Review: YouDazzle Dazzles Like SkyDrive and Google Drive?

We’re seeing it everywhere these days…. Remember the good ol’ days when you worked on your desktop on a document and freaked when someone would glance at the screen?

Those days are over! Nowadays, everyone shares their work online in real time. Think of SkyDrive and Google Drive. It’s all saved on a “cloud,” and you can have anyone view what you’re working on, and even better — it saves automatically as you’re typing your stuff out.

Think of it as an auto attendant or call center with a “word processor” feature added to it.

The Benefit of Online Word Processing

Businesses love it. I don’t even think I have to prove that. In all honesty, though, it’s not that I need to prove that in this article, but rather, this is about a specific online service sharing the same features as, say, SkyDrive or Google Drive. It’s called YouDazzle. Dear God, yet another service providing the same things as these mega-giants from Microsoft and Google….

There’s much more to it than that, though, and that’s why I’m writing this review.

The Lowdown on YouDazzle

Ever heard of Dropbox? A nifty little service, allowing you to drag and drop files onto a browser window with ease, without having to upload files manually. Well, YouDazzle utilizes that. This is a web site allowing you to manage your files online and share with as many as 100 people at the same time.

Of course, SkyDrive and Google Drive can do that, too….

But wait a second! There’s got to be something nifty about this! There sort of is. Businesses can attest to the ease of us and inclusivity of this service in the fact that you can handle a lot of different types of documents — creating your own custom branding, web meeting integration, analytics, audio conferencing.

All of that can be done on YouDazzle. Given this is a ‘service’ and not an ‘account,’ per se, this is a service that works for just about anything — as long as the members have a browser on their computer. That’s a big stretch right there, right? (Just about anyone with a computer, laptop, tablet, or even smartphone, has some type of ‘browser’.)

So…. Talk about convenience! Seems like a good deal….

Waaaaiiit a Second…. Let’s Play Devil’s Advocate Here

Once again, here’s the problem: SkyDrive and Google Drive does that as well!

All of it.

So what’s the big deal?

Sure, with the big boys, Microsoft and Google, you kind of need an account for it to be effective, and all of your prospective members would also need respective accounts for it to even work; but still, how hard is it to make a Google account or Windows Live account? Basically, a monkey can do it.

Moreover, given that SkyDrive can handle the whole audio/video thing, too (Windows Live Messenger) and Google can do it, too (Google Talk and even the Google+ Hangouts), YouDazzle isn’t particularly inventive and unique.

And the last little bit to keep in mind? YouDazzle isn’t free like SkyDrive and Google Drive. You’re looking at $19 per month and up depending on how many features you want with your service. Ouch.

It’s Exclusive

That may be its appeal, to be honest. So it’s not a complete bomb in the small business service arena. I won’t give it 1 or 2 stars. It does have that marketability factor for a company; but all in all, if you can get a service for free, why go with something that’s not?

Although a big bonus is the fact that YouDazzle can support over 300 different file types, including Word documents and PDFs. There are some benefits.

So you may want to give it a shot. It takes the compatibility issue out of the window, and if you run a really profitable business, 19 bucks a month might be absolutely nothing to you.

Go figure. I guess it’s all about what you need, what your business needs, and what you’re willing to invest in. So I guess the question falls on your lap — do you think YouDazzle will dazzle you better than the other big boys out there? You be the judge.

Related Keywords: online editing, feedback, memos