With So Many Web Tools, How Can Businesses Choose? Try Comparz.

For small and medium-sized businesses, there’s no shortage of Web-based software out there designed to help companies collaborate, market themselves and get things done. In fact, the selection can be a little overwhelming. This comparison chart on Wikipedia, for example, breaks down 132 project management software options for businesses. And that’s just project management.

Recognizing that smaller operations seldom have the time or patience to sift through hundreds of options, serial entrepreneur Rachel Blankstein launched Comparz, a site that combines expert and user reviews for an variety of Web-based tools for SMBs.

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Rather than burying business owners and IT decision makers in a list several dozen options deep, Comparz attempts to boil each category down to the top five best choices. Each product is then reviewed by an expert technology analyst, whose assessment can be read alongside several user-generated reviews.

This mix of professional and amateur product reviews makes for a particularly useful analysis of which products are worth a business owner’s time. Strictly user-generated reviews can lead to a lot of noise and it’s sometimes hard to parse people’s biases (Are they writing an angry review because of one rare, bad experience?). On the flipside, in the era of Yelp and user-generated everything, who wants to read only one person’s opinion? Comparz combines the best of both worlds.

Currently, the categories they cover include CRM, email marketing, Web conferencing and online data backup.

The site also offers “Decision Guides” for each product category, which are essentially white paper-style roundups designed to help businesses pick the best option for each type of software.

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