Google Apps for Domains: How Smart Businesses Email

Google cre­ated an awe­some ser­vice when it cre­ate Google Apps for Domains. There sim­ply is noth­ing to com­pete with it.

MS Exchange is a Joke, and so is Your ISP’s email Solution

The Microsoft Exchange Server and Out­look com­bi­na­tion is too expen­sive, too inflex­i­ble, and just plain reeks with that stale 90’s smell.

Con­sider that MS Exchange soft­ware alone costs $1000 which only cov­ers five users, you have to pay an addi­tional $70+ dol­lars for every user after five. Add to that the cost of the server to run the soft­ware, and the on-site or out­sourced main­te­nance you hire to keep it up and you have a hefty expense on your hands.

If this is you read no fur­ther, just sign-up and test it out.

Hav­ing your ISP han­dle your e-mails is a plain unpro­fes­sional joke. You will learn that quickly if you ever get involved in an e-mail audit. ISP’s also have no uptime guar­an­tee so you might get your email when you check, and you might not. The stor­age for email is usu­ally skimpy, and they place restric­tions on attach­ment sizes, and they allow spam to come in with no resis­tance. Need I say more

Bet­ter Safe than Sorry when Han­dling E-Maill

Trust me I have had a client involved in one, and it was a night­mare for all involved. This event caused me to auto­mat­i­cally enroll future clients in Google Apps for Domains.

My com­pany have even paid for a lot of our cus­tomers to get started. It is that good, that con­ve­nient, and that important!

Google Apps has enough stor­age in an indi­vid­ual account to ful­fill the needs of your entire busi­ness. So you don’t have to be anx­ious to delete mes­sages to pre­serve space. If you can’t shake the habit of delet­ing emails, you could sim­ply for­ward a dupli­cate mes­sage to an archiv­ing account, and retrieve any mes­sage with a sim­ple search. It can be done behind the scenes, and if an employee delete their mes­sages per­ma­nently from the inbox, you will always have a copy to refer to.

Appear­ing Pro­fes­sional Has it’s Ben­e­fits No Mat­ter how Small your Company

Google Apps is pro­fes­sional, because you have to buy your own domain to use the ser­vice, but that is a great thing. What do you think is more pro­fes­sional john.doe@bluewidget.com or john.doe@msn.com.

Google Apps Plays Nicely withe Smartphones

Google plays nicely with smart­phones! I love that I can keep my address book in the cloud, and never fear los­ing it. I can sync with Out­look, Quick­books, and a ton of other pro­grams with ease. As soon as I add a con­tact to my iPhone it is ready to be used by any­one with access. If I send a mes­sage on my phone it archives online. As soon as I receive a mes­sage, it appears on my phone as well. I can even setup a cor­po­rate wide address book for every­one to share!

Google Apps have a strong cal­en­der that plays nicely with all soft­ware and smart­phones too. I can update the cal­en­dar on my iPhone and it will auto­mat­i­cally put the entry in all of my employ­ees and con­trac­tors cal­en­dar with­out send­ing an e-mail.

Out­sourc­ing your email needs to Google doesn’t require thought. It doesn’t even take an IT genius to setup and main­tain. It is one of those well thought out ideas, where you can actu­ally set it and for­get it.

The <a onclick=“javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html’);” href=“http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html” target=_blank”>Standard Google Apps ver­sion is great for most small and medium busi­nesses, but I could under­stand why some peo­ple would pay $50/user for the pre­mium ser­vice as well, Google throws in video host­ing, share fold­ers (online stor­age), groups and per­mis­sions, SSL (more secure online con­nec­tion to Google Apps, and 99.9% uptime.