Today, I got an opportunity to do a paid review of an upcoming small business software called CatalystOffice that offers enterprise grade web based office productivity service at cost effective prices for small companies. In other words, you get a hosted Sharepoint-like solution without paying exorbitant license fees.

Catalyst Office integrates the following functions into its service:

+ POP3 email
+ Secure online file access
+ Flexible calendar scheduling
+ Contacts management
+ Enterprise-wide Instant Messaging

If you already have a custom domain, you can integrate it by pointing your MX records to CatalystWeb’s email server, though access is limited via the POP3 protocol. This allows you to access only emails via a mobile device. This is not enough. It would have been better if a mobility solution such as SyncML was deployed into the service so that company users can synchronize their contacts, calendars and notes with their mobile device and get real-time notifications.

Apart from that, CatalystOffice offers benefiits such as

+ unlimited user licenses,
+ online documents saving and editing,
+ assigning and changing user roles and permissions with ease

and other small things that can make a big difference to the user experience.

Sign up for a free trial of CatalystOffice here. More details can be found on the Catalyst launch blog.