All right, so the title’s a little presumptuous, but unless you’re in the business of researching or using as many cloud hosted applications as possible, then you probably haven’t heard of a substantial number of the SaaS solutions on the list below.  As an independent IT consultant—who moonlights as a small-time MSP—I love being able to recommend these solutions to my clients.  Some of the companies even offer freemium partner/reseller programs, which makes them all the more attractive to me.

Mail Chimp: Tired of paying a premium price for email list management tools like Constant Contact?  Then MailChimp might be for you.  The “forever free” version of MailChimp allows users to store up to 2,000 subscribers and send as many as 12,000 emails per month—no contracts, no fees, no credit cards, no trial expirations.  MailChimp also offers reasonable monthly, pay-as-you-go, and high volume plans.

Cloudo, eyeOS: These are two separate companies offering virtually the same service: Host your computer in the cloud and access it from any Internet-connected computer or mobile device.  That’s right; both of these free services allow you to create and configure a virtual computer and host it in their data centers.  Manage files, run applications, and do whatever you normally would do on your computer—all within a web browser.  The key difference between these two services is that CloudO is free while in beta, whereas eyeOS is an open source project offering both free and professional versions and a partner program.

Pixlr: This photo editing cloud app rocks.  I used to carry a USB key with a portable version of Photoshop on it.  No longer!  Thanks to Pixlr.  (Seriously, I’m not being paid by Pixlr to write this—nor am I in any way associated with them.)  Pixlr’s web-based photo editor is one of the most responsive cloud apps I’ve ever used.  Given a decent Internet connection, there’s virtually no lag at all.  It’s like Photoshop lite, offering many of the same image adjustment, layer, and filter functions that I use all the time with Photoshop.  They also offer a free Android and iOS app.

Picnik: Another free cloud hosted photo editing app similar to Pixlr, the main difference between the two is Picnik’s premium offerings that add even more powerful functionality. Picnik also offers a “Chrome App” which worked great on an underpowered Lenovo x120e laptop.

HootSuite: While growing quickly in popularity, it’s possible you may still haven’t heard of HotSuite.  This SaaS solution allows you to manage all of your social media accounts from one easy-to-use dashboard.  I actually prefer HootSuite’s interface to Facebook’s own native one.  Using HootSuite, IT consultants could tiptoe into the online identity or brand management sectors, offering profile management services for SMB owners who don’t have the time to deal with it themselves.

Mint: While no QuickBooks replacement, Mint’s accounting software is a great Quicken replacement.  It offers investment management and personal finance functions that allow for easy budgeting and investment planning.  While it can’t handle the accounting needs of an SMB with significant inventory, a high volume of transactions, or employees, it could work well for an independent service provider. 

SoundCloud: Similar to cloud-based music streaming services like GrooveShark, SoundCloud goes a step further and allows you to stream and share any sound.  It has simple voice and sound capture functions and allows for the upload of virtually any sound file.  For businesses that want to share audio files on their websites, SoundCloud is a perfect fit.  The service offers a widget that makes streaming audio files on your website easy-breezy.

Megaupload: Need an easy way to share very large files with Internet users?  Then Megaupload could be a great fit.  The free service gives 200GB of storage for individual files as large as 2GB.  Premium options get rid of wait times and download throttling.

Hitman Pro: Despite the name, this software from the Netherlands is actually intended for users’ security.  Hitman Pro is a malware and antivirus removal solution that scans users’ computers, uploads suspicious files to the cloud, and leverages the power of a significant number of other security companies’ software to identify malicious software.  I’ve seen Hitman Pro remove run of the mill malware, rootkits, and even bootkits.  The software has a 30-day free full functionality period, but will identify (without removing) suspicious files forever.