Article Highlights
• Gmail is now an excellent option for business email
• Gmail accounts are free, Google Apps adds business functionality
• Google Apps Standard is free, Premier is $50/year
Google’s free, web-based email program, Gmail, just got a whole lot better for business users.
You may already know about Gmail’s intuitive interface, monster size storage space, easy tagging and searching ability to find archived messages in a snap, effective spam filtering, and the way it gathers all messages of a single thread into a grouped “conversation.” You may already know you can access Gmail from any computer with Internet access, download copies of your email onto your computer’s hard drive (if, like me, you want to know you have a copy of all your messages should Google burp), chat within Gmail and save your chats in your account, and access Gmail from your web-enabled mobile phone.
Now, Gmail has added functionality that makes a great personal email program a great business email program. If you’re looking for a simple business email system you can access via both the web and via your computer’s email program, it’s time to look more closely at Gmail. Here’s why:
Google recently made its Google Apps services super-charged for small business. You can now send and receive email seamlessly with your own domain’s email address (username@yourdomain.com instead of username@gmail.com). With Google Apps Premier Edition ($50 per year), you get 10 GB of email storage, multiple user accounts, 24/7 user support, 99.9% email uptime guarantee and more. With the Standard Edition (free), you still get 2 GB of storage (I used Gmail’s basic account for several years and never exceeded 15% of the storage capacity), multiple user accounts and other features. To compare the options, see Choose the Edition that Fits Your Needs; note that the Premier Edition offers a free trial through April 2007.
If you don’t need all the features a Google Apps account gives you, you can still send and receive business email from a basic Gmail account by using Mail Fetcher. It’s not quite as elegant an option as Google Apps, because, as Google notes, “…your Gmail address will still be included in your email header’s sender field, to help prevent your mail from being marked as spam.” Most email programs don’t display the sender field, though some versions of Outlook may show emails sent from a basic Gmail account as “From username@yourdomain.com on behalf of username@gmail.com.”
Gmail add-ins improve functionality further. I particularly like GTDGmail, a free application that makes labeling (“tagging”) email messages both simpler and more powerful. And Google Notifier alerts users of new messages with a quick preview of the message subject, sender, and snippet (available for both PC and Mac), even when your web browser isn’t open.
If you want to learn more about Gmail and tips for using it most effectively, try these excellent articles:
Copyright © 2007 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.
