Last week someone asked me about free and low cost work spaces online. Specifically they were looking for space or tools that would allow them work with colleagues who were not on the same network. Here is what I found:

Standard Applications
Most of the resources that I looked at let you share a calendar, files and photos, create polls, and carry on an archived conversation

Yahoo! Groups
Yahoo! Groups is free but it includes a lot of advertising. You can limit use to members only or open it up to the public for people to join. Yahoo! Groups is good for a potentially public list, such as for your matchbook collectors club, a very casual list, such as your family or high school reunion list, or when free is the most important.

Intranets
Intranets is a low cost solution; it’s $60 per month for 5 or fewer business users and $50 per month for 10 or fewer nonprofit users. With Intranets you can host real-time chats. I have used Intranets and I think it works quite well – although the chats were not very easy to follow. A free 30 days trial is available.

HyperOffice
HyperOffice is another low cost solution; it’s $6 per month for one user, $30 for 10 or fewer users and pricing goes up from there. I haven’t used HyperOffice but it looks quite good. I think it would be a good solution for a contractor who needed to access files remotely. A free 30 days trial is available.

I have to say that I also found several solutions that didn’t have pricing – so I haven’t included them. And I have tried other solutions that I didn’t like much – so I haven’t included them.