Best,
Richard Lusk
Founder/CEO Foldera
Foldera is trying to find a place in a well estabished and competitive space. The features they are struggling to implement have been well executed years ago by companies both big and small. The leaders are actually operating from 2nd and 3rd generation products now (some actually quite well thought out). So what’s the reason a “Foldera update” gets mention on TC? TC if you’re going to cover a sector ignore the press releases; get back out there and do your research.
I’d like to hear what TC’s editorial mission is so I can decide if it’s maturing as a credible industry host or a valley wag.
I have been using foldera for quite a while now and it has really helped our company to organize ourselves. There are lots of projects going on and Foldera has helped us to organize and collaborate. Also, it is free to start up. so, you have nothing to lose. Plus, the customer support is really good if we have any questions. Just thought i would thro my 2 cents in. Have a good day everyone.
This post really does read like an infomercial so I agree with the critics here. At some level I don’t blame you for using something you created to write something you have a vested interest in, but the obviously planted comments (by others) makes this entire thread look bad.
Personally I think this company is a day late and a few dollars short. It’s going to take a lot more than TC hype to compete against companies (Google, MS, etc.) that have more reach, resources – and who don’t wait 1+ years to launch a product in this space.
and, the reason why there were prob. so many positive comments in the beginning is because it is a great product. It is easy to use. Why wouldn’t people get a lil excited about something they like?
Registration or Beta invites do not work…
Hi Nicoguyon,
The invite form works fine. We are sending out account credentials all day today and again on Monday.
Sorry about the short wait.
(Fyi-By the end of July will will have a self provisioning tool that will make it possible to set up a Foldera account for your business and employees in just a couple on minutes).
Best,
Richard Lusk
Foldera
We use zoho.com. Had a quick look at foldera, looks ok but lacked the milestones/sub tasks feature of zoho and didnt have any CRM features