Many people are now working from home due to coronavirus pandemic. Businesses are in dire need of tools that can support videoconferencing for conducting online meetings, promoting teamwork and helping people collaborate while working remotely, safeguarding business data and privacy.
- Educational institutions are scrambling for software that can help them conduct classes online so that the education of their students does not suffer in these unprecedented times and they are productively engaged.
- With no end of coronavirus in sight, prolonged period of requisite self-isolation to prevent the spread has posed unparalleled challenges for all organizations, more so for the smaller ones who lack remote working technologies, strategies and infrastructure.
- The Healthcare sector fighting the coronavirus needs communication tools and software to share information with the world.
To help the world cope, software companies and service providers are rolling out free services for coronavirus pandemic. Here are some services that you can use for free to maintain business continuity in this pandemic.
WEB CONFERENCING & COLLABORATION SOFTWARE
Adobe Connect plays a vital role for enterprises looking to continue business operations despite travel restrictions, canceled conferences and delayed projects, all while keeping their people safe. Adobe’s virtual business environments let employees join meetings, virtual conferences, and training from their homes, where they can continue to be productive and socially engaged.
Schools, businesses and government agencies who aren’t Adobe customers can now use Adobe Connect rooms with up to 25 participants for free for up to 90 days if they sign-up for a trial license between now and July 1st.
DingTalk by Alibaba Cloud has played an important role in controlling the COVID-19 outbreak in China. Every day, a large number of Chinese medical experts contribute their efforts and work remotely through the application.
Through real-time multi-language translation, remote video conferencing and other functions, medical staff in any country can communicate in real-time and exchange knowledge.
Atlassian’s project tracking software Jira and team collaboration software – Confluence are now available for free to teams of up to ten people. This is not a time-bound offer. This will make their products more easily accessible to more teams throughout the world.
Additionally, they are offering one-year subscriptions to Trello Business Class for free to educators at K-12 schools and higher education institutions. This will help schools affected by closures stay organized and connected as they transition to remote learning.
Avaya is offering Avaya Spaces, its collaboration software for free, to all educational institutions including colleges and universities along with non-profit organizations worldwide.
It gives users all the meeting and team collaboration features needed, including voice and video conferencing for up to 200 participants. It’s a mobile-enabled solution giving users a simple, secure and effective way to track communications and manage tasks when travel and connectivity are limited.
BlackBerry UEM, BlackBerry Desktop, BlackBerry 2FA, BlackBerry SecuSUITE, BBM-E, and BlackBerry PROTECT have been made available free of charge for 60 days, enabling businesses to continue their operations as they take steps to contain the spread of COVID-19.
BlueJeans is offering free access to its video conferencing service to first responders and NGOs helping communities manage outbreaks and protect citizens from further exposure. First responders and NGOs may have organization-wide access to BlueJeans for an initial period of 90 days, that may be extended by BlueJeans, as needed.
All nonprofits everywhere will now have access to use Boardable for free for up to 90 days — no cost or commitment. This offer includes unlimited users, meetings, committees, and documents.
Nonprofits can set up their accounts and start using Boardable with their board and staff immediately. There will be no limits on how many users they add to Boardable or to file storage.
BoardEffect by Diligent Corporation
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, Diligent Corporation announced on March 25, 2020, that it will offer BoardEffect, its board management solution for mission-based organizations, free of charge to local 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations through the crisis.
With free access to BoardEffect, smaller nonprofits can securely share and amend documents, schedule and host virtual meetings, and collaborate through online voting, surveys, discussion forums, and board committee workrooms. Additionally, BoardEffect’s integrations with GoToMeeting and Zoom facilitate crucial video conference communication during social distancing.
Cisco is offering Webex for free to enable remote working accelerated by COVID-19. Webex is offering users unlimited usage on the most secure collaboration platform globally to help organizations get through this difficult time.
Your free Webex Meetings plan gives you meetings with 100 participants, HD video, screen sharing, and a personal room. Use it as long as you like.
Dialpad is offering Dialpad Talk Pro and UberConference Business free for a limited time to help keep you connected if you or your company are working remotely due to the Covid-19 crisis. You will get access to unlimited calling and texting to the U.S. and Canada from any device. Both Dialpad and UberConference allow you to turn your camera on, so you stay connected. They help maintain productivity with free integrations to G Suite, Salesforce, Zendesk, and more
Every company that signs up now will be credited for the first two months of service and can cancel any time with no fee or commitment.
LogMeIn is offering critical front-line service providers with free, organization-wide use of many LogMeIn products for 3 months through the availability of Emergency Remote Work Kits. These kits will include solutions for meetings and video conferencing, webinars and virtual events, IT support and management of remote employee devices and apps, as well as remote access to devices in multiple locations. Eligible organizations include health care providers, educational institutions, municipalities, and non-profit organizations.
These Emergency Remote Work Kits available to all existing LogMeIn customers. Current LogMeIn customers can expand their agreements to include GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar and other tools to cover their entire employee population for up to three months at no additional cost to their current subscription. They are also offering assistance with deploying and training users who are new to remote working.
Google has rolled out free access to advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers globally including:
- Larger meetings, for up to 250 participants per call
- Live streaming for up to 100,000 viewers within a domain
- The ability to record meetings and save them to Google Drive
These features are typically available in the Enterprise edition of G Suite and in G Suite Enterprise for Education and will be available at no additional cost to all customers until July 1, 2020.
IBM is providing free offerings to businesses to help combat the effects of this pandemic. Web conferencing and collaboration software offers include:
- IBM Aspera is offering new clients free, 90-day access to its cloud service for high-speed file sharing and team collaboration.
- IBM Video Streaming and IBM Enterprise Video Streaming solutions are available for free, 90-day access for new customers to stream events to public audiences up to 20,000 viewer hours or to stream to up to 20,000 authenticated users for one event per week.
- IBM Blueworks Live is offering free, 90-day access to help clients facilitate remote collaboration with stakeholders and distribute new or changing processes to their workforce.
- Remote Learning Resources including free access to IBM Video Streaming for new K-12 education organizations, as alternatives are put in place for nearly a billion children around the world who have seen their schools close as a result of COVID-19.
Teams is a part of Office 365. If your organization is licensed for Office 365, you already have it.
Freemium version of Teams gives unlimited chat, built-in group, and one-on-one audio or video calls, 10 GB of team file storage, and 2 GB of personal file storage per user. You also get real-time collaboration with the Office apps for the web, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
Suggested read: 10 best practices for working remotely in this period of coronavirus crisis
Qualtrics Remote Work Pulse by SAP
SAP has made its Qualtrics Remote Work Pulse publicly available and free for all organizations to help each move forward during this difficult time. This service lets organizations prepare for a remote workforce and provides feedback if their employees have what they need to succeed in the new environment.
To help teams collaborate while employees are away from the office, Quip Starter will be available for free to any Salesforce customer or non-profit organization through September 30, 2020.
Through Health Cloud, Salesforce will provide free access to technology for emergency response teams, call centers, and care management teams for health systems affected by coronavirus.
You can keep your organization connected during the Coronavirus outbreak with RingCentral Office for FREE. If you’re an educator (K-12 or community college), health-care provider, non-profit, public sector, or news and media organization, provide your details and RingCentral will get you up and running right away.
To support organizations fighting COVID-19, Slack is offering three months of a Slack paid plan free of charge —no credit card required and no obligation to pay. Those working on COVID19 research, response, or mitigation can mail to covid@slack.com to request help. They provide free upgrades to paid plans, set up consultation for remote collaboration best practices and more.
Threads, a platform that enables remote working, has made its Pro and Team plans free to all users through July 1, 2020. With Pro, you get to create unlimited private spaces, provide access to 100 members per space you create, and you get 100 GB of file storage. With Team plan, you get admin controls, spaces with unlimited members, you can add guests to spaces and threads and more.
Vidyard has introduced secure video messaging to enhance internal communications during the Coronavirus pandemic. It is now available to all businesses for free. Vidyard for Internal Communications will help remote workers stay connected with each other via secure video content and messaging. This new offer enables executives and employees to easily record, secure, and share private videos in just a few clicks from their web browser and email app.
They already offer free versions of their video messaging app as well as flagship video hosting and publishing platform. These free tools continue to offer unlimited video capture, hosting, and sharing, making them great options to support the expanded use of video when engaging remote prospects and customers.
Vonage, a global business cloud communications leader, has released multiple new solutions for organizations that require remote operations during the COVID-19 health crisis. Vonage’s new Business Continuity Offer eliminates the barrier to creating an immediate virtual work environment with access to its Vonage Business Communications (VBC) unified communications and collaboration platform.
The Vonage Business Continuity offer is available to any business and provides up to 250 mobile-only licenses free for up to 90 days. This enables teams to work from anywhere using the Vonage mobile or desktop application, minimizes business disruption and gives teams immediate access to the full suite of VBC capabilities, including:
- Voice, SMS, and team messaging.
- Video collaboration through Vonage Meetings to facilitate one-on-one communications or cross-company meetings from multiple locations worldwide.
- Desktop and Mobile applications that allow employees to manage their services directly from any device.
- The ability to choose how calls are handled and routed with call forwarding, or to automatically redirect calls to a specified backup number when needed using call continuity.
- Seamless integration into CRM and productivity tools.
Workplace uses simple and secure tools such as video calling, groups, News Feed, file sharing and instant messaging to keep entire organizations connected and informed.
Workplace Advanced will be available for free for one year to new emergency services and government customers, beginning on 18 March 2020, subject to local legal and compliance checks. This offer is valid until 30 June 2020. Applications will be qualified by the Workplace team. Organizations will have the option of moving to either a paid or free tier after 12 months.
Zoho has launched Small Business Emergency Subscription Assistance Program to provide up to 20,000 of Zoho’s small business customers worldwide, free access to their existing Zoho applications for up to 3 months to weather this global crisis. As per their press release, Zoho will prioritize those who are most in need, for this program.
Zoho also mentioned about recently launched Remotely, a virtual productivity platform of 11 collaboration applications, provided to businesses of all sizes around the world for free, so that companies could effectively make the transition to remote work.
Zoom offers Basic plan for free which includes – hosting up to 100 participants, unlimited 1 to 1 meetings, 40 mins limit on group meetings, unlimited number of meetings, online support; video conferencing features like HD video, HD voice, active speaker view and more; web conferencing features like desktop and application sharing, personal room or Meeting ID, instant or scheduled meetings and more; Group collaboration features like breakout rooms, sharing screen any iPad/iPhone, co-annotation on shared screen, whiteboarding and more; and security features like SSL encryption and AES 256 bits encryption.
Zoom has lifted the 40-minute meeting limit on free Basic accounts for K-12 schools in Australia, India, Israel, Canada, Germany, the UK, the UAE, Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, New Zealand and more. Zoom hardware partner Logitech is providing free equipment bundles for K-12 educators.
CYBERSECURITY, BACKUP AND STORAGE SOFTWARE
Acronis is making secure, enterprise-grade file sync and share technology available for free to partners so that organizations can remain both productive and secure during this challenging period.
Acronis service provider partners who use Acronis Cyber Cloud to deliver solutions to their clients will have free access to Acronis Cyber Files Cloud from now until July 31, 2020. This free access will enable them to implement remote-work environments for their clients quickly and painlessly.
Service providers who do not already work with Acronis but whose clients need a secure file sync and share solution will be eligible for the free access as well. An express signup process is being put in place to expedite their ability to access the Acronis Cyber Cloud platform and start offering the services to their customers.
Also, for new customers added by service providers between March 18 and July 31, the service providers will not be charged for the consumption of any Acronis Cyber Backup Cloud by those customers between now and July 31. This move is designed to enable partners to support clients who have an immediate need for cyber protection but have not budgeted for it.
Suggested Reading: Work from home during COVID-19: Data security tips for remote working enterprises
Automox is offering free 90-day access to its endpoint hardening platform for companies transitioning to remote work. Automox’s cloud-native, endpoint hardening platform accelerates, simplifies, and automates how you manage, patch, and configure all your internet-connected corporate laptops. No VPNs or corporate network connections required.
This 90-day access includes unlimited usage, no caps on endpoints, full service and support and NO sales contacts of any kind.
Box is providing 90-Day free trial of its business edition. It includes unlimited storage, 5 GB file upload limit, advanced user and security reporting, Active Directory & Single Sign-On (SSO) integrations, mobile security controls, integrations with EMM providers, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), 50,000 API calls per month and user groups.
Cloudflare is offering Cloudflare for Teams – a tool to secure devices, networks, and internal applications, to organizations of any size at no cost through September 1. There is no commitment to continue using the product after September 1. The program includes an optional 30-minute onboarding session with a technical expert.
Commvault is offering free software together with support and education courses at no charge through September 1st, with no strings attached.
Together with Microsoft, Commvault has made SaaS-based endpoint data protection available at no charge* to help organizations coping with a sudden increase in remote workers. This will be available in the USA and Canada only with their SaaS solution, hosted on Azure: Metallic Endpoint Backup and Recovery.
Dropbox is offering free Dropbox Business – a smart workspace where teams, tools, and content come together, and HelloSign Enterprise – effortless eSignatures built for enterprise, subscriptions for a three-month period to nonprofits and NGOs that are focused on fighting COVID-19.
Delivered as-a-Service and deployed in as little as 15 minutes, Druva can protect Office 365 and endpoint data with an automated and secure backup and recovery solution to prevent accidental or malicious data loss, as well as ransomware attacks.
For a limited time, Druva is providing free 6-month trial of Office 365 and endpoint data protection. The offer includes Druva inSync Enterprise for up to 300 Office 365 users with a maximum of 15GB source data per user and up to 300 endpoint protection users with a maximum of 50 GB source data per user. The trial period ends 180 calendar days after the first day an organization activates the Druva trial.
To help organizations stay compliant with disparate data privacy regulations during this challenging time, Hyperproof is offering continuous compliance software subscription at no cost. This offer includes Hyperproof’s core platform and two compliance templates focused on privacy mandates passed in the United States and the European Union.
IBM Security is offering a number of solutions and extended, no-charge access to technologies to help clients alter their operations and security programs to protect remote employees, protect themselves from cybersecurity criminals who might try to exploit on COVID-19 uncertainty and address critical security needs.
Kaspersky announced the free availability of its core endpoint security products for medical organizations, in order to help them stay protected from cyber threats during the coronavirus pandemic. The full list of B2B products available for free for six months includes Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Plus, Kaspersky Security for Microsoft Office 365, Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business Advanced and Kaspersky Hybrid Cloud Security.
Okta for Emergency Remote Work will be available to eligible organizations free of charge for six months from date of contract signing, with the option to extend as per the situation. Okta Single Sign-On (SSO) and Okta Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to 5 apps for all users are available for free.
Veeam has a number of solutions, many of which can be accessed right now for FREE, to help back up a company’s mission-critical data quickly and easily, especially in remote working environments. The organization will be able to send encrypted backups to your primary data center or an external repository for safekeeping.
Veeam offers a variety of FREE solutions to protect Windows, Linux and Office 365, including complimentary versions of our full product set with Veeam Backup & Replication
Community Edition, Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 Community Edition and Veeam ONE Community Edition.
Know another free software/organization that’s helping the world deal with Coronavirus pandemic by offering free web conferencing or cybersecurity services? Let us know in the comments section and help us make the list more usable for our readers.
Disclaimer: The article aims to provide a list of all free services offered by different vendors during the COVID-19 pandemic for general informational purposes only. ZNetLive owns no responsibility for these deals. Vendors may change their product or service pricing and features from time to time. It’s therefore advised in the interest of the website visitor that before taking a decision or making a purchase, updated information should be verified from the respective vendor’s site. This information has been sourced from the vendor websites and relevant resources available in the public domain on April 4. Though we make best endeavors to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date, we do not guarantee its 100% accuracy or timeliness.
