The COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted the entire world, including millions of businesses.
Many businesses have gone upside down and are struggling to cope up with what’s happening all around the globe. Also, for ordinary people, the practice of quarantining and staying at home can be a bit daunting because most of us aren’t used to doing this for long.
In these trying times, it’s only wise and advisable to use our time staying indoors to do something that we wouldn’t have done otherwise. Thankfully, a lot of companies and marketers are lending their hands and making things easier for all of us.
They’re offering their paid tools, services, courses, and various other resources free of cost. Here’s a roundup of some of the best ones I’ve found.
Cloudflare
A brilliant and most popular solution for protecting and speeding up your website, Cloudflare is making its enterprise-grade features available to you for no cost.
Also, you get a 30-minute onboarding session with one of their experts. Just fill their form and get started.
Indusface
As the world grapples with the harsh realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and many parts of the world having to go on lockdown, a vast majority of the businesses have had to move to remote-digital workplaces and have employees work from home. This means increased use of personal computers, routers, home networks, etc. that may not be secure against cyber-attacks. Additionally, company VPNs servers are of paramount importance while working remotely and their security and availability are of utmost criticality.
Consequently, there has been a massive and quick increase in the number of cybersecurity attacks. Cyber-attackers around the world are increasingly orchestrating attacks and hacks by exploiting the COVID-19 outbreak. The number of phishing and social engineering links and emails claiming to be donations towards and updates about the COVID-19, impersonating trustworthy organizations, are on the rise and so are the attempts to exfiltrate databases on quarantined travelers including their passport numbers and home addresses. There have been attacks and misinformation campaigns against medical and healthcare research agencies, government agencies, non-profits and working tirelessly to help the world tide over the crisis.
The products offered under the Indusface COVID program are:
Indusface WAS – Advance
- Indusface Web Application Scanning enables organizations to detect web application vulnerabilities, malware, and logical flaws through daily or on-demand comprehensive and intelligent scanning.
- Managed by certified security experts, Indusface Application Scanner helps organizations to identify and unearth the business impact of logical flaws with detailed demonstrations through proof-of-concept.
- Indusface WAS enables organizations to proactively understand their risk posture and the readiness of their application to go public.
Indusface AppTrana – Advance
- AppTrana offers continuous and robust website security with
- Intelligent Web application scanning
- Managed and comprehensive Web Application Firewall (WAF)
- Content Delivery Network (CDN) that minimizes access to the origin servers through caching and ensuring content delivery that is fast, secure and reliable
- Multi-layered and round-the-clock DDoS protection.
- AppTrana is the only comprehensive solution in the market which is fully managed that helps organizations move their business digital in no time.
Google Hangouts
If you’re an existing customer for G-Suite and/or G-Suite Enterprise for Education, then you’re eligible to grab their advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities. This offer is valid until July 1, 2020. So, if you’re a student or a business that’s into video conferencing, you should definitely check this one out.
Zoom
Video conferencing can be really essential for schools, which is why Zoom is lifting its 40-minute time limit restriction on free basic accounts. This means there will be no interruption between communications with students. You can only grab this offer if you’re a school.
1Password
One of the most secure password managers out there, 1Password in a bid to ease the situation for everybody, has removed their 30-day trial period and introduced six months free plan instead.
If you’ve always wanted to use a password manager to store all your passwords, this is the time.
HubSpot
HubSpot is doing a whole lot of things to lend their support in this crisis, including:
- Reducing price for their Starter Growth Suite from $112.50 USD/month to $50 USD/month
- Increasing limits for sending emails and calling minutes
- Offering paid functions for free, such as Meetings, Quotes, E-Sign & 1-1 video
- Offering commission advances for solution partners
And a bunch of other cool offerings.
Digital Marketer Lab
Probably the best source for marketing advice, Digital Marketer is offering its paid membership called DM Lab through the end of March. This membership community has over 10,000 marketers and founders, all coming together to crush those marketing goals.
So, if you want to take your marketing game to the next level, don’t forget to grab this one.
Smart Passive Income
Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income is offering a huge library of online business resources, including a bunch of podcasts, guides, and his courses. The courses include:
- Start from Scratch: Finding a winning business idea and landing your first customer
- Build your Own Brand: A 5-day challenge to build your brand and website
- 0-100 Email Challenge: Go from 0-100 email subscribers in 3 days
Pat Flynn is known for making a killing online, especially via affiliate and email marketing. So, you definitely need to learn his secrets.
Brit.co
Would you like to learn drawing, illustrating, editing, and other creative stuff? Then here’s some good news. Brit.co is offering ALL of their classes for free when you use the code “SELFCARE” during checkout. They have really cool ones out there that you don’t want to miss.
Monday
If you’re a non-profit organization, then you can use Monday’s complete platform free of cost. You’ll also get the required support to set things up and to run. Just simply reach out to them and grab your membership.
Airtable
Great for keeping your work organized, Airtable is making their pro plans for free with absolutely no time limit. You can grab this offering if you’re either a student or a non-political humanitarian group working on COVID-19 relief efforts.
.@airtable has been absolutely invaluable to organizing our efforts to get #MasksNow into the hands of everyone who needs them. @masksnoworg has tripled our volunteer base in the past few days, and we couldn’t do it without the tools we’ve been able to deploy. Thank you!
— Joe Cooter (@jcooter) March 29, 2020
Not only that, but they’ve also opened their enterprise-only live training for all.
Appian
Appian helps you seamlessly manage the health and safety of your employees. In response to the outbreak, they’re offering their solution at no cost for everybody, including organizations with over 1,000 employees.
During this time, a solution like this would come more than handy for any company.
Calendly
A powerful and feature-packed scheduling software, Calendly is currently offering free Zoom and GoToMeeting integrations to help everyone stay connected even remotely. If you’ve been a Calendly user and wanted this integration, then you should make use of this right now.
Workplace
Workplace is an amazing solution from Facebook that helps you collaborate with teams and improve workflow massively. Usually, Workplace’s pricing plans start from $4/month/user, but currently, they’re offering their advanced plan free of cost to emergency services and government organizations for 12 months.
Freshworks
For the next six months, Freshworks is offering its customer engagement tools, Freshchat and Freshcaller, at no cost to small businesses with less than 50 employees. This tool will allow you to easily work from home with your employees and continue your normal workflow.
Hootsuite
One of the most popular tools for social media marketing, Hootsuite, is giving away their professional plan for free until July 1st, 2020. Along with that, you’ll get a huge video library of training videos to make the most out of your marketing efforts.
I recommend Hootsuite if you need to manage social media except you don’t want to use each app one-by-one. Hootsuite allows you to use each app with one. Brilliant, really. pic.twitter.com/saxEQ0X7tI
— Jupiter8Ronin (@bond_next) March 30, 2020
You can either get started instantly, or if you don’t want to enter credit card details, then you can complete a separate application on their page, which can be found when you scroll down a bit.
Mailchimp
You can get a free standard account on Mailchimp if you’re an eligible group sending critical public health information about COVID-19 through June 30, 2020. Email marketing is really essential to growing your business, and this might just be the right chance to take advantage of it.
Moz Academy
With over 15 SEO courses, Moz Academy is making all of it available for free. Just log in or sign up for free and use the code “wegotthis” during checkout to redeem the offer. SEO is still super huge in marketing, and if you struggle with it, you should grab this one.
Ahref Academy
Ahref Academy’s course called Blogging for Business is available for free for a limited time. This course shows you how to grow your blogpost 100K monthly visitors and turn them into paying customers. It’s over 4 hours long and has been praised by the likes of Brian Dean and Kyle Byers.
Codecademy
If you’re a student, you can grab Codecademy’s Pro membership and access a plethora of courses on topics like Web Development, Mobile Development, and Data Science. The great thing is, you have access to them for the rest of the school year.
14 Day Script Challenge
If you regularly roll out videos or have been planning to, but struggle with the script, then this course called 14 Day Script Challenge is all you need. The normal cost of this course is $197, but you can get it for free as of now. No need to enter credit card details. Just agree to social distancing, and you’re good to join.
TechSmith
You can grab TechSmith’s screen recording tool called Snagit and also their collaboration feedback tool called Video Review for free until June 2020. Though free usage won’t be permanent, in these months, you can decide better if these two tools are good for you or not.
Facebook Grants
Known for always stepping up in times of crisis, Facebook is offering $100M in cash grants and ad credits for up to 30,000 eligible small businesses in over 30 countries they operate in. If you’re eligible, you can use it to keep your workflow going strong, pay your rent, cover necessary costs, and even reach more customers.
You can sign up on their page and be notified when this becomes available.
Zoho Remotely
Free till July 1, 2020; you can use Zoho remotely to keep your business going in this situation. This all-in-one suite has web and mobile apps that’ll help you seamlessly collaborate, communicate, and get more done.
CXL
If you’ve lost your job or your career has been negatively impacted by this outbreak, then you’re eligible to grab CXL’s Growth Marketing Minidegree free for 12 weeks. This will help you build an in-demand skill and score a new remote job.
Upon completion, you’ll get a certificate, and you can then go on to enroll in their other courses if you wish to.
Conclusion
With the global lockdown, it’s easy to procrastinate and get carried away staying at home. In order to avoid that and hopefully achieve more than ever before, I highly recommend grabbing the resources above that are suitable for you.
