Collaboration on editing documents and spreadsheets is becoming a key feature in productivity suites with the emergence of Google Docs, Zoho, Etherpad and others. Even Microsoft is adding collaboration features to Excel in its new version of Office. While Microsoft is adding this limited functionality to its new version of office, DocVerse offers a plug-in for Word, PowerPoint and Excel that lets you collaborate with other users when editing a document.
Once downloaded, the DocVerse plug-in will appear on the right-hand sidebar of any Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel file. You can invite other users to collaborate with you, and once all partied have downloaded the plug-in, you can share documents with each other. Whether users are working on a document online or offline, DocVerse will track, manages and sync all changes to merge them into one updated version of the document. You can communicate with other users via an IM feature within the plug-in as well.
And DocVerse also allows for documents to be viewed on web. So you can transfer your document to the web, where DocVerse will render a high fidelity version of within it’s platform. You can also add comments from the web, which are synced automatically, enabling collaboration between people with and those without Microsoft Office software installed on their computers. Each DocVerse-edited document will feature an activity stream which is viewable via Microsoft Office, any Web browser, or an RSS stream.
DocVerse is priced based upon users and number of documents. For example, the plug-in is $49 per month for 500 documents and up to ten users. Although DocVerse will face competition from Microsoft itself when Office is released with more collaboration features, the plug-in is extremely useful for past versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Founded in 2007 by Microsoft veterans Shan Sinha and Alex DeNeui, DocVerse has raised $1.3 million in seed funding from Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal Capital, Naval Ravikant and others. The startup also recently made an enterprise play by integrating its plug-in with popular social collaboration platform Jive.
Sound like a good way to invite security issues into MS Office. Either use MS Office as it’s intended, or there may be security issues. Personally, I’m going to use one or the other.
@bhartzer
Shan Sinha, Founder / CEO here. I’d like to hear more about your security concerns.
We are maniacal about security given we are working with often times extremely sensitive content.
Most of the folks on our team come from building products like SQL Server and from building applications in the financial services industry.
Our partnership with Jive Software is a great illustration of how seriously we consider security. Jive is the leading social collaboration product created for the largest enterprises.
They are bundling our product and reselling it as a module on their product. Their customer base includes 15% of the Fortune 500. We have to go through extensive rigor to be able to offer a truly secure product that would pass the enterprise security test.
What we have done with the DocVerse Web Product is take that same technology and make it available to individuals and small teams.
All of your data is securely stored and securely transferred using completely encrypted communications. We have not compromised any of the security precautions we take for our enterprise deployments for our Web Product.
Please keep asking your questions.. I am confident that security should not be the reason you do not find our product valuable.
DocVerse can help you more cost effectively solve many of the problems you may be looking to solve with upgrades and retraining!
There are security issues if you use standalone MS Office, too…
As with every other piece software.
Though MS Office might have more than youre average software
Too bad that OpenOffice isn`t completely convertable to MS Office formats.. It works but still not as needed.
The real problem here is that this is too little, too late. This type of functionality can either be completed now using free tools or organizations needing this will likely implement SharePoint and Office 2010 so that users can collaborate in real-time within the enterprise network.
I would encourage you to watch our two minute video about the functionality at http://vimeo.com/7302723. We truly believe that DocVerse is a much better solution compared to anything else out in the market today
Himanshu
It is not “too little too late.”
1. Free tools do not display MS files as they would look in MS Office. There’s major fidelity loss, and Google is the worst culprit.
2. Sure, MS is coming out with some ability to collaborate, but it will fall short of what people need. MS Online Services or SharePoint will be required for enterprise use. But what happens when a company wants to share files outside their walls? What is required of those users? (e.g. eXpresso enables auto manufacturers to share files with suppliers securely without requiring them to purchase costly MS services.)
3. eXpresso provides real-time document collaboration differently than DocVerse. Where DocVerse places its emphasis on working on the desktop, eXpresso brings document collaboration to the browser. All files are centrally located online in easy-to-access folders, plus eXpresso gives users more control over what gets displayed in the file on a per-user basis. Much more control and security options.
eXpresso has been around for a couple years now, and I encourage you to check out this blog post: http://blog.exp...ne-before-2010/
Thanks for letting me share my perspective as being someone in the industry like Shan and Himanshu.
I was about the download, then saw the absurd pricing plans.
If they don’t know, users go to google docs for free collaboration. They won’t shell out money to do basic sync.
My suggestion: free for individuals yet INCREASE volume of docs to 100 per month. If it goes beyond that start charging.
I believe with this pricing plan you’ll have serious adoption issues – you lost me as customer, but probably a whole lot more.
@Geoff, @Logo Designer- Shan Sinha, Founder/CEO here.
Thanks for the feedback on the pricing plans. We’ve been spending a lot of time discussing our pricing plans, especially in the context of how people have been using our beta product for the last year.
I should first point out a few details with our pricing plans that may be leading you to think the pricing is absurd. I’m interested to hear your feedback.
* We do have a free version of the product for individuals. We always will. It is our intention to make sure that anybody who wants to use DocVerse casually can always do it for free.
DocVerse is the kind of product that becomes more valuable when everyone has it.
Moreover, it is very important that a user of the “paid version” can always add another users (whether free or paid) as a collaborator to the document. We make this very simple to do.
* When we say that a user gets 50 documents for their account, we mean that we will store every version of each document. So if you have 100 versions of 1 document, it only counts as 1 document against your limit (regardless of how large the document is.
* Moreover, “document” only refers to documents on which you are listed as an owner. For example, if one of your co-workers adds you as an editor to a document, that document will not count against your limit, even though it shows up in your account.
What we’ve found with our existing beta user base is that this limits closely match the profile of people using it casually versus people using it extensively.
You should also know that we are taking all of the feedback on our pricing plans very seriously, so please keep it coming as we are listening and will definitely evolve our pricing plans if they do not match the value we offer.
We’re confident that the capabilities of the product offer a lot of value (which also is realized over more usage) in exchange for price or in comparison to what you can get for free. This is the reason why we offer such a long trial on the paid versions of the product.
I’d encourage you to give the product a run, if only with the Free version and tell us whether you think its benefits actually match the value.
Cheers
Shan
Hi Shan, thx for the thoughtful reply. My comment:
1. Your free version only gives me as user 10 documents. I won’t start using it as I’ll hit the pay wall pretty quick. I would consider using for free only if its 100 docs sync and up per month – because “free” has its time costs (downloading, learning the app, etc).
2. I think your value prop is not in storing documents, but rather create seamless integration between Mic Office and google doc – that’s what people want (at least myself and a small number of people I talked with about your product). I wouldn’t go and offer the costly hosting of the doc – let google do it! they do it for free! so why would i pay you to host my docs as of the 10th document? It doesn’t make any sense. All you need to do is allow people to office docs with their own gmail account (and apps for business- that’s it) and someone will buy the technology after your 10 million install.
Don’t incur cost of hosting – which I believe is not a core value, but rather more of a way to “find” a business model.
I hope it helps, and I hope your company will make it.
@Geoff-
Thanks Geoff.. that’s very helpful. A couple of things I’ll add:
1. Our business model centers around building a product that people will find value in and purchase, rather than to build a product that someone will acquire for technology. I am confident that the product we offer offers sufficient value to build a sustainable business around.
2. Your feedback on document limits is well taken and that’s something we will continue to iterate on as we learn more about our users and customers.
I hope that even with the product versions as is, you will give the product a test run and offer your opinion and thoughts after you’ve taken it for a spin, to help provide us with even more insight than you are already giving us.
Many Thanks
Shan
@Geoff Corgis
Agree with Geoff, it would be better free for individuals. May charge resonable money for commercial or business use.
Nice job guys — I would love to see this for the Mac, btw
+1 on bad pricing model. I too was interested until I saw the pricing.
where is the document being stored/saved/synced? If i create a document on my local computer, then invite 5 other people to edit it, will they be able to continue editing when i shut down my computer and go home for the night? does it store a copy on everyones computer and just merge the changes?
Yes, if you invite 5 other people to edit a document, they will be able to continue editing even if you shut down your computer.
All six of you will have a local copy of the document on each of your computer. DocVerse simply merges the changes made by others into your local copy of the document.
A copy of the document is stored on DocVerse servers to enable the functionality.
Such a good idea – coming from someone who lived in GoogleDocs for awhile, I definitely want something with more functionality. GDocs is too limiting at times and export doesn’t always work right, making the whole process a complete nightmare. Can’t wait to give this a try.
Wow very intersting. I will give it a shot, keep up the good work