These online productivity tools pass with flying colors in my book. We’re talking so good that I use most of them on a daily basis. Not all are free, but the paid versions are well worth your money. All of them definitely lower the cost of entry for starting your own business.

I will be providing more information about most of these products from time to time in Glass Case. I’ll be sure to link to the reviews from here as they are written. Also, I will update this list as I discover new tools.

Basecamp
Online project management and collaboration. Very intuitive. You can export all of your data if you decide to not use the service any more in the future.

FreshBooks
Time tracking for your projects. Great reporting and invoicing features. Also very intuitive and lets you export all of your data. My review of FreshBooks’ easy registration process

Google Apps for Your Domain
This ties high-end email, calendaring, and document sharing to your domain. So imagine having your company emails powered by Gmail, except with yourname@yourcompany.com instead of yourname@gmail.com. Or a hosted calendaring service powered by Google Calendar. Also includes free web-based knock-offs of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The applications included in the suite are Gmail, Docs, Talk, Calendar, iGoogle, Sites, and Reader.

Google Analytics
Track traffic and activities on your web site. This free tool is becoming better than most analytics tools that can cost your company thousands of dollars.

Highrise
Free customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Track all of your communications with your customers.

WordPress
The de facto platform for blogging. It’s open source, so you can have it tweaked any way you’d like.

FeedBurner
Free tool lets you manage and report on activities related to your RSS feeds (people subscribed to your blog). Also lets you tie email subscriptions into your blog. My review of FeedBurner

GrandCentral
Get a free phone number that rings your other phones. Also includes cool voicemail and telemaketer-blocking tools. I’m currently using this service to have a separate business number that rings my cell phone. My review of GrandCentral

Google Webmaster Tools
Get some insight and control into how Google handles your site.

Adobe Kuler
Having trouble coming up with a color palette for your brand? Play around with this for an hour, and I bet you’ll come up with something that you love.